“Come on.”
The tomb raider knelt and inspected the final drawer, which held a black feather quill.
“Now we’re talking. Just need the lantern, and I’m out of here.”
Shay grinned. She wouldn’t say it was the easiest three million she’d ever earned, but she was satisfied with the job. She looked around the cabin, and her smile faded.
There was no lantern in the captain’s cabin.
She scrubbed a hand over her face.
“I’m really gonna have to check this whole ship?”
The tomb raider shook her fist. “Seriously, Australia? Why do you hate me?”
It had taken Lily an hour to come up with an excuse that got her out of Warehouse Two and out from under Peyton’s curious eye.
She tried saying she wanted to go get a burger. but he offered to drive. When she changed her mind and said she was going to work out first, maybe she’d run the distance between the two warehouses, Peyton only grew more suspicious, peppering her with questions.
“You’re meeting someone. Is it a guy? I’d understand. You’re a teenager,” he had said.
She stared at him, working on a different storyline that would get him to back off when it hit her.
“I need to get some, uh… girl things.” She kept the stare going, daring him to look away.
Peyton slowly turned red and sputtered, even throwing some of the petty cash at her.
That’ll teach him. Lily smiled as she got on the crosstown bus to Wilshire Boulevard. She didn’t want to tell him, tell anyone that she was going to the nuclear escape tunnel. Going home.
Lily slipped behind the strip mall and rows of green metal dumpsters to a hidden door between two of the stores. It looked like it had to be a second entrance to one of the stores and once opened, a curious passerby would have been met with a large steel door locked tight.
Lily grabbed hold of the handle and felt a lurch through her body. The tumblers in the lock fell into place and she pulled back, using her weight to get the door open just wide enough to slip through. The heavy backpack on her back just barely fitting. Weird magic.
She stepped off the short platform and felt nothing but air, reaching out for the metal ladder she knew was there.
She scrambled down the ladder, whistling out the old signal that it was her, not knowing if the code had changed and everyone would scatter.
By the time she made her way down the ladder and worked through the tunnels to the camp she found no one there. Her heart dropped from the disappointment.
She let out another loud, low whistle and waited to hear anything in return. Nothing. One more time.
Finally, she heard splashing and the sound of someone running toward her. She pressed back against the cement wall, not sure who was coming yet. No one had answered with the end of the code.
A tall, thin teenage boy with rumpled brown hair emerged from one of the tunnels.
“Harry!” Lily ran toward him with relief and hugged him tight around his neck. “I thought you were all gone.”
Harry hugged her back and could feel the newly defined muscles in her arms. He stood back from her to get a better look. “You thought we were gone? I pretty much wrote you off. How long has it been? Who was that woman? What happened to you?”
“That’s a lot of questions, Harry. Not even sure I can answer them all. Where is everybody else? I brought food and some clothes. They’re a little unusual. I kind of borrowed them from a friend of mine.”
“Everyone is at the new encampment. You know us, we move around every week or so, just in case. You come back to stay?”
Lily looked down for a moment and squeezed her eyes shut, not sure what to say. “No, not this time. It’s just a visit.” She offered him the bag. “I can’t stay too long.”
“You got yourself a home, Lily. That’s a good thing.”
“This is home, Harry. I’m going back because I’m learning a trade. Tomb raider. I even saw the Ice bitch again.” Lily shook her head. “And I lost again, but each time I learn a little more about her. Her end of days is coming.”
Harry took her hand. “Be careful out there. We’ll be here when you’re ready to come back.”
“I’ll stop by again when I can slip away without anyone seeing me.”
Harry backed up in the direction he came and tilted his head back, letting out a loud bird call that echoed through the pipes. He smiled as the sound of running feet echoed and filled the pipes with sound.
Lily’s eyes filled with tears as she waited. He had let out the distress call that anyone living underground would answer, no matter what. One by one they came into view and saw her standing there, even as they swiveled around looking for trouble.
Petie, a young wizard noticed the smile on Harry’s face and caught on first, rushing at Lily to hug her. Everyone else quickly followed, patting her on the head and squeezing her till she thought she would pass out. She loved it all. Family.
“I’ll be back, I swear.”
Shay muttered to herself as she set up her sleeping bag in the desert. The damned lantern hadn’t been anywhere on the ship, and now she was left with nothing but exhausted muscles and the bright moon hanging in the sky as if taunting her.
She shrugged at her sleeping horse.
“How the hell am I supposed to find a lantern that could be, uh, anywhere in Australia?”
Shay laid her sheathed sword and tactical harness beside the sleeping bag. The lantern would have to wait. She could light her own non-eternal lantern, but right now her muscles ached and fatigue fogged her mind.
The horse’d had the right idea. It was time for some sleep. She unzipped her
