Heavy . . . solid metal doors. They locked down in emergencies, right?
In answer, the entire elevator swung on its suspension as Lady Siyu crashed against the doors again, this time leaving a serpent tail–shaped dent.
I pulled my hand off the receiver. “Rynn! Get up to Mr. Kurosawa’s casino now. Lady Siyu has the scroll—”
That was as far as I got before two sets of red lacquered claws broke through the elevator seal and began to pry the doors apart. I swallowed hard as they slid open a few centimeters and I caught a glimpse of a fang set in red lips. I lifted my foot and rammed my boot heel into the claws. One broke, and I was rewarded with a screech as Lady Siyu withdrew them, clipping another one against the metal.
“Try a can opener, bitch snake,” I yelled.
Me taunting the naga through the partially opened elevator door was premature.
I heard the warning rattle and jumped back as her tail crashed into the doors again, deepening the dent. Lady Siyu wedged her claws back through, but this time she worked them back and forth in a disjointed unity, like the spines of a sea urchin. The door slid open another few centimeters until she could reach a hand through, her scales glinting under the fluorescence. She pressed her face against the crack, and drops of black venom collected on her fangs as she snarled, “I will feast on your bones, little thief.”
Double shit.
I texted as fast as my fingers would let me. Rynn, get your ass up here now. Naga—angry naga—
I hit Send as the doors opened. They screeched with every inch gained as only shearing metal can do.
Most of Lady Siyu’s black hair had come loose by now, and thick strands hung in her face, making her parted red lips that much more sinister. She growled, and the rattle sounded to my right. I couldn’t help but look. A clear misdirection, which I didn’t realize until her tail whipped from the left.
At my head.
I ducked and dove out of the way, but the elevator was too confining. The bone rattle smashed into my hand, sending my cell phone into the elevator’s glass wall. It dropped to the floor in three pieces. So much for calling for help. Lady Siyu smiled, raised her tail, and hissed as she readied another blow. Seeing no reason to stay in this elevator death trap, I waited until her tail was arched in the air and baseball-slid under it. As soon as I was past, I tucked my feet under and came up in a run. I heard her snarl as I bolted down the hall. There was a crash that sounded like collapsing drywall; I presumed it was her coming after me, since there was no way in hell I was looking over my shoulder.
On a good day, snakes—let alone a three-hundred-pound naga—were faster than me. I needed interference, and fast, so I darted into the first set of open doors I came across . . . and skidded to a halt in front of Mr. Kurosawa’s maze of slot machines.
Goddamn it, I can pick them.
I bolted to my left down the first row of slots. With my first step, on cue, the chimes and bells started to ring.
I heard Lady Siyu scream amid the whine of crunching metal and sick, mistuned chimes. I ducked in beside a green slot machine flashing four-leaf clovers and peeked around the edge in time to see a slot machine two rows away catapult into the air and take out two more on the way down. Snakes in general are sensitive to vibration and sound. With all the slot machines going off, she wouldn’t be able to hone in on me.
Well, score one for the ghosts—though I doubt Mr. Kurosawa had had quite this in mind when he’d trapped them here. I stayed where I was.
“Get back here, thief,” Lady Siyu screamed.
“What did you do to Oricho?” I yelled back.
She growled and swayed her head from side to side, trying to pinpoint my voice through the slot vibrations. Her eyes glinted more gold than green under the lights. “You humans are all alike, thieves with no honor,” she screamed, and took out three more slot machines not that far away from my hiding spot.
Damn it, I should probably run—now . . .
I was timing Lady Siyu’s outbursts to make another run for it when I caught movement in the hallway behind the open doors.
Rynn.
He slipped in just as Lady Siyu’s back was turned, then ducked into the shadows.
I switched gears; I needed to keep her occupied, and pissing her off seemed like the best way to do it.
“You’ve got a really strange definition of stealing,” I yelled back. “If I was holding Mr. Kurosawa’s scroll in one hand, that would be one thing—Oh no, wait, that’s you.”
