Owl and the Tiger Thieves Read online

  “Less questions, more searching.” He stepped outside the cell.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the old guards’ room I passed, I think I saw some weapons.”

  Shit. He really was hiding something. I followed him out. “Artemis?” I whispered at his back down the hall.

  He ignored me.

  “Artemis!” I called out, louder this time.

  He turned, hands open at his side. “I may have—been quick to dismiss my misgivings earlier.”

  Shit. I spun on my heels, searching the hall, my ears open for something, anything. But there was no movement or sound, not a trace of anyone there. I spun back around on Artemis.

  “It’s hard to describe, but the scent’s changed, like death—and there’s something electric in the air, I can feel it on my skin. As if someone plugged in every appliance they could find and turned things on high. Imagine you could hear the fuse box,” he added at my confused expression. “Now imagine it’s screaming, as if it’s about to blow.”

  Shit. I needed to find the medallion and get out. “Go—” I said to Artemis as I skidded back into the Hatter’s cell, checking it over with my flashlight once again, anywhere Jack could have reached from his irons. There were no loose stones, no dug-out mortar; nowhere to hide an inmate’s valuables . . .

  Why the hell did pirates have to be so damn good at hiding their treasure? As bad as the Dragon—

  Scratch that. Dragons might build a bitch of a warren or death maze, but they left their treasure fortresses out where everyone could see them.

  “Owl?” Artemis called. He stopped just outside the cell, bracing himself on the entrance, eyes wide, a single age-dulled sword gripped in his hand.

  “Find anything?”

  He shook his head. “And it’s getting stronger.”

  I swore and fell back on my ass as the stone fortress’s foundations shook. Thankfully only a few bits of loose mortar rained down on us. Please say Jack hadn’t bartered it away.

  “We need to go now,” Artemis said, backing out of the cell, his voice worried.

  “I need another minute!” Maybe it really wasn’t here; maybe I’d spent the last two months on one giant, useless goose chase . . .

  The fortress shook again—this time not as strongly, but carrying with it the pungent smell of a dank, stagnant cave.

  “Remember what I said about there not being any magic in this place? I take it all back.”

  Think, Owl—shit! I dropped back to the floor as the dungeon shook for a third time, longer and stronger than it had either time before. When the dungeon once again came to a rest, I picked up the distant sound of clicking—faint, like teeth chattering.

  Artemis heard it too. “Now!” he said, gripping the sword he’d found. “Or I’m leaving you to fend off whatever that magic is heralding.”

  “What the hell do you plan to tell Lady Siyu?”

  “Whatever the hell I want. You’ll be dead—or worse.”

  Artemis might be right. If I didn’t cut my losses now—

  I caught the glint of something gold and metallic hiding by the mercury-laced top hat, which had been knocked on its side by the shaking of the fortress.

  I scrambled over and grabbed the hat, turning it over in my hands. Tucked inside the green velvet lining that folded inside its brim was a stone medallion painted with gold.

  I wrapped my hand in my sleeve before pulling it out, coarse leather rope and all.

  “Got it,” I said, and held it up for Artemis to see.

  He wasn’t looking at me, though; he was staring at something behind me in the cell. But before I could see what had Artemis speechless, something gripped my arm, the one that was holding the medallion. It spun me around until I was facing a set of grimacing green teeth set into a skull covered with paper-thin skin. One of the shackles had come loose, freeing the arm that now gripped mine.

  Its green teeth parted as its grip on my hand tightened, and it let out a dry, off-kilter laugh as it lunged for me. All that kept me safe from its chomping green teeth were the three chains still securing him to the wall. And the anchors were crumbling.

  “Artemis!” I shouted, “now would be a good time to use that sword!” There was no answer. I hazarded a glimpse back at the door, but Artemis was nowhere to be seen.

  Fucking fantastic. True to his word, he’d abandoned me. Leaving me with the pirate. I swallowed. “I don’t suppose you’d consider letting me go?” I asked the Mad Hatter.

  In answer Jack’s teeth chattered, his vocal cords long since dried out. He wrenched his left hand free.

