It didn’t matter. I didn’t care. I forced my hand into Rynn’s pockets until I found the device. I then fell more than ran towards Artemis and Shiva, who had the good sense to catch me.
The vampire on the ground and Rynn were both incapacitated. Rynn’s face was turning an angry red I’d seen on the Electric Samurai before. He shouted after us, “You can’t win, Alix. Not this time—not against me.”
I was getting tired of hearing that. We ran. I hazarded a glance behind us, but Rynn was gone, the vampire now hurling on the ground.
I crossed my fingers and hoped he stayed that way.
“The exit is just up this way,” Shiva said, winded despite her supernatural gifts.
I was too tired myself to ask anything except, “How did you get rid of the other vampire?”
Artemis skidded to a stop up ahead, so abruptly that I careened into his back. “Oh, hell,” I said as I got a look at what had halted him.
“Easy. We didn’t,” answered Shiva.
I covered my mouth with my sleeve—not that it would do any good against vampire pheromones. “So blow some more colored powder at it,” I said.
She shot me an irritated sideways glance. “It was Mau cat litter—and I’m out of it.”
Shit. A roar from back towards the dead end told me that the other vampire was recovering. I turned my attention to the vampire directly in front of us. Rock, meet hard place . . .
As I was trying to decide what to do, I picked up a low, deafening murmur echoing through the fortress, like hundreds of pattering soft padded feet.
Bloodcurdling screams echoed behind us—the other vampire.
Whether the blood lust had worn off or the vampire had some sense of self preservation left, he finally stopped stalking us and turned to see with his bloodshot eyes what the commotion was all about.
That’s when the first cat dropped.
It was none other than Captain, in the lead of an army of Maus. And they smelled vampires. For a moment the entire fortress seemed to go quiet as the Maus encircled the vampire. Apparently Rynn’s control fell just shy of imminent death. The vampire backed up as the Maus spread themselves out.
I think, at the very end, he might have gulped and contemplated his fate and what steps and missteps had brought him here.
Captain let out one of his menacing growls as he stalked the vampire.
Or else the vampire was just terrified by the sight of a very, very angry Mau.
I winced and looked away as Captain and the others pounced.
When we emerged from the fortress, there was one vampire left alive. The Tiger Thieves had decided to keep one alive, though he was heavily guarded by both the Maus and the Tiger Thieves’ weapons. He was raving, angry, vicious—one of the worst off I’d seen of Rynn’s new brood, dressed in a tattered suit, a sole designer shoe left on his foot— Son of a bitch!
I got a good look at his face as one of the Tiger Thieves wrestled him back to the ground. Sure enough, it was Alexander. Well, now I knew why I hadn’t heard from him after sending my message about Charles.
I spotted my pack, held by one of the Tiger Thieves. “Gimme that,” I said, snatching it back, and pulled out my UV flashlight. Normally Alexander is the last vampire on the planet I feel sorry for; he’s always arrogant, pompous, trying to kill me. But the way he sunk into himself as my flashlight beam passed over him, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.
“He’s mad,” Shiva said.
Yeah, just like Charles had been . . . I felt for the device, now back in my pocket, and pulled it out. As before, I pressed the device into the right configuration. “Hold him, will you?” Okay, how had this worked last time? Device, check. Half-mad vampire, check. Now all I needed was blood—but whose? Alexander’s or mine? And would it work without other vampires around to drain? There was only one way to find out.
“I’d really step back,” I told the others. Then carefully, ever so carefully, I motioned for the Tiger Thieves to open Alexander’s bloody hand. “On the count of three,” I told them. One, two, three—I dropped the device into his hand and dived out of the way, the two Tiger Thieves doing the same. Alexander flashed his fangs and stumbled after us in his feral gait. Then da Vinci’s device burst in an explosion of white light.
When the bright spots finally subsided, I lifted my head. It took me a second to take in the scene before me.