Lady Siyu spat and lunged not far from where I was hiding, taking out another machine. I couldn’t help wondering what happened to the ghost when its house was smashed to smithereens—did it piggyback with a buddy? Disappear into some netherworld? A sickening thought struck me as an old Japanese pot toppled on its side and rolled across the floor. Just how long had Mr. Kurosawa been collecting ghosts?
Bad timing for contemplation, I know, especially since Lady Siyu had stopped her tantrum.
The picture of calm and serene, she swayed back and forth on her tail, lifting herself to full height. She tilted her face up, and her red forked tongue flicked up into the air.
I held my breath. Damn it, I wished I could remember whether nagas smelled with their tongues, like snakes. From the way she turned and smirked right at me, I guessed she could smell where I was just fine.
In two sinuous slides she was in front of my lucky charm slot machine. She gripped the sides and wrapped her tail completely around it. “I will not entertain your lies. I claimed the scroll first to protect it from you,” she said.
“As if,” I said. I threw my jacket in her face and dodged to the side, but she was faster and tripped me with a tail sweep, knocking me flat on my ass. She came in for the kill at lightning speed, pinning me down. Her jaws extended and opened to strike. Black venom ran down her fangs and collected at the tips.
What the hell was Rynn doing? Checking email? I needed to buy myself time. I wriggled underneath Lady Siyu, making it next to impossible for her to strike.
“Why—the hell would I go to the trouble of finding and handing the scroll over if all I wanted to do was steal it back?” I said.
With a hiss, she pinned my arms down. “Humans are all the same. Liars, cheats, greedy, destructive—not fit to walk the earth.” Her tongue flicked out, smelling and tasting my cheek.
Now that she had me pinned, I was having trouble breathing under the weight of her tail. “Destructive? I’m not the one trashing the whole goddamn casino,” I said.
“You plan on using the scroll,” she said, accusation dripping from each syllable.
I choked down a scream.
Anytime now, Rynn, anytime.
“Why the hell would—I want to kill—argh—everyone?” I strained to say.
“I’ll send slivers of your corpse back to the treacherous incubus,” she said. She bent her head back and opened her jaws wide, wider than should have been possible. Her fangs arched out, gleaming with black venom.
The quip about Rynn pissed me off. I set my jaw and tried one last time, using every last bit of adrenaline to wriggle out from under her. It was as if she had a sixth sense for injury—she shifted her weight and drove her hand into my dislocated rib. I screamed, and a wave of nausea hit me as I experienced a new kind of pain. A single drop of venom fell on my face, numbing and burning my cheek at the same time.
Someone whistled from behind Lady Siyu.
The pressure eased off my chest. Lady Siyu swiveled her torso around to see who was behind her.
“I hate being talked about behind my back,” Rynn said, holding a harpoon with a jagged spear tip.
Lady Siyu bolted for Rynn. Shit, he’d never get out of the way in time.
He waited until she’d almost reached him. “Owl, catch,” he said and launched the harpoon—at me.
What did he expect? That I was going to catch it midair? Shit, that’s exactly what he had in mind . . . I scrambled back, as fast as my rib let me. The jagged spear tip lodg
ed itself inches from my feet. I swore and dove for it. I’d have to have a long talk with Rynn about how he passed humans weapons.
Seeing this, Lady Siyu one-eighty’d and hurtled back towards me, fangs bared, like she was at the center of some sick and twisted version of monkey in the middle.
Well, I wasn’t about to throw it back. I tucked it under my arm and hoped Lady Siyu was too enraged to notice.
I don’t know if it was because Lady Siyu was furious or didn’t think much of humans in the first place, but she didn’t slow down.
Fine by me. I fixed my grip on the harpoon shaft.
“You know what, Lady Siyu?” I said. She snarled. Ten feet away, five feet away . . . now.
I raised the harpoon as she glided the last few feet towards me and extended her torso, teeth bared. “Life’s a real bitch, and so am I,” I said.
Shock, or the closest thing I’d ever seen to it on her face, registered as she impaled herself on the harpoon. I skidded back against the floor with the impact but held on. Lady Siyu grasped the tip with both red-clawed hands and shrieked.
Rynn headed over.
“Next time you pass me a weapon, don’t send the pointy end first,” I said.
