Discount Armageddon

Fourteen

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 giving 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 people 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.”

“I’m not sure that she can.”

Mom sighed. “To tell the truth, honey, neither am I.”

Every family has their tragedies. My family has about a baker’s dozen, starting with the death of my great-grandmother and increasing in unpleasantness from there. Grandpa Thomas is probably the worst of the lot. Somehow, he managed to get himself linked to one of the planes in the Underworld, probably by trying to pull off some sort of spell from the “no, really, don’t do this” section of the family library. He spent years trying to sever the connection, sometimes on his own, sometimes with help. They never succeeded, and Grandma Alice was pregnant with my Aunt Jane when that link finally yanked him out of this dimension and into that one … wherever that one is. Grandma’s been looking for him ever since. After forty years of chasing rumors and half-coherent clues across the dimensions, I don’t know if she remembers how to do anything else.

Mom cleared her throat, breaking the melancholy silence that had grown up between us. “You didn’t call to talk about this, though, did you? What’s going on, Very?”

“Can you get Dad on the other line? I’d rather not go over this more than once if I can help it.”

“Sure thing, sweetie; just hang on a second.” There was a soft scraping sound as she set the receiver against her shoulder, and she shouted, sounding somewhat muffled, “Kevin! Pick up the phone! It’s Verity!”

The line clicked as Dad picked up the extension in his office, saying, “Verity! How was your dance contest this morning?”

“It was a tango competition, and it was fine, until it got interrupted by an act of Covenant.” I put an arm across my face, blocking out the light, if not the distant chatter of the mice. “Dominic decided the best way to get hold of me was to infiltrate the hall, stuff my partner in a coat closet, and get me disqualified for bringing an unregistered dancer onto the floor. Good times all around.”

A long silence greeted this announcement. Finally, carefully, Dad asked, “Verity, has the Covenant blown your cover?”

“You mean ‘does the Covenant know that Valerie Pryor is actually me’? Yeah. They do. But that’s sort of secondary to the real problem at hand.”

“If the Covenant knows—”

“So far, only Dominic knows, and he isn’t telling anyone, because if he calls home, he’s going to wind up losing control of this operation pretty much immediately.”

There was a long pause before Mom asked the question that had to be preying on both of their minds—after all, losing my Valerie identity could mean the final end of my attempts at a dance career and, while they wanted me following in the family business, not dancing, this wasn’t the way they wanted to win the argument. Her voice was almost hesitant, like she was afraid of what my answer would be. “Verity, if the Covenant knowing who you are is the secondary problem … what’s the primary one?”

“Oh, yeah, that.” I closed my eyes, bracing for the shouting I knew was about to start. “See, it turns out there’s a dragon sleeping somewhere under Manhattan…”

My parents didn’t disappoint. They both began talking at once, and quickly escalated to both shouting at once, less out of anger than out of sheer and utter bewilderment. I relaxed and waited, letting them get it out of their systems. As expected, they started winding down after a few minutes. Finally, cautiously, Mom said, “Verity? Are you still there?”

“I’m here. Just waiting for you two to calm down enough to listen. Are you calm?”

“That depends,” said Dad.

“On what?”

“On whether you’re getting ready to buy a plane ticket home.”

I rolled onto my stomach, propping myself up on my elbows as I replied, “Nope. I’m getting ready to go find myself a dragon.”

“Verity—”

“Don’t ‘Verity’ me. This is a dragon. A real, honest-to-God dragon. I’m not going to walk away from that. Could you?” Silence greeted my question. “I thought not. Anyway, I can’t leave. The Covenant’s in town, and their local representative is actually willing to work with me, at least until the dragon gets found.”

“What happens then?” Mom asked quietly. “When you’re alone with the dragon and a member of the Covenant, what happens then?”

“Well, then I guess we see whose point of view is faster on the trigger.” I rolled onto my back again, staring at the ceiling. “I hate to admit it, but I need his help. I can’t do this alone, and I’m not willing to have any of the rest of you fly out here—not when there’s a chance that Covenant surveillance could ID you. I’m compromised, you’re on the other side of the country, and that seems like the right place for you to be. Besides, I have Sarah here.”

