Owl and the Japanese Circus (21 page)

“. . . and you,” Bindi said, turning her snarl on me, “can’t imagine the horrors my mistress has in store for you . . .”

“Save it, princess. I’m not buying,” I said. Yeah, I felt sorry for her, but not enough to listen to the rhetoric. I tapped Rynn on the arm and nodded to the hallway. He sighed and, after ramming a gag into her mouth to damper down the obscenities, headed out.

Red glared at me accusingly. “You can’t just leave us tied up like this,” he yelled.

“Watch me,” Rynn yelled over his shoulder.

I just shook my head. “Don’t blame me, kid, you should have run when I told you to.” I followed Rynn out and slammed the wooden door. But he would blame me. Another archaeologist whose career and life I’d supposedly ruined. Damn it, I hate being a scapegoat.

Even with the door closed I could hear Bindi kicking and struggling against the restraints. I took a deep breath. “You’re approaching this all wrong. She’s batshit crazy.”

“Really? Funny, I hadn’t noticed—”

I held up my hand. Yeah, his usual cool demeanor was just about done. “Let me have a go at her. I’ve got experience dealing with vampire junkies, and my head’s cleared up enough. I think.”

He gave me an incredulous look. “You
think
?”

I shrugged. “Well, we don’t have a lot of options right now, do we? I mean, we can’t just stay here indefinitely. We either leave now without finding that tablet, or you let me have a go at her.”

Rynn sighed. “All right.” He stepped aside for me. “Lead the way.”

“Lesson one. Vampire junkies are scared of only one thing,” I said, grabbing my mask, a Ziploc bag, and a pair of latex gloves from my pack and ducking into the ancient kitchen. I walked right up to Charles the vampire, right where we’d left him, tied up and cowering in the brick oven. Captain was exactly where I’d left him too; tied to his leash just out of striking distance. I figured the more he got used to them, the less likely he’d be to charge in every time he smelled one.

Captain mewed, and Charles’s eyes widened as he focused past my cat on me.

“Relax, I just need something,” I said, as I ripped out a chunk of his greasy brown hair and slid it into the Ziploc bag. Rynn stayed at the doorway, but he raised an eyebrow as I headed back in to see my rapidly derailing archaeologists. “Watch and learn,” I said.

I crouched down in front of Bindi and removed the gag. She tried to bite me, but I was ready for it. Like I said, I know my vampire junkies.

“You two are dead, mark my words, as soon as Sabine finds me,” Bindi said, her teeth bared.

Taking my time, I opened the Ziploc and waved it under her nose.

With the first whiff, her eyes sharpened and she shut her mouth. She breathed in deeper, shivered, licked her lips, and lunged against her restraints. I waved the bag one last time before sealing it shut. She fixed hate-filled eyes on me, but her lip curled up in a frightened snarl.

“Noooww we’re getting somewhere,” I said, and placed the sealed bag on her lap. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m not going to threaten you, like Rynn, and I’m not going to barter with you. Because we both know you need what’s in that bag.” I tapped it for effect. “Now, if you tell me where the tablet is, I
might
be persuaded to open it back up and leave it here.”

And just like that, the screaming indoctrinate was gone. I don’t know if she looked more crazy, angry, or scared. Maybe some middle ground she’d found in a burst of lucidity. Her eyes didn’t leave the bag though, and she kept licking her lips.

What can I say? I’m good with crazy.

“She’ll kill me if I say anything,” Bindi finally whispered.

I nodded. “You’re right, she’ll probably kill you. What I do know is I won’t open that bag unless you tell me what I want to know, so it’s up to you.” I crossed my arms and leaned back against the wall.

A minute dragged into two with only the sound of my gas mask grinding in the background.

“Time’s almost up. What’s it going to be?” I said.

“All right,” she said, and licked her lips.

Red, who’d been silent up till this point, pulled against his restraints. “Bindi, you can’t tell her,” he said. Rynn silenced him with a blow to the head. But it was pointless. Bindi couldn’t see or hear anything except the bag.

“It’s at the back of the room,” she whispered. “Behind the curtain there’s an alcove. We hid the tablet under a canvas sheet before you arrived.”

They’d moved it.

“What about the bag?” Bindi screamed as I ran to the alcove and pulled the canvas off. Sure enough, there was the matching tablet I needed.

