The Grimrose Path

by Rob Thurman

  “Gods are many things, but they’re not ridiculous.” Thor, determined to be an embarrassing thorn in my side, blew a spit bubble and kept on snoring, as unconscious as he’d been since the beginning of our trip. “Okay. Rarely ridiculous. And, Griffin, you should know I have a backup plan. My backup plans have backup plans.” I turned around completely in the seat and shot Thor in the chest with my Smith. I muffled the sound with a pillow that had been left with the sleeping bag the guys were sitting on in the back. The pillowcase, not immaculate to begin with, blackened from the gunpowder. When I lifted it away, the tank top below showed a bullet hole, but there was nothing else. The flesh had already healed, and there wasn’t a single drop of blood, but Thor’s rhythmic snore did skip. That was something. I shot him again in the same spot.

  “I’m sorry I doubted you. Houdini is banging his head sitting up in his coffin in wonder at the elaborate nature of this spectacular magic trick. A gun and a pillow. That beats a rabbit out of a hat any day.” Griffin wasn’t impressed, but Zeke was shifting in a way that said he was seconds away from asking for his turn. A silver lining in every gunshot, that was my Kit.

  I regarded the skeptical one of the pair patiently. “You’ve been strung up by demons this week, sugar. Do you really want to be strung up by me too?”

  “Sorry,” Griffin apologized. “I’m hungry, I haven’t lost my sense of smell as I’d hoped, and I was expecting some sort of complicated world-class jewel thief equipment. You know, with wires and complex laser-generating electronics.”

  Leo gave a laugh that was far too amused at my expense, but I didn’t mind. It kept him occupied with thoughts other than gutting Griffin with a pair of car keys for the poofing disrespect. Not that he would have, but it had been a long, odoriferous ride. We could all use the distraction. “Trixa and electronics? She can’t program her TiVo. She can’t work her cell phone. It still chirps like a flock of birds when it rings. She’s set two, no . . . three microwaves on fire. Most couldn’t do it that many times on purpose.”

  “I’m not technically gifted.” I shot Thor yet again. “I’m not ashamed. We all have our weaknesses. If you didn’t have a weakness, how could you hone your skills to work around it? Shape-shifting and the powers of persuasion are my skills. Those and the ability to drive a fast car in three-inch demon-gutting boots. I don’t need TiVo to trick, and I don’t need a microwave to kill, although it might be nicely ironic in some cases. Now let me do my job.” This time when I shot Thor, it worked. That was another thing that didn’t require technical skill: pulling a trigger . . . a rather sad commentary on weapons of the day.

  Thor’s eyes were open and on me. The color wasn’t clear in the parking lot lights, but I could guarantee massively bloodshot was descriptive enough. I didn’t wait long enough for any emotion to register. I didn’t want to deal with a pissed-off, cranky, heading hard into hangover god. I wanted an amiable, still drunk but conscious one. “Give him a beer, Zeke,” I ordered before smiling at Thor. “Hey, doll, Loki said you’d give us a hand.” The same one that automatically grabbed for the beer Zeke dangled. Guns weren’t the only necessities we’d packed. When dealing with an alcoholic god, it was a good idea to not run out of what kept him happy.

  By the time he drank four beers, asked to see my breasts—not that that was how he phrased it—I was inside the museum. It wasn’t an easy ride, far and away the worst I’d been on. I couldn’t poof . . . damn Griffin. I couldn’t appear or disappear at will—that wasn’t one of my skills I’d been talking up earlier. But I could compare Thor’s shortcut to the ones that Leo had taken me on a time or two in the old days. Those had been smooth sailing on a calm sea. Thor’s trip was a roller-coaster ride off the rails and into the screaming crowd below. That I fell only three feet to the floor was something I was grateful for. I could’ve ended up in a display case one-third my size or inside the floor instead of above it.

  I landed on my bare feet—boots were great for fighting demons but not for robbing a museum—and caught my balance. Gym and yoga classes were paying off in some ways even if they were at the mercy of the diner’s biscuits and gravy. Leo had looked up the contents of the museum via their Web site on Thor’s computer, after fighting off all the porn-bots, and said there didn’t appear to be anything valuable enough to elicit the need of motion detectors throughout the building or around any specific exhibits. Most of what was here wasn’t half as valuable as what your average collector bought off eBay. This wasn’t the British Museum, full of gold and irreplaceable pieces of history. This was a nice, educational museum with the funding that went with that. That meant all the doors and windows had alarms. There would also be an alarm if you shattered a display case and there would be at least one security guard.

