Owl and the Japanese Circus (35 page)

Jumped down the rabbit hole and got the black screen of death.
The turnover was twelve hours. In twelve hours, I could either use a resurrection charm, or my avatar would wake up.
Either way, I’m not playing again for twelve hours.

Shit. Anything I can do in the meantime?

Yeah. Hunt down and kill Paul.

You know elves don’t kill things out of revenge . . . I could maybe drop him in a deep dark marsh or bog though.

Yeah, yeah. Just make sure it’s full of zombies, or goblins—or something that
’ll eat him.
I tipped my chair back violently so it banged into the wall, then checked to make sure I hadn’t left a mark. I was on bad enough terms with the dragon as it was without breaking his things. I wanted to scream, or hit someone, with Paul at the top of my list. Mostly I wanted out of World Quest.

I’m out. See you in twelve,
I wrote, and logged out without waiting for a reply.

I was too pissed off to try and work or sleep, so I grabbed my jacket. I needed to get out of my room. I checked the clock. 6:30 a.m. Maybe the coffee bar was open by now. Once I cooled down I could find Oricho and Nadya, and get back to work.

Between this job and World Quest . . . I shook my head. Trusted
teammates were like live Orcs. Eventually one of them was going to jump out of hiding and stab you in the back.

Well, no sense pondering my most recent failures. Otherwise I was liable to throw myself down an elevator shaft.

“Come on, Captain,” I said, and held the door open for him. From the trinket table, I took one of Captain’s favorite mice and a plastic bag with the vampire pheromone–soaked rag I’d recovered from Charles. “Let’s see if we can get your growling under control before people show up at the pool.”

I hefted the red mouse a few times in my hand to get Captain’s attention.

“Stay,” I said.

Captain sat back on his haunches. Sort of.

I wound back and launched the toy mouse across the garden’s green lawn. Captain lifted his behind off the ground but waited. I counted to five in my head.

“Go get it,” I said.

With a noise that was a cross between a meow and growl, he shot after it. I sat back down, and a shiver went up my spine as I remembered my run-in with Sebastian, Marie’s first lackey, a few days ago. I pushed the thought out of my mind and focused on Captain.

Besides the pool-boy nymphs, the only other people around the garden at this time were a handful of retirees taking a morning walk before they got back to their gambling. The air smelled better in the morning, crisper and cleaner before the smoke, perfume, and booze spilled over from the casino floor.

I pulled my leather jacket tighter around me. It was cooler than I’d expected, and I was glad I’d had the sense to grab it on the way out of my room. I nodded at one of the nymphs on his way to the pool shed. He smiled and waved but didn’t say anything.

You’d think I’d be happy that I could spot a nymph, but out of all the supernaturals out there, they were about as easy as it gets. I’d read once that they had a hard time communicating with language; come to think of it, I wondered if they could speak at all. Whatever they lacked in communication skills they made up for with the sheer volume of charisma that rolled off them. I don’t think they could rope it in to save their lives. Made identifying them a piece of cake once you knew what to look for: an incredibly hot mute you just about fell over to talk to.

Goddamn it, I hate my blind side for spotting supernaturals more than I hate my lousy spoken-language skills.

Captain trotted back across the grass and dropped the mouse at my feet with a loud chirp.

“All right, time to up the ante, Captain. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

He just stared at the red mouse in my hand, waiting. I pulled the Ziploc bag out of my pocket that contained a white piece of cloth. I held my breath as I opened the bag full of Charles’s vampire pheromones and tossed the mouse in. I gave it a good few shakes before retrieving it and holding it up for Captain to smell.

I grabbed the scruff of his neck and launched the mouse across the garden. He strained and almost fell over trying to go after it. “Wait,” I said.

He twisted to face me and gave a baleful meow.

I counted to five, then said, “OK, go get it,” and let go. Captain almost nose-planted over his own front legs as he blindly bolted across the lawn.

He just about barreled into a middle-aged woman—from the Hawaiian shirt and sunburn I guessed this was her vacation—as she strolled down the path towards us. As it was, she didn’t see him until
he shot between her legs with a loud chirp. She yelped and did an unsure-footed dance from side to side. She didn’t strike me as the most agile woman, so I was surprised and a little impressed that she held her balance.

She stared after the vampire-killing ball of fury, her mouth open in shock, then shot me an accusatory look.

I shrugged and tried to look sheepish. “Catnip,” I said, “he really loves catnip.”

She shook her head at me, then turned tail back towards the relative safety of the casino. I thought about the ghosts tied to the slot machines of Mr. Kurosawa’s private floor.
Lady, if you only knew. Trust me, it’s safer out here with the crazy cat.

“You might want to tell Captain old people are fragile. Otherwise a few more throws and you’re liable to have a broken hip and a lawsuit on your hands.”

I turned around. Nadya was wearing a light sweater and balancing a coffee and a stack of folders on her laptop. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she’d forgone contacts for glasses. Her eyes were rimmed red, and she hadn’t bothered to put makeup on. She looked more set for a day on her couch with a bag of chips than poolside at a luxury casino. I don’t think I’d seen her dressed this casually since our dorm days, cramming for exams.

“How did you know I was here?” I said. I winced as Captain let out a howl when he reached the mouse across the yard.

“I didn’t. I stopped by your room, and when you weren’t there, I headed down to the bar—”

“Even I don’t drink at seven a.m. Hey!” I yelled across the garden. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Captain crouch down and start tearing into the toy mouse. “Get back here!” Captain bleated in complaint but picked the mouse up and made his way back towards us until he was three feet away. He crouched down again, mouse in mouth, eyeing me warily. I frowned. “I said here, not three feet away. Damn it, he was bringing it back a minute ago.”

