Pocket Apocalypse

by Seanan McGuire

  Praise for the InCryptid novels:

  “The only thing more fun than an October Daye book is an InCryptid book. Swift narrative, charm, great world-building . . . all the McGuire trademarks.”

  —Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

  “[Half-Off Ragnarok is] slightly over-the-top fun, a genuinely entertaining good time, [and] an urban fantasy that, despite the title, isn’t about the imminent end of the world.”

  —Tor.com

  “Seanan McGuire’s Discount Armageddon is an urban fantasy triple threat—smart and sexy and funny. The Aeslin mice alone are worth the price of the book, so consider a cast of truly original characters, a plot where weird never overwhelms logic, and some serious kickass world-building as a bonus.”

  —Tanya Huff, bestselling author of The Wild Ways

  “It would seem that McGuire’s imagination is utterly boundless. The world of her InCryptid series is full of unexpected creatures, constant surprises and appealing characters, all crafted with the measured ease of a skilled professional, making the fantastic seem like a wonderful reality. The shifting focus of the series [in Half-Off Ragnarok] to a different member of the engaging and consistently surprising Price family is a resounding success, offering a new look at some well-loved characters and a new world of interesting beasts and mysteries to explore.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Exciting . . . McGuire creates a sense of wonder and playfulness with her love for mythology and folklore, weaving together numerous manifestations of a single theme. Her enthusiastic and fast-paced style makes this an entertaining page-turner.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “While chock full of quality worldbuilding, realistic characters, and a double helping of sass, at its core, Half-Off Ragnarok is a book about judging others according to stereotypes, how nurture can overcome nature, and the importance of family.”

  —The Ranting Dragon

  “Discount Armageddon is a quick-witted, sharp-edged look at what makes a monster monstrous, and at how closely our urban fantasy protagonists walk—or dance—that line. The pacing never lets up, and when the end comes, you’re left wanting more. I can’t wait for the next book!”

  —C. E. Murphy, author of Raven Calls

  DAW Books presents the finest in urban fantasy from Seanan McGuire:

  InCryptid Novels

  DISCOUNT ARMAGEDDON

  MIDNIGHT BLUE-LIGHT SPECIAL

  HALF-OFF RAGNAROK

  POCKET APOCALYPSE

  SPARROW HILL ROAD

  October Daye Novels

  ROSEMARY AND RUE

  A LOCAL HABITATION

  AN ARTIFICIAL NIGHT

  LATE ECLIPSES

  ONE SALT SEA

  ASHES OF HONOR

  CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

  THE WINTER LONG

  A RED ROSE CHAIN*

  *Available September 2015 from DAW Books

  Copyright © 2015 by Seanan McGuire.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Aly Fell.

  Cover design by G-Force Design.

  Interior dingbats created by Tara O’Shea.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1684.

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA).

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.

  ISBN 978-1-101-60240-9

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Praise for Seanan McGuire

  Also by Seanan McGuire

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Family Trees

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Epilogue

  Price Family Field Guide to the Cryptids of North America and Australia: Updated and Expanded Edition

  Playlist

  Acknowledgments

  For Amy Mebberson and Nikki Purvis.

  Thanks for making my world a better place.

  Endangered, adjective:

  1. Threatened with extinction or immediate harm.

  Australia, noun:

  1. The world’s smallest continent.

  2. Home of some of the most unique and varied animal life known to mainstream science.

  3. A good place to become endangered.

  Prologue

  “Adversity doesn’t exist to make us stronger. Adversity exists because this world is a damn hard place to live. Prove that you’re better than the things it throws at you. Live.”

  —Thomas Price

  A privately owned family farm near Vancouver, Canada

  Seven years ago

  ALEX EASED HIMSELF AROUND the open stable door, his heart beating so hard that it felt like it was going to break in two. The sweat dripping from his palms was making it hard to keep his hand positioned correctly on the grip of his pistol. Everything was silent. His parents and Aunt Jane were inside the house, looking for signs that could possibly lead them to the werewolf’s hiding place. Elsie was outside, watching the road to see if anyone else was inclined to come looking. The farm was isolated enough that the screams wouldn’t have carried very far—but they had carried far enough for one of the local Sasquatches to notice.

  This was the area’s second werewolf outbreak in a little under a month. The first had been handled by amateur monster hunters who didn’t finish the job. When the werewolves came back, the locals got frightened for their own safety, and called in the closest thing they could find to professionals: the Prices.

  Alex and Elsie wouldn’t even have been there if Uncle Mike had been available. Alex had turned nineteen two months before, making him officially old enough for dangerous field assignments. Elsie was still eighteen. The fact that she had been allowed to come along had been the cause of much shouting at home when Alex’s sixteen-year-old little sister, Verity, had learned that the rules weren’t going to bend far enough to let her join the party. As loud as she could yell, she should have been a singer, not a dancer.

  As he inched farther into the dark barn, Alex found himself wishing their ages had been reversed. Verity wouldn’t have enjoyed the current situation any more than he did, he was sure, but at least she’d wanted to be there. He’d wanted to stay home with his books and his terrariums and keep studying for next week’
s midterms. Even if most of his research was going to be done under false identities, he needed to have a real degree to have any credibility within the cryptozoological community.

  And none of that was going to matter if he wound up as werewolf chow. He took a deep, shaky breath, forcing his hands to stop shaking, and swung around the corner into the main part of the stable.

  There were still bloodstains on the walls from the first outbreak. Alex looked at them and swallowed hard. Lycanthropy-w was a relative of rabies. It was primarily blood borne, but it couldn’t spread through dry contact. He’d need to lick the walls to be in danger, and even then, the odds of infection were so low as to be nonexistent. He knew that, just like he knew that he’d been sent to search the stables because there was less of a chance he’d run into danger out here. He still gave the first of the stains a wide berth, and made a mental note to tell his father that they needed to put a call out for Aunt Mary. She could come and scan the ghost side of things to make sure the dead horses weren’t haunting the place.

