I wanted to argue, I needed to argue—but part of me knew she was right.
“We don’t have to like it, but for now?” She glanced over to where Artemis and Oricho had disappeared into the crowd. “Unless you have a better plan, it’s all we can do.”
I didn’t, and maybe that was the crux of it. And it was eating me up inside.
Cold certainty descended over me. As Artemis had said, I needed to suck up my precious morals and either play with the supernaturals on their level or go home. “Fine, Nadya,” I said.
Her surprise was quickly replaced by disbelief. I shook my head. I was serious—and certain. “Artemis and Oricho want us to play on their level? Then let’s play. We’ll do it your way.”
She looked taken aback. “It’s just—you were so sure . . .”
I shook my head. “No, Artemis was right. It’s time for me to grow up. There are no such things as rainbows and unicorns.” Or maybe there were such things as unicorns for all I knew . . . so that wasn’t the point . . .
Nadya knew better to argue when I set my mind on something. She only nodded. Funny, considering her insistence earlier that getting Artemis to use the device would be the best way, I could have sworn she was the one who’d change her mind.
“Are you two going to stand there with the fucking cat or open the bar back up so I can get a fucking drink?” Artemis shouted. Not one person in the crowd looked his way.
Of course no one else could hear Artemis. Goddamn it, and he thought I made a spectacle of myself.
Nadya made a rude gesture at him, both of us knowing better than to shout and draw any more attention to ourselves than necessary. I tried not to look at the body on the sidewalk. It was covered, but there was only so much a white sheet could do to hide that kind of unnecessary violence.
Artemis wanted me to grow up? Fine, I’d grow up.
“Can you convince Artemis to use the device?” Nadya asked.
I shook my head. As they kept telling me—grow up. “I’ll handle Artemis.” He was no Rynn when it came to reading emotions.
Captain gave a mournful mew from my backpack. I patted him on the head. “Don’t worry, buddy, I know what I’m doing,” I whispered, doing my best not to look at the body on the sidewalk.
It still made me sick to my stomach, beneath the cold and ice—but then again, maybe learning how to ignore that was another part of growing up.
We set off after Oricho and Artemis. The device burned in my hand, though that was more from my gripping it tight than any magical effect. We’d managed to cast our own spell of sorts, Nadya and I, and I wasn’t at all certain it was any better than the ones the elves had cast on Rynn.
19
CHARLATANS AND THIEVES
8:00 p.m.: Space Station Deluxe. The bar is empty, the lights are off, and despite being here, I’m still not sure anyone’s home.
Back at Space Station Deluxe, I’d skipped the Corona and gone straight for the tequila. I sipped it, savoring the burn as I turned the silver device over in my hands. How the hell was I supposed to use the device without killing Rynn, as had happened with the vampires and just about every experiment da Vinci had ever tried?
And then there was the issue of what the device would do with the corrupted magic of the armor. In theory, it would strip the magic into its most basic components, separating the armor, the corruption, and Rynn into their own pieces. But I couldn’t be certain.
I was between a rock and a hard place—or maybe with a cougar and a bear on either side of the tree I was up. That was more like it. We still weren’t entirely sure that the device would work against the magic corruption Rynn was spreading. There wasn’t a good choice. I sipped my tequila. Maybe we’d get lucky and the powder would work.
Goddamn it, why did I always find myself in these kinds of situations? Why the hell couldn’t things ever be black and white?
Captain, who had been sleeping on one of the bar stools, lifted his head, turning his nose up in the air. He’d picked up on something—supernatural, if his curious mew was any indication.
I heard footsteps crossing the floor.
I put the empty tequila shot down and swiveled my chair around. “What?” I said, despite the fact that there was no one there.
When there was no answer I added, “Artemis, quit it with the games. I’m not in the mood.”
“Well, you got the supernatural right. I guess that sort of counts for something—you know, if we were playing horseshoes,” came a male voice, congenial and definitely not Artemis’s.
Oh, for crying out loud. I swiveled my chair back around to find none other than Hermes behind the bar, nursing a beer. The king of thieves himself. The problem with thieves was that you never quite knew where trusting them was going to take you—or when the tables would turn.
I so did not need for that to be tonight . . .
“Look, Hermes, no offense, but whatever reason you’ve decided to show up today—”
Hermes tsked and held up his hand. Initially I thought it was to stop me, but Captain decided it was an invitation to a pat and took him up on the offer. Hermes smiled, pulled another beer out from Nadya’s fridge, and held it out to me.
I shook my head and, with no other option open to me, headed over and took it.
“Well?” I finally said, when Hermes didn’t offer me any reason for his visit.
“Just checking in, seeing what you’re up to, that sort of thing.”
“Bullshit,” I said before taking a long pull from the bottle.
Hermes shrugged. “Why do you guys always have to be so damn skeptical? I mean, is it really that much of a stretch to think the people around you are maybe, just maybe, concerned for you?”
My thoughts drifted back to Artemis, unwelcome. “If you believe that, I’ve got a great bridge to sell you.”
