“You can’t put him in the suit!” Carpe started. “It’s disastrous for supernaturals. The suit is made for humans—it’s human magic.”
Nicodemous barely glanced at Carpe as he followed where his prize was dragged. “You played your part well, Carpe. You’ll be rewarded.” It was a dismissal.
Carpe didn’t take the hint. Fists clenched, he tried to follow Nicodemous but was blocked by a mercenary. He looked so strange, his slight frame against the much larger Zebra. It was pathetic. “You promised!” he shouted after Nicodemous.
That made Nicodemous pause.
“If we got you the suit, you’d find someone else—besides Alix,” Carpe screamed.
“And so I did,” Nicodemous said. “We’re elves, Carpe. We trick everyone, and if you’re only learning that lesson now, then I’ve done you a favor.” And with that, Rynn, Nicodemous, and a guard of mercenaries left.
Leaving us with the rest of the Zebras. And Dennings.
I looked at her over my shoulder. She was smiling in a way that in my experience usually precedes grievous bodily harm. “Is this where the IAA reinstates me as an archaeologist?” I asked.
Her smile was made vicious against her severe hair and lawyerly black suit. “Should have taken our deal from the start, Hiboux. And now it’s going to cost you.”
Captain hissed at Dennings as she hit me over the head with the butt of her gun. My head hit the tiles while my eyes were still open, and the very last thing I saw before everything faded to black was Rynn disappearing up the steps of Shangri-La.
18
THEIR WICKED, WICKED WAYS
Time? Evening if the dark sky is any indication
Shangri-La
I felt my face. Oh, man. I seriously needed to stop letting people hit me over the head. Brain damage started to happen after enough of those, didn’t it?
No bruises, no broken bones, no blindfold or eyes swollen shut . . . at least they were professionals and above beating me to a pulp. Well, except for the throbbing pain in my head from being hit. Dennings was going to pay for that if I ever got a chance.
Funny the things you remember after someone knocks you out. It was the scent of pine mixed with rotting autumn leaves that stayed with me as the wave of nausea crested. And the nightmare replaying over and over of an unconscious Rynn being dragged off.
Okay, Owl. Time to open your eyes . . . Oh the light hurt, though the dark storm clouds that had moved in overhead dampened the effect. A peel of thunder rolled through Shangri-La, shaking the ground right to its core. Not a good sign.
From my spot lying on the floor, I took stock of my new surroundings. I was still in the courtyard with a skeleton crew of Zebras—three that I could see, probably four. Dev and Texas were tied up beside me. I was also tied up, but no one had thought to stick me upright. Dennings’s work, I was guessing.
Captain was stuck in a sturdy metal cage sitting in the corner with a large rock holding it in place. Captain didn’t like stationary carriers. He preferred ones he could knock over—made it easier to roll them across the floor when it suited him.
I wondered which unlucky mercenary lost fingers getting him in there.
There was no sign of Michigan, or Dennings, or Carpe, for that matter. That I could live with.
“How’s it feel to be back in ropes?” Texas said.
I managed to push myself up to a sitting position despite my hands being bound behind my back. First problem solved—now for the next hundred. “How long was I out?”
“An hour, give or take,” Texas said as another roll of thunder ran through Shangri-La, followed by lightning this time. “And as to the weather?” He glanced up. “In six years all I’ve ever seen is a mild rainstorm. Even then the sun still shone through.”
Carpe and Neil both said the balance was already screwed to high heaven. Where did they take them? “Neil and Rynn?” I asked.
It was Dev who answered this time. “To the temple—the one you and your friend came out of.” After a pause he added, “We’ve been hearing blasts from inside—and feeling the aftershocks.”
Probably to get the suit out. I just hoped that we’d managed to bury it better than they’d anticipated.
“Why would they take Neil?” Texas asked me.
I chose my answer carefully. “Most likely they wanted someone who was familiar with Shangri-La and the magic running this place.” There was of course another reason: the spell they planned to use to force the armor on Rynn needed a human blood sacrifice . . . or something worse, though I chose not to say that.
Texas took it better than I expected. “A little early for the IAA suits to be involving themselves, isn’t it? I always thought they showed up after the damage was done.”
“They’ve graduated from cleanup crews to offensive on account of them getting caught with their pants down a little too much as of late, I imagine.” We all fell silent as one of the Zebras did another pass. From the two black eyes Texas was sporting, I was guessing that was the incentive.
“This turned into one hell of a clusterfuck,” Texas said once they passed.
“Welcome to the modern world of archaeology,” Dev said.
While they glared at the mercenaries, I took stock of what we had—or, more accurately, didn’t have. They’d taken what few weapons and equipment we’d had. I watched the mercenaries as they finished their round of the courtyard.
Sometimes the best way to get some forward motion is to throw a stick . . . and as far as I could see, that was the only break I was going to get.
“Hey!” I shouted. Texas swore.
“Are you out of your mind?” Dev hissed.
I ignored both of them. The two Zebras exchanged a dark glance between themselves. “Yeah, I’m talking to you. How ’bout some water over here? Or service.”