  “Guess that’s a no,” I said, ducking a nasty left hook and braining the Mad Hatter with my flashlight.

  It didn’t slow him one bit. He squeezed the wrist he had, trying to force me to drop the pendant. Like hell. I fought, trying to pull away, but all that did was make him grip my wrist tighter. The Mad Hatter pulled me towards him, the garlic scent of arsenic wafting off him, as his teeth chattered towards my face.

  I almost closed my eyes—I would have if not for the silver arc that came down between us, a hairbreadth close to my face before sinking into the Hatter’s arm. Like a pair of scissors through paper, dried tissues and skin gave way as the sword embedded itself into the tendons and muscles. The Hatter’s grip loosened and my hand came free.

  Artemis stood beside us, wielding the blunt sword.

  Where the hell had he been hiding?

  “Stop playing with the dead pirate so we can get out of here!” he shouted.

  Didn’t need to tell me twice. I shoved the medallion into my jacket as the Hatter swiped at my head with his other arm. He laughed—a dry, low guttural laugh, empty green eye sockets fixed on me.

  I shook my head as I backed towards the cell door. Humans and magic. Every goddamned time, they had to raise violent dead things. Why, oh why, couldn’t we aim for anything else? Like an army of harmless bunnies?

  “Owl!” Artemis called.

  Seriously—weapons, spontaneous bunnies, changing weather patterns, endless supplies of clean water—there were millions of things we could try to do with magic, but oh no. Dead things.

  The Hatter’s right foot broke free and he lurched for me. I danced back out of the cell. Only one shackle remained and not for long if the way the rusted exterior crumbling against its braces was any indication.

  I slammed the cell door in The Hatter’s face. “Run!” I said to Artemis, and bolted for the prison proper. But Artemis grabbed my sleeve, stopping me. “Not that way,” he said. “There are more of them.”

  Sure enough, more chattering noises reached us—echoing not from below but from the way we’d already come.

  That was how everyone else had been trapped in here. The ghouls didn’t animate until you made it past a point of no return.

  “Come on,” Artemis said, pushing me towards the stone steps leading farther down. “This way. I can smell fresh air coming from below.”

  I did my best to keep up as he took two stone steps at a time. I could have sworn the sounds of clicking teeth and rattling of chains were gaining on us.

  “Hurry up!” Artemis called, hazarding a glance over his shoulder.

  Son of a bitch, he was already five steps ahead of me. I squeezed the medallion in my pocket and picked up speed. I needed to get it out of here—this was the closest I’d come.

  I hit the bottom in time to see Artemis bolting down another row of dungeon doors, each one rattling against its rusted hinges, the clicking of bones behind them.

  One of the doors gave—not fully but an inch—enough to let a skeletal arm shoot out. It caught my hair and pulled, while another pirate tried to reach me through the grate.

  Like hell. I gripped my hair and pulled. Some I won back, some came out by its roots in a painful clump. Either way, I was back to running.

  And Artemis was near the end, still running at full speed.

  “Hey! Wait for me!” I shouted. The banging on the doors went up in v
olume and intensity as soon as I did. I ducked another door as it rattled off its hinges, pushed by a group of pirates clawing for a grip, and yelped as the hinges on yet another cell gave. A skull wearing an eye patch and covered with thin, rice-paper skin wedged its way through, its teeth chattering at me. I kicked the door hard, severing the head right off the skeleton. It rolled to the ground and I jumped over it, just in case.

  A bone-chilling howl echoed down the stairs we’d descended moments before.

  I made the mistake of glancing back.

  The Hatter, in his arsenic-and-mercury-laced glory, stood at the bottom.

  He lifted a shaking hand and pointed it at me, and his teeth began chattering out a new, sharp tempo.

  As if in reply the cells around me rattled back.

  “Run faster!” Artemis called from somewhere down the hall, where I could no longer see him.

  Right, because I’d been running at a Sunday sightseeing pace.

