Owl and the City of Angels (25 page)

I swallowed. “Would you believe this is my off weekend and I just happened to crash?”

Daphne let out another sharp whistle as she considered what I’d said. “The dragon? No matter, you’ll tell me. Too bad they sent a girl though. Means I have to think out of the box, and that gets painful,” she said, and took a step forward. Behind her followed two dark-skinned supernaturals, the same kind I’d seen at Artemis’s. Together, the three of them fanned out around the room, closing me in. “Painful for you, that is. Not me.”

I had two choices: try to reason with her, or run like hell and hope the door on the other side of the room wasn’t a closet. I went with the latter. I grabbed my bag full of artifacts and bolted past the other display cases, Captain close on my heels.

Daphne let out a piercing shriek behind me, and I heard the bodyguards’ boots hitting the ground. I shunted my bag onto my shoulder and covered my ears as I ran. I thought sirens were supposed to lure you in with songs, not boil your eardrums.

I slammed into the door at a dead run, knocking it open and stumbling into another hallway. There was a staircase leading up on my right, and more hallway to my left. I went for the staircase. Most of the guards and supernaturals would be on the lower floors for the party, and I was more likely to slip out a window than bolt past a full ballroom.

That and no one ever expects thieves to go up . . . except in this case. I came to a halt on the third step as the sound of heavy footsteps hit the floor above. Big, bulky, armed footsteps. Captain hissed.

“Supernatural horde it is,” I told him.

We ran back down and turned left as the door to the exhibit room crashed open. The footsteps upstairs got louder and closer.

Captain and I both skidded to a halt.

The corner had looped us back around to the ballroom, and an entire room turned towards me.

Something told me we were past midnight. I got a good, long look in those few seconds of inaction. Goblins, trolls—recognized that one . . . I was pretty sure I saw a Naga in back. Teeth. There were a lot of serrated teeth. Black, green, white even. Not something I would have thought.

I noticed one nearby—he/she/it had reflective white skin and was tall, with black eyes and a tuft of white and green leaflets shooting out at odd angles from the top of their head.

Hunh, so that’s what a daikon demon looks like.

It’s amazing the things that pop into your head when you think you might be about to die.

Daphne screeched behind me, breaking our impasse.

The entire horde moved towards me as one as Daphne closed in behind me, her dreadlocks streaming around her head with a life of their own.

If Rynn asked me to pinpoint when everything became a disaster, this was definitely it.

“You’ve got a great art collection,” I tried.

Daphne smiled, but it looked more like she was baring her teeth—serrated teeth. Son of a bitch, what the hell was it with supernaturals and the sharp teeth? Rynn better not be hiding serrated teeth somewhere—and speaking of incubi, where the hell was Artemis?

“You know, it’s funny you stealing those artifacts from me. Considering you stole them for me in the first place,” Daphne said.

“Whoa? I’m sorry? I did not steal
anything
for you—especially not these,” I said, shaking the bag holding the artifacts.

Daphne only smiled. “That’s not what my paper trail says.” Louder, for the crowd, she added, “Not only does Mr. Kurosawa’s Owl steal dangerous artifacts, she sneaks back in to try and cover her mistakes.”

The way she was smiling . . . she knew I wasn’t the thief; what’s more, she knew I was being set up . . .

“Funny, considering you’re the one holding the cursed artifacts.” I knew as soon as I said it that it’d been the wrong thing to say. Daphne was way too happy about it.

“No dear, that would be you. And I was only doing the dragon’s job retrieving them from reckless and incompetent human hands.”

Screw reasoning, it was a losing battle. Whatever Daphne was angling for with the rest of the supernaturals here, she had the upper hand. Time to get the hell out.

For once, Captain was two big steps ahead of me. He bolted through what I’d assumed was a broom closet. It wasn’t—it was some sort of servants’ wing.

At this point I was game for anything. I raced after my cat.

Daphne screeched, and it sounded like the entire ballroom picked up after me. That worked in my favor—a few hundred monsters all trying to squeeze through a narrow doorway at the same time would slow the mob down.

Captain skidded to a stop along the hardwood floor halfway down the hallway and lifted his nose up to sniff the air.