Hermes shook his head and took a long pull from his beer. After a moment he added, “You know, you try to be nice—”
“—and end up wasting a lot of people’s time. Get to the point.”
Hermes shrugged. “Thieves,” he said under his breath. “I’m in a generous mood and you’ve been having a rough week, so for once we’ll do it your way.” He glared at me over the bottle. “But don’t think we’re making a habit of it.” He paused. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”
My guard went up as he went back to paying attention to Captain, who had decided that the attention he was getting wasn’t nearly enough and was on the verge of knocking over Hermes’s beer. “I make a lot of decisions—some good, some bad,” I said carefully.
Hermes shook his head. “Your problem is that you’ve taken on your boyfriend’s habit of thinking of things as good or bad.”
“You think he’s wrong?”
Hermes shrugged. “Not wrong for Rynn. He divides the world and people up that way—helps keep the sanity—but you? You don’t.”
I crossed my arms. “Is this another ‘You damn thieves have no morals’? Because if it is—”
Hermes shook his head and finished off his beer. “It’s not an insult, so stop taking it that way. It’s the truth. You and Rynn don’t think about the world the same way. No two people ever think about the world the exact same way. That’s why humans—and supernaturals, I might add—never fucking agree on anything—or at least don’t agree on enough to put down their guns and magic.”
I was getting tired of this. I polished off a good portion of my own beer. “So everyone disagrees on something. Is that your point?”
“My point is that you’re the only one here who can decide how you are going to act on your interpretation of the facts of life as you see them.” Hermes deposited his empty beer bottle in the bin under the bar and shrugged on a red windbreaker—the color he always seemed to pick.
“So if I fail, it’s my own goddamned fault. Gee, thanks.” I was going to need another beer after this just to counteract the demoralization.
“It means that only you can decide what kind of person yo
u want to be, Alix: underdog, tough guy, independent rogue for hire, thief with a heart of gold—you, kid, no one can do it for you, because despite popular wisdom, you’re the one who has to live with your actions. Stop pretending it’s everyone else.”
He started for the door. “Just whatever you do, make up your mind whoever the hell it is you want to be before you do something you’ll regret. Otherwise you’ll end up like Artemis—maybe not today or tomorrow, but eventually.”
“Like Artemis?”
I caught sight of Hermes near the door as he passed under the lights. “Someone who hates what he’s let himself become but still has to live with it.” The shadows created by the lights finally swallowed him up. I heard the door swing shut behind him.
I realized I was clenching my hands. Hermes had hit a nerve. I didn’t know which nerve exactly. They were all raw right now.
I turned back to my laptop, where the information Nadya and Oricho had acquired for me was waiting. Something bad happened when the device had been used; that was clear enough. But what was the price, exactly? And was it worth it?
Despite what I’d tried to convince myself and Nadya of, the truth was that I wasn’t so sure it was. And the guilt I felt along with that realization was eating me alive.
Hermes wanted me to decide what kind of person I wanted to be. The truth was that I really didn’t know. The question before me wasn’t one of right or wrong; that was part of the problem. If it had been, I would have been able to decide: good guy or bad guy, end of story.
But this wasn’t that kind of decision; it was as if I had a series of lousy options, and each of them had its own personal nasty potential outcome.
“It’s like an Eastern European fairy tale,” I said to Captain, who was still sleeping on the red-LED–lit bar. The kind of fairy tale where someone died, regardless of what the so-called hero did.
“I always preferred those—it was more honest to children to tell them that someone was probably going to be eaten by the trolls—whether they were or not.”
I turned to see Artemis leaning against a chair a few tables away, watching me darkly, hands in his pockets.
Shit, how long had he been there? Could he hide from Hermes? “What did you hear?”
He arched his eyebrows. “Him?” he asked, nodding towards the exit. “Nothing—I picked up his scent and kept my distance. Not worth meddling with him. I’d suggest you put distance between you and him, but knowing you, you won’t take my advice.
“I pick up on emotions,” he added. “Not as well as Rynn but enough to know you got surprised. How often does he do that?”
“Drop in uninvited? Surprisingly frequently, and no, he doesn’t help—just muddies everything up.”
“He has a reputation for that, much like you have a reputation for bringing destruction and disaster wherever you go. And me?” He paused. “I’ve got my own reputation, I suppose.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m here to apologize,” he said, then cleared his throat. “For not telling you why I was helping.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m not proud of it,” he continued. “But I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t do it again, so take the apology however you will.”
I glared at him. To think that a few days ago I would have given him a chance. Not happening this time . . .
Artemis cleared his throat again, except this time he sat down beside me, then helped himself to my bottle of tequila. “I think I understand what you two see in each other,” he said, downing the shot he’d poured. “Neither of you is willing to look at the world outside your own damned narrow views.”
Oh, for— I shut my computer. “What’s so wrong with wanting to save someone besides myself?”
“Tell me honestly, Alix, are you upset about not being able to save the woman from the will-o’-the-wisp or the students from the skin walkers because of an obligation you feel deep down inside to do the right thing?” He made a show of tapping his heart. “Or is it because in your twisted view of reality, it makes up for the fact that you’d do it all over again to save Rynn? Don’t bother answering that.”
