Owl and the Japanese Circus (5 page)

Interesting.

Vampire lackey strode right up, crossed his arms, and smirked down at me. “Well? Have anything to say for yourself, Owl?”

I crinkled my nose—cheap cologne was dripping off him. From how far gone he was, I’d wager it was to cover residual rotting lily of the valley from his vampire master. Damn, where did vampires find these guys? I glanced once more at Oricho, who stood like a statue by the door. Well, time to see what this truce was worth.

“Yeah. Fuck the hell off before I call security.”

That caught him off guard. He placed both hands on my table and leaned in, the smirk twisting into a sneer that showed heavily stained teeth.

I leaned back—not out of fear but in disgust. “The least the vampires could do is offer you lapdogs decent dental. Bad teeth ruin the ominous dark messenger effect. So does the cheap perfume. I could still smell you across the pool.” That pissed him off.

“There’s a bounty on your head. One I plan on collecting.” His white shirt slipped to the side, exposing a hidden handgun.

I hate guns. You’d think with all my running away from vampires I’d have a gun or two lying around, or a stake at the very least. My experience is that as soon as you start keeping a gun in your glove compartment, the bad guys manage to beat you to it. A gun is predictable—you point and shoot. Not having a gun means I have to think outside the box, and I’ve escaped more tight situations that way than I can count. Same thing goes for stakes. I do keep garlic water hidden in a perfume bottle though, for up close emergencies.

I glanced back towards the garden cafe door. Oricho was nowhere to be seen.

I frowned. So much for dragon protection. I guessed human vampire lackeys didn’t rate interference.

“You realize there’s a truce? I’m not on any hit list,” I said.

He smiled, showing me those stained teeth again. “Not officially, but I bring you in, I get made.”

“You break a truce your bosses bartered with the dragon running Vegas, and you figure Alexander is going to reward you publicly and make you a vampire? You’re dumber than you look,” I said.

His smile wavered. Trusting your vampire bosses only goes so far—even for the stupidly devout. But this guy was a fanatic. He shook his head. “She wouldn’t do that to me. The others might have caved to the dragon, but she still wants you dead.”

It took every ounce of control to keep myself from smiling.
Now
we were getting somewhere. Not having a gun means people subconsciously keep talking—even when they start telling you stuff they
shouldn’t. My guess is their subconscious figures you’ll be dead anyways, so why bother with the filter? It’s not like these guys have a lot of brainpower to spare.
She
told me a lot. For one, it said that against all odds, Alexander and the Paris boys were playing ball. None of them were female. Which meant this was either someone they’d hired or another, unknown female vampire I’d pissed off.

“Don’t be stupid. The only reward you’ll be getting is a pine box—the kind you don’t crawl back out of,” I said, hoping to talk some reason into him—not completely selfishly either. His vampire boss would kill him to cover her tracks.

I could see in his eyes though that the blind devotion was back, and I heard, more than saw, the safety click off. Amazing the things you start to hear when someone’s about to kill you. I did another visual check: not only were Mr. Kurosawa’s big muscles nowhere to be seen but the regular guards had disappeared as well. Along with any guests who had been in earshot.

I sighed. It’s always nice to know where you fall in a list of priorities. Image, guests, and then probably property damage well above my well-being—just like my archaeology days.

The lackey’s eyes glazed over with the apathy people get when they’re about to kill another human being, and he aimed the gun at me. I gripped the arms of the chair. I wasn’t going to keel over and die just yet. I’d have to time it right, but if I could just keep him talking . . .

“You’re making a big mistake. This vampire chick isn’t going to let you walk away from starting a turf war with a dragon. She’s using you as a scapegoat. You’ll be her rogue human who killed the girl after she explicitly told you not to, and then she’ll present your severed head. This stuff happens all the time. You’re just another pawn to be thrown under the bus—”

“Enough,” he said with the fervor only a rabid vampire lackey could show. “Sabine would never do that to me.”