  Easy damn peasy for any thief, including a nontechnologically gifted one such as I.

  I’d appeared in a room full of dead, stuffed birds. While it was a teaching tool and the birds had died of natural causes, I didn’t like it. It was the païen in me. We were of nature. We were nature in a very real sense and everything born of nature should return to it, birds included—they shouldn’t be frozen behind glass. But humans were human and had long lost the connection to what raised them up and took them down.

  The Latin American exhibit was to the left of the bird mortuary, both on the second floor, which was where Thor had put me, miracle of miracles. I kept close to the walls and in the shadows. The lights were turned low but not completely off. If anyone was watching a bank of video screens in the security office, I wasn’t going to make it that simple for them.

  Many of the ancient discoveries were, like the birds, set in a recess in the wall and behind glass. The weapon mold wasn’t. It was halfway through the exhibit in a display case in the middle of the floor. It was set atop a square black marble pillar. The mold itself was colored black as well, inaccurately described as Mayan, age indeterminate. It wasn’t their fault. Even if carbon dating could be used for dating an obsidian artifact, instead of relying on the layers of earth it was found within, it would be worthless against a Namaru one. Their devices were immeasurable and inviolable. They would fool any modern technology into thinking they were brand-new, older than wrinkly-assed Methuselah, or didn’t exist at all except for the fact you could see it with your own eyes. As I was seeing this one. I could see why it stood separate. The museum might not think it was worth any more than the other Mayan artifacts, but it drew the eye as nothing else around it did. It would catch a visitor’s attention immediately and draw them into the room. It was a showstopper, a shout formed of stone. They might not know why or how, but people on a subconscious level would know it didn’t belong. It hadn’t come from a human hand and it wasn’t meant for humans. People being people, of course they’d immediately want a look at that. The old saying was wrong. It wasn’t a cat that curiosity killed.

  I moved closer. It was almost as black as the pillar beneath it except for a shimmer of silver gray that floated just under the surface. It looked like a block of volcanic glass twelve inches by twelve inches. There was carving along all the edges, looping and swirling. It was intricately deceptive, that design. If you thought it was Mayan, then the design would appear Mayan. If you thought Egyptian, then you would get Egyptian. If you thought Namaru, it would squirm like a living thing until it gave you a headache. Thor’s archeologist must have been an expert in all things Mayan, because that’s what she’d seen, that’s what it had been labeled, and to most of the world, that’s what it would be.

  To me it looked like a nuclear bomb, and if the Namaru were alive today, you’d be able to make one with one of their new weapon molds. Fortunately, they’d lived in a time when weapons didn’t have moving parts and there were no new molds, but that didn’t lessen what that block could do. A nuclear bomb wouldn’t work on Cronus anyway—what I could hopefully pull out of this chunk of dark rock just might.

  My cell phone vibrated in my jeans pocket. Knowing that couldn’t be good, I slipped it out,
opened it, and held it to my ear. I couldn’t answer, not with my knowledge of the security system being based on guesses. I could only listen and hope it was the diner wondering where I was as I rarely missed turkey meat loaf night. It wasn’t. It was Leo’s voice, quiet and brusque. As fond as I was of Leo, I would much rather it had been that fetal-aged nineteen-year-old cook from the diner, worried I’d fallen and broken my hip.

  “Thor’s out cold again,” Leo said. “Useless steroid-popping frat boy. There’s no waking him up and Zeke ever so generously emptied a clip into him, ruining his silencer in the attempt. We can’t get you out of there. We’re going to cause a distraction, and you’ll have to run for it.”

  Run for it. I was going to have to run for it carrying a piece of Namaru tech that not only was close to the size of a concrete block, but would weigh as much if not more. The Namaru had been able to create seemingly miraculous things, but those miraculous things invariably weighed a ton. If you wanted miraculous, there was always a price to be paid. Sometimes that price was blood and sometimes it was a herniated disc. Considering how long this run was going to be, I would rather have forked over a pint.

