by Martha Carr
Lily blinked a few times and stepped toward the plexiglass. “And I thought I had trust issues. You already threated to kill me over Warehouse Two’s location, so…what, you’ll kill me two and half times as much if I rat out this place’s location?”
“Something like that.” The tomb raider nodded. “This is a whole different level of secret. This is the kind of stuff that very dangerous people would kill everyone in your tunnels over, so it’s as much for your own safety as mine.” She tapped in some commands on the keyboard. An automated arm descended from the ceiling and whizzed into the dark distance. About thirty seconds later, it reappeared with a long, curved sword in a scabbard—Shay’s enchanted Masamune tachi.
Lily nodded. “So this is where you’ve been keeping it instead of Warehouse Three.”
“Yep. Had to get a new scabbard, though, because my boyfriend broke my old one on a little field trip to Oriceran. Fortunately, it wasn’t magic, so I was only seriously pissed instead of completely pissed. It was damned nice, though. I still yelled at him about it.”
“Well, when you date the Scourge of Harriken you have to expect that kind of thing.” The teen shrugged.
“Yeah, true enough.” Shay smirked and entered a few more commands. A window opened in the bottom of the plexiglass, and she reached into it and grabbed the scabbard. She handed it to Lily.
“I don’t keep my adamantine knives or my lockpick at Warehouse Five, but most other shit I do.” More commands followed. “Now if we’re lucky, and the egg is the size we expect it to be, I’ve got a solution that should involve no melting.”
Again, the arm whirred into the darkness.
Lily peered into the glass. “An artifact solution to a dangerous artifact? Isn’t that doubling-down on risk?”
“Nope. It’s more about managing risk.”
The arm brought back what appeared to be a simple wooden lidded box. No writing or decoration adorned it. You might find it anywhere in the world.
An opening reappeared in the plexiglass, and Shay grabbed the box. “I got this on a quick but nasty tomb raid for a client who unfortunately kicked the bucket before he could pay me. I took this as my payment.”
“What’s it do?”
“It’s supposed to be able to protect whatever is held inside of it. I’m just hoping the egg will fit.”
Lily eyed the box. “Supposed to? You’ve never tested it?”
Shay shrugged and handed the girl the box. “I did some low-level tests. Put an artifact in there and shot it. It didn’t dent, but it’s not like I’ve had a chance to test it against flesh-melting magic. That doesn’t come up all that often even in my line of work.”
She winked. “If you get anything out of my training, you should learn that most of these things we find out as we go. That’s just kind of what it means to be a tomb raider.”
5
Static crackled in Shay’s earpiece.
Lily frowned and tapped at hers. “Can you hear Peyton?”
Shay shook her head. “Nope.” She nodded at the phone built into the SUV’s console. “I haven’t even been able to get a satellite signal for the last hour.” She pulled out her earpiece. “Might as well just get turn it off for now. It’s useless.”
Everything from their flight to the trip to their target location had gone well, so Shay wasn’t surprised that something had finally gone wrong. It didn’t matter. She had all the data she needed to complete the tomb raid already downloaded to her phone. She’d half-expected something like this to happen.
Lily glanced at Shay. “Is that why you kept sticking your arm out the window? To check your satellite phone reception?”
“Yep. Point is, we have line-of-sight to the sky from this road. If I can’t get a signal, that means general interference and not just some weird magnetic field or something.”
Lily furrowed her brow. “Jammer?”
Shay shook her head. “Don’t think so, but there isn’t a magical storm or anything, so it’s natural, or magically natural. You sense anything? See anything?”
The girl shrugged. “Nothing in particular, and the only thing I see in our future is more driving.”
Shay snickered. “Don’t have to be clairvoyant to guess that.” She shrugged. “But it doesn’t matter. The interference will clear up once we get out of the mountains, and it’s not like Peyton can hack anything up here to help us. Drones are often not all that great in small caves. If anything, this might be a good thing.”
Lily laughed. “How is a bunch of interference a good thing? Even if he couldn’t help us with the cave, he could watch the outside for us.”
“Sure, but among other things, if we can’t have someone watch the outside with a drone, it means no one else can either. It also means no one can sneak up a drone with rockets to try to blow our asses up.”
“Has that happened to you?”
Shay nodded. “Yes. It’s really fucking annoying. A little bit of everything has happened to me on this job. Remind me to tell you someday how I think I doomed Russia to a supernatural empress in the future.”
“Uh, okay, then. I think I’ll just stop talking for now.”
The tomb raider grinned.
Lily gave her a quick nod and fell into silence, her gray eyes locked on the passenger-side window.
The SUV continued to rattle along the snow-covered dirt road on their way up the back of the Argentinian mountain called Cerro Catedral. The vehicle could take them a good part of the way, and then more than a little hiking through the snow would be necessary.
Their heavy coats would help, but fortunately, from what Peyton’s information indicated, they wouldn’t have to do any true mountain-climbing versus glorified hiking. Ice-climbing wasn’t something Shay’d had a lot of experience with.
Maybe I should start practicing that. Hate to miss out an artifact because I can’t get to it.