Sabine
. I had a name. I had no idea who this Sabine vampire was, but I had a name, and a name can do wonders in the digital age.

Now all I had to do was keep myself alive. The lawn chair had some weight to it and acted as an anchor as I leaned back and inched my Chanel boot towards him. If I timed it just right, I’d catch his foot with my heel and reap his knee before he got a shot off. I doubt he’d see that coming. I planned to throw myself to the side and take a bullet to my shoulder, just in case.

“You know what I hate most about vampire lackeys?” I asked, hoping I could distract him so he wouldn’t catch the last precious inch I’d slid my boot towards him.

“What?” he growled.

“You guys never think ahead of your next fix,” I said as I caught his shoe with my right heel and kicked out my left leg at his knee.

I didn’t connect. A tattooed arm reached around my torso and lifted me clear over the back of my chair as I yelped. Mr. Kurosawa’s boys apparently weren’t as indifferent to vampire lackeys running around their hotel as I’d summarized.

Vampire Boy was nowhere near as lucky as me. He never knew what hit him. Oricho had him by the throat and lifted him up until his feet were dangling off the ground. Vampire Boy’s eyes went wide, and he started grasping at Oricho’s hands. Oricho didn’t squeeze, or threaten, or sprout fangs, or anything else I’d expect from a supernatural working for a dragon. He pulled the quivering lackey in close, and all I could make out were his lips moving quickly as he whispered in my would-be assassin’s ear.

At first nothing happened. Vampire Boy looked more confused than anything else. But a half breath later the expression turned from confusion to terror as he began to twitch. The twitching escalated into full-blown convulsions, and white foam began to spew out of his mouth.

Oricho let him fall to the concrete as if he’d been dropping a sack of trash off at the corner. The vampire lackey twitched and choked for a good long minute, until he lay still in a pool of his own vomit.

I took a step back and whistled. “You guys don’t mess around,” I
said. Off the top of my head, I didn’t know of any other creatures who could kill that subtly.

Oricho regarded the body and shook his head. “Drug overdose. So sad in one so young.”

Yeah. Real sad. And a perfectly plausible junkie’s death with no witnesses to say otherwise. As professional a cover-up as the International Archaeology Association ever orchestrated.

I made a mental note to err on the side of caution when dealing with these guys in the future.

“Umm, not that I don’t appreciate you guys stepping in and all, but if you weren’t planning on letting him shoot me, why not step in sooner?”

Oricho turned his attention to me, and I tried to keep from fidgeting. He’d been wearing sunglasses before, and this was the first time I got a glimpse of his unnatural green eyes.

After a moment of regarding me he said, “Starting a war on a conversation and an argument is not wise. It was more profitable to let him act. Besides, this assassin talked too much,” he added, almost cracking a half smile.

I nodded. Yup, that rang true, which reminded me: “He wasn’t with Alexander and the Paris boys. Apparently they’re respecting Mr. Kurosawa’s truce. Have you ever heard of a vampire called Sabine?” I nodded to Vampire Boy’s corpse. “ ‘Cause that’s who threw him under the bus.”

“Perhaps. I will consult with Mr. Kurosawa. If there is anything of note, Lady Siyu shall contact you. In the meantime, do not leave the Circus’s grounds.”

I noticed the only people who seemed to be left in the vicinity were the outback Aussie boys, except now they were carrying cleanup equipment.

I arched an eyebrow back at Oricho. He just raised one right back at me. I know when to pick my battles. “Yeah, about that, I need to be on a flight to Japan tonight.”

For the first time, Oricho’s face betrayed a trace of surprise.

“You’ve located it already—?”

I shook my head and picked up my laptop. I was done with the pool. Besides, up in my room Captain would smell any vampires before they reached the door. “I’ve got a lead and it leads to Japan, so I’m on a flight to Tokyo tonight—or at least I’m booked on one.”

He frowned and shook his head. “It would be better for you to wait until I have identified and spoken to this
Sabine,
” he said, rolling around the name as if it was something distasteful. “The Paris Vampire Contingency was satisfied with Mr. Kurosawa’s arrangement and removed their agents and selves from Las Vegas last night.”

