Owl and the Tiger Thieves

by Kristi Charish

  The parts of Rynn that the armor had warped and twisted didn’t know that or didn’t care. Meaning he might still be somewhere in there—still fighting.

  The dream construct truly started to waver. The room shook, and it startled Rynn. For a moment his eyes shifted back to the ones I remembered, the bright blue ones in a face that was much paler and more wan than it should have been. They fixed on me, and the cold veneer vanished as panic set in. “You need to hurry,” he said in a thin voice. It was all he said before the ice-cold eyes were back.

  This time they were furious.

  “That was very, very stupid,” Rynn whispered to me. “And you are going to pay dearly for it.” He shook his head at me. “And here I planned to be merciful. Keep your secrets, Alix Hiboux. You can die in here with them.”

  The hand released me, as did the cold, and I crashed to the still wavering floor.

  I laid there on the floor, the short carpet fibers soft between my fingers. I’d get up as soon as my head stopped spinning.

  Wait a minute, my head wasn’t spinning, the floor was shaking.

  Shit.

  I forced myself up. It wasn’t just the floor, the entire room was shaking, wavering. And Rynn was gone.

  My head cleared. I was back in Mali in a hotel washroom; the carbon copy of my rooms in Vegas was a dream. And now that Rynn was gone, it was collapsing.

  I closed my eyes and willed myself to wake up. I opened my eyes. The room only wavered more. Damn it.

  Maybe if I could get out of my room, whatever magic or supernatural manipulation was forming the room would break. It was worth a try. I stumbled to the door over the shaking floor. It took me three tries to get the lock turned; then I threw open the door and froze.

  The hall outside my door was filled with bodies, the usual mix of tourists that regularly populated the hotel, but with one difference. Underneath the bright floral vacation shirts, dresses, and strappy heels was putrid decaying flesh. A set of white dentures snapped at my fingers as I slammed the door shut. Zombies—Rynn had filled my hall with undead weekend gamblers.

  I needed another way out. I ran to the window, unlocked it, then broke the safety latch. I started to crawl through and stopped when I saw the roiling cloud and fog below. What the hell could Rynn have conjured outside the window? Oh, for fuck’s sake—

  I rolled back from the ledge about as gracefully as a walrus and crashed to the carpet as an oily tentacle slapped at the glass. That’s what I got for letting Rynn watch anime: tentacle monsters.

  One of the many suction cups attached to the sill while another tentacle reached in and grasped the latch. Red orbs flickered like eyes trying to see inside.

  I shut the drapes and turned frantically around my apartment, wondering what the hell to do now.

  There was a banging at my front door followed by splintering wood. I turned in time to see an arm reach through. To my horror, it went for the door handle.

  No fair, Rynn. Zombies aren’t supposed to be able to open doors.

  I started to pile furniture in front of the door. First my desk chair, then the desk—I put my back into knocking over the armoire. It crashed in front of the door with a cacophony of shattering glasses and dishes. Still, arms made their way through.

  “Mroew!”

  I cringed at Captain’s wail.

  Captain was standing in the kitchen hovering over his bowl, his tail flicking.

  Even in my dreams my cat thinks with his stomach . . . “Not now, Captain, I’m trying to get out of Rynn’s zombie apocalypse.”

  He hopped up onto the table and let out another loud, obnoxious mew.

  “Off the table!” I told him. I was fast running out of furniture and needed it to add to the barricade.

  Captain wriggled towards me, straining his neck as he did when he wanted a pat.

  “I’m not petting you! Shit!” I gripped the edge of the table as the floor shook once again. There was another crash, and the plaster beside the window cracked. I turned to Captain, who was still on the table. “Rynn is trying to kill me. Now off the— Ow! Son of a bitch!”

  I looked down at my hand where Captain was latched on. “Let go, you crazy cat!”

  Instead of letting go, he growled and ground his teeth in deeper.

  I swore and tried to shake him loose. Note to self: don’t trust friends’ monster-filled dreams . . .

