I sighed for Carpe and Paul’s benefit. I thought about ordering room service; I was going to need coffee and breakfast soon. “Look, guys, decide between yourselves, but one of you has to either stand on that block or go back and grab a hundred and twenty pounds’ worth of goblin corpses. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Byzantine, this isn’t—” Carpe started.
I muted the mic, took off my headset, and picked up the number to dial room service.
“Hello?” answered the prim voice on the other end.
“Hi there, I need breakfast and coffee—preferably something with espresso in it. What do you have?”
After I was done ordering I put my headset back on. “Well boys, what did you decide?”
“I’ll stay here. Paul will go with you,” Carpe said. He didn’t sound enthusiastic about it. I wondered how Paul had won that round. I thought about asking Carpe in our dialogue box, but I decided against it. I didn’t want to give him the impression I’d cooled down yet. Son of a bitch, tracking me behind my back.
“Fine. Carpe, stand on that red tile,” I said, and used my cursor to indicate the right one. “Paul, you’re with me.”
We reached the halfway point down the hall towards the door of death. I stopped at the wall and looked for the right set of mosaic patterns, the ones I’d had to memorize from my grad school textbook on Mayan temples and deities.
“Gimme a sec, Paul, I need to solve this puzzle.”
It was a series of numbers that had to be entered perfectly to open an adjacent passage, otherwise a fireball would launch from the opposing wall . . . or was it spears? Anyway, if you screwed up, something bad shot out. On the off chance you dodged that, a trapdoor opened underneath. I had no idea what was under the trapdoor. As far as I knew, no one did.
I was on the final sequence of equations when my inbox chimed. A message from Mr. Kurosawa had come in. I stopped midpunch to skim the message.
I have looked at all six sets of inscriptions. Though I echo your suspicions that this is derived from one of the languages you so quaintly refer to as “supernatural,” it is not a form I am familiar with. In the future, direct your inquiries through Lady Siyu or Oricho.
“Shit.” He couldn’t translate it. Any of it. I’d let a dragon beat the shit out of me, and it hadn’t gotten me anywhere. I was back where I started. Nowhere. Now what the hell was I going to do?
“Byzantine?” Paul said.
I shook my head and turned my attention back to the game. I did the second-to-last equation in my head and pressed the tile with the Mayan five, written in red ochre. The treasure room door slid open a crack to the right of the Mayan tiles. “Sorry, Paul—out-of-game stuff. This will just take me a few more seconds.”
“No worries, I can relate,” he said, and chuckled.
I can’t, wrote Carpe.
I frowned and closed the text box. Snarky bastard. Another one popped up in its place.
Sooooo . . . how long have you been running from vampires?
Son of a bitch wasn’t going to let it drop. Stop it. I come here to get away from my day job, not talk about it.
You know, you might be the most famous archaeologist on the planet. You should see what comes up in a Google search.
Will you stop! Someone might read this.
Relax, I’ve got the line secured.
Smug little bastard. Don’t want to hear it—If I can’t trust you to keep your word, how the hell am I supposed to trust you outside, let alone in-game? I closed the text box as soon as I clicked Send. Another one appeared.
Ummm Owl—Carpe started, but I closed the box before he could finish. Another popped up, this time on my laptop, overshadowing the rest of the screen.
No Owl, seriously, why is Paul casting Monk’s Fist?
What the—?
I focused back on the game screen. Sure enough, Paul’s monk was getting ready to cast Monk’s Fist, a melee attack able to rip out an opponent’s heart in one shot.
“Paul,” I yelled into my headset. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Sorry, kid, but if I kill you, I get the experience points and the treasure. I’ll reach the Blue Beard before Carpe and buy that resurrection charm.”
“Oh, not you too—”
“Nothing personal, but I’ve got a job and three kids. I don’t have the luxury of scourging these places all day like you losers.”
I couldn’t believe it. I’d been playing with Paul for six months, and he’d blindsided me. “You lying, cheating, bigoted son of a bitch—just because we don’t have lousy time-management skills doesn’t mean we don’t have real job shit to do too. Grow a pair of fucking balls and tell your goddamned kids to drive themselves to soccer—” I kept going, but the World Quest PG buzzer went off.
