Owl and the Tiger Thieves Read online

  I let Captain out first to scope the room, and once he gave the OK, I stepped inside and set up my laptop before I even considered hopping into the shower. I opened the files I’d collected on Timbuktu and the temple.

  As I said, wasting any of the hours I had would be, well, a waste.

  I pulled up an old map of West Africa showing Timbuktu during the Middle Ages, when it had still been one of the most important trade cities on the Silk Road, the gateway between Europe and the infamous salt mines of the Sahara Desert.

  Timbuktu had been part of the Malian Empire during its heyday in the Middle Ages—that is, until the neighboring nations invaded. After a hundred years of warring, Morocco ended up with it, having decided it was a nice addition to its own empire. Timbuktu became the capital of the Moroccan Empire, which promptly managed to run it into the ground. By the time da Vinci was alive, Timbuktu was little more than a dusty, run-down Silk Road legend, a remnant of a fallen empire and a lost city at the end of the world. A good example of how the mighty can fall.

  I covered my eyes to rest them, and when I opened them again it was the Tiger Thieves medallions that they rested on.

  I made myself look away from the medallions, even with their gold lines flickering under the lights. I’d learned the hard way that things that called to me were usually not my friends, no matter what they promised . . .

  Captain stretched and yawned from his spot behind my computer. I focused back on the screen and the details of the temple, trying to notice anything I might have missed, however slight.

  I found my thoughts drifting towards da Vinci’s silver ball, a device that could incapacitate supernaturals, strip the magic right off of them. At least that was more or less what da Vinci had said.

  Broken or not, what I’d be able to do with that kind of magic . . .

  I forced my eyes back on the screen. I wasn’t that reckless or desperate. Yet.

  I placed da Vinci’s device back in my bag well out of sight and zippered it shut. Oricho and I had a plan, which was finding the Tiger Thieves and convincing them to help us wrangle Rynn. I did not need to go chasing down every magic rabbit hole I found.

  “Then why does it leave such a bad taste in my mouth, Captain?”

  He lifted his head, yawned, and mewed.

  I sighed. If this was being responsible . . . I checked my email. There was only a quick message from Oricho saying he’d received my message that I was in Timbuktu and wishing me luck. Nothing with regard to the situation in Tokyo. That worried me, but there was little I could do.

  There were three other emails, though, one from Nadya and the second from none other than Lady Siyu. Nadya’s was brief, a quick update on Tokyo with a handful more details than Oricho had offered. It boiled down to things getting weird—supernaturals misbehaving and strange happenings reported in the news.

  I swore. Making the news at all meant that despite Oricho’s and the IAA’s best efforts, things were unraveling.

  I sighed. Well, I’d see how bad it got, then I’d start to worry.

  The one from Lady Siyu was short and to the point, berating me for the lack of any progress and skipping the Vatican. She wanted to know what item I was fetching for Mr. Kurosawa in North Africa and what I had found in Venice. I swore. I’d need to come up with something to explain the travel, and soon; otherwise they’d start wondering exactly what the hell I was doing running all over the planet.

  There was also an email from the World Quest duo saying that they had no fucking clue how and why World Quest was still online but that I could go to hell and stop emailing them.

  Fucking fantastic . . . assholes . . .

  I sent a sharply worded message back, telling Frank he owed it to Carpe if not me to look. It’d at least get the two of them thinking.

  The next stop on the Tiger Thieves’ trail, according to da Vinci and the map Artemis had uncovered, was the Temple of Shifting Faces—Shifting Gods was more like it. The temple had been reused and co-opted by various gods over the years, many of them long forgotten with the fall of the Silk Road. Supposedly, according to the texts that existed, this one hadn’t been named for a god but for the way the temple walls changed colors in the shifting sunlight. If I had to guess, I imagined that they’d used polished sandstone or some reflective stone layered over the top of the structural stones, like a veneer. You wouldn’t think that to look at it now; it was little more than a handful of pitted, worn sandstone pillars peeking out of the sand.