  I disconnected the call on Leo’s further happy news of, “We’ll give you two minutes.” I was glad he had faith I was already in position, but when you can’t bitch back about the sudden change of plans and vagaries of fate, nearly everything annoys you . . . faith included. Scanning the area quickly, I found what I needed and in precisely two minutes, I smashed the fire extinguisher into the display case. However loud it might have been, it was completely overshadowed by the explosions I heard outside. They sounded like entertaining distractions. I wished I were the one making them and not the one carrying an artifact that had surprised me by not weighing as much as a concrete block, but weighing as much as two or three concrete blocks.

  I made it through the bird room, RIP, and came up against a closed door identifying that the Dino Lab lay behind it. Closed and locked. This was the moment when your average thief would’ve become more irritated, but I wasn’t your average thief. To me, that’s when it became interesting. Let’s face it, if you’re not challenged by your job, if it doesn’t get your adrenaline pumping, your brain cycling into overdrive, then your job isn’t worth doing.

  The Roses? Stealing a potentially worlds-saving device? That . . . that was worth doing.

  And picking an ordinary lock, such as this one—a simple pin-and-tumbler design—wasn’t technology. Getting through it would be more like solving a puzzle or falling down the stairs in precisely the right way. If it took me a minute, I’d kiss Eli’s ass. Putting the Namaru mold on the floor, I lifted my shirt a few inches and retrieved the pick and torsion wrench from my back pocket. After giving the pins a subtle but nasty raking with the pick, I turned the small wrench. It was as easy as actually having the key, only more rewarding. Picking up the stone block again was less rewarding as my muscles complained and the scraped skin on my arms echoed that complaint before going straight to pain as the barely new skin tore in what felt like three or four spots. But all in all, I was maintaining a high level of job satisfaction and sheer fun as I passed through the lab, down the stairs, and burst out onto the first floor. From there it was past the insect zoo, which I cared for even less than the dead birds. Zoos are a prison and humanity the reason those prisons are necessary.

  I ran past the admissions desk and out the main entrance, which was unlocked, the steel mesh lifted as the security guard or guards had gone out to see what was exploding. It was cars. Four of them. That made sense. Four grenades in our trunk. Four cars blow up. I’d thought I was having a good time before. This was absolutely amazing—a party if ever there was one.

  The museum backed up to Exposition Boulevard, was cornered by Menlo, and was fronted by a green space with grass, several trees, and a narrow jogging path. Now added to all that greenery were several burning cars. It was a pity to scar a beautiful area, but exploding cars in the street could hurt someone who didn’t deserve it. The grass would grow again, if not shut behind glass; that was nature’s way.

  I saw two security guards by two of the cars. The other two bonfires were past three trees. I had to admit it was a great distraction except for all the light it put off. But in LA as in Vegas, it’s never dark anyway. And when you’re by several streets, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and a museum, you can take the word “night” out of the dictionary altogether. I was good at sticking to the shadows when I had to, but in this situation the shadows were scarce. I heard the shout behind me as I kept running. “Stop!” I wonder if that had ever worked. Did anyone the world over start to steal from a museum, get spotted, and then stop? Sorry, sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Here’s your priceless Star of the Infinite Morning diamond back. Wait, let me rub off that smudge. There you go. Sparkly as ever. I’ll handcuff myself, no problem. Happy to help.

  I doubted it. They all most likely did what I did. Ran faster.

  The grass was cool under my feet and the damn Namaru block was getting heavier with every step I took, but I kept running. I saw our borrowed car come screeching across Menlo Avenue from the parking lot, causing two other cars to slam on their brakes to avoid a collision. I was almost there, almost home free . . . as long as they didn’t have guns. I snatched a glance over my shoulder.

  Ah, shit.

  I dived to the ground. I didn’t bother to try and protect the mold as I hit grass and it hit asphalt. Like all Namaru devices, it was virtually indestructible. It could protect itself. I could protect myself too, but I couldn’t make myself impervious to electricity. The wires from the Taser sailed over the top of me and the darts hit the street next to the weapon mold. It was almost exactly simultaneous to Zeke jumping out of the car with his gun pointed at the guards less than fifteen feet behind me—the innocent, if inconvenient, guards.