“Shit.”

Rynn came up behind me. “What’s wrong? That’s the tablet, isn’t it?”

“What’s wrong is I’m
fucked
.” I ran my hand through my hair, and I swore again as it caught on a bad knot. I so needed a shower. “They pulled it out of its setting.”

“So?”

“I expected the room the tablet was housed in to have inscriptions on the wall like the one in Sanur.”

“Then get the images you need off this and we’ll find the cavern.”

I shook my head. “Once you take the focus object like this,” I said, kicking the stone tablet, “all the arcane symbols fall away fast. I might still get the inscriptions off the tablet, but I doubt I could get an imprint off the room anymore. And everyone says
I’
m
the one who ruins archaeological finds.” I threw the canvas sheet across the room. I wanted to scream, but that wouldn’t help me and would probably just get Bindi riled up.

I strode back to her, the adrenaline making up for any of the haze still left over from my giant dose of vampire pheromones. “When did you remove that tablet?”

She looked up at me with desperate eyes. “You said you’d open—”

“The deal’s changed.”

Her bottom lip quivered. “But—”

I picked up the bag and started to walk out of the room.

“Three days ago!” she screamed.

I stopped.

“Sabine called us and said to copy the inscriptions and take it out.”

Three days ago . . . Sabine hadn’t followed me to Bali; she’d laid a trap. She’d known exactly what I was looking for before I’d even taken the job. I glanced over at Rynn. He hadn’t missed that either.

So what the hell did Sabine need me for if she’d already known about the Bali link?

“What did she want with me? Come on, it’s important.”

Bindi shook her head. She was losing it fast. I wouldn’t get much more out of her. “She called us when you left Tokyo and told us to give Alexander whatever help he needed to capture you. She never told us why she wanted you, only that you had to be alive.” She nodded at Rynn. “They didn’t say anything about him though. It was only supposed to be you.”

“Why the hell did you try to chloroform me, then?” Rynn asked.

“She figured you’d make a good vampire flunkie,” I said. I turned back to Bindi. “Am I right? Let me guess, a few days ago Sabine said keep a lookout for good-looking men?”

Bindi’s eyes widened, but she nodded.

I glanced back to Rynn. “That’s when Sabine’s old flunkie jumped me at the Circus. She’ll be looking for a replacement,” I told him. Rynn just shook his head.

Bindi whimpered. “I’ve told you everything I know,
please
.”

I doubted it. Still though, I had just about everything I needed, so I opened the Ziploc and watched her bury her face in it. I had a much bigger issue to worry about. Two, in fact.

“She’s a step ahead of me,” I said.

“Superficially,” Rynn said. “If she knew where to go next, she would have already. She thinks you know something she doesn’t—or can figure it out, I’ll wager.”

It was the same conclusion I’d come to. If Sabine could find the scroll on her own, she would have by now.

“There’s something else bothering you about this, isn’t there?” he asked.

I nodded. “How did they get my flight and travel plans? I only told three people: Nadya, Oricho, and Lady Siyu. I didn’t tell you or Benji until I was already on the plane.”

“It wasn’t Nadya or Oricho,” Rynn said, seeing where I was headed.

“Why so certain about Oricho?”

He shrugged. “It’s not his style. Besides that, he’s meticulous. He would have known I’d be tailing you, and this,” he said, looking around the room, “is sloppy.”

I nodded. Funny that
Oricho isn’t the kind of person who’d kill his employees
wasn’t one of Rynn’s reasons. I’d shelve that tidbit for later. “That leaves Lady Siyu,” I said. I had no problem believing she would hang me out to dry.

Rynn wasn’t convinced. “Oricho is very careful who he works with—it could be that a message was intercepted or she had a spy tailing you.”

“Maybe.” But I wasn’t convinced. I used some pretty high-tech encryption. I’d paid enough for it.

I ran my fingers through my hair again, gave up on the tangles, and pulled it back into a ponytail. “This whole trip is turning into a disaster.”

Bindi, high again on pheromones, laughed. “You have no idea.”

I rolled my eyes. Great, another junkie who got brave and delusional. “What is that supposed to mean?”

She laid her head against the wall and looked up at the partly restored ceiling. “Sabine made a plan in case Alexander failed. All you’re going to see is the inside of a jail cell. They’ll have found the bodies by now.”

