Owl and the Electric Samurai

by Kristi Charish

  “This changes a number of things,” Mr. Kurosawa said to her. I got the distinct impression something else silent was said.

  Then Mr. Kurosawa turned to me. “It is imperative that you deal with the armor while I . . . discuss some issues with the elves.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but I stopped short at the smile Mr. Kurosawa gave me and the glimpse of his black, pointed teeth. I don’t think I’d ever seen his skin quite this red—was that steam rising off of it? I stifled a shudder. Dragons had a harder time than most hiding their form, though Mr. Kurosawa was good at it, probably because of his penchant for ten-thousand-dollar suits. There was very little a dragon liked more than his treasure.

  “You will also need to deal with this IAA issue,” he added.

  Wait . . . what? “Since when do I work for them? Or take care of two contracts at once—with mercenaries?” I said.

  “The IAA is a mess of your own making,” Lady Siyu snarled, slinking in a slow predatory circle around me.

  “Like hell it is. Oh shit!” I stumbled back as she dropped her clipboard and lunged for me, red lacquered claws out.

  I ducked behind a nearby slot, narrowly avoiding a grazing claw. Served me right for baiting a Naga.

  “Okay, before you try to kill me, hear me out. Hey!” I ducked as she made a swipe around the slot machine, aiming for my left side.

  “If they are not after you for your transgressions, then what?” Lady Siyu wasn’t hissing or lunging at me anymore, but she also wasn’t backing down.

  “Because I’m the best and they don’t stand a chance of tracking the World Quest designers down without me.”

  “Then why have you been pursuing them? You think I didn’t know about your side excursions searching for them? If not for the reward of treasure, then what interest could it possibly hold for your thieving hands?”

  Shit. This was the part I’d been hoping to avoid. I was not about to tell Lady Siyu and Mr. Kurosawa, of all people, that I figured the World Quest duo had stumbled across a lost city made of human magic. I didn’t like whatever idea it might churn up if left for too long; on the other hand, lying to them was suicidal. “Because I am sick and tired of the IAA crushing everyone under their heels. Me, World Quest, any graduate student that doesn’t kowtow the right way—”

  Lady Siyu snorted and looked at me with disgust. “If you expect us to believe for one minute—”

  “Believe whatever you want. Look, you want a selfish reason? Fine. If the IAA finds them first, they’ll shut down World Quest. Forever. I’ve sunk three years of my life into that game. Do you have any idea how long it’ll take to reach the same level in a new one?”

  “That is the most idiotic reason I’ve ever heard.”

  “Make up your mind, then! Do you want honest or selfish?”

  Mr. Kurosawa stopped us midargument with a derisive noise.

  My heart pounded as he turned those black, calculating eyes on Lady Siyu, then me.

  “It appears the IAA was not truthful with you, Lady Siyu,” he said.

  And just like that he turned his back to us and headed back to his black couch, where he returned to a magazine that had been left upside down on the coffee table.

  “Mr. Kurosawa—I implore you.” Her heels clicked furiously against the tiles as she chased him.

  He held up a hand that silenced her voice and brought her to a standstill. “And it will cost them. Explain to them that they were most clearly and sorely mistaken upon any assumption that my antiquities thief agreed to any contract. Furthermore, she has emphatically expressed her intent to refuse any future contracts offered due to egregious outstanding payments. Any further attempts on their part to contact or interfere with Alix Hiboux’s employment with me shall be severely frowned upon.”

  When Lady Siyu didn’t immediately turn on her heels, Mr. Kurosawa added, “You are dismissed.”

  With one last hate-filled glare in my direction, she turned on her heels and headed back into the maze. I almost pitied the IAA agent who was on the receiving end of that call.

  I held my breath and waited for the other proverbial shoe to drop. It was when Mr. Kurosawa worded things that way—that legal way—that I knew there was a catch.

  “Not that I don’t appreciate it, Mr. Kurosawa, but I’m pretty sure all that will do is piss them off more,” I said as Lady Siyu’s clicking heels faded.

