Relic Hunters: BBW Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance (The Complete Trilogy) Read online

  “I don’t have time to explain right now, but you have to trust me. They are coming and they will kill you! We need a way out of here and we need to go now.”

  “There’s no other way out of here. We’re in the catacombs. There’s no way out but up. How could you not know that? What kind of thief are you? Not a very good one, I’m guessing.” Saira crossed her arms and planted her feet firmly. She had no intention of moving until the police arrived.

  Where in the hell are they?

  She felt it before she heard the shot. Something buzzed past her ear, she felt the searing heat just before the projectile struck the wall, inches from her head, cratering the plaster behind her. She felt warmth on her scalp and touched her head tentatively. When she looked at her hand, it was coated with fresh blood. Her blood.

  “Get down!” Bryce shouted as he dashed across the floor to Saira, pulling her down, out of the line of fire.

  “I’ve been shot . . .” She stared in stunned silence at her bloody hand.

  “Harden up Princess, it’s just a scratch. You got hit by a piece of plaster.” Bryce reached up and grabbed a piece of paper towel from a nearby workbench. Another shot was fired, narrowly missing his hand. “Press this against it to stop the bleeding.”

  She followed his instructions without a word. She was in shock.

  They shot me!

  “Now can we go?” Bryce’s brow furrowed as he looked her in the eyes, “before you get shot for real?”

  Saira nodded. She saw the wisdom in hightailing it out of there instead of waiting for the cavalry to arrive.

  Bryce looked around for another escape route. All he saw was a door to a storage cupboard which held the gas tanks for the fire suppression system and a doorway that looked like it led to a an unmarked storage room.

  “What’s behind there?” he asked tilting his head toward the latter door.

  “Nothing. It’s an old service tunnel to the Underground station that used to be here, but it was sealed off 80 years ago. We use it for document storage.”

  “So it leads to the old Tube system and the abandoned stations, right?”

  “Yeah, the ghost stations, but I told you, it’s blocked off. Once you get past all the crap we’ve got piled up in there, it’s a dead end. It’s bricked up and has been for decades to keep the urban explorers out of the old tunnels.”

  “Perfect.” Bryce smiled then grabbed his pack and took Saira by the hand and made his way toward the door.

  “Wait,” Saira screamed as she dug her heels in, bringing Bryce to an abrupt stop.

  “If you’re wondering why they’ve stopped shooting, it’s because they’re up to something. I’m guessing they’re waiting for their team to regroup, then, they’re going to overrun us in force, guns up and shooting to kill.”

  “I’ve got to get kitty. I’m not leaving without him,” she said defiantly.

  Bryce opened his mouth to object but realized that it would only waste time and he’d end up relenting, anyway. “Okay, go get it, but hurry and stay low.”

  “Him.”

  “What?” Bryce looked confused.

  Saira scowled at him.

  “Kitty is a ‘him’ not an ‘it’.” With that, she dashed off to retrieve kitty.

  Bryce looked behind him to the doors which concealed fire suppression gas tanks and an idea started to take shape, bringing an evil grin to his otherwise handsome face.

  Withdrawing his portable laser device from his pack, he opened the doors and wedged it between two of the Halon tanks before turning it on to its lowest setting. As he finished his science project, Saira returned with kitty under her arm.

  Kitty immediately squirmed free of Saira’s hold and leapt into Bryce’s arms.

  “I think you’ve made a friend. Kitty is pretty fussy who he likes and doesn’t. Maybe you’re not all bad, then.”

  And that’s when the relative quiet of the moment was interrupted by something metallic bouncing across the concrete floor toward them.

  There’s only one thing in the world that looks like an M84 Stun Grenade and that’s . . . well . . . an M84 Stun Grenade. Even before Bryce fully processed what he was seeing, his instincts had him dragging Saira and kitty toward the storage tunnel and hauling the heavy old doors open as he shoved them through the opening.

  “Close your eyes and block your ears and whatever you do —”

  Bryce never got to finish his sentence.

  Chapter 10

  The concussive force of the blast slammed the doors shut just as Bryce pushed his way through the doorway. His eardrums felt like they had exploded and the ringing in his head made him feel nauseous. Only good luck prevented them becoming temporarily blinded by flash of the magnesium based charge in the grenade. If they hadn’t made it behind the doors in time, thanks to Bryce’s lightning fast reflexes, the effect of the blast in such a confined space could have been lethal.

  There was no point talking to Saira, Bryce knew she wouldn’t be able to hear him so he simply held her down on the floor with his hand. She got the message. Stay low.

  Kitty meanwhile was clinging to Bryce’s body suit like his life depended on it. The explosion had terrified him. Bryce tried to calm him with a soothing rub behind the ears while trying to stop him escaping from his arms, but that didn’t seem to help.

  He hoped the next explosion didn’t upset the cat even more as they were going to make their move straight after.

  “What are we waiting for?” Saira mouthed.

  Bryce held up raised his palm, signaling her to be patient.

  Within seconds all hell broke loose in the main lab. The lights went out, men in body armor and night vision goggles burst through the main entrance and the beams of infra-red assault rifle scopes crisscrossed the room in search of targets.

