This one was big and made of rock. It stood about seven feet tall and had been sculpted without many features. Its torso consisted of a large, pendulous midsection, attached to a featureless head and rounded limbs. The whole thing reminded me of the Mesopotamian fertility gods. Golems weren’t built to look pretty, they were built to pound threats into roadkill.
Peering from behind the crate, Nadya and I stayed as still as possible. Golems responded to movement. Hopefully it would go for Odawaa, who was yelling for reinforcements steps away from the tent exit.
No such luck. It took two more steps out of the crate, but instead of running after Odawaa, it swiveled its stone head. Three unnaturally black pits chiseled into the front of its head focused in on us.
“If we split up and run, we might short-circuit it,” Nadya said.
“Or it could squish us.”
Turns out we didn’t have to test that theory. Odawaa’s reinforcements arrived and opened fire.
Like I said, golems work on binary logic. The guns going off overrode whatever proximity programming we’d triggered. Stone grating against stone, the golem swiveled and charged towards Odawaa and his men.
We took the opportunity to duck behind another crate while the bullets slapped against the oncoming golem, not that they were doing much good. Think rock-paper-scissors, except with bullets instead of scissors. Rock still wins.
Like idiots, they kept firing. I swore. You don’t try to defeat a golem, you run— fast—preferably into tight spots it can’t fit its limbs through. There’s a reason golems are found in tombs with a doorway smaller than they are.
As much as I’d have liked to get even with Odawaa and his band of merry pirates for pretending to be me . . .
“Odawaa, you idiot, you don’t shoot golems, you run!” I yelled.
Odawaa turned his gun in my direction. “There is no such thing as golems,” he snarled, a maniacal look on his face.
It’s the smart, sane ones who go ballistic when faced with their first supernatural.
“Don’t you think that’s a pretty fucking moot point—oh shit.” I ducked back down as Odawaa opened fire, bullets peppering the crates.
A high-pitched shriek echoed around the room, and I hazarded a peek back over the box in time to see the golem toss one of the pirates. I winced as bone met tent pole with a crunch. The man didn’t get back up—or move.
Odawaa’s sanity might’ve been getting a hell of a challenge today, but he wasn’t stupid. He and the remaining pirate abandoned their shooting and went for the tent flap.
Only problem was the tent wouldn’t halt a golem.
Come to think of it, the best bet was to follow their lead while the golem was busy. The crates were in the center of the room. We might be able to make a run for it and slide under the canvas.
I peeked over the edge to see where the golem was in time to see it bat Odawaa’s remaining man in our direction. I swore and ducked back down as the body collided with our crate. Bone cracking against plywood.
Yeah, not running. I heard Odawaa scream, I think, but I didn’t dare look—not with the golem lobbing human projectiles in our direction.
“That thing moves a hell of a lot faster than I thought it would,” I said to Nadya.
“Yes, its speed and agility are an unforeseen complication.”
“Unforeseen complication? Nadya, the golem is an unforeseen complication.”
She shrugged. “Like I said. Now stop worrying about how the golem got activated and start worrying about a way out—one that does not involve running by the golem.”
I frowned. “Me find a way? I was the one who told you not to read from Carpe’s goddamned magic book. You find a way out . . .”
The yelling and screaming had stopped.
Nadya frowned. “Go see what it is doing,” she said.
“No, you go see what it’s doing, it’s already thrown someone at me—oomph!” Without ceremony, Nadya shoved me so that I had no choice but to peek over the edge. Damn it, I needed to remember to push first next time . . .
No sign of Odawaa—or his body—and the tent flap had been torn off. Whether he’d gotten out or been thrown was up for debate. The golem was standing there, perfectly still. For whatever reason, programming or misfire, it had decided for the moment that this was the area it was supposed to protect. “I think it’s deactivated,” I said.
At the sound of my voice, its head swiveled around, the three black pits fixating on our crate.
