Discount Armageddon

Thirteen

Deep beneath the streets of Manhattan, about to be attacked

THERE WAS A PAUSE AFTER MY LAST bravado-fueled comment, long enough that I was starting to feel a little silly standing in a sewer in a defensive posture, my back pressed up against a member of the Covenant of St. George, waiting to be attacked like a coed in a horror movie. I was about to suggest we start moving again when the walls around us bulged, transmuting from flat stone into lumpy, uneven crags. The crags split away from the walls, becoming a group of roughly-humanoid figures in tattered, mismatched clothing.

I gasped. It was a stupid, girly thing to do, but I couldn’t help myself. I’ve been studying cryptids since before I knew my ABCs. I’ve been specializing in the humanoid cryptids since second grade. But these … whatever they were, it was nothing I’d ever seen before. That realization was almost as chilling as the one that accompanied it.

We were trapped.

The figures continued to separate from the walls around us; I counted at least ten, maybe more, since the way their outlines shifted and blended together made it difficult to say for sure. They were hairless, about six feet tall, and covered head to toe in tiny green-and-brown scales. None of them was carrying a gun, thank God, but they all had at least one weapon in their hands, and in close quarters, knives and lead pipes will get you just as dead as bullets. Holes torn in the seats of their pants allowed their long whipcord-thin tails to wave free. Several of them were clutching additional weapons with those tails, waving them with prehensile menace.

“Oh, fuck, killer Sleestaks.” I pressed further back against Dominic. They had us outnumbered, and while they might have fought against humans before, I’d never fought against them. I wanted to watch them move for as long as I could.

“You know what these are?” he demanded, sotto voce. “How do we defeat them?”

“I so don’t have time to explain The Land of the Lost right now.” I shifted my weight onto the balls of my feet, assuming the position I’d use to start a samba. Samba, street fight, it’s all the same once you find the rhythm. Pitching my voice toward the lizard-men, I said, “My name is Verity Price. My companion and I mean you no harm. We’re just passing through, on important business.”

Three more of the lizard-men produced knives from inside their grimy shirts. So much for that tactic.

Time to try another approach. “I work for Dave Smith,” I said. “The local bogeyman community will vouch for me.” They definitely understood that, since their reaction was different this time: two of them hissed balefully, and one produced a nasty-looking hacksaw from inside his vest.

I said “different,” not “better.”

“I don’t think you’re talking us out of this,” said Dominic. Despite the precariousness of our position, he couldn’t quite keep the amusement from his tone.

Great. The man finally gets a sense of humor thirty seconds before we die. “I guess we’re just going to have to go the old-fashioned route.”

The lizard-man with the hacksaw hissed. That must have been a signal. The rest immediately stopped their baleful glaring and began to advance, clawed feet clacking on the sewer floor.

“What’s that?”

“Let’s kick some lizard ass.”

With a wild, ululating cry that was half reptile, half human, and all nightmare-inducing, the creatures charged. I took advantage of the fact that I was still braced against Dominic, leaning into him just long enough to kick the first of the attackers in the chin. Its jaws snapped shut on its serpentine tongue, and it made a wordless sound I assumed was lizard-man for “Ow.” My heel caught him in the forehead as I brought my foot back down. Then Dominic was lunging for a target of his own, momentum carrying him away from me and leaving me to dance my side of the battle solo.

Ten lizard-men, a Covenant trainee, and a Price girl: there’s no way to turn that into even odds. The lizard-man I’d kicked in the head was on his knees, blood running from the sides of his mouth. I kicked him a third time, sending him over backward before jumping up and using his chest as a source of higher ground. Without that extra bit of height, the lizard-men had more than six inches on me.

Six of the lizard-men were engaged in combat with Dominic, their tails whipping around to strike his back and shoulders as he hacked his way grimly forward. My count had been off by two, because even with my new stepstool groaning and motionless beneath me, there were six more closing in on my position. The odds were more than reasonably good that we were screwed.

“I’ve always loved a challenge,” I said—more for effect than because I meant a word of it—and leaped, baton raised, toward the next of the lizard-men.

In the movies, when the hero is surrounded by a gang of ne’er-do-wells who mean to do him (or her) harm, they always offer the courtesy of approaching one at a time, thus letting themselves be mowed down by the hero’s superior fighting skills and devastating repartee. Our lizard-men clearly hadn’t seen that many movies, since they belonged more to the school of “run at the enemy until the enemy stops fighting back.” I could appreciate the tactic—even respect it—but that didn’t mean I appreciated being on the receiving end.

My first lizard-man didn’t move even after I launched myself from his chest. I slammed my baton into the throat of the next one in the line, hearing the distinct breaking-plywood sound of his larynx giving way. He went down immediately, clutching at his throat. With two lizard-men down and five remaining, I was no longer devastatingly outnumbered, just horrifyingly outnumbered, and those were odds I was better-equipped to deal with.

I swung my baton at the next lizard-man, aiming for his kidneys at the last moment. Unfortunately, that was the moment when another of the lizard-men caught me in the back of the thighs with a length of what felt like rebar, sending me staggering for balance. The lizard-man I’d been swinging at whipped his tail around and yanked the baton from my hands, flinging it away into the darkness.

