Carl nodded uneasily. “This sounds like a bad idea. Why not just go to the Armory?”
I shook my head adamantly. “This is a step up from a terrible idea, which would be heading straight for the Armory. What if this whole ‘release from prison’ thing is a ruse? What if they’re somehow playing me much like I was toying with Ares and Apollo? What if they’re watching us right now and we lead them straight to fucking Pandora?”
Carl grimaced, glancing over his shoulders suspiciously. “I sense no one,” he said, not sounding convinced.
“They are gods, Carl. Let’s not pretend that we know their limits and capabilities. Neither should we give them too much credit,” I admitted with a growl, still shifting through the Tiny Balls. “It’s all a balancing act. Until I’m certain we don’t have a tail, we’re staying low.”
Carl glanced at his tail with a frown, shaking it for good measure. I rolled my eyes.
“Also, the moment I step foot on Chateau Falco’s grounds, the mansion will likely respond to my presence and everyone will know I’m back. I need to figure out a way to get into the Armory without alerting everyone. If Zeus is watching, he won’t be able to miss all of my friends being suddenly excited about my return because my Beast, Falco, couldn’t keep a secret.”
I sighed, realizing that I was getting agitated. I turned back to the Tiny Balls spread out before me. Most of these were designed to lead to specific places—marked with a rune or word on the inside of the clear glass marble. I held them up to the moonlight, quickly reading and discarding them: Falco, Sanctorum, Plato’s Cave, Kansas City…
I closed my eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and set that one to the side. Callie was in Kansas City. Another thing I had to deal with. I paused, realizing that I’d just referred to Callie as a thing to deal with, as if from a checklist, and I imagined Aphrodite’s smile of confirmation that she’d been right. I didn’t love her.
Kára’s predatory grin hit me a millisecond later, victorious that she had been right about the fact that I treated Callie more like a business partner than a potential girlfriend.
Was I really that much of an asshole? Not wanting to answer the obvious, I focused back on my task, fondling my Tiny Balls. I saw two for Niflheim and hesitated. That…could be helpful, actually. Especially with Aphrodite’s warning about needing to mask my presence in the event our Titan Thorns could be tracked. Last I’d checked, there were a ton of Sensates there.
I shoved that one into my pocket. We also needed somewhere to sleep away from prying eyes, and any god who chose to come to Niflheim had to suffer the effects of the mist that drained their powers. I wasn’t sure what lasting effect it might have on an Elder or a godkiller, but it was better than getting a hotel room since we needed to stay off the radar. Hotels had cameras and paperwork.
And any of my known properties with a bed would be an obvious guess for my hunters.
Because if the Olympians weren’t playing me, Ares and Apollo were going to turn over every rock to get me back into their torture chamber. They were personally invested in my misery, now, because their father was going to make them pay for their failure. Even if Aphrodite had freed me, that might not have happened if the brothers hadn’t left her unsupervised.
Zeus would find a way to make each of them feel guilty for it, capitalizing on their need for his affection. He truly was a sick man.
I almost let out a shout of relief to finally find a Tiny Ball linked to Grimm Tech. I carefully put the rest back into the velvet pouch and tucked it away inside my satchel.
“Here we go, Carl. Just keep a lookout so I can grab a few quick items. Stay close because we won’t be there long. We’re going straight for the Vault,” I said, holding up the marble.
The Vault was where I stored the most secret, dangerous, experimental projects involving magic and technology. I had a team of wizard scientists and engineers working around the clock to pretty much come up with the craziest shit they could think of. Or find a way to create any of the craziest shit I randomly emailed them. It was the research and development section of the company, and most of the company’s other employees knew nothing about it.
They only heard about the items I approved to be sent to market—the nonlethal ones.
“How do we get out after?” Carl asked, studying the marble in the moonlight.
I stared at him for about five seconds. “Shit.” The Vault had been warded to prevent Gateways in or out. I knew the Tiny Ball in my hand would work to get us in—because it had been designed to do exactly that—but any Tiny Ball thrown inside the Vault would do absolutely nothing. And that wasn’t even considering any new wards my employees might have put up.
