Discount Armageddon i-1 Page 16

  “You’re the one that sent us off to find a dragon,” I pointed out, and followed her, waving for Dominic to do the same. Moving stiffly, he came.

  Sarah was true to her word: although the lobby was full of people, none of them even glanced our way as we walked past them to the elevators. We were unkempt enough to have been a spectacle in a place as ritzy as the Plaza Athénée, even if we hadn’t been covered head to toe in a delightful blend of sewage, blood, and slime. Somebody should have called the cops as soon as we crossed the threshold.

  Dominic observed the oblivious hotel occupants with a dark scowl, shoulders going stiff beneath his duster. I realized, sickly, that Sarah’s little Jedi mind trick probably wasn’t doing anything to convince him that she wasn’t a danger to the human race. It wasn’t like he’d be able to find her after we left—not without me guiding him—but still. I made a note to remind her to change hotels again sooner rather than later.

  The elevator came and we boarded without incident. From penthouse to sewer and back again in a single afternoon … and the day was nowhere even close to over yet.

  * * *

  Sarah’s eyes returned to their normal shade of slightly-alien blue as soon as the elevator doors closed behind us. When we reached the penthouse, she went straight for the kitchen, saying, “I’ll get the first aid kit. You two figure out which of you is hurt worse, and just let me know where I’m starting.”

  Dominic glared after her, waiting until she was out of sight before turning to me and saying, darkly, “She controlled the minds of all those people. How can you—?”

  “She couldn’t have held them if she was an actual threat. Cuckoos are ambush hunters. That kind of open assault isn’t their style.” That wasn’t entirely true—there were things she could have done, if she could keep concentrating while she was poisoning drinks—but it was true enough for him. I knelt, wincing, to start untying my shoes. “Get your jacket off. Sarah’s going to need to see that arm.”

  Wow, you sure did find a sweetheart. Sarah’s mental voice was sour. You should keep this one, Very, he’s a real gem.

  Stop eavesdropping if you don’t want to hear it, I chided.

  “I’m still not comfortable with this,” said Dominic. Still, he shrugged out of his duster, revealing the thoroughly-shredded sleeve over his right arm. He made a sharp hissing sound as he studied the damage. I was too far away to get much more than an impression of equally-shredded flesh, and I was happy with that. “I take that back. I’m less comfortable with dying of septic shock.”

  “It’s always good to know where I rate,” said Sarah, walking back into the room with a standard drugstore first aid kit in one hand and a paring knife in the other. She put both down on the coffee table, extracting a cup from the first aid kit before looking the two of us studiously up and down.

  “Worse injuries?” she asked me.

  I pointed to Dominic.

  “I figured as much. Dominic, could you take off your shirt and come over here?” Sarah picked up the paring knife, shooting me a sour look. I knew what was coming next, and mouthed the word “Sorry” at her. She sighed. “Ah, the joys of alternative biology,” she said, and slashed the knife quickly along the curve of her left bicep. A thick, clear substance started leaking out of the cut. Still wincing, Sarah traded the knife for the cup and began collecting it.

  Dominic froze midway through removing his shirt, staring at her. I straightened and planted a hand against his upper back, pushing him forward.

  “Trust me,” I said.

  Maybe it was the fact that we’d just survived an attack by subterranean lizard-men; maybe he was just too tired to keep fighting with me. Either way, Dominic’s shoulders slumped slightly, signaling his submission even before he finished removing his shirt, crossed to Sarah, and sat down on the couch. I decided to ignore the fact that he was swearing under his breath in Latin. He wasn’t stabbing anybody. That was all I could ask for.

  Sarah studied the viscous fluid coating the sides of her cup, nodded, and put it aside, reaching for a gauze pad. “I’ll start on your arm in a second,” she said, unwrapping the gauze. “I’d rather not faint from blood loss while I’m trying to clean out your wounds.”

  “That is blood?” asked Dominic, sounding horrified.