  “Oh, I am almost certain that will be the effect. In fact I fully expect them to retaliate,” he said, smiling at me with those black teeth. “The IAA bureaucrats and the elves share a common habit of getting so caught up in their own internal games they forget the external consequences.”

  “No offense, but me being dead or tossed in an IAA jail—”

  Smoke billowed out of Mr. Kurosawa’s nose. “Who do you think in the supernatural community helps their . . . problems disappear? Eventually my lack of cooperation will reach someone in charge and the carefully arranged dominoes in this scheme will begin to fall and expose their hand. In the meantime? I suggest you do what you do best.”

  Steal things. And run. Not necessarily in that order.

  Smoke was filling the room now. It was up to my knees, curling around my calves in a manner that could only be described as predatory. And the temperature was decidedly getting warmer. I felt the squeeze from Rynn on my shoulder. It was time for us to leave.

  “I will offer you one more hint, Owl,” Mr. Kurosawa called when we were already deep in the maze, his voice carrying through the slot machines as if he was standing there beside us. “The politics being played by the IAA and elves reek of someone arrogant enough to ignore my favorite force of nature.”

  “Which is?” I called out.

  “Chaos” came the dark hiss of Mr. Kurosawa’s voice from the closest slot machine. I jumped back out of reflex.

  I waited for him to add anything else, but the maze was silent. Even the slot machines seemed to be wary.

  As Rynn led us out of the maze, I made sure to keep him in my sights despite the wheels churning in my head, trying to tease things apart.

  We rode the elevator up to our floor in silence. When it opened, I stepped out into the empty top-floor hall where my suite was and opened Captain’s carrier. He shook his front and back paws a few times and grumbled his discontent about the dirt, but he headed toward the door with his tail up.

  Rynn stayed in the elevator. “Security?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I want to be somewhere I can watch things when Lady Siyu delivers her message to the IAA. The mercenaries won’t stop, Alix. Not when there’s a pay day at hand, and not now that the IAA has made you a target, despite whatever sway Lady Siyu can scare out of them.”

  I nodded. I’d figured that. I waited for Rynn to reach out and touch me, kiss me, like he usually did when we parted ways to work, but he didn’t. He only stared at a spot on the mirrored wall as the doors slid shut.

  Preoccupied. I knew it wasn’t me, but still . . .

  Captain meowed beside me.

  I cleared my thoughts and followed him down the hall to our suite. “Come on, I can fix the mud, but you’re not going to like it,” I told him as I opened the door and let him waltz inside.

  He headed straight for the food and water in the kitchen. Me? I finally had the chance to strip off my muddy clothes. I changed into sweats and dropped my computer on the desk before heading into the bathroom to start the bath water running.

  While the tap ran, I grabbed a beer out of the fridge—one of the Belgians Rynn had me trying—and turned on the TV over the bathtub to see if the coverage in New Delhi had changed. It hadn’t, which, all things considered, wasn’t a bad thing.

  I settled in and watched the news, the door slightly ajar so Captain could get in when he was done stuffing his face with kibble. Lady Siyu had succeeded where I’d failed; enforcing his diet.


  Beyond my exploits in India, the news was filled with basic stuff. Normal world problems: terrorists, politics, people getting fleeced out of millions, some innocent man who had been locked behind bars for fifteen years because of a corrupt local legal system, etc. I really was starting to wonder whether helping Mr. Kurosawa was making things better. Would things really change if the supernaturals came out of the closet? Or maybe it would just add a new flavor to the same old problems.

  I’d had my eyes closed and was only half listening to the TV while I rested my head and let the warm water penetrate my bones. It felt as if I’d been on my feet for days; come to think of it, I had. The last time I’d had a good sleep had been in the hostel in Nepal.

  I almost drifted off, and if I had, I probably would have missed it entirely. Just in time, I opened my eyes and frowned at the screen. It couldn’t be . . . there was no way.

  I upped the volume and sat up.

  “Vampires in Las Vegas? Really?”

  “Yes, there has been a reporting of vampires in downtown Las Vegas.”

