He shook me again. “A weapon? Magic meant to trap me once again?” He twisted my wrist, eliciting a sickening squeal from me. “I’ve been imprisoned for more than six hundred years, so you’ll understand I don’t take kindly to that.”
Come on, Owl, lie like you mean it—enough to put something over on an incubus . . . the best lies are rooted in truth.
“It’s a weapon,” I managed.
He twisted again. I couldn’t feel the pain, but the slick wetness told me that bone had gone through skin. I focused on the blood that was on the device. Mine. I really hoped I was right about this. If I wasn’t—well, I wouldn’t be around to worry about it. One shot—I’d get only one . . .
“What kind of weapon?”
“One that kills supernaturals—and for all I know, humans too,” I said.
“How?”
“You press the button—”
Another shake. “Really?”
“I swear!” I screamed. “That’s how it works. Blood, supernaturals, and press the damn button.”
His eyes narrowed as he peered into mine. For a moment I held my breath, thinking he’d figured it out. After too long a pause he said, “I believe you. Now, what are you not telling me?”
Please don’t pick out the lie. I hoped to hell he wouldn’t be able to tell the lie from the pain and fear—both of which were very real. That’s what Artemis had said, hadn’t he? That there was a point where even a skilled incubus could be fooled.
Here went everything. Through clenched teeth I said, “It kills everyone except the one holding the device,” I said.
The Electric Samurai clicked his tongue and glanced over to where Oricho and Artemis remained away from the Electric Samurai’s sphere of influence. “Now, isn’t that interesting,” he said. I watched him as he mulled it over, looking for the flaws. Regardless of any suspicions he might have, I knew it was too tempting. I had him.
“You know what your problem is, Alix? You give up too easily.”
I licked my lips and watched as he slowly, oh so slowly, wrapped his gloved hand around the device, over the silver button. The device was still covered in my blood. He caressed it, and for a heartbeat, I thought he might not press it. I was too afraid to hold my breath.
Come on, just press the damn button already . . . I willed him to press it with everything I had left . . .
The Electric Samurai might have Rynn’s body and mind, but his imagination and self-restraint he did not.
I watched as his finger pressed the blood-soaked silver button down.
For a moment nothing happened, and then the air around us heated up. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Artemis help Oricho to stand.
The Electric Samurai realized his mistake too late. He whirled on me, eyes blazing red. “You tricked me!” There was no attempt to ape Rynn’s expression now, it was the unadulterated twisted rage of the armor.
“Yeah, and that’s not all.” I kicked him in the knee as hard as I could, as Rynn had once shown me. It caught him off guard, and he let my wrist slip. Despite the fresh new pain that flooded my senses, I managed to slip out of his grip. I stumbled back. The Electric Samurai reached towards me—and couldn’t get to me. His hand slammed into an invisible wall.
“You tricked me!” he screamed, face twisting in fury.
“And I hope it rips every last bit of you away from the armor and my boyfriend.” I took a step back from the Electric Samurai as it pounded against the invisible barrier the sphere had created. “Every last drop,” I whispered.
My back hit something solid.
Shit. Sure enough, behind me was another barrier. I felt my way around, but it had encircled me as well.
Damn. I turned back to the Electric Samurai, who either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care that I was trapped as well. As I watched, the armor began to smoke. There are some points in life where right and wrong just aren’t so clear.
The armor lost its modern guise, retreating back through the ages until it reached its ancient Japanese origins. Smoke poured out of it now, and Rynn’s skin began to char a smoky brown.
Please don’t kill him, I thought.
The smoke wound around him, licking at the armor and Rynn’s skin as the Electric Samurai raged, screaming at me and the world. Thousands of years of anger and hate swelled against the barrier between us.
I don’t know if the Electric Samurai knew its existence had come to an end. I don’t know if it was capable of regret or sorrow. I do know it knew it was dying and fought every step of the way. It sunk to its knees and bared its teeth at me. “This isn’t over,” it said in that hollow voice.
