Owl and the Electric Samurai

by Kristi Charish

  And to think he got his kicks sneaking up on me. “Seriously, and you think I have bad timing?”

  The corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist. You walked right by me, Alix. Twice.”

  I closed my eyes. He’d been standing outside the window. It was open now, the summer air stirring the curtains and carrying in the smell of cooking and incense. “I didn’t even hear you open it.”

  “I waited until you had your back turned and got busy with the backpacks. Check outside next time,” he said, and, picking me up, moved me out of the way of the bags so he could give them a quick once-over.

  “For someone who fifteen minutes ago sounded like we were in imminent danger, you’re in an awfully good mood.”

  He tossed the larger of the backpacks over his shoulder and handed me mine, the smaller, lighter one—mainly because it didn’t have any weapons. I have a strict policy on weapons like guns and stakes. In my experience, it just gives the vampires something else to beat you with, and they take the stakes personally.

  I could have pushed, but Rynn and I had both been under a lot of stress the last few weeks. If he was in a good enough mood to play, as opposed to worry about our backs, that had to mean we were ahead of the game for once, despite the fact that we were in a lodge full of mercenaries.

  Rynn shook his head at me. “I checked when I came in—no perimeter, no patrol, no trip wires, no sensors. They’re not even looking for supernaturals. Sloppy if you ask me. The South Africans, the Zebras, know better in a place like Fikkal, and an IAA bounty like this is bound to attract some supernatural competition.”

  Mercenary-style work was something of a career choice in the supernatural communities—mostly to police each other, but freelancing for a supernatural-smelling job like this?

  “Not that we’re going out the front door,” Rynn said. “I’m not that—” He stopped and turned his head to the side, as if listening. The playful mood vanished, and I waited and watched as he hit the light and placed his ear against the door.

  I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the sparse neon lights. “What? What happened?” I whispered.

  Rynn abandoned the door and, taking my arm, steered me back to the window. “It’s my fault. I got too confident when there weren’t any patrols or sensors.”

  “You said they weren’t looking for us!”

  “They weren’t—aren’t—but I spoke too soon when I assumed they weren’t keeping their eyes out,” Rynn said.

  “Fuck.” I peered at the space between the floorboards and the door where the light seeped through. I could have sworn I saw shadows moving underneath, the kinds caused by feet, but I’ll be damned if I could hear anything.

  Rynn stepped outside onto the ledge first, checking to make sure there really was no one there. Once he was certain it was safe, he held out his hand and motioned for me to join him.

  I hesitated. I was a professional thief. Gallantry or whatever Rynn was going for was all well and good on paper, not in practice. I could crawl my own way out a window.

  “I don’t want them to hear us leaving,” he mouthed more than whispered at me.

  I let him lift me out. I’m stubborn, but I also knew I wasn’t as silent as him.

  He set me down on the thin ledge out of view of the window as the first clink of a lock pick sounded in the door.

  Rynn tapped my shoulder and pointed down to the road two stories down.

  “Please say we aren’t jumping,” I said. My ankle was still smarting from our last hurried exit out of New Delhi. There had been a misunderstanding about an artifact I’d been collecting for Mr. Kurosawa . . . and misconception that if they chased me, they might actually get it back. Rynn had vetoed my run through a crowded market, and we’d jumped off a building instead.

  “Not twice in the same week,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Think of it more as falling to safety.”

  “Falling? No, no falling,” I demanded. At least with jumping there was some modicum, some pretence, of control. “Shit!”

  Rynn timed it so that he pushed me at the same moment the mercenaries kicked the door open.

  If they heard me yelling on the way down, there wasn’t much they could do about it. I didn’t even see if they made it to the window.

  We landed with a thud on a tarp. Me first, followed by Rynn, who managed to look more graceful than I did on account of the fact that he got to jump instead of fall. The “tarp” was in fact a jeep—a dilapidated orange jeep encrusted with fuchsia rhinestones done into flower patterns. It roared to life with a sputtering cough as soon as we landed, then started to pull forward.