I swore and ducked back down. What I needed was something that would trigger the attack response, get it going in one direction while we went the other . . . I scanned the things in reach. Vase? No, too expensive—I wasn’t that desperate yet. Buddha? The gold plate probably wouldn’t register as an attack—wait a minute . . .
I slid my hand between the crates as silently as I could and reached for the rifle strapped across the collapsed man’s chest. Eww, there was blood. Oh man, I signed up to be an antiquities thief specifically to avoid blood and shooting.
My fingers closed around the back of the gun strap, and I untangled it from the body.
Only problem was I didn’t know a goddamn thing about rifles. “Do you know how to use this?” I asked, handing it to Nadya.
She checked the gun. “It’s a Kalashnikov—that’s a yes,” she added when I gave her an exasperated look.
“Is it ready to fire?” I’m not one for guns—in my experience, unless you really know what you’re doing, the bad guys end up with the weapons—pointed at me.
She nodded, but a frown touched her face.
“Fantastic. I know exactly the distraction. Shoot the metal crates on the golem’s left,” I said.
“That’s a terrible idea—”
“Fine, I’ll do it.” I took back the gun and leveled the bullet end over the crate. “No!” Nadya yelled.
It was too late. I’d already pulled the trigger.
My plan had been to aim at the metal storage boxes piled on the far side of the tent and draw the golem’s attention away from us, leaving a short but clear pathway to freedom . . .
Fun fact: bullets ricochet when you shoot them at some types of metal. And the Kalashnikov is an automatic.
I swore and ducked back behind the crate with Nadya as the bullets rained back down on the artifacts and fakes, including the false Buddha statue. The pieces—brittle metal under the gold leaf—clattered to the ground all around us.
I knew I should have thrown the statue . . . maybe the golem hadn’t noticed?
I heard the granite on granite swivel as it charged.
Nadya shoved me to the left while she took off to the right. With two of us to chase, it might just short-circuit long enough to give us time to make it out under the tent flap.
The golem’s head swiveled towards me.
If the golem thought this was its new lair, then as soon as we slid under the tent flap, the off switch should be triggered. Or it might start rampaging through the pirates’ camp, but at this point I was desperate.
“Hurry up!” Nadya yelled. I checked over my shoulder and saw she was halfway under the tent. The golem had caught up.
The end of the tent was only a few feet away. Oh hell, I hoped I didn’t mess this up, otherwise I was going to be a sand popsicle . . .
The golem raised its arm to swing, and I dove. Maybe it was the fever, maybe it was just my personal brand of bad luck, but instead of sliding under the canvas, I slipped in the sand, the golem’s arms braced overhead.
There was no way I’d crawl out in time. I closed my eyes and winced. So that was how it ended; the great Owl smashed by an accidently triggered golem . . .
Before the golem could swing its rock hand down on me, a strong hand snatched my wrist and pulled me under the tent and out to safety. I felt the ground shake as the golem’s fist struck the
sand. I looked up into Rynn’s face.
“Hi Alix, found a golem, I see?” he said, smiling.
Relief washed over me. “Let it never be said you don’t have good timing.”
But before I could do anything too embarrassing, Rynn turned to the man standing behind him. Not one of the pirates, but familiar-looking . . . dark skin with a blue tinge to it, no hair, tall.
“I told you they’d be where the pirates were screaming ‘Monster,’ ” Rynn said.
The man frowned at me, and I realized why he looked familiar. He was a ringer for the guards who’d been stationed at both Artemis’s and Daphne’s homes. A genie.
Rynn’s genie friend frowned at me and used the one word of supernatural I recognized. Seereet. Rynn shrugged at him in response, and the genie turned back to me. “She is very small for someone to cause that much trouble. I would caution you to find another human.”
“Hey!” I said.
Rynn patted the genie on the back. “Don’t mind Nomun, Alix, he means no harm. He’s an air genie. Not much of a filter either. Owes me a gambling debt, so he’ll be getting us into Syria.”