I shook my head. “Yes, it is.”
The last of the smoke swirled around the Electric Samurai’s charred body. A piece fell off and turned to ash on the ground, then another, and another, until all the pieces laid burning around it, turning to ashes, not unlike the way it had left countless cities and people over the centuries. The last flicker of the Electric Samurai’s existence was a final glare of hate before the pale eyes shut forever.
I breathed a sigh of relief, finally tuning into the sounds and shouts around me. We’d defeated the Electric Samurai. I might not be certain about a lot of things, but I knew it was gone.
And then the smoke flowing around the invisible barrier dived for me.
Damn it. I pressed my back as hard as I could against the wall, but it wouldn’t give. The smoke flowed under and then around me. It flicked at my skin, as if tasting me. Goose bumps rose along my arms. A tendril licked at my face, then gripped it, coating me in milky gray.
“Alix?”
The voice was strained and quiet against the backdrop of noise—so much so I wasn’t sure if it was real. I glanced up as the gray smoke snaked its way into my mouth and nose, forcing the breath I needed out.
Rynn was watching me through the barrier, the rage of the Electric Samurai having vanished, replaced by panic and terror.
“No!” He tried to push through the barrier and when that failed searched for the device. He found it on the ground, the symbols still glowing with magic and my blood.
I inhaled but felt no relief. Panic washed over me, a reflex from the lack of oxygen. Oh, that could not be good . . .
Still, the panic didn’t overwhelm me. I’d stopped the Electric Samurai, I’d saved Rynn, and for a time at least I’d stopped a supernatural war from bursting into the human world. Despite what happened, regardless if I died now, I’d done it. Somehow that made everything easier to take.
I leaned my face against the barrier separating us. It felt like glass under my fingers.
“Alix, you need to stop it!” Rynn screamed.
We both knew that even if I could, I wouldn’t. My vision was wavering now—that happens, or so I hear, when there isn’t any oxygen . . .
“Alix, look at me!”
I did—or tried to. I placed my hand up against the barrier. Rynn did the same. At least I’d gotten the chance to see him before—
The last throes of the spell hit us in a burst of blinding light.
I was vaguely aware of flying backwards and falling hard. The blow of back meeting ground knocked the wind out of me, and stars were added to my blurred vision.
As Hermes had said, even if all my roads led to disaster, they were still my roads. Somehow that fact made whatever would come next that much easier to take.
21
AFTERMATH
Still in Tokyo . . . though the jury’s still out on whether I’m dead . . .
I was cold. I hate being cold, as much as I hate it when Captain howls in my ear to wake me up—which he was doing right the fuck now.
My head hurt way too much for me to be dead . . .
I opened my eyes.
I was on my back in a street. Neon lights flashed overhead along with the flickering lights of emergency vehicles. Downtown Tokyo.
I groaned and tried to roll my head. It didn’t work well. At least the different pains were canceling one another o
ut now, my numb, broken wrist competing with the pain in my back and neck . . .
Funny how it hadn’t been until I started working with supernaturals that I’d begun to see silver linings—a coping mechanism?
I was also way more familiar with passing out than I had any right to be.
Somewhere over the background that was my buzzing head I could hear Nadya, Oricho, and Artemis shouting—commands, directions, threats, take your pick.
I turned my head. Ooooh, that was going to smart tomorrow. It took a second for my vision to catch up, but I saw Rynn. He was sitting unconscious, like I should have been, slumped against a wall.
His eyes weren’t open, but that didn’t matter.
The armor was gone, a charred heap of rusted metal scraps and ash scattered around him. A breeze blew down the street, and I watched as the ash was carried away until it was no more. Somehow that struck me as a very fitting end and a long, long time coming.
Through my throbbing headache, I searched for da Vinci’s device: another smoking piece of magic debris lying broken on the pavement, a crack around it. I didn’t think I’d need to worry about it getting into the wrong hands ever again. Which, despite every ounce of pain in my body, suited me just fine.
