About time to do another round of buying, he thought. Overseas black market. Replace the recoilless rifle with a laser-guided rocket launcher, better range and accuracy. Took three rounds and too damn much time to blow up that speedboat chasing Dan and the kids. Someone could have gotten hurt.
That damned brujo had captured Dan, kidnapped the girls. He'd found out about the Dragon's Eye and wanted the power it carried. Gary and Caroline had slipped into the Pratt tunnels, a system very much like this one, and pulled Dan and their sisters out. But someone had noticed, in all the fire and shooting of Alice's other raid. The best laid plans of mice and witches . . .
But that wasn't why Ben had come down here. He turned and stepped around long boxes to a high workbench, felt-covered and backed by ranks of gunsmith's tools gleaming faintly in the dim light. He didn't particularly care for guns, had a professional dislike of finding them in the wrong hands, but had to admit that the occasional use of violence solved some tricky problems. Like the Pratts. And if Morgans needed to use guns, he damn well intended that they would work perfectly. Precise and reliable, just like any other proper tool.
He snapped on a work light, harsh and bright against the dimness of the cave, and smiled. An aluminum case lay under the light, rounded and ribbed for strength, about as thick as a briefcase but longer and narrower, sort of a sawed-off airline rifle case. He spun the lock dials and snapped the latches open. Lifting the lid revealed a green foam plastic lining cut to the precise outline of glinting dark gray flint.
The flint.
It took his breath away. It always did, on first sight, intricate and bizarre and beautiful. The jaguar god grinned at him, a flat profile with the illusion of depth to it, laughing at the secrets of the centuries.
He picked it up, startled as always by the weight of it which contrasted so much with the delicacy, and turned it so that the light glinted back and forth on the tiny facets and grooves of its making. Hundreds of hours — perhaps thousands — it must have taken, just for the one artifact. How many years of training and practice? How many false starts, ruined by a single slip of the hand, a single drip of salty sweat into the worker's eye at a crucial moment?
He traced one edge with his finger, the headdress of the god in profile. It sprouted out free from the mass and then curved and tapered to a single feather that he barely dared to touch, yet this fragility had survived a thousand years in the earth. He shook his head in awe.
He turned it again, and again, and again, letting light and shadow play across it, drinking the sight of it, and then laid it back in the protective foam. The jaguar winked at him. And then he noticed the red smear across it, felt the warmth and slick stickiness on his glove, and stared at a fine slash across his right palm.
The damned flint was so sharp, he hadn't even felt it bite. He peeled off the thin cotton glove, fumbled in a first-aid kit for antiseptic and a bandage, and patched his damaged hide awkwardly, left-handed. The cut stretched nearly an inch and a half and sank well into the meat. Almost worth a couple of stitches. But he wasn't about to go to a doctor, or even Alice.
Then he moistened a cotton ball with alcohol, and went to swab his blood off the flint, and froze with his hand in mid-air. The stone gleamed back at him, bare, no stain. The sight chilled him and raised hairs on the back of his neck.
It looked almost as if the jaguar had drunk his blood.
Ben blinked and rubbed his eyes, shivering. The tunnels stayed cold, year round. He shut the flint's case, turned off the light, and worked his way back through the rituals of the doorway.
Chapter Five
Warmth snuggled up against Gary Morgan's back and nibbled at his right ear. That would have been nice, if he wasn't trying to concentrate. He studied the museum case in front of him. It displayed a wide flat Zuni bowl, faded red and black geometric design, with a hole punched through the bottom. He spotted alarm sensors on the Plexiglas of the case, and the bowl seemed to be wired to its mounting. Probably sensors on that, as well. Wouldn't want the exhibit to take a walk.
The title plaque didn't mention that the damage dated to ancient times, "killing" the bowl to release its spirit before burial. And some of Dad's references suggested that the dating was off by about a century. As anthropology museums went, this place seemed a little shaky. Caroline would sneer.
The nibble turned into a nip and he flinched away. Warm breath shifted to his left ear, smelling of cinnamon and whispering sweet nothings. "Hey, lover-boy, why are you mapping all the surveillance cameras and alarm sensors?"
He sighed and turned around to stare into sardonic brown eyes under dyed purple brows and hair. Purple hair lying smooth and flat for a change, instead of rucked up into a cockatoo's crest or a line of spikes like the back-plates of a Stegosaurus. Purple eye-shadow and lipstick and fingernails, too, color-coordinated punk couture using the anthropology exhibits as a fashion runway.
Jane White — a walking refutation of the "Plain Jane" mental image her name invoked, with a nose stud as big as a cufflink and a line of three pierced earrings dangling from her right ear. That punk image included a long clinging purple skirt slit up both sides almost to her waist and a black sweater a couple of sizes too