Who was even running the Vault, now?
Regardless, escaping directly from the Vault was probably a hard no. If I had access to my own magic, I knew I could find a way out no problem. But the Titan Thorns prevented that. A new fear came to mind. Would our manacles set off the alarms? They were incredibly powerful, after all, and might be construed as weapons depending on what new wards had been implemented. What if Elders had been included in the wards? They might even have their own alarm tone.
My arms suddenly pebbled with the realization that it was a terrible, terrible plan.
I slowly turned to Carl. “Remember what I said about our plan being one step above a terrible idea?” He nodded. “Scratch that. We’re…going to need to purposely set off the alarms.”
He arched an eyebrow and pursed his lips. “Why?”
“Because without magic, the only way out of the Vault is through the only door in the room. I’ve got a code, but who knows if it’s still good.” His tail began to twitch nervously. “We need to alert security so they’ll open the doors for us. We’ll sneak out the door in the confusion. Once we’re out of the Vault, we should be able to use a Tiny Ball.”
“While the security guards shoot at us or try to kill us with fang and claw,” Carl said softly.
“And magic,” I added. “But there are plenty of things in the Vault that I can grab to help in that regard. Maybe I can find a shield of some kind.”
“This is no longer a stealth operation,” Carl said, staring towards the imposing warehouse. “And even though we will set off alarms, alert security, and then attempt to sneak past them…we cannot let them see who we are.” I nodded. “I hope I pass for a shifter dragon, then.”
I cringed, wondering if I should leave him out here. But I needed his eyes to keep watch. And he was much better at physical confrontation than me, of course. I needed the muscle. “Me, too.”
I ran through the mental list of items I knew we had inside the Vault, assessing what I could use to help our escape. As long as those items were still present and accounted for. There would likely be some kind of illusion spell.
“How many guards are we talking about?” Carl mused. “I can’t use my powers with these manacles, which leaves my only weapons right here,” he said, holding up his lethal claws.
I gritted my teeth. “Okay. You’re on look-out and distraction detail. I’ll be theft and deterrent.” I didn’t have anything in my satchel that would help in that regard—because I carried death on my hip. Nothing so juvenile as non-lethal weapons; my enemies played for keeps. I hoped the Vault personnel had been productive, making something that I could use for our escape.
I reached into my satchel, hoping to find a hat or bandana to help conceal our faces. I came up with nothing. Thankfully, it had rained recently and the air was warm. I quickly scanned the ground and found a muddy patch. “Perfect!” I began scooping globs of the dark mud onto my face and hair. Remembering that my shirt was familiar to my friends, I liberally coated that in mud as well. Carl sighed and began doing the same. Carl was a germaphobe and meticulous about keeping clean, so this was worse than our upcoming robbery to him.
He looked particularly depressed about further dirtying his pink coat. “We’ll find a warm place to wash up after,” I promised him. He suffered in silence.
Once finished, we stood facing each other, unable to bite back faint grins at how ridiculous we looked. The CEO and one of the most dangerous creatures in the known worlds now looked like a mud lizard and a homeless vagrant. At least security wouldn’t instantly assume me a wizard since the Titan Thorns blocked my powers. We might just be able to pull this off.
I took a deep breath and held the Tiny Ball up to the moonlight. I kissed it for luck, leaving a muddy smear on the clear surface.
Then I threw it on the ground, waited for the Gateway to scream open with a flare of sparks—an ominous start to our stealth operation—and leapt through.
21
Carl landed beside me and we quickly scanned our surroundings in a full circle, back-to-back like we’d done it a million times. Then his tail almost ankle-swept me onto my ass. I stumbled, but managed to keep my balance and step out of his range. It was the middle of the night, but that was when security was most alert.