“Hey!” I yelped, from anger as much as from surprise. That baton was a gift from my brother. I didn’t appreciate having it taken away by a crazy cryptid with territory issues.

Since I was already staggering, I let myself hit the ground in a runner’s crouch, pulling the throwing knives from the holster strapped around my left ankle. It was difficult to tell exactly where the lizard-men were—the distortion from the cave walls made it almost impossible to know what was the original noise, and what was just a decoy—but Dominic’s breathing was distinct enough from theirs that I could tell where it wasn’t safe to aim. Whipping myself around to face the attackers coming up behind me, I half rose and snapped my wrists forward in the throwing motion Antimony and I spent three summers studying with the local circus.

We may have driven the Incredible Christopher crazy with how long it took us to learn the fine art of knife throwing, but he would have been proud of me in that moment, assuming he could get past the part where I was applying his lessons to an underground battle with an unidentified race of lizard-men. The knives flew straight and true toward their targets, one burying itself in the throat of a third lizard-man, while the other caught the fourth in the shoulder. The one I’d hit in the throat went down like a sack of potatoes. The other remained standing, but squealed, losing his hold on the larger of his two knives.

A severed head went flying overhead from Dominic’s direction, signaling that at least one of his opponents was no longer an issue. I was liking the odds better all the time.

My allotment of lizard-men was starting to advance again, faster this time, their tails waving wildly. Their hissing had acquired a distinctly pissed-off note, distinguishable from their earlier hissing only because it came with a healthy dose of snarling and exposed teeth.

“Dominic?” I shouted, barely ducking a blow from a lead pipe clutched in a scaly tail. “What’s the situation on your end?”

He answered with a grunt of exertion before calling, “Somewhat busy!”

“I know!” I dodged another blow, pulling a stiletto from my sleeve and stabbing the lizard-man’s tail before he could pull it away. He shrieked as he yanked his tail back, taking my stiletto with it. Fighting in quarters this cramped was resulting in a surprisingly large number of lost weapons. “How many do you have left?”

“Three! You?”

“Two and a half!” One of the downed lizard-men staggered to his feet, and I amended, “Three and a half!” The nearest lizard-man lunged for me. I jumped clear, barely, jamming a hand into the waistband of my jeans as my left shoulder slammed into the wall. I hit stone, not concealed lizard-man; that was one possible complication down the drain.

“We need to retreat!”

“I know!” Yanking the .32 from my hip holster, I released the safety and opened fire.

Here’s the thing about friendly fire: it isn’t. Once Mr. Bullet has left Mr. Gun, he is no longer your friend. Shooting a firearm in an enclosed space is a dangerous proposition at best, because the closer the walls are, the more likely you are to set off a ricochet. Even if your bullets don’t come bouncing back at you, there’s a good chance that pieces of the wall will. Stone chips hurt when they’re traveling at that sort of speed.

I fired first at my two most intact lizard-men, catching one in the forehead and the other in the throat. They went down hard. I put two more bullets into a third lizard-man, the reports leaving my ears ringing until I could barely hear the shrieks echoing through the sewers.

The lizard-men must have been even more sensitive to sound than humans. They stopped attacking, all of them turning to me as they hissed and bared their teeth.

Mouseguns are intended for self-defense and designed to be easily concealed in street clothes, not to hold enormous numbers of bullets. I kept my .32 raised, trying to look cool and unruffled, despite the blood I could feel trickling down my cheek from a cut near my hairline. I was going to be sore in the morning, assuming we lived through the night.

“I know you understand English,” I said, focusing on the lizard-man with the hacksaw. He was still standing, and he was my best guess for the leader. “Let’s see if you can understand this: back off and let us leave, or I start shooting again.” If they knew firearms, they’d know I was bluffing. If they knew firearms, they’d probably have brought some.

Slowly, the lizard-men began to back up. They weren’t backing away, exactly—the tunnel was too narrow for that—but they were clearing the necessary space for Dominic to move to my side, his short sword still at the ready, and a long, curving dagger in his off hand. That explained how he’d managed to keep the lizard-men from gutting him while he was chopping off their limbs; he had something to stab with, even when he was blocking.

“Now what?” he muttered.

“Now you’re going to lead me out of here, so I don’t have to take my eyes off our new buddies,” I said, keeping the gun aimed, unwavering, at the lizard-leader’s forehead.

“Right,” said Dominic. He stepped out of my field of vision. I felt his hand on my shoulder a moment later, tugging me back the way we’d come.

Even with Dominic making sure I didn’t collide with anything solid, walking was a chore. The previously-dry floor was slippery with blood, and chunks of lizard-man kept getting underfoot, threatening to knock me on my ass. I was glad to be wearing sensible shoes for a change, and doubly glad that I’d wrapped my ankles before we started pounding the pavement.

The lizard-men stayed where they were as we moved away, their tongues flicking, snakelike, to sample the air. Once we reached the first turn in the tunnel, I stepped back, lowered my gun, and looked to Dominic.

“This is where we run,” I said.

He nodded firm assent, grabbed my free hand, and booked it back up the incline toward the place where we’d entered.