“I thought you knew where you were going!” I said.

He mewed and bolted down a left arm of the smaller passage.

I swore. Not the direction I would have picked, but here’s hoping Captain could smell freedom better than me. Not that I had many options left . . . no windows or vents, and I could hear that damn horde right behind me.

At the end of the passage, Captain stopped again and started sniffing and scratching madly at the bottom of a door.

I shook my head. “Dude, I’m trusting you,” I said, and opened it. Captain shot through, and I followed after. No more than three steps in, rotting lily of the valley hit me, right before Captain howled.

Shit. Using the door handle as an anchor, I stopped. “Bad cat! Get back here!”

It was too late though. Captain launched himself at the vampire standing at the other end—dressed in a server’s outfit, of all things.

Well, local vampires wouldn’t know about the wonder of a Mau’s poisonous bite. This vampire did though. He waited until the last minute of Captain’s leap, then, faster than a human would have been able to, caught him in a canvas bag.

Damn it. Had to be one of Alexander’s. I scanned the room for something to attack the vampire with—a chair, painting, baseball-sized stone sculpture . . . The poker at the fireplace caught my eye. That’d do.

Captain shrieked, and the vampire swore in French as my cat did his best to tear his way out of the bag.

Before I could launch myself at the fireplace poker though, a bag found its way over my head—the same kind they’d caught Captain with.

I yelled and tried to push it off, but a cord pulled it tight around my neck. The lily of the valley scent got stronger as someone, not much taller than me, leaned in to whisper, “Miss me much, little birdie?” Female. Valley girl accent.

Bindi. Psychotic surfer vampire chick from hell. Before I could throw an insult at her, a baseball bat collided with my stomach, knocking the wind out of me and doubling me over.

I held my breath against the vampire pheromones.
OK, Alix, think.
Three vampires: Bindi holding me, the one with the baseball bat, and the one trying to contain Captain. Captain and I could manage three vampires; all I had to do was get out of the bag.

I threw my head back where I thought Bindi’s face might be and was rewarded with a crunch of cartilage and Bindi’s resulting growl. She let go of my arms, and I started to untie the burlap hood.

A sickly sweet smell hit me that wasn’t vampire pheromone. More like sweetened acetone. Ether. They’d doused the bags with ether. Shit.

I raced to get the bag off, but it was no use—the ether and pheromones permeated my lungs and nose. With the two of them mixed, I’d pass out any moment. “Captain?” I tried.

I got a mew, but it was faint; they’d doused him too.

The last thought that hit me was I hoped they didn’t hand us over to Daphne’s horde. Then again, considering my last conversation with Alexander, the horde might be the gentler way to go.

10

Vampires of the Sunset Strip

Time: No fucking clue

Place: Urine, beer, and gross negligence of eardrums say nightclub

Or the basement of a dive bar, take your pick. It was the mix of beer and urine that gave it away. Funny how alcohol dulls the smell of urine . . . I’ve never wondered about that relationship before, but there you go.

I leaned my head back against the concrete wall as Captain let out another forlorn mew.

Only his head poked out the top of a burlap bag. He wasn’t impressed. So unimpressed that a few minutes earlier, he’d decided to pee all over the bag. And himself. I added ammonia to the regular dive bar smells that permeated the closet-sized room. Way to get the message across to our vampire captors, Captain. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

“You realize this is all your fault? You were supposed to find us an exit, not vampires.”

He meowed again and looked at me expectantly.

I held up my hands, both tied with a zip cord. “I get it, you want out, but I can’t exactly help you here.” I’d already tried slipping out of them, but the vampires had gotten smart since last time. They’d switched from plastic to metal.

Assholes.

At least I couldn’t smell any rotting lily of the valley, though that could just mean they had something worse in store.

Try to think about the positives, Alix . . .

Well, Captain was in here with me, but my bag, along with the two cursed items and one very authentic-looking fake, was gone.

That was positive, right? I couldn’t accidently curse myself anymore.

Oh hell, I give up.

The door opened and Bindi stepped through. I held my breath against the pheromones that assaulted my nose.