Either they suspected me of something or couldn’t believe I was that much of an idiot. A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B, I imagined. Either way, they headed over.
“Quiet,” one of the mercenaries said with a much thicker Afrikaans accent than Williams.
I did no such thing. “Get me a water—no, make that a beer and then we’ll talk about me shutting up.” I made a show of glancing up at the sky. “Wouldn’t mind an umbrella here either. Think we’re due for rain?”
“I’m being serious,” the mercenary said, giving my thigh a rough kick. He was visibly upset now that his bluster and threats weren’t having the expected or desired effect.
“So am I. About a beer. Go get it.” Come on, you know you want to lose your temper. I’m an asshole, I’m demanding and have no respect for your gun or authority. Teach me a lesson—just do something stupid. I’m all tied up; how much harder could it get?
For a moment I thought the mercenary might come closer, might take me on, might let himself make a mistake . . .
“That’s enough.” Williams stepped out of the foliage. The mercenary I’d been baiting looked like he might argue, but Williams added, “Fall back to checking the perimeter. Relieve Malcolm, he’s been sitting on a dock for four hours.”
The mercenary nodded and without even a glance at me disappeared from sight down the trail. After a nod from Williams, the other two followed. Williams then stood in front of me, arms crossed.
“No offense meant, but I figured it was going to take you a few more hours to crawl out of those tunnels,” I said.
Williams only smiled. “Are you trying to start a brawl?”
“What can I say? Inaction offends me.”
He made a tsking noise. “I had a lieutenant like you a few years back.”
“Let me guess. You fired him?”
“Didn’t have to. Ended up dead all on his own.”
I shouldn’t have smiled back—I knew it was a bad idea. Williams wasn’t a twenty-something underling with a temper and something to prove. “An
d I’m betting having the supernaturals running free isn’t going to be nearly as good for business as you think it’ll be.”
Williams gave me a casual shrug. “I have it on good authority that most of the time, not even the elves can predict the outcome of their own clandestine machinations. And make no doubt about it—I’m as disposable as you are to the lot of them at the best of times, though there’s one thing I’ve got going for me that you don’t.”
“And what’s that?” I asked.
Williams crouched down to my level. “I carry a big stick. I’ve done you a favor keeping you here with my men.”
I didn’t bother arguing. He probably had; Dennings and anyone from the IAA would have had far worse for me in store. Instead I said, “No one does favors for free.”
Williams stood back up and nodded. “No, they don’t. On that we’re agreed.”
I watched him leave and two more guards returned to take up position. Williams’s message was loud and clear. Stop screwing around. I’m watching you, and I’m not stupid.
“Well, that went about as well as anything you do goes,” Texas offered.
I would have told him to shut it—my pounding headache and ears really didn’t need it, but something else caught my attention. At first I thought it was a bird, except for the fact that it was sticking out of a wooden door. It was a dart . . . and there was another one on the courtyard tiles. I was certain they hadn’t been there a moment before.
I watched one fall out of the air close to the mercenary’s feet. He stepped down and picked it up, looking at it before another one dropped and lodged in his neck. He toppled over, and about five darts later, the other two in sight fell as well.
Normally I’d be happy about a rescue—any rescue—except I knew who had to be behind it.
Carpe stepped into the clearing, watching me, wary. Captain let out a low growl that made Carpe jump as he edged by the cage.
“Speak of the devil,” Texas murmured.
Carpe stopped a few feet away from us—nowhere near close enough for us to lynch him while we were still tied up. I held my breath and schooled my face to neutral until he came over and began to untie my hands.
“I knocked the other one out already,” he said. “We have about five minutes or so before they’ll be expected to check in,” he said.
As soon as the ropes restraining my hands were gone, I leaped at him, knocking him to the ground.
“Hey!”
“Son of a bitch,” I said. “All this time you knew what they were planning.”
“Not everything! And all I did was make a deal—”
“And look where that got us!? You idiot.”
He managed to loosen my hand. I pinned his neck with my forearm instead.
“It’s not that simple, Owl. It’s one person against saving the world. I can’t put one person over the greater good like that—it goes against everything we believe!”
The greater good. I wondered how many people through history had said just that. “That’s just it, Carpe—a world where people toss each other over for the greater good isn’t the kind of world I want to live in.”
“Just listen to me, will you?” he said as I tried to punch him. “I think I know what they’re planning to do with Rynn and how.”
I loosened my grip. “You’ve got three seconds.”
“Three? Fuck me, three—”
“Two.”
“Fine. They plan on making Rynn the Electric Samurai because he was one of their best warriors before he told them to fuck off. They’ve wanted him back ever since but haven’t been able to do anything until now. Take away his free will and make him the Electric Samurai, under their control. Alix, there was nothing you could have done. They’ve been planning this for years, and when you found the spell book, it gave them the means. World Quest provided the opportunity.”
“Did you know? When you made me go after that spell book?” I slammed his head against the stone tiles. A roll of thunder rumbled overhead and I smelled rain on the air.
“I swear I didn’t know! Now will you stop hitting me?”
