Owl and the Tiger Thieves Page 15

  That was one way to put it.

  “An unfortunate one, a very long time ago, and one of many mistakes of which I’ve since lost count. All that blood . . .” he trailed off, apparently remembering something more pleasant.

  Come on, Owl, think of a way to get out of here before you become dinner.

  “The amulets,” I tried, nodding at the two still clasped in his hand.

  “Ah yes! The Tiger Thieves—where was I? They are not altruistic, as the stories make them out to be—or easy to find. Malcontents and rebels one and all—set on visiting their form of justice on the supernatural communities. I suppose you’ve heard that they’re the righteous, the helpful?” His eyes reddened once again, the anger returning. “You’d be wrong. Otherwise they would have helped me a long time ago. History is written by the survivors, and there were not many back when they roamed the Silk Road. Now? In this modern era? They say nothing at all.” He gave me a toothy smile before shuffling back to his desk. “Rather like me.”

  I was relieved that the rotting mix of scents retreated, giving my nose a reprieve.

  “It’s been a long time since I remembered the Tiger Thieves and their amulet,” he said. “So I suppose I have you to thank for that. Did I mention I do like visitors? Blood really is quite the distraction, especially with global travel in this time. So many flavors and delicacies.”

  Okay, Owl, keep him off the topic of fresh blood . . . “What happened to my companion?”

  “Ah, your incubus friend? I fear he is indisposed at the moment.” Leonardo stood up and pulled back a brown-stained cloth. Underneath was Artemis, unconscious and prone. Leonardo crouched over him and with a heavy glass syringe removed a sample of the incubus’s blood. Artemis didn’t so much as wince. So much for the cavalry.

  Keep Leonardo off the topic of blood . . . “I’ve never heard of anyone—supernatural or otherwise—able to reverse a turning,” I said cautiously.

  Leonardo clucked his tongue. “Ah, yes, but that would require a true turning, now, wouldn’t it? And though I share some of their traits, even your cat has discovered that I’m not a vampire—not truly, at any rate.”

  Something I’d come across in his journal struck me, about the elixir components he’d experimented with—pixies, incubi, fairies—vampires . . .

  “You did this to yourself, didn’t you?” It also explained why Artemis had been confused by his scent. “And you think the Tiger Thieves can fix you?” I felt a spike of hope surface. If they could fix Leonardo, why not Rynn? Whatever the elves had done to the Electric Samurai armor couldn’t be worse than what da Vinci had done to himself.

  Leonardo hissed at me, flashing his canines and the reddened whites of his eyes. “Can? Certainly. But will they? Of course not. Why would they want to save Leonardo? Did this to myself—an eye for an eye, they like to think.” He spat and it hit the water, sending out shallow ripples. “Warnings? They never warned me of this.” His eyes flickered for a moment as his sneer turned into a grin. “Eye for an eye, they’ll learn what Leonardo can do.” He shook a cardboard box filled with objects not unlike the one Artemis had found.

  My stomach turned as I saw another silver bat peek over the edge. A weapon against the supernatural.

  “Revenge. It’s one of the few things that keeps me from draining every human I encounter.” He glanced at me. “Well, I suppose delay is a more accurate word.” He glanced up at the ceiling. “Or perhaps whet my appetite,” he said, picking up the canvas bag holding Captain.

  Captain, as if sensing the shift in attention, growled and lashed out, his claws cutting through the canvas and grazing Leonardo’s chest. Da Vinci, apparently aware of what a Mau could do, stumbled back.

  He turned on me and let out a snarl, once again flashing his yellow fangs. “You put your Mau up to that, didn’t you? And here I thought we were being civil.”

  Time to bargain before da Vinci’s sanity could slip any further. “Look, we’re both trying to find the Tiger Thieves. Wouldn’t it make more sense to”—I was about to say “work together,” but not even the most gullible would buy that—“share information?”

  Da Vinci considered that and smiled. “I’ll tell you what, give me the incubus and I’ll tell you everything I know about the Tiger Thieves, hmmm?”