I snorted. “The vampires are still in the catacombs, probably for another day. At least. And you two won’t even be missed until your buddies at the hostel figure out you haven’t come home. They don’t seem the brightest bunch, so I wouldn’t count on that happening until tomorrow—”

Her maniacal laughter just got louder and grated on my nerves. I didn’t like that smile on her face. “What the hell is so funny?”

“Who do you think Sabine had us kill?”

I froze. “You wouldn’t. It’s stupid and pointless—”

Bindi just laughed. “Who do you think they’re going to pin all the dead bodies on? Little old me, or the renowned international antiquities thief? Sabine thought of everything.”

I lost it. I grabbed her by the neck and slammed her head against the wall. “What dead bodies?” I yelled. Even as I said it though, I knew. It made me sick to my stomach, but I knew.

She spat at me, and even though I had her by the neck, she was grinning madly. “It’s too late,” she said. “We poisoned them. They were dead before we left this morning.” She leaned forward. “Go ahead, strangle me, you know you want to.”

They’d killed the only other people I’d had contact with in Bali. The four other archaeology students staying at the hostel.

I let her go and stepped back, shaking. I’m used to crazy, a safe level of crazy . . . but everything had just left my comfort zone at warp speed. Thefts, a few maimed supernatural creatures . . .
that
I could marginally deal with, but a trail of dead bodies and a crazy, hopped-up serial killer were totally different.

I took another step back. “Rynn, I’m out, I’m so out—hell, we need to get out of Bali, now.” I pulled out my cell phone and started to dial. “Maybe Nadya can pull a few strings—I’ve got an extra passport on me, I can head back to Tokyo under that . . .”

“That’s not going to help,” Rynn said.

“Fine, I’ll head to Australia this time . . . I don’t think dragons like Australia, and there are more than enough places to get lost in the outback—”

Rynn grabbed my hand before the phone connected. “Owl—”

I spun on him. “Don’t ‘
Owl
’ me, Rynn. This stopped being a job thirty seconds ago. We’re questioning a goddamn serial killer. Two serial killers,” I said as I realized both of them had been in on it.

Rynn shook my shoulder, snapping me back to the present. “This isn’t your fault.”

I stopped fighting him. He was right. I hated it, but he was right. I took a deep breath. I hadn’t actually pulled the trigger. If I’d never accepted the job or come to Bali, the four students at the hostel would still be alive, but these two had carried out the murders, not me.

“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better about this—”

“
Please
. Deal with the tablet. That’s your specialty. This is mine.”

I didn’t want to. I wanted to run, to get the hell out while I still had a very small and disappearing window to escape. And tell Oricho and Mr. Kurosawa where to shove their lousy job.

“Please,” Rynn said. I looked up at his face and into those incredibly blue eyes.

I hate it when people look at me with that much sincerity . . . I pinched the bridge of my nose and nodded.

I don’t know why I agreed; it went against every single instinct in my body, every single one of them screaming at me to run for it . . . hell, that was what I was good at.

But Rynn was asking me to trust him. Some small voice in the back of my head told me I owed him that much. A very small voice, mind you—never underestimate my instinct to run and hide, it’s big and loud—but a needling one nonetheless.

I gave Bindi one last glance. She was smiling. She’d killed four people for no reason except to try and frame me, and she was pleased about it. I shook my head and forced my thoughts to the tablet.

“I need five minutes, Rynn,” I said, and headed to the antechamber to work.

The tablet was lying exposed on the alcove. I assembled the filters I needed and started shooting pictures.

The first thing I noticed was the sloppy job they’d done removing the slab. It looked like they’d taken their pickaxes to it instead of taking their time to pry it out of the floor relief. That worried me. Arcane inscriptions are more fragile than real ones. Cracks and faults made in the stonework can cause inscriptions to unravel, depending on how intricate and delicate they are. From what I’d seen in the Sanur tablet, these were very delicate.

When I slid in the first filter and saw the fuzzy results, I knew they’d damaged the sets. Whether I’d be able to read or translate was another thing entirely. I kept taking pictures and switched the filters. Each arcane set had been disrupted by different micro fractures in the stone edges when they’d removed it. Shit.

I pulled out my last tool—the diluted chicken blood, which I’d
left for last on purpose. I figured that with the symbols already this fragile, the blood would probably unravel all the others.