Would I stop hitting him? After he betrayed and delivered Rynn to a band of real monsters? Not a chance. But Texas stopped me, wrapping his bound hands over my head and dragging me off. “You can beat an apology out of him later. After we’re all the hell out of here,” he said, holding up his still-bound hands.
He was right. I let go of Carpe and watched him scramble back up. Captain must have disagreed, because he let out a cross between a growl and a meow. “Don’t for a second think this is over, Carpe. You should have told us.”
Carpe frowned. “Could have, should have, didn’t . . .” Carpe set about untying Texas, and I helped Dev. “Look, we need a distraction. A big one,” Carpe said. “They have them in the temple, and it’s well guarded.”
“How the hell do you expect us to lure away a band of mercenaries? That’s not a plan, Carpe. Not even remotely!” I finished with Dev and opened the latch to Captain’s cage. He lost no time darting into the foliage, where he could hide and watch.
“I have an idea.”
We all turned to look at Texas. “You need something big, that’s going to force them all to do something—give them a bit of a scare?” He nodded toward the other side of the courtyard. There was a statue on each corner—a dragon, a dog, a monster I couldn’t immediately identify. Closest to us there was a stone tiger. The temple district was littered with them . . . “Are those what I think they are?”
“Reason we never set up camp here. No one with half a brain did. Didn’t want to trigger one accidently.”
Golems were an interesting category of magical device. Popular up until the Middle Ages, they’d been used to guard treasure and people, but as far as magical constructs went, they were simple. They might be able to move, but the commands were literally set in stone. There was no improvisation. If you made it to chase intruders, it would chase anyone it wasn’t programmed to ignore . . . which occasionally meant the house cat or the hapless owner. “I’ve had bad luck with golems.”
“You know how to set one off then?” he said, not bothering to hide his optimism.
I crawled over to the nearest unconscious mercenary and removed his gun. I was familiar with the mechanism if not the gun itself. “Yeah, more or less.” Before anyone had a chance to argue, I aimed and fired at the dragon.
Texas grabbed the gun from me before I could fire at the second golem.
“You said activate it!”
“Yeah, I figured by turning on the bindings! Just what the hell kind of archaeology school did you go to? ‘Hold my beer and watch this’?”
“Guys,” Dev said.
We turned as the dragon golem shuddered, moving its first few inches in centuries. Its eyes sparked like glowing red embers, and it fixed them on me.
“Run,” I said.
I took the gun from Texas and fired at the other three golems before dropping the weapon and running for the path after Carpe, Texas, and Dev—the same way the mercenaries had gone. “Head for the temple,” I said. With any luck, the golems would view mercenaries carrying weapons as larger threats than we were.
As we ran, I could hear them catching up, their stone feet hitting the ancient steps in rapid succession. Of course they were gaining. But I could also hear the mercenaries up ahead. I caught sight of the temple entrance, guarded. The mercenaries saw us now—they were pointing and scrambling, but whether from us or the golems . . .
Time to remove ourselves from the line of sight.
Captain shot ahead of us and veered off the trail into the foliage.
“Follow my cat,” I said, and plunged into the foliage after Captain. Turns out it was less an outcrop and more a steep hillside blanketed with fallen leaves—years’ worth. My feet shot out from under me and I started to slide down. I heard Carpe, De
v, and Texas follow suit. I also heard gunfire behind us, the roar of a golem, and, more importantly, no large stone objects hitting the hillside.
The slide Captain had found wound its way down until it reached a flat clearing. The chaos and screams stayed above us.
Captain was waiting for us, licking his paws as the others slid to a stop beside me. “Your cat is an asshole,” Texas said.
I got up and checked the area around us. A smooth, unnatural wall was half overgrown with foliage. I brushed some of the vines aside. It was the temple—the bottom of it. “Jackpot,” I said. All we had to do was find a different entrance. They wouldn’t even know we were inside.
There was a rumble of thunder, followed closely by a sheet of lightning. The ground shook in the start of an earthquake.
“It’s getting worse,” Texas said.
“They must have opened the gates again and let more people in. I told them not to, that it would affect the balance,” Carpe offered. He glanced up at the sky, a nervous look on his face. “For all we know, Shangri-La is about to implode with all the new activity.”
Like a time bomb sitting on a rickety shelf without a timer.
I ran my hand through my hair. Thankfully, the armor had laid off the prompts so I could think. Probably had its own immediate fate to worry about.
“I don’t think the mercenaries have uncovered the portal in the temple courtyard,” Texas said. “They got us before we got close, and like I said, it’s hidden.”
I nodded. If we were gone, there was no reason to leave guards. Not with the golems at any rate.
“And what’s to stop them from following us?” Dev argued. “Besides, they all lead to the middle of nowhere. Implode here or starve or freeze on the other side. Unless one of you has a cell phone shoved up your a—”
“We might have an alternative,” Texas said, “but we’ll need to get access to the computers. I might be able to get a message out through World Quest. Nothing substantial, mind you, but considering how busy Shangri-La is playing with the mercenaries and fucking up its own weather patterns, it shouldn’t be watching the game.”
Owl and the Electric Samurai Page 37
