Owl and the City of Angels (3 page)

As soon as I reached the shallow end I stood up and pushed wet hair out of my face before glancing back at the stone trap . . . Damn, that had been awful easy. On the one hand, I should be thanking my luck; on the other hand, as a general rule, my luck sucks in situations like this.

I heard another scrape along the far wall and aimed my flashlight, hoping to catch whatever had made the noise. I had a sinking suspicion it was whatever had bitten the dead rat in two. Like before, whatever it was clung to the shadowed recesses my flashlight couldn’t penetrate.

The sooner I got out of here the better. I crawled back up on top of the cracked sarcophagus. The hole was only nine feet away, but high enough that I couldn’t reach the edge. I angled my flashlight along the wall, searching for foot- and handholds, but I only found a carved depiction of Anubis, which wasn’t recessed enough for me to get my toes in, or pronounced enough to hold my weight. I turned the flashlight as I heard the scraping noise for a third time, swearing I caught movement just outside my light stick’s range . . .

I heard a door slam shut a few floors above me, followed by hurried footsteps. “Hey, Serena?” Mike called.

Five minutes early, but under the circumstances . . .

I shone the light back through the hole and waved the beam around for good measure. “Down here, Mike.”

His face appeared over the hole.

“The floor gave way when the building shook,” I yelled up. More or less the truth. “I need you to throw a rope or something down,” I added, keeping the far side of the room in the corner of my eye.

“Just wait there, I’ll go get help,” Mike said, and disappeared from view.

The thing in the corner moved again, and this time I caught a glimpse of what looked like an arm. Yeah, not a chance in hell—

“No!” I yelled, maybe a little too desperately. When Mike’s perplexed face returned, I added, “I don’t think the room is stable—do you have your rope up there?”

“Found it,” he said.

I hoped that either Mike didn’t notice the climbing hook, or, if he did, I could talk myself out of it. “Tie it to something sturdy and lower it down.”

I heard Mike moving in the cramped space above me.

The “thing” hiding in the corner grunted, and this time I was ready—I managed to hit it in the face with my flashlight beam.

An embalmed head, showing too much decay to be recognizable, looked up at me with empty eye sockets. What had to be the mummified remains of Caracalla snarled at me, displaying a rotting mess of sharpened black teeth.

“Make it faster, Mike,” I yelled. Leave it to me to find the one IAA dig site with a mummy still in it . . . What the hell was the IAA doing nowadays? They were supposed to clear supernaturals out before hapless researchers like Serena and Mike showed up.

Caracalla said something . . . or I think it tried to say something; its vocal cords weren’t exactly in the best shape. I mean it when I say the Romans messed up the Egyptian incantations. On top of that, I might be a genius at translating written languages—I can read and write ten, three of them dead—but I can’t speak one of them to save my life.

Caracalla’s mouth twisted up into something reminiscent of a smile, and he began to wade through the water towards me.

I scrambled as far back as I could until the carved Anubis idol dug into my back.

“Mike, I mean it, get me the hell out of here
—now,
” I screamed. There had to be something around here to throw . . .

Caracalla reached the end of the shallows and stretched one of his black arms towards me before submerging under the water.

Son of a bitch, they could swim? Mummies weren’t supposed to swim . . .

“Almost there,” Mike said as the end of my rope slipped over the edge.

I searched the water for Caracalla as I waited for the rope . . .

Crack
.

Above me, a fracture line appeared in the floor near the hole. Mike swore.

“Mike, out of the way—” Son of a bitch—I jumped back into the knee-deep water as a slab of stone, followed by a screaming Mike, crashed into the sarcophagus. The rope followed him down last, sliding off the slippery stone surface and disappearing underneath the water.

Damn it. I headed over to where Mike sat in the water. “Mike, are you OK?” I said, shaking his arm, hoping nothing had broken.

He shook his head. “Fine—yeah . . .” His voice trailed off, and his eyes widened as he stretched out his hand, still shaking from the fall, and screamed.

I glanced over my shoulder. Caracalla stood a few feet away. This close it really resembled a walking corpse rather than an Egyptian mummy. If it’d been a proper mummy, maybe I could have reasoned with it, but this? Not exactly the top of the supernatural food chain . . . though somehow fitting, considering how big an asshole he’d been.