  I ran. The doors were rattling incessantly now, as if the pirates behind them could taste fresh meat or a potential mark. I’d made deals with vampires, a Naga, and a Japanese Red Dragon; I fit the sucker bill perfectly.

  I caught up to Artemis. He’d reached a heavy grate that had been fitted at the end of the corridor. He was trying to force it open. From the dirt and tears on his shirt, I figured he’d also had to deal with some of the celled pirates.

  As I reached him, I grabbed the nearest piece of loose stone and brought it down on the lock. It wrenched and bent at an odd angle; the rust, having damaged the integrity, made the iron malleable.

  I hit it again before Artemis grabbed the piece of broken stone from me. “Let me.”

  The third time was the charm. The lock snapped in two, and I swung the grate open. “You go first,” I said. I preferred the supernatural to take the lead—especially if we’d woken up any more pirates. I followed and slammed the grate behind me, then scanned the other side for something, anything, that I could block it with—a stone, a fallen piece of wood . . . I settled on a piece of broken rebar, wedging it through at an odd angle. Not that it was the most secure blockade; I imagined it’d hold them only for a while.

  “Oh, for the love of—” Artemis spun me around. “Let the IAA deal with it! They set up shop over a haunted pirate dungeon, they can deal with the aftermath. Besides, it’ll mean they won’t have time to worry about who set them off.”

  He had a point there—one I might have echoed a year ago—but I didn’t trust the IAA to save anyone, let alone the locals in the surrounding area. Cover up? Certainly. Just not go out of their way to help anyone.

  But under the circumstances it’d have to do. Just in time, as the first pirate thrust himself at the grate. I was not sticking around to have a deep and meaningful conversation with the Mad Hatter and his friends . . .

  I gave the rebar one last shove before following Artemis.

  This new tunnel wasn’t the same kind of finished product as the halls above, polished and reinforced to look something akin to civilized. Its walls were rough and uneven, as if they’d been excavated only enough to allow passage. On top of that, we were heading down, towards the ocean, if the puddles on the ground and dampness running down the sides of the tunnel were any indication. That the trickling water and the echo of our feet drowned out any chance of hearing the rattling chains and chattering teeth was oddly comforting.

  I did my best to keep up with the jog Artemis set, refusing to look back and see if the pirates had made their way through. Sometimes it’s better not to know.

  The tunnel widened and leveled out, turning into a shallow pond. I skidded to a stop at the edge. Artemis was already up to his knees.

  “What?”

  “I haven’t had the best luck with stagnant water and tombs.”

  “Fine, stay here with the pirates,” he said before jumping in.

  Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. I covered my mouth with my sleeve and waded in after him.

  My boots, the ones I’d stolen, sloshed with water as I reached the other side of the pool and broke into a clumsy run. I could see light up ahead: moonlight and the lamps from the exterior of the prison above, maybe a lighthouse. It was a sight better than what was down here.

  And I could hear something: the crashing waves that for the last two weeks had been only a faint whisper in the dead of night. I picked up my pace as I spotted the ocean outside—only to skid to a stop when Artemis held up his hand.

  Fighting against my need to get the hell away from here, I stopped.

  It was the sirens that warned me there was something afoot outside—that and the floodlight that was sweeping over the beach, not the lighthouse light, as I’d initially thought. When the light had passed over, I took a look out the cavern entrance.

  Above in the prison and the road leading up to it were fire trucks and a number of black SUVs, the kind IAA agents were fond of terrorizing archaeology students in.

  Past the trucks I could see smoke and the tips of red-orange flames.

  “See? The IAA is already taking care of it. By morning the prison interior will be burned to the ground. I doubt the skeleton ghouls will survive that.”

  I spun on him. “There aren’t any ambulances!” There were at least a hundred IAA prisoners in there; there was no way they could have gotten them all out before striking the match.

  Artemis only shrugged. “Means they aren’t concerned about accounting for the prisoners—oh, don’t look so scandalized. Consider yourself lucky. Besides, you didn’t light the place on fire, so it’s hardly your fault. You even let a handful of wayward archaeologists out. A good deed.”

