Owl and the Tiger Thieves

by Kristi Charish

  He stared at me as if I wasn’t about to have my hands ripped off. Then he turned and sniffed down the hall.

  Now was not the time for a training relapse. “The pendant!” I shouted at him over the ancient gears. I tapped the altar with my foot as best as I could.

  This time Captain trotted over. I nodded at the altar. He hopped up and sniffed at the box before looking at me and meowing. Considering all the objects my cat had ever knocked off a table, why the hell couldn’t he do it with the necklace?

  I winced as the stones crimped my palms, causing them to spasm. Captain just stared at me. I needed more time. I took my flashlight and shoved it into the right-hand hole with my mouth, jamming it in as far as it would go. The pressure on my hands eased as I heard the metal flashlight wrench. Now for the other side. With effort I removed a pen from my pocket with my teeth and tried that. Again the pressure lessened.

  “Captain, I am begging you: play with the necklace so I can shut the altar.” Much longer and I wouldn’t be doing anything with my hands, let alone getting us out.

  Captain mewed and batted gingerly at the pendant. The flashlight snapped.

  Like hell did I plan on giving the temple a new sacrifice . . . “It’s a shiny thing with a string, how the hell can you not want to play with it?”

  Captain looked at me.

  I winced as the stone dislocated the thumb of my left hand. “Captain, so help me, if you don’t knock that pendant off the altar, neither of us is getting out of here.”

  Captain let out a loud meow and knocked the pendant off the altar. It clinked as it hit the stone floor, bouncing twice before coming to a stop. He jumped down and chased it.

  I kicked the lid down with my boot, sighing as the stone pins retreated and slumping to the ground. My hands were a spasming mess, but nothing had been broken.

  Doubled over on the altar steps, cradling my hands on my knees, I stared at my cat. He was licking his paws, the pendant between them.

  I shook my head. Of all the pets out there . . .

  I fumbled the pendant into my jacket pocket and reclaimed what was left of my cracked flashlight where it had fallen on the floor. It flickered on and off like a geriatric strobe light as I balanced it under my chin.

  “What do you say we get the hell out of here?” I asked Captain.

  It wasn’t a mew I heard, though. It was a scrape against stone, like feet being dragged. And this time it was closer. I shone the flickering flashlight down the hall. The scraping stopped, and in the entrance stood a woman I recognized. Though I couldn’t see well in the light, I wouldn’t miss the blue hat and bag anywhere. It was the UN relief worker, Sandra, the one I’d met in the hotel.

  I tried to angle my broken flashlight towards her, with minimal luck. She did the honors, shining her own flashlight up at her face, giving it a ghoulish cast.

  Her heavy floral perfume filled the antechamber.

  “Well, hello there! Fancy meeting you down here!” she said. The shadows from the flashlights did not compliment her face.

  “How did you get down here?” I asked.

  She ignored the question, a strange gleam in her eye as she nodded at the open altar. “It wants blood. The pendant. We’ve been keeping it here a long time. Not many people get out of our trap.”

  Our trap? Out of instinct I backed up towards the altar since she was blocking the door. She looked normal. I didn’t get a supernatural vibe off her.

  Captain let out a hiss, and Sandra stopped closing in. Definitely not human.

  It was then I picked up the faint trace of urea underneath her heavy floral perfume. I knew that scent. She hadn’t been worried about body odor, she’d been covering the scent of urea, the telltale mark of a skin walker.

  Sweat began to accumulate along my forehead.

  If vampires were the cockroaches of the supernatural world, skin walkers were the locusts, a supernatural species of predator that preyed on humans and stole their memories and skin, wearing them like a new suit. Skin walkers mimicked their hosts seamlessly, using them to navigate the human world and picking off family and friends as the need for new skins arrived, like pantry preserves.

  I’d had a run-in with a skin walker at the Japanese Circus. It was how I’d found out that Rynn wasn’t human. It hadn’t been a pleasant encounter; it had almost killed me. With supernatural reflexes, great strength, and a violent cruel streak, their reputation as dangerous killers wasn’t overblown.

