Owl and the City of Angels (43 page)

I would have loved to know what the hell Rynn had orchestrated out there . . . And in spite of myself, I hoped the enthralled pirates hadn’t gotten maimed or killed in the process. Pirates getting hurt by a golem while keeping us locked in a cage was one thing, enthralled pirates getting used as cannon fodder was another.

I waited until the flashlights retreated before I uncovered Benji’s mouth again. “Look, if this was just a hate on for me, that’d be fine, but five people are already dead from the curse.“ Granted, most of them were pirates impersonating me, but I saw no need to put that small detail forward. “Sorry, Benji, you can be a good guy or bad guy, not both.”

He swore. “Fine, but only because I didn’t sign up for people to end up dead.” He checked that the coast was clear in the main hall and nodded for us to follow him. “The entrance is down this way,” he said.

We froze as footsteps sounded behind us, followed by Cooper’s Midwest accent and Odawaa’s raised voice. Nadya and I pulled our hoods further down. “Quick, give us something to do—now,” I added, pushing Benji in the back of his shoulder to break the panic setting in. After a moment of hesitation, he grabbed two notebooks off the table and shoved them at us.

“Benji, go secure the catacombs, will you? We’re shutting down for the night,” Cooper said without giving me or Nadya a second look.

What did I say about shipping in archaeologists? Gets hard to tell us apart.

Benji nodded and started towards the back. When I’d been in grad school, Cooper had had one really bad habit; he’d always had his face buried in his phone. Still did . . . I exchanged a quick look with Nadya. Not an opportunity I could resist . . .

It wasn’t much of an effort to knock the chair over in front of Cooper. Nadya did the honors on that one. The real trick was nudging the dig kit in front of his feet as he stumbled, still looking at his phone.

Out of reflex, Cooper dropped his phone to catch himself. It skidded across the room and under a table.

Benji and I ran over to get it, both of us edging under the table while Nadya apologized in a heavily altered voice.

“Did you just steal Cooper’s phone?” Benji asked.

“It’s where he still keeps everything, isn’t it? Here, gimme yours—”

“No!”

“Now, or I’ll hand your number and address over to Bindi.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

I pulled my own phone out. “Vampire on speed dial. Try me.”

He forked over his phone. Same IAA-issue make and model as Cooper’s. I turned his over, opened up the back, and cracked the battery before handing it back. “Here, give this back to him.” With the battery trashed, it’d take him a while to figure out it wasn’t his phone. I pocketed Cooper’s.

Benji handed the phone over to Cooper. I wonder if he would have thought better of it if he hadn’t still been in shock from, well, everything.

We continued on down a set of stairs that led into what looked and smelled like a cellar. It wasn’t until the fourth or fifth step down that Nadya stopped. “Alix, are you picking up a signal anymore?”

I checked my earpiece. “Carpe? Rynn? Can you hear me?”

“Just barely,” came Carpe’s voice.

I swore. Not having the ability to contact Carpe completely screwed my ability to log onto World Quest in twenty minutes and get my damn map. I kicked the wall. So close . . .

“Wait, I have an idea—Nadya is with you, right? Can she find a spot closer to the surface? I might be able to bounce the signal—use one of you as a receiver for the other.”

I looked at Benji. He nodded. “There’s a storage room off to the side. No one will check,” he said.

Benji headed back upstairs with Nadya, returning a moment later.

“Can you hear me now, Carpe?”

“Loud and clear.”

“All right, Nadya, if things get hectic up there—”

“I’ll be the first one to leave. Likewise, Alix.”

“All I need is five minutes with these guys. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve got the map. Then go find Rynn and get out of here.”

I helped Benji pull a stone plate off the floor, revealing another drop down into a shorter and narrower stone passage. Not ominous by design, just that a few thousand years ago people were much shorter. “It’s down there,” he said.

I let Benji go first and still made damn sure I checked for traps; I only trusted Benji so far.

As soon as the coast was clear, I let Captain out of the backpack. One thing Captain was great at finding—besides vampires—was traps. Plus, he was too light to set any off. Ancients were pretty good about making sure small mammals wouldn’t set off their traps, otherwise some lazy thief would figure out all he had to do was release a bag of rats down the tunnel and follow after the trap-triggering bonanza . . . provided one of the traps wasn’t a giant block that blocked the entire tunnel. Then you were screwed.

