by Martha Carr
Shay frowned. She didn’t like her threats dismissed so easily. She looked down at the satchel and noticed the vacuum bag containing the book on the Dwarka was poking out of the top.
“It’s a book on Old Dwarka. It’s in Sanskrit, but I have an app with the translation, so I can read it line by line and sync it with the illustrations. You’d be surprised what kind of useful information you can find in illustrations.”
Peyton shrugged. “They do say a picture is worth a thousand words.” He chuckled. “And yet again, you’ve brought me major background info before I could really get going.”
Lily peered at the bag. “This is the job you were talking about earlier? Where is it?”
Shay opened her mouth, but a fog horn blasted from Peyton’s computer. He rushed back into the office and sat down to check the computer.
“Please tell me you’ve got good news,” Shay called to him. “I don’t really want my day ruined by having to go threaten or kill someone. It’s been a good day.”
Peyton grinned and shook his head. “Nope. Not that kind of alarm. Job alarm. Somebody needs a tomb raider of your quality, or at least your pay range.”
Shay snickered. “Okay, now I like what I’m hearing. It’s about time. Been fun to play around with Alison, but I need to bring home some treasure before I get rusty.”
“One second.” Peyton frowned and quickly skimmed the information in the alert.
Shay crossed her arms and tapped her foot. Lily bounced back and forth on one foot, excitement on her face.
Guess I’m not the only one who wanted a little tomb-raiding excitement. Guess ultra-parkour still isn’t as interesting as tomb raiding.
Peyton blew out a breath and nodded “Okay. The TL/DR is that they want you to recover the Necessaire Egg.”
Lily frowned. “Is this egg guarded by a demonic chicken?”
Shay snorted. “Good question. Is it?”
Peyton shook his head. “No demonic chickens, at least in the initial alert. I haven’t had time to confirm all the details. Anyway, it’s one of the seven lost Imperial Faberge eggs of the original fifty-two made for the tsars. It’s a jeweled egg decorated in diamonds. It was made to hold women’s toiletries, which were also decorated in diamonds, by the way.”
“Masters and mistresses of bling. Got it. Those tsarinas knew how to rock a bathroom. How much is the job paying?”
A grin split Peyton’s face. “They’re offering twenty million for its recovery.”
Damn. That would more than pay for all my recent warehouse upgrades and then some. Still, something smells off here.
Lily whistled.
The tomb raider frowned. “That’s a big payday, even for one of those. Sure, it’s worth a lot, but most haven’t sold for anywhere near that much. There’s something else going on here. Hiring a tomb raider for that much to grab lost jewelry is overkill.” She pointed at Peyton. “A little test of your skills. Find out what you can in the next hour, and we’ll reconvene to figure out if demonic chickens are involved and what else is going on.”
Peyton nodded. “And what are you going to do while I’m doing research?”
Shay smiled. “Eat some pizza before your damned cat steals it all.”
It didn’t take an hour. Twenty minutes later Peyton called Lily and Shay back into the office.
The hacker shot them both a shit-eating grin. “I’m too damned good for this world. I’m the king of all researchers. Omniscient, in practical terms.”
Lily rolled her eyes.
Shay shrugged. “Show, don’t tell, Peyton.”
Peyton clapped his hands. “So, here’s the deal. The egg was commissioned as a gift by Tsar Alexander III for his wife, Maria.”
“Yeah, rich royal gives an expensive gift to his wife. That’s not a shocking revelation. It’s definitely low on the list of revelations granted by omniscience.”
He grinned like he was Osiris catching a mouse. “Yeah, but did you know there were rumors that his wife Maria had an Oriceran heritage?”
Shay blinked. “No shit, really?”
Lily nodded. “Wonder how many royals had that kind of thing. Maybe that was why they were so obsessed with their bloodlines.”