  Wow. This was a conundrum. Throw Artemis under the bus in exchange for information on the Tiger Thieves, or try to save him. I mean, in general I’m against the idea of handing anyone over to vampires, but it was Artemis . . . Sometimes I really hate my conscience . . . not that it wasn’t tempting, but considering his current state, I didn’t think da Vinci was one to pay the fuck up on his deals.

  “No offense, but leaving him here wouldn’t be doing you any favors. Isn’t the serum what got you into this mess in the first place?” Da Vinci’s smile fell. I added, “And I’m not at all certain you’ll hold up your end of the deal.”

  His smile returned. “Isn’t that one of the spices of life? Uncertainty? Consider it a hypothesis. Will I or will I not kill you? Or perhaps I’ve found another way to outwit you.”

  At first I thought the movement was my imagination—Artemis was still lying on the floor, his eyes closed. Then I saw his index finger twitch, followed by a tapping sound, barely audible over the water . . . it was a song, one of Artemis’s from the late nineties, “I Have a Plan.”

  Because relying on Artemis’s plans was such a fantastic idea.

  I gave a quick, slight shake of my head when da Vinci turned back to his desk, hoping Artemis would see it.

  “Now, where’s that syringe?” da Vinci mumbled, back to the harmless-old-man routine. “It’s a special one—I know I left it somewhere around here—ah!” He turned back to face me, a long glass syringe in his hand, much larger than the one he’d just used. “You know, in all of my elixir experiments, I never once tried spinal fluids—I think that’s something to be explored, no?”

  The tapping from Artemis increased in intensity, changing the rhythm while he kept his eyes shut. Another song, this one called “More Time.”

  I made a face.

  “And of course I’ll need to try the Mau blood.”

  What the—? I whipped my head up.

  “And possibly some of the other fluids. It’s hard to say what will work, but I’m hopeful your Mau’s antivampiric properties will counteract the less savory side effects of the vampirism keeping me alive.”

  I glanced back at Artemis. One of his eyes was open. I mouthed “fine” at him. Buy the incubus more time from the psychotic vampire. I just hoped Artemis’s plan involved getting all of us out. With my luck he’d be gone before I could scream.

  I watched da Vinci as he worked, mumbling to himself—dilutions, order, purification all reached my ears—but it reeked of the ramblings of a man driven mad by desperation and obsession.

  Desperation. Maybe that was my ticket.

  I kept the journal and the pendants in my sights. “Look, why not try the Tiger Thieves again? It’s had to have been what? Five hundred years?”

  “Those glorified assassins?” da Vinci hissed. “The ones responsible for my decrepit predicament?”

  I swallowed at the way da Vinci held the spinal syringe as if it were a knife, his thin hands turning white. The Tiger Thieves were definitely a sore spot. Kudos, Owl, you guessed right—though I doubted there was any kind of door prize.

  I did not like the look of those fangs. “Well, you know, even the supernaturally inclined have to change management occasionally—I’d imagine after five hundred years it’d be worthwhile to try them again. I mean, who knows? They might be more willing to listen to you now—shit.” I leaned back as da Vinci closed in on me, rattling the spiked ball hanging above my head. Artemis still hadn’t done a damn thing.

  “Supernatural?” da Vinci snorted. “The Tiger Thieves are poor imitations, the lot of them. Not worth the time of day compared to what I achieved. They’re as much at odds with the real supernaturals as paltry humans such as yourself.�
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  Not that I wasn’t fixated on the swinging spiked ball suspended overhead, but even I couldn’t help catching what he had said. Not supernatural or human? Now, that was interesting. I filed that tidbit away and nodded to the box he’d been rifling through. “All the better, then. I mean, I’d think they’d be interested in your devices now—like that one,” I said as he lifted a small, smooth metallic orb that had been broken into two pieces out of the box.

  Another huff from da Vinci. I could smell the mildew and algae that had taken up residence in his clothes over the years. The ones he’d probably stolen from his victims.

  “This old thing?” he asked, holding up the orb. “It barely works. It was supposed to drain supernaturals of all their powers, but it does little more than wound them. Tried it on a vampire once. It died a wretched death, screaming in agony while it shriveled into a dusty corpse. One of my failures, that.”

