9

TEMPLES, TOMBS, AND OTHER ASSORTED CRAWL SPACES

10:00 a.m. My suite at the Japanese Circus

I stared at the set of files on my screen from the cache I’d taken from the university. A possible treasure room in Mongolia . . . If I was right about the referencing, there was a good chance a chunk of Jebe’s treasure had ended up there.

It was worth a shot, since everything else had been a dead end. I stifled a yawn as I opened a search window for one of the many IAA databases Nadya and I still had access to. I needed more coffee. After a phone call full of my threats and Benji’s snide replies, he had managed to chase up a few more mentions of the armor on his end, but even combined with the details Rynn remembered and what I’d dug out of Jebe’s journal . . .

Well, let’s just say there weren’t a lot of options.

“Come on, Jebe, don’t fail me now,” I said as I scanned through the recorded digs and excavations that had been done in that region of Mongolia. I’d finally given up last night around 2:00 a.m. after I’d hit my third dead end in search of Jebe’s treasure horde and headed to bed. Still, I was working on a sleep deficit and was having trouble focusing on the screen between yawns. Captain’s pleas for food weren’t helping either.

“Shit.” Found in 1920 while excavating a horde. I skimmed through; they’d found treasure, records, and a large number of skin walkers who’d taken up residence. I hit the keyboard with more force than I needed to in order to close the window. Fantastic. Yet another temple the horde had used to store treasure that I could cross off my list. And that had been the last one recorded in the files. I’d known it was a possibility that the horde’s scribes might have left out what happened to Jebe’s armor, but I’d been hopeful. . . .

I hate finding things people went out of their way to lose.

There was the clinking of dishes from the kitchen as I went back to Jebe’s journal. “What this time?” Rynn called. He’d returned a few hours ago, after I’d given up and decided to sleep. Incubi didn’t need much sleep, provided there was a surplus of energy to sop up. Still, it irked me that after only two or three hours he had none of the exhaustion I felt.

“Another dead end,” I said. I rubbed my face, but this time it wasn’t just the sleep in my eyes; it was the fact that as Jebe’s condition had progressed, his handwriting had gotten much worse. As if he was battling the armor itself to put anything to paper. Considering what he had to say, I wasn’t surprised.

I was vaguely aware of Rynn coming up behind me as I turned the pages. The references got sporadic after Kiev—after they’d killed the ruling princes in a very gruesome way. As if that was when Jebe had realized the armor was more than it seemed. I tore my eyes away from the pages to the cup of coffee Rynn placed beside my computer before pulling up a seat.

“Well?” he said, settling in with his own mug. Incubi might not need sleep, but they were not immune to the many wonders of caffeine.

I held up the journal. “The entries after Kiev get sporadic, but he knew something was up. The armor, however, figured it out too and dug its claws into his head, so to speak.”

Rynn nodded thoughtfully. “Any mentions of its location?”

I shook my head and paused to sip the warm black coffee, willing it to filter into my veins before answering. “Despite the fact we know Jebe wore the suit, there is no mention of it anywhere after this journal. Not even the scribes bothered to mention what happened after Jebe died.” Not one inkling of it beyond what Jebe and the scribe had recorded. As if the armor had just vanished from history.

“What about other treasure troves? There must be more of them. Ones that were left off the records.”

At this I inclined my head. It was possible, but I wasn’t about to bet on it. “I’m thinking they took it a step further and buried the suit with Jebe himself.” It wasn’t a bad idea. After Jebe died, his body had been buried in an unmarked grave—a Mongolian tradition so no one could spoil the remains or loot the grave for treasure. I had to hand it to the Mongolians: where others had spent fortunes building impenetrable tombs, the khans had taken it a step further. Instead of creating a beacon for grave robbers, they hadn’t advertised at all. Considering all the tombs I’d managed to get into, and the countless tomb robbers through the histories before me, they’d had a point.

Not having an exact location for the grave was a significant problem, but there was another, bigger concern consuming my thoughts now that I’d had a chance to rummage through Jebe’s thoughts as the suit had consumed him. “There’s no report on how he died,” I said, once again holding up the last page of the journal and indicating the files I’d stolen from the IAA research cache.

Rynn sipped his own coffee and frowned at the screen. “Arrow to the heart, axe to the head, festering wound,” he offered. “There were a lot of ways to die on a battlefield in the 1200s.”

“That’s just it.” I gestured with my coffee at the screen. “I mean, battles, spoils, even the numbers of civilians killed and enslaved—hell, they balanced the ones they used as human shields in the margins.” The Mongolians had been awfully well managed for a horde of murderous barbarians; they’d even calculated how many of the conquered civilians they needed to kill versus enslave depending on how much grain they had for horses and supplies.