The genie shook his head at me, still not looking convinced. “I must say, incubus, as a point of honor I should offer to extinguish this one for you. So much trouble—”
“Yeah, I can really see the ‘no harm’ part, Rynn,” I said, backing up as the genie peered down at me.
The genie threw back his head and laughed. “You were right, incubus, she is very gullible.”
Oh you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. I glared at Rynn, who couldn’t quite cover a laugh. “You thought that was funny?”
Nomun leaned down and patted my shoulder. “Please take no offense. I offered to get you out of harm’s way, but he claimed you would be just as likely to throw something at me as the golem.” He added to Rynn, “The pirates are dismantled for now, though no sign of their leader. If we leave now and the wind is good, we will get there before nightfall.”
“We need to grab the elf first—and the Mau,” Rynn said. “I left them back at Passer’s temple. They should be fine provided the elf didn’t do anything stupid.”
Shit . . . “No, wait—I need back in there,” I said. “We can’t leave without Carpe’s stupid book, and I’m not leaving the pirates with the dig notes.” Thief or not, an archaeologist would have kept a map and inventory. We’d also know if more cursed artifacts had been sold.
Nomun nodded. “I’ll deal with the golem,” he said. He frowned and shook his head as he headed into the tent ahead of me. “So much trouble for one so small.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I called after him.
As soon as Nomun disappeared into the tent, I shook my head at Rynn. “I got to admit, I’m a little disappointed. An incubus held in captivity by a pack of pirates.”
“Who said anything about captivity?” Rynn said, arching a blond eyebrow.
I frowned. “What the hell else could you have been doing for the past couple hours?”
Rynn’s smile widened. “How bout you come meet my entourage.”
“What entourage?”
17
The Syrian City of the Dead
7:00 p.m., at the feet of Moses the Abyssinian
I had to hand it to Nomun, he got us into Syria and to the mountain undetected, though I don’t think I’ll ever step foot on a cargo plane again. Nomun could make very old planes do things they shouldn’t—like fly.
A fat lot of good getting here had done us, what with all the IAA crawling around . . . I was still trying to figure out how the hell they’d gotten all the vehicles in there, on account of there being no roads.
“I cannot believe we left the terra-cotta warriors behind,” I said to Nadya, who was sitting beside me. At the moment she had the binoculars. “A pair, Nadya.”
She jabbed me in the arm. “You do not need a terra-cotta warrior.”
I wiped sweat off my forehead and did my best to cover the wet cough I’d developed. It had started in the last couple hours, along with a killer sore throat—no pun intended. I was having a hard time keeping the hemorrhagic fever part out of my mind. “I beg to differ, especially if I get out alive.”
Nadya skewered me with one look.
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve had my eye out for one of those? A pair!”
The skewering didn’t stop. “We’ll be in China again.”
“You know, that’s what people used to say about Nirvana concerts. No terra-cotta warriors—happy?” I said, and stifled another cough.
She shook her head and got up, heading over to where Carpe and Captain were hiding.
We were encamped on mountain steps dug out on the opposite side of the ravine that housed the Deir Mar Musa Monastery, maybe a thousand or so meters away, give or take. Both sides of the ravine were covered in paths that wound their way to nowhere, making that distance not mean a hell of a lot. In fact, the entire mountain range surrounding the Monastery of Saint Moses was filled with similar footpaths, which is what you get when you let the sheep and goats do the urban planning.
My head hurt. And despite the fact that I was running a permanent fever now, I was freezing from the altitude. We’d been on lookout for over an hour now—Rynn and his genie friend were not willing to do anything until nightfall. We had no idea what Odawaa might or might not have told the IAA—or if he was still alive.
By my guess, I was also about due for another hallucination. That was going to be a joy . . .