  “You kidding? That sounds pretty fantastic to me. All right, you’re right! It’s one of your biggest failures, my mistake.” I cringed as I smelled his acrid breath, devoid of the bacteria smell but rotting nonetheless—rotting while he lived. But the look on his face— I hazarded a glance at Artemis. I hoped to hell he’d made some progress . . . oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me.

  Gone. He was gone. Completely fucking gone. He hadn’t even bothered to loosen the tie on Captain’s canvas bag prison.

  Ungrateful, lousy, no-good—

  “Any last words?” da Vinci whispered. His eyes had turned a weepy red. He licked his lips, running them over the yellow fangs. “I’m truly sorry about this, but I believe I have enough sketched here to remember you and your cat by.”

  I glanced back up at the metal spikes glinting above me. Da Vinci was oblivious as he loomed over me. I held my breath—not to keep out the vampire pheromones or whatever neutered version he produced—but to keep out the miasma of the lingering death that shrouded him.

  I’d have to time it perfectly . . .

  “That is the nature of my cursed existence. But you know what they say, genius always suffers for art.”

  His fangs were extended, the saliva gleaming as he gripped my hand and turned the wrist over, exposing my blue-green veins. “I’d like to say I’ll only take a bite, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop. It really has been lovely meeting you.”

  I glanced back up at the cannonball. Please let this work . . . “Wish I could say the same,” I said. As soon as he bent to bite my wrist, I kicked back the chair with as much force as I could muster.

  The world went in slow motion, and for a brief moment I watched the cannonball detach from the pulleys. My chair fell backwards, but caught in vampiric bloodlust da Vinci didn’t—or couldn’t—let go. His eyes went wide as realization struck him, but it was too late. The cannonball struck as the back of my chair crashed to the floor. I only heard the spikes crunch into his skull—and saw the aftermath as I scrambled up. Captain bleated in his bag, sensing that he’d missed a fight. I pushed myself up and went to untie him. “Trust me, this wasn’t the vampire fight you wanted. Who knows whether your saliva would even have made a dent?”

  Captain grumbled but settled for sniffing at the body. Da Vinci might have stumbled across an elixir of longevity, but it sure hadn’t been one of immortality—as his very dead and mangled corpse told me.

  Normally I’d celebrate a near-death escape. On the one hand, I’d gotten rid of a serial killer; on the other, he had been a victim—one of his own making but a victim nonetheless. I couldn’t celebrate that.

  “Well, that was quite the show. Not the way I would have done it—”

  Artemis was leaning casually against the small door frame. My anger returned in spectacular form. “Buy me time? So what, you could save your own skin?”

  If my tone bothered him, he showed no sign of it. “You got out. Both of us did, and without losing anything.” He frowned as he glanced at da Vinci’s corpse. “Well, except maybe for your dignity. Do you realize who you just killed? Possibly one of the greatest minds your species has ever spawned.”

  “He was a decrepit vampire.”

  He seemed to think about that as he crouched down by da Vinci’s body. “Be that as it may, you’ve more than lived up to your reputation of destroying ancient sites. I mean, technically—”

  “Technically I killed a serial killer vampire who was about to eat me.”

  Artemis didn’t look convinced. He was the last person I needed to sway to my side. “Look, just wait there while I look through his things and, I don’t know, entertain my cat.”

  Artemis said something under his breath but otherwise did as I asked—namely stayed back. While I rummaged through the desk, Artemis examined da Vinci’s corpse.

  “Not that I socialize with many vampires, but are they supposed to look this decrepit?”

  I shook my head as I checked the journal to make certain it was the one with the references to the Tiger Thieves. It was. “No. Granted, the oldest vampire I’ve met is only three centuries. I’ve seen vampire flunkies look like that but it’s more a consequence of pheromone addiction.” The Tiger Thief pendants were both lying on the desk next to the wooden box da Vinci had been rummaging through, the one with the broken weapons. I picked up both of the necklaces and ran my fingers over the gold lines that decorated each before tucking them both inside my jacket. I paused, my eyes falling on the box.