  Still, despite my research, the one thing I really wanted to know eluded me: why, out of all the temples in ancient Timbuktu, had the Tiger Thieves picked this one in which to leave their bread crumb?

  I hated going into a job with only half the information.

  I glanced at the time on my screen: 6:30 p.m., half an hour away from sunset and therefore time to head to the temple remains. Artemis had insisted on nightfall because he’d be able to hide us easier in the dark from any supernaturals that might be lurking around.

  Considering we were on the edge of a war zone and the Sahara, I’d have been surprised if there hadn’t been something sneaking about. I hoped Artemis was sober . . .

  I stood up to get ready and got a whiff of myself. Despite the air-conditioning and fans, I was in desperate need of a shower. I headed for the small bathroom and turned the water on.

  I caught sight of my face in the mirror above the sink. I was still gaunt and needed to gain back a couple of pounds and catch up on sleep, but the reflection that stared back at me was markedly better than it had been in Las Vegas. I was on the mend, despite what both Artemis and Rynn had hinted at about my being damaged goods. I was not hell bent on destroying myself.

  My eyelids felt heavy as I tried to focus on my reflection. That made me frown. I hadn’t been about to fall asleep moments before; if anything, that should have happened while I’d been sitting at my laptop, not while standing up and about to take a shower.

  My head slumped forward like a rag doll’s, my eyes weighted shut.

  “Alix?”

  I lifted my head and forced my eyes back open as Artemis’s voice reached me. “Where the hell are you? We’re supposed to be leaving now.”

  I blinked again, trying to force my eyes to stay open. His voice was distant but clear.

  I shook my head to clear the sleep fog that had settled over me and stared at my dark circles. The water was still pelting in the shower. I hadn’t even made it in. I must have been more tired than I realized. I don’t fall asleep like that—not standing on my feet and sober.

  I turned off the hot water and pulled my jeans, T-shirt, and jacket back on. Body odor would have to wait.

  There were three bangs on my hotel door. I swore under my breath. “Coming—sorry, didn’t mean to run late.” Damn it, I was apologizing to him. My head was most definitely not screwed on right today.

  Clothes on, I opened the bathroom door and almost stepped on Captain.

  Instead of bleating his displeasure, he stretched, arched his back, and curled around my feet. I frowned at him. Odd, he didn’t normally behave this affectionately—not with me, at any rate.

  He leapt up onto the sink and pressed his front paws up against the fogged glass, leaving small footprints in their wake. He gave me a baleful mew.

  I frowned. That was definitely new. Captain didn’t bother being polite—not even with me.

  He jumped down from the vanity. There was definitely something under the fog . . . I wiped the paw prints away with the sleeve of my flannel shirt and peered at the glass.

  There was something wrong with the reflection of the bathroom. I took note of my surroundings: familiar white tiles and tempered soft lighting. When and how the hell had I gotten back to Vegas?

  My knees wavered, and my stomach lurched. I grasped the counter to stop myself from face-planting on the floor.

  Damn it, what the hell was going on? It wasn’t as though I’d eaten anything. My thoughts drifted as my eyes fell on the reflection in the
mirror. Rynn’s face stared back at me this time. His eyes were as cold as they’d been in Shangri-La, but more calculating. I squinted as words began to unravel in what was left of the fog. “I warned you. Time to pay the piper, Alix.”

  With that he was gone—Rynn, the words, the fog . . .

  I stumbled out of the bathroom and spotted my laptop on the desk. I’d been doing something important on it.

  I frowned and sat down. The window was open to my World Quest game screen. There was a reason I hadn’t been playing recently. Why was that?

  Something flashed at the bottom of the screen. A message window. Carpe. Something pinged at my memory; there was something strange about that . . .

  I opened the message box. Careful, Byzantine—you may have bitten off more than you can chew.

