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 out 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 essence 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.
I’d seen that text box only once since Shangri-La, when it had been filled with a jumble of numbers.
Are you there?
I swallowed and stared at the screen, not entirely certain whether I should trust myself or what I was seeing.
Another message popped up on the screen. Please, Alix— Just tell me if you can see this.
A cold sensation crept down my spine. Carpe was dead and buried in a collapsed pocket universe. I was certain about that, that’s what I’d told the elves . . .
Please?
I hesitated but only for a moment, my fingers flying over the digital keys.
“Alix?” Nadya said. I held up my hand and continued to type.
Who are you?
A moment later, words appeared on the small screen: It’s me.
Not It’s Carpe, not It’s the elf. Ambiguous. Not good enough, I typed back.
Another pause, then Inventory.
I switched apps and opened my game inventory log. A new item had appeared amongst my items. It was a scroll. An extra-life scroll, but this one had been customized. That was rare with game items, but it was possible to attach notes to them—usually to hide something from other players. I clicked on it. On the back of the scroll was written, I finally got Paul the Monk.
I caught my breath but stoppered my hope. Paul had been our in-game teammate who had screwed us over, trying to kill both our avatars and make off with the loot, using his soccer-dad status as the excuse. Very few people besides Carpe would know about that wanted poster—he had been the one to set up the bounty. It still wasn’t clear, it was circumspect, like a code . . . Why the hell couldn’t he just come out and say it was him?
There was a link at the end of the message. What the hell did I have to lose? I clicked it. The screen went blank and for a moment stayed that way before flickering and taking me to another player’s inventory. I recognized the name and avatar. It was Paul the Monk’s private inventory. I shouldn’t be able to see it.
That wasn’t what had my attention, though. The inventory slots did.
Every item he’d ever had had been replaced by a small computer-generated chicken. Even the empty slots had been filled with them. There had to be three dozen chickens on the screen. Just like the ones Carpe had saved from a plane crash in Egypt.
Son of a bitch. It had to be him.
“Carpe? Where the hell are you?”
I’m inside—in here. I need to go before it finds me again.
With that, the screen went blank.
Son of a bitch. “Carpe? Carpe, you asshole, type back now and tell me where the hell you are!”
“Alix!” Nadya spun me around.
I shook off the spell that had descended over me while I’d been staring at the blank message box. I cleared my head as best I could to find out what Nadya wanted.
She pointed to the place where Rynn had been a moment before. He was gone. “Rynn?” I called out. There was no answer. I searched the scene but saw only Artemis and Oricho along with a handful of other supernaturals. There was no trace of him.
I looked at Nadya, but she shook her head. “One moment he was there—” she said.
“—and the next he was gone,” I filled in for her. I stood there, the pain that engulfed my body replaced by hollow numbness. I’d spent months of searching, worrying that I’d lost him, and as soon as I’d thought I had him back—he was gone.
The moment the world starts to look up . . .
I don’t know how long I stood there, searching the crowds, hoping, willing Rynn to step back out.
Another of Artemis’s sentiments came back to me loud and clear: “I might forgive Rynn, but that didn’t mean he’d forgive me.”
I stood like that, watching the crowd, until Oricho and Artemis had left and Nadya made me move.