“So they were conscientious of their murderous activities and kept good records,” Rynn said.

“Exactly. Injuries sustained by a general—and not just any general, but one in charge of a quarter of an empire’s forces—is like a king dying. Someone somewhere should have recorded what happened. If not in here,” I said, holding up the journal, “then somewhere.”

“If there is a battle missing—” Rynn tried.

I held up my hands. “That’s just it! A lost batch of documents I could understand, but this reads as if it was intentionally left out. Not something removed by the elves after the fact, but never recorded.”

Rynn stared at the screen, a thoughtful expression on his face.

I rested my forehead in my hands then rubbed my eyes. I was cranky and frustrated. “No offense, but unless you happened to be awake during the Middle Ages and remember hearing something about a general dying after destroying most of eastern Europe?”

Rynn made a face at me. “I think I would have remembered a marauding Mongolian horde passing through. And I already told you, unlike Artemis, I did not enjoy sitting back and watching civilizations burn. After Rome fell and the Christians took power, I spent a few hundred years up north with the Celts until their civilization started to fall under the heel of the Christians. I slept for a few hundred years and woke to find the Christians were well entrenched and out to hunt supernaturals as much as before.” As Rynn had pointed out, it had been only five hundred years or so since supernaturals had changed their rules.

“After that?”

Rynn shrugged. “I moved farther north into the lands the Vikings, Danes, and their ilk still held. They didn’t care so much about supernaturals as long as they proved useful in winning raids and new kingdoms from the Christians, which I did so no one ever bothered confirming any suspicions.”

“You helped the Vikings raid cities?” Somehow I had trouble imagining Rynn as a raider; it didn’t quite fit with his persona.

He swayed his head, considering his answer. “I suppose, though, I was more concerned with finding the people who were hunting down and burning supernaturals during their medieval witch hunts.”

“I always thought they just used those as an excuse to kill women who tried to think for themselves.”

“Eventually they did, but in the early years, especially in the smaller villages and towns, they were terrified of supernaturals. Not without reason, the ones running the cities were dangerous, but like most movements, they didn’t go after the dangerous ones that were eating humans and their children, which, for the record, I would have been fine with. They went after the harmless ones, the odd wood nymph or brownie they stumbled across. Even had to pull a young succubus out of a cloister of monks. They found her hibernating in the old ruins of the church and were convinced they held the key to power.” He snorted with distaste. “Sorcery. The monks were the ones guilty of sorcery, yet they called her evil.”

“What happened to them?”

Rynn actually looked at me this time and held my gaze. “Nothing nice,” he said. “She was fine; she recovered. They didn’t.” His lips curled up, exposing his teeth, not unlike Lady Siyu did, though his were perfectly human.

I turned my attention back to my coffee, lost in my own thoughts. On the one hand, the idea of Rynn beating up and very likely killing humans sometime during the Middle Ages wasn’t exactly comforting despite the fact that at the time killing and raiding was kind of like going to the mall for a movie. And I couldn’t say I blamed him. It’d be like my finding a bunch of vampires with old classmates tied up and drugged out beneath one of their hidey-hole clubs as snacks. Probably wouldn’t want anything nice to happen to them either. I know I wouldn’t think twice or have any regrets about doing something awful.

And yet half a year ago—four months ago, even—if you’d asked me, I would have sided with the humans. No questions asked, the monsters must have done something to deserve it.

And though many of the supernaturals I’d met were complete fucking assholes who tried to kill me, the majority, like the turnip demons and nymphs, were harmless. God help me, I was starting to agree with Rynn in that they were the ones who needed protecting from the humans.

Seriously universe, do you just sit there waiting to completely fuck with my belief systems?

“Alix?”

I glanced up from where I’d been staring thoughtfully into the depths of my coffee.

“Just thinking to myself.”

Rynn looked back at the screen. “I heard about the Mongolians at the time, even heard about the destruction in Kiev, but it was years after the fact. The tales were always too far removed to be accurate by the time they reached me. And the Vikings were only interested in writing down financial transactions and trade.” He shook his head. “I’ve got nothing useful. What is in there?” he said, nodding at the journal.

I flipped back through to the very last few entries. My grasp of the Mongolian script used was suspect, but it was close enough to some of the ancient Chinese scripts that I could follow. I was glad for the translation that had accompanied it. “Details, mostly his suspicions about the suit after Kiev, and a few entries after that where he sounds like he’s fighting to get a word on the page. Ah, there are a couple of lines, dialect I don’t follow, but here he talks about the suit corrupting his heart and mind until all he could see was death and darkness. It goes like that until near the very end.” I flipped the page to the very last passage. “ ‘I’m trying to control thoughts that I know are not my own, and I fear this is one battle I cannot win and come out alive.’ ”

“And after that?”

