Midnight Blue-Light Special

Ten

The Meatpacking District, which is nicer than it sounds, inside a converted warehouse (which is a more pleasant way of saying “slaughterhouse”)

THE HIDEBEHIND GLAMOUR that had once hidden the true contents of the converted slaughterhouse that held the dragons’ Nest was gone. We had been able to see the true structure of the building from the minute we walked through the front door. (This had been more difficult than I expected it to be, since the dragons’ overpriced bodega was also gone, and that was the only easy ground floor entrance to the slaughterhouse courtyard. Luckily, Mike and I had both been picking locks since before we could tie our shoes, but it would have been nice to have a little warning.)

The power still worked—that made sense, since it wasn’t like the dragons had ever been paying for it in the first place—and after flipping a few dozen switches, we were able to get a good idea of what we were dealing with: a huge, two-story building with a ground floor that consisted almost entirely of one enormous room. The gold that used to fill the place was gone, taken by the dragons when they moved to their new home beneath the city. The patched-together carpet was still on the floor, but that was about it. There was no furniture, and whatever illusion the building might have possessed of being something other than a part of the industrial wasteland had departed with the dragons.

Stairs led to the offices on the second floor, which were arrayed all the way around the edges of the room. The layout was left over from the original slaughterhouse design, letting the occupants of those offices look out on the livestock waiting to be put to death below. Charming stuff, and the reason I was vaguely afraid of being haunted by the ghosts of hamburgers past while we were staying at the Nest. A waist-high rail ran along the walkway to keep people from plummeting to their deaths, presumably out of sorrow for the cows, sheep, and other victims of the slaughterhouse assembly line. There were enough offices that we could each have one as a bedroom, with another to use as an armory, and another for the mice. Even after all that, there were easily half a dozen offices standing empty, and we hadn’t even looked at the basement.

The mice were thrilled about having an entire office for their Barbie Nightmare House. It must have been an incredible step up after being confined in a single closet. They had started arranging raiding parties as soon as I put them down. All the raiding parties were armed with tiny spears, crossbows, and swords. There would be no rats left in the slaughterhouse by morning, and the mice would feast for days.

It can be easy to forget that Aeslin aren’t cute Disney cartoons come to life. They’re vicious fighters when they have to be, and they’ve survived in a world filled with bigger, meaner, better-armed creatures by being smart and absolutely ruthless. That’s something else they have in common with our family. Prices and Aeslin always, always shoot to kill.

“Verity!”

“Coming!” I stepped out of the office we’d given to the mice, walking to the rail and looking down. Ryan and Mike were on the main floor of the slaughterhouse, piling my meager possessions—mostly weapons and clothing—around the coolers and gear boxes Mike had brought with him from Chicago. “What’cha need?”

“Do you own a bed?” asked Mike. He somehow managed to shout without sounding like he was shouting. Probably a skill developed to make it easier to talk to sea monsters who didn’t feel like coming to shore, but didn’t want to be yelled at, either.

“Not here,” I said. I sat down on the walkway, squeezing through the gap between the bars intended to keep us from plummeting to our deaths. Then I turned, hooking my toes against the base of the rail, and leaned backward. This resulted in my dangling about eight feet off the floor. Mike and Ryan watched this process without comment. “I left my bed back in Portland.”

“Got it. We’re going to want to pick up some inflatables, maybe a bean bag chair or something. Things we can carry in without attracting attention.” Mike returned to surveying my belongings, for all the world like I wasn’t dangling from the walkway behind him. I leaned forward again, grabbed the lowest bar of the railing, and tucked my knees, bracing against the side of the walkway in a sort of horizontal squat before letting my feet drop. “I think we’ve got enough food to hold out for a few days—did you know there’s a full kitchen?”

“I guess they couldn’t replace that with gold,” I said, hand-walking my way over to the nearest of the support beams holding up the walkway. It was like the monkey bars on my elementary school playground, only without as many yard monitors waiting to tell me that it wasn’t ladylike to climb. “Thanks again for helping us get moved in, Ryan.”