  “You get as old as me, and you forget some of the players over the centuries,” Sandra continued. “But not them, not the Tiger Thieves.” She shivered involuntarily, then regarded me closely. “Though I must say I also haven’t had anyone stroll into my house for a few centuries. It’s what I’d call a pleasant surprise.”

  Her home? It hit me: the Temple of Shifting Faces, the stick figures etched into the walls . . .

  This was a skin walker temple.

  She clicked her tongue and smiled, her lips parting enough that I could see the serrated skin walker’s teeth, which were too small for her face and slightly pointed. I hadn’t noticed that the last time I’d run into one. I backed up until I reached the wall. Skin walkers weren’t exactly sympathetic with their food. The distance between us was rapidly growing shorter.

  “Ah . . .” I started. When all else fails, best to keep the monster talking.

  “Sandra, or that’s what the clothes tag said.” She winked at me, the expression ill fitting her face. “Or label might be more appropriate. What would you say? Friendly middle-aged white American, size medium?”

  I abandoned the idea of running. I wouldn’t make it three steps.

  Often hired as assassins by the supernatural community to deal with human problems, they’d become even more popular over the last twenty years with the advent of international travel. If skin walkers had a weakness, it was that they needed water to survive.

  Which prompted the question, what the hell was one doing out here in the desert?

  “Airplanes, trains, and automobiles, dearie,” the skin walker wearing Sandra’s skin said, guessing or preempting my question. “It’s really made this world such a wonderful place to travel. You know, I hadn’t planned on chasing you when we ran into each other in the hotel.” She tsked, reminding me of a kindergarten teacher. “We’ve had much too much trouble dealing with him. He’s taken quite the interest in you. We all stay out of his way—rumors abound. But then I saw that you were coming out here with the other incubus in the jeep, and my curiosity begged to know what you were doing out here. This one used to watch a lot of soaps; try as we may, we can never block out their thoughts entirely.”

  I swallowed. “What do you want to know?”

  “Oh, that won’t be necessary. I’d rather just read your thoughts. Harder for you to lie and misdirect.” She closed the distance between us with inhuman speed, until her face was inches from mine. This close the smell of her perfume mixed with the scent of skin walker urea, producing a foul mix. I tried to push myself away, but it was no use.

  “And I’ve decided I need a new suit. Granted, the tag ought to read ‘Comes with IAA and dragon liability,’ but every now and again I figure I can splurge on throwaway fashion.”

  I swallowed hard, searching for something, anything, to stall her with until I could think myself out of this disaster. My terrified mind glommed on to the sole thing that had jumped out like a beacon while she’d been talking.

  “Wait, you said you were afraid of him—Rynn. Why? What rumors?”

  “Ah, you didn’t know? The other useless incubus didn’t tell you? Should I tell you, then? Why not?” she mused. “What harm could it do? You’ll be dead momentarily.” She let me go, and I scrambled away, searching the room for something, anything, to use against her while she spoke. “Tell you what, if you surrender like a good little girl and give me your memories, I’ll tell you. I so prefer it when my prey doesn’t fight. Ruins the outfit.” She winked and began stalking me as a cat does a mouse.
/>
  I saw the white and brown fur overhead.

  Captain had managed to find his way into a shaft above us. He twitched his tail and shuffled his hindquarters, eyes on the skin walker.

  God, I hoped I wasn’t giving my cat too much credit. I changed the direction I was retreating in, slowly backing up until I was underneath where he was waiting, keeping her attention on me.

  Back up . . . just about there . . . “No deal,” I said.

  Captain meowed, and a heavy object struck the skin walker on the top of her head with a crack. Her eyes rolled up into her head, and she toppled to the ground.

  An antique hammer, still gripped by a grave robber’s skeletal hand, laid beside her.

  Thank God for trespassers and vandals . . .

  I stared at the skin walker’s motionless body, wondering if I should run or attempt to restrain her first.

  I was still rooted in place, deciding, when the floor shook. “Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me . . .” It was the temple. What the hell had I done to jostle the foundations? No dynamite, no massive collapses . . . maybe the gears and mechanized stone pieces behind the altar; they probably hadn’t been triggered in hundreds of years.