“Why the hell did you drag me down here with you? I’m not a thief, and contrary to what you seem to think, I don’t want to end up in Siberia,” Benji said when we’d gone a few feet down the circular winding tunnel.

Maybe it was the fever talking, but it struck me I could have ended up like Benji—friendless, scared, running. Or worse, I could have ended up like Cooper.

The difference was I had friends who cared about me . . . and had crazy access to military satellites.

I flipped off my comm. “Relax, there’s a very good reason I brought you down here with me,” I said. The fact that Nadya had to stay up top ended up being serendipitous good luck. That I was stuck with Benji was less good luck, but you can’t win them all.

Benji warily watched me; this was the part I knew Rynn and Nadya—my friends—wouldn’t go for. Benji would. Benji hated my guts.

“I plan on sealing these tunnels off for good so more cursed artifacts don’t find their way out.”

Benji, in spite of his hate for me, managed to look mollified. “How do you plan on doing that?”

“Easy,” I said, and patted my bag. “Because in about fifteen minutes, I’m going to know where all the big traps are.”

“And?”

“And I’m going to set them off.”

Yeah . . . Nadya and Rynn wouldn’t have gone for that one.

For a second I thought Benji was going to say no, but then he nodded. “What do you need from me?”

“Get us into the first section of the catacombs and find us a spot to hide while I get the map.”

“And you promise the dig site will get shut down?”

“Think of it this way. If for some reason I can’t get the traps to shut the place down, I’ll make damn sure everyone in the IAA and the news outlets knows exactly who’s responsible,” I said, and held up Cooper’s phone. If I had to go out, I was going to go out with one hell of a bang—one that would screw the IAA and Cooper.

Benji nodded and turned down the left wing. “Follow me. I know a shortcut.”

18

Dead Gods

9:00 p.m. Where the hell was Carpe?

I swore as I stumbled over another uneven section of floor. The one bitch about old ruins is they never planned or accommodated for ground settling. My head was killing me, and on top of that my vision was now coming in and out of focus—hence the more frequent tripping.

Lucky for me Benji hadn’t caught on just how bad off I was. No need to give him anything to tip his flight-or-fight response. As it was, he was jumpy under the best of circumstances.

A wave of light-headedness hit me, and I steadied myself against the wall—yet another part of the curse I was becoming more familiar with. I felt Captain wind around my feet.

“You really need to revisit your priorities.”

I frowned. The voice wasn’t Benji’s—not whiny enough; it reminded me of an old Egyptologist professor back in my undergrad years.

“Seriously, you need a life overhaul.”

There it was again. I looked to find Benji—he was farther along, examining a section of floor.

Captain was sitting behind me—watching me, patiently. I frowned. My cat didn’t do patient. There was no way, but still . . . “Did you . . .
say
something?”

Captain shook his ruff out and looked straight back at me. “Slow on the uptake, aren’t you?” he said, his lips molding around his teeth to form the words. “But seriously, you should really revisit your life goals. I think at some point you really derailed things.”

I closed my eyes. Great, now my
cat
was giving me life advice . . .

“And maybe spend some time reflecting. I try to be positive, but I think we both know the chances of survival are not in your favor right now. I mean, my kind are the guardians of the underworld; I think I know a couple things about death.”

I frowned. “OK, you’re a cat. You chase vampires and apparently the odd mummy—not exactly a tactical genius that should be doling out life advice.”

“Hey, you said it; I have a brain the size of a walnut. All things considering, I’m doing fucking spectacularly.”

I don’t know what was worse: Captain giving me relatively coherent life advice, or me arguing with him.

This wasn’t happening, just another hallucination.
Wait it out, Alix, it’ll go away
 . . .

“Oh and you should give me more treats. Like now. On account of you dying.”

“You’re a figment of my imagination.” I said it more for myself than my cat.

“And tell Nadya to take me off the diet. It’s cruel and unusual punishment, and completely unnecessary.”

Captain blurred out of focus. Either that meant the hallucination was almost over, or I was about to start bleeding out of my ears . . . I squeezed my eyes shut and hoped for the former.

“Alix? Hey, Alix?”

Someone was shaking my shoulders. Hard.