  The assault team was half way through a grid search of the lab when Bryce’s hidden laser finally heated the Halon tank enough to cause it to rupture with the full force of the compressed gas within. The tank exploded, instantly filling the entire lab with the most efficient fire retardant gas ever devised. Halon is widely used in museums and art galleries to extinguish fires as it leaves no residue, so it doesn’t harm exhibits in any way. It immediately creates an oxygen free environment which is great for fire suppression and great for artworks and antiquities. For humans, though . . . not so much.

  Within seconds, the breach team was incapacitated, if only temporarily, due to the sudden lack of oxygen in the air. The tunnel doors had sealed Bryce and his two companions from the gas explosion, allowing them to fumble their way through the various boxes and wooden crates littering the dark, dusty tunnel. Fumbling through his pack, Bryce found a glow stick and snapped it in the middle, releasing enough light for them to see a few feet ahead.

  Within a few yards, they hit the end of the tunnel — a solid brick wall from floor to ceiling. Not the flimsy wooden structure he’d been expecting to find.

  Wow . . . this just keeps getting better.

  “This is what I tried to tell you . . . they blocked this tunnel off when they closed this Tube station and stopped using this line. We’re trapped.”

  “If we can get through this wall, we’re inside the old station and from there we can make our way through the disused Tube tunnel, right?”

  Saira nodded. Her adrenaline rush had started to abate and now she was feeling the after effects. Her entire body convulsed and she was close to tears without even realizing why. Bryce gripped her shoulder firmly to focus her attention on him.

  “Keep it together for a little longer. Here,” he handed her the cat, “take kitty and look after him while I figure something out. They’re going to be coming through here soon and we need to be long gone.”

  With trembling hands she took hold of kitty and began to stroke him, as much to calm herself as the cat.

  In the meantime, Bryce had begun to rummage through his pack taking inventory of what equipment he had that might get them through the wall fast enough to a
void a firefight in a narrow, dark tunnel. In other words, certain death, at least for kitty and Saira. Maybe for him, too.

  The tunnel was so narrow that there wasn’t even enough space to shift into his dragon form and as a human shifter, while he had greatly accelerated healing abilities, there were limits and he suspected that a barrage from a bunch of automatic weapons might severely test those limits. That was something he wasn’t keen to do, especially with other lives in the balance.

  “This might work,” Bryce said as he extracted what looked like a length of thick, rubbery rope.

  “What is it?” Saira had found her voice again.

  “This is a Linear Shaped Charge. But right now, I’m calling it our ticket out of here. Help me move some of this crap closer to the wall,” he responded while dragging crates of books and documents toward the dead end wall.

  Within a few minutes he’d attached the ropelike demolition charge to the wall and inserted a pencil thin detonator into the end of the charge before crushing the copper tube on the end of the detonator to start the chemical reaction needed to detonate the shape charge.

  “Block your ears and hang on to that cat,” he instructed as they huddled behind the pile of boxes they’d assembled to protect them from the blast.

  Ten seconds later and not for the first time that evening, a concussive shockwave ripped through the confined space, sucking the air from their lungs and leaving them hearing nothing but a constant ringing.

  As soon as the dust began to clear, the glow stick illuminated a large hole in the wall, beyond which lay total darkness and the dank air of a London Underground station that hadn’t been used in almost a century.

  Saira and Bryce looked at each other, then at their escape route. Their fate was sealed and there was no turning back — this was the only way forward for her from here. Neither of them bothered to speak as they couldn’t hear anything, anyway thanks to the after effects of the blast. Besides, with armed gunmen shooting at her and being whisked away by some kind of James Bond style thief, words hardly seemed adequate.

  Saira knew that once she climbed through the still smoking hole in the freshly blasted wall and into the darkness beyond, things would never be the same for her. She didn’t know how or why, but she knew it with a certainty that both frightened and excited her at the same time.

  Chapter 11

  His face was illuminated by the ambient light of the glow stick and for the first time, Saira took note of his features. When he first entered the lab, all she remembered were his piercing blue-gray eyes and after that, with being shot at and blown up, there really wasn’t time to assess her new companion. Until now, as he looked around the filthy, gritty and long abandoned Tube station looking for a way out.

  He was undeniably handsome. She had to admit that. Strong square jaw, high cheekbones and wavy, jet black hair that just begged to have her fingers run through it. Yes, he was a fine specimen, for a thief. She tried to remind herself that he was a thief. A museum thief who stole for profit that which she had dedicated her career to saving and protecting.

  Don’t even think about it! She needed a distraction before her wayward thoughts resurfaced.

  “What’s so special about that damned coin, anyway? It looks like any other coin of that era and if it was of any real value, someone would have found out by now.”

  “You really don’t know? You know where it was minted and when,” Bryce responded in a hushed tone. The vast, cavernous space with its tiled walls, which once bustled with life and fast moving trains now served only to augment their voices.

  “If you’re going to try to convince me that you’ve a coin minted in Antioch and it’s one of the fabled thirty pieces of silver, then you can forget it. Do you know how many people make that very claim each year?”

  “Okay, I won’t bother, then. We’re going this way.” He pointed toward the farthest tunnel opening at the end of the platform.

