“Yeah, still here.”
“No stupid risks—or no more stupid than usual.”
“Just keep me up to date on what the hell is going on in Tokyo.”
And with that she hung up.
I turned to Rynn. “Protection money?”
He nodded. “Yakuzu most likely, but the timing is odd. And so is the other request, unless they’re looking for another way to launder money. It happens every now and then. One gangster moves in on another’s territory and decides he—or she—needs to make sure everyone knows who’s boss.”
I frowned. “Odd? As in supernatural dangerous?”
“Let’s hope not,” Rynn said.
I shook my head and took another sip of my beer. “I hate it when you supernaturals use qualifying verbs.”
“We’ll see what rodents scurry out of the trash. And they will scurry.”
Great, as long as they didn’t bring guns. I hoped Nadya knew what the hell she was doing.
“You were about to tell me what you know about the Electric Samurai,” I said, changing the subject to stop me from worrying about what might or might not be going on in Tokyo.
“The Electric Samurai?” Rynn said, frowning.
I shrugged. It seemed as good a name as any. “It’s what I’ve started calling the suit. It has a better ring than Lightning Suit or Storm Armor.”
He gave me a strange look as he took another sip of his own beer. “You realize it’s incredibly inaccurate? There were no samurai until the medieval times.”
I shrugged. “The sentiment was there even if the name wasn’t. Besides, I think I know a little something about archaeologically accurate terms.”
Rynn ignored my attempt to troll him, and instead nodded to himself, his brow furrowed as he stared at a spot on the ground. “Was he successful, this Jebe?” he asked after another long moment had passed. “On his campaign into Russia?”
I shrugged. “In a sense. Technically Jebe’s army won, but only after burying themselves and the Russians under a river of blood and steel.”
Rynn nodded. “And what happened to Jebe?”
“No one says, at least not in these records.”
A silence that was palpable stretched between us until he said, “I’ve seen the suit before. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but it fits the description. I lost track of it; when you live long enough you start to skip through parts of history—except for my cousin. He’d rather get a good seat and watch things burn.”
Yeah, that sounded an awful lot like Artemis.
“The point is I remember the armor during the reign of Caligula. I was working as an enforcer for the elves. Artemis at the time was playing minor warlord in Rome. His antics were inconsequential, so for the most part I left him alone. Until one of his men stumbled onto something, an incubus named Atticus, who found it after a battle. It was magic, that much they knew, so of course they squabbled over it—except for Boadicea.”
“Wait, Boadicea, the real one?”
Rynn nodded. “A succubus. She was recently from the north and claimed she recognized the suit. Not as it was, it had changed its appearance, but she recognized the magic. She said a Viking warlord had stumbled into town wearing it, on his last legs and burning up from fever. He died and one of her Celtic warriors took it. As you so aptly put, it allowed the wearer to strike at his foes with electricity. At first they thought it was a holy object—or the humans did and she didn’t argue—but then it started to change him, turning him into a monster. She described it as watching someone’s soul being devoured slowly from the inside out.” Rynn paused to take another sip of his beer.
“And?”
“And one day he left. Without any warning. Unsettling stories reached them of a sole warrior devastating villages with no mercy. No, the suit didn’t look the same, but the magic?” Rynn stopped to finish off his beer. “Most of Artemis’s men listened to her warnings. Except for Atticus. Convinced she was scheming to keep it for herself, he took it. The others said it was as if the armor called to him. Artemis never had a backbone for telling people no, so Atticus took the suit.”
“And it burned him up? Like the Viking?”
Rynn shook his head. “No. Much worse. Boadicea described what had happened when humans donned the armor, but Atticus was an incubus.” He turned his eyes on me again. “It turned him into a monster the likes of which I’ve never seen. It took seven of us to defeat him—seven trained supernatural warriors to subdue one incubus. He was very powerful—and unstable. Every time he lost his temper, the armor would take on a life of its own, lightning dancing across the metal.”
I didn’t want to ask, but I knew I had to. “What happened to him?”
“He’d gone half mad by the time we caught up to him. Once the seven of us had him pinned down we tried to remove the armor, but it wouldn’t come off. Three of us ran him through the heart. Artemis has never forgiven me for it,” he added after a moment.
Despite my disastrous run-in with Artemis, I could understand his anger at Rynn now. I didn’t sympathize with it, but I understood it. “What did you do with it?”
Rynn shrugged. “It disappeared a few days later before we could entomb it. Calling to a new victim I imagine, as if it had a mind of its own. Alix, the suit chose him. That’s why it’s so dangerous. It might not think, but it searches people out.”
I sat back in my chair. “And if the elves want it, who’s to say it isn’t calling to one of them?”
“They claim it is too dangerous a piece to leave on the playing field.”
Magic was bad on its own, but magic that gave things a life of their own? It would also explain why the Electric Samurai wasn’t exactly at the forefront of the monster hordes; they preferred to control the chaos, not be controlled by it.
“It’s like a larger more violent version of a monkey paw,” I said.