“That’s it. That was the last one. No pages missing. The only other useful thing I’ve found is a mention of what happened when someone else tried the armor on. Here it is. Jebe talks about finding the armor—ah, don’t understand that word, or that one. He mentions a soldier who decided to test the armor before he got to the room—burned skin, screams, charred remains. Not a pretty way to go.”

“It does confirm the suit wanted Jebe,” Rynn said. “Either by choice or some necessity.”

“Yeah, and after that things got really interesting, in the magical sense,” I said, the details of which had me worried.

Rynn frowned. “We knew the suit was magic. For that matter, so did they.”

“Yeah but I don’t think anyone realized to what extent until it was much too late.” I flipped through the pages until I found the entry I had read three times last night before finally letting myself drift into a restless sleep. “Jebe puts the suit on, it decides not to fry him, and pretty fast they figure out it is more than happy to fry enemies with electricity—hence the Lightning, or Storm, Armor. We know from the scribe that Jebe got progressively more violent as they moved into Russia.” I count off on my fingers. “Quickness to anger, impatience, arguing with his officers, recklessly going into battle without intelligence. All of that alone could be written off as bad days—which he did, considering what the armor offered.”

“The armor was manipulating him,” Rynn mused.

I inclined my head in agreement. “Listen to this,” I said, and started to read a passage from their invasion of the walled city outside Kiev. “ ‘It was a stupid military move, and one that has cost me valuable men even though we won. But I fear it is a sign of worse things to come. I suspected it before, but now I am certain—the suit, though powerful, is affecting my judgment. The more I use it, the more powerful it grows. I am reluctant to continue the campaign and unleash its power so freely, but I see no other choice. The armies here are not as weak as we’d hoped, and not so easy to die on our blades and arrows. I fear we are in too deep to turn back, and I must persevere. In hindsight there were subtle signs the armor did more than grant me powers. I was foolish not to question the cost.’ ”

“So why not take the armor off?”

“Because he couldn’t: ‘I know now that the armor is possessed by a malevolent demon that feeds off death and despair. The more my army wins, the deeper and more desperate that thirst goes, so much so that I fear the suit now lusts so much for death that it no longer cares whether I live or die, pushing me into battle and caring little whether I survive with an army, so long as there is blood. I fear its reckless influence will be the death of us all. It would be a simple thing to remove the armor and rid myself of it; in my more lucid moments I have tried, but it will no longer relinquish me, bonded to my flesh like a second skin. Or maybe it is my new skin, wearing my body like the prize I thought it was. There is an irony in that.’ ” I glanced up at Rynn from the pages.

“When was that entry?” Rynn asked.

“About a month before this one.” I skipped to one of the last entries of the journal I’d bookmarked. “Listen to this: ‘I write this in a moment of lucidity, as they are so few and far between now, and I am certain I will forget myself once again in the coming days. I both wake and dream its blood lust—there is no escape and even in my bloodiest moments I am no longer able to satiate it. I am now the source of its frustration, and I think it has ceased to care whether I am the source of its victims, or the next.’ ” I glanced up at Rynn again. “It’s like the armor is an addiction—or has an addiction. The more it feeds, the worse it becomes.”

“ ‘The priests and sorcerers have been unable to dampen the armor’s hold over me. Nevertheless, once these lands are conquered and we are on the road home, the suit will be retired one way or the other, until greater, wise men may learn to tame it.’ And that was the last one,” I added, and closed the journal. “No mention of his death, not even a footnote from a scribe marking the occasion.”

“You think the suit killed him? Forced him into battle?”

I shook my head. That was the part that had kept me up in bed, worrying until I’d finally fallen asleep. “No, I think it wanted to. I think it tried, but ultimately Jebe dug in the last knife. Remember, he was a genius of a general, maybe one of the best the world has ever seen.” I held up the journal again. “However much control the suit had, Jebe knew he was at war with it and that he couldn’t win by conventional means. What do you do when you know you’re going to die fighting a battle you can’t win?”

“You make certain your opponent’s victory is a hollow one.”

I nodded. Which, considering the Mongolians were known to scuttle entire civilizations to prove a point . . . “I think the suit had used up Jebe and was ready to move on to another host. I think Jebe figured out a way to make that impossible, which is why no one has seen the armor in eight hundred years.”