“It worked, didn’t it? Nagas tend not to think the more enraged they get. Do you mind,” he asked me, nodding at the spear I was barely managing to hold onto. Saying Lady Siyu was strong was an understatement, and she was already trying to work the spear tip out.
“Be my guest,” I said, and let him take it. I figured let the supernatural deal with each other one-on-one.
“Now, you were saying something about dismembering Owl and sending the pieces through the mail? Please,” Rynn said, twisting the harpoon until Lady Siyu growled in pain, “continue.”
She hissed and wrapped her tail around the length of the spear, reminding me of a worm on a fishing hook. “Lowliest trash of the ethereal world—”
I shook my head and took a big step back. Supernaturals.
“The scroll, Alix,” he said.
Oh, yeah, right. She’d dropped it on the floor a few inches out of reach. I edged forward. My fingers brushed the edge of the scroll as Lady Siyu’s rattle tip struck. I scrambled back and almost fell flat on my face.
“You get it!” I said.
“I’m a little busy,” he said.
“I was lucky that wasn’t my head,” I yelled back.
Rynn grimaced and shifted his weight as Lady Siyu twined and retwined her tail. She wasn’t hurt, only immobilized—and really, really pissed off. It was only a matter of time until she torqued the harpoon out of Rynn’s grip. I really didn’t want either of us to be around for that part . . .
“Damn it, where the hell is Oricho when you need him?” I said.
“I believe here would be the correct answer,” Oricho said.
I turned around. I hadn’t believed my ears, and I didn’t quite believe my own eyes, but there he was, stepping over the top half of a ruined slot machine.
“Has anyone ever told you you have lousy timing?” I said.
He arched his tattooed eyebrow. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“Are you kidding? You missed just about everything we could have used you for.”
Lady Siyu spat as he walked up to where the scroll still lay. She hissed and thrashed at him with the tip of her tail, but he evaded it as if it had been no more than a gust of wind. He retrieved the scroll, then did something that caught me off guard—he bowed to her. Not that I claim to even begin to understand supernatural culture, but even Rynn looked taken aback, and he understood the etiquette and nuances.
Lady Siyu said something I had no hope of understanding.
Whatever it was though got Rynn’s attention. “Oricho, what’s she talking about?” he said, more tense than he had been a moment before.
Oricho stood no less than a foot away from me, his face the emotionless mask I’d grown used to. Real fast I was aware that Lady Siyu and the spear were standing between me and Rynn. “Oricho . . . answer Rynn’s question, preferably in English so I know what the hell is going on too.”
“Snakes always did have a hard time controlling their tempers,” he said.
Lady Siyu called him something in the strange language again.
Oricho replied, “And yet, as you flail on the end of a stick, incapable of upholding your honor, you still can’t bring yourself to speak in a common tongue. It is a failing, Lady Siyu. A mortal one.”
Rynn pulled the spear out and circled with it to keep Lady Siyu at bay as he took a step closer to me. He was frowning at Oricho, and I realized it wasn’t Lady Siyu he was pointing the harpoon at. Oricho strode over and grabbed Lady Siyu by the neck. He twisted it, and her tail went limp as she crumpled into a heap on the floor.
“Owl, move,” Rynn said as I stared at Lady Siyu’s dead body.
“What the hell just happened?” I said. “Oricho?”
He stepped towards me. Shit. I looked into the same ice-cold eyes I remembered from the first day I met him. They scared the shit out of me then, and they still did.
I made for Rynn, but Oricho was faster. He grabbed me around the waist and lifted me off the ground. “I don’t care what private war you had with Lady Siyu,” I said, “let me go and leave me out of it.”
“If only it were that simple.” He shook his head, and for a moment I thought I saw a flicker of regret—maybe even sadness. But it was gone before I really knew what I’d seen. “You’ve acted honorably. I am sorry you are here. Unlike many of my kind, I prefer not to involve humans in our spats.”
“Alix, duck,” Rynn said. I didn’t exactly have a hell of a lot of mobility, and the only version of “duck” I could come up with was burying my face in Oricho’s shirt. Idiotic moment of relief; it smelled like cherry blossoms, not some version of supernatural BO.