Peyton shrugged. “Don’t know, but the thing is, her husband died in 1894, and she lived until 1928, including through that little unpleasantness known as the Russian Revolution. There are more than a few rumors that some dark magic was involved in her lifespan, but the thing we care about at the moment is that she allegedly infused some sort of magical energy into the egg. Quite a lot. People who have tried to access the energy ended up…well, they had bad endings. To this day, allegedly no one knows how to access the energy of the egg.”
Shay nodded. “Okay, now this is sounding more like my kind of job. So, I’m guessing they at least have some clue where it is, or you have some clue where it is. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be so smug and happy.”
He nodded. “It’s Argentina, where all the bad white boys have gone to retire throughout the ages."
She smirked. “Maybe I’ll get to kill a few Hitler clones while I’m down there.”
Lily frowned. “What about the energy? And what exactly is a bad end?”
Shay pointed toward Lily. “Girl asks some good questions. Do you have good answers?”
Peyton rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, yeah, those are some good questions, and I have some answers, but um…”
“Spit it the fuck out already.”
“They melted.” Peyton shrugged.
“Huh?” Shay blinked.
“The people who tried to access the energy melted like those Nazis looking at the Ark in that old movie you made me watch last week.”
Shay rolled her eyes. “Now you’re disrespecting the classics.”
“Just saying, there might be a few Nazi mummies down there in need of melting. It is Argentina, after all.”
Lily shuddered. “Melted? That’s harsh.”
Peyton managed a smile. “Good news is, at least there are no demonic chickens involved. Bad news is that if you want the job, you’re going to have fly out tonight, according to the offer.”
Shay considered that. She normally wanted a little more background before she agreed to take on a job, but twenty million was a lot of money even by her standards.
Not like I can’t bail if things go south.
“Dig some more,” Shay ordered. “And pass anything you find along to me on the way. Book two seats on a supersonic flight. It’ll probably still take a good six hours to get down there, and that gives you plenty of time to find some shit out.” She shook her finger. “Make sure you get all the relevant info before I leave the airport down there. I don’t want to end up a puddle. That’s a pretty damned pathetic way to die.”
Lily eyes widened, and she looked at Shay and Peyton.
Shay shrugged at the girl. “You don’t have to come if you think it’s too dangerous.”
The girl shook her head. “And pass up my chance to maybe see melting Nazis?”
4
An hour later, Shay was walking among racks of firearms, grenades, knives, and gadgets in Warehouse Three. Regardless of what Peyton found out, she needed to go in with a standard complement of weapons. The egg might not melt them, but it wouldn’t do them any good if someone shot them in the face before they got anywhere near it.
She pulled down several guns and knives and dropped them into a box.
Need more artifacts, so I don’t have to rely on guns and the adamantine knives so much. If I had more artifacts, I probably could have beaten Yulia. Magic might be annoying, but it’s still damned necessary.
Lily eyed the box. “I still don’t quite understand how you get away with this.”
“Get away with what?”
“Bringing all sorts of guns and grenades and stuff like that on planes. It seems like most of the time you take commercial.”
Shay nodded. “Yeah, that’s true.”
Lily shook her head. “
Yeah, I’ve only flown with you on a few private flights, but mostly commercial. How do you smuggle boxes of weapons past security and customs without ending up in some foreign dungeon? Even if you could explain away the guns, I doubt anyone allows people to fly with grenades in their luggage.”
Shay winked. “It’s all about knowing the right people and hacking the right systems in other situations.” She shrugged. “It’s really not a big deal. It helps if I’m with James on occasion, because they pretty much let him bring anything he wants legally, but most of the time, I’m not doing jobs with him. The thing is, if I’m flying a short distance, it’s very easy to arrange a private plane, but there aren’t a bunch of supersonic planes out there that I can easily charter for private trips. Doesn’t matter that I’ve been…”
She frowned. Lily didn’t know about her pre-tomb raider past and didn’t need to know. It wasn’t that Shay was ashamed. It was more that it’d unnecessarily complicate their relationship. She might not be James, but the last thing she needed was more complications in her relationships.