  I couldn’t resist. I picked up the broken silver orb da Vinci had claimed could drain a supernatural of their power and rolled it over in my hand. It looked simple enough: a silver sphere split almost in half, the halves hanging on to each other by metal chains and copper threads, decorated with small pinpoint-precise holes and other markings I imagined had to be arcane.

  Broken things could be fixed. I began to search the desk for blueprints that matched the orb.

  “What is that?” Artemis asked from where he was now emptying da Vinci’s pockets. I had a disturbing flashback to the peculiar looting style of World Quest, where the longer you looked for treasure on a victim the rougher things got—disturbingly so . . .

  With a shiver I exiled that to the back of my mind. This was not World Quest, and Artemis didn’t have da Vinci by the ankles to shake him out.

  “Not sure,” I said, which was partially true. “But I got the impression da Vinci thought the Tiger Thieves might be interested in it.” Not entirely untrue. They might be interested in it. I certainly was.

  Now, where the hell were the blueprints?

  Even though I had my back to Artemis, I got the sinking suspicion he wanted to argue as I rifled through the piles of papers. He didn’t get a chance.

  Both of us came to a standstill at the sound of a crash upstairs, as if a door—or a wall—had been broken in.

  I waited to hear footsteps or voices but none followed. “Maybe it was an act of God?” Lack of structural integrity, a beam that was destined to go and just happened to do so now?

  Artemis shook his head. “That was intentional.”

  “Vampires or another monster?”

  He shook his head once more. “The monsters don’t make that much noise.”

  That narrowed it down to a whopping two possibilities. Either someone had stumbled into the old rooms—unlikely—or someone had come looking for us. “IAA,” I said. It was my best guess, plus they were experts at bad timing . . .

  The building shook once more, but it wasn’t an earthquake or questionable structural integrity. It had been an explosion, I’d bet what was left of my thieving reputation on it. This time the murmur of voices reached us.

  “Since when does the IAA use explosives?” Artemis asked.

  I shook my head. “They don’t.” Which meant it was someone else. I knew one group after artifacts that had no issues throwing around small explosives. Mercenaries. And Rynn and his crew were the only ones with a reason to be following me.

  Artemis came to the same conclusion. He checked the stairwell from the cover of the work
shop. He darted back just as quickly, shutting the workshop door and throwing the lock. He grabbed my arm. “All right, change in plans. Can you keep the cat quiet?”

  The question caught me off guard. “Except for vampires? Usually.”

  Apparently that was good enough. He pulled me towards one of da Vinci’s closets and began throwing out enough contents that the two of us could fit inside.

  Then he tried shoving me and Captain in. “Hiding in a closet? Are you out of your mind?”

  “Trust me.”

  “No!”

  Artemis glanced over his shoulder as footsteps hurried down the staircase. They’d reach the small platform in no time if they hadn’t already, and then they’d be breaking down the door. Sure enough, the battering ram started pounding the door and shaking the room.

  Artemis pursed his lips and shoved me and Captain inside before getting in himself and shutting the door.

  “Wait a minute—” The rest of my sentence was muffled by Artemis’s hand.

  “I understand your reluctance to trust me, but believe me when I say I have no intention of running into my illustrious warlord cousin today.”

  I tried pulling his damned hand off my mouth. When that didn’t work, I pinched him as hard as I could.

  “If I take my hand off, will you keep your bloody voice to a whisper?”

  I glared but nodded. Even if I wanted to find a different way out, I’d be hard pressed before they broke down the door. Besides, there might not be one.

  Slowly he unmuffled me, searching my face for any sign that I might ignore his warning.

  “What I was trying to say,” I whispered, “is that the closet is the worst place to hide.” The battering ram hit the door to the workshop again and fragments of plaster and wood rained down on us.

  Artemis’s upper lip curled. “No, it isn’t,” he hissed back.

  The room shook once more, this time accompanied by a cracking sound. “Are you out of your mind? As soon as they see the body, this is the first place they’ll check! If we were smart, we would have hid the body in here and looked for another way out!”