Mike regained his voice. “Oh my God, it’s a mummy—a real mummy—” In a surprising show of agility, he jumped out of the water and wedged himself up against the sarcophagus—
behind
me.

“Hey!” I grabbed his jacket and pulled him back out so he was standing beside me. “Not cool, Mike,” I said, and slapped him hard on his injured shoulder. I didn’t care if this was his first supernatural; hiding behind coworkers was not cool.

Mike ran his fingers through his hair as he attempted to regain something resembling composure. If anything, I was impressed with how well he kept his balance on the narrow ledge, reminding me of a beer-gutted, facial-hair-wearing ballerina.

Don’t ask me why that visual came to mind; it’s amazing what adrenaline does.

“The handbook . . . the handbook says something about this,” Mike said.

I rolled my eyes. The IAA student handbook was next to useless when it came to supernaturals. One chapter on ghosts and a few phrases in ancient languages—most of which seemed to loosely translate to “please don’t eat me.”

I’m paraphrasing, but you get the picture.

“We’re supposed to try and reason with him until the IAA gets here,” Mike continued, turning panicked eyes on me. “Quick, Serena, offer him something.”

I glared. “It’s living in a pit full of water, eating
rats
. I don’t think there’s anything we can offer it that we’d be willing to part with.” Though a small part of me was wondering whether I’d be willing to part with Mike. It was a very small part, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it was there.

I have to give Mike credit; he didn’t give up. “Greetings, Emperor Caracalla,” he said, clearing his throat.

Oh this was going to be good . . .

From the growl Caracalla let out, my guess was he thought about the same. I kept searching for something I could use as a weapon.

“There are some nice people on their way to get you out,” Mike continued, shaking in fear.

The mummy growled again, flashing his black teeth.

Mike stepped back into the sarcophagus. “They’ll feed you all the rats you want—promise!”

Oh for crying out loud. “Grow a backbone, Mike.”

Mike whirled on me. “I’m trying to negotiate,” he said.

“You’re making an idiot out of yourself. Now help me find something to skewer it with before that sorry excuse for a mummy decides we look better than the rats.”

Mike snapped out of his fear-induced panic and focused on me.

“That’s more like it—hey!” I said, as his eyes went wide with excitement and he gripped my arm with both clammy hands. He wrapped his arms around my waist and neck in a reverse bear hug, placing me directly between him and Caracalla.

“What the hell?!” I pried at Mike’s arm wrapped around my throat, but it didn’t budge. Stronger than he looked when terrified . . .

“Here! Emperor Caracalla. Let me go, and you can have her—”

“Are you out of your mind? Since when the hell is toss your dig mate to the mummy in the manual?”

“Extreme measures. I’m making it up as we go along right now,” Mike told me. Louder and to the mummy he said, “Wave once if you are amenable to my terms, great Caracalla.”

Oh you got to be fucking kidding me.

I could have sworn Caracalla laughed . . . then again, it was hard to tell. It could just as easily have been growling.

Time to stop playing Serena, the grad student. “Hey Mike, remember what I said about breaking your nose for looking down my shirt?”

“Shhh! Quiet. I read that Caracalla liked his women meek and docile.” To the mummy he added, “She’s a little rough around the edges, but not too bad once you clean the dirt off.”

I shook my head and readied my foot. “Just wanted to let you know trying to trade me to a mummy deserved a hell of a lot worse than a broken nose, that’s all.”

Mike howled as my foot connected hard with his precious bits. He let go and doubled over, eyes wide in shock.

“And you also get a broken nose.” I grabbed Mike’s head—already conveniently doubled over—and connected his nose with my knee. Mike’s eyes glassed over for a brief moment before he sunk to the floor and passed out against the sarcophagus. I turned back to Caracalla, still approaching through the water. As tempting as it was to offer the mummy Mike, I wasn’t willing to cross that line. It was just safer for everyone involved, especially me, if Mike was left out of the negotiations from this point on.

Now, left with only the mummy to deal with, I had a chance to better scan the room for options. By some unknown miracle, Mike’s rope had fallen near the sarcophagus in the shallows. I hopped down from the pedestal lip and felt under the surface for the rope, never letting the mummy out of my sight as he paced the edge of my side of the shallows. “You stay on your side, I’ll stay on my side . . .” I said, more of a hope than a threat.

