Owl and the City of Angels (44 page)

The chalet door opened, and a man wearing Buddhist robes paired with a cowboy hat stuck his head outside. “You’re late,” the one I’d dubbed Texas said.

I was late? . . . Asshole. “Yeah, just be happy I’m not raiding Shangri-la down there.” I started walking for the chalet. Damn, these hallucinations were getting awful real. Couldn’t be a good sign . . .

Texas spit on the ground as someone I assumed had to be Michigan stuck his head out. No cowboy hat, but the yellow Buddhist robes were there as well.

“I told you it was a mistake meeting them here,” Texas said . . . well,
growled
might be more accurate.

“We’re here for negotiations, and the elf is trustwort-oomph!” Michigan was cut short by Texas’s elbow to the ribs.

They stood aside, and I entered the chalet in a hallucinated daze. For the next few moments we all stood there, awkwardly looking at each other, Carpe fidgeting his thumbs. “This is the Byzantine Thief, and I’m Carpe Diem. We appreciate you meeting us to negotiate,” he said.

Yeah, no time for this right now . . . “Look, let’s save the uncomfortable pleasantries. Give me the map to the Syrian City of the Dead, and I’ll leave. I won’t even raid Shangri-la down there on my way out.” Not that I
would
raid Shangri-la on my way out. That was a few too many steps over the ethical gray zone line, even for me.

Not that I wouldn’t consider coming back.

Carpe winced. So did Michigan, I noted. “Byzantine—” Carpe started.

“Can you not take no for an answer?” Texas said. “Is that what’s going on here?”

I needed to have a long chat with Carpe later about what constituted negotiations and what was a fucking waste of time. “How about you stop trying to fuck me over and give me the goddamn map? That we agreed upon.”

“Jesus, no wonder we keep getting censorship notes on you,” Michigan said.

“Give me my fucking map.”

“You’re here to negotiate, not hold us at gunpoint,” Texas said.

You know, I wasn’t going to say it, but if the shoe fits . . .

I grabbed Carpe—or the Byzantine Thief grabbed Carpe; my brain was having trouble keeping track of what was real and not real right now. “Give me the map or World Quest gets it—”

“Hey—” Carpe started to argue.

“Do you want your spell book or not?”

Carpe gave a disgruntled sigh but settled out of his argument.

Texas looked like he might punch me, and I readied my poisoned daggers. I’d get a good hit on him if he swung first.

Michigan took the opportunity to step between me and Texas. “Enough, both of you—”

“But she—” Texas started.

“She’s got a mouth worse than a sailor, and you’re offering up a bar fight. What did you expect was going to happen?”

Michigan turned his attention on me next. “All right, Carpe took the liberty of explaining your predicament. We get why you attacked World Quest, and I even get the whole give-the-IAA-the-finger thing you’ve been doing. We both do, but we also don’t want any more attention than we already get. You raiding every site we’ve mapped out in game is causing us some pretty fucking huge problems.”

“To put it in terms and words you might be able to understand, we’re real inclusive that way,” Texas added.

Michigan glared at Texas before continuing. “Because of the extenuating circumstances—namely, someone letting loose cursed artifacts into the public and you dying—we’ve agreed to help and not ban your asses. Got it?”

“I’m waiting for the
but
.”

I must have picked up some kind of cue from the audio, because Michigan’s avatar looked as if he’d aged a few years where he stood. “All right, here’s the problem; we don’t have the entire map to give you because we never finished the level. We’ve never been inside.”

“On account of us being sane and the whole city being cursed,” Texas added.

“Let me get this straight—you two knew you didn’t have the map and brought me here anyways? Why didn’t you just say that in the first place and save us all the time?”

“Alix—” Carpe started.

I turned on him. “If I’d have known there was no complete map, I’d have never wasted time with your damn book.”

Carpe winced.

“Jesus—is she always like this?” Texas asked.