Rynn’s face grew pensive. “Not suicide, not unless he was certain he could control the resting place. And somehow I doubt a suit of armor that survived that many centuries would let him. He couldn’t have been the first host to try. Maybe poison, but again, he would need to keep it hidden from the armor.” He glanced up at me.

“Perhaps,” he said, his voice not argumentative but distant. “The elves don’t go after items like this. Not in the entire time I worked for them. Why this, why now?”

“Maybe they’ve changed. I mean, you worked for them, what—over a few hundred years ago?”

Rynn made a face. “They don’t change, Alix. Not like that.” He gathered both our mugs and headed into the kitchen.

There was another possibility. “Rynn, bear with me. What if they want to use it?” I said.

Rynn shook his head from the sink. “They don’t get involved.”

“I know, I know. They love their neutrality more than life itself. But what if? What if they decided the benefits outweighed the costs? A powerful weapon that drives its user mad in a relatively quick time frame, more so if they’re supernatural. Wouldn’t you want to keep that information under wraps from the potential next wearer?” Or the suckers you want to have steal it for you?

Rynn paused, but only for a moment. “Anyone else I’d consider it, but not them.”

I clenched my teeth and thought about my next words carefully. On the one hand, I got it—Rynn hated the elves. But on the other hand, I was getting the distinct feeling it was blinding him from looking at any of the other angles. “Rynn, you know more about the supernatural world than I do—”

He shook his head to stop me, the dark look still on his face. “Leave this one alone, Alix,” he said, his voice cold, disinviting any argument.

I stopped. I don’t think Rynn had ever used that tone with me before. It wasn’t cruel or mean, just . . . icy. And unlike him.

His expression softened and he added, “I know you’re trying, and normally I wouldn’t dismiss it, but you don’t know them. I do.” He disappeared back into the kitchen, shaking his head as if a dark cloud had descended on him.

I turned back to the computer and the files. Captain decided now was as good a time as any to hop on my lap. As much as I balked at Rynn’s insistence on what the elves would and wouldn’t do, I had to admit he was right about one thing. Even if we knew what the suit did, we had no idea why they wanted it now. Unless . . .

“Shit.” Captain jumped off my lap with an indignant mew as I pulled up my message screen. Oh man, if that spell book was behind all this . . . but what were the odds?

You already know the answer to that, Owl. Highly probable, considering your track record.

The World Quest message box flickered open. Surprise, surprise—there was already a message from Carpe waiting.

Call me. We should talk. And you owe me game time.

Yeah, sure. Right after he told me what the hell the book had to do with anything. “Rynn, I think I know what changed the elves’ mind. Remember the spell book Carpe had me find?”

It didn’t take Rynn long to return, looking colder and more contained than he had a moment ago. “Explain,” he said.

“What if they found a spell that they thought would control the armor? Even you have to admit the time line works.”

Rynn didn’t say anything as he stared at the screen where my empty message window with Carpe was now open.

“Well?”

His eyes didn’t move from the open screen; his expression only turned darker and more inward. He nodded at it. “What is that about?”

“Getting Carpe on the line. With any luck, I can get him to answer some questions without getting myself roped into a World Quest game.”

Rynn turned his dark expression on me. “So let me get this straight—the elves go out of their way to deceive us, you think they are planning to resurrect a possessed suit of armor, and your first instinct is to run to that elf?” His voice was civil, but the contempt was there. Bad moods were one thing, those I could understand, but this went beyond that.

“I know Carpe. I’ll get the information out of him. I’ll have to think about how to word it . . .”

Rynn said something under his breath in supernatural.

“What?” I said.

“Lady Siyu and Mr. Kurosawa I can understand striking a deal with the elves. They’re arrogant. But you? After all I’ve told you?”

I couldn’t believe he was pissed at me. Over Carpe of all people.

“What I think is that he can get me information we need,” I said, letting some of my own frustration into my voice.

Rynn made a derisive sound. “I like that even less. Why bother listening to me? I’m just the incubus, what do I know about complex politics and elves?” He headed back into the kitchen.

“That’s not what I said.”

I heard the dishes in the sink rattle. “Even you, Alix. You barely listen to any of my warnings, especially when it comes to that elf. Look where it got you last time! Now you want to ask him questions? All you’ll do is let him know what we’ve found out.”

“I’m not an idiot. I’ll be careful. If you’re worried about Carpe and what information he might feed me . . . I don’t know, you can sit behind the computer and watch.”

He returned from the kitchen, the storm still apparent on his face. “Close the screen.”

“What?”

“Now.”

I drew in a breath and held it before I said something I might regret. This was not the first fight Rynn and I had ever had about my methods and work. I had a track record for shooting my mouth off in ways I regretted later, but this was the first fight Rynn had ever started.

