“Tenzin?”
She pursed her lips.
“Tell me it’s not someone who hates you.”
“This is slightly embarrassing.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know who is in charge here.”
“You don’t?” That was surprising, considering her memory.
“In this area, it’s almost constantly changing. Power struggles are a way of life.”
“Why didn’t you ask Kesan?”
She looked offended. “And let him know that I do not know who runs this area? Hardly.”
“So, rather than look bad in front of someone you mildly trust, you’re going into a city and taking out gold when you have no idea who the VIC is at all?”
She shrugged. “It’s my gold.”
“They may not see it that way, since it’s been in their territory for over two hundred years, Tenzin.”
“No matter. I hardly think we’ll arouse any interest.”
“Really? You’re so full of shit.”
She smiled.
Ben groaned. “You’re itching for a fight, aren’t you?”
“It’s been a while.”
He sat up and grabbed for his backpack, rifling through to find a clean shirt.
“Fine. Whatever. Don’t get me killed and remember the golden rule of pissing VICs off.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He leaned forward and grabbed her chin between his fingers, forcing her to look at him. “You break it, you buy it. So unless you want to be the de facto immortal leader of a small city in Central Asia, don’t kill anyone, Tenzin.”
She pouted. “You really like spoiling a fight, don’t you? And this is faulty reasoning. If they try to hurt us, I’m going to kill them. I don’t care what happens afterward.”
“Why do I even bother?” He went back to his backpack. Yeah, he was definitely going to have to do laundry. “Fine. Try not to kill anyone important.”
“Of course.”
“Happy now?”
“Always.” She leaned over and rolled onto his bed, shoving him toward the edge. “Oh, this is comfortable. I’ll just wait here while you get dressed.”
“Boundary issues, Tenzin.”
“What?”
He shook his head and walked to the tiny bathroom, hoping he wouldn’t give himself a concussion trying to get dressed. “Never mind.”
CHAPTER SIX
It was inevitable that everything went to hell the second he thought they were clear.
Ben and Tenzin had made their way to one of the oldest crumbling neighborhoods of Kashgar around midnight, the moon full enough to give them some light, which was good because street lamps weren’t something the city had invested in for this part of town. Most of the light came from open doors and a few windows. Many of the houses were already deserted. Mud-brick walls lined the narrow streets as they turned and twisted farther into the dark maze of square houses.
Eventually, they came to a crumbling wooden gate. Tenzin paused, putting her finger to her lips. She listened for a few minutes. Then, without turning to Ben, she leapt into the air and over the wall. He heard a few steps. A pause. More steps. He was reaching for the door handles when the gate suddenly swung open with a loud squeak. Ben immediately pulled out the small can of spray lubricant he’d picked up that day to quiet any hinges they might run into.
“Sorry,” Tenzin said. “Needed to make sure we were alone. The family is gone.”
“Gone?” His eyes swept the bare courtyard. Though the gate had been in bad shape, the courtyard was neat and relatively intact. Three houses opened onto it, all two story with carved wooden beams supporting the bricks. Numerous windows showed that, at one time, the houses had been showpieces. A covered cistern was in the center of the courtyard and brick planters lined the walls. But all the plants in them were dead. Old vines had fallen over and not even a bird or a rat lingered.
“I don’t like this,” Ben said.
“I don’t know if they’ve been paid since Nima died. It’s possible they just moved on.”
“You have got to get someone hired to take care of your paperwork, Tiny.”
She shrugged.
Ben shook his head. “You think your cache is still here?”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
Without another word, she walked over to the cistern and pulled open the grate.
“You stored it in a cistern? I thought you said—”
“There is a false wall. I borrowed an earth vampire to dig it so that the water would run to one side while keeping my things dry on the other. He did an excellent job. This area doesn’t get enough rain to be a danger.” She slipped inside, her narrow body disappearing beneath the earth. Ben tried not to shiver.
“You used an earth vampire to dig it?”
“Yes.” Her voice echoed up from below.
“How did you know he wouldn’t come back and steal from you?”
There was no sound for a few minutes, and then Ben heard a smashing. Then a crumbling, as if rocks were tumbling down. He wondered if Tenzin would answer his question or just let him wonder. Finally, her dusty face peeked through the hole, hovering just under the surface.
“He wasn’t a very nice earth vampire.”
“Oh.”
She smiled. “It looks like everything is still here. The question is, do you want to start sorting or get the crates?”
“Is there a ladder?”
“Not down here.”
He spun around and saw one leaning on the second floor of one of the houses, propped against the roof. Ben walked over and stood at the doorway of the empty house, pausing to listen for any traces of occupation. There was nothing, so he went inside.
Flicking on the flashlight he’d pocketed, he could see it was definitely empty. Dust and a few broken pieces of furniture were all that was left. He made his way up the stairs, a few bits of straw and mud falling as he climbed.
Maybe it was being raised in earthquake-prone California, but Ben shuddered at the thought of living there. The whole place felt like it was about to crumble. He found his way to the walkway that ran around the outside of the second story and found the ladder, carefully lowering it into Tenzin’s waiting hands in the courtyard below.
