“God,” Oliver said. “I’m so sorry.”
“As am I, Mr. Jones. The tribe was my entire world. They were the only people I had ever seen before. To see them massacred was…it is difficult to describe the terror I felt. Or the anguish.”
“I can’t imagine,” Oliver said. “But you’re not…sorry, this sounds weird. You’re not dead.”
“No, I am not. After perhaps half a day I woke up. I am not sure, but it was long enough that night had fallen and the animals had come to…” She winced. “I will speak of that no more. I did not understand what had happened. Why I was no longer dead. To be honest, I cannot answer why to this day. I have died hundreds of times, Mr. Jones, in dozens of ways. But each time I did, even in the cases where my body had suffered incomprehensible damage, I woke up again only to find that I had been restored to the form you see before you now. And I have never grown a day older.”
Neither of them spoke for a long time. Then Artemis said, “Are you content with my answers, Mr. Jones?”
“I am.”
“Do you feel that we have started our relationship afresh? From the beginning?”
“Yeah. I do. I have more questions, but I hardly know where to start.”
“Leave your questions for the time being. We should go out and find something to eat. Starvation is not capable of killing me, but I do find hunger quite unpleasant.”
Oliver nodded. “One more, please?” Artemis nodded. “You said Artemis isn’t your real name. What is?”
“I have had dozens of names, but I have been calling myself Artemis since before the time of Plato, and that is what you will continue to call me. I have no desire to be called anything else.”
“Just tell me,” Oliver said. “I won’t use it, but I’d like to hear it just once.”
Artemis sighed. “Very well, Mr. Jones. If it is that important to you.” She took a breath. “My name is Aula. Are you now satisfied?”
“Aula,” Oliver repeated.
“I told you I did not wish to hear it.” Artemis gave him a stern look. “That name was for my family. You will not say it again.”
“I won’t,” Oliver said. “I just wanted to hear it once.” He smiled. “It’s pretty.”
Artemis regarded him for a moment, appearing to be trying to judge whether he was joking. Then she smiled, also. “It is, is it not? I liked it a great deal. I liked hearing my mother say it. I do not know what it meant in our language, or if it even had any particular meaning, but when my mother said it I heard the word love.”
Oliver had to wonder what name his own mother had given him, but that was going to have to wait. Artemis stood up. “Come, Mr. Jones. It is time to eat. Tomorrow will be a very long day for us.”
Oliver nodded. Of that much he was certain.
Chapter 11
The company jet was waiting for them at a small airport not far from Athens the next morning. Daniel Vega looked frazzled and not at all excited about the prospect of turning around and flying back to San Francisco, but Seven had promised him a large bonus in return for his continued work. Oliver suspected Vega had enjoyed a cocktail or two on the flight over, but he seemed alert enough to get them back to San Francisco. It wouldn’t be a terribly long flight, given that their plane treated the sound barrier like a pebble in the road.
Artemis didn’t speak much for the first few hours of the flight, appearing lost in her own thoughts. Oliver decided to leave her alone. Recent events and last night’s conversation seemed to have taken their toll on her. Oliver found it difficult to imagine how much Artemis must have lost during her long life. She’d told him once during an argument that everyone she’d ever loved was dead, but he’d shrugged it off at the time. Now he realized how much it must weigh on her. More than that, she was cursed with the knowledge that the cycle would repeat itself again and again. If she became attached to anything, she also knew she’d lose it in what must have seemed like the blink of an eye to her. Oliver found the thought overwhelming.
When Daniel Vega announced they had an hour to go until their landing, Artemis went into the galley and came back with two cups of steaming hot tea. She handed Oliver one. “Have a drink with me, Mr. Jones. I do not consume alcohol, so this is all I have to offer you.”
Oliver took the cup and blew on the hot liquid, and then took a sip. “Earl Grey?”
“No,” she said. She sat down across from him. “You are still not very good at identifying teas, I’m afraid.”
“I’m getting better.”