What alternate universe had I stepped into?

“No,” I said just as forcefully, refusing to break eye contact. I didn’t let any supernatural push me around—not even Rynn.

For a hairsbreadth of a second, I could have sworn he was going to double down. Then he sighed, and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, Alix,” he said after a moment and opened his eyes. The anger was gone, if not the dark mood that had settled on him as of late. “I’m letting my temper get to me and cloud my own judgment.” He nodded at the screen. “Forget what I said. Contact the elf if you think that’s the best route.”

Funny thing; if Rynn was the empathic one, why couldn’t I shake the feeling that I was the one left gauging the emotions?

Rynn ran his hand through his hair. “I need to get some fresh air and clear my head. And it won’t hurt to check in with security again and see if they’ve got a fix on the mercenaries.”

“Whoa, what?”

He made a tsking noise, chiding himself. “I’m sorry, I was preoccupied and didn’t mention it. A few of the mercenaries have been spotted in Las Vegas. Apparently the IAA has decided to ignore Lady Siyu’s decree.”

He didn’t sound surprised. Considering the current climate, neither was I. “How many?”

“At the moment? Just the ones stupid enough to use commercial flights and their own passports. The Zebras I’m still tracking, but they’ll have someone here if the others have surfaced. I’m not too worried about them—yet. They’ll wait and see what happens, let the other outfits do their dirty work.”

I wasn’t so concerned about them getting in. I was more worried about what happened when we tried to leave.

“I’ll be back in a couple hours,” Rynn said. “I need to clear my head.” He reached over and gave me a quick kiss on the forehead, but still, there was that preoccupation and distance.

There was something else though that was bothering him. God knows how I figured that out, but I was sure of it. I reached out and grabbed his arm. For once, I seemed to have surprised him. A lot of firsts . . .

“It doesn’t just have to do with the IAA and the elves, does it?”

“It’s everything. The elves, the possibility of a change in power.” He shook his head and gave me a weary look. “The powerful in these games never run any risks, but the nymphs and radish demons downstairs?” He narrowed his eyes. “Working in a casino for a dragon is a far cry from what any of them dreamed of doing with their lives, but it’s a sight better than being hunted down by humans. And they would be the first. The elves, dragons, the real monsters? It’s like your human struggles. The poor man always ends up paying for the rich man’s war,” he said.

As hard as I might, I couldn’t offer up any disagreement, which is why I didn’t stop Rynn again as he left. Sometimes, apparently even incubi need to be left to settle their own emotions.

Me? I had an elf to deal with. I refilled my coffee and settled my strategy before maneuvering around Captain and back to the desk where my laptop was open. Let’s hope I could get Carpe to talk.

Captain hopped back into my lap as I settled in. “Let’s see if we can’t deal with the asshole elf, shall we?”

He turned his big green eyes on me and let out a long, drawn-out mew.

“Yeah, yeah,” I told him. “I’ll try not to let it degrade into insults, okay?”

Captain huffed.

“Fine. I’ll keep it civil for the first ten minutes.”

That seemed to appease him, and he finally settled in. Apparently, Captain had a thing for setting realistic expectations. Who knew? If only negotiating with Carpe were as easy.

I set my fingers to the keyboard. First rule of negotiations: if you can, pick the location. I’ve got a job for us, Carpe, I wrote in the message window.

What you thinking, Byzantine? scrawled below my own message a few moments later.

I didn’t bother answering through my mic. Like I said, I was trying to keep things civil. No raiding low-level goblin hordes this time, promise. I got a noncommittal huff over my headset.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said to myself and shot Carpe off the map I’d settled on. One I’d wanted to explore but wouldn’t put any cards on the table.

“A Norse treasure trove?” Carpe said over the headset after a brief moment.

That’s what the map says. A wise player once said to never trust what’s on a map—right before something ate him, I imagined.

“Hardly seems worth it to share. You could handle this on your own.”

Second rule of engagement? Never open with what you want to bargain for, but also don’t waste your time.

“Consider it a peace offering. I’m bored. Then we split the treasure fifty-fifty.” I waited to the count of two before adding, “Of course, if you have better things to do . . .” Or need more time to plan how to double-­cross me . . .

“Wouldn’t think of it.”

And that was the crux of the problem. No one ever warned the person they were about to double-cross.

Holding the warm mug of coffee in my hand, I ported Byzantine into Dead Orc Soup. Let’s see if I couldn’t pump Carpe with some carefully worded questions on the evil elves trying to screw me over . . .

And figure out just whose side Carpe was on.