  Before I could decode the message, I started as something banged at the door.

  I swung it open. No one was there. I checked down the hall both ways, but still no one and nothing appeared.

  I closed and locked the door and headed back to my desk. The World Quest screen was gone. I tried to pull up my message window with Carpe, but it was no use. I gripped my head as my mind reeled with pain.

  Captain meowed from his lookout on top of the bookshelf, his tail flicking at me. He hissed, ears back, fangs extended. A cold shiver made its way up my spine. There was only one reason Captain would hiss like that.

  I startled again as a glass broke. It had come from the small kitchenette. I headed to the sink, but couldn’t find any broken glass. Instead, there was a drink on the counter. Tequila on rocks—not ice—with a lime already in it. I picked it up and sniffed. Top shelf—sipping tequila—and the rim had been salted.

  I placed it back on the counter oh so carefully. Only one person I knew poured tequila like that.

  I spun again only to see none other than Rynn sitting at my computer. He was dressed casually in jeans and a long-sleeved black-and-gold T-shirt and bike boots. I could even smell his sandalwood cologne. There was no sign of the Electric Samurai armor that the elves had bound to him, corrupting both him and it in the process.

  I reached for the counter to steady myself, my throat dry at the sight of him. It had to be my mind playing tricks on me . . . For the briefest of moments I even let myself wonder if I’d dreamt the whole thing: the Electric Samurai, Shangri-La . . .

  “It is your mind playing tricks on you,” Rynn said, his face taking on a cruel smile that had no right being on his face. His eyes flared blue. I looked away—at the tequila on the counter, the clock, the fridge’s LED—anything to avoid his eyes.

  “Alix? Look at me.”

  Unable to resist the command, I faced him. Whereas before his eyes had been either a brilliant gray or blue, now they were a pale glacial shade. If I just kept watching, forgetting whatever it was that was nagging at the back of my thoughts . . .

  It was the cold ice reaching into my thoughts that stopped me. I’d seen a lot of things in those eyes over the past year—disappointment, compassion, caring, frustration, exasperation—the last usually directed at me—but cold, calculated indifference hadn’t ever made that list.

  That undid whatever the hell supernatural bullshit Rynn was trying to put over on me. I threw off the grogginess and the living room lost some of its defined edges, as if my buying into the fantasy had been part of the kindling fueling the believability. Now it was only a blurry haze of something half remembered—whether in my or Rynn’s thoughts.

  “A bit of both,” Rynn offered. Unlike this place, his voice was clear, cutting, underlined with a cruelty I’d convinced myself I’d imagined in Shangri-La. He regarded me. “To be honest, I think you would have enjoyed things much better if you’d bought in a little longer.”

  I swallowed. This wasn’t really Rynn. Not anymore—or not right now. “You know me, Rynn. I hate cheap impressions.” I suppressed a shiver.

  His eyes narrowed. “Hardly cheap, arranging this.”

  I forced a smile. “I was talking about you.”

  The temperature in my strange dream dropped to positively icy as Rynn’s eyes bored into me.

  What was it they said happened if you died in a dream? That had to be a myth, right?

  Watching Rynn observe me, I wasn’t so certain . . .

  The room wavered, and the glass vanished from my hand. I glanced at Rynn; the jeans and T-shirt had vanished as well, replaced with the armor in all its black, modern glory.

  I took a step back, and the room shuddered as though a violent wave passed through it.

  I wondered . . . I stumbled into a chair, knocking it over, as I continued to back up and put more space between me and Rynn. “I think I’ll keep my own grip on reality, if it’s all the same to you.” I nodded at the apartment. “So what is this? A figment of my imagination?”

  He smiled—not cruelly, there’d have to be more emotion for that. In anticipation, like a cat stalking a mouse. “In part. It’s real enough. As real as I want it to be.”

  If that was true, I really could have used that glass of chilled tequila about now.