Vampires . . . how do I say this accurately? They’re like the cockroaches of the supernatural world. Vampires hold the exalted position of being one of the only supernaturals that starts off human. Most of what you’ve heard in the movies or read in stories is exaggerated and overblown. First off, vampires don’t have superstrength. They excrete a narcotic-like pheromone that delivers their victims into a euphoric high where they’d be hard-pressed to throw a punch, let alone run. It’s also more addictive than heroin. Vampire junkies, as I like to call them, are those who follow their vampire sugar daddies around waiting for the next hit.

As for the rest of the legends? Holy water is a complete bust, so are crosses, though sunlight has its uses. It depends how old the vampire is—the really old ones go up in seconds, but the young ones still sustain nasty burns from a good dose of UV light. Same thing goes for the allergic reactions to garlic.

Like cockroaches though, you might kill a few, but most just crawl off into a dark hole to lick their wounds, breed, and return another day.

Oh yeah, and they hate Captain. Maus were bred by the ancient Egyptians to attack vampires on sight. Their bites are poisonous to vampires and elicit one hell of an allergic reaction. As evidenced by the scar left on Alexander’s face, the poison nullifies some of the healing—and Alexander was a few hundred years old.

They like to play dress-up too; designer suits, expensive shoes—you know, Eurotrash. Though apparently Bindi was in a class of her own. She was still dressed like a university surfer chick in a pair of dock shorts, tank top, and flip-flops, with her shoulder-length blond hair in tangled waves.

“Wow, they let you walk around dressed like that? What, did Alexander add a surfing department to his cronies? You look ridiculous, by the way.”

As I expected, Bindi didn’t take the jab well. Her mouth twisted into a snarl—not a subtle one but a full-on, fang-baring snarl.

Bindi was what I like to call batshit crazy. She’d been a few baskets shy of a picnic when human, and vampirism hadn’t helped. An archaeologist PhD student by trade, she’d been roped into a plot to steal artifacts for a powerful vampire in exchange for being turned. Already well on her way to full-blown sociopath, Bindi had killed a bunch of her innocent dig mates to prove just how dedicated she was.

She balled up her fists and stepped inside the closet, but she was very careful to stay out of range of Captain, who, for his part, had doubled his efforts to tear his way out of the bag. He’d escalated from hissing to spitting.

“I was sent to tell you the master is on his way,” Bindi said.

I made a derisive noise. “The only people in the world who call Alexander ‘master’ are you and him, and that includes vampires. Now, go woman up and start calling him ‘dipshit’ and ‘asshole’ like the rest of us—”

She snarled and took a step closer towards me. “Stop screwing your face up and show some respect.”

I snorted. “Or what?”

“Or I’ll eat your cat and make . . .” Bindi suddenly looked disgusted and glanced around the room. “What is that
smell
?” she said, and covered up her nose.

“What—the cat pee? Your fault for not including a litter box.”

“Oh my God, that is the foulest—” I didn’t hear the rest as Bindi succumbed to a coughing fit.

Hunh. Note to self: Captain’s pee was bad for vampires too.

Being a young vampire, Bindi’s pheromones hadn’t hit me full force yet. With her doubled over, maybe I could crawl out of here—at least until I could find some wire cutters.

Captain wiggled in his bag and bunny-hopped towards a still-doubled-over Bindi. I held my breath, hoping she didn’t notice as he made two more hops, each time wiggling furiously, then launching the sack towards his target. He latched on to her bare leg.

Bindi straightened, the anger and viciousness replaced by panic and excruciating pain. She shrieked and dropped to her knees . . . which was a stupid idea on her part, since it allowed Captain to sink his teeth in deeper—which he did.

Her leg began to turn an unhealthy shade of purple. “Get it off me, get it off me!” she yelled, batting at Captain’s head.

“You know that only pisses him off,” I offered. “If you stay still, he might let go.” He wouldn’t, but hopefully the level of pain was high enough that Bindi would believe anything.

She continued to shriek, but her struggling lightened a notch and she stopped smacking him. “It’s not working!”

Let’s hope the pain was real bad. I held up my hands. “Untie the zip cord and I can get him off.” I’d actually untie Captain so he could get his claws in. I’d seen vampire’s pass out from Captain bites before.