  As it tore down the road, the engine still protesting, I turned on Rynn. “You just pushed me out of a window!”

  “Off a ledge. And it couldn’t be avoided. Look, I’m sorry, but better your indignity than the mercenaries.” Rynn swung himself off the tarp so he was balancing on the jeep rail.

  I followed his lead but took the other side, ignoring Rynn’s proffered hand. “We humans call that sorry, not sorry,” I said. “And what the hell is wrong with climbing?”

  “It’s not fast enough,” he said.

  “It’s plenty fast! I climb out of tight spots all the time.” I swung into the seat of the moving jeep beside Rynn. It was a patchwork of colorful blankets that had been sewn and stretched over long-gone padded seats.

  His jaw clenched. “And every time you end up having to run through a city chased by someone.” He gave the metal railing of the jeep three hard taps. It picked up speed, making the potholes we went over more pronounced. “This way we skip the chase. Faster.”

  “I still think we could have climbed down and avoided tossing me onto a jeep canopy.” I was a little amazed it had held up, to be honest . . . if there was one issue Rynn and I had in our relationship, it was our disagreement over acceptable work risks. Namely, risks that I considered acceptable, he labeled suicidal.

  But I was still alive, so my methods couldn’t have been that bad.

  “Besides, couldn’t you have done the . . . you know?” I waved my hand around my ear, my usual method to indicate Rynn’s ability to manipulate people’s minds, then grasped the railing as the jeep bounced over an exceptionally deep pothole.

  “I doubt it. They’ve probably got chemical inhibitors in their systems.”

  “Whoa. Wait, they can do that?”

  Rynn gave me a wry look as he dumped his pack into the back. I followed his lead. “I never kid about people with guns. Did you get what you needed?” I nodded and patted the book still tucked in my jacket.

  As the jeep coughed and sputtered our retreat up the hill and out of the valley, I got a look out the back at the town fading behind us. I thought I saw a handful of men standing in the lantern-lit road, but with the potholes jostling the jeep I could have been mistaken. I didn’t hear screams, sirens, or any other indication anyone was following us. Considering how fast we left, I figured they were still trying to determine what had happened.

  I turned to Rynn, who was also watching our departure from Fikkal. “I can’t believe for once it’s you catching their attention and not me,” I said.

  “Well, there’s a first time for everything. And like I said, these guys are good.”

  The ambient light vanished as we passed the town limits—Fikkal was a concentrated place and not that large. It didn’t take you long to get out of town, and once you did, the lampposts were gone. Got to admit, after bouncing between large cities and Vegas over the past few weeks, I could appreciate actually seeing the night sky. And the stars . . . all of them, not just the big ones. The fact that the purveying scent of incense and frying foods was also fading, replaced by the clean scent of the mountain forests, was a bonus as well. Something else you didn’t get in Vegas.

  I turned to say something along those lines to Rynn, but he
wasn’t looking at me. He was leaning over the driver’s seat.

  Right, our driver. I wonder who Rynn had roped into getting us out of Dodge.

  I frowned as I caught a bit of what Rynn said—lyrical-sounding and light, an awful lot like the language I liked to refer to as “supernatural common.”

  I shimmied up to the back of the front seat to get a look at our driver, a feat in itself, since we were out of Fikkal now and the potholes had gotten worse, not better, bouncing the jeep over the uneven side roads.

  But as luck would have it, the moon was out, and during a stretch of smooth road I got a good look. He—no, make that a she—was a kid. Twelve at the most, and dressed in a fuchsia tunic and matching pants layered with a heavy orange sari also adorned with fuchsia rhinestones that matched the ones decorating the jeep.

  She glanced at me for only a brief moment, but it was enough to get a good look at her beautiful and very childlike face. More importantly though, I got a look at her shining gold eyes.

