“Not as pretty as the rest of us,” the one who was touching my hair said.
OK, looks insulted by wraiths—new rock bottom for me.
“Now be nice, girls,” Artemis added.
I spotted a bottle by the bed . . . “You want to know what I choose, Artemis?” I said, grabbing his shirt and pulling him close, careful to avoid the eyes. With my foot I rolled the bottle towards me.
He smiled. “Dying to know.”
“I’d rather die than join your fan club.” As fast as I could, I reached down for the bottle and slammed it into his face. He yelped—whether from surprise or pain, I didn’t really care. It had the desired effect. He let the hell go.
“Come on, Captain,” I said, sliding out from under him and bolting for the window. The wraiths got out of the way, and for once the cat listened.
I threw back the curtains. The windows were barred.
“We’re in Hollywood, dear, what did you expect?” Artemis laughed, still recovering on the carpet from the blow to his head.
I tried to run around the wraiths, but I tripped and landed flat on my face. I glanced down at my feet. They were tied together with panty hose. The wraiths had tied my feet up with damn panty hose while I’d been pinned by Artemis . . .
“Told you they had their uses,” Artemis said, pushing me over and pinning my chest with his knee. His eyes glowed green again. I cranked my head to the side, but too late. I felt the euphoria start to spread through me . . . It wouldn’t be so bad to look at him? Would it?
Captain’s distressed meow broke the hold Artemis was gaining over my mind. I tried to slide out, but Artemis just pinned me harder, forcing my face back where I couldn’t help but look at him. For the second time I shut my eyes.
“Open them,” he growled.
Part of me really wanted to, was begging me to. I spat, hopefully hitting his face. “Fuck off,” I said.
I don’t know what shocked me more—the fact that Artemis kissed me, hard, on the mouth, or that his lips burned. He broke it off, still holding my jaw in place.
I started to kick, not that I got anywhere. “At what point did you figure that was a good idea, because I’ll tell you right now, your brain fucked it up—”
“Open. Your. Eyes,” Artemis said, pronouncing each word like a command. That’s just about the effect it had on me.
“Let go of me!” But even as the words left my mouth, I could feel something else creeping through the back of my mind, telling me it wouldn’t be such a bad idea—come on, how long could I hold out? Really?
I yelled as Artemis pried my eyelids open with his fingers. I forced the alien thoughts down and struggled harder.
“I hate to do this, I really do, but I don’t need to win you over. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll love me more than life itself,” he said.
“You don’t seriously believe those things love you?” I said. I saw Captain creeping up behind Artemis. Stall, Owl, stall . . .
“Not really, but it’s close enough. Better than the real thing if you consider the perks. And they’ll never leave me.”
I swore as Artemis straddled my chest, driving his knee into my throat while holding my chin in place with his free hand. I could barely breathe. Why the hell is it that every time I end up dealing with the supernatural, I get the shit kicked out of me? Anyone want to touch that one? Seriously?
The problem with being choked like this is it’s damn near impossible not to open your eyes . . .
Artemis’s eyes were glowing green, the pupils a dark red. “Time to make you love me,” he said.
I started to tell Artemis to fuck off—the words formed in my mind, I started to say them . . . Nothing came out. My mind filled with—well, I won’t say it was pleasant, just blank. No pain, no pleasure . . . not a damn thing . . .
I felt something alien reach in, twisting my memories, nothing was off limits—Rynn, Carpe, Nadya. It hurt like a son of a bitch, enough so it snapped me out of the haze and I got control of my voice back.
“Now, Captain!” I yelled as loud as I could manage.
Then it was as if every pleasurable moment in life was ripped to the surface of my mind all at once . . . and tumbled right back down.
Artemis screamed as he clawed at his own back. Captain was riding him as well as any vampire, his tail switching back and forth as he bit him.
Adrenaline helped clear the fog out of my head, and I scrambled out from under Artemis.