Caracalla glanced up toward the hole in the ceiling before spreading what was left of his lips in macabre mimicry of a smile.

Great, just fantastic. The mummy had the wherewithal to figure out there was a new exit.

My fingers brushed against the nylon rope. I wrapped it around my wrist and searched my bag for my grappling hook. In general, I stay the hell away from grappling hooks. You’re more likely to eviscerate yourself or fall to your death than orchestrate a timely escape. Having said that, I was desperate.

I tied the rope end off fast and reeled the hook back for a throw. It bounced harmlessly off the ledge and fell back down in an arc. Right idea, wrong execution . . .

I shoulder-checked Caracalla in time to see him reach into the water. I got a good look at what he retrieved: a jagged, broken bone—femur was a good guess . . .

And human.

“Hello—anyone?” I yelled, hoping someone else had come back down to see what had happened to me and Mike. “Need some help down here, like right now.” But all that came back was the echo of my own voice warped by the water in the tomb—that, and another truck running overhead.

The mummy made a grating, laughing noise that reminded me of a monster on a bad amusement park ride.

Come on, you stupid rope, come on.
I threw it again and was rewarded with a catch.

Caracalla dove under the water.

Son of a bitch. Why the hell hadn’t I ever read anything about swimming mummies? I might be able to shimmy up the rope, but not before I could pull Mike out. Maybe I should just leave him for Caracalla . . . but I dismissed that thought and repeated my newest mantra: I am better than Mr. Kurosawa and also the IAA.

I shone the flashlight over the surface but didn’t spot Caracalla. Damn it, what the hell was I supposed to do with a swimming mummy?

I retrieved my phone and made the call I’d gone out of my way to avoid making since setting foot in Egypt.

I called Rynn.

To give him credit, he picked up on the first ring.

“Alix.”

No detectable anger, no accusations . . . this was good. “Hey Rynn, listen, I’m in a bit of a jam—what do you know about Egyptian mummies from the Roman era? The ones who look more like rotting corpses.”

There was a brief pause. “What the hell are you doing in Egypt?”

“Yeah, about that—I decided since I was already on the continent, I might as well hit both the Moroccan and Egyptian jobs. Last-minute decision, and I didn’t have time to call.” I winced at the white lie. I’d had the time to call, just not for the argument that would have followed.

“We agreed you’d tell me what jobs you were doing.” Rynn tried to hide his frustration, but I’d gotten a lot better at picking up on it lately.

“And I’m telling you now—” I started.

“Before something tried to kill you!”

“Well, we also said you weren’t supposed to become Mr. Kurosawa’s new security.”

“I told you that’s temporary—”

“Well, so is Egypt!”

Rynn sighed. “Roman mummies don’t do well with bright light. UV is best. Has to do with degeneration of the retina.”

OK, that was useful. I patted my jacket until I found my UV flashlight. Never leave home without it. I aimed and shone it on the surface. “He’s under the water—how do I find him?”

“Just keep the flashlight on the water. He shouldn’t resurface.”

I switched the setting to flood, illuminating the whole room. “Rynn, I know you hate the whole thieving thing, but man, if you saw half the stuff in here . . .”

“Keep me on the phone until you’re out of whatever hole you’ve crawled into.” Rynn kept his voice professional. He usually did on business, but there was genuine concern under the irritation.

I was guessing Rynn also needed me on the phone to get a signal on my whereabouts—considering the circumstances, I didn’t think that was half as bad an idea as I normally would. “All right, what do you want to talk about?” I said, and began tying the loose end of the rope around Mike, making sure it would hold.

“I think the fact you’re in Egypt is a good start.”

“There’s not much to tell. I saw an opportunity to get both pieces on Mr. Kurosawa’s list, so I took it.”

“We agreed to do it my way—”

I tested the rope one last time to make sure it would hold me as I climbed up. “Yeah, but your way means I end up aborting the job halfway through because it’s too dangerous.”

“No fucking offense, Alix, but considering the circumstances, I’m the only one in this conversation with a point. And this is the second time you’ve done this.”