“Awesome.”
“Are you shitting me?” Juice drowned out the others’ yells of celebration and grabbed him by the arm. “If you’re fucking with us, I’m going to be all kinds of pissed.”
“No fucking involved.” He held up both hands with his palms out. “I swear. Your mate comes with us.” His eyes widened as Bran’s fur faded and the wolf became a man.
I’m never going to get used to that shit.
Relief flickered on Juice’s face as he leaned into Trace’s shoulder. “What do you say, mate? Will you sail the seas and go to war with me?”
“Damn straight,” Trace growled. “I vowed to protect you. You are mine.”
“Do ya think we can squeeze out half an hour for us before we need to start packing shit?”
“Yes. Yes, we can.” Trace dipped his shoulder, tossed Juice over it, and made a beeline for their room. “Don’t leave without us, assholes. Juice has to talk to a man about a dog.”
“Jesus.” Zero pinched his fingers into his eyes. “We didn’t need to know that, assholes,” he yelled after Trace and Juice.
Viper let the laughter settle for a beat, then stepped back into command mode. “You heard me, boys—twelve-hour window. Warbirds waiting. Let’s move.”
As the team scattered to prep, the weight of mission protocol settled back into place, heavy and familiar. Whatever waited out there—jungle, target unknown—it didn’t matter. They were Volcano Team, even if they now had a wolf in their pack. No matter what the world threw at them, they would do their jobs as ordered. Period.
Dr. Howard*Ward* Sutherland wasn’t a fan of emails with the subject line ‘You’ll want to see this.’ They were usually clickbait from lazy colleagues trying to spin a half-buried shard of pottery into the next Rosetta Stone. Nine times out of ten, it was a fluke. A stain. Bird shit on a rock, if you will. But this one? It pinged every nerve ending in his body.
“Why the heck is the French Ministry of Culture – Direction Générale des Patrimoines et de l’Architecture emailing me?” Ward glanced at the CC list and frowned at the single email on the list. “And CC-ing Service Archéologique Maritime Français (SAMF), no less.” He hovered his mouse over the email for a second or two.
If I get a virus, I’m going to be so fucking pissed.
After deciding he wouldn’t click any links contained in the email, his curiosity won out. He clicked the mail and began to read. The body of the email was almost apologetic:
Dr. Sutherland,
We believe you are the foremost expert available to consult on an anomalous inscription discovered on a remote site in the Indian Ocean. Due to the linguistic anomalies and the highly localized volcanic conditions, we’re requesting your immediate attention. Please see the attached image.
Well, crap. Now I want to click the dang link.
He backed out of the email and turned on the super-duper anti-virus software his cousin had developed. It slowed everything down on his laptop, so he rarely used it. But if he lost all his work from the dig he’d just returned from or got a virus, he’d be pissed with himself for not waiting an extra thirty seconds to see what was attached to the email.
He pointed the program at his inbox, snagged his insulated coffee mug from the desk, and went to get himself a coffee refill while the anti-virus program did its thing. He paused at the sink to rinse out his mug, refilled it, and added a spoonful of sugar. Stirring his mug, he went back to his office and stared at the screen as he waited for the program completion bar to populate.
“Finally.” He heaved a sigh of relief at the green writing that told him the email contained no known viruses and clicked on the link. It took a couple of seconds for the single-page, high-resolution image to open.
Ward hunched over the table, peering at what looked like a hand-scanned page from a waterproof field journal, judging by the slight bend at the edges and the fine grit stuck to the paper grain.
He focused on the markings on the page, and the world dropped out from under him. He placed the mug on the table, well away from the laptop, and pulled the device closer to him. His brain went into overdrive as it tried to make sense of what he was looking at. They weren’t just any symbols.
Is it a language?
Holy crap, it is a language.
He went through the possibilities in his head and rapidly ruled out Latin, Sanskrit, Polynesian, or Austroasiatic. He didn’t thinkit was a tribal glyph structure, but it also had no modern root trace. “What are you?”
I’ve seen that before.
I think.
He nudged the laptop back and got to his feet. Glancing at the notebooks on his shelf, he searched until he found the one he wanted. “There you are.” He lifted multiple volumes of textbooks from the battered copybook and carefully moved them aside.
The copybook was bought at a tiny corner shop in Ireland when he and his family had gone on vacation. Staying in Munster hadn’t been too much fun for his fifteen-year-old self until he’d come across the markings on the stones near a corrie lake in the Comeragh mountains.