The vampire carcasses that had been strewn over the ground had disintegrated, just as the live ones had before, leaving small piles of ash in their wake. In the middle was Alexander, and just like Charles, the red eyes and feral look were gone, the arrogance and judgmental personality I’d grown used to left in their wake.
Captain crept forwards but I stopped him, picking him up under my arm as I strode over and crouched down to Alexander’s eye level. I needed answers. And there was only one thing I really wanted to know. “Where the hell is Rynn?” I asked him.
Alexander glared at me before spitting on the dirt floor. There was blood mixed in, and though I got only a brief glimpse, my mood lifted when I saw that one of his canines had been broken off in the fight. “We had what you’d call a disagreement.”
“In plain English,” I said.
Alexander clicked his tongue, not taking his hateful eyes off me. “He took my vampires,” he said, spitting out the last words.
Yeah, well, unfortunately my bleeding heart was all bled out. Alexander and I had had a tentative truce, and I did owe him one favor. He didn’t want to see the supernatural spill over into the real world any more than I did, so on that page we were square, but that was where our tentative truce began and ended. He’d shelled out more than his fair share of pain and retribution, in the process making my life a living hell for a good year. If Alexander were reincarnated as a high school girl, we’d be arch-frenemies. “Wow, tough times, eh, Alexander?”
Alexander sneered, “I imagine you and your cat are enjoying seeing me reduced to—this.” He held up his arms and made a noise of disgust.
I realized that only half of Alexander’s mood was attributable to his predicament. The other half was the wounding his pride was taking at having me and the Tiger Thieves see him this way.
“You’re welcome for unthralling you,” I said instead of the multitude of snide comments that came to mind.
Alexander made a rude gesture. I didn’t care. “Where is he hiding?”
“Where is who hiding?” Alexander asked, feigning innocence.
“Cut the bullshit, I’m in no mood for it. Tell me where he’s hiding, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get your vampires back.”
“Like this?” Alexander glared at me from under lowered brows, a hint of fang showing from under his curled lip as he gestured towards the piles of ash.
I shook my head. I suspected that some of Alexander’s vampires had been amongst the thralls—not a hell of a lot I could have done about it. “Look, I feel for you, Dandy Fangs, but you know as well as I do that that was Rynn’s fault, not mine.”
“You incinerated them!” Alexander screamed, his face twisting in fury as he let the ashes of one of the vampires run through his fingers.
I inclined my head. “Actually, technically you incinerated them.”
Alexander swore—loudly.
“And Rynn’s the one pulling all the puppet strings, not me.”
At that Alexander smiled. “Little bird, you have no idea.”
I frowned. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you should not be worried about where Rynn and his band of merry mercenaries, as you call them, are hiding but where they intend to go. Where I was supposed to go with my vampires if things had gone according to plan.”
“Where?” Captain let out an accompanying meow, adding his two cents’ worth to the discussion with the vampire—the one he’d rather be eating.
Alexander smiled. “Ah, not so fast, little bird—a trade of goodwill, if you would,” he said, flicking his eyes towards the Tiger Thi
eves.
Alexander wanted a safe way out. I couldn’t blame him; I wouldn’t trust his frenemy status to get him out of hock with the Tiger Thieves either.
“What do you want?”
“For you to guarantee the safety of my remaining vampires under his thrall.”
“Shiva, you use bait to train your cats?”
The request surprised her but only momentarily. One corner of her mouth twitched up. “Frequently.”
I turned my back on Alexander and started back for the fortress.
“Alix—Hiboux!” he shouted.
I waved over my shoulder. “See you, Alexander,” I shouted to another round of curses, this time in French. I waited. I could sympathize with him, but there was no way I could promise to save his friends or subjects or whatever he called them. They were vampires, meaning that they would try to eat me. Promising something I couldn’t deliver would be stupid, even for me.
Despite how upset Alexander might be, deep down I think he knew I wouldn’t agree to his first demands. Drama queen? Sure, but he was a businessman as well.