“You go get the crates,” he whispered. “I’ll start sorting.”
She nodded and took off into the night, the dark flap of her black tunic sounding more like a night bird than a person. She kept to the shadows, hopping along the roofs of the houses until she was out of sight.
Ben climbed back down to the courtyard, relieved that the ladder seemed to hold his weight, then he lowered the thing into the cistern and took a deep breath.
“Please no rats,” he whispered. “Or snakes.”
Holy shit.
He’d watched movies. Seen some pretty amazing museum exhibits. But nothing really compared to holding a really large bar of pure gold in your hand.
Holy shit.
It was heavier than he’d expected. Really heavy. The small bars were nothing like the bullion he’d seen pictures of at Fort Knox. No, these were closer to the size of a deck of cards, with just a little more length. There was a symbol he couldn’t read pressed into them and pieces had been sliced or chopped off here and there, so they were far from uniform.
Still, that much gold in one place… And this was only one of her caches.
The gold bars were stored in small wooden boxes that had been crumbled by the inevitable passing of years. Silks, old tapestries, and carpets were piled on top of the boxes, but most of those were molded or moth-eaten. He removed them carefully, placing them in one corner of the small room half the size of his walk-in closet at home. There were a few pieces Tenzin might want to save. Other than that, there were two boxes of remarkably intact porcelain packed in moldy straw, one box that looked like it contained idols of different kinds, and another small box he’d saved for last.
“Oh yeah,” he
whispered, guessing the small chest was where Tenzin had placed the jewelry she’d mentioned. It was locked, so he took out the set of picks he always carried with him and eased the old latch open, touching the rusted joints with the oil he’d brought. “Come on…”
A click. A crack. And there it was. The lid swung up.
“Hello, beautiful.”
There was a jumble of gold chains and loose stones in the bottom of the box. He saw a ruby almost the size of his thumb. A twisted diadem of some kind. A gold and garnet crown. Earrings, most of them pressed and engraved gold. Chains and bracelets of every thickness and length were tangled in the bottom of the box.
And then there was the necklace.
It was a thick crescent of pure gold that would fit around a woman’s neck with a delicate series of chains hanging in back. Tiny twisting depictions of animals with hunters following them in chariots. Flowers and mythical figures he thought were probably griffins. He tried to date it, but he couldn’t. He’d have to look it up. It wasn’t Egyptian or Greek.
He was going to have to do a lot more reading if he was going to treasure hunt with Tenzin.
“Scythian,” came a whisper over his shoulder.
Ben spun to see Tenzin hovering over him with a grin. “You’re going to have to work on that. Anyone could have snuck in and knocked you over the head while you were mooning over that necklace. Don’t get gold-dumb.”
“Sorry.” He held the necklace up. “This one. This is the piece I want.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Just like that? You should ask me what the provenance is. Where I found it. Or stole it.”
“I don’t really care,” he admitted. “I want it.”
“As I said, it’s Scythian. Third or fourth century. Closer to fourth, I think. I found it in Russia.”
“Is it mine?”
She looked around the room. “As soon as we get these packed and out of here, yes. I’m assuming you want to keep it with the the rest of the treasure for now.”
Tenzin held out her hand and waited.
With effort, Ben held out the necklace, which was already warm from his hands.
“Don’t be greedy,” she whispered. “It’s been around for sixteen hundred years. It’s not going to disappear.”
He handed it over.
“You have very good taste, by the way,” Tenzin said. “This is one of the best pieces in this cache. If I were trading, I’d ask for at least two of these gold bars in exchange.”
“Why? It’s not half as heavy as one of the bars.”
“But the craftsmanship.” She trailed her fingers over a line of flowers that decorated the top loop of the crescent. “Keep this one. It’s a good piece. An auspicious start to your own collection. I took it in trade from a man I respected a great deal. I’ll tell you the story someday.” She put it back in the box, examining the open lock with a smile. “But not now. Let’s get to work. You climb up and I’ll hand you the pieces.”
He walked to the ladder as Tenzin bent near the rugs and the silks.
“Have you ever lost things?” he asked.
“Lost? No.” She picked up one silk carpet that was only ragged on one edge. “I always find things eventually. Had things stolen? Yes.”
“Who stole from you?”
“Remember that earth vampire I mentioned?”
“Oh.”
She looked up. “I left him in his element.”
Realizing she must have killed the vampire and left his body to disintegrate down in the cistern, he cringed.
“Ew.”
She shrugged and went back to sorting through the pile. “Dust to dust. One day, I will be air. Dissolve into nothing more than a whisper on the breeze.”
“No,” he said, not wanting to think about a world without Tenzin. “Forget the breeze, Tiny. We all know you’d be a hurricane.”
She laughed quietly, her eyes sparkling in the low glimmer of the flashlight he’d propped in the corner.
“I’ll go up and start,” Ben said. “It’s going to be a long night.”