Shay forced a smile. “Let’s just say I know how to get a thing or two through customs and security.” She leaned over to start grabbing boxes of magazines. “Since you’ve been hiding in your tunnels lately, I don’t even know if you still have what it takes.”
The girl rolled her eyes and brushed some gray hair out of her eyes. “You make it sound like it’s been months. It hasn’t been that long.”
“Just saying.” The tomb raider moved past her and set the box down on a table. She pulled out a small 9mm and a magazine and handed it to Lily. “Prove it. A person-melting egg isn’t a junior varsity mission.”
Without hesitation, the teen slapped the magazine into the gun and readied the pistol. She marched across the room and aimed at a paper target down a shooting lane. Lily whipped up the pistol, took aim, and fired three times. She lowered the weapon and flipped the safety on, a smirk on her face.
Shay pressed a button, and the hanging target slid toward the pair. When it arrived, there was a tight center-mass cluster of hits.
She nodded. “Well, all right then. You have always been a natural.”
Lily smirked and handed Shay the gun, grip-first. “Was that why you decided to train me?”
The tomb raider shrugged. “Maybe I just see a little of myself in you.” She walked back over to the other side of the room, ejected the magazine, and placed the gun in the box. “That, and you can sometimes see the future. It’s just a little incentive.” She pressed her thumb and finger together. “Teensy little bit.”
The teen followed her. “Going to get some grenades, too?”
“Never know when one might come in handy, and I’d rather say, ‘Darn, didn’t need it’ than ‘Shit, I really wish I had a grenade right now.’” Shay’s phone rang. “What’s up, Peyton?”
“I’ve got the background info you need,” he answered. “At least enough to not get melted. I figured telling you now might make your flight more comfortable.”
Shay snorted. “Yeah, not getting melted is pretty high on my list of important shit.”
“I’ve got to give you credit. We’re not even at the airport yet. I thought it’d take you a little while to hack your way around to it.”
“I’m not a one-trick pony. This is where I got to demonstrate my fine bargaining skills.”
“What do you mean? What bargaining skills?”
Peyton chuckled. “In the course of doing my normal thing for you I come across a lot of information on artifacts, but most of it is low- or mid-range garbage. Basically, stuff you wouldn’t get out of bed to recover but might pick up if it were on the ground and you had nothing better to do.”
“Okay, I get that, what’s that have to do with me not getting melted and your bargaining skills?”
Peyton laughed. “Well, just because you don’t care doesn’t mean other people don’t care. So, I traded some info on an artifact you don’t give a crap about to get information on an artifact you care about, namely the egg and its dangers, with someone on the dark web.”
Shay nodded toward the box and walked over to her grenade shelf. Lily picked up the box and followed her, curiosity in her gray eyes.
The hacker sighed. “Anyway, we’ve got one of those classic good news-slash-bad news situations.”
The tomb raider started grabbing grenades from the shelf to set in the box. “Give me the good news first. I always like to end on a pissy note.”
“Don’t I know it! Good news is you should be able to get the egg without melting. It was moved to Argentina without teleportation, so that proves it’s possible.”
“Now give me the bad news.”
“Yeah, well, the only people who can handle the egg directly are those with equally strong magic.”
Shay tossed a sonic grenade into the box and frowned at her phone. “You just told me I could handle it without melting. Unless I somehow managed to be a witch or Oriceran all these years without knowing it, I don’t think I’m gonna suddenly manifest strong magic.”
“Sure, sure. But you can still move it. From what I’ve been told, it wasn’t a wizard who last moved it, so you just need to figure out how. What I’ve found out is that you have to be prepared to grab the egg, but not with your bare hands or a piece of cloth, or anything like that.”
The tomb raider scoffed. “So I can handle it, as long I just don’t touch it directly or indirectly.”
“Yeah, that’s about it. Hope you have some ideas, but like I said, we at least know it’s possible.”
Shay chuckled. “I’ve got a few ideas I’ll try for twenty million. Transmit all the relevant location data to me when you get a chance. I’m gonna finish up arming here and then head to the airport with Lily.”