  “Kit, don’t,” I said on the end of a ragged pant for air.

  Griffin’s voice followed mine. “Think, Zeke. Think.” Think about what you’re doing, whom you’re facing, what the situation was and who we were in it. The guards were the good guys. Misguided, as we were trying to stop a danger they couldn’t imagine, but they were good nonetheless.

  “I’ve already thought,” came the reply, somewhat exasperated, the gun not wavering. “You two,” he said to the guards. “Go away. Now.”

  But good doesn’t always mean intelligent. It can mean brave and stubborn to the point of stupidity. Weren’t some of the greatest heroes in written history those who didn’t have the sense to say, What the hell was I thinking? Let’s wait until we have more men, spears, swords, and brain cells. Why are we even here? I could be home plowing the field and enjoying the nice spring day. The second guard wasn’t a plow-the-field type though. She was a hero. Only unlike other past heroes, she was going to live to tell about it.

  When Zeke fell beside me, his entire body rigid, he didn’t pull the trigger. He’d told the truth. He had thought. We should’ve had more faith in him. Zeke always knew right from wrong—it was the punishment area he had difficulties in, and you didn’t punish guards chasing a thief. Instead, he took the punishment himself, although he did manage to keep an irritated expression on his face as he went down, which is an achievement when you have that many volts passing through you.

  I grabbed my own gun, rolled over, sat up, and put a bullet in the ground twelve inches or so from the feet of the nearest guard. Ms. Hero. I hoped it made her think twice in the future. Do the right thing in the smart way. We needed heroes in the world, but heroes who didn’t look before leaping rarely lived long enough to pass on their heroic genes. Whether it would make her think in the future, I didn’t know, but it did make her think now. “I don’t think I can say it much better than my friend. Go away is good and now is perfect. So go.” Neither looked like a former marine, a cop moonlighting, or someone with a badge fetish but a psych profile that would keep you from serving up slushies, much less working in a field where you’re armed. They we
re two museum guards, plain and simple, and that let them back away from a no-win situation, because they were bright enough, the hero included, to know that a chunk of rock wasn’t worth dying for. Saving a life was, saving the world was, but a thing? An artifact? That wasn’t. Too bad I hadn’t stolen one of the dead birds instead. That would’ve made their decision go down a little easier.

  As they backed up, hands in the air, Leo and Griffin came out of the car. Leo took the artifact, Griffin took Zeke, and when everyone was back in the car, I followed. We were flying down Menlo before I could get the door shut. When I did, I checked the mirror to see the guards running after us, trying to get the license plate. Unfortunately for them they’d get nothing. Amateurs, which we weren’t, would know enough to remove the license plate in the parking lot. It wasn’t our car, but if they tracked down Zeke’s neighbors through it, they had no reason to take the fall for him and every reason to gleefully see him dragged to jail. It would be excuse enough for a block party.

  “Who stole the cars and drove them into the park?” I asked, using the cause of the entire uproar as a footstool as I reached back and took Zeke’s slack hand.

  “I did. I keep in practice—as a certain trickster taught me.” Leo steered around one car and turned onto West Thirty-ninth, and proceeded to get us thoroughly buried in the city. “I blew them up as well. I did have to wrestle the grenades from Zeke, but it was worth it. Fireballs and stealing—it was very satisfying.”

  “I’m glad you’re having a good time.” If it weren’t for Zeke getting a small taste of sticking a fork in an outlet, I would be high on the experience myself. “Griff, how is he doing?”

  “He’s blinking. That’s something.” Thor remained unconscious, and Griffin had shoved him into the corner of the backseat. He also had Zeke’s gun in hand before placing it in his partner’s holster. It was Zeke’s favorite gun, a Colt Anaconda, and Griffin knew better than to leave it behind. Zeke cherished that phallic-boosting piece of metal beyond all measure. “Hey, partner, when you can move again, be glad we didn’t wait and try to break you out of jail later.” He hoisted him higher in the seat, and I felt a twitch of fingers captured by my hand. “I’d hate to see what you would’ve done if they’d tried a full-body cavity search on you. Or have to mess with Thor poofing out all the ill-tempered red-heads. With our luck you know one who would’ve been a pervert clown arrested for twisting his penis into balloon animals.”