  “Oh hell no,” I said before my filter could kick in. I’d been in a jeep with a childlike supernatural with eyes like that once before—an Apsara, or Balinese luck demon masquerading as a “kid” in Bali.

  “Alix, meet Talie,” Rynn said pleasantly.

  Yeah. No. “When were you going to tell me a luck demon was driving the car?” I didn’t bother lowering my voice. She knew what she was. “And I thought we agreed not to involve any other supernaturals?” There was already enough of a mess that we’d waded into with the IAA, and now add to that the mercenaries. More supernaturals would make things more complicated, not less. Besides, I didn’t have the best track record with supernaturals; Rynn was the exception, not the rule. I did my damnedest to keep them out of my business and work, not that that had been working for me lately. When the universe keeps throwing lemons at you, saying you won’t make lemonade becomes pretty pointless.

  For her part, Talie didn’t bother acknowledging me.

  “They prefer the term Apsara—and it’s not exactly the same. Talie has influence over clouds and snow. Kato, as you called him, works with water.”

  “Same species, different gig, and that’s a tangent.”

  Rynn’s mouth twisted into a frown, the first hint at irritation. He wasn’t a fan of me lumping all supernaturals into one column. The dangerous one. It wasn’t exactly an easy habit to break, considering they were usually trying to kill me. “Completely different temperaments,” he said. “Note, Talie hasn’t told you never to come back. Yet.”

  Wait a minute . . . Talie? Taleju, the child goddess of Nepal, the one that was supposed to be reincarnated in the body of a girl every decade or so and forced to live in the guarded temple in Kathmandu?

  We came to a stop, not for a sign but for a herd of yaks crossing the road. She caught me staring at her. “Aren’t you supposed to be locked inside a palace in Kathmandu?” My filter was really taking a backseat to my curiosity tonight.

  “Alix—” Rynn warned.

  Yeah, like hell was I not asking. “The whole reincarnation thing? Is that a myth, or do, you know, are they”—I really didn’t know of a delicate way to put it—“hosts?” Possession by a supernatural entity was rare, but it happened.

  She ignored me and turned her attention back on Rynn. “I have a place you can hide, but it won’t offer protection for long, not with their equipment. I’m lucky, but not even a luck demon is that lucky. If you are smart, you will leave.”

  Wait a minute. What if we didn’t need to hole up for days? Dev’s warnings be damned. I’d feel better looking into it now rather than later.

  I leaned closer and raised my voice. “Look, what about evading them for a few hours? Like heading into some caves at the base of the mountains?” I asked Talie. “A few hours is all we’d need. I even have a location,” I added, and patted my chest so Rynn would get the idea.

  Talie gave me a measured once-over, her gold demon eyes shining in the moonlight. “Mountains this time of year have yeti. But I believe a few hours is the kind of luck I can arrange.”

  I pulled the journal out and opened it to the map of the cave’s location. “Then this is where we’re heading.”

  Talie glanced at the map, then pulled out a cell phone decorated in more pink and yellow rhinestones. “GPS,” she said when she caught me staring. “I’m not a fan of driving these roads at night.” She tapped in the coordinates and fixed the rhinestone-encrusted phone onto the dashboard on a cartoon cat holder. She then turned her attention back on the road and kicked the jeep, sputtering and coughing, into a higher gear, scattering the remaining yaks.

  I sat back in the patchwork orange backseat and let out my breath. Now all I had to do was figure out how the cave disappeared Neil and Frank. Preferably without stumbling into being disappeared myself. . . .

  My name is Alix Hiboux, better known as Owl, antiquities thief for hire.

  Welcome to my life.

  2

  A LONG WALK THROUGH A SILENT FOREST

  8:00 a.m. Somewhere in the foothills of Kanchenjunga, Nepal

  It took us the better part of the night to reach the caves marked in Frank and Neil’s journal. Despite the Apsara driving the jeep and the bumpy ride, I fell asleep. For one, I needed it, and two, I figured Rynn would wake me up if things took a turn. They didn’t, and the first indication I had that we’d arrived was when the jeep ground to a loud, wrenching halt.