“Not so fast,” he said, grabbing my foot and dragging me back across the floor. Then he grabbed Captain by the scruff of the neck and threw him at the wraiths.
“Son of a bitch, that’s my cat—” I went for his knee, but he caught my ankle. “That emptiness in between the pain and elation?” Artemis snarled. “That’s what we live in. We feed off emotion—attraction, lust . . . but love, that’s the one we never get enough of. We’re parasites, Alix, we don’t love anything. We take it to fill the damn void of a pit left inside. It’ll be Rynn feeding off yours until your dying breath—how is that for a raw deal? The wraiths? I’ve drained them dry of every drop of love they’ve ever had, but at least it’s quick and honest, not pulled out over the years. Rynn has screwed you over more than I ever will. Think of it this way. I’m doing you a favor.”
Somehow I got the distinct impression this had more to do with Artemis’s baggage than any perks . . .
Once again that voice of surrender seeped back into my brain, stronger this time . . .
“Come on, Owl—just let go,” Artemis urged, and forced my face to look at the mirrored closet. “Take a look, you’re halfway there.”
In the mirror was something akin to a wraith, with sunken eyes and graying skin . . .
It was me. Whatever Artemis had done, I looked more like one of the husks than my old self.
“See? I’ve already won,” he growled.
I stared at my reflection a second longer. I had two choices; give in to an inevitable descent into wraithdom, or tell Artemis to take his warped harem and fuck off. I think we know by now which way I go.
I fought harder, kicked, screamed. I watched Captain get back up on his feet and shake his head as the wraiths surrounded him. “Captain! Run, you stupid cat,” I managed. If he didn’t move it now, one of the wraiths would get him.
Don’t ask me how or why, but a single voice crept through the back of my mind, demanding my attention as Artemis pinned down my arms.
“You know, now would be a really awesome time to use that get out of jail free card.”
Despite my situation, I snorted. Somehow I seriously doubted Hermes’s get out of jail card would do dick all.
“Just saying . . .” Hermes’s voice in my head continued. “Unless that whole wraith thing is what you’re going for. To each their own, I guess. Just seems real stupid is all.”
Oh what the hell, I was going to be dead anyways . . .
“I’m trading in my get out of jail free card, Hermes,” I said. “Get me the fuck out of here!”
It all happened in a matter of seconds. Even though my eyes were closed, I saw white light blare in front of me, and my jacket pocket warmed against my skin. The scent of burning fabric hit my nose.
Artemis screamed—high-pitched and inhuman—and I felt him roll off me.
I opened my eyes. He’d retreated a few feet away, huddled in a ball. Hermes’s card, now singed, fell out of the burned remnants of my coat pocket.
Son of a bitch, it’d worked . . .
Artemis lifted his hand to his face. It was covered in blood from a gaping hole in his chest caused by the flare. “Oh you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said. He threw his head back and laughed, not a sane one. “I cannot fucking believe he got involved. Can’t trust fucking supernaturals anywhere.” Then Artemis stopped laughing and collapsed back on the floor, his eyes closed.
All the wraiths still surrounding Captain fell in a heap, as if their strings had been cut.
I crawled over to the mirror and breathed a sigh of relief at my reflection. Back to normal. I wasn’t a wraith.
Captain growled at Artemis’s collapsed body but gave it and the wraiths a wide berth as he headed over to me. I gave him a quick once-over, which he protested. A few bruises from being thrown, but otherwise none the worse for wear.
My phone buzzed. It was Rynn. There in two.
I shook my head as I pushed myself up. I checked Artemis. Still unconscious, but I saw his chest move.
Yeah, not leaving him here—I didn’t think he’d get up and walk away, but you never knew. Somehow superproximity to the wraiths didn’t strike me as a good thing. I grabbed his foot and dragged him out of the room and down the hall. I didn’t bother watching his head on the stairs. He deserved whatever headache/hangover he got, and then some . . . Captain rode him the whole way down. There were a few more holes in Artemis’s shirt by the time his head hit the ballroom floor.