“Son of a bitch,” I yelled, though only Carpe and World Quest’s version of the FTC could hear me now. It would be a cold day in hell before I let Carpe pick team members again.
I watched as Paul’s avatar readied to throw Monk’s Fist at my Byzantine. I did what any respectful thief does. Dodge. The fist caught my hood but didn’t deliver any damage.
I pulled up the secure message box with Carpe. Carpe, get your ass teleported over here now. Paul’s gone rogue.
I hit Enter as Paul readied another fist. Damn it, I wish I’d bothered to learn how many strikes a monk had on special attacks . . .
Carpe’s voice came over my headset. “I set up a private line.”
“Good, ’cause World Quest FTC just booted me out. I didn’t even deserve it this time.”
“I’ll be there in less than a minute. Keep him busy.”
“How the hell do you suggest I do that?” I said, as I ran the Byzantine Thief through a series of flips and rolls that placed a batch of poison arrows between her and the bastard rogue monk. Paul’s avatar didn’t falter as the arrows hit. Instead, he readied his staff.
Shit, monks had poison resistance. I was totally fucked. All Paul had to do was hit me once, that’s all it takes to kill a thief. Unless . . .
The secret passage door was ajar, but I still had one more number to press on the tile set for it to slide the whole way open. My guess was that Paul figured he could pry it open after he looted my avatar’s body. He was dead wrong.
“I’m going to try something stupid, Carpe,” I said into the mic.
I targeted the wall and pressed Enter. Byzantine rolled for the sequence, catching a kick on her leg that knocked my health bar down by a third. My avatar still managed to slam into the Mayan number five instead of the nine.
The game screen began to rumble as pieces behind the tomb walls began to slide. Two large slabs of rock slammed down and blocked off both ends of the tunnel, trapping me and the monk. Poison arrows flew from above, then from the side, in a repeating pattern. Paul’s monk looked like a ballet dancer as he dodged them. Well, goody for him. By comparison, the Byzantine Thief looked like a monkey doing a jig as I dodged enough to stay alive. I kept my eyes on the floors and walls, watching for the trapdoor to open.
The hall shook again as the treasure room door started to slide shut. Paul must have seen it too, because the next thing I knew he dove for the opening and wedged his hands between the wall and the door. The monk strained to hold the slab open.
Ha, good luck with that.
“Byzantine, what the hell did you do?” Carpe yelled.
“Sprung the ancient Mayan booby trap—” Out of the corner of my eye I caught the tiled floor start to drop away, one by one, the scraping of the slab drowning out any noise the tiles made as they fell. I swung the screen camera around; Paul was still concentrating on the slab. I couldn’t tell whether he noticed the opening or not.
Now or never, while I had a head start. “And do me a favor? Kill Paul,” I said.
I held my breath as Byzantine jumped. My view of the torchlit tunnel faded as I hit a steep ramp and slid into darkness. The screen shook as I slid to the edge of the ramp and somersaulted ove
r the lip. I scrambled to grab onto something, and I held, for a second, suspended over a cavern, the light from the torches flickering above like dim beacons. I hit the Up arrow as fast as I could and watched the Thief start to pull herself up. If she could just hold on a few seconds more, just enough to get her back on the ledge, I could ride it out until Carpe arrived.
The Byzantine Thief wrapped her arm around the ledge. I breathed a sigh of relief and started to maneuver her up slowly to conserve her strength.
She slipped.
“No!” I yelled, not quite believing what I was seeing.
“Byz? Don’t do anything stupid, I’m almost there—” Carpe said.
The screen jolted one last time before fading to black. I pulled my headset off, not bothering to untangle my hair first, and threw it on the floor. “Son of a bitch.”
Captain unraveled from his perch on the windowsill to see what the commotion was about. Only two things in World Quest make the screen go black; when you’re knocked unconscious, and when you die.
I picked up my mouse and threw it at the wall; Captain yawned and curled right back up. “Shit.” Best-case scenario, I was unconscious. Not much help if something came along and decided to eat me. Death by rat pack, anyone?
Five minutes later a message popped up on my out-of-game screen. Byz? What the hell happened? Carpe wrote. And where are you?
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.”
15
SO YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH MONSTERS?
7:00 a.m., the Japanese Circus, poolside at the Garden cafe
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.”
Owl and the Japanese Circus Page 26