The Lost Continent (6 page)

“I don't,” said Seth. “But like I told you before, it's about the challenge, not the reward. I've been meaning to repay Hill for the little souvenir she gave me from our last encounter.” He motioned to the scar once again. “This seems like as good a place as any to start.”

“You're out of your mind, Seth, you know that?” asked Stubby. “Running halfway around the world just to get back at a bitch who gave you a little scar? It's pathetic is what it is.”

Seth slid the sword into a sheath concealed beneath his overcoat. “You've been a great help today, Mr. Stubby. Trust me when I say that I won't forget this.”

“Yeah well how about you just don't tell Elisa about all this?” asked Stubby. “I really don't feel like getting my ass kicked again.”

Seth grinned. “But Mr. Stubby, you do it so well. Good day to you, kind sir.” He offered an extravagant bow before leaving the back office. Stubby grabbed the bottle of gin and poured some of it over the sword wound.

“Ow! Goddammit...”

He took a swig from the bottle but then realized he hadn't heard the bell go off at the front of the store yet. Stubby set down the bottle and reached for the Magnum on the desk. Slowly he went to the office door and opened it, peering out into the shop.

Seth was still there, casually looking around the shop. Stubby, keeping his distance, raised the gun carefully. The pain from the wound only made holding the gun even harder but he had to try and keep steady. He would only have one shot at this while Seth's back was turned. Stubby lined up his shot as perfectly as he could and when he was convinced he had the myth hunter in his crosshairs, he pulled the trigger.

The Magnum went off like a cannon but Stubby no longer cared about the noise. By the time Seth heard it and reacted, his brains would be decorating the shop.

A flash of metal, however, quickly crushed Stubby's confidence. Although it all happened in an instant, for Stubby it seemed as if time stopped. Seth drew his sword as he turned, the blade slicing right through the bullet and the two halves harmlessly passed by him.
 

Seth jumped, sailing across the gap between him and Stubby. As he landed, the blade sliced right through Stubby's wrist. The Magnum hit the floor with Stubby's hand still wrapped around it.

“YOU SONNUVA BI—!”

Seth elbowed Stubby in the nose. “What did I tell you about language, Mr. Stubby?”

“My...you just...”

Seth sighed. “I cut off your hand, yes. Quit being such an infant.” He knelt down and picked it up, pulling the gun free from the fingers and throwing it behind him. Then he offered the hand back to its owner. “Here, would you like it back?”

“You sick, twisted—”

“Oh please, you tried to
shoot
me, it was self-defense,” said Seth. “Now if you don't mind, I have a plane to catch.”

Seth sheathed his sword once more and went to the exit. He opened the door but before walking out, he gave one final glance back at Stubby. “One more thing, good sir. Do you know what's good for a wound like that?”

“What?” asked Stubby. Then he remembered the gas cans nearby. Seth struck a match and smiled.

“Cauterization.”

“NO!”

Seth tossed the match at the gas cans and it fell perfectly inside the open cap. They instantly burst into flames. Stubby ran for the office and out the back door just in time to watch his shop completely go up in flames.
 

He was able to make it to the front of the shop, wrapping his vest around the stump of a hand. But by the time he got there, Stubby fell to the ground, passing out from the blood loss.
 

As he drifted into unconsciousness, he only prayed that Elisa had been able to find the tablets by now so hopefully, she wouldn't have to contend with Seth as well as Davalos and the Order.

Unfortunately for her, Stubby knew the odds were definitely not in her favor. Elisa was going to have a lot of trouble on her hands and he hoped she had someone on her side.
 

Lucas Davalos stood on a street in Mumbai, watching as the police dragged the car from the water beneath the bridge. He removed the cigarillo from his mouth and flicked it into the water, turning away and finding his unfortunate shadow standing on the street corner. Dressed, just as before, in a Hawaiian shirt with an oversized straw hat and large sunglasses.

“Wade, inconspicuous as always,” said Lucas as he passed by the larger man.

“This isn't good, Davalos,” said Wade. “We need to know where Hill is going. She may have a lead on the Churchward Tablets that we don't. And it's your job to find out what it is.”