  Dirt, debris, old newspapers and other assorted refuse littered the track at the tunnel entrance. Remnants of a partially decomposed rat could be seen among the detritus.

  “Eeew! I’m not going in there. It’s disgusting.” She hugged kitty to her chest and screwed up her cute, slightly upturned nose.

  Bryce jumped down from the platform and onto the track before reaching up to help Saira down.

  “There has to be another way. I’m not going down that gross looking tunnel. There’s . . . dead things in there.”

  “There’s going to be two more dead things right here if we don’t get moving. It’s only a matter of time before the others come after us.” His arms remained outstretched.

  She handed kitty over to Bryce then proceeded to jump down on to the track, landing confidently and giving him her best I don’t need any help look.

  He handed back the cat and shook his head as he turned. Whatever. It was no skin off his ass if Little Miss Independent didn’t want his help.

  Snapping another glow stick, he marched straight into the mouth of the tunnel. Into the unknown.

  “So who are those other guys, you know the ones shooting at us and trying to blow up the museum?”

  “Long story,” Bryce sighed.

  “Like we don’t have time for that right now? Seriously? You have something better to be doing?”

  “You won’t believe me anyway, so what’s the point? You’re a scientist. A bookworm. A nerd. I know your type. I could tell you about them and their history, but you won’t believe a word of it. Not without a bucket load of empirical evidence and I can assure you, you won’t find any of that. That’s one thing I can be absolutely certain of.”

  “Okay, humor me. Entertain me with a non-verifiable tale while we trudge through miles of dusty, silty blackened tunnel.” Something brushed against Saira’s ankle as it scurried past. She let out a shrill shriek.

  “What’s wrong?” Bryce stopped suddenly causing Saira to bump into him.

  “Nothing. Well, something, I’m just not sure I want to know what it was. Let’s just keep moving. The sooner we get out of this revolting place the better.” With one hand holding kitty, she thrust the other hand out to give Bryce a push to the chest to get him moving again.

  He hardly moved at all. She felt like she was pushing against a solid wall he was so unyielding. The muscle beneath his body suit was firm and lean and her hand soon molded to the shape of his solid, well defined pecs. Somehow, the image of him naked with his powerful muscles on display entered her head.

  Where did that just come from?

  Bryce grinned. His dragon was playing with her again, despite the inappropriate circumstances.

  “Something the matter?” he asked, knowing full well what was going through her head.

  “Just keep moving, will you and tell me about these other guys to keep my mind off the things I can hear scurrying around at my feet.” And off the images of your naked body, gleaming with sweat after doing God knows what to me . . .

  It was then that Saira realized something that made her blush shamefully at such risqué thoughts. She didn’t even know his name!

  Chapter 12

  Blane woke with an agonizing headache and a constant ringing in his ears that threatened to burst his eardrums if it didn’t cause his head to explode first. He began to recollect a cracking good blow to the head and soon after, a deafening blast followed by an intense flash of light and gunfire. Lots of gunfire. He started to piece together what had happened.

  They’d come to rescue him. That must have been what the all that ruckus was about. As he tried to move his hands from the arms of the chair in which he sat he felt the sharp edges of the zip ties biting into his skin. Likewise, his feet were securely bound to the of the sturdy wooden chair. Everything was black. Pitch black. That’s when he realized that his head was covered with a black sack. Suddenly he was breathing rapidly and was overcome with an almost irrational feeling of claustrophobia.

  Professor Blane was a highly educated man with multiple degrees from the bes
t universities and a doctorate from Oxford. He’d even had a number of papers published in the most prestigious journals. But he didn’t need any of that education right now. Every movie he’d ever seen and every crime novel he’d ever read told him all that he needed to know.

  Nothing good ever came from having a black sack over your head while zip-locked to a chair.

  Chapter 13

  “I don’t suppose that in your Mary Poppins bag with its never ending supply of glow sticks and explosives you have, maybe something useful like a bottle of water?”

  Bryce paused and shrugged the pack off his shoulder. “Hold this.” He passed the glow stick to Saira while he opened the bag and withdrew a plastic tube.

  “Here.” He offered her the end of the tube.

  “I was thinking more like a bottle of Evian. What the hell is that?”

  “Camelback, what did you think it was?”

  Her perplexed expression said it all. She had no idea what he was talking about.

  “You drink through this tube. The water is in a bladder inside the backpack. See . . .” He began sucking water through the tube.

  “Where’s mine?” she asked, looking for another tube.

  “This is it, I’m afraid.” Bryce shrugged, still offering her the tube.

  “Thanks. I’ll wait until we get out of here. Sainsbury’s here I come.” She let out a sigh of annoyance and stomped past Bryce, into the darkness.

  “Suit yourself. But you know something, you really need to get out more.” He followed her lead savoring the refreshing water as he walked.

  She’s never seen a Camelback before? Really?

  “Well, are you going to tell me the story or not?”

  “You need to drink. You’re getting dehydrated and we still have a way to go. Take a sip and I’ll tell you.”

  “Fine,” she huffed, snatching the tube and wiping the end with her blouse before taking a mouthful.