Lily stared out at the white wonderland. “Maybe it’s lame considering I’m part elf and can see the future, but it’s really weirding me out that it’s winter here when it’s summer back home. It’s messing with my brain. It just feels so wrong.”
Shay chuckled. “That’s how the raids get you. It’s not the strange and exotic that breaks your brain when you see some weird ghost or bunyip or whatever. Those are so out there that it’s easy to compartmentalize. It’s just another monster on the checklist of problems to get through, something you know you won’t see again once you get home. But the other stuff—time zones, climate differences, hemispheres, different languages—it’s unsettling, but not alien. So it stays with you; it lingers and seeps into your soul.” She shook her head. “But it’s all the kind of crap you need to get used to as a tomb raider. It’d be nice if everything could just be hidden under a Walmart in Illinois, but it’s rare that I don’t have to leave the country for a tomb raid.”
“You get to go and see the world, at least. Maybe that’s why I like the idea so much. I like my friends and LA, but there’s a whole world out there. Heck, there are a couple of whole worlds out there, and I’ve barely even seen any of mine.”
Shay grinned.
Not just a couple of worlds, kid.
“True enough,” Shay agreed. “Half the time that world is trying to kill me, but I least I get to see it. Not a bad life, as long as you understand you’ll never be safe.”
“Not like my life in LA is safe.” Lily frowned. “But when you think about it, this is kind of more like the Walmart situation than some weird ancient tomb in Egypt.”
Shay glanced her way. “How do you figure? We’re grabbing this thing out of an allegedly hidden part of a cave.”
“But it’s not a remote mountain in the middle of nowhere. From what Peyton sent us, this place is a ski resort. We’re not that far from a bunch of tourists and South American ski bunnies. If they got lost on the mountain, they could almost end up in the cave.”
Shay nodded. “True enough. What’s the problem? You look a little annoyed by that. Not exotic enough f
or your tourist desires?”
“Not annoyed, just confused.” Lily shook her head. “I don’t get why no one had found the artifact. Even if they couldn’t handle it, you figure the government would have sealed off the cave with a big warning sign—Caution, flesh-melting egg inside. That kind of thing. Maybe bomb it closed or something. You know, typical government overreaction stuff.”
Shay shrugged. “Who knows? There might be a glamour on the cave, so unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, you won’t find it. I’ve run into that kind of thing a lot. Or it’s just the right time of year for us to find it. Sometimes it’s easy to hide things in plain sight.” She turned off the main road into a thicket of tall and dense trees. “I’m less worried about a few wayward ski assholes than I am competition. From the info Peyton sent along, other tomb raiders are targeting this place.”
“That was why we had to leave right away?”
“Yep. Maybe I should have told you that before I told you to come along.”
Lily shook her head. “I can’t run away every time there’s a little danger, and other tomb raiders are less scary than invisible cursed sword ghosts or Yulia.” She nodded, determination on her face. “I can do this. I need to get more experience, and the only way to do that is to go with you on jobs.”
Shay frowned a little. She was enjoying training Lily, but even as helpful as it was, the girl was supposed to be getting something out of it, too. Maybe it was time to push her a little and make her think about her future more.
“With your share of this,” Shay offered, “you can probably set your friends up somewhere other than those tunnels, you know. I’ve already given you some decent money. You don’t have to keep doing that magical Artful Dodger shit.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve been talking with Harry about that.” Lily laughed. “The funny thing is, now that I’m bringing money in, we’re not sure what to do with it. We’ve gotten so used to living the way we have that it’s hard to adjust. We don’t have to scavenge for food, but we’re also not sure about the idea of leaving the tunnels. Funny how that works. We know them, and feel safe there in a way that we wouldn’t feel safe in apartments on the surface.”
Shay frowned and did a quick mirror check. Nothing but snow and trees. “I get it. It’s hard to leave your old life behind, even if you should.”
“Did you leave an old life behind?”
“Not like I’ve always been a tomb raider.”
Lily stared at her for a moment. “And what did you do before you were a tomb raider?”
Shay shook her head. “I’ll tell you someday when I feel like it, but today isn’t that day. Today, we just concentrate on not getting melted.”
The tomb raider and her trainee fell silent, lost in their thoughts of the past.
Shay tromped up the hill through the snow. They might not be having to crack out pitons and rope, but waist-high snow wasn’t exactly fun to trudge through. Their vehicle was a distant black bump down the side of the mountain.
Lily groaned. “If this is reminding me of anything, it’s that I’m a true Southern Californian.”
The tomb raider laughed. “I’m still not sure which annoys me more, being very cold or very hot. I’ll say one thing, though. It’s not as bad as Antarctica, and I’m not just talking about that damned witch.”
“Just saying, maybe next time you can take a nice tomb raiding job in Hawaii or the Bahamas.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
A dark opening loomed several hundred yards above them.
Shay grinned. “We’re almost there.” She patted Lily’s backpack. The box rested inside. “The trick will just be getting it into the box, and then we’re home-free, and will be much, much richer.”
“I’m not touching it. Just so you know.”