“Yeah, about that—it wasn’t purely altruistic.” The therianthrope bartender moved toward me as he spoke, lacking Uncle Mike’s skill at shouting without shouting. “I wanted to ask you for a favor.”

“Name it.” I had reached the pillar. I grasped it firmly with my knees and let go of the rail, flipping so that I was facing toward the floor. With this accomplished, I began climbing carefully down.

“Istas and I were wondering if maybe—what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m going to assume that wasn’t your original question. What I’m doing is figuring out the tactical shape of the room. Most of the time, if I can’t shoot something in the first thirty seconds of dealing with it, my style of staying alive involves being able to go up as much as possible. So knowing what will and won’t support my weight is important.” It was also fun, and extremely relaxing. I needed to relax. This wasn’t going to end overnight.

“Oh. That’s weird, Very.”

“I know.”

“Anyway, Istas and I were wondering if we could come and stay here with you. You know, until all this is taken care of. Kitty says we can crash at the Freakshow if we want, but Istas really can’t do crowds twenty-four seven. I’m afraid she’d take somebody’s head off. And then she’d eat it, which would probably get her fired.”

“You want to crash with us?” I grabbed the pillar and flipped myself around again, landing with my feet neatly on the floor. Then I blinked at Ryan. “You realize that if the Covenant finds out about this place, it’s going to be open season.”

“I don’t think any place in this city is safe now that they’re here. I’d rather be unsafe with you than unsafe on my own, and I don’t want Istas eating one of the barmaids without a really good reason.”

I glanced toward Mike. He put his hands up, and said, “Ryan already said he was going to ask you. I told him it was your call.”

“But what do you think?” I asked. He’d acknowledged that this was my operation. I could be magnanimous.

Mike lowered his hands, looking serious. “I think we need all the muscle we can get, and I can cook for four as easy as I can cook for two.”

Given that Ryan and Istas were both therianthropes, I was pretty sure Mike was going to regret saying that. This wasn’t the time to point that out. I turned back to Ryan. “As long as you can be subtle about moving your stuff over here, you and Istas are both welcome to stay.”

Part of me wanted to add “and so is anybody else who wants to come.” The sensible part of me—the one that understood that this was about to become a war zone—stepped in, and didn’t let the words get out.

Ryan grinned, relief obvious. “I’ll go tell Istas. Thanks a lot, Very.”

“Don’t thank me until you’ve spent your first night trying to sleep through the mice,” I said—but I let him hug me when he stepped closer, and I hugged him back with equal fervor. There’s something to be said for keeping your friends around you when things get bad. It may not be good for their life expectancies, but it’s sure as hell easier on the heart.

My phone rang. I pulled away from Ryan, offering him one last smile, and dug the phone out of my pocket. The call was coming from a blocked number. “Hello?”

“Verity, it’s Sarah. You owe me. Do you understand how much you owe me? Does your tiny, fluff-filled little head have the capacity to comprehend the volume of ‘owe’ that you now bear on your skinny little shoulders?”

I laughed. “Artie found the address?”

“Artie found the address,” Sarah confirmed. “Artie then spent an hour grilling me about why I wanted to know. Do you have any idea how bad I am at lying to him?”

“You’re probably the only cuckoo in the world who can say ‘I’m a bad liar’ with a straight face, you know.” I sat down on top of an ammo box. “What did you tell him?”

“That you’d explain later. About twelve times. And then I told him that if he didn’t stop pushing, I was going to start crying, and then neither of us would get anything done. He’s really unhappy, Very.”

“I’m sorry. I really am. But you said he found the address?”

Sarah made a frustrated sound. “I’m texting it to you now. You were right—the credit card used for the rental is registered to an address downtown. It’s an apartment, though, about the size of yours. I don’t think Dominic’s going to be keeping the entire Covenant there.”