“Don't blame me, these were
your
blasted men.” Lucas moved into an alley with Wade following. He took out a pack of cigarillos and drew a fresh one, offering one to Wade.

“No thanks. Filthy habit, takes ten years off your life.”

“Yeah, but that's off the
end
of your life, and those years are miserable anyway.” Lucas lit the cigarillo. “But if you find shitting in a bag appealing while nursing home employees rob your ass blind, more power to you. Besides, in this line of work, do you really think I'll make it long enough for cancer to be an issue?”

“If there's a god, then no,” said Wade.

“Back on topic, then.” Lucas pointed the fingers gripping the cigarillo at Wade. “These were
your
men, so don't blame me if they couldn't do their damned job. Maybe the Order should think about improving their hiring practices if your boys can't even handle a simple matter like tailing someone from the fucking airport.”

“Temper, temper, Mr. Davalos. Perhaps if you were better at your job, you wouldn't
need
Elisa Hill to do your hunting for you.”

“And this omniscient Order you represent certainly doesn't know much,” said Lucas. “'Just go to India, that's where the tablets were last seen.' Yes, searching for tablets that are centuries old in one of the most densely-populated countries in the world. It's like searching for a microscopic needle in a haystack the size of the Empire State Building.”

“Need I remind you that we are paying you quite handsomely for this task?”

“No, no you don't,” said Lucas. “I know how much money I'm getting and I know how important this is to your bosses. You're my client, you hired me and I'll stay on this job until either it or myself are finished, understand?”

“That's exactly what we like to hear, Mr. Davalos.”

“Good, now we've got another matter to worry about, and that's how do we find my old friend, Elsie? Your men were supposed to hold her in customs, what happened?”

“Apparently, she has some good friends who ranked a bit higher and took care of her luggage problems,” said Wade.

“Do we know who her friend is? If we do, we could probably lean on him, get the information that way. It's the best chance we have to figure something out.”

“We have no way of finding out that information,” said Wade. “But there is something else.” He handed Lucas a photograph taken from the airport security cameras.

“And who might this tasty little number be?” asked Lucas.

“That's Lakita Rai, professor of archaeology at Mumbai University. She was the one who picked up Hill.”

“Really? What else do we know about the dear Professor Rai?”

“She's an expert in her field, knows more about eastern mythology and archaeology than anyone else.”

“A myth hunter with this much knowledge and I've never heard of her? That seems kind of strange to me.”

“There are two possible reasons for that, Davalos. The first is that she's not really a myth hunter, but she's obviously an associate,” said Wade. “And the second is maybe you don't know as much as you want others to believe.”

Lucas shook his head with a grin on his face as he puffed the cigarillo. “Y'know something, you really hurt me, Wade. And here I thought we were becoming such good friends.”

“We're not friends, Davalos. I am the liaison to your client, that is all. Do we understand each other?”

“I suppose that means we won't be hitting up a titty bar any time soon.”

“To say the least.”

“Fine, so tell me something I can work with,” said Lucas. “You got an address for Rai?”

“I'm surprised a famed myth hunter like you wouldn't think to explore all sides of an issue,” said Wade.

Lucas took a long drag on the cigarillo and examined the photograph. He turned it over and on the back an address had been written in black ink. When he looked up again, Wade had already gone.

“Snarky little bastard,” he muttered.

***

Dusk had fallen when Lakita Rai searched through the bookshelves in her office, trying to locate the book she had left behind. She mentally kicked herself for not being prepared earlier. When she first began to help myth hunters three years ago, she had just started working at Mumbai University. She met Maxwell Finch during her doctoral studies and she impressed him with her knowledge and open minded perspective.
 

Of course, her lack of experience with combat training meant she would be a liability in any sort of field work. But myth hunters who were active in the field were different from ones who did their work in the world's research libraries. Elisa Hill, for all her intelligence, still had limitations to how much time she could devote to research. So did Maxwell at one time. That's when it helped to have people like Laki Rai on call.