“Neither of us are. Hard to spend money when we’re dead.”
Shay hissed when a stiff wind coated them with snow. “At least in the cave, there won’t be as much wind.”
The minutes passed as the snow crunched underneath their boots until they stood at the entrance of a surprisingly smooth and warm cave. Icicles hung from the entrance, but the snow and ice extended only a few feet inside.
Lily squinted and pointed to several silver pools littering the front of the cave. “What the heck are those? Mercury?”
Shay moved over toward one of the pools and kicked a pebble into it. The pebble sank without producing any ripples. A chill ran through her body, and it wasn’t from the cold wind.
The tomb raider clucked her tongue. “Poor bastards.”
“Huh?”
Shay pointed to the nearest pool. “Too thick to be mercury, and it’s not warm enough to be melted silver or anything like that. I’m pretty sure those are what’s left over from some of the other people who tried to take the egg.”
Lily grimaced. “At least we know we’re on the right track.”
“That we do.” Shay took a single step forward and frowned. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and she looked over her shoulder. “Something’s not right. Damn it.”
Lily looked behind her. “What? I don’t see anything but trees and snow.” She shook her head. “And I’m not sensing anything. Can’t see the future right now.”
The tomb raider fished binoculars out of her backpack and started scanning the area. “I trust my instincts. I know when I’m being watched.”
“Wait, like a premonition? You’ve never mentioned that before.”
Shay shook her head and continued to scan. “Nothing like. It’s just experience. Probably just keying in on some subtle sense thing.” A flash caught her attention, and she jerked her head in that direction. Two men in parkas stood in the trees about a half-mile away. One had binoculars to his eyes.
She adjusted her binoculars. She couldn’t make out a lot of fine details, but she did recognize the emblem on their coats.
“The assholes even have custom coats. You’ve got to be kidding me. Fucking arrogant jerks.”
Lily frowned. “Who are you talking about?”
“Hollingsworth Retrieval Specialists. They are tomb raiders based out of England. They aren’t completely ruthless murderers, I’ll give them that, but they also don’t know when to give up. The assholes probably thought they could just wait over there and swoop in and take the egg.” Shay lowered her binoculars and looked at Lily. “Seeing anything yet?”
The girl shook her head. “No visions.”
Shay let out a dark chuckle. “Maybe fifteen minutes from now we’re cute little silver pools, too.” She stuffed the binoculars into her backpack. “Time to go make the future happen.”
“What about the English guys?”
Shay shrugged. “If they want to come and actually play, then we’ll worry about them. For now, we’ve got an egg to find.”
Twenty minutes into the cave, it had grown warm enough that Shay wanted to take off her coat. She wasn’t sure if it was a geothermal or magical effect but decided a little unzipping and unbuttoning would be enough. It’d give her better access to her weapons anyway.
Their wrist lights cut into the darkness as they moved deeper into the cave, but thus far, the closest thing to exciting they’d encountered was some moss.
That is, until the cave shook and gave a deep rumble.
“That’s not good,” Lily observed. “Is this mountain a volcano?”
“Beats me.” Shay shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Even I don’t have such bad luck that it’d erupt the second I show up. Let’s just find it and get the hell out of here, then we won’t have to worry. Visions yet?”
Lily shook her head. “Still nothing.” She frowned. “Damn it. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, don’t beat yourself up over it. Most of my jobs, the only thing I have to go on is background data that Peyton or I dug up.”
A couple more minutes brought to them a fork, the round tunnels just as unnaturally smooth as the rest of the cave. Shay doubted this was a natural cave, but she didn�
�t care about magical civil engineering projects, just the egg they were designed to protect.
A stronger tremor shook the cave.
Shay gritted her teeth. “Any clues?”
Lily pointed to the left fork. “It’s that way.”
“Nice. That simplifies things.” Shay jogged down the tunnel.
Lily hurried after her.
Shay didn’t want to believe her eyes as their lights illuminated a dead end. She frowned.
“You sure it was this way?”
Lily nodded and pointed at the wall. “That’s magical.”
The tomb raider hurried over to the wall and looked it over. “Well, it looks like everything else in here. Probably stupid to touch it, but here we go.”
Shay swallowed, reached out, and poked the wall. Her finger went right through.
“What the hell?” Further probing proved her entire hand could go through, as could her arm. She grinned at Lily. “It’s just an illusion. That’s the magic you’re sensing.”
Shay shrugged and stepped through the wall. A cavern larger than any of the tunnels in the cave was on the other side. The target of their quest, an ornate jeweled egg, sat in the center of a small stone platform with a dip in the center. Two large silver pools lay on either side, and there was a smaller pool in the corner.
Lily appeared through the wall. “Great, more melted people. That’s really making me feel good.”
Shay frowned and pointed at the smaller pool. “But why is that there? No one could touch the egg from that far away.”
She headed toward the pool with Lily close behind.
Another tremor rocked the cave and the pools shook, moving a few inches.
“Guess that answers that.” She stared at the egg. “But wait. There were pools at the entrance to the cave. No way they slid all the way back there.”