A cat yowled in the background on Peyton’s end and a loud crash followed.
Shay snickered. “I don’t even want to know what the hell is going on. Talk to you later.”
Peyton mumbled something under his breath as she hung up.
Lily lifted the box and shrugged. “Problems?”
“How much do you know about handling dangerous artifacts?”
She shrugged. “A little. My father showed me a few things, but not going to lie and say I’m an expert.”
Shay nodded. “Let’s pack this gear up in a few of my special boxes for the airport. We’ll make a stop before we hit it.”
“Where’s that?”
The tomb raider grinned. “A place where I can show you a few more things about handling artifacts. There’s just one more thing I need to grab here first.”
Lily peered around the large open space of the main room of Warehouse Five with a frown on her face. “This looks a lot like Warehouse Three. I mean, you’ve got a bunch of racks of stuff, and it just looks like just random crap, at that.” She pointed to a velvet painting of a young Drake from twenty years prior when he was still in his prime. “Talk about random. I thought you said this was some big artifact warehouse, not the world’s lamest garbage dump.”
Shay laughed. “Most of that random stuff is just about confusing people. Almost all of it is random junk that was here, or that I bought just to mess with people if they found this place. Artifacts aren’t always obvious, so it helps keep people on their toes.”
Lily looked back and forth. “But there’s lots of magic in this place. Even some on the racks.”
“Yeah. I’ve got a few minor artifacts here and there as chaff, but none of the good stuff. Sure, it won’t fool an Oriceran or a wizard, but the typical idiot hitman wouldn’t get any of the good artifacts even if he got in here. Not that that would ever happen, but it always helps to have multiple lines of defense.”
“So, where’s the real stuff, then?”
“This is where it gets cool.” Shay marched over to a wall in the corner and pressed her palm against the middle. A small portion of the wall retracted to reveal a retinal scanner. She leaned in, and after the scan, another small silver panel revealed it
self.
“Got enough locks?”
Shay shook her head. “Probably not. I’ve thought about getting magical locks on here, too.”
The tomb raider placed her thumb on the silver panel and waited for the telltale burn of a DNA scan.
She grinned. “You’re getting to see something cool and new. I remodeled some of this lately. Let me tell you, that’s not easy when you have to bring in a bunch of people blindfolded and use artifacts to block their ability to be traced. Not cheap either.”
The entire wall slid open to reveal two joysticks, a keyboard, and a couple of displays set in a black console at waist level. Thick plexiglass separated the rest of the vast and dark hidden chamber from the main warehouse.
“Welcome to my artifact vault.” Shay grinned. “Bulletproof glass. Also has a few enchantments on it to take minor spells and help disrupt magical tracking. Guess it’s a good thing I’m about to earn twenty million. Gonna need to pay for all the upgrades I just did for this place. The thing is almost completely automated now.”
Lily looked at Shay. “It wasn’t before?”
“Nope. I just had the vault and stuff sitting inside it on shelves.”
Lily furrowed her brow. “Why did you automate it then?”
Shay shrugged a single shoulder. “Here’s a little test. Why do you think I might have automated it?”
“I’m guessing it’s not just because you’re lazy.”
The tomb raider snorted. “Nope.”
The Gray Elf teen stepped toward the plexiglass and tapped it with her index finger. “My father told me that a lot of people don’t get that magical artifacts aren’t like technology. A lot of them will respond to you, and maybe respond badly if you’re using them for something you shouldn’t be.”
“Yeah, Tubal-Cain has gone on about that several times to me. After about the fiftieth time he told me that, I bought a clue and decided that I don’t know if some asshole artifact is judging me, so the less I’m handling things directly, the better. Don’t want to get turned into a bird or something one day.” Shay nodded toward the artifact vault. “So I had this system created. Better safe than melted or winged.” She marched over to the keyboard. “By the way, just to make it clear, you can’t tell anyone about this place. Peyton knows something like it exists, but he has no idea where. I’d strongly prefer he not know.”