“No, but he may have left something that we can use to figure out where he’s gone.” I paused. “Speaking of which, don’t bother going by my apartment. We just finished moving my stuff out of there. I’m going to see if I can get the Internet working where I am now, and I have cell service.”

“Wait, ‘we’?” said Sarah, voice going suddenly suspicious. “Who’s with you?”

“Uncle Mike’s here from Chicago.” I had to hold the phone away from my ear to keep her delighted squeal from piercing my eardrum. “Sarah! Volume!”

“Sorry! Sorry sorry, but tell Uncle Mike I say hi, okay? I’d ask where you were, but you probably shouldn’t tell me over the phone, so I’ll just beg you to be at least a little bit careful, and try not to get killed.”

“I’ll do my best.” I briefly considered telling her to get out of the Port Hope, but decided against it. No one who wasn’t attuned to her would be able to remember where she was, and much as I hated to consider it, that included Dominic. She was safest if she didn’t move. “Stay inside tonight, okay?”

“Okay.” She sounded relieved.

That made two of us. We exchanged good-byes, and I hung up. The little yellow envelope that meant I had a text message appeared at the top of my screen two seconds later. I tapped it with my thumb, and it opened, displaying a midtown address. According to the clock, it was almost six. The sun would be setting soon. I straightened, slipping the phone into my pocket.

“Hey, Uncle Mike? I think I need to go out for a little while. Can you get things set up here?”

“Depends. Are you going to go do something stupid that your folks would want me to forbid you to do?”

“Nope. And it’s not like you can forbid me to do anything anyway.” I smiled winningly. “I’m just going to break into Dominic’s apartment and see if I can find anything to tell me where he’s keeping the Covenant while they’re in town.”

“Oh, is that all?” Mike waved a hand dismissively. “Pick up some eggs while you’re out. I’ll make omelets in the morning. Also, write down the address and leave it by the door. If you’re not back in an hour, I’ll go over to have a chat with your young man.” Any “chat” Uncle Mike described in those terms would probably involve a crowbar.

“Sure thing, Uncle Mike,” I said, and turned to head for the nearest stairway. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it my way, and that meant that step one was getting myself away from ground level.

The dragons had been living in the Meatpacking District for so long that their renovated slaughterhouse was surrounded on all sides by buildings whose tenants probably had no idea what was in that sealed-off courtyard. New York is an old enough city that it has more than its share of odd architectural quirks like that, little streets that lead to nowhere, little courtyards that technically aren’t accessible unless you know the secret steps to get you there. I stopped on the edge of the slaughterhouse roof, looking around me as I assessed my position.

This was my neighborhood now. I might never see the apartment I’d been illegally subletting again. The thought was oddly sobering. Even if I survived, my time in New York was almost up. The deal I’d made with my family was for a year. At the end of that, I was supposed to choose between cryptozoology and dancing. I had one month left in my original plan.

When this ended, I was either cutting ties with the cryptid community, or I was going home.

I tried not to think about that too hard as I backed up to the middle of the roof, got myself a running start, and leaped.

Some people will tell you that gravity is a cruel mistress. I think they’re missing the point. Gravity isn’t cruel. Gravity is exactly the same for everybody, Covenant, Price, or neutral party. Gravity doesn’t care. Once you give yourself over to the essential forces that govern the universe, your choices are plummet or learn how to control your fall. After years of effort, I had learned control.

The buildings around the old Nest were still mostly unfamiliar to me—I’d never been what you’d call a regular guest back when the dragons lived here, and I certainly hadn’t been swinging by on a regular basis since—but I’d been free running through New York long enough by that point to be at least a little comfortable traveling blind. I grabbed hold of a fire escape as I fell, letting my own momentum snap me to a stop and then send me swinging upward. Energy likes to be used, and so I used it, turning the half swing into a full swing that deposited me neatly on the next level of the fire escape. From there, it was just a matter of running along the building ledge until I could leap again, landing safely on the next roof.

