by Greg Cox
He took off down the center corridor, figuring that was her most likely escape route. Did Nadia have a car parked here? Probably not, he figured; this lot was for the paying customers. Which meant that hopefully she was still on foot.
A young couple approached the carnival from the outer reaches of the parking lot. Pete ran up to them. “Excuse me, folks. Have you seen a runaway Egyptian priestess?”
“You mean that hot chick in the white robe? She went that way,” the guy volunteered, before casting a nervous glance at his date, who appeared less than amused by his powers of observation. He gulped. “Er, not that I really noticed. . . .”
“Thanks!” Pete left the poor guy to dig himself out of whatever hole he was in. “Good luck, dude.”
Heading off the way the man had indicated, he cut through a line of parked cars to reach an open corridor one row over. His efforts were rewarded by the sight of Nadia herself at the far end of the fence. A barbed-wire fence cut off the parking lot from an adjacent pasture, blocking her escape. She paused, visibly uncertain which way to go next.
“Nadia!” Pete sprinted toward her. He made a mental note not to let her lay hands on him until he took that glove off her. He had a touch of heartburn at the moment, probably from that chili dog he had munched on the way here, but nothing that needed healing that badly. “Stay right where you are, okay? We don’t want any more trouble.”
She spun around. Pete noticed that she was sweating and out of breath. Her face was flushed. Perhaps she hadn’t recovered from healing all those people yet? No wonder she hadn’t been able to shake their tail. She looked like she was at the end of her rope.
Pete hoped there was no more flight in her. He was anxious to get back to Myka and make she sure she was okay.
“You don’t need to run anymore.” He walked toward her in what he hoped was a nonthreatening manner. “We’re the good guys. Really we are.”
The roar of a powerful V-twin engine drowned out his words. A motorcycle zoomed past Pete, then braked in front of Nadia. “Hop on!” Jim Doherty shouted. The determined knife thrower must have gotten out from beneath the sideshow tent. “Hurry!”
Nadia didn’t need to be asked twice. She jumped onto the chopper behind her boyfriend and threw her arms around his waist. He wore a leather jacket over his spangled costume. No helmet protected his skull. He shot Pete a dirty look.
“Wait!” Pete hollered. This whole operation was going south on them again. He rushed toward the bike, but Jim wasn’t sticking around. Gunning the throttle, he pulled a wheelie, then peeled out parallel to the fence. Pete guessed that he was heading out of the parking lot toward the open road. The bike’s exhaust hung in the air.
So much for chasing Nadia on foot. Pete tried to remember where his car was parked. Retrieving his keys from his pocket, he remote-activated the locks. An answering beep led him back to a rented Subaru and he jumped behind the wheel. Honking madly to clear a path, he sped out of the lot after the bike. He yanked his seat belt into place.
The lights of the carnival receded in his rearview mirror. A winding country road lined by low stone walls and drooping elms and oaks led him away from West Haven. Keeping his eye on the motorcycle, Pete hit the gas to eat up the distance between them. Irritated drivers honked at him as he passed them in pursuit of the fleeing carnies. An oncoming pickup truck came around a corner fast, and he yanked hard on the wheel, barely making it back to his own lane in time. The close call left his heart pounding.
This would have been easier in the Badlands. . . .
His wild driving made him impossible to miss. Jim and Nadia looked back over their shoulders. It was obvious they had made him.
The chopper accelerated, trying to shake him, but Pete stuck to them like Sticky String, something he’d had plenty of gooey experience with. The bike wove recklessly through traffic, tempting fate. Did having a healer aboard encourage Jim to play daredevil, or was he just determined to keep Nadia out of the agents’ nefarious clutches?
Probably the latter, Pete guessed.
They shredded the speed limit, turning the moonlit road into a racetrack, as Pete floored it to keep up with the bike. His brain was racing, too, trying to figure out how to end this chase safely. Running the chopper off the road was not an option; as much as he wanted that glove, he wasn’t going to risk getting the two carnies killed in the process. Nor could he call for backup; he really didn’t want to involve the local constabulary in this. All he could do now was keep on top of the fugitives until they gave up or ran out of gas. Losing them now would suck big-time.
A stop sign warned of an approaching intersection. The Harley didn’t even slow down, despite an oncoming station wagon with the right of way. The wagon slammed on its brakes as the bike cut in front of it, risking a collision. The driver honked his horn in protest. Pete gave him an apologetic wave as he blew through the crossing after the bike.
The problem with high-speed chases was that they always endangered any innocent drivers sharing the road. Pete’s temper heated up. Jim and Nadia weren’t risking just their own skins now.
An open straightaway gave him a chance to zoom past the cars between him and the chopper. He pulled in behind the bike, which was right ahead of him, hammering down the road. Pete honked and flashed his headlights to try to get them to pull over. Too bad the rental car hadn’t come with a siren. Or a tractor beam.