I laid my head back onto the pavement. I was a lot of things, but stupid enough to try getting up was not one of them. I might have lain there with my eyes closed, letting the world spin circles around my brain, forever, but the throbbing, shooting pain in my arm brought me back out of my stupor. I lifted my head, ignoring the headache to see just how bad my wrist was, before momentarily passing out.
Oh man, I really wished I hadn’t looked. It was bent at an odd angle, and I was pretty sure that was bone sticking out. I closed my eyes and bit back tears. I couldn’t move my fingers.
Numbness was replaced with warmth and sensation in my fingers.
Artemis? But he was still back with the other disoriented supernaturals trying to get their bearings around the square they’d found themselves in, not quite able to remember what had happened and whether what they’d done was a curse or a gift.
I heard more commotion and Nadya’s voice above me. “Alix? Alix?” I think there was a shake at my shoulder as she loomed over me.
I forced myself to sit up. The area around me was cordoned off with yellow tape, yet there was no one to be seen standing at the edges—Artemis’s and Oricho’s work, I wagered. I spotted Oricho nearby; he was blurry, but whether that was due to the flashing lights or the pounding in my head . . .
“Alix?”
I winced—definitely my head.
Nadya crouched beside me, a hand tentatively on my shoulder. I was definitely alive—things hurt too much for me to be dead. “Nadya, pretend I have a really bad hangover.”
I wiped at my forehead before I remembered I’d injured my hand—or thought I had. I frowned at it; where there should have been a twisted wrist, it felt fine. “How does it feel?” I heard Artemis ask. I saw him looming a short distance away. He nodded at my wrist.
“I take it I have you to thank for my hand?” That was the only explanation—Artemis wasn’t nearly as adept as Rynn at healing, which would explain why I was still in such goddamned bad shape.
“The armor?” I asked, my voice catching, worried that I’d somehow dreamed it.
There was a look on Artemis’s face that I couldn’t quite decipher—a mix of concern and— Son of a bitch, the degenerate rock star incubus felt sorry for me.
I tried to push myself up and head over to Rynn, but Artemis and Nadya both stopped me.
“Just—wait until your head settles,” Artemis said gently.
I wasn’t buying it; Artemis didn’t do anything gently. I turned to Nadya, but she was frowning at me as well—and blocking my way.
I stared at her face—and his. Both of them just seemed so damned . . . concerned. Under the circumstances, it was irritating more than anything else.
“How do you feel?” Nadya asked.
I ignored her and tried to get up, but both of them held me down. Captain continued his nervous dance around me, twitching his tail and bleating—a begging, confused sound.
Like hell I was going to sit here and answer questions while Rynn laid there unconscious on the pavement . . .
I drew in a breath. Shit, what if the device hadn’t worked? What if Rynn was still the Electric Samurai?
But Artemis shook his head, still restraining me. “He’s free of the armor. Now answer her question.”
I drew in a breath out of irritation more than anything else. “Rattled but fine.” I held up my wrist. “A quarter patched up, apparently. Happy?”
The two of them exchanged a look. “I think it’s better if you just stay there—” Nadya began.
But Rynn groaned and tried to sit up. That nullified any chance of my cooperating. I shoved the two of them aside and stumbled over to where he was slumped, a jumble of emotions mixed in with my pain and god-awful pounding headache.
I got close to him as he managed to sit up but hesitated a few feet away. What if we were wrong?
Rynn looked about as well as I felt as he took stock of his surroundings. He took in the destruction and general mayhem. His eyes narrowed as they found Artemis and Oricho but didn’t linger—not until they found me.
His eyes were gray. Not white, not blue, not any other color except gray.