“That much is true. You did not confuse it for coffee.”
Oliver smiled. She was exaggerating, of course, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever enjoyed a cup of tea before he’d met Artemis. It had just seemed like poorly-flavored water to him. He considered that for a moment as they drank. Then he decided to broach a subject he’d been avoiding because he already knew he wouldn’t have much to contribute to it. “Have you come up with a plan?” he asked. “Because I’ve got nothing. I don’t know the first thing about how to fight with magic, and Armitage seems pretty invulnerable to everything else. Bullets just bounced off him.”
“I do not suppose you have been able to harness your abilities enough to put them to good use for us?” Artemis asked. “Perhaps you could do with Armitage what you did with the Kalatari and remove them from existence?”
“No. I wish I could say yes, but I haven’t been able to do anything interesting under pressure. It’s unpredictable.”
“That is more or less what I thought.”
“Sorry.”
“There is no need to be sorry, Mr. Jones. It was, at best, a longshot. As we are about to land, I will now reveal my plan to you.”
“Really? You’re actually going to tell me what’s happening this time?”
“Certainly,” Artemis said. “My plan is simple. I will surrender to Armitage, and in return he will return Mr. Jacobsen to human form and allow you both to leave unharmed. You may then do whatsoever you may wish.”
Oliver nodded sagely before what Artemis had said had a chance to sink in. Then he nearly did a double take. “You’re kidding, right? What makes you think Armitage would agree to that?”
“He has given me his word. That still counts for something with him.”
Oliver shook his head. “You’ve talked to him? When did you…did you call him when I was in the shower or something?”
“No.” Artemis sipped her tea. “When he touched something I had touched recently, in this case his gem, he gained the ability to project his consciousness to my location for a short time. We spoke last night. Well, I suppose spoke is the wrong word, but it will suffice.”
Oliver couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So you’re just giving up?”
“I am making a trade.” Artemis looked at him for a moment, but she seemed hesitant to make eye contact. “The sad truth, Mr. Jones, is that I am responsible for everything that has happened. Not only to Mr. Jacobsen, but to everyone Armitage has hurt. It is only correct that I pay the price for my failures. It is the only way to end this.” She sighed. “I failed with Armitage. I failed with Sally. I have failed…quite honestly, Mr. Jones, I have failed more than you could possibly imagine. I am very old, I am very tired, and I no longer have the energy to fight. This will end with me.”
Oliver put his empty tea cup down. “What’s gotten into you? I’ve never heard you talk like this before.”
“It has been a long time coming. I have no other solution for our current problem, and I will not let anyone else be hurt, or continue to be hurt, because of me.”
“This isn’t a solution at all,” Oliver said. He started to continue but suddenly noticed he was seeing double. He blinked and his vision returned to normal. “So Armitage kills you and then he runs off stealing souls and creating more of these…abominations, I guess. You’re leaving me and Tyler to hunt them down and take on Armitage? We can’t do that. We don’t know how.”
“There will be only one more abomination,” Arte
mis said. “And as I said, you destroy them with fire. Be sure that you are thorough.”
“What do you…” Oliver began. “Wait. You’re talking about you, aren’t you?”
“I am. Armitage needs only one more soul to achieve what he wants. Mine. I assume this is what he wanted all along. If he can add my life force to his own, immortality will finally be his.”
Oliver made a fist, but his hand felt oddly weak. “You’re sacrificing yourself…” He looked at his hand and noticed it had started to tremble. “I won’t let you do this,” he said. “I’ll fight Armitage myself when we land, with or without you. This isn’t…” Oliver suddenly noticed he wasn’t able to keep his fist clenched at all. His hand had become heavy, and now it slowly fell to his lap. It didn’t take him long to realize what had just happened. He looked at his tea cup, and then glared at Artemis. “Damn you,” he said. “I don’t believe this. You did it again.”
“Perhaps I have become too predictable,” Artemis said. “Although not so much you did not see that coming. This is why I did not tell you the plan earlier.”