I gathered speed and certainty with every transition. My muscles were loosening, body falling into the familiar dance of playing chicken with gravity. I’ve been free running since puberty was just a scary specter in the rearview mirror of my life, running up on me like T. Rex in the first Jurassic Park. I’ve long since passed puberty, and a bunch more milestones I wasn’t looking for, and through everything that’s changed, free running has always stayed the same. I appreciate that.

I also appreciated the fact that getting to Dominic’s address involved several stretches of city that I was comfortable with, allowing me to take the time to confuse my route by doubling back, using unnecessary shortcuts and longcuts (like shortcuts, but designed to make the trip longer and more confusing), and generally messing around. If someone tried to follow me, or tried to use some kind of tracking spell to figure out where I’d started from, they were going to find it a much taller order than originally assumed.

New York is seen as a pretty big city, especially by people who look at the population size and try to imagine a world where all those people actually fit. In reality, the island of Manhattan is fairly small. It’s just compact, with enough people for a dozen cities all stacked on top of each other. That makes it a free runner’s dream and a monster hunter’s nightmare. The city’s cryptid population would know the rooftops and sewers as well as or better than I did, leaving the Covenant of St. George grasping at shadows as they tried to figure out where their targets were going to stop.

Home field advantage is a good thing, if you know how to use it, and if you’re not overly committed to the idea of playing fair. Personally, I’ve always thought that “playing fair” was another way of saying “play to lose.” I’m more a fan of my grandmother’s motto: play for keeps. If I was going to get involved in the Covenant’s little game, I was going to come out the winner, or I was going to die trying.

The address Artie had provided was to a nondescript live-work building that looked like it had last been renovated sometime in the early nineties, when all the dot-com kids were totally in love with the idea of working themselves into an early, if lucrative, grave. Dominic’s apartment was on the nineteenth floor. That worked out well for me, since the building was only twenty-three stories high. A little air is a nice thing to have. A lot of air can lead to plummeting.

Most of the time, I prefer to do my running without a net; nets just slow you down. Sometimes, however, even I have to admit the wisdom of having a little something to hold onto. That’s why I always carried a climbing harness when I thought I might need to perform a little friendly breaking and entering. I measured off my rope based on the floor where the apartment was supposedly located, leaving myself a few extra feet for maneuverability. Once that was done and the rope was set, I tied it to one of the building’s heat vents, checked the climbing belt twice to make sure it was secure, and stepped off the edge of the roof onto the empty air.

The air obligingly failed to support my weight, and I dropped forty feet straight down, only to be brought up short by the elastic ties connecting the rope to my harness. I went limp, letting gravity have its way with me. That was the best way to avoid any unwanted broken bones or dislocated shoulders. Physics can play nice, as long as it feels like you’re playing along.

(Antimony calls that particular move “pulling a Gwen Stacy,” and mutters imprecations about how she’s going to wind up short a sister one of these days. Antimony reads too many comic books.)

Once the rope stopped swaying, I sat up and looked around. I was dangling about two feet below the floor level of a nearby balcony. I swung myself over that way, reaching out to grab the rails as soon as they came close enough. Then I pulled myself laboriously upward, finally sliding myself onto the balcony.

The small child who was standing behind the sliding glass door leading into the apartment blinked at me. I blinked back, too surprised to do anything else. Slowly, he opened the sliding glass door.

I said the first thing that popped into my head: “Didn’t your parents tell you never to open the door for a stranger?”

“Superheroes aren’t strangers,” he said, with calm matter-of-factness. I must have looked puzzled, because he explained, “You flew onto the balcony. Strangers don’t fly. If strangers could fly, I’d never be allowed outside. So you’re a superhero. Like the man next door.”