He nodded at the vampire lackey as two of the Aussie boys lifted the body into a giant metal garbage can. “We noticed him around the casino this morning, but there has been no trace of a female vampire anywhere in Vegas. I promise you I will find her,” he added as I opened my mouth to argue.

“Oh, I have no doubt you’ll find out who she is, it’s the me being alive part I’m worried about,” I said.

Oricho smiled at that. “I promise you were never in any danger.”

The Aussie boys rolled the garbage can away. They were way too cheerful about it. I’d have to look into what they might be before I spent any more time ogling them poolside. “Yeah, well, danger or not, if you plan on me finding your boss’s scroll, I need to be in Japan.”

Oricho frowned and tried to stare me down, but I held my ground. I wasn’t messing around with this job. Finally, he took his cell out, and after a brief discussion in Japanese that was well over my head, he turned to me and said, “Go to Japan. There will be no problems.”

“What—How?” I said.

Oricho raised an eyebrow. That expression was starting to grate on my nerves.

“A minute ago you were insisting I hang around,” I added.

“You said it was necessary to go to Japan and I cannot watch you in Japan, so I called in a favor. Do not worry, they will not interfere with your investigation,” he added, as if reading my thoughts.

Without another word Oricho and the rest of Mr. Kurosawa’s
men headed back inside the casino. One of the Aussie boys, the blond wearing a cowboy hat who’d helped dispose of the body, smiled and waved before making a beeline for me.

Smile fixed, he stopped less than a foot away and handed me a worn black leather wallet. I took it—I mean, what was I supposed to do?—and checked the ID. It was Vampire Boy’s: Sebastian Collard’s, to be exact. Collard . . . the face wasn’t ringing any bells, but the name . . . I flipped through and wrote down the Social Security and credit card numbers before handing the wallet back to the Aussie—or whatever he was.

“I’d give that to Oricho, but thanks for letting me look at it,” I said.

He tipped his hat and headed back towards the pool bar without ever saying a single word to me.
Creepy
.

I grabbed my laptop and headed back upstairs to order room service and pack. If I was really lucky, Lady Siyu might even have some info on Sabine. Lady Siyu—that gave me an idea. I opened the door to my room and endured Captain’s inspection before he let me in. Like I said, he can smell vampire. I cracked open a Corona and punched Lady Siyu’s number into the phone.

“Yes?” came the bored reply.

“Yeah, hi—” I had to balance the Corona as Captain lugged himself onto my lap and launched into a motor run of purrs. “Listen, there was an incident downstairs—”

“I am aware it was taken care of.” Her voice turned up at the end, insinuating the unspoken question of why the hell I was bothering her.

“Yeah, that’s not why I’m calling. I was hoping if I sent you some details on the assassin, you could find out some information I don’t have readily accessible.”

There was a pause on the other end. “Send the details and I will see what I can do.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it—”

“And Owl?”

“Yeah?”

“Please get to the point in future correspondence.” And the line went dead.

I fired off an email with the info I had copied from Sebastian’s wallet, along with a list of what I was looking for. Financials, employers, home address, work history, had he checked into the hotel with anyone . . . stuff that would take me a week I didn’t have and a lot of bribes. I figured Lady Siyu and Mr. Kurosawa had a lot more pull and resources.

I settled in and logged into World Quest an hour early, heading straight for a dungeon to start making up for lost time. Did you know you can sell World Quest treasure online? For real money?

An hour later Lady Siyu still hadn’t returned my email, but the coordinates for my next quest rendezvous, courtesy of Carpe, blinked across my chat window.

“Time to be social, Captain,” I said, and ported the Byzantine Thief into Dead Orc Soup, a World Quest pub with a sense of humor and a reputation for buying as many orcs and goblins as we could kill.

I’d worry about Sabine when she popped up again. With my luck she’d rear her head sooner rather than later.