“You drugged…” Oliver’s eyelids were getting heavy. “You drugged me.”
“Do not be angry with me, Mr. Jones. This was the only way.”
Oliver tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t move. The world was getting dark. Artemis didn’t do things in half measures. Whatever she’d put in his cup wasn’t just going to make him sleepy. It was going to knock him right out, and it was happening quickly. “I can’t believe you’d do this.”
“Say something else, Mr. Jones,” Artemis said. He couldn’t see her at all now, but he couldn’t be sure if his eyes had closed or if the world had simply gone dark. He fought it, but unconsciousness was closing in. “I would not have your last words to me be those of anger,” Artemis continued. “We would both regret it, although I will regret it for much less a period of time. Say something kind to me.” She paused. “Please?”
Oliver struggled to stay awake, but it was a lost cause. Artemis had a long history of knocking people out when she didn’t want to argue with them. It was one of the more annoying aspects of her personality. He tried to think of a clever remark, but sentence construction was a concept lost on him now. Still, he heard himself say one more thing before the blackness took him away. “I’ll find you.”
“How sweet,” he heard Artemis say, sounding as if she was far away. “Thank you, Mr. Jones. I will remember that statement. You are in charge now. Take care of my…” but then her voice dissipated like smoke in the wind and Oliver was lost to sleep.
Chapter 12
Later, although how much later he couldn’t be sure, Oliver felt himself stirring back to consciousness. He was still in his seat in the jet. Tyler, now in human form and wearing a fresh Hawaiian shirt, stood over him. One of his hands gripped Oliver’s upper arm, and concern was written all over his face. “Hey, buddy,” he said. His voice was quiet and mournful.
Oliver felt groggy, but otherwise didn’t seem to have suffered any side effects from what Artemis had done to him. “God damn it,” he said, his voice scratchy. “I can’t believe I fell for that.”
“Yeah,” Tyler said. “It’s a pretty good trick she does.”
Oliver rubbed his eyes. The lids still felt heavy, as if they’d been held down with weights in the recent past. “How long has it been?”
“Maybe two hours since you landed. Not much more than that.”
“What happened?”
“She got off the plane. They talked. Armitage turned me back into a human, and then he smashed her phone and they drove off.”
Oliver nodded. “They have two hours on us, then. Without her phone we can’t track them. Any idea where they were going?”
Tyler shook his head. “I had trouble understanding human speech when I was a dog,” he said. “I could only understand a few words here and there when Armitage and the Ripper were talking. None of it gave me an idea where they were going.”
“I need some air,” Oliver said. He stood up and headed for the exit. Once down on the tarmac he took a look around. As he’d expected, they were at the airport south of San Francisco they normally used. There didn’t seem to be a lot of activity here today. That was just as well. People turning from dogs into humans would be a difficult thing to explain away to any witnesses.
Daniel Vega sat on the hood of a town car a short distance away. He had a cigarette in his hands. “Did he see anything?” Oliver asked Tyler.
“I don’t think so,” Tyler said. “He didn’t get off the plane until I got on. I take it Artemis told him to sit tight in the cockpit.”
Oliver reached into his pocket and found his phone. “And you really couldn’t do anything to stop them?”
“I wanted to, but Artemis said no.” Tyler looked at the ground. “I’m ashamed of myself. Artemis said she was sorry for everything that happened to me and thanks for always being loyal.”
“Yeah,” Oliver said. “She was feeling pretty melancholy and it made her stupid.” He started dialing.
“I was always loyal,” Tyler protested.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh.” Tyler put his hands in his pockets. “Well, I’m sorry, buddy, but we lost this one.”
“We haven’t lost anything yet,” Oliver said. He gritted his teeth and waited as the phone rang. A moment later Seven answered. “Where are you?” Oliver asked.
“London.”
Oliver put him on speaker. “We lost Artemis. She sent you into the Vault as a distraction. She wanted you out of the way while she surrendered to Armitage.”