I opened my eyes. Benji stood in front of me, searching my face, and not with concern. “You were just standing there mumbling to yourself,” he said. It was phrased as a statement, but I didn’t miss the open-ended question.

Note to self, when hallucinating don’t talk to the imaginary people. Or cats.

Captain, still sitting behind me, let out a baleful meow. “Just light-headed with the air down here—needed a breather is all.”

Benji let me go, but I don’t know how convinced he was on the fine part . . . then again, maybe he was just worried a monster was about to jump out at us. Considering the location and company, I could forgive him on that one.

And that was another hallucination down. I was starting to see a pattern; the people I cared about pointing out the things I was most afraid they thought about me. Well, that and the idea of my cat speaking in general scared the shit out of me.

Manifestations of my own paranoia. Fantastic.

“Let’s keep going,” I said, nodding at the three-way junction up ahead. “You said there was a hall coming up?”

Benji took the left fork. “It’s a cistern with some inscriptions left on the pillars and walls, but that’s as far as I’ve gone. Past that?” He shrugged.

I checked my phone clock. Two minutes to go until my meeting. The cistern would do. I followed Benji, placing my feet where he did. After finding a spot to sit, I pulled my laptop out. Time to see if our signal hop worked . . .

“Carpe, I hope to hell you can still hear me,” I said.

“Loud and clear. Log in and head to the Dead Orc. I need to teleport our characters to the meeting location.”

“Provided the game designers don’t delete them as soon as we log in. You think a phone call or email would have been a hell of a lot easier,” I mumbled, but I did as Carpe asked.

“You think I didn’t try that already? They said in game was the only way.”

In World Quest there are only a handful of places you can re-spawn; bars are the place of choice. I watched as the Byzantine Thief fazed into existence amongst the other players on-screen. So far so good. Thank God bars weren’t PVP zones anymore.

“I’m not dead yet,” I said.

“Hold on, teleporting. Special destination spell, so don’t mess with your screen.”

My screen shifted as the Byzantine Thief materialized alongside Carpe on a small mountain path leading up to what looked like a ski lodge, with a distinct Himalayan feel. The mountain path was narrow enough that I had to roll to save my character from sliding down the steep mountain cliff.

“Damn. I’ve heard of this place,” Carpe said. “Just, I’d never thought to actually end up here in game.”

“Where are we? It’s not showing up on my world map—at all.” My headache flared again, and I winced as I tried to focus on my screen.

Carpe turned his character around, taking in the scenery—and probably a lot of screen shots. Below us was a valley spotted with a lake and other dwellings.

“Owl, you don’t understand, we’re not only off-map, we’re, like, in the mythical realm of off-map. This is the game makers’ house.”

Wait a minute—that rang a bell. Something I’d heard at an archaeology conference a few years back after a lot of beer. I winced again as the headache struck a second time and my vision blurred.

“Byzantine, welcome to the Himalayas and the gates of Shangri-la.”

Now, I might have been having a hell of a time focusing, but that detail blazed a trail through my brain. Shangri-la was a mythical location. Like Valhalla, it wasn’t supposed to actually exist.

Except here it was. In World Quest.

If there was one thing I’d learned over my years playing, everything in the game had a basis in reality. Shangri-la was real, and Carpe and Byzantine were standing on the edge of it. All I needed to do was get a dot on my map . . .

“Ow—son of a bitch!” I grasped both ears as the headache reared, ugly. “Owl?” I heard Carpe say, though his voice sounded muffled.

“Yeah, fine—” Just your run-of-the-mill curse . . . The pain abated, and I opened my eyes.

You know, on the one hand I knew perfectly well I was sitting in an ancient cistern built underneath a cursed monastery in Syria . . . but my eyes, nose, and brain were convinced I was standing on a Himalayan mountaintop. I looked down. Instead of a laptop, I was looking at Byzantine’s climbing gear. Carpe’s elf—an uncanny rendition of the real one—stood beside me.

Of all the times for me to hallucinate . . .

Well, no choice but to roll with it. “Let’s just get this over with before I freeze.” The Byzantine Thief wasn’t exactly dressed for snow-filled mountains. Damn it, I couldn’t even screen-shot to try and analyze the topography later on. Shangri-la, right there in front of me . . .