Like the . . . “See, that’s who I was coming here to see,” I said quickly. “We’re supposed to be having a team-up. Can you tell me which way his balcony is? It’s sort of hard to aim precisely when you’re heading for something the size of a building.”

The little boy pointed solemnly to the balcony to the right.

“Great, thank you.” I boosted myself back onto the banister, intending to jump. Then I paused. “Oh, and hey, kid? There are bad superheroes, too. So you really shouldn’t open the door, even for people who can fly.” Most human threats were unlikely to attack from above. That didn’t do much to eliminate the cryptid ones.

“Okay,” said the boy, and closed the door. I guess when a superhero tells you to do something, you do it.

Leave it to Dominic to preach secrecy and caution to me, and forget to consider whether or not his neighbors could see him from their balcony. I smirked as I jumped back down and swung over to his apartment, grabbing hold of the balcony rails and pulling myself up for a second time. This time, no small children greeted me. Instead, the sliding glass doors granted me a view of a sparsely furnished, utterly deserted apartment.

“Jackpot,” I murmured, and started squirming out of my climbing harness.

After the last of the buckles was undone, I used a carabiner to snap the harness to the balcony rail. That way, I’d still be able to reach my rope if I needed to make a quick escape, but I wouldn’t be wandering around the apartment looking like the victim of badly-considered bondage. The kid from next door hadn’t reappeared on his balcony. I decided that was a good thing—no one wants people watching their breaking and entering, especially not when they’re as rusty as I am—and moved to try the door.

It slid open easily. I stopped, blinking. “Okay, that was . . . anticlimactic,” I muttered. Dominic must not have considered the need for exterior nineteenth floor security. If we both survived this, and were on speaking terms when everything was said and done, he and I were going to have some serious talks about that.

That, or this was all a trap. I stayed where I was for several seconds, weighing the possibility that he was playing me against my need to know what was inside. In the end, common sense was solidly voted down by the rest of me.

I stepped inside.

My father always says that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they live when no one’s watching. My brother Alex, for example, didn’t do laundry for three months when he went away to college, because that was how long it took for him to run out of clean shirts. Sarah generally lived like she was totally unaware that the physical world existed. Antimony alphabetized her knives.

Apparently, Dominic lived like he was expecting to be gone tomorrow, and didn’t want to leave too much of a mess for the next people who passed through. There was something almost tragic about the bare wood floor and the empty, Ikea-issue shelves. What little furniture he had was clearly window dressing, purchased because it was expected of him, and then practically unused.

I moved through the apartment like a ghost, opening every drawer and cabinet that I passed. The coat closet was filled with weapons, ranging from a longbow and three quivers of arrows to an assortment of pole arms that had clearly become part of the standard equipment back during the Covenant’s dragon slaying days. The pantry held nothing but ramen noodles, canned chicken, and generic macaroni and cheese, the kind that never looked like food, no matter what you did to it. The fridge was a little better—at least it had a few cartons of takeout Chinese food. I recognized them as coming from the Chinese place we always went to together, on our rare “date nights.” Maybe he didn’t know anything closer.

The medicine cabinet in the bathroom was packed with first aid supplies both mundane and magical. Band-Aids and gauze pads, over-the-counter painkillers and powdered basilisk bones, antibiotics and antivenin, even some Tylenol 3 with codeine—all the things your modern monster hunter needs if he’s going to keep fighting.

Once I had exhausted the rest of the apartment, I moved on to the bedroom. Dominic’s bed was a twin-sized futon mattress without a frame, shoved up against the wall like an afterthought. Looking at it broke my heart a little bit. The Covenant gave him resources and access to knowledge stretching back for centuries. What it didn’t give him was a single person willing to make sure he slept in a real bed, and ate something more nutritious than shrimp-flavored ramen.

“Dammit, Dominic,” I murmured, and began searching the bedroom.

I found what I was looking for under the futon: a sheet of paper on which was written a dockside address, the number for a car rental service—labeled—and another number, unlabeled. I straightened, folding the paper and slipping it into my belt.