“Does she know about all this?” asked Dad.

“Know? How do you think I know there’s actually a dragon? Dominic found the rumor, but it was Sarah who found the giant sleeping lizard.” I hesitated, unsure as to whether I should tell them the rest. Common sense won out; if I was going to go off and get myself eaten, they’d need to know everything before they came charging in to recover my remains. “Oh, and there’s one more thing. We think someone’s trying to wake the dragon up.”

It took a lot longer for the shouting to stop this time, at least in part because Antimony finally realized we were having a conference call and hopped onto the downstairs extension. Adding a third voice to the chaos—especially a third voice that had to be brought up to speed on the situation—did nothing to make it quieter. I wound up holding the phone a foot away from me, listening to them yell at one another, and waiting for things to settle down.

Eventually, Dad realized I’d dropped out of the conversation. After vigorously hushing my mother and sister, he asked, “Verity? Are you still there?”

“Just waiting for the panicking part of our program to be over,” I said, and brought the phone back to my ear. “Are you ready to listen calmly and without commentary to the rest of what I have to tell you, or should I send an email and turn off my phone?”

“We’ll listen,” said Mom firmly, before Dad or Antimony could say anything. “Go ahead, honey.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said. “Okay, first, Dominic isn’t responsible for the disappearances—not among the sentient cryptids, anyway. He killed a few of the nastier dumb ones. I was planning to kill a few of them myself, so it’s hard to be too pissed. Anyway, he thought I was helping the local cryptids get the heck out of Dodge after I knew that he was in town. According to a local Madhura, most of the folks who’ve vanished have been young, female, and either unmarried or unmated, depending on the standards of their species.”

“Someone’s hunting virgins?” asked Antimony. “Gross much?”

“Pretty standard for the snake cults,” said Mom. “I’ve never known a snake god who cared about virginity, but somehow, the idea that they do has managed to really take root with those people.”

“So maybe somebody’s applying snake cult standards to the dragon. Whatever the reason, Sarah says someone’s trying to wake it up, and I believe her. When Dominic and I went down into the sewers—”

“Wait,” Mom interrupted. “Are you saying you took this Covenant boy to meet your cousin?”

I bit back a groan. “Mom, she’s a cuckoo. Like he’s going to find her again if she doesn’t want to be found? Give me a little credit, here.”

“If he’d attacked at the time—”

“First, he didn’t, and second, if he had, I would have been right there. Sarah and I together are more than a match for anything the Covenant can throw at us, and I know for a fact that I’m more heavily armed than he is. Can I get back to the sewers?”

“Please,” said Dad.

I outlined the Sleestak encounter in the sewers as quickly as I could, paring the information down to the bare minimum. We went down; we found signs of cryptid habitation; we got jumped by rejects from another remake of Land of the Lost. We kicked ass, we ran away. End of story.

When I was done, I paused, waiting for someone to say something. No one did. Finally, I asked, “Well?”

“I have no idea what those are,” said Mom.

“I’ll check my books,” said Dad.

“You got to have a subterranean grudge match with lizard-people, and I had to spend the day cleaning the library,” said Antimony. “Some people get all the luck.”

“Yeah, well,” I said. “So that’s the status. Are we agreed that I don’t currently need backup?”

“No,” said Dad. “You absolutely need backup. But…” He hesitated before saying, reluctantly, “We’re agreed that we can’t send any. Not right now. I want you to check in every day. The same goes for Sarah. If either of you fails to do so—”

“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,” I finished grimly. “I get the picture. I just know that if that dragon wakes up, we’re going to have a serious problem on our hands, and it’s best if we keep the number of us available for damage control as high as possible.”

“I wish I didn’t agree with you,” said Mom.

“Oh, trust me, Mom,” I said, sitting up and looking out the bedroom window to the city beyond. The city that I was responsible for protecting, and that was dangerously close to becoming the setting for the first real-world Godzilla flick in the past several hundred years. I sighed. “So do I.”