  “Come on, Captain!” I yelled, and bolted back towards the entrance. I skidded to a stop in front of my rope. The temple floor shook for a third time, strong enough to almost knock me over.

  I motioned for Captain to climb onto my backpack. I felt the weight as he gripped tight.

  I grabbed the rope and climbed faster than I ever had, hand over hand, adrenaline helping me ignore my lungs’ protests. There was the top—I heaved myself over the edge and gasped for breath, my legs dangling. I pulled myself up and began retrieving the rope.

  “Wait!”

  I just about dropped the rope back in.

  “I wish to bargain with you, human,” Sandra called out over the rumbling temple noise.

  Bargain with a skin walker? I’ve got some magic beans to go with that . . . But curiosity got the better of me. I crept back to the edge of the shaft and glanced down.

  There she stood, blood streaming down her face from where the hammer had bludgeoned her.

  It dawned on me that I had the only rope leading out. She must have used mine to climb down and not considered taking a backup. That was skin walker arrogance for you.

  Sandra might be a skin walker, but she wasn’t stupid. “I know something about the soldier that you don’t!” she shouted up at me.

  The soldier? She must mean Rynn. I snorted and began retrieving the rope, winding it around my arms.

  “About his plans!” she continued. “Do you know why the supernaturals are so frightened of him? No, I can tell from your face and your scent that you do not.”

  I turned to go but paused. She’d hinted in the temple that she knew something about Rynn. If she knew something, anything, that could help me . . . “What do you want?” I shouted down.

  “Leave the rope, and I will tell you.”

  Yeah, right. Tell my dead body, maybe—after she skinned me alive . . . “Tell me, and if it’s any good, maybe we can deal,” I called back down as the temple shook again.

  “Miscreant human!” The temple shook again, raining dust around her.

  “Wrong answer!” I’d have to abandon this roof soon; it wouldn’t be safe much longer, not if the structure below was failing.

  She licked blood off her lips, betraying her desperation. “He’s started taking us,” she called back. “Yes, that’s right, he can manipulate us now as easily as the humans he’s acquired, warping and twisting us until we’re just as dark and damaged as the elves made him and the armor.”

  So that was what she’d been cagey about earlier when she’d hinted that the supernaturals’ fear of Rynn was more than just from his random violence and his reign of chaos . . .

  It also meant he was getting more powerful. “How? How is he doing it?”

  Sandra smiled and shook her bloody head, knowing she had me now. “Not until you agree to throw me the rope.”

  There was another shake of the building beneath us. On the one hand, I really didn’t want to let a skin walker out—I had no illusions she’d be happy letting me get the better of her and just stroll away; on the other, if she knew how Rynn was manipulating supernaturals—

  As if she were reading my thoughts—or maybe was just desperate—she added, “I’ll sweeten our deal. I swear I’ll let you and the incubus leave, with the Tiger Thieves amulet.”

  I paused. I wasn’t going to get a much better deal than that, not from a skin walker. And wasn’t the amulet what I had come here for?

  I readied to throw the rope down just as screams erupted behind me.

  “Throw me the rope!”

  I ignored her and abandoned the shaft for the nearest pillar. Below was mayhem—the UN workers and medical student volunteers were screaming and running for the bus, flashlight beams moving above them like minnows in the black night sky.

  I stood there dumbstruck for a moment as a smaller group of UN workers chased them. The screams rose as one of the running people was tackled to the sands.

  I ran back to the shaft. “What’s going on?” I yelled down.

  She smiled at me. “Jumped the gun, did they? Poor dears out there are a little desperate. They’ve been down on their luck as of late. Plenty of bodies to steal, but it’s like having a black-tie event to attend and all you have is jeans and a T-shirt. A Malian passport isn’t exactly a ticket to an international flight right now, and considering how infrequent tourists have become with all the violence—” She tsked. “We don’t like being fenced in. Me? I’m in the mail-order business.”