There were times when Laki wished she did have the kind of training to perform Elisa's work. This moment had been one of those times, when a hand wrapped around her mouth and pressed the barrel of a gun under her chin.

“See that?” asked Lucas Davalos in a low whisper. “That's a Zastava CZ05. Semi-automatic. And that narrow barrel at the end? That's a silencer. For the uninitiated, a silencer means I could empty several clips into your tight little body and no one would hear a damn thing. See, loud noises and I aren't exactly what you'd call simpatico. Hence the silencer. So if you scream, if you make a sound, if you so much as breathe in a way I don't like, I'm gonna get spooked and I might accidentally squeeze this here trigger. Now, nod your head if we understand each other.”

Laki carefully nodded.

“Good,” said Lucas. He turned her around and pinned her against the bookcase with one hand around her throat, the other holding the gun against her forehead. “This is what we call point-blank range. From here, I couldn't miss painting these books with your brains, not even if I wanted to. My understanding is you're not used to this kind of work. You're a bookworm, aren't you? Spend your time flipping through texts and doing that cross-referencing and translating shit you're so good at, right? So that means this must be a pretty scary situation for you, am I right?”

Laki nodded once more.
 

“I have some questions and you're going to answer them for me. The first one is where is Elisa Hill going to look for the Churchward Tablets?” He pushed the barrel hard against Laki's forehead. “And I swear on my mother's grave, if your voice rises above a whisper, I will put a bullet between your eyes.”

“I understand,” said Laki in a low voice. “And you're right, I just do research for hunters. I'm not one of them myself. And yes, this is the scariest situation I've ever been in.”

“I don't need you to repeat my words to me, I'm the one who said them.”

“I'm telling you this because I want you to know that despite all that, there is nothing you can do that will make me tell you a damn thing,” said Laki with a smile. “You're Davalos, right? And by coming here, you've told me that you don't know anything. Right now, I'm your only lead to the tablets. If you kill me, you get nothing and I find it hard to believe that the Order is very forgiving.”

Lucas frowned and Laki knew her assumption had been correct. He really didn't know where to find the tablets. He needed her and maybe she could find a way to use him against the Order.

“So first off, lower the gun,” she said. “They make me nervous and when I get nervous, I keep my mouth shut. Or I scream.”

“You know, I don't
have
to kill you,” said Lucas, a slight grin creeping up the side of his face. “I could always torture the information out of you.”

“And I could always send you on a wild goose chase,” said Laki. “Face it, Lucas—you've tipped your hand. You have no idea what you're doing out here, you don't know anything about the jobs you take on. You're nothing but a scavenger.”

He pushed her against the bookcase to reassert his dominance. Laki winced.
 

“Here's what we're going to do,” he said. “You are going to tell me everything you know about the Churchward Tablets, including where we can find them.”

“Go to hell.”

Lucas lowered the gun. “Fine. If you won't help me out, then what good are you anyway?” He brought the Zastava back up, about to fire a round between Laki's eyes, just as he had promised. Before he could squeeze the trigger, his body arched forward and he cried out in pain.

Laki looked down where Lucas had collapsed, seeing four red marks through the tears in his shirt. She looked up to find the source of the attack and saw a silhouette by the window. The figure turned and looked at her with eyes that seemed to shimmer like gold. Just as quickly as it came, the third party had left, leaving Laki alone with Lucas Davalos.

She picked up the Zastava and pointed at him. With her free hand, she took out her cell phone and dialed Elisa's number.

Lucas slowly started to get up, but Laki had him dead to rights. “There are a lot of differences between us, Davalos. At the moment, the biggest of those is that while you need me, I have absolutely zero use for you. So if you piss me off, you
will
be dead.”

Lucas laughed.
 

“What's so funny?” asked Laki.

“You're right, there are a lot of differences between us,” he said. “And one of those differences?”

Lucas grabbed her arm and flipped her over his shoulder, throwing Laki on her back, the gun now having fallen from her grip. He drew the dagger he kept concealed in his boot and held it to her throat as he pinned her to the floor with his knee.