I checked my watch. 7:00 p.m. Time to see what the IAA had planned for dinner. “Gimme those,” I said, and grabbed the binoculars hanging from Rynn’s neck as he slid into Nadya’s place. After my hallucination with Caracalla, no one was willing to leave me on my own for any stretch of time . . .
“Damn it, will you ask before taking things?” Rynn said.
“Thief, remember?”
Using the binoculars, I focused in on the collection of tents and off-road jeeps surrounding the monastery and the footbridge spanning the ravine.
IAA agents and a handful of archaeologists milled around the jeeps and tarps before heading into the stone monastery buildings, light escaping from the stone windows.
Now, if I could just figure out who the hell was in charge. One of Sanders’s postdocs had to be milling around . . . even if I spotted a grad student I recognized, it’d be better than nothing.
“Oh man, this just keeps getting better and better,” I said as I picked out a man wearing an old, secondhand military cargo jacket—it was supposed to be ironic, whatever the hell that meant—and shoulder-length light brown hair. I was half convinced he highlighted it.
Out of all the postdocs, of course it had to be him.
Nadya crouched down on my other side. “Far left, entrance to the monastery,” I told her. A moment later she swore.
“If we’re looking for the link of who’s in charge, that’s him,” I said.
“Who is it?” Rynn asked, taking his binoculars back.
“He’s Dr. Cooper Hill,” Nadya said. “One of Dr. Sanders’s most celebrated researchers, also used to be Alix’s and my acting supervisor.”
Rynn smirked. I ignored it. “Also happens to be the most cutthroat postdoc on his payroll.” I should have known he was involved. “I ruled him out initially because of the curse involved. Cooper isn’t stupid, but more than that, he doesn’t usually get his hands dirty.”
“No, he’d prefer to throw hapless grad students under the bus,” Nadya said. Yeah, then hijack the paperwork, falsify a few signatures and dig reports—hell, I’m amazed he hadn’t tried to pin drugs on me as well.
“What about the professor in charge?” Rynn asked.
I shook my head. “Past making sure they’re turning in publishable research papers, Dr. Sanders can’t be bothered checking what the hell his postdocs are doing. Besides, th
e IAA treats Hill like some sort of archaeology god.” With Dr. Sanders’s signature on the paperwork and Cooper’s clean record and talent for finding hapless and willing scapegoats, no wonder the IAA hadn’t bothered looking too closely into the reopening of the dig . . .
When I caught Rynn frowning at me, I added, “He’s good,” lest he read any meaning into it. “We’ll have to be careful—he’s got a talent for keeping track of what goes on at his dig sites. If something’s out of place, he’ll know.”
“Hill was responsible for getting Alix thrown out of grad school,” Nadya offered. “He was the one who convinced her to retract her research after it uncovered the Aztec mummy.”
“Gee thanks, Nadya.” Not exactly something I’d wanted Rynn to know about. Mostly because it was embarrassing. “Retract your thesis, Alix, there’ll be a nice compensation pack in Ephesus for you . . .” Needless to say there had been no travel plans to Turkey, only a one-way ticket to Siberia.
I’ve got one hell of a talent for trusting the wrong people.
“Alix was particularly stupid, she was practically in love with Hill, followed him around like a lost puppy.”
Goddamn it—“Enough, Nadya!” I felt my face turning red as Rynn narrowed in on me. I did my best to put the conversation away from my idiocy and back on track. “Regardless of his dubious ethics, I’m still surprised Cooper’s involved. He usually keeps a degree’s worth of separation from anything remotely dangerous.”
“Cooper? You’re on a first-name basis?” Rynn asked, phrasing it innocently, though I knew damn well it was anything but.
I frowned right back. “If Dr. Hill is down there, it means he’s in charge of whatever the hell they’ve got going on. No way the thieves could have gotten in and out without him knowing and sounding the alarm.” As a point of reference, I purposely stayed away from his digs.
Owl and the City of Angels Page 32