The dark inner warehouse of the Vault was utterly silent and empty, and I let out a breath of relief as the Gateway winked shut behind us. We were standing in the center of a wide aisle, and about ten rows of massive shelves climbed twenty feet high on either side of us. The single entrance to the Vault stood behind us—complete with a glass-walled breakroom that hadn’t existed during my last visit.
At the opposite end of the warehouse was an open-concept laboratory, complete with tables of laboratory equipment, work desks, and filing cabinets. I spotted a few shelves bulging with dusty magical books. The computers were apparently hooked up to the massive monitors hanging from the ceiling, but I didn’t want to risk booting one of them up and trying to log on. That would defeat the purpose of hiding my identity, even though it would make my shopping easier. Because one thing was obvious.
Grimm Tech had developed far beyond what I had imagined.
For example, rather than chairs, I saw only workout balls. I rolled my eyes.
“Fucking millennials. Ruin everything. In my day, we wore chains to work and didn’t get to eat until we got home. We didn’t even have chairs! Whoever is running this place is too soft.”
Carl eyed me dubiously. I ignored him. He wasn’t a CEO. He didn’t know my troubles.
Several forklifts had been abandoned between the rows of shelves, and I saw a row of hazmat suits hanging near the lab area. That made me cringe with concern. But if the room itself had been poisonous, the hazmat suits would have been outside the Vault, not in here. The quarantine suits must have been set out for the handling of specific items on the shelves. Still…
What the hell had they been working on to need them?
Some of the storage rows had more shelves than others, depending on the size of the magitech stowed. The ambient security lighting bathed the room in a pale blue glow—just enough for us to make our way while remaining masked by shadows.
I straightened, relieved that an alarm hadn’t immediately announced our arrival.
“Okay, Carl. Take a quick look around for cameras or motion detectors. I don’t know what kind of security upgrades they’ve made in here. The stupid chairs and breakroom are new, so who knows what else they changed. Let me know what you find, and don’t accidentally set any alarms off,” I warned him. I waited for him to nod. “I’ll start gathering stuff.”
He crouched low and stalked over to the first aisle, turning out of my sight.
I slipped into the closest row, which was a few down from Carl, and took a quick inventory. Each shelf featured placards behind plastic sleeves, indicating the items stored on that particular shelf. Large blocks of tiny text that I couldn’t read in the dim lighting filled each card, and I suddenly felt overwhelmed at the dozens upon dozens of slips of paper…on this shelf alone.
I didn’t have time to read all of them. Not even all of them on this row. We needed to get out of here as fast as possible.
I froze, squinting at one of the placards. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief.
The millennial invasion…
Had saved my life. I was forced to concede that they had made at least one worthwhile donation to humanity.
One of them had probably been annoyed that his older coworkers always needed their reading glasses, so he had decided to include little symbols that indicated pertinent information on each inventory item—using a single symbol. No doubt to save himself from being endlessly harassed by his geezer coworkers who couldn’t read the damned microscopic print in this abysmal lighting—
I cut off, narrowing my eyes. “I’m an old geezer,” I admitted in a stunned whisper, horrified.
Emojis—the name of their strange, hieroglyphic-based, alien tongue—filled each placard.
Shields. Icicles. Fireballs. Skull and Crossbones. Chemistry flasks showing skulls with crossed-out eyes on the front. And dozens more. Rather than reading the texts, I resorted to scanning the emojis, silently thanking the millennial movement. Maybe I’d let them keep their stupid workout ball chairs. One of them. Only for the guy or gal who’d done the emoji thing.
Even with the symbols speeding things up, many of them were vague enough to make me hesitate. What did a yellow exclamation mark mean versus a green or red one? Safe, or not? Good deadly, or bad deadly? Time was not on my side, because I had no idea what time of night it actually was. What if it was close to morning?
I was currently in some kind of clothing section. That much, at least, was obvious. So, rather than wasting time, I made the best of my bottomless satchel, and transformed myself into a coupon-clipping all-star on Black Friday.