  Wait a minute. I frowned at my hand, which had turned a dark shade of purple. Damn it. I felt my mouth, where what I feared most protruded from my gums: pointed, slightly elongated incisors. Just like a vampire’s.

  Son of a bitch, Rynn, that’s a low blow.

  “That was your greatest fear, no? Becoming one of us sordid cockroaches?” came the heavily accented English. French, attached to a voice I wouldn’t be able to forget if I lived a thousand years. Alexander; Euro trash vampire extraordinaire.

  Of course he’d make an appearance in my nightmare. I stumbled, but it wasn’t just because of the room shaking. There was a groggy fog descending over me. I tried to shake it off and saw the first few drops of sweat hit the table. Alexander gave me a vicious smile and nodded at my hand, still gripped between Captain’s jaws. “I hear those are quite lethal for our kind, the Mau bite.”

  “Tough luck, loser.”

  It was another voice I recognized. Bindi’s. She was standing in the bedroom, stretched out and blocking the doorway.

  Not only were the zombies and tentacle monsters just about through, but there were vampires boxing me in. The grogginess overtook me, and at the next rumble through the construct I collapsed to the floor.

  My breath was coming in short bursts now, and I didn’t think the air was getting to me.

  I recalled something about dying in dreams—God, I hoped that was an urban legend. The grogginess turned to sleepiness, and my eyelids descended over my field of vision, now too heavy to keep open. The first of the zombified tourists broke past the barricade, their running shoes passing across my field of vision. I felt a suction-cupped tentacle brush my face, and it brought to mind sandpaper.

  The first of the zombies, a woman with hair extensions trailing down behind her, crouched beside me. She clicked her teeth at another zombie who tore at her floral halter dress, trying to dislodge her in a zombie battle for first dibs.

  Now, if only the sandpaperlike tentacle would stop fellating my face . . . I was thinking that death by zombies was the lesser of the evils.

  I wondered how the hell Artemis was going to explain this one to Oricho.

  I gasped as the first zombie bit into my shoulder—

  And opened my eyes. My heart raced inside my chest. I was on the floor of the Mali hotel bathroom, my face pressed into the floor, a streak of drool running down the side of my mouth.

  Captain chirped in my ear. The rough sandpaper had been his tongue. I pushed myself onto all fours, Captain dancing away out of my range.

  I’d woken up. Either Rynn and the Electric Samurai had become much more subtle over the last minute, or I was safe and back in Timbuktu. I decided not to start looking for zebras and to accept that I wasn’t dead. Though my hand was killing me. It took me a second to see why.

  My hand was wet and sticky with blood—my blood. Two suspiciously Captain-sized puncture wounds stared back at me from the soft bit between my thumb and forefinger.

  I glared at him, holding up my still bleeding hand. “Son of a bitch, you bit me!” I said. He took a break from licking his paws to lift his head and mew.

  I didn’t know whether to be mad at Captain for attacking me or reward him for figuring out he needed to wake me up.

  As if sensing my conundrum, he mewed again and exited the bathroom. I heard the distinct ring of him upending his food dish, putting in his two cents’ worth.

  Well, with that taken care of . . . I pushed myself to standing. “I’m starting to think bad things happen when I fall asleep sober,” I told him. I’m sure if my head hadn’t still been pounding, I could have come up with s
omething much more clever.

  Man, oh man, zombies and tentacle monsters . . . it was like a bad video game. Rynn had never understood why some tropes had to be separated.

  Captain poked his head back in.

  “You’re not off the hook completely,” I told him. “You knew it would hurt.” Having a two-way conversation with my cat—the picture of sanity.

  The door between my room and Artemis’s crashed open. Artemis’s eyes were bright green and angry as he took in the room and finally me slumped by my desk. Probably pissed off that I’d interrupted his beauty sleep. The only thing I could muster any energy for was an apathetic wave of my hand. Great, the gang was all here. Oh, goodie.

  Artemis’s eyes narrowed, and he looked about to yell at me. Then he took in the room and got a good look at me. The expression he wore turned from anger to—if not quite concern, then something akin to curiosity. “I think you need to tell me whatever it is you’re hiding,” he said, after a long five seconds had clicked by on the room clock.