  I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and shrugged a blanket off. At some point Rynn must have tossed it over me. Or maybe I’d done so in my sleep. You’d be amazed at how efficient my unconscious autopilot is. I can detach a hungry Mau from my pillow and hit him with his Nerf ball across the room without batting an eye.

  I sat up from where I’d stretched out on the backseat, then peeked outside the jeep’s colorful canvas.

  The sun was bright and well over a cloudless horizon, making the fuchsia rhinestones twinkle right into my still sleepy eyes. I squinted against the light as I got a first look at our surroundings.

  Well, it might be too bright, but it certainly was pretty out here. And quiet.

  We were in the end of May, so Nepal was in the off-season. The trees, grasses, and brush were green with the beginning of summer, and the small river that ran through the picturesque valley before me was running heavy with snowmelt. Despite the veneer of summer, you could still see white in the surrounding mountains, and we were high enough into the foothills that the air was crisp with the scent of nearby snow.

  If it hadn’t been for the fact that the river meant we were at serious risk of being caught in an avalanche from the melting snow above us, it would have been downright idyllic.

  Dev’s warning about the mystical valley came roaring back: “When people start disappearing, never to be seen or heard from again, only fools and small children are so quick to think they ended up in a magical paradise.”

  I spotted the caves a ways into the valley, partway up the mountain steps and obscured by the summer vegetation. There were a handful of them, but only one that was big enough for people to walk in comfortably.

  I pulled the notebook out of my parka, opened to the page with the diagrams and photos of the cave Neil and Frank had been interested in, and held up the images for comparison. Beyond a few fallen boulders over the past four years and substantially less snow around the cave proper, thanks to a warmer-than-normal May, it matched.

  If I had to guess, I’d put it at a couple kilometers into the valley, maybe two and a half to three when you took in the incline. With the river and moderate brush terrain it’d take us an hour or so to hike in, provided there wasn’t an avalanche to contend with. Though truth be told, an avalanche was the least of my worries right now.

  I tucked the journal back into my jacket. There wasn’t any point worrying about the details of the cave until we got there, and if my suspicions about the valley’s
quiet nature were confirmed, I’d deal with it.

  We’d deal with it. I kept forgetting that I was working with Rynn, not against him. There were some serious benefits to having a partner. I’d gotten a good night’s sleep—or as good as was possible in the back of a suspect jeep over back roads. I never got a good night’s sleep while working. And I hadn’t had to panic about transportation.

  It also meant I hadn’t been in control of all the plans.

  Though it was still a huge adjustment. I was used to working on my own.

  I trusted Rynn with my life, but it was a weird learning curve.

  And being thrown out of windows . . . then again, the ball was about to be well and good back in my court.

  I stopped my perusal of the hillside as I picked up the scent—warm, light roasted, brewed strong. I glanced over to where Rynn was standing outside the jeep with his arms crossed, scanning the area. “Coffee?” Oh God, please say he’d made enough for two.

  In answer, he passed me a Thermos. I grabbed it. “Oh, the universe doesn’t hate me this morning.” Another benefit to having a partner in my job—one who understood my deep-rooted love of caffeine.

  “It’s early. You haven’t had a chance to offend the powers that be. Yet,” he added, glancing once more at the picturesque valley at the foot of the mountain.

  I guzzled half the Thermos, then passed it back to Rynn before I finished it all. Not human did not mean does not drink coffee. I’d learned that one the hard way.

  Talie was ignoring us. She’d opened the hood to her jeep and was fiddling with the engine—or the parts that were jerry-rigged into an engine. Good thing we’d gotten out of Fikkal in the dark of night, otherwise I don’t know if I’d have trusted the jeep not to burst into an all-engulfing flame, let alone survive the offtrack roads.