Rynn nodded. “A similar effect. After that falling out? I went north and didn’t see my cousin again for many hundreds of years. I didn’t return to Rome until it had fallen and the Dark Ages had set in.”
I sat back and emptied my own beer while I thought. If anything, this made me more determined to find the suit. Something that dangerous shouldn’t be in anyone’s hands, especially supernatural ones. And with this many supernaturals involved, something was bound to go sideways soon.
Rynn retrieved our empty bottles and headed into the kitchen. “And in the meantime, what do you plan to do about the IAA and World Quest?” he asked, the sink running in the background.
Not much until I got a handle on the armor. “Part of me is inclined to head back to the Himalayas and start there, but now that the mercenaries are involved—”
“They’ll entrench themselves and branch out,” Rynn said. He paused before adding, “The Zebras are dangerous. Their leader, Captain Hans Williams, is smart. He’ll know from that explosion you found something.”
I turned around in my seat so I was facing him. He was kind enough to return, holding two new beers. “My gut tells me the answers are in here, not in the Himalayas,” I said, sliding the World Quest notebook across the table. “I know they left more clues. I just need to figure out what they are.” Preferably by having my brain mull things over with alcohol; I lifted my new beer and took another sip. “Besides, like you said, we need to deal with the elves first.”
Rynn stood and headed for the bedroom we shared. I was inclined to follow. I almost did, but my brain was still chasing the files and this new mystery to solve. I refreshed the screen and opened my browser to search for where the current archaeological collection of artifacts pertaining to the Mongolian horde was currently housed.
“Hello, Canada,” I said. It was doing a tour of the Canadian universities, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver being its most recent stop.
I pulled up flights from Vegas heading out to
morrow. If the elves weren’t going to cooperate with me, let’s see what Charity Greenwoods could glean from under the noses of the IAA’s Canadian branch. . . .
I was still mulling over my search results and travel plans when Rynn stuck his head out of the bedroom. “Alix, come to bed.”
I gave a noncommittal response, not able to tear myself away from the screen.
He came up behind me and rested his chin on the top of my head before removing the beer from my hand. “Come to bed, Alix. I don’t need sleep. You do.”
The computer screen called to me, but Rynn was right—and warm. I took a deep breath and turned away from the screen and the paltry excuse for intel the elves had deigned to give me.
I had a lot of blanks to fill—needed to fill—so the Electric Samurai didn’t fall into the wrong hands. But it wouldn’t happen tonight.
Rynn pulled me up out of the chair and into his arms. I let out the breath I was holding and pushed away thoughts of the Electric Samurai as he kissed me.
I didn’t spare even one glance back at the computer as he led me into the bedroom.
6
THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN OF CHARITY GREENWOODS
11:00 a.m., Sunday
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
You’d be amazed at how hard it is to keep an eye on your surroundings when there are trees and artistically placed totem poles in your path. And I don’t just mean one or two trees, I mean they stuck the campus in the middle of a forest with brush and wildlife besides rats.
I glanced around the path again. I could not shake the feeling someone was watching us, even though Captain was settled into his carrier and hadn’t even lifted his head in the last hour. Rynn didn’t seem concerned either. It was possible it was just the onslaught of nature—something I expected from a dig site, not a university. Canadians were definitely not concerned about visibility.
I chalked my pinging spider sense up to too much travel over the past few days. I just needed to get my fingers into the exhibit.
“You didn’t have to come with me,” I said, needing to break the silence. “Up to the university, that is. We could have arranged a meet-up.” I didn’t add, Somewhere that you would fit in a little better—like an upscale bar in the trendy Kits area just outside the campus, where he wouldn’t have garnered looks from the female student population that was up here on a Sunday. Me? I could hide in plain sight. Nadya could too when pressed. But Rynn? Every coed we’d passed had given us a second look. Well, no, they’d given Rynn a second look. . . .
“Nadya isn’t here,” he said.
“Yes, but I don’t need Nadya or you to watch my back. It’s not like I haven’t done this before.” Since long before I met Rynn.
“Consider me insurance the vampires don’t show up.”
“I have Captain for that.”
Captain, at the sound of his name, issued a noise that was a cross between a growl and a meow from inside his carrier-turned-backpack, perpetually hopeful for a treat. “See? Vampire detection at its finest.”
“Fine, then consider me backup if something besides vampires shows up.”
I fell silent, and not just because the totem poles that decorated the front of the anthropology museum had come into view through the campus trail. Rynn had a point. And to be completely honest, I’d rather have Rynn around even if it was only vampires that showed up. Especially since they tended to travel in numbers, cockroaches of the supernatural world that they were.
Even though it was a weekend, there were only a few couples milling outside the anthropology museum entrance. I kept my head down as we passed by and headed around the side of the building, where the researchers’ entrance would be.
It was a Sunday morning and, as I’d suspected, there wasn’t a single grad student on a smoke break. I took my collection of white access cards out of my bag. “Canadian . . . Canadian . . .” I said to myself as I searched through the thick ring holding them together. I’d made a habit of collecting university access cards over the years. Trust me, when it comes to research facilities, outside military and medical research of the narcotic pharmaceutical variety, security measures barely kept the riffraff out. And no, that doesn’t include me. Changing security systems is expensive. The cards get reworked every five years or so—at most. And even then I figure they just cycled through the old codes.