  Shit. I hadn’t heard wrong. They had said the magic V word. Rynn was going to love this. So was Mr. Kurosawa. Lady Siyu? She’d be pissed someone had dared break Mr. Kurosawa’s rules, but as far as what she’d actually think of a vampire jumping the girls? Probably, deep down, she thought it was an improvement.

  But before I could catapult myself out of the bathtub and probably break my neck, the hosts continued.

  “An elaborate prank orchestrated as a publicity stunt for the upcoming ‘Noir by Night,’ the newest show coming to Vegas this October.”

  Relieved, I settled back down into the water. Now, don’t get me wrong, it was a horrible prank to play on tourists, but man was I ever happy to see it wasn’t real vampires. Still, I left the channel on.

  They drifted off into more benign news on the upcoming weather—no rain and hot, real fucking surprise for Vegas . . .

  It had all been an elaborate prank. Still, I suppose it was a window into what things might be like if vampires and other supernaturals started to slip through the cracks out of the closet. I remembered what Alexander had said would happen—self-made Van Helsings and towns overrun with crazy cannibalistic vampires.

  I took a swig of my beer. I think I was happier not being in the supernatural know.

  Captain chose that moment to stride in. He chirped and sniffed around the room before jumping up on the bathtub sill to sniff the water. Cats: they might hate water, but they can’t stop themselves from investigating. A love-hate thing I suppose.

  He mewed at me again. “You so aren’t going to be impressed with this,” I told him. But, since Captain was a cat, and only had a rudimentary understanding of English, he ignored me and went back to sniffing at me and the water.

  “But you also need to get that mud off, soooo . . .” I continued.

  There were two ways to give a cat a bath. The first was to let them know what was happening. I really don’t recommend that with their hating water thing.

  The second was to make sure they didn’t see it coming.

  I waited until Captain was looking away—that was the other critical part. You can’t ever let them blame you.

  I batted the water at him. As the drops hit his fur, Captain swung his head around to see where the offensive water had come from annndd slipped.

  For a moment he just sat there in the water. Soaked, eyes wide in shock at the humiliating offense that had just befallen him, he made a clumsy grab for the edge to pull himself out but slipped right back in.

  “Not so fast.” I grabbed the pet shampoo and had him soaped up before he knew what hit him. I think he was a little shell-shocked.

  He let out a baleful mew as I massaged his head. “Tragedy of your own devices, buddy,” I said.

  After I had Captain rinsed and cleaned, I did my best to dry him off. Still damp, he slinked away, probably to find a pile of my clothes to finish drying off in. I pulled my clean sweats back on and headed into the living room.

  Rynn still wasn’t back, so I decided to delve once again into the mystery of the samurai. I pulled Jebe’s journal out of my bag and opened my laptop.

  There was a note from Nadya sitting for me in my inbox.

  Got your message on the journal and the IAA. It’s disconcerting but there has been no sign of them over here.

  That was a relief. What I read next though wasn’t.

  Things are . . . more involved in Tokyo than I’d hoped. I’m still figuring out a way to fix things. Don’t worry, it isn’t unfixable, just . . . complicated. I’m working with Rynn’s people at Gaijin Cloud and I think we’ve come up with a plan.

  I thought about texting or calling, but if things were as complicated businesswise as Nadya hinted, then me throwing in a beeping or buzzing cell phone was going to hinder, not help.

  I opened up my email to fire off a response. That had the opposite effect of making me not worry, I wrote, and sent it off before setting attention back on research.

  I don’t like working in a void. I do better with details. And right now I was going on too many assumptions where the IAA and the elves were concerned.

  And, with Nadya out of commission in Tokyo, that meant I was the one who was going to have to ping my contacts. I went to the fridge and poured myself a shot of tequila and grabbed another beer, which I needed in order to swallow the ass-kissing I was going to have to do.

  Oh God, I was going to get an earful from Benji . . .

  I noticed a flickering message in the bottom left-hand corner of my screen.

  Hey, Byzantine—you up for a World Quest session?

  I closed Carpe’s message without responding. I wasn’t up for dealing with the elf just yet.

