“Come on,” Shay shouted. She sprinted forward, and Lily rushed after her.
The two conscious tomb raiders didn’t pursue them. Instead, they knelt to check on their fallen friends.
You care more about your friends than the artifact. You’re all right. Too bad we had to beat your asses.
She was glad to escape. The bulky parkas their opponents were wearing might not be armor, but they did deny Shay access to body targets that would have made taking them down in a non-lethal manner easier.
Not killing people is a lot fucking harder than just killing them.
Shay and Lily continued charging for the cave entrance. The pair just needed to get to their vehicle.
The cave started getting lighter even as it shook. They were close to the entrance, and no one was closing on them from the rear.
Looks like we’re home free.
The tomb raider and her protégé ran past the silver pools and out of the cave. Two steps out of the cave, a large group of men rushed at them from either side of the cave entrance.
“Shit,” Shay hissed.
The deep snow slowed Shay’s pivot, and one of the men slammed into her. Both went to the ground, but a quick throat punch had the man gasping and rolling off her.
“It’s free,” one of the men shouted, and pointed.
Shay jerked her head that way. Her zipper had come undone, and the box had fallen out. The lid was askew, and the egg lay loose in the snow.
The Hollingsworth tomb raider charged through the snow, a huge grin on his face.
“Don’t touch it,” one of the other men shouted.
The idiot ignored them and snatched up the egg with his gloved hands. He grinned and held it above him like a trophy. “Yeah, bonus time.”
His good mood lasted all of two seconds. He twitched and screamed. Argent lines shot all over his skin and clothes in an instant, and a moment later, a mass of thick silver liquid roughly in the shape of a man hung in the air where the tomb raider had once stood.
Shay blinked, the horror of seeing a man melt piercing even her jaded heart.
The egg fell toward the ground, and a blur ran past her. Lily, protective box in hand, jumped underneath the egg, catching it in the box.
She stared at it, panting. No one else said a word. The other Hollingsworth tomb raiders continued to stare at the silver pool in the snow that had once been their teammate.
The teen stood slowly and grabbed the lid off the ground. She set it back on the box and backed away from the men.
One of the Hollingsworth men looked up at Shay and shook his head. “Just go already. Shit.”
Shay gave him a quick nod and jogged off with Lily toward the SUV at the bottom of the incline. After about fifty yards, she glanced over her shoulder. The men hadn’t moved.
She could understand what they were feeling, even if they were enemies.
That could have been Lily.
Chapter Six
Spending hours holding a box containing a human-liquifying artifact didn’t do wonders for Shay’s nerves. Even a stone-cold tomb raider could be rattled, and seeing a man taken out in a moment had accomplished just that.
Pain suffused her neck and shoulders, and she hadn’t spoken much to Lily on the plane back or on the ride back to the tunnels.
It wasn’t that hard. Both of them were exhausted from the travel and the tomb raid, and neither wanted to spend time chatting about watching a man being melted by an artifact.
At least it’ll be a good payday. She should seriously think about moving her friends out of those tunnels.
Shay even allowed herself a long nap on the flight back, while Lily decided to take in the latest Caleb Rodriguez film. She almost wanted to laugh. There was something bizarre about going on a dangerous tomb raid just to get on a plane and watch a movie about a fictional tomb raider.
Maybe by watching the movie, she could put what had happened out of her mind. In the end, Caleb always gets the artifact, and the bad guys get what was coming to them.
Are those Hollingsworth assholes the bad guys? I didn’t have any more right to that egg than they did, and they didn’t go out of their way to kill us. They could have pulled guns and not a Taser. Maybe the good guy died, and the bad girl got away with the loot.
The tomb raider stopped her car when she and Lily arrived at one of the ten-foot-diameter pipes leading into the nuclear shelter and blew out a breath. “I got you home in one piece. You all right? I know that was a harder one than usual.”
Lily shrugged. “Not saying I wasn’t spooked, but I’ll be okay. Maybe it’s a bitch thing to say, but it’s not like I knew the guy, and it’s not the first person I’ve seen killed.”
Shay chuckled. “True enough.”
The teen glanced into the back seat. They’d secured the box and the lid in the back. “I can’t help but wonder…”
“Wonder what?”
Lily sighed. “What do you even do with something like that? It’s kind of elaborate if it’s just about killing people.”
Shay shrugged. “Good question. I honestly don’t know. I’m guessing someone wants the power stored in that thing. For what? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe they want to power something even freakier.”
Lily shook her head. “You told me before, and my dad mentioned to me how artifacts can respond to what people want to do with them. Like, you have to be careful with how you use them. Not use them for the wrong stuff.”
“Yeah. What about it?”
Lily nodded toward the box. “Maybe that’s the end result of using something for evil. Maybe they used it all for the wrong stuff, and now it’s an egg of evil.”
Shay shrugged. “Who knows? I don’t know if the tsar’s wife was evil, or maybe she was trying to prepare something for
