Read Online Hunt at World's End by Gabriel Hunt - Free Book Online

right,” Noboru said.
    “Oh,” Joyce said, as Gabriel snapped, “What?”
    “If this cult operates internationally, she won’t necessarily be safer in the U.S. than here. As long as they think she has this thing, they’ll keep coming after her. And if we send it back with her, they’ll be right. Meanwhile, if that map’s correct, what everyone’s looking for is somewhere around here. If we’re going to have to face them somewhere, better to do it where we can put an end to it.”
    “Thank you,” Joyce said, with a tone of satisfaction. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
    “All that business about liking your job,” Gabriel muttered, “and not wanting to make Michael angry…?”
    Noboru shrugged. “He won’t like it any more if they kill her back in New York.”
    Gabriel nodded. Noboru was right, of course. And so, for that matter, was Joyce. If someone had ever tried to take something like this out of his hands, he’d never have stood for it. But—
    “It’ll be dangerous,” Gabriel said. “You might get killed. I can’t promise I’ll be able to keep you alive the next time.”
    “—and airplanes can crash, and peanuts can give you anaphylactic shock,” Joyce said. “Life’s a thing of risks. You know that better than anyone.”
    “You’re so right,” Gabriel said. “Next time we’re facing a dozen men with swords and a bowl of peanuts, you can deal with the swordsmen, I’ll handle the peanuts.”
    They stared at each other in tense, unblinking confrontation till a grin broke out on Joyce’s face. “I’m picturing you throwing yourself on a bowl of peanuts,” she said, “like a soldier on a grenade.”
    “Well, we really wouldn’t want you to go into anaphylactic shock,” Gabriel said.
    “I wouldn’t,” Joyce said. “That was just an example. I’m not allergic to…”
    But Gabriel had already turned away. “You want the first shift or the second?” he asked Noboru.
    “Either’s fine with me,” Noboru said. “But first I’d be grateful if someone could tell me just what this ancient treasure is that everyone’s getting so excited over.”
    “You mean the Three Eyes…?” Gabriel said.
    “No,” Noboru said. “I mean whatever it is that the Three Eyes unlock.”
    “The Spearhead,” Joyce said.
    “It’s a weapon,” Gabriel said.
    Joyce shook her head. “It’s much more than that. Hold on a sec, I want to show you something.” She went over to the corner of the room where they’d piled her books earlier, rummaged through them and pulled one out. She flipped through the pages and said, “When Teshub gave the Spearhead to the Hittites, the first thing they were supposed to have done with it was turn it on their enemies, the Kaska. In 2005, the Kaskan city of Sargonia was excavated in the northern hill country between Hatti and the Black Sea.” She handed Gabriel the book, open to a photograph of the excavated village. In it, Gabriel saw a stone structure, its pillars and walls black and cracked, the rest of it in ruins. “That was a temple,” Joyce went on. “The stone was charred and baked all the way through by some sort of extreme, concentrated blast of heat. And you see that at the bottom?”
    There was a reflective pool surrounding the base of the temple. “What, the water?”
    “That’s not water,” she said. “It’s glass.”
    He looked up from the photograph.
    “Whatever destroyed Sargonia was strong enough, hot enough, to turn the sand around the base of that temple into glass.”
    Gabriel looked at the photograph again, studying the reflective surface. On closer inspection, he saw what might be faint fissures or cracks—something you wouldn’t see in water.
    “Of course, we don’t know what did this,” he said. “We don’t know that it was the Spearhead.”
    “Of course,” Joyce said. “But we know somethingdid. And how many things in the ancient world could?”
    “Lightning?” Noboru said, looking at the photo over