  After I sent off a few emails, I settled back in to read Jebe’s journal and his accounts of the horde’s invasion of the west.

  9

  TEMPLES, TOMBS, AND OTHER ASSORTED CRAWL SPACES

  10:00 a.m. My suite at the Japanese Circus

  I stared at the set of files on my screen from the cache I’d taken from the university. A possible treasure room in Mongolia . . . If I was right about the referencing, there was a good chance a chunk of Jebe’s treasure had ended up there.

  It was worth a shot, since everything else had been a dead end. I stifled a yawn as I opened a search window for one of the many IAA databases Nadya and I still had access to. I needed more coffee. After a phone call full of my threats and Benji’s snide replies, he had managed to chase up a few more mentions of the armor on his end, but even combined with the details Rynn remembered and what I’d dug out of Jebe’s journal . . .

  Well, let’s just say there weren’t a lot of options.

  “Come on, Jebe, don’t fail me now,” I said as I scanned through the recorded digs and excavations that had been done in that region of Mongolia. I’d finally given up last night around 2:00 a.m. after I’d hit my third dead end in search of Jebe’s treasure horde and headed to bed. Still, I was working on a sleep deficit and was having trouble focusing on the screen between yawns. Captain’s pleas for food weren’t helping either.

  “Shit.” Found in 1920 while excavating a horde. I skimmed through; they’d found treasure, records, and a large number of skin walkers who’d taken up residence. I hit the keyboard with more force than I needed to in order to close the window. Fantastic. Yet another temple the horde had used to store treasure that I could cross off my list. And that had been the last one recorded in the files. I’d known it was a possibility that the horde’s scribes might have left out what happened to Jebe’s armor, but I’d been hopeful. . . .

  I hate finding things people went out of their way to lose.

  There was the clinking of dishes from the kitchen as I went back to Jebe’s journal. “What this time?” Rynn called. He’d returned a few hours ago, after I’d given up and decided to
sleep. Incubi didn’t need much sleep, provided there was a surplus of energy to sop up. Still, it irked me that after only two or three hours he had none of the exhaustion I felt.

  “Another dead end,” I said. I rubbed my face, but this time it wasn’t just the sleep in my eyes; it was the fact that as Jebe’s condition had progressed, his handwriting had gotten much worse. As if he was battling the armor itself to put anything to paper. Considering what he had to say, I wasn’t surprised.

  I was vaguely aware of Rynn coming up behind me as I turned the pages. The references got sporadic after Kiev—after they’d killed the ruling princes in a very gruesome way. As if that was when Jebe had realized the armor was more than it seemed. I tore my eyes away from the pages to the cup of coffee Rynn placed beside my computer before pulling up a seat.

  “Well?” he said, settling in with his own mug. Incubi might not need sleep, but they were not immune to the many wonders of caffeine.

  I held up the journal. “The entries after Kiev get sporadic, but he knew something was up. The armor, however, figured it out too and dug its claws into his head, so to speak.”

  Rynn nodded thoughtfully. “Any mentions of its location?”

  I shook my head and paused to sip the warm black coffee, willing it to filter into my veins before answering. “Despite the fact we know Jebe wore the suit, there is no mention of it anywhere after this journal. Not even the scribes bothered to mention what happened after Jebe died.” Not one inkling of it beyond what Jebe and the scribe had recorded. As if the armor had just vanished from history.

  “What about other treasure troves? There must be more of them. Ones that were left off the records.”

  At this I inclined my head. It was possible, but I wasn’t about to bet on it. “I’m thinking they took it a step further and buried the suit with Jebe himself.” It wasn’t a bad idea. After Jebe died, his body had been buried in an unmarked grave—a Mongolian tradition so no one could spoil the remains or loot the grave for treasure. I had to hand it to the Mongolians: where others had spent fortunes building impenetrable tombs, the khans had taken it a step further. Instead of creating a beacon for grave robbers, they hadn’t advertised at all. Considering all the tombs I’d managed to get into, and the countless tomb robbers through the histories before me, they’d had a point.