“I was afraid she might do something like that,” Seven said. “She’d never put her people in danger needlessly.”
Oliver wasn’t sure he agreed with that sentiment, but this wasn’t the time to have that discussion. “Look, it’s a long story, but he’s going to use this magic gem he’s got to steal her soul and turn himself immortal,” he said. “I don’t know how long we have, so we’re going to have to track them down fast.”
“We have three days,” Seven said.
“Okay, then let’s…” Oliver stopped. “How do you know we have three days?”
“I read it in Armitage’s grimoire.”
Tyler shook his head. “I thought that was a wild goose chase?”
“It probably was,” Seven said, “but we did have the grimoire. I figured it would be in the Piano Room, so that’s the first place I looked.”
“We have a Piano Room?” Oliver asked.
“Sure. There are no pianos in there, though. Hard to explain.”
Oliver glanced at Tyler, who held up his hands in a don’t ask me gesture. “And we have three days?”
“That’s what I read in the grimoire.”
“You read the thing?” Tyler asked.
“Sure,” Seven said. “I read everything. I can’t do any of the stuff in there, don’t get me wrong. Magic is an innate ability, like having perfect pitch or being able to see in the infrared light spectrum. I can read the stuff, though.”
“Remind me to bring you along next time we have to read a magic scroll,” Oliver said. “Anyway, how do you know it’s three days?”
“It was in his notes,” Seven said. “For something this size he’s going to want to be in a power nexus, and he’ll want to cast the spell on the brightest day of the full moon. That’s in three days.”
“Okay,” Oliver said. “So that gives us the when. How do we figure out the where? What’s a power nexus?”
“Do you know what ley lines are?”
“No,” Oliver said.
“Magic rivers,” said Tyler.
“Well, close enough,” Seven said. “If you wanted to call them magic rivers, then think about what would happen where they intersected.”
“There would be a lot of magic water,” Oliver said.
“Again, they’re not really rivers,” Seven said. “It’s just an analogy, and honestly, it’s not a very good one. It doesn’t
make a difference to anything we’re going to do, though.”
“Okay,” Oliver said. “I’ll look it up later. Or maybe I won’t. How do we find one?”
“There were only three known during Armitage’s lifetime,” Seven said. “One is in Peru, high in the mountains. One is near Shanghai. The other is about a hundred miles from here. It’s in the center of a group of standing stones, not far from Stonehenge. It’s a good bet he’ll choose that one, just because he’s been there before. Plus the one in Peru is guarded by some kind of giant animated skeleton. I’ve been meaning to get down there and try to classify the thing, but Artemis…”
“Okay,” Oliver cut him off. Giant skeletons made Peru seem unlikely, and he thought England would make more sense for Armitage than China. “I agree with you,” he said. “I guess it’s a little bit of a gamble, but we don’t have another way to find them.”
“Let’s go get his ass,” Tyler said. “And Jack the Ripper, too.”
“What do you want me to do?” Seven asked.
“Stay there,” Oliver said. “We’ll come to you. Make arrangements for our landing and then go back to the Vault and look for anything we can use against him. I don’t know. Some big-ass guns or something.”
“There isn’t much in the way of guns there,” Seven said. “Artemis stopped actively using Vault 2 in 1911. I’ll see what I can do, though.”
“See you soon,” Oliver said. He shut the phone off and yelled to Daniel Vega. “Hey! We’re going to need fuel. Lots of it.”
“You want to leave again?” Vega asked. “I just flew around the world.”
“You’re about to do it again,” Oliver said. “Don’t worry. We’ll pay you so much you can buy enough Scotch to last the rest of your life.”
Vega looked indignant for a moment, but then he turned and started for the hangar to get his equipment. Oliver watched him go.
“You want to stop by Vault 3 and pick up some guns?” Tyler asked.
“Definitely. Anything we can get our hands on. Are Sally’s weapons there?”
Interesting People (Interesting Times #3) Page 11