He fidgeted. “Well . . . sort of, but right now we’re kind of under extenuating circumstances—”

“
Enough,
Carpe.” Oh why, universe, do you derive so much pleasure setting me up for disaster? “All right, what
can
you give us?”

“The only one we figure has been inside the city is whoever is removing the items,” Michigan said.

“
If
they aren’t dead yet,” Texas said.

“We’ve got a decent layout of the tunnels and rooms, including the cistern you’re in right now and most of the big outer traps. Basically anything the IAA had in their archives and a few they didn’t.”

“Wait a minute—how do you know I’m in a cistern?”

Michigan smiled and pointed at Carpe. “Because he’s not the only person here who can hack. Now, I’ll send you the file, but we want your word no more breaking World Quest.”

“Deal,” Carpe said, a little too fast for my liking.

“And no more using our game to steal stuff,” Texas added.

“Yeah, I heard you the first twenty times. For the record, I wasn’t even trying to steal anything this time—”

He snorted. “Yeah, and the guy in the Mexican whorehouse is just visiting his sister.”

Goddamn it . . .

“We’re in agreement, then?” Michigan asked.

Carpe and I both nodded, and Michigan extended his hand.

I knew it wasn’t really there, but what the hell. It felt so real . . .

And then the Buddhist ski chalet was gone, as was Shangri-la. My character, the Byzantine Thief—or me, if you want to get into validating my hallucinogenic delusions of grandeur—was left standing in the Himalayas.

“Carpe?” But Carpe was nowhere to be seen or heard. Son of a bitch had already left. The temperature dropped, and snow that hadn’t been there before started lashing at my face . . .

“Hey, assholes, how do I get out of here?” I yelled.

“Walk down the mountain like everyone else,” I heard Texas say.

Walk down the mountain. Damn it, I was not leaving Byzantine here . . .

I turned around to see if there was a portal or launch pad to get the hell out.

I heard a cross between a roar and a growl behind me.

“And watch out for the abominable snowmen,” came Texas’s voice.

Damn it. I started to run down the mountain path and heard something crash after me.

Come on, brain, positive thoughts, we are not running away from abominable snowmen in the Himalayas
 . . . I closed my eyes and willed the hallucination to disappear. The cold faded, as did the growling, and my screen came back into focus.

I was back in the catacombs—but the growling had been replaced by yelling . . . Benji’s.

“What’s wrong with you?” he said, his forehead scrunched.

“What’s wrong with me?” What wasn’t wrong with me was more like it . . . “I’m fine. Just tired. The last few days of no sleep catching up with me.”

Benji stood up and took a step back. He wasn’t buying it this time. “Yeah, unh-hunh, and that’s why your nose is bleeding.”

I held my hand to my face and pulled it back. Sure enough, there was blood. Damn it. I glanced back up at Benji. Oh what the hell . . . “All right. In amongst chasing down cursed artifacts, I may have cursed myself—accidently.”

The color drained from his face.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not contagious—”

His pallor wasn’t from fear though, as I soon discovered. It was rage. He threw down his flashlight, cracking the plastic on the stone floor. “I don’t—You’re not here to save everyone from the artifacts, you’re here to save your own neck!”

OK, it was my turn to get angry. “I’m here to do both. Hell, I don’t want to see anyone else die—”

“Oh and you’d have come here anyways, I suppose? If you weren’t trying to cure yourself?” Benji ran his hands through his hair. “Un-fucking believable.”

“I got cursed retrieving the artifacts to get them out of circulation—and you should talk. You’re helping them excavate, for Christ’s sake!”

He made an exasperated sound. “I don’t have a choice.”

Funny how five small words I’ve said myself carried that much weight.

It’s when I think I’m at my worst that things click—what Rynn, Nadya . . . hell, even Oricho . . . had said.

“Yeah, you do. You can’t stomach the consequences, so you pretend you don’t have a choice. It’s not the same thing.”

The look on his face was still furious, but it wasn’t aimed at me anymore—or not entirely.