I covered the last few steps and knelt down beside him. I stayed still as he took stock of me. “Alix? I thought it was another dream, the armor trying to break me—I didn’t think it was possible . . .” I figured Rynn would throw his arms around me; instead his voice trailed off and his eyes narrowed in on me. He stared at his hands, and his eyes went wide. “Alix, what the hell have you done?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
I could feel the trepidation as if it was my own. Then my own anger replaced it. “What did I do?” Saved you—I saved everyone from you. “I found a way to get rid of the armor, that’s what I did. One that didn’t end up with everyone dead.”
I expected him to snap back to himself, touch me—something. I reached out, but he did something I’d never expected: he pulled back, pulled his face just out of reach of my fingers. I was so shocked that none of the things that coursed through my head made it out of my mouth. The thing that floated to the surface from the cacophony was Artemis’s admonition, clear as when he’d said it what seemed a lifetime ago: “The question you should be asking yourself is will he still want you when he finds out what it will take to save everyone?”
Rynn shook his head and averted his eyes. My anger dissipated. He wasn’t angry at me, just sad, so incredibly sad. “Your eyes, Alix,” he said, and nodded towards a building where the glass was still intact.
I crawled over and took a look at myself in a window. It was me, with fewer scrapes than I normally had, but me—except for my eyes.
They were blue. A devastatingly bright blue—not human and not my own darker shade.
Artemis and Nadya came over to us from where they’d been hanging back, apparently deciding that now was a good time. I saw them in the reflection of the broken window—I couldn’t look away from my eyes.
It was Nadya who touched me and finally turned me away.
It was Artemis who finally spoke. “Well, I’ll be damned. That’s what the mad old Italian meant,” he said.
The three of us turned towards him.
“Da Vinci. He said the device had a cost, that it couldn’t get rid of any powers. We all assumed it meant that it didn’t work half the time.”
It hit me what he’d meant. “That’s how he became a vampire,” I whispered.
Artemis inclined his head. Nadya only gasped, though she hid it well.
“Something resembling a vampire, at any rate,” Artemis said, glancing at Rynn, who was watching us, before turning his green eyes back on me.
That was why the device hadn’t done anything to Charles except clear his head. He was already a vampire; stealing the essen
ce of other vampires only cleared his head, while it reduced the others to ash, stripping everything away that was keeping them alive.
I hadn’t just deactivated the armor, as I’d been led me to believe the device would do. She’d been wrong.
“You took my powers. All of them.” We all turned to where Rynn was standing now, balancing himself against the wall.
“So I’m what? An incubus now?”
“Something resembling one, at any rate,” Artemis said.
I would have said something more, something to the point, but I didn’t need to. I could feel it rolling off the three of them now.
Once again, it was Artemis who finally spoke. He let out a low whistle. “Well, isn’t this an outcome no one expected.”
I glanced up at Rynn, who still hadn’t touched me, not once, not after everything. He narrowed his eyes at Artemis, then at me. “No, not in a million years.”
I don’t know if it was all the emotions swirling around inside me, overwhelming me, or if it was Rynn, but one thing did claw its way to the surface: that once again, despite my best intentions, I’d managed to replace one disaster with another.
“Try blocking it out, Alix,” Artemis said, his voice oddly even and quiet.
I was only half listening to his advice. That was easy for him to say; he lived with this stuff. If I had known this was going to happen . . . Big breath, Alix, I told myself. I unclenched my hands and did the best I could to school my expression.
I had to sit down. There was too much going on, too many feelings, the majority of which couldn’t be my own. I slid my back down against a wall and tried to wrap my head around everything, shut out the onslaught of sensory overload on my raw nerves, make sense out of everything that was going on in my head, try to piece together which emotions were mine and which were coming in from outside.
What made it through was an incessant buzzing in the background, constant and unforgiving on my raw nerves. It was the kind I couldn’t ignore. I pulled it out, meaning to silence it.
I stared at the screen. Everything else faded away.
There was only one person who could make a message box appear on my phone like that. It was the same messaging program Carpe had used to contact me.
Owl and the Tiger Thieves Page 40