  “It comes out when you cut me, and it keeps me oxygenated, so yes, it is.” Sarah slapped the gauze over her bicep, taping it down. “Cuckoo biology. Putting a healthy dose of ‘what the fuck’ into your daily life.”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

  She flashed me a tightly amused smile. “I know.”

  Telepaths suck. “Cuckoos bleed sort of a biological antifreeze,” I supplied, moving to sit next to Sarah on the couch. I dug through the first aid kit as I continued, “It’s the best topical antibiotic we’ve ever found, and it doesn’t really have any nasty side effects.”

  “If you don’t count me having to bleed, which Very clearly doesn’t,” said Sarah dryly.

  “Wait!” Dominic pulled away from her, staring at me. At least he knew who he was supposed to blame. “You expect me to sit here and passively allow her to bleed on me?”

  “It’ll prevent infection, it’ll reduce scarring, and it’s that or the hospital, so yes, I sort of do.” I shook my head. “Suck it up and trust me, okay?”

  Dominic scowled at me for a moment, and then subsided, sagging into the couch.

  “Thank you.”

  He muttered something in Italian. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

  “Same to you,” I said, and passed Sarah a hand towel from the first aid kit. She folded it over twice, beginning to wipe the worst of the blood from his arm. He hissed in pain. I hissed in surprise.

  Four parallel slashes cut across his arm, not quite deep enough to hit the bone, but definitely deep enough to hurt like a bitch. I upgraded my assessment of his pain tolerance. Dominic looked stoically at the wound, and said in a clipped tone, “I’ve had worse.”

  “How macho,” said Sarah. Putting the towel aside, she picked up the cup and began carefully dribbling its contents over the wound. “How’s that feel?”

  “… soothing,” said Dominic, sounding bemused. “Why?”

  “Natural painkiller. Trust me, you’ll be glad,” said Sarah. She put the cup down, looking to me. “Ready, Verity?”

  “Ready.” I picked up the suture kit, and smiled apologetically. “Time for your stitches. This may sting a little.”

  Dominic blanched.

  Fourteen

  “First, check your ammunition. Then, check your escape routes. Finally, check your hair.”

  –Frances Brown

  A semilegal sublet in Greenwich Village, about two hours later

  DOMINIC HAD DEFINITELY COME OFF THE WORSE in our fight against the lizard-men. I had some minor cuts, a lot of bruises, and a certain stiffness in my left knee that would work itself out after a couple of days. Dominic had those lacerations down his right arm, another set across his ribs that wasn’t as deep but looked just as bad, and a full complement of minor cuts and bruises. It took Sarah two full cups of blood to clean our wounds, and by the time I finished stitching up his ribs, Dominic looked ready to vomit. He seemed almost grateful when I said we needed to go back to our respective homes, collect our research materials, and regroup. Anything to get away from the crazy girls who kept smearing him with blood that looked more like corn syrup and stabbing him with needles.

  The concierge summoned two taxis at Sarah’s request. I got into mine gratefully, letting myself sag into the seat. Pride might have made me insist I was perfectly okay to take my usual overland route home, but if Sarah was offering, well, I couldn’t be rude, now could I? Also, I didn’t particularly want to walk home barefoot, and there was no way I was ever wearing my sewer-soaked running shoes again. Sarah had promised to dispose of them for me. I didn’t want to know any more than that.

  I saw Dominic get into his cab. I didn’t see where it went. I was too busy giv
ing directions to my own driver, and planning out just what I’d tell my father. Hopefully, “Daddy, I found you a dragon” would be a bigger deal than “Daddy, I went into the sewers with a member of the Covenant and got attacked by killer lizard-men.” Hopefully. Personally, I wasn’t placing any bets.

  My taxi pulled into midafternoon Manhattan traffic. I relaxed as best I could as we rattled over potholes and swerved to avoid tourists. If the past six hours had been anything to go by, this was the last break I was going to get for a while. And I still had to go to work.

  * * *

  Cries of exultation greeted my key turning in the lock. I opened the front door to find the entire Aeslin congregation gathered on and around the tiny table where I kept the mail. Several of them were waving tiny banners made of tissue paper that had been meticulously painted with drops of blue, black, and red ink.