I took a gamble. “Look, you’re more than welcome to try and find your own way out. I won’t stop you, but I won’t stand half as much of a chance if you don’t help me—and I’d really like to make sure nothing else leaves this place.”

He swore but grabbed his flashlight and continued back towards the cistern. I checked my phone. The map from the World Quest developers still hadn’t downloaded. “Owl?” came Carpe’s voice.

“Carpe, Nadya—the World Quest map isn’t showing up on my screen.”

I heard Carpe typing on the other end. “Sorry, I’m having trouble pushing the file through.”

Shit. “All right, I’ll need you two to walk me through—meaning traps—sooner rather than later.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Carpe said.

“With descriptions.”

I hoped Carpe got the message, then I set off after Benji. Let’s see if we could find out where the hell these artifacts were coming from.

We stepped out of a small rectangular room into another forked section. We’d found inscriptions in the previous rooms, but nothing referring to the sword or the other cursed artifacts.

Looking at the wall, I could have sworn I needed to go left, not right, like Carpe said. “Carpe, are you sure it’s a right turn here? It’s a dead end—it’s the left tunnel that keeps going.”

“That’s what the map says,” he said.

“Hey, Benji. See anything on this right wall, like a lever that might open a door?”

He gave a cursory examination to the wall, cracked floor tiles—even the ceiling. After he checked the seams between the wall and floor, he stood back up, shaking his head. “It’s just a wall.”

Damn elf . . . “Carpe, it’s a dead end—the only way out is to the right.”

“Alix, Carpe’s right, I can see it on the map—left tunnel,” Nadya added.

I sighed. And while I was telling them that wasn’t possible, there was a rock wall . . . We’d have to find another way around to the Neolithic chamber.

“Where did you say you found those items again? The ones that went missing from the inventory?” Benji asked.

“Daphne Sylph’s private collection in L.A.—two of the pieces, at least. The third one—the bronze sword—reappeared in an L.A. vampire den.”

Benji shook his head at the mention of vampires, and I felt no need to elaborate. “Give me Cooper’s phone,” he said.

“There’s no point; I can’t download anything.”

“No, but you know how he is. He takes more pictures on that thing than is healthy.”

“So?”

“So, maybe he took a picture of the place where he took them from? I mean, why not? If he was going to go to all the trouble of having the artifacts stolen—which he must have, because he went to the trouble of filing the reports in the first place. There’s no advantage to not keeping a record. Besides, I’m pretty sure he didn’t expect you to show up and lift his phone. And besides, the photos would be on his phone’s memory—here, give it to me.”

I passed Benji Cooper’s phone, and he scrolled through the pictures. “Bronze sword—that’s the one, isn’t it?” he said, holding the phone back out.

I took the phone back and focused in on the image. “That’s it exactly.” There were five or six more pictures showing the flint and stone bowl, along with some long shots of the room the three had been found in.

“Wait a minute,” Benji said, grabbing the phone back and zooming in on the room. “Shit, son of a bitch . . . that’s what Cooper wanted with those translations.”

I froze. “What translations?”

Benji shook his head and showed me a picture of an old room.

“Cooper asked me to do some translations on some old Aramaic inscriptions he pulled off one of the burial mounds. I didn’t think of it at the time because it was way past the Neolithic time point. Figured they were added by the next batch of people who moved in and started building the monastery foundation. There was a lot of term discontinuity though, and parts had been added a hundred years apart—as if someone was making notes.”

“And you’re just telling me this now?”

“I figured it was a translation mix-up, all right? I didn’t think it was related to the cursed items. The items were long gone by the time I got there—and you said yourself they were from the Neolithic sites.” He pointed to the image. “
That
room’s not Neolithic; it’s ancient, but built during Aramaic times.”

“All right, what was in them—disjointed shorthand?”

“They were run-of-the-mill burial spells—similar in nature to the Egyptians’, but much less refined; not as much detail, and a lot more room for ad-lib.”