The main floor was a disaster . . . though oddly enough, the bar itself was still mostly intact, including the booze.
I dropped Artemis, leaned over the still-standing bar, and grabbed a Corona out of the fridge. I took a swig before grabbing a barstool, no lime required.
Next I checked in with Nadya. She’d managed to vamoose the Paramount lot before the IAA agents swooped in. Carpe’s YouTube video had apparently garnered a lot of hits before it was mysteriously blocked. I didn’t bother giving her the whole rundown, as I thought this was one of those occasions when one had to see to believe.
Rynn showed up first.
“The best part is upstairs, fourth door on the left,” I said.
He took in the entirety of the ballroom and checked Artemis before sweeping the rest of the mansion and coming back to join me at the bar.
“Is he dead?” I asked in between sips as Rynn slid onto the barstool beside me.
Rynn shook his head. “Out of commission for a few weeks, but alive.” He nodded at the still-standing rows of alcohol. “I’m beginning to think you want all your fights to end in a bar,” he said, then helped himself to a bottle, shaking his head.
Well, there were worse places to end up . . . “How the hell—”
“Don’t ask me about the wraiths, Alix. For once I have absolutely no idea.” He shook his head again, and I realized Rynn was about as shaken up as me. Artemis had said the wraiths were legend more than anything else.
What Artemis had said to me about Rynn came back, but I pushed it aside. I wasn’t giving that much credit to a pissed-off incubus trying to turn me into a wraith. Besides, I may hate the majority of supernaturals—Artemis had climbed spectacularly high on that list—but out of all the people on the planet, Rynn was one of two, maybe three, if I ever forgave Carpe about the cargo plane, who cared about what happened to me.
That meant more to me than the whole wraith/Artemis disaster spread out before us.
Rynn flipped on the TV. More coverage of the zombie war still unfolding in the streets, though the zombies themselves were scarcer. I hoped to hell that was because Lady Siyu had managed to shut the curse off. . . .
I decided we’d both had enough serious supernatural bullshit for a while. “On a scale of one to ten, how mad are you at me for coming here on my own?” I asked.
It took him a moment to catch on. “Depends,” he said carefully. “Carpe and Nadya said you destroyed all the pirates’ records of dig sites. Tell me why.”
I took another sip of my beer. “You’re bringing that up now?”
He shrugged. “You asked me if I was mad. It’s a valid question. Let’s face it; you could have stolen them.”
“Don’t think I don’t have copies,” I said.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“So what is the point?”
“The point is that when left to your own devices in a treasure room, you didn’t act like a thief first—you did the right thing.”
I mulled that one over in my head. “I’m still a thief, Rynn—”
At that he grabbed my chin and made a show of turning my face from side to side. Examining me. He leaned in close enough to kiss me and did.
“Debatable,” he said when we broke off.
I let the kiss and what he’d said sink in while I finished off my beer.
“You still scare the shit out of me half the time,” I said, and not just because of the supernatural thing.
“You’re still a complete and utter train wreck—unless you’d like to argue the point, though I have to warn you the entire supernatural community is on my side.” I didn’t miss the trace of a smile. “Just give me a few more months,” he added. “We’ll see how much of a thief you still are.”
I frowned at that. I don’t like change. Rynn was change, working for Mr. Kurosawa was change . . . Then again, as hallucinated Captain had suggested, maybe reevaluating my life wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I shook that idea off before it dug any more roots into my brain than I was comfortable with.
Give credit where credit is due; Rynn knows when to drop a subject. He nodded back at Artemis’s body.
“Care to explain how that hole in his chest happened?”
I gave him the short run of events and finished by pulling Hermes’s now charred card from my pocket. I figured I’d keep it as a souvenir. I frowned as I noticed the gold letters had changed, and there was now a red void stamped on the card. Score one for Owl not fucking up. Thank fucking God, cause I had twenty grand riding on this.