The riders ignored his signals. Instead, to his surprise, Nadia stood up behind Jim and climbed over her boyfriend’s shoulders even as he scooted backward to make room for her up front. The daring high-speed acrobatics were like something you’d see in a circus—or a carnival. Pete’s jaw dropped. Nadia and Jim traded places atop the speeding chopper. She grabbed the handlebars, taking control of the bike. It swerved wildly for a second but then got back on course. The bike kept on rolling.
“What the hey?” Peter muttered. He couldn’t figure out what they were up to.
The answer came in the form of a flashing blade. With Nadia now steering the bike, Jim’s hand was free to pluck a throwing knife from his belt and hurl it back at Pete. The blade caught the gleam of the Subaru’s headlights. Pete ducked involuntarily, but Jim wasn’t aiming at him. Instead of striking the windshield, the knife plunged toward the car’s front tires instead. The knife struck the driver’s-side wheel with a jarring bump. Air hissed from the punctured tire.
More knives followed, one after another. Both front tires blew. White knuckles gripped the steering wheel as Pete lost control of the car. He hit the brakes, and the car swerved to the right, clipping a mailbox and crashing into a ditch. An air bag inflated explosively, swallowing his face. Abused metal crunched noisily before falling silent. The Subaru came to rest nose down in the ditch. Broken glass tinkled across the mangled hood. Smashed headlights went black.
Pete guessed he wouldn’t be getting his deposit back.
Over the ringing in his head, he heard Nadia open up on the throttle.
The chopper sped away into the night.
Artie didn’t like what they had to tell him.
“You lost the artifact? It got away?”
“I’m afraid so,” Myka admitted. She and Pete shared their Farnsworth while, a few yards away, a tow truck extricated the battered Subaru from the ditch. A second car, which she had “borrowed” from the carnival parking lot, was parked nearby. Unfortunately, she had not arrived in time to keep Nadia and Jim from escaping with the glove.
On the brighter side, her ankle felt good as new.
“At least we know what we’re looking for now,” Pete pointed out. His face was scratched and bruised from the crash, but otherwise he seemed to be in one piece. His hair and clothes had looked better. “If not where it came from.”
“That’s progress,” Artie conceded. “A glove, you say? Of antique design?” He scratched his beard thoughtfully, sounding intrigued. “Hmm. Let me look into that. In the meantime, you two need to get a lead on that girl. What about her fellow carnies?”
Myka shook her head. “They’re not talking. Turns out the Mafia has nothing on the sideshow code of silence. Plus, they all seem to regard Nadia as a genuine saint. She’s been using the glove to relieve their aches and pains for weeks now. They’re not going to flip on her.”
Pete squirmed uncomfortably. “Speaking of which, Artie, I’ve gotta ask: Are you sure we’re doing the right thing here? Nadia really does seem to be helping a whole lot of people.”
“Are you serious?” Artie acted surprised by the question. “How long have you been working here, again? Since when do we leave unidentified artifacts at large?”
“You weren’t there, Artie,” Myka said. She understood where Pete’s doubts were coming from. To be honest, the same reservations had crossed her mind. “You didn’t see how happy those people and their families were after Nadia healed them.”
“But at what cost?” he said sternly. “I’m sure that this Nadia person means well. People who find an artifact, or are found by one, often do. But we absolutely, positively cannot let this go. That kind of thinking never ends well.” A grave look came over his bewhiskered face. “Look what happened to MacPherson.”
James MacPherson’s schemes to exploit the power of the artifacts had ultimately gotten him killed, along with plenty of innocent people. And it had all started when he used a dangerous artifact to save one woman at the expense of others. That had been the end of his career as an agent—and the beginning of a tragic tale of death and betrayal.
“Point taken.” Myka wished it was otherwise—that they could just let Nadia keep on healing people—but she’d been an agent long enough to know better.
So had Pete.
“Don’t worry, Artie,” he sighed. “We’ll track her down, just like we always do. It just kind of sucks sometimes, you know?”
Artie smiled sadly. “Do I ever.”
Pete tried to lighten the mood. He peered into the Farnsworth, trying to see around Artie’s head. “Is Claudia around?” He fished the cheap plastic binoculars from his pocket. Miraculously, they had come through the wreck unscathed. “I got her a souvenir, just like I promised.”
Oh, boy, Myka thought. She could just imagine Claudia’s excitement . . . or lack thereof.
“Sorry,” Artie said. “She and Leena are doing inventory.”
In other words, they could be busy for a while. . . .
CHAPTER
7
WAREHOUSE 13
“Queen Victoria’s wedding cake?”
“Check.”