“I couldn’t tell you, but I could count on you finding a way to come and get it for yourself,” said Dominic.

I stiffened. Then I turned, slowly, half-convinced that he’d be holding a crossbow with his finger on the trigger.

Instead, he was just standing there, hands in his pockets, looking faintly defeated. “They’re getting settled into our temporary residence,” he said quietly. “I’ve been sent out for food. If you can recommend an ‘authentic Italian’ restaurant that does takeout, I’d be very grateful. None of the places I go will meet their standards.”

“Dominic . . .” I began, and stopped, not sure how to continue. “I’m sorry I broke into your apartment” probably wasn’t going to cut it.

A very small smile crossed his face. “You found the place faster than I expected you to. I was actually stopping by to pick up a few things.”

“Like what?” I asked, before I could stop myself. “There’s nothing here to pick up. You might as well be living out of cardboard boxes.”

“I threw those out months ago.” His smile faded, expression composing itself. “Verity . . .”

“Are you okay? Those people from the Covenant, they’re not hurting you or anything, are they?” It was a stupid question. I didn’t know what else to ask.

“Why would they hurt me? They think I’m one of them.”

“Are you?”

Another smile crossed his face. This one was sadder, and died even faster than its predecessor. “I don’t know, Verity. I wish I did.”

“I’m not in my apartment anymore.”

“Good. I’m glad. You weren’t safe there.”

“You wouldn’t tell them where to find me, would you?”

Dominic sighed. “I don’t know. If I knew . . . there are a great many things that I don’t know, right now. It’s not a pleasant sensation.”

“I’m sorry.” I stepped toward him, offering my hands. After a moment’s hesitation, he took them. “If you need me, call. I’ll try to come.”

“If I call you, run. There’s no guarantee I’ll be doing it for the right reasons—or of my own free will.” He leaned forward to rest his forehead against mine. “Either I’ll have betrayed you, or they’ll have compelled me. It’s not worth the risk.”

“I wish—”

“I know.” He ducked his head enough to bring his mouth to mine. The kiss was long, and slow, and sweet in a way that was difficult to describe. Kisses on the eve of battle almost always are. When he pulled away again, it was only to murmur, “I have something I need to tell you. I should have told you before. I shouldn’t tell you at all.”

“What?” I blinked at him, puzzled.

“I love you, Verity Price. Regardless of how things go from here, please remember that. There was a time, however short, where I was a boy, and you were a girl, and I allowed myself to love you.” He smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” This time, I was the one leaning in. I kissed him hard, hard enough that when I pulled away, my lips felt bruised. “Covenant boys and Price girls . . . it’s sort of the natural order of things at this point, don’t you think?”

“Nature is cruel,” Dominic murmured, and tugged his hands free of mine. I let him go. “You can’t come here again. Once they’re settled, they’ll begin patrolling, and this is technically Covenant property. They’ll feel free to come and go here as they like. I can’t risk them stumbling over you because they stopped to resupply themselves.”

“I don’t suppose you can give me their names, can you? Just so I can find out who we’re dealing with.”

Dominic hesitated.

“Come on,” I said, a bit more sharply. “I’m the one who’s standing solo here. It’s not betraying the Covenant to tell me who I’m going to be fighting against.”

He sighed. “All three are from the British arm of the Covenant, possibly because that was where I had the bulk of my training, after my parents died. The men are Peter Brandt and Robert Bullard. The woman . . . Verity, please understand that I had absolutely no influence in choosing who would be sent with this team.”

“I know that.” I frowned. “Why?”

“The woman’s name is Margaret Healy. She’s your third cousin. And if there is anyone in the Covenant who hates your branch of the family more than she does, I have yet to have the misfortune of meeting them.”

I stared at him. “Oh,” I said, finally. “Well, shit.”

Dominic sighed again. “My thought exactly.”