I snorted and resisted the temptation to crumple the card as I forked it over to Rynn. He turned the now fragile piece of paper over in his hands before handing it back to me. Then he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me in, touching his head against my forehead.
“Alix, you may be the biggest train wreck I’ve ever known, but you’re lucky as all hell.”
Any minute now Nadya and Carpe would come crashing through, but somehow this toed the balance between enough and not too much between us—at least until we got this mess cleaned up and the hell out of Dodge.
You know, I try to stay away from the supernatural. I’m terrified of them, they hate humans, every time I run into them something goes horribly wrong . . . I mean, Alexander is still trying to kill me . . . probably Daphne now too . . .
I used to go by one rule; no supernatural jobs.
But then again, I don’t do normal—or at least I sure as hell don’t do it well—and out of the three people I call friends in the world, only one is human.
Oh screw it. What I need to do is make a rule about lying to myself.
I’m Alix Hiboux, supernatural antiquities thief for hire . . .
The door to Artemis’s mansion slammed open, and the telltale click of expensive heels fell across the floor.
Lady Siyu. Shit.
She strode right up to me, carrying a bright red cat carrier over her shoulder. She held it out to me. “The cat, as per our agreement,” she said.
Oh hell no. No way was I following through on this. I grabbed Captain from where he’d wound his way around my feet and clutched him to my chest. “Go to hell. It was a bad deal and you know it.”
The corner of her lip curled up. “Yes, well, you are the expert at bad deals, aren’t you? The cat. Now,” she repeated.
I clutched Captain tighter under one arm while I reached back with the other and palmed a bottle. “Over my dead body,” I said.
Her smile widened, showing a hint of fang. “My pleasure,” she said, and took a step towards me.
“Alix, no!” Rynn added something to Lady Siyu in supernatural before pushing me behind the bar as she retreated to the doorway.
“Rynn, what the hell are you doing? I could have gotten the drop on her with the bottle,” I
said.
“You have to give her the cat,” he said.
“Are you out of your mind? I am not giving Captain to that monster. He isn’t some possession to be handed off.”
“Believe me, I know. But you made an agreement with her.”
“Yeah well, the agreement sucks.”
He glanced over his shoulder to where Lady Siyu waited, watching us. “Please, I’m begging you. If you don’t uphold your end of the bargain, there’ll be nothing I can do. You, Captain, Nadya—everyone will die.”
“So, what? Just give in and fork over Captain? Rynn, I can’t do that to him!” Captain was more than just my cat. He’d saved my life more times than I could count, and he’d been my best friend for the past year. Hell, that cat was the last redeemable quality I had left! I couldn’t just fork him over.
Rynn was looking worried now and hazarded another glance at Lady Siyu. He tightened his grip on my arms. “Please, I’m begging you to trust me. I swear to you, we’ll get him back, but this isn’t the way.”
Trust him. He couldn’t have started off with something easy, like falling back with my eyes closed?
Deep down I didn’t think I could beat Lady Siyu in a fight. And Rynn was right; if I couldn’t beat her, all running would accomplish was getting all of us dead. I was good at running, but I couldn’t guarantee I was good enough to evade Mr. Kurosawa’s reach—not if Nadya and Captain’s lives were both on the line.
Son of a bitch. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I said to Rynn as I walked back over to where Lady Siyu waited.
I grabbed the red carrier from her hand and headed back to the bar. I held it open for Captain, and after a quick sniff he walked right in. I was starting to wish I hadn’t trained him to do that. Come on, Alix, do this fast, otherwise you won’t be able to go through with it. I zipped it up and pressed my face against the screen.
Sensing something was up, Captain let out a questioning meow.
“OK, I don’t know how much of what I say you actually understand, but this is temporary, I promise.”
Before I changed my mind and without sparing another look at Rynn, I walked back to Lady Siyu and handed her the carrier. Captain meowed again, this time more insistent. How the hell did I explain to my cat what was going on?
Owl and the City of Angels Page 42
