What interested Shay most was this information revealed that at least someone was aware of how extensive the tunnel system was underneath the temple.
They’d made a rookie mistake in terms of security. They should have collapsed most, if not all, of the tunnels. Going through a door would always be easier than digging through the ground.
Her navigation through the mazelike tunnels brought her to her destination. A gilded golden door covered with an elaborate carving of Vishnu. She pulled on the huge handle, straining with a grunt.
Inside the cavernous stone chamber, piles of gold, golden idols, and jewels littered the low-ceilinged chamber inside. They glinted under the light of her headlamp.
“And I thought they’d taken all this stuff out already, Professor. Even you don’t always have all the info, huh?”
Shay stepped inside the room and eyed the contents. Bulky and hard to carry. That was the problem with most conventional treasure and why she’d focused her career on magical items.
She reached into her pouch to pull out the flute. “Hope this shit works.” She blew in it once. No sound emerged. She blew in it again.
Okay, that was anti-climatic.
A few seconds later, Shay collapsed to her knees as vertigo overwhelmed her. The world around her twisted in on itself, the colors blurring and shifting.
“Fuck.” Her dinner threatened to come up.
A few careful, deep breaths followed. The room continued to twist and shudder, with two sets of walls passing through each other as if they didn’t exist to each other. She tried to focus, but the entire room stubbornly refused to return to anything normal. Her pulse pounded in her ears and pain spiked in her head.
A tiny painted clay figurine of Vishnu resting atop the serpent sat in the corner, the only new object inside the room she could make out in the mess.
The key. Smaller than I expected.
Shay crawled over toward the figurine. Her stomach churned, and bile rose in her throat. She grabbed the figurine, shoved the flute to her mouth, and blew again.
The world returned to normal, even if her breathing remained ragged.
What the fuck? You call that momentary discomfort, Smite-Williams?
Shay lay on her back, staring up at the cracked stone ceiling above her. The cold figurine rested in the palm of her hand.
“That wasn’t fun.”
She let a few more minutes pass for her stomach and heart to settle before standing up and slipping the figurine into a pouch.
Peyton’s information combined with the Professor’s eliminated aimless wandering. She’d made excellent time and could escape the temple well before she lost the cover of night outside.
Her footsteps echoed in the tunnels as she walked back toward the water entrance. The trip gave her time to reflect on how things had changed for her.
I wasn’t sure if Peyton would be a help, but damned if he hasn’t been a big help. Can’t admit it to the guy, but not so sure I’d already be doing jobs for people like Smite-Williams so quickly without his help.
Teamwork still weighed on her heart and filled her with doubt. The line between her being self-reliant and dependent blurred with each job.
Is it a good thing? I don’t know. Maybe it’s not a totally stupid thing to have someone like Brownstone having my back on jobs like this. It’s not I can’t do this shit by myself, just makes it easier.
Shay continued down the tunnel and let out a quiet sigh. At least she didn’t need Brownstone after this job. She’d not so much as seen a shadow of anyone.
A second after the thought left her head, a barefoot Indian man in a thin dark robe stepped around a corner, frowning.
Shay stopped, convinced the man was a trick of the light.
The man narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms. The robe didn’t match the pattern or brighter colors of the other men she’d spotted when surveilling the temple earlier in the day, but she wasn’t an expert on Indian religious clothing.
Shay sucked in a deep breath as she thought over her next move. Her instinct was to pull her gun and shoot the man down, but she didn’t doubt the Professor possessed some way of telling if she did just that, and she couldn’t risk losing a high-profile client.
Not only that, but killing some random man for being at the wrong place at the wrong time struck her as a little unfair. She might have been a killer, but she wasn’t a random murderer or a complete dick like the Harriken.
He’s some dude in a temple. All it’ll take is a little intimidation.
Shay pulled out her pistol. “Turn around, put your hands behind your head, and you don’t have to die.”
“No,” the man responded.
“You don’t have to die here, pal. I don’t want to kill you. Seriously.”
The man tilted his head to the side. “I can see it. Its power glows.”
Fuck. This is going south already.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shay said.
“You think I’m a fool? You think I believe you’ve entered this temple with honorable intentions?”
Shay barked out a laugh. “Not saying I did, but also I’m leaving. So either come at me, or get the fuck out of my way. I don’t…”
She narrowed her eyes and stared at the man. The tunnels were pitch black without a light source. She’d been relying on her headlamp.
The man carried no torch, flashlight, or lamp. He wasn’t even wearing shoes, let alone AR goggles. If he could see in the dark, that meant he wasn’t a normal man.
Fuck, Professor. Thanks for the total lack of warning about magical temple guardians.
Shay lifted her pistol. “Get the fuck out of my way right now. I’m done playing around.”
“Human garbage,” the man said. He spit on the ground. “You infest this country. You infest this planet. You’re nothing. A mistake. You make a mockery of the dharma.”
“I make a mockery out of a lot of stuff, but I’m pretty sure anyone holy thinks I’m bad news.” Shay waved the gun a