I flipped open my satchel and began tossing in absolutely anything that looked even remotely beneficial. I quickly scanned the placards to make sure the items wouldn’t explode or poison me on contact. Seconds later, I was scooping up the relevant placards along with the clothing.
The next shelves held massive machines, so I skipped over them, deciding that no matter what they did, they wouldn’t be practical in any upcoming fights. I saw a row of tiny stone Guardians and almost screamed in alarm, fearing they were active. They stared back at me lifelessly, and I let out a sigh of relief. I shoved them into my satchel and flipped the lid closed. Then I carefully moved two rows down, spotting blades and guns on the row closest to the door.
I grabbed a few strangely shaped blades and their respective placards before spotting an item that definitely didn’t make any sense. A stuffed teddy bear with shaggy brown hair—looking like those old Teddy Ruxpin toys—sat on a shelf all by himself. In the weapons section.
I stared into Teddy Ruxpin’s big plastic eyes, with a wary frown. I slowly scanned it, stepping laterally to make sure the eyes didn’t follow me or anything else similarly creepy. Nothing happened. I lunged at it aggressively, wondering if it would counterpunch me in the testicles or hit me with the People’s Elbow.
Teddy Ruxpin remained inert, daring me with his cute blue eyes and happy smile. Why was he in the weapons section? I would have thought he had been misplaced, but he had a placard with a crescent moon on it. “Silly old bear,” I muttered.
A forklift was parked between me and the next area of weapons, so I scooped up Teddy Ruxpin with a nervous laugh, and made my way around the obstacle, yawning…
I BLINKED BLEARILY, wondering why I suddenly felt so sleepy. I frowned to discover that I was sitting in the seat of the forklift I had meant to bypass. The Teddy Ruxpin bear was laying on the concrete floor, smiling savagely at me, his blue eyes looking demonic in the dim blue lighting.
I flinched instinctively, but I couldn’t halt the massive yawn that threatened to dislocate my jaw. Teddy watched me like a predator watching prey. “Creepy ass bear,” I mumbled, rubbing at my eyes. Why was I so tired, and when had I climbed onto the forklift?
My eyes settled on Teddy Ruxpin, and I noticed the placard had also fallen out of my hand. All I could make out was the crescent moon—
I stiffened, my eyes shooting wide as I immediately snapped out of my daze, panting.
“Motherfu
cker,” I whispered, violently slapping my cheeks in an attempt to wake up as I glared down at the stuffed animal. “Talk about lazy parenting,” I muttered, wondering who the hell had approved the idea to make a Teddy Ruxpin with the power to knock out his owner kid.
“Roofie Ruxpin, more like,” I growled, stumbling out of the forklift.
Carl came rushing around the corner and jumped in fright to see me climbing out of the forklift. “There you are!” he hissed, changing course to sprint my way. He looked panicked. “We need to go!”
My sphincter tensed at the tone of his voice. “Why? What happened—”
The lights in the room suddenly clicked on, almost blinding me. I cursed, dropping to the ground and hiding behind the shelves as I squinted to protect my vision. Voices suddenly filled the room as the security door opened and…a lot of fucking people walked into the Vault.
“I couldn’t find you,” Carl hissed, crouching down beside me, using the only row between us and our visitors to hide. Luckily, it contained the large machine devices, so we were safely out of view. “Where were you?”
I blinked at him, peering through the shelves to see about thirty goddamned people walking in through the main door. Luckily, none of them were guards.
Unluckily, they were worse. “Employees,” I hissed, staring at their white lab coats.
“Wizard employees,” Carl corrected in a grim whisper.
I nodded. “Shit,” I breathed. “This is bad. So fucking bad. Do you think we can sneak past them?” I asked. The wizard technicians were now filing into the breakroom, speaking in hushed but animated tones. Several couches and chairs, along with a few large tables and a small kitchenette, filled the glass-walled breakroom.
One woman was holding a plate with both hands, and the rest were all gathered around her. “What are they even doing here in the middle of the night?”
Carnage: Nate Temple Series Book 14 Page 15