  Over a hundred people could die, all to cover up a supernatural snafu, and I should congratulate myself for getting three people out? It wasn’t a good deed. It was disgusting. And it was Artemis’s fault. I should have let them out, if he hadn’t stopped me . . .

  I turned on Artemis, fists clenched, barely able to control my rage. “You are the worst supernatural I have ever met!” The floodlight passed over the beach twice more. I got its timing down and left the cave, keeping to the cliff face where the beam couldn’t strike. With the slippery rocks and poor-fitting boots it was slow going but I had no intention of spending another minute in Artemis’s company.

  He didn’t see it that way. “You need me,” he shouted.

  I kept my eyes on the rocks and beam. “I don’t want your kind of help.”

  He didn’t take the hint, catching up and shadowing me along the cliff. I ignored him. Chances were good the run-down jeep I’d bought from a gas station was only a few miles down the coast. I’d left it hidden on the outskirts of town, keys hidden in the undercarriage, where I’d figured it’d be safe. Not that anything is a certainty. It might take me a few hours to get there, but get there I would. Worst-case scenario, the jeep would be gone . . . I’d figure something out.

  Artemis pulled a pair of keys out of his pocket and jingled them in front of me like one of Captain’s cat toys.

  I started to tell him to go to hell. Then I noticed the metallic cat and the fossilized shark’s tooth. Oh, for fuck’s sake . . . they were mine—unmistakably mine.

  “Give me those!” I hissed, and made a grab for them, almost face-planting in the sharp shale.

  “No,” he said, easily holding them out of my reach.

  “I don’t need your help—”

  “Yes, you do.”

  I opened my mouth to argue but stopped at the hostile expression on his face.

  Artemis continued, “You need my help because you didn’t just come back from Shangri-La reckless. You’ve stopped caring whether you live or die; that makes you dangerous.”

  I fell into silence. Thank God, so did Artemis.

  He wasn’t wrong . . .

  “Mr. Kurosawa and Lady Siyu haven’t figured it out yet. Though I’d wager Oricho has. He’s dealt with enough humans over the centuries that he can tell when your kind goes suicidal—so can I, for that matter. You’ve sti
ll got yourself some time. Oricho isn’t inclined to say anything to the Dragon or the Snake out of Onorio spite, and as for myself? Well, I just plain don’t care.” He glanced back at me. “But they will figure it out. Dragons know when an asset becomes a loss. Consider it one of their talents.”

  “Give me my keys back,” I said, my fists clenched.

  “Certainly,” he said, and tossed them at me. I scrambled to catch them before they hit the surf coming in.

  “But I’ll be accompanying you back to the Japanese Circus. Consider it my ensuring that I fulfill my bargain with Lady Siyu.”

  I maybe should have argued. Normally I’d argue. I was not suicidal.

  But after two weeks in a prison with three thieves and only my own thoughts to keep me company, I knew as well as he did that he had a point.

  I didn’t need to be an incubus to figure that one out.

  I felt for the pendant in my jacket pocket and held on to it. It was still there, warm against my skin. At least I’d gotten what I’d come for—that and the idol. Two weeks in the Albino, and I was none the worse for wear—more or less.

  My recklessness as of late was just a temporary glitch, a result of my desperation to find the Tiger Thieves.

  I told myself that over and over again as we continued down the shore, watching for the floodlights, which quickly faded into the burning background that was the Albino Prison as the IAA continued its morbid cleanup.

  I wondered who was worse; Miguelito for his abuses of the prisoners and his position with the IAA, the IAA for their willingness to burn their mistakes to the ground, or me for not realizing that just about any quest I set myself on seems to end in disaster and ruin for someone.

  It was a hard choice.

  4

  THE DEFINITION OF MADNESS

  4:00 p.m. two days later: The Japanese Circus, Las Vegas.

  Madness is defined by some as repeating an action over and over, expecting to get a different result.

  That was exactly what I felt like I was doing as the glass doors slid back, opening the way to the Japanese Circus much like the gaping maw of a monstrous whale about to swallow a man whole.