  “Hail!” shouted the head priest, waving his banner with extra enthusiasm.

  “HAIL!” agreed the congregation.

  “Hail,” I said tiredly, and shut the door. “What’s the occasion?”

  “Today is the Holy Feast of I Swear, Daddy, I’ll Kiss the Next Man That Walks Through That Door,” said the priest, sparking a second, more solemn declaration of “Hail” from the rest of the mice.

  “Cool.” I started for the living room. The mice scampered after me, still waving their banners wildly in all directions. Aeslin religious rituals are nothing if not enthusiastic. “Do I need to do anything?”

  One of the novice priests looked at me like she wasn’t sure whether or not I was joking. “Priestess…”

  “Right, right. I have to kiss the next man who walks through the door, right?” Cheers from the mice, interspersed with more cries of “Hail.” “Got it. At least I’m not expecting company.” I dropped my dance bag on the couch, looking toward the bedroom, where my computer was. Check email, or call home? Which was more pressing?

  The odds that Dad was going to insist on coming when I called were high. The odds that he’d bring Alex and Antimony were lower, but still good enough to make me less than happy. There might, however, be something in my email that I could use to mollify him, like reports from a reliable source indicating a giant Gila monster or something living under the city. Anything but a dragon.

  The mice had returned to their vigil at the door, having deduced that I wasn’t going to kiss anyone immediately. Occasional cries of “Hail” broke the silence, muted enough to be reduced to the level of background noise. Things like this were a perfect illustration of why Alex was my date to my Junior Prom, and why I never brought any of the boys from my dance classes home.

  Not any of the human boys, at any rate.

  I swung by the fridge on my way to the computer, nabbing a can of generic diet ginger ale and the Styrofoam box containing all the leftovers from my previous shift. The kitchen at Dave’s Fish and Strips isn’t particularly interested in saving the planet from the scourge of nonbiodegradable plastics, but boy, are they happy to clog your arteries.

  I sat down at the computer, munching a deep-fried zucchini stick as I waited for my email to load. I maintain three different addresses—private, personal, and cryptozoological—and thanks to Artie, they all feed into the same mail reader. (He said he was doing me a favor. I think he was actually tired of Sarah bitching when I didn’t answer her mail.) When the download finished, the display at the top informed me that I had five hundred and thirty-seven new messages. I groaned. So much for making this fast.

  More than half the messages were Facebook updates for Valerie, who has a lot more friends than I do—something about having been on national television upped her stock with the public. The remainder consisted primarily of spam and messages from my mailing lists. I flagged a few threads to come back to later—the reports of werewolves in Florida were starting up again, and there’d been another Bat-Boy sighting, this time at a strip mall in Boise—but shoved most of it into folders to get it out of my inbox.

  Only seven messages remained by the time I was done. One was from Alex, telling me I’d better not do anything to get him sent to New York while his basilisk breeding program was still in such a delicate stage. Two were from Aunt Jane, updating me on the total lack of clues on the “what’s going on in New York” front. Her second message, sent while I was waiting to go on at the tango competition, included the information about the disappearing cryptid girls. If the gossips outside the city were picking up on it, it was definitely spreading.

  As expected, the message immediately after Aunt Jane’s second email was from her son, my cousin Artie, demanding to know whether Sarah was okay. He’d clearly been worried when he sat down at his computer; two of the words were misspelled, something an enormous nerd like Artie would normally see as a crime worthy of hard time, or at least community service. He and Sarah have been sweet on each other since we were all kids. Not that she knows it’s mutual, and not that he’ll tell her. Eventually, I’m going to bang their heads together and lock them in a closet to work things out, before I’m forced to drown them both.

  I fired off a response to Artie, assuring him that Sarah was fine. (I left out the part where she’d spent a chunk of the afternoon providing medical care for a member of the Covenant of St. George. There were things he didn’t need to know.) I emailed Aunt Jane next, relaying the information we got from Piyusha. I didn’t tell her about the dragon. She’d find out eventually, but I wanted to talk to Dad before I went spreading that information around.