  Well, where alcohol fails me, sheer bravado often serves as a cheap replacement. It’s just as much trouble, there’s just not nearly the hangover or buzz. I remembered that I kept a set of knives near the sink. I changed direction as I continued to put distance between me and Rynn.

  “So, up to anything new?” I nodded at his outfit. “Besides the new wardrobe? Can’t say it’s an improvement, though it does suit the new eye color. Let me guess, contacts?” My back bumped into the drawer, and I reached behind me as carefully as possible.

  Amusement danced across Rynn’s features, and another chill coursed through me, this one freezing me in place. Well, there went my knife plan. It was all I could do not to cut and run—not even Alexander and Lady Siyu looked at me with that kind of calculating malcontent, and the two of them really wanted me dead.

  As if reading my thoughts, Rynn said, “I haven’t decided whether I want to see you dead, Alix. Though I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t quite seem to determine why I used to care so much whether you survived. That’s what’s become so perplexing about this.” He glanced away from me, and the cold gripping me in place lessened. I keeled forwards.

  “You’re an anomaly. An interesting one.” He torqued his head to the side. “Tell me, were you going to let yourself waste away in that dungeon?”

  Son of a bitch. All this time Rynn had been playing me. He’d been able to walk into my thoughts whenever he wanted to.

  “Dreams, not thoughts. You need to be asleep—and it won’t work with just anyone. Only those I had a connection to . . .” He trailed off, and I thought I saw conflict cross his features, but only a flicker. “Before,” he finally said.

  I chastised myself for not taking Rynn’s threat more seriously. How powerful would an incubus have to be to actually start wandering into people’s thoughts?

  Dangerously so, was the answer.

  And here I was. A human, defenseless except for the small fact that Rynn seemed more interested in toying with me.

  Yet how much did he actually know? Walking through my dreams was one thing, but I caught the edges wavering again every time he used his powers in other ways. Time to test the theory . . .

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  He arched his eyebrows. “For starters, I want to finish wresting power from the supernaturals who think they’re in charge.”

  “For whom? To what end?”

  “For myself.” The perplexed frown was back as he renewed his icy evaluation of me. “And you’re stalling. I remember your tricks. It won’t work, whatever it is you’re trying to achieve.”

  He couldn’t read my mind. He could break in and walk around my house but not open the closets and drawers . . . or something like that. Another waver. Rynn was losing control of the dream. If I could just keep him talking . . .

  “Alix,” he said, more forcefully, the cold smile fading into a tight line. I’d used
up whatever patience Warlord Rynn had for me. “I know you’ve got something underhanded going on in that rattled head of yours—I can feel it.”

  I shrugged. “I’m just a human, Rynn—one of a few billion. I wander around, steal stuff for Mr. Kurosawa. I haven’t really thought that much about you at all.”

  The tight line of Rynn’s mouth turned downwards as he regarded me, and my limbs chilled. Another waver, stronger this time, like waves crashing violently. “I will warn you this one last time. Whatever it is you are up to, whatever plans you have cooked up in your mad head, stop.”

  I clenched my teeth against the cold, my mind set on riding it out. The armor hadn’t made Rynn omnipotent.

  He got off the counter and walked towards me, slowly, like a predator—more snake than cat . . .

  He grabbed my neck too fast for me to block and bared his teeth. “I don’t have the time to chase after you. Stay out of my way.”

  “Or what?” I managed between gulps of breath.

  His grip tightened. “You don’t think I won’t kill you?”

  I smirked at him, hoping to hell my second hunch in this strange, weird dream was right. “I don’t think you can.” I put as much arrogance behind it as I could muster with my throat trapped.

  The icy grip tightened, and I saw the fury in his eyes.

  If there was one thing I knew about Rynn and his powers, he had a bitch of a time dealing with them when he was angry. It was why he’d always kept so much control over his temper and berated me so much when I went off the program or grid.