“Guarantee my safe passage!” the vampire shouted after me, sounding more panicked, though I suspected that was due to the Maus that were growling at him as they advanced.
I stopped and glanced at Shiva. It was subtle, but she shrugged. I turned back to Alexander. He was done bartering. “If you ever wished to stop a supernatural war from spilling into the human world, you have two days left,” he said through clenched teeth. “Because that is when the Onorio is meeting with the malcontents to discuss a truce. In Tokyo.”
“That is a trap if ever I heard one,” said Artemis, who had been silent up until this point.
Yeah, no kidding. Looks like I would be going to Tokyo. At least if it was a trap, I knew Rynn would be a show. “Let him go,” I said, nodding to Alexander.
Surprise shone in the vampire’s calculating eyes. “You would spare me?”
“In a few days,” I continued.
Alexander swore and spat. “Why, you—”
“Sorry, Alexander, but, like you said, Rynn has your vampires. I can’t trust you to crawl back unless you can’t. Let him out in a few days,” I called after the Tiger Thieves as they led him away. “And I mean it!” I hoped I could trust the Tiger Thieves not to rough him up too badly—I did owe him a favor. I just wasn’t going to hand my head on a platter over to a vampire in the process.
I stood and started for Artemis. If we wanted to reach Tokyo before it was too late—
Shiva stopped me, stepping into my way. In her hand was a small bag made of coarse canvas. She opened it for me to see. Inside was a finely milled powder, a mix of orange, pink, and dark yellow, swirling together. It was the powder she’d promised me.
She shoved it towards me but didn’t let go.
“That device,” she said, in a voice low enough for only me to hear. “It will work against him, but I caution you not to use it.” Her dark brows furrowed, showing her more-than-human nature. “Magic like that—it has a steep price.”
I took the powder and shoved it into my pocket, right beside the device. “Always does,” I told her. “Artemis? Get ready, we’re headed for Tokyo.”
18
TOKYO NIGHT
Saturday. Twenty-four hours later: At Space Station Deluxe.
I sat at the bar, the red neon light shining through my Corona beer. It was a Friday evening, and Nadya’s bar was uncharacteristically closed. In fact, the entire district of bars and nightlife seemed unusually subdued. Whether it was my imagination playing tricks on me or the supernaturals that had descended upon the city playing their own tricks, I didn’t want to know.
Captain hopped up onto the bar and mewed at me. I swirled my beer, sending the reflected shards of light over the bar for him to play with. It seemed like a lifetime ago that I’d been spending my nights here with Nadya, planning heists and trying to stay under the radar of the IAA. Before Rynn, Mr. Kurosawa, and the rest of the supernatural world had come crashing down on my life.
Funny how things that used to seem so important felt so petty now. Especially as I watched Oricho’s tattoos seemingly move under the collar of his shirt, as he sat across from me, Nadya standing across from us, on the mediating side of the bar, acting as referee.
“Rynn is already here,” Oricho said. “My sources say he showed up at Gaijin Cloud a few days ago and has been in and out. He’s getting more powerful.”
“No kidding.” I filled them in on his appearing act in Muziris—the very tangible version.
Oricho listened, then nodded. “He may be able to use his minions as conduits. It is a power I have heard of before, though never witnessed.”
“Fantastic.” New and unusual powers. Not what we needed.
“And we still have our opponents to deal with,” Oricho said. “Our negotiations with them to broker a peace, however tentative, have deteriorated, not improved.”
“What he’s trying to say,” Nadya offered, “is that they’ve been moving their forces in.”
“How many? Twenty? Thirty?”
“Try hundreds,” Nadya said. “And all stripes.”
I frowned. “You mean Tokyo is overrun with monsters and what? No one cares?”
Nadya shrugged. “Everyone is still just . . . pretending. Plus, let’s face it, this is Tokyo.”
Meaning that a couple of extra monsters running around wouldn’t necessarily come across as anything more than a blip on the city’s already richly eccentric scene.