Nadya tsked. “As I was saying, after swinging by the bar I passed an old couple in the elevator talking about a woman in a leather jacket and boots playing fetch with a cat.”

Captain continued to ignore my command and started tearing into the mouse again. I strode over. “Gimme that,” I said.

Captain growled and chewed faster.

“Naturally I jumped to the logical conclusion and came out here to find you.”

I wrenched the mouse from between his teeth. “Bad Captain,” I said. And with that I threw the mouse into the pool.

Captain whined and darted to the edge. He stretched his paw for the floating mouse (they’re made of cork after all) but wasn’t committed enough to get wet.

Nadya took a seat at one of the picnic tables, so I joined her to wait for Captain to either cool off, or get desperate enough to jump in. I figured it was fifty-fifty.

Nadya sipped her coffee and watched Captain chase the mouse around the edge of the pool, mewing at it every few seconds.

“Why is he so obsessed with that mouse?”

“Because I doused it with vampire pheromones.”

Nadya swore and instinctively covered her nose and mouth with the sleeve of her sweater. “Owl, have you gone insane! Get it out of the pool before it contaminates the water, otherwise we’ll have a casino full of vampire junkies on our hands.”

“Relax, the pheromones are fat, not water, soluble, and even if they could wash off, it’s a small enough amount the pool will dilute it. The only thing in this area that can smell them is Captain, and maybe a bloodhound.”

Nadya swore. “Why?” she asked.

“I’m trying to train Captain not to go ballistic every time he smells vampire.”

She snorted. “How is that going?”

I frowned. “We’re making progress. It’s just slow is all.”

Captain had given up trying to get the mouse out of the pool by himself, and he gave me a baleful whine. I fetched the mouse and held it up. “Now bring it back this time or it goes back in the pool,” I said, and hefted it across the lawn, where one of the nymphs was gardening.

Nadya nodded at the nymph. “I thought nymphs always travelled in pairs, male/female.”

“They do. The girls are dealing blackjack.”

“Smart. No human is going to be able to stay mad at a nymph, even when they’re on a one-way streak for the poorhouse.”

I took in Nadya’s appearance again. She wasn’t just tired. She was worried. “Did you sleep at all?” I asked.

She shook her head and pulled out one of the files.

“Couldn’t. Not after I found this,” she said, and slid it across the table. It was a compilation of ancient accounts in Europe about a weapon, all in Cyrillic. An unmistakable diagram of the egg I’d fetched for Mr. Kurosawa, with inscriptions, was in the side margin.

I grabbed it. “Where did you find this?”

“Russian archives. One of Nuroshi’s cryptic notes hinted there was something there.” She shrugged. “They still don’t have the security there they should, so my old passwords still work.”

“Shit, Nadya, they’ll know it was you who logged in and was sniffing around—”

She waved a hand dismissively. “It was worth the risk.”

Captain returned with the mouse and took up a position under my seat. I rewarded his obedience with another throw, and he waited until I gave the signal to chase it. Captain might be stubborn, but he sure as hell learns fast.

“I know what it does,” Nadya said, the same flat edge in her voice she used when throwing out unruly Japanese men from her club. She slid the top file across the garden table, her mouth drawn in a hard line.

I leafed through the edges. It was a collection of photocopied pages from old Cyrillic texts. I leaned back in my lawn chair. Captain
trotted back under the table and dropped his mouse by my feet, swishing his tail. I packed it back into the plastic bag and slid it into my coat. Sensing playtime was over, he didn’t push, and instead curled up.

“I’m guessing this doesn’t say it’s the equivalent of a ‘dragon happy meal’ toy?” I said.

She shook her head. “Direct translation?” she said, and removed the first page. “Here they call it ‘Devil’s Vengeance.’ Owl, this isn’t some minor magic weapon, it’s a bad one.” She tapped the text. “This is a page from a collection of known magic, written by a priest from an offshoot Christian cult popular in Russia during the ninth century. The priests and friars used to entomb themselves and starve to death for penance. The priest who wrote this, Cervac, was the only one who ever came out alive. He was anointed a saint by his followers.”

“Vampire?” I asked.

Nadya shook her head. “No, vampires weren’t common in Russia then—too cold. Besides, there’s no mention of avoiding the sun or drinking blood. More likely a skin walker or genie possessed him and decided to have a little fun. There were lots of them buried in the tombs and caves throughout Russia and Mongolia, just waiting for someone to break their cages. We used to have to watch out for them—not always bottles either, more often half-cracked ossuaries. Just try moving one of those.”

I cringed, glad I hadn’t spent my first year of grad school crawling around Russian dig sites. The Americas had their share of demons and mummies, but nothing as dangerous as genies or skin walkers. No wonder Nadya was so good at spotting supernaturals; first-year grad school in Russia weeds everyone else out.

“The history of magic and supernatural creatures Cervac wrote down is mostly accurate, which is why I lean towards genie. After three or four days, skin walkers start to smell bad, like ammonia or old urine, and besides that, they aren’t much for writing, more like finger painting with blood.”

“So what does the scroll do?” I asked.

“From what I can tell, it’s a spell that when cast sends a sheet of magic in a radius of about a kilometer, give or take. The one holding the spell is fine, animals are fine, buildings are fine, but anyone in that kilometer radius disappears, like they never existed in the first place. It’s like a localized extermination. And all anyone needs to cast it is the scroll.”

“Shit.” That was just what a psychotic vampire like Marie didn’t need. A magic atomic bomb. I also didn’t know how crazy I was about handing it over to Mr. Kurosawa either. The lesser of two evils? Maybe. But as fond as he was of his Vegas empire, I didn’t hold much hope that he’d think twice about blowing up a rival’s city, repeatedly.

“What about destroying it? We could accidently light it on fire,” I said.