The sound of clawed feet striking stone followed us all the way back to the ladder leading to the surface. The lizard-men started out at least twenty feet behind, and only gained slightly. Panic is a great motivator when it comes to sprinting. At the bottom of the ladder, I stopped and shoved Dominic forward, shouting, “Go! I’ll be right behind you!”

“Verity—”

“Don’t be a chivalrous idiot! I’m the one with the gun!”

He went.

Light flooded the tunnel as he shoved the manhole cover off to one side. I heard squeals of reptilian anguish coming from the direction of our pursuers. Looked like our subterranean Sleestak knockoffs couldn’t stand the sunlight. I drew my gun and fired once into the darkness, just to keep them from getting any funny ideas, and followed Dominic up, into the light.

The familiar mental static of Sarah’s proximity snapped on as soon as I got to ground level. Dominic grabbed my hands and pulled me off the top rung of the ladder, setting me on my feet before he returned to what he’d been doing: shoving the manhole cover back into place. A momentary chill washed over me as I realized that I’d been practically screaming “here I am, entomb me” to a member of the Covenant.

But he hadn’t. And judging by the quick, worried glance he cast my way before throwing all his weight onto the crowbar and forcing the manhole cover to move, he hadn’t been intending to. The screech of metal moving over blacktop would have been painful under normal circumstances. At the moment, it was music to my ears.

Telepathy gets harder the farther people are from each other. I was too tired to perform the internal gymnastics of trying to shout without using my mouth, and Sarah had to be as aware of my presence as I was of hers. Being a telepath means never needing to say “I’m lonely.” Digging my phone out of my purse, I leaned hard against the nearest lamppost and dialed her number.

She picked up before the first ring had time to finish. “How badly injured are you?” she demanded.

“I’ll probably never play the piano again, but my wounds are mostly superficial. I’m going to have some awesome bruises.” I could feel them forming across the back of my thighs where the lizard-man caught me with the rebar. “Not sure what Dominic’s status is. We were fighting pretty much blind.”

“Come back to the hotel. I’ll meet you in the lobby and walk you up to my room. Don’t argue!” The fierceness of her tone would have been comic under almost any other circumstances. “Aunt Evelyn would have my ears if I let you leave here without checking you over.”

“Technically, she’s your sister.” As attempts to tease go, reminding Sarah that her adoptive parents—my grandparents—are also Mom’s adopted parents was a pretty lame one.

It still seemed to reassure her that I wasn’t intending to bleed to death. “Get moving,” she said, much less fiercely, and hung up the phone.

I snapped my phone shut, shoving it into my bag and straightening up. Dominic had managed to get the manhole cover back into position. He was standing half-bent, hands braced against his knees and his feet apart. He looked exhausted. I shared the sentiment.

“You okay?” I asked, walking over and putting a hand on his shoulder.

His head jerked up, expression reflecting a startlement that changed quickly to concern. “You’re bleeding,” he said, eyes going to the cut in my forehead.

“Superficial,” I repeated. Comforting a cryptid and a member of the Covenant in the same five minutes. Who says the age of miracles is over? “What about you?”

“Some minor bruises and abrasions, and a possible sprain to my left shoulder.” Dominic’s expression darkened. “We could have been killed down there. Do you still want to insist that we befriend the monsters?”

“Not all of them. Just the ones smart enough to be on Facebook.” There was a shininess I didn’t like to the fabric on the right sleeve of his duster. I reached out, brushing my fingers against it. They came away slick and slightly sticky. “Your blood, or someone else’s?”

“Both.” Dominic glanced at the manhole cover. “I gave as well as I got.”

“So much for minor abrasions.” I stepped back. “Sarah’s going to meet us at the hotel. She can give us a once-over before we head out of here.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think I would ever allow a cryptid to examine my injuries?”

“Your total inability to take them to a New York emergency room without getting the third degree.” That wasn’t true—he could probably just claim to have been mugged, and since he didn’t have any bullet wounds, it wasn’t likely they’d report it to the police without his consent—but he didn’t need to know that.

Dominic sighed. “I cede the point. Any hostile actions, however…”

“Hey, after the Sleestaks, I’m jumpy too. Don’t worry. She’ll be careful.”

“That reminds me.”

“Of what?”

“What, exactly, is a ‘Sleestak’?”

I made it halfway through my explanation of Land of the Lost before we reached the Plaza Athénée. Sarah was waiting for us on the sidewalk outside, eyes wide and bleached from their normal glacial blue to an icy blue-white. Her telepathic shields were down, leaving her an open receptor for anything in range. It was dangerous as hell, and not something she did very often, but I had to admire the sense behind her actions. If any of the lizard-men had managed to follow us out of the sewers, she’d “hear” them before they could attack us.

“Hey, Sarah,” I said, offering her a wave with one grimy, blood-mottled hand.

Her relief was visible. A small measure of the color bled back into her eyes, like ink spreading through blotter paper. “I can’t leave you alone for five minutes without you finding something horrible to get into, can I? Come on, both of you. I’ve got everyone in the lobby primed to ignore us, but I can’t keep it up for long.”

“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.