The Warehouse seemed to go on forever. Aisle after aisle of overstuffed shelves and storage areas stretched further than Claudia could see. Wooden crates, metal drums, cardboard boxes, steamer trunks, Tupperware bins, plastic coolers, picnic baskets, and other containers were piled several stories high. Labels, ranging from handwritten index cards to sophisticated electronic video units, attempted to impose order on the sprawling collection, which threatened to fill up every nook and cranny of the vast, cavernous space. The sheer size of the Warehouse could take one’s breath away. Claudia had been apprenticed here for over a year now, and she was still stumbling onto new areas and artifacts she had never seen before. Maintaining an accurate inventory was a Sisyphean task, despite her continuing efforts to update Artie’s stubbornly antiquated records and filing systems. Like, a card catalog . . . seriously?
“D. B. Cooper’s parachute?”
“Check.”
She rode a rolling metal ladder along the towering shelves, calling out the artifacts in front of her, while Leena strolled down the aisle below, checking the items off on a clipboard. They had been at this for hours now, but had yet to find anything out of place or missing. Claudia fought a yawn. If it were up to her, she’d be on the road with Pete and Myka rather than stuck here doing scut work, but Artie had been insistent. Given recent security breaches by the likes of MacPherson and H. G. Wells, he wanted to make sure everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. A reasonable precaution, she had to admit, even if that didn’t make the job any less mind-numbingly tedious.
“Sigmund Freud’s cigar.” Claudia paused. “What does that do?”
Leena made a face. “You don’t want to know.”
“Okaaay. Moving on . . .”
It was hot, thirsty work, especially since there was no air-conditioning on the main floor of the Warehouse (which, granted, would be a budget buster). The musty, dusty atmosphere seemed unusually stuffy today, like she was stuck in the world’s biggest sweatshop. Her mouth was dry and she kicked herself for not bringing along a can of soda. There was a small fridge back in Artie’s lair, but that was umpteen aisles, half a dozen stories, and at least a thirty-minute hike away.
Maybe after they finished this shelf?
She tried to focus on the task at hand. Leaving the skeevy cigar behind, she checked out the next item: a battered tin pot resting right side up. A faded paper label identified it as once belonging to John Chapman (1774–1845), a.k.a. “Johnny Appleseed.”
Right, she thought. A storybook illustration of a scruffy, barefoot wanderer planting an orchard in the wilderness popped from her memory banks. Dude used to wear his pot as a hat.
Talk about a bold fashion choice!
But that wasn’t all the pot was good for. Intrigued by the description pinned to the shelf beneath it, Claudia couldn’t resist lifting the pot from its perch. As she brought it toward her face, the interior of the pot magically filled with swirling golden-brown liquid. The enticing aroma of fresh apple cider tickled her nose.
Her mouth watered. She licked her lips.
She lifted the pot to her lips. One little sip couldn’t hurt, right? It was just like using the snow globe to cool her drinks back at the office. . . .
“Claudia?” Leena called out from below. “Everything okay up there?”
She blushed guiltily. On second thought, maybe she should pass on the cider. Messing with artifacts was seldom a good idea. Look what happened that time she tried to use Volta’s lab coat to change a lightbulb. . . .
“We’re copacetic,” she assured Leena, a little too quickly. She lowered the pot from her lips, hoping that Leena hadn’t seen. “Strictly professional all the way.”
She started to put the pot back where it belonged. Just then, a burst of azure energy flashed into existence farther down the aisle. Crackling like ball lighting, the thunderous discharge threw off spidery blasts of electricity as it came racing toward her.
“Holy moley!” She had seen this before. Sometimes the sheer accumulation of tangential energy in the Warehouse kicked up a little static, as Artie liked to put it, which could be extremely hazardous to your health. “Duck and cover!”
The roiling electrical storm rattled the shelves. The metal ladder turned into an elevated lightning rod. Grasping the danger just in time, Claudia leaped off a rung and grabbed onto the edge of the nearest shelf right before the energy bolt struck the ladder, sending it spinning across the aisle away from her. Sparks cascaded down the ladder’s length as the grounded energy dispersed into the floor. Within seconds the crisis was over.
Except, of course, that Claudia now found herself dangling some ten feet above the floor, hanging on by her fingertips. Her feet searched for purchase but couldn’t quite reach one of the lower shelves. Gravity tugged on her legs. Not for the first time, she wished she were a few inches taller.
“Er, Leena? A hand, please?”
The other woman had thrown herself facedown onto the floor, her hands over her head. She lifted her eyes cautiously and looked around to make sure the coast was clear. Then she jumped to her feet and ran over to the displaced ladder. Playing it safe, she pulled on a pair of protective purple gloves before taking hold of the ladder and wheeling it back under Claudia. “Here you go,” she said. “You okay?”