I felt something stir my hair as it passed by. Whatever it was, Oricho breathed out fast and loosened his grip as he was thrown back. I slid out and ran, reaching Rynn before turning around to see what had happened. The harpoon was sticking out of Oricho’s shoulder. Something wet was trickling down my neck, and I reached to wipe it away. My hand came back with blood—my blood. I swore and slapped Rynn. “Will you stop throwing harpoons at me?”
“I missed.”
I held up my bloody hand. “This is not ‘missed.’ ”
He frowned. “Fine. I didn’t hit anything vital—”
“It’s my head.”
“Oh for the love of—Will you stop arguing and run?” he said, and pulled me after him.
“Oricho has the scroll—” I started.
“I don’t know about you, but I stopped caring about five minutes ago.”
He had a very good point. Let the supernaturals kill each other while I sent a nice little email to Mr. Kurosawa from a safe distance on a Mediterranean beach—or better yet, on the other side of the planet, like Australia’s Gold Coast.
“If we move fast, we should be able to get Nadya and Captain and get the hell out of here before—” Rynn added when we were mere footsteps away from the casino exit.
Oricho spoke in an old-sounding Japanese dialect, and a gust of air came up around us. The doors to the casino slammed shut, and both of us crashed into them.
The ghosts.
Rynn swore, or I think he swore, since I couldn’t understand what he said as he pulled me back down the first row of slot machines . . . or what was left after Lady Siyu’s tirade.
“There is no escape that way, old friend,” Oricho said as the chimes started and all the machines spewed coins over the floor. They piled up fast, blocking our way.
Rynn stopped and spun, removing a hunting knife from inside his jacket. Oricho smiled as he strode towards us and reached behind his head. His hand came back holding the hilt of a very sharp and polished samurai sword.
That scared me. Rynn might survive a fight with Oricho, but considering the short work Oricho had made of Lady Siyu, my chances were slim, at best. That meant
my best hope was to talk my way out . . . shit. Here went everything.
“I thought you kami cared about honor? What the fuck is this supposed to be?”
“Dishonor to an honorable end,” Oricho said.
“Let’s see, you’re working for Sabine to help her steal a weapon she really shouldn’t be in possession of, and then you snapped Lady Siyu’s neck after Rynn harpooned her—I’m not up on supernatural death rules, but I doubt that was an honorable fight, and for what? To steal the magic version of a localized nuke from your boss? I get you hate him, but I don’t get this.”
Oricho was taking his time but still getting closer.
Rynn stepped in front of me. “Oricho, don’t do this—it’s not worth stealing from Mr. Kurosawa, whatever Sabine is offering you. You can’t do this, you’re kami—”
Oricho stopped a few feet away, a sad, uncharacteristic smile on his face. “Who said anything about working for Sabine? She is under my employ. Honorable unto death,” he said, and undid the collar of his crisp white shirt to reveal a thick, angry red welt, never properly healed and still oozing.
Rynn’s eyes went wide in shock. Oricho nodded at him and raised his sword back up.
“You are right, old friend. A kami would serve as duty dictates. When I found out the true purpose of the scroll a few months back, I paid Sabine to take my life.”
Oricho had died. Some supers can do that—but when a kami dies, it becomes something else.
“You’re onryo,” I said. A spirit of vengeance.
He gave me an eerie smile, showing a completely different side, one I hadn’t even suspected lay beneath the surface.
“Honor for my samurai in vengeance,” he said.
The pieces began to fall into place. Lady Siyu hadn’t been the target, and neither were Rynn and I really. Hell, he wanted to take out his boss. A personal nuke with enough explosive power to take out a kilometer of Las Vegas just might do it. And take everyone else with it . . .
Lady Siyu had just been guarding it until I’d run in looking for Oricho, and Rynn had come looking for me . . . “Lady Siyu didn’t poison Nadya—you did,” I said.
Oricho removed a pair of incisors from his pocket. “My associate was able to retrieve these from the Balinese temple after you incidentally killed the naga guarding the catacombs. I suspected they might come in handy—naga venom is so difficult to come by. I am sorry your friend had to be poisoned. I had no other way to steer you towards this path.”
Owl and the Japanese Circus Page 38