It was hot dusty work, even if you were a vampire. Tenzin had a seemingly endless supply of energy, flying back and forth from the bottom to the mouth of the cistern, handing up a few rugs, porcelain bowls and vases, and brick after brick of gold. They worked silently for three hours until the majority of the cache was packed.
Ben distributed the gold evenly between ten crates so none would be too heavy to carry. He’d found a handcart that afternoon, so while Tenzin sorted through the last of the silks and porcelain, he went to get it from the truck, glad he’d remembered to bring the chalk he used for caving. He’d marked the path through the old neighborhood with surreptitious white tags at waist level, which allowed him to walk through the maze of old houses and back to the truck with ease. He retrieved the handcart and started back to the courtyard where Tenzin was finishing up.
He drew a few curious glances from windows, but it was three in the morning and most of the old city was asleep. Very few lights illuminated the alleyways or houses. Ben felt utterly alone. Alone was good. When you were transporting a bunch of priceless treasure, company was not a desirable thing.
The city was quiet. So quiet that, when he turned the last corner, the sound of shuffling feet in the courtyard brought him up short. Tenzin didn’t shuffle. Mostly, she floated.
Shit.
Ben didn’t hear her, but he did hear strange male voices speaking Uyghur. Someone was in the courtyard and he could hear them opening the crates he’d just nailed shut.
Bastards.
They laughed softly, then he heard one kick something metal. Then came the sound of wood breaking, and Ben knew they’d broken the ladder. More sound of metal on bricks, and he realized the heavy plate would be back over the cistern, trapping Tenzin under the earth.
Not good.
He peeked through the cracked gate and saw three vampires poking through the contents of the crates. One held up a vase as another dug through the straw.
“You’re poking through her stuff and tried to trap her underground,” he murmured. “You must really want to die.”
The moment the grate fell over the opening of the cistern, the shot of instinctive panic streaked through Tenzin. She could feel the press of the narrow walls around her and for just a second, the taste of earth was in her mouth.
Tenzin hated being underground.
She narrowed her eyes and eyed the lovely little treasure she’d just unearthed from the tangle of a crumbling tapestry.
It was a bone-handled pesh-kabz, a Persian blade she’d picked up in the eighteenth century from a trader on the Khyber Pass. Lovely. Still in excellent condition. And more than capable of taking care of the foolish vampires who’d tried to trap her.
Tenzin floated to the top of the cistern, peeking through the grate to see who was examining her gold.
Where was Ben? Hopefully, by the time he got back with the handcart, she’d have hidden all the bodies. He did get strangely upset when she had to kill people, even if they were vampires.
One of them was muttering and holding out a brick of gold with her mark on it. If they had any sense, they’d realize who it belonged to, drop it back in the crate, and run. If they did, she’d let them live. After all, she was done with this hiding place anyway.
The vampire showed the mark to the one who seemed to be in charge. He cocked his head like a spaniel, shrugged, and grabbed the brick, slipping it into his pocket.
Obviously, they were idiots and she was going to have to kill them. Vampires that stupid just made the rest of their race look bad.
Should he go in? Wait outside? Ben was fairly sure Tenzin didn’t need any help, and she might even get annoyed if he tried. It wasn’t as if the metal grate was that heavy. Maybe the vampires didn’t realize she could fly. While Ben debated how much carnage he wanted to witness, he saw the grate begin to move. While one vampire halted what he was doing to look at it, the others had disappeared from his sight.
Oh shit.
They ripped the door from its hinges and pulled Ben into the courtyard. He wasted no time, years of practice kicking in. It was all automatic reaction. As they tossed him into the air, he tucked and rolled, reaching down to the small sheaths strapped to his ankles. Pulling out his throwing knives as he landed, he immediately aimed at the nearest vampire, who was still coming forward, laughing at the silly human they’d caught.
The vampire’s scream when the knife caught his eye shattered the moonlit night. He pulled at the knife, covering his bleeding eye with one hand while the other curled into a fist. The bloody immortal bared his fangs and charged him, but tripped over a crate as he clutched his face. Ben could see the grate sliding open from the corner of his eye. Like a shadow, Tenzin rose from the earth, grabbing the vampire nearest the cistern by the hair. She cut his throat before he could make a sound. Then, still holding his head as the blood poured down his front, she drew back the dagger and hacked at the vampire’s spine. With two heavy thwacks, the body dropped.
The vampire with two eyes rushed to Ben, crouching over him, his fangs almost in Ben’s neck before Ben was able to bring his knife up. He forced the blade under the vampire’s ribs just as a flying head collided with his attacker’s temple, blood and brain matter spattering the bricks as the vampire released Ben.
Ben spit something he didn’t want to think about out of his mouth as he rolled to his back, bringing his legs up and punching them into the torso of the vampire still on top of him. The kick drove the dagger in deeper. It caught in the immortal’s ribs, and Ben heard a soft crack.
The two vampires were still shouting. Then it was only one. Ben’s head whipped around to see the vampire with the bloody eye in a heap on the bricks. This time, it took three thwacks to decapitate him.