A few deep breaths followed, and she pulled the trigger. The bowl shattered. Shards blasted in every direction.
“Whoa... That was easy.”
A magical clay bowl is about as strong as any other clay bowl.
She grabbed several handfuls of the shards from different places on the ground and slipped them into her pouch. The client mentioned separating them from the main bowl, but he seemed to be more concerned with the basic destruction of the artifact.
It wouldn’t hurt to store a few of the fragments in Warehouse Five given she’d already shattered the bowl.
Shay made her way into the cave entrance and pulled out a couple of grenades. Her stomach tightened, and she made a mental note to consider avoiding any job that required her to destroy historical evidence.
Shay pulled the pin and tossed the grenades inside. She was clear of the entrance when it exploded.
Thick smoke poured from the cave as Shay surveyed the area. She spotted no one with her light and normal vision nor with night vision.
I better check to make sure those guys are still dead.
A tap switched her to IR mode. Her heart kicked into a gallop. The four men she’d shot before still lay exactly where she left, but dozens of heat signatures were making their way through the woods toward the cave. Several of them towered over the others, their bodies too broad and their limbs too long to be human.
Guttural growls filled the air.
Fuck. Yeah, bet you have talons and two rows of teeth, huh?
The humans, at least she assumed they were humans based on size, moved toward her. Their strides were even and long, but they didn’t run.
Shay sprinted toward the woods. She opened up with her gun and emptied her clip into the charging men. Fourteen men dropped to the ground, and she reloaded. Her arrival in the trees forced her back into the night-vision mode.
Low-hanging branches slapped at the charging tomb raider. Her lungs burned as she continued her charge back toward her rental truck. The growls grew louder and closer as she emerged from the trees, the vehicle now in sight.
She switched back to IR mode and chanced a look behind her.
“No fucking way.”
A solid mass of heat signatures moved together now. If Shay hazarded a guess, she would estimate over a hundred pursued her now. The enemy horde advanced steadily but without a quick pace. It’s like they had all the time in the world.
She turned back to her truck, the faint thermal differential of the vehicle still distinguishable in IR.
Shay threw open the truck and jumped inside, yanking off her AR goggles with one hand while starting the vehicle with another. The engine roared to life, and she threw the vehicle into reverse before spinning around. It’d be a short distance over the grass and back to the main road.
Her foot pressed the accelerator to the floor, and the truck rushed forward. A few seconds later, the truck shook with an impact and a thump. Then another. Then another.
Even if she couldn’t see whoever she was running into, she could see the dents they were leaving in the hood.
The hits ceased, and only the shaking of the off-road travel afflicted the Chevy. Shay arrived at the road and yanked hard on the wheel.
A few minutes later, her heart returning to normal, Shay grabbed the AR goggles and chanced a quick look out the window. Nothing unusual. At least nothing unusual that she could see.
“I think I prefer the naga,” Shay muttered.
Shay slowly let out a deep breath. She didn’t know what she’d just faced, but she also knew it didn’t matter. Her job was to take out the artifact. The mystery horde now would get nothing but pottery shards for their trouble.
Fuck you and your chaos demons. I won.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
After stepping out of her Fiat into Warehouse Two the next morning, Shay noticed several of the cubicle walls had been removed from the maze and set in a pile. Peyton was reclaiming the warehouse for work, or he was taking the walls to his apartment.
Peyton waved as he stepped out of the office. “You know, now that I’ve got my own place. I need to think about getting some better wheels than borrowing one of your creepy vans.”
Shay shrugged. “You’ve got money and know how to hide your trail. Buy a car. It’s not like I’m gonna give you my Spider.”
“I don’t like your car that much anyway.”
Shay rolled her eyes. “Please tell me that our mystery evil dude paid up finally.”
Peyton nodded. “Oh… one second.” He pulled out his phone and tapped away. “Oh, yeah, he did it last night to the secondary account. I’ll get it transferred over.”
“What the hell?”
“What?”
“You didn’t think to tell me?”
Peyton averted his gaze. “I was distracted.”
“Distracted by what? Porn? I was getting chased by weird invisible mobs, and you’re too busy to pay attention to my stuff?”
“No.” Peyton rubbed the back of his neck. “Something important came up.”
Shay shrugged. “Like fucking what?”
“My brother, sister, and mother are out of the country.” Peyton blurted it out.
“What?”
“You heard me.” Peyton sighed. “Look, I’ve been keeping track of them on occasion. That’s a good thing, right? It means I know if they’re looking for me still.”
Shay shook her head in frustration. “It also means you could potentially mess up, and they could realize that you’re still alive. I thought you were smarter than this by now, Peyton.”
“I never got to say goodbye to my father. I should at least visit his grave.”
“Back to the East Coast? I can’t believe you. It’s not like you had some great relationship with him. You told me yourself. If it was your mother, that’s one thing, but your dad?”
Peyton threw up his hands. “And now he’s dead, okay? I think maybe I should try and bury the hatchet