  I just stared at her, dumbstruck. She’d lured all those people out here and sold them to the other skin walkers as convenient tickets out of Mali, like used clothing.

  “Now. My rope, and perhaps I will tell you how to stop him. I know the armor, I know the Thieves, this was my temple.” Her fists clenched by her sides. “Throw it down, and I can help you make it all go away. I swear! You know what happens to supernaturals who break their word, especially when it’s sworn on holy land.”

  The ground shook again, and this time I heard stone collapsing inside. Deals with supernaturals were hard to break—almost impossible for them. Doing so usually involved nasty curses. It was why they were so reluctant to make them without a litany of clauses.

  If she was willing to swear, it meant she could help me.

  I was tempted, sorely so, but looking at her, the woman whose memories and skin she was wearing . . . just how many people had she killed over her lifetime? Would she continue to kill?

  “Here’s your rope,” I called down. But before I dropped it down the shaft, I cut the rope into four pieces. She shrieked, something sharp, piercing, inhuman, but her screams melded with all the others’ as I slid down the sand. A massive crack sounded through the desert, followed by the ground shaking and a cloud of sand being thrown into the air.

  Well, there was another temple I could add to my list.

  I skidded to a stop by the jeep and opened the door. “Got it, now get it started! Oh, shit!” Where the hell was Artemis?

  I searched the area around the jeep for him, but there was no sign of him. However, three flashlight beams were hurtling my way. Between the flailing lights I made out three young UN workers being chased by an older man who wasn’t moving as a human should. It was the two doctors who’d sat behind us, comparing working in gang-infested projects with training for a war zone.

  “Find somewhere to hide!” I shouted.

  I spotted more groups of fleeing people running like headless chickens every which way, herded and chased by the skin walkers who had hidden amongst them, luring them here.

  Bodies fell. It was a massacre.

  I ducked behind the jeep as one of the UN workers/skin walkers looked my way, having discarded all pretense of humanity in his now jerky, quick movements.

  I needed to hide, and inside a jeep
was not the best option. Where the hell was Artemis? My eyes searched the dunes for him but didn’t get a glimpse.

  My phone rang. Shit. I scrambled to get it out of my jacket. Luckily, the chaos and screams hid the sound. It was Oricho. I swore again but answered it. Oricho wasn’t the kind of supernatural you ignored. “Ah, yeah, Oricho—not a great time. We’ve stumbled into a skin walker problem.”

  “I have heard reports that you are in Mali,” came Oricho’s smooth and not-a-damn-bit-concerned voice.

  Of course, right now, in the middle of a skin walker massacre, he’d bring it up . . . “Yeah, look, like I said— Damn it!” I ducked back down behind the jeep, making myself as small as possible behind the wheel as a flashlight beam passed my way. Thank God they didn’t have the olfactory talents of other supernaturals.

  I heard the rumbling of the bus and more screams as a few of the UN workers and doctors made a break for it. The skin walkers sniffing around the jeep bolted towards the fresh sounds of mayhem.

  I brought the phone back to my ear. “Short answer: yes, I’m in Mali, currently an unwilling participant in a skin walker massacre. I’ll call you back and fill you in on the details if and when I survive,” I said, and switched off the phone.

  “Pssst!” I heard the sharp whisper coming from an overturned diesel barrel discarded in the sand with a rusted hole in its side. I caught sight of Artemis’s ornate boot.

  I waited until the skin walker, who was now sniffing my way, looked back towards the three he’d been chasing. I baseball slid in beside Artemis. Captain followed, not quite sure what to make of the turn of events.

  “Can you hide us?”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Me? Certainly, but they’re looking for blood.” He nodded at the skin walker sniffing towards our jeep. “Look, he’s already scented you.”

  “You’re the supernatural. What’s your escape plan? Shit.” I ducked back down as a retreating aid worker, a young woman, skidded to a stop by our jeep. She was jumped by two skin walkers—a mild-mannered–looking gentleman and the bus driver—they must have gotten him earlier in the evening. Their limbs bent into shapes they shouldn’t have been able to as they pinned their victim, every move betraying the thin-limbed yellow creatures that resided underneath.