A curse. That was one possibility. She had not run into a true curse yet, but it’d come eventually. That only made it more important for her to build connections with the magical world. Preventive medicine.
Shay gently opened the locket. There was no iris petal inside anymore, only a fine white dust. Even the most stubborn man’s effort couldn’t defeat time.
“Three million for pride and loyalty, huh?”
She shook her head. Kalinin was an exile from his home with hostile people trying to kill him. He was a lot like her in that sense, but he wasn’t running away and erasing his past. Instead, he was still pushing back, as if he could wait out his enemies and come back to reclaim his place in society.
“This is not what I want. It’s not like my old life was solid enough to build on anything lasting.”
The attempt on her life provided a convenient excuse, but Shay couldn’t deny that she’d grown sick of being a hitman long before Natalie showed up to die in her kitchen.
Three million would help her find a new life or reclaim an old one if wanted.
Shay wrapped the locket in a soft felt cloth, slipped it into a small tan leather bag, and stowed it in her backpack before making her way back around the tunnels, her gun at the ready. Even if there were no traps, that didn’t mean there was no ambush.
The trip back to the basement was uneventful, the silence oppressive from the lack of danger. By the time Shay emerged back into the surface ruins, she began to wonder if she was just damned lucky.
If Kalinin hired a few amateurs, they might have just got picked off by some local thugs or something.
Not a big deal after all.
Shay laughed quietly. Sometimes you get paid well just to be brave. She crept along further, her gun raised but the sensation of being watched returned and all her senses went on alert. She spun, seeking any sign or hint of someone else. The grass, trees, and shrubs still looked empty of any real threats.
“Wait a second,” Shay whispered. She pointed her gun at a vodyanoy statue and counted. “One.” The Glock jumped to another statue. “Two… three… four… five… six…” She winced and felt a chill go down her spine. “Oh shit.”
Thirteen. She was sure there were thirteen before, but now there were only six. Either the world’s most efficient vandals had shown up during her brief time underground, or seven frogmen were now on the move.
Shay flipped her AR goggles down and again did a thermal sweep. Nothing large or humanoid stood out.
Fuck. Would this even work, or is a frogman the temperature of the surrounding air? I mean he’s a magical frogman… damn it. It hurts my brain to think about it.
Shay flipped the goggles back up and jogged toward the SUV. She needed to get the hell out of there before she ended up face down in the river.
Something crunched behind her. Shay spun and fired on reflex.
A high-pitched squeal filled the air.
“What… the… fuck?”
Her victim fell to the ground, green blood spewing from the wound in its head. Frogman from hell was an accurate description, and Shay’s heart rate picked up at seeing the monster in the flesh rather than in statue form.
It had two legs with webbed feet and two arms ending in long claws. Its bulbous eyes dominated its face along with a maw filled with razor-sharp teeth. A layer of a thick liquid covered its body. It was slime or mucous, Shay wasn’t sure.
The color of the air near the vodyanoy was wrong, and the shadows were not right. The air shimmered as six more frogmen appeared.
Shay emptied her clip, putting two rounds into each of the remaining monsters. Several quick, ragged breaths followed as she reloaded her gun.
Shay sprinted for her vehicle, not wanting to wait around for reinforcements. She threw open the door and slid into the seat, starting the SUV even as her foot was on the gas pedal. An odd choking and thumping sounded as the engine turned over, but the vehicle started up.
“What the fuck?”
The dashboard displays were all in Russian, but the icons were understandable enough. Somehow she’d gone from a full tank of gas to being almost empty, her oil pressure was shit, and her engine was in dire need of immediate service. Several other problems afflicted the vehicle, but she couldn’t interpret the language or the symbols.
Shay revved the engine and pulled away. She might not be able to get back to Moscow with the SUV, but she could at least get to the nearby village and put enough space between her and the lizard kingdom.
There she could rent a vehicle from a villager. The fact that the village could exist in the area for centuries without much trouble told her the vodyanoy weren’t willing to go near a concentration of people.
Not like those fuckers were bullet proof.
Shay glanced into her rearview mirror, and bile rose in her throat.
The vodyanoy corpses were all gone. “Let’s hope that means they disappear when they die.”
Shay smacked the steering wheel. “Stay with me, you stupid piece of shit. Stay with me.”
Chapter Fourteen
Peyton stifled a yawn and glanced down at the time on the computer. Dawn was coming soon in L.A., but it was still afternoon near Shay’s tomb raid site. She had not sent him a message since arrival, but that wasn’t unusual.
His computer beeped, and Peyton frowned. He clicked on a notification window and read the alerts. They were automated messages attached to monitoring programs he’d set up and focused on Shay’s Aletheia identity. Someone was poking around.
Peyton read through the messages. A few forum questions here and there, a few network tracing operations elsewhere. It was another tomb raider, Johann Weiss, who had taken an extreme interest in discovering the real person behind Aletheia.
They still had a long way to go before they