  I thought about arguing, refusing him, but the more I ran that idea over in my head while he stood a few short feet away in the door frame . . . I realized that trying to hide Rynn and what he could do at this point was fast turning me into a liability.

  I pulled my pajama robe tighter and capitulated. “Grab yourself a beer from the fridge,” I said. My computer was still open, lying on its side on the floor. Captain had probably knocked it over during our scuffle. The screen was still flickering. There was a better than fifty-fifty chance it was still working.

  Artemis disappeared back into his room, leaving the door open. He returned a moment later and headed for my fridge. “Here,” he said gruffly.

  I looked up to find a beer shoved in my face. I took it, drew a long pull—I deserved it after the fiasco with Rynn—and jostled the mouse pad. After a long moment, the screen came back to life. Greater than fifty.

  There was another tap on my shoulder. It was Artemis, holding out a bottle of antiseptic and gauze. I took them with a nod of thanks. I figured he’d have better ways to try to stick a knife in my back than by offering me medical supplies.

  I concentrated on fixing my hand, procrastinating until the blood from Captain’s bite was stanched.

  I sighed and took another swig of the beer. “Okay, so Rynn might have a few new tricks,” I said, then told Artemis—slowly and succinctly as I drank my beer—everything that had happened, from the hint of Rynn watching me at da Vinci’s lair to the monster mash dream.

  To his credit, he waited until I was finished.

  “How long? How long has he been able to travel into your dreams?”

  “A day or two at least, maybe more. For all I know, he was keeping tabs on me in the Albino.”

  Artemis’s upper lip curled, and his nose flared. “Why didn’t you come to me sooner?” he demanded, the anger rolling off him now.

  I didn’t answer. He already knew what I would say. I might have agreed to forgive him, but that didn’t mean I would trust him as far as I could throw him.

  He shook his head. “And you suspected he was trailing you.” He swore and grabbed my carrier, tossing it at rather than to me. “This changes everything. He’ll be onto us in no time, especially if he has an inkling of where we are. Take your bag, we’re heading to the temple now and leaving Mali as soon as we have what we came for.”

  I began to gather my things—laptop, notebooks, handbag—but despite my protestations to Artemis, I was still woozy from Rynn’s show. I headed into the bathroom. Water on my face, hot or cold, it didn’t matter; that was what I needed to wake me up . . .

  I froze as my eyes focused on the foggy stained glass. It was cracked, condensation caught in the new creases.

  It wasn’t the cracks that bothered me, though—it was the message they spelled out, in jagged, harsh letters: No more warnings, Alix.

  Shit. Rynn’s work.

  I gripped the counter as my heart pounded through my ears and waited until my heartbeat slowed to something resembling normal. Captain, going against his nature, was silent while I tried to push the panic back down. It didn’t listen very well.

  If Rynn could warp glass without being in the room, what else could he do?

  I took a deep breath.

  “Hiboux?” Artemis called from the hall. “Hurry your ass up before everything hits the fan!”

  Ignoring Artemis, I tried to wipe away the message and, when that didn’t work, threw a towel over it.

  I clutched my jacket tighter around me and grabbed my supplies plus the amulets before following after Artemis’s hurried footsteps, Captain on my heels.

  Here was hoping we didn’t all get killed.

  10

  THE ROAD TO TIMBUKTU

  8:00 p.m.: Sitting in a jeep on the edge of the Sahara.

  “Well, at least it’s something new for him.”

  I glared at Artemis. It wasn’t what he said but his cheerful, devil-may-care conversational tone. I’d let him drive the jeep since he’d been the one to find it. We’d been on the road leading to the ruins on the outskirts of Timbuktu for an hour—the Temple of Shifting Faces had been a ways from the city even when it had been a metropolis.

  As I kept my eyes on Artemis, I had the sinking suspicion he’d used some of his powers of persuasion to convince me to let him drive . . .

  “I mean, Rynn’s been in such a rut over the past few centuries. I’m rather amazed at the change, corrupted armor or not.”