“Regardless of how blind people want to be, they won’t be able to keep the wraps on this for much longer.” I searched around the bar. “And where the hell is Artemis?” He’d come to the bar ahead of me but he’d said he’d be here . . .
“Artemis is meeting with Mr. Kurosawa’s opponents in an attempt to broker a temporary truce—until the Electric Samurai is dealt with, that is.”
“I’m having a hard time seeing how it’s even an issue,” I said. Rynn’s current brand of chaos wasn’t good for anyone, and I couldn’t believe that the Malcontents, as Alexander had called them, didn’t believe Rynn was a threat.
“They believe Rynn is a threat, but some of the younger ones are willing to gamble that he will give them an edge. The older ones are not so arrogant.”
“Haven’t they seen what he can do? They can’t think they’re immune.”
Oricho inclined his head. “It is more complicated than that. Some of the older supernaturals believe the Electric Samurai is a powerful threat—but others? Some are unwise enough to believe themselves immune, but the majority simply believe all they need to do is outwait or outlive us. They are wrong.”
No kidding . . .
A phone rang—one that wasn’t one of mine—and Oricho took his phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. “My informants,” he said, excusing himself.
Nadya hesitated as Oricho disappeared out the front door, likely onto the stairs that led to the club. She pursed her lips, looking as if she was deciding whether to follow him or broach another topic.
“What?” I said. When she hesitated, I added, “Look, whatever you have to say can’t make things any worse than they already are.”
She made a face. “It might.” She made up her mind and opened her laptop, turning it so I could see the screen. “It’s about the device,” she said.
I swore.
“You want the good or the bad?”
“Bad—always the bad, Nadya.”
“I’ve found out more about it. On one of the older servers in Moscow, one that doesn’t get checked very often. It was buried amongst some old texts from the Renaissance period—a Russian Illuminatus’s notes that hadn’t been scrubbed.”
“How come I get the impression that’s not a good thing?”
She pursed her lips once again. “Alix, I think it drains the user.”
The user? I opened my mouth to protest, but then I remembered that it had removed the corruption that Rynn had imposed on the vampi
res, both Charles and Alexander. I’d thought that was because it was healing them somehow or resetting their powers—but what if it was because it had been draining them? Draining away the extra power Rynn and the Electric Samurai had forced on them. It made frightening sense.
Shiva’s warning that the device elicited a price came back to my thoughts.
It also complicated my plans. The powder would immobilize Rynn, but that didn’t mean we’d be able to get the armor off him. Da Vinci’s device was my backup plan.
“I have an idea,” Nadya continued, than hesitated.
I waited, watching my best friend. Nadya wasn’t usually this hesitant—or shy.
Whatever struggle was going on in her own head vanished with a shake of her neon red wig. “Get Artemis to use it,” she said, meeting my gaze.
I lowered my head. “You can’t be serious!” But from the expression on her face, she was. “You are! Jesus, Nadya, I’d expect that from Oricho, hell, I’d expect it from Artemis, but you?”
I needed some air, but she stopped me before I could leave, grabbing my arm. “As a backup, if we can’t get the armor off Rynn,” she said. “Artemis is not a good person—supernatural. Remember what he tried to do to you.”
I stood there, shocked. More so as I realized I would have thought the same thing a week ago. I frowned at her. “You’ve been spending too much time with Oricho, Nadya, or you’d know the answer to that already.”
She looked as if I’d struck her. “I’m looking out for you is what I’m doing!”
“I’m not throwing anyone under the bus!”
It was her turn to narrow her eyes at me. “You were the one who told me it was only a matter of time before he stabbed you in the back.”
Well, yes, I had said that—numerous times—but I realized I didn’t believe it—not anymore. Or maybe I did—I didn’t know. “That doesn’t mean I want to adopt the same goddamn tactics he uses.”
Nadya frowned at me. “And you wonder why you always end up on the bottom.”
Owl and the Tiger Thieves Page 36