“There it is.” I pulled out a white security card labeled UBC in smeared blue marker and swiped it along the back research entrance door panel. As I’d suspected, the green light went on and I heard the door to the museum click open, just for yours truly.
“God, if half the world’s museums were this easy to waltz into—” I was halfway tempted to bet Rynn that the card would work on most of the buildings . . . “Think there’s anything interesting in the chemistry building?” I asked.
He made a face. “I’m amazed they bothered with the cards at all if they weren’t going to keep track of them.” Rynn was frowning at me. I shrugged. “They turn away the odd klepto and burgeoning drug dealers looking for free equipment, but beyond that? I don’t think they figured on antiquities thieves waltzing through. I kept it after an excursion up here for some Inuit artifacts last year.” I’d had a collector who’d gotten in a beef with the university—or one of the curators up here. It’d been a shockingly easy job, and totally legit—I mean, they’d practically been planning on selling it to him until an argument . . .
Still, Rynn’s frown didn’t go anywhere. “You’ve been here before? Using that card?”
It took me a second to figure out that Rynn wasn’t concerned about the general principle. I shook my head. “Seriously, this is one of the least guarded IAA facilities on the planet. It’s Canada—might as well be a research station in Greenland. I’d be surprised if they even realized I took anything last time.” Skeleton crew campus security, rooms full of boxes that hadn’t been opened since 1970, an ever-revolving roster of three-month grant employees and student interns hired to curate the boxes they did manage to open. It was a wonder anything ever got unpacked, and even more unlikely that anyone actually bothered to check the boxes, drawers, and shelves to see if everything was still there.
If I wanted to do them a real favor, I’d label and sort a couple things for them while I searched.
“Last time I found a handful of early Viking settler artifacts from back east mixed in with the First Nations display stuff. On display. Do you realize how much of a screwup that is?”
Rynn stared at me.
“Seriously, if it had been one of my undergrads who couldn’t tell them apart, they wouldn’t have heard the end of it.”
“Like I’m not hearing the end of it?”
I made a face. Rynn might know guns, the supernatural, and mixing bar drinks, but understand the finer points of archaeology he did not. “I did that Inuit totem a favor. At least it’s appreciated and properly labeled now. You know I have a point.”
Rynn inclined his head as I pushed open the door. “A point? Yes. I’m holding judgment on whether it’s a good one. How many of those do you have exactly?” he asked, taking the ring of white cards from my hand, holding them out as if they were some morbid collection of animal feet . . . or a graveyard where lost academic security access cards went to die a slow and slightly zombified death.
I grabbed them back before he could do anything to them. “You’d be surprised,” I said.
Sensing motion, the hall lights flickered on, illuminating the 1970s off-yellow beige paint in cheap fluorescence. Now, which way was the research room?
I turned around and tried to remember which way I’d gone last time . . . there! I remembered the cracked ceiling.
I eased my way around Rynn and headed left.
I kept my ears open for any sounds, but to be honest, running into someone wasn’t at the top of my list of worries. I’d picked the t
ime and date for a reason. At 11:00 a.m. on a Sunday, there were people milling around the museum proper, which meant that was where the sole security guard’s attention would be. As far as grad students in the research facility were concerned? Even the keeners wouldn’t be in until at least 2:00 p.m. There’s only so far dedication takes you past free overtime on a Sunday morning.
Well, that and having to put up with weekend museumgoers; they had an uncanny knack for finding your research lab on the way to the snack machine, and they just had a couple of questions . . . not that they’ve noticed your hangover and the lousy cup of coffee you’re clutching between your hands like a shield or blessed relic, the only silver lining you’ve seen this morning, but more importantly the only thing on the planet standing between you and them. . . .
“Are you sure we shouldn’t come back at night?” Rynn asked.
I shook my head. “On a Sunday, they might actually set an alarm for after hours to prevent real thieves from getting in.” Though I doubted that would apply to the graduate student section, I preferred to be careful.
“The real thieves? Please, tell me more. I’m quite curious how their patterns of behavior differ.”
I ignored him as I counted and examined the beigey-yellow doors. Behind which one was the loaner stuff? Hmmm, should be near the middle, about where the loading dock would be . . . bingo. I placed my ear against the door labeled Research and Loading Bay to see if anyone was inside. Unlikely, but it always pays to check. Never know when someone hits a Saturday-night dorm party or campus pub crawl and ends up passing out in their office watching sci-fi flicks.
Before I could swipe my card, Rynn shouldered me out of the way and listened himself. Finally, once he was convinced the room really was empty, he let me swipe the key card. I pushed open the heavy, hermetically sealed door to a large rectangular room about half the size of a tennis court. Arranged in rows down the long side were three research bays—basically tables that stretched the narrow width of the room, fitted down their length with chairs, lights, and Bunsen burners.
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