  He had definitely used his powers. There is no way in hell I’d have let him drive otherwise. “Do you ever stop with the morbid sarcasm?”

  Keeping his eyes on the road, he arched an eyebrow. “Do you?”

  I didn’t dignify that with an answer. Instead, I leaned against the door as far away from him as I could get.

  “Careful. I wouldn’t trust that lock. I don’t nearly have Rynn’s healing ability. I’m much better at hiding in the shadows. No, despite its macabre nature, I have to admit I’m impressed with my little cousin’s current quest for murderous self-improvement.”

  The murderous self-improvement wasn’t what got my attention. “Younger cousin?”

  Artemis raised his eyebrow at me again. “Little cousin. I’d helped lead armies before Rynn was born. I suppose he never told you how he looked up to me in his younger days? Hmmm? No?” He tsked. “I’d be hurt if I didn’t expect his indifference so much.”

  “Contempt, not indifference. The distinction is subtle.” I scanned the desert hills in the last bit of setting sun, searching for remnants of Timbuktu. Artemis had grilled me about Rynn’s visit; I’d answered as best as I could, but that hadn’t stemmed conversation on the topic. On his side anyway.

  “Things are about to become very dangerous,” he mused, drawing my attention off the darkening sky and sand.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is that your boyfriend is getting stronger—” He paused as we went over a bump, the jeep rattling and earning an unsettled mew from Captain. “More to the point, he’s taken an interest in your activities, enough to test the extent of his new powers—recklessly, in my opinion.”

  “Struck me as pretty damn efficient.” I’d jumped real high.

  “Rynn is a lot of things, but he was never reckless. Which means the armor, the suit—whatever the hell the elves bound to him—is finally making some real headway.”

  I kept silent. I’d already realized that, and it was tearing me up. It was something we agreed on: Rynn was losing.

  I was grateful for the cold desert night air that numbed my face. “Is there anything else you need to tell me?” I asked him, my voice dry and more than a little defeated-sounding. “I thought you guys couldn’t do that—warp minds and read thoughts.”

  Artemis inclined his head to the side, keeping his eyes on the road. “Some incubi, very powerful ones, can do what he did: enter the human subconscious and manipulate it beyond the usual tricks pulling your emotions.” I knew he was hedging
his answer. “Emotions lead to thoughts: desires, wants, needs, passions. There’s much less division between the two than you humans seem to think. It’s a glimpse of just how powerful the suit could make him.”

  I don’t know why I offered it; chalk it up to boredom. “Inside—the dream, whatever it was—for a second he seemed to break away. He said I didn’t have much time left and to hurry.”

  Artemis’s mouth drew into a tight line. “Might have been him. Might have been the suit learning our tricks. Nothing like kindling hope to get humans going—usually in the wrong direction. Either way, so long as he’s still in there, you serve as a distraction.”

  I waited, watching him. After a moment he inclined his head. “But the wavering of your dream, the construct—it does suggest that either Rynn doesn’t know the limits of his power or the suit is still teasing control away from him.”

  “So there’s still a chance? That we can get him out?” That was us. We humans couldn’t resist hope. Not even me. There was silence while I held my breath.

  “Yes,” Artemis finally said, and silence stretched between us. Artemis was the one who broke it. “Did Rynn ever tell you what I did? Before.”

  I shook my head. Besides Artemis’s career as a sordid rock star, Rynn had told me very little about his cousin—and himself, if I was being honest. Though I had no idea why that was bothering me now. It wasn’t as though I was an open book, even if my emotions were.

  Artemis pursed his lips. “Rynn’s talents might have predisposed him to more martial pursuits, but me? People like to talk to me—supernaturals and humans alike—I’m harmless, after all. An entertaining drunk.” He glanced at me. “Being able to fight is only one-half of the equation. If you don’t know who your enemies are, you never really know whose battles you’re fighting.”

  “You were a spy.”

  “Am a spy—and you’d be smart not to forget it.” Another hesitation. “I mention it because there is another way to read what Rynn said to you in the dream. That the suit has full control over Rynn and is baiting you—just enough to give you pause.”