Goddamn it, what had started off as an apology had morphed into a fight. “Maybe that’s true, but at least I try to do better than my natural inclinations. You?”
“Take a good look, Alix, because as long as you keep thinking that, this is what you have to look forward to.”
I clenched my hands into tight fists. “Go to hell,” I said.
The bar stool scraped loudly against the floor as Artemis stood. “Gladly. You and my damned cousin deserve each other,” he said, and turned to go.
And to think five minutes ago I’d been defending him to Nadya . . . “Artemis!”
He stopped and frowned, as if he were trying to read me. “Like I said, the two of you deserve each other.” With that he left, leaving me feeling unsettled and even more confused as to why I was unsettled.
I didn’t have much time to ponder our conversation, though—or Artemis’s failed apology. Nadya stepped around the corner, passing Artemis as he left. She didn’t see him, though she startled at the disturbance in the air.
At least I’d gotten under his skin enough to rattle him. Somehow that mollified my own anger.
Nadya’s frown deepened as she settled in behind the bar. “I heard yelling,” she said, and searched the bar.
“Artemis being Artemis,” I said, and waited until I was certain that he had to be down the stairs. I finished the beer and poured myself another tequila. I took a sip, the tequila biting at my tongue. “What you said earlier, about getting Artemis to use the device? What if I changed my mind?”
She gave me a wary nod. “I would say good for you coming to your senses,” she said. “Because Oricho found Rynn.”
I stood up, less steady on my feet than I had been moments before—though whether that was an effect of the tequila or of what I was about to do . . . “Where?”
Nadya inclined her head and picked up the TV remote. “Where else? Downtown Tokyo.” A news-reporting duo filled the screen, their frantic expressions flickering soundlessly.
The sound was off, but I didn’t need it. The scene was set smack in the middle of the Shinjuku entertainment district, throngs of people rushing out under the neon gate. The view changed to the middle of the district. Cars had stopped helter-skelter in the street, a few turned over. Fires burned where neon lights had crashed to the ground. And in the center of the street stood none other than Rynn, his warped and twisted collection of monsters fanning out, chasing people like bedraggled urchins that had graduated to terrifying.
Rynn, smack in the middle of ground zero of the running, screaming, neon-colored mayhem. He glanced up at the camera with those watery, cold eyes and seemed to stare right at me, daring me to do something about it. If Rynn was in there, I sure as hell didn’t see him.
Shit. I dropped my tequila on the bar and grabbed my jacket. There weren’t any bodies littering the screen—yet—but give it time. I had no illusions as to what was coming—especially if I didn’t take Rynn up on his dare. I felt in my pocket to make sure da Vinci’s device was still there, then started for the door.
Nadya swore in Russian and rushed to catch up. “Alix!” she called after me, and when I didn’t stop grabbed me.
“We need to stop him,” she said, simply and to the point. And carrying more weight than she could have known.
I swallowed. “I know.”
She searched my face, then nodded. “I’ll get hold of Oricho and tell him to bring Artemis.” I knew there was another question on the tip of her tongue, but it’d have to wait. We had to get to Shinjuku and stop Rynn and his ragtag army of misfit supernaturals before they leveled half of Tokyo. The silver orb was warm in my hand. I hoped my plans wouldn’t unravel halfway through like they usually did—not this time. There was too much at stake.
I couldn’t get the image of Rynn’s watery, pale eyes out of my head as I rushed down the
stairs, Nadya with her bright red hair in step beside me. The sound of sirens in the air reached us along with the sound of car horns. Somehow I didn’t think it’d bode well for me. Or Rynn.
20
THE DEVIL’S IN THE DETAIL
10:00 p.m. Friday: Shinjuku district, Tokyo.
By the time the four of us reached the red-lit gate of the Shinjuku district, my nerves were frazzled from imagining how many people had already died. As I looked around the abandoned streets, I hoped that most of the people had gotten out in time. Then I worried where the hell Rynn’s vampires were. Sirens still wailed but there were no people to be seen, not even peeking out from the corners of the storefront windows that lined the streets.
“For a weekend it’s quiet,” Nadya observed as we stepped under the gate.
“Sure, if you can filter out the collapsed neon signs, crashed cars, and fires.” I stepped around a broken sign whose bare wires had spilled out the back, blocking our way. Captain sniffed at the air. He sensed that there was something out of place but wasn’t quite able to place it. He settled for taking a tense perch on my shoulder, ready and willing to pounce.
It was as though every instinct in my body was waiting for something horrible to happen.
There had barely been a sound since we had exited the Shinjuku subway station, with the exception of a handful of panicked people racing to get onto the train as we exited it. Their eyes had been wide and they had shouted as they pushed their way past us. There was no mention of monsters or destruction, not even of a blond man with hostages in the square. Just shouts, footfalls, and the train doors swishing shut before the train raced away from the disconcertingly unexplainable event. And of course we were headed straight for it . . .
“Well, looks like we found the place. Now where the hell is he hiding?” Nadya said.
Owl and the Tiger Thieves Page 38