  The remaining three emails were from Dad, containing everything he’d been able to find about the history of cryptids in New York. The file attachments were large enough to make it seem like he’d emailed me an encyclopedia. I downloaded them all and started a search, looking for the word “dragon.” Maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe the search wouldn’t—

  The search box blinked, indicating a hit. Heart sinking, I clicked over to the indicated file. The highlighted word was in the title of an article. “The Last Dragon?” Opening the article, I read:

  Early settlers to the Island of Manhattan laughed at the local stories detailing how “the sun himself” had come to sleep beneath the island’s stone. The sun, according to the legends, was vast enough to blacken the sky, and when he walked, the very stones shook and trembled in their fear. He came cloaked in darkness, sending golden handmaids to convey his requests. He troubled not the people of the land, but still requested tribute, in exchange for all that he provided in his warmth and in his light.

  The golden handmaids of the sun collected the tribute and carried it to him deep beneath the world, while every day he sent his magic into the sky, bringing heat and life. The handmaids were human in appearance, but the heat of the sun did not burn them, and the sharpness of stones beneath their feet did not cut them. Some among the settlers found the lure of the sun’s handmaids irresistible, and went to the cave indicated by the legends as the place of tribute. The sun’s seven golden handmaids came, and the men, dazzled by their beauty, took them as their wives. When locals protested this disruption of the tribute, they were chastised, and told that the sun did not sleep beneath the island, but that the golden women had tricked them.

  No pictures survive of the “golden handmaids,” but their description and purpose matches that most often ascribed to the so-called “dragon princesses,” a symbiotic cryptid race which evolved to live in parallel with the dragons. It is possible that the last of the great dragons, fleeing the Covenant of St. George, may have taken refuge in the caves beneath Manhattan, bringing as many of the symbiotic race as possible into exile. Once the dragon died, possibly of wounds sustained before coming to Manhattan, it would be an easy matter to remove the dragon princesses from their home. There can be no question that the dragon died, if it was there at all; no living dragon would allow the dragon princesses to be removed.

  The article went on to describe the various physical and psychological characteristics of dragons from around the world. There were—or had been, before peo
ple got tired of being on the buffet menu—six known species of “Great Wyrm,” which is cryptozoologist for “enormous fucking lizard with wings.” They all liked caves and precious metals, they all traveled with dragon princesses, and they were all, supposedly, extinct.

  “And that, kids, is why we still have to depend on fieldwork,” I muttered. I instructed the computer to print the file, and rose, picking up my phone as I walked toward the kitchen. After I got some ice packs for my leg, it was time to call home and let the parents know what I was dealing with.

  * * *

  “Can I help you?” inquired a flat, utterly nonhelpful female voice. The speaker’s air of disdain was enhanced by a broad Ohio accent, making her sound like the stereotypical bored secretary from a bad sitcom.

  I fell backward onto the bed, relief wiping the tension from my neck and shoulders. “Hi, Mom. It’s Very. How was the Underworld?”

  “Verity!” The disdain vanished in an instant, replaced by Mom’s more customary brand of good cheer. My mother: one of nature’s pep squad team captains. “How are you, honey? Your father said you were having some boy troubles.”

  The image of Dominic De Luca’s face if he heard his presence referred to as “boy troubles” was enough to make me snort briefly with laughter. “Well, he’s Covenant, and he’s male, but I’m not sure that’s the way I’d phrase it,” I said. “When did you get home?”

  “Just this morning. I’ve barely had time to rinse the brimstone out of my hair.”

  “There was actually brimstone this time?”

  “Not literally, but close enough. There was this acidic slimy stuff that ate through the straps on our packs like they were sugar candy. Didn’t melt skin or hair, though, so I can’t complain overmuch.”

  I heard the faint resignation in her tone, and placed a guess: “No luck this time, either, huh?”

  “None,” she said. “I know she says she’s sure he’s still out there somewhere, but Very, I’m just not convinced. She was so certain that this was going to be the time we brought him home … maybe it’s time she moved on.”