  Everyone had their own set of skills and talents to bring to the table. Alex just wasn’t sure that his included this particular kind of fieldwork.

  Something rustled at the back of an open stall. Alex held his breath, counting to five as he listened. The sound didn’t repeat, and he inched forward, scanning all the while for movement. It was probably a raccoon, or a barn cat, or something else native to the farm. Why would a werewolf have come out to the stables when there was so much untouched meat strewn around the house? The family that had owned this farm was dead, all of them, their throats ripped out and their blood left to pool on the floor. Werewolves were territorial, and they didn’t like to be exposed. The creature had most likely made its den somewhere inside the house—an attic, a basement, an overlooked room.

  Unless it considered the stable its territory. As Alex moved toward the open stall the creature, which had been huddled down in the straw, rose on strong, twisted legs that were somewhere between equine and lupine, yet still somehow managed to grant it a bipedal stance. Alex froze, feeling like his feet were suddenly locked to the floor. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t move.

  The werewolf had no such restrictions. It stalked toward him, snapping and snarling at the air. Its mouth was a crowded jumble of herbivore and carnivore teeth, and its half-hoven claws were splayed as wide as its warping bone structure would allow.

  The claws were what finally did it. Alex’s paralysis broke, and he turned and ran, heading for the rear of the stable as fast as his legs could carry him. He could hear the werewolf crashing along behind him, but as he had hoped, the creature’s twisted skeletal structure was slowing it down, preventing it from matching his speed. No human could outrun a horse over a short distance, or a wolf for that matter. This thing was a combination of the two, along with the unique bone structure granted to its interstitial form by the lycanthropy-w virus. It had to be a newish werewolf. If it had been more accustomed to its new reality, it would have changed forms and gone for him as either a wolf or a horse by now, not this horrifying combination of the two.

  He was almost to cover. He dared a glance over his shoulder and saw the werewolf less than eight feet behind, froth dripping from its jaws, eyes red with burst capillaries. Adrenaline lanced through his veins, propelling him the rest of the way to the back wall, where he spun around, whipping himself behind a pile of hay bales, and opened fire.

  His pistol was small: it held only six bullets, but all of them were silver-coated and treated with aconite. The werewolf screamed when the first one hit it. It wasn’t a sound Alex had ever heard before, and it wasn’t a sound he ever wanted to hear again. Like everything else about the creature, that scream was a hybridized horror, neither wolf nor horse, and somehow wrong in a way he couldn’t put into words. It made his blood run cold and his teeth ache, and so he kept firing, again and again, until the hammer clicked on an empty chamber and the werewolf was sprawled on the stable floor, no longer moving.

  Its anatomy was so twisted that it was impossible to tell whether or not the thing was dead, and Alex had seen too many horror movies to risk walking over to check. That was the sort of decision that got people gutted or, worse, infected. He sank slowly to the floor, his useless weapon dangling from his fingers, and stared at the unmoving bulk of the creature. He knew that he should run, but he couldn’t get his legs to work. So he just sat there.

  He was still sitting there, crying silently, when his family came running to investigate the gunshots. He didn’t know what else to do.

  One

  “Adventure is a tricky beast that will sneak up on you when you least expect it, laying ambushes and forcing you down avenues that you would never have chosen to walk on your own. After a certain point, it’s better just to go along with it. You do see the most interesting things that way.”

  —Alexander Healy

  An unnamed stretch of marshland near Columbus, Ohio

  Now

  EARLY FALL HAD TURNED the leaves on the trees around us into a flaming corona of red, gold, and pale brown. The few remaining patches of green looked almost out of place: their season was over, and they no longer belonged here. Crow seemed to share my feelings. The black-feathered Church Griffin was flying from tree to tree, crashing through the green patches like a self-aiming arrow and sending explosions of foliage to the ground. He cawed with delight every time he slammed into a branch. I had long since given up on worrying about him injuring himself; his head was incredibly hard, and he rarely collided with anything he wasn’t aiming to hit. Of the two of us, he was much less likely to be injured than I was.

  “You know, I can stay home if I want to see scrubland and dead leaves,” said Dee. She was struggling to match my trail through the patchy marsh, hampered by her sensible pumps, which weren’t so sensible in her current environment. I was aiming my steps expertly for the patches of solid ground between the puddles and the mud flats. Despite having grown up in the forest not far from here, Dee wasn’t very practiced at walking in swamps. That either showed a great failing or a great advantage in her upbringing.

  “Yes, but can you see the screaming yams as they prepare to migrate to land that’s less likely to freeze solid enough to damage their roots?” I kept walking. Dee, on the other hand, stopped dead.

  I turned around after a few feet, beaming a sunny smile in her direction. Dee, her eyes narrowed with suspicion behind the smoked yellow lenses of her glasses, did not match the expression.

  “What,” she said.

  “I told you we were coming out here to witness a migration,” I said.

  “Yes, Alex. You said ‘a migration.’ You know what migrates? Things with the capacity for independent movement. You know what doesn’t migrate? Yams.” Dee shook her head hard enough that her wig—a sleek blonde beehive—slipped a little. “Yams are plants. I realize there’s some hazing involved in doing this job. I’ve managed to resign myself to the fact that you’re a mammal and hence by definition, insane. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to convince me that we’re out here looking for yams that scream.”

  “And see, that right there is how your colony has been able to exist for decades without discovering the screaming yam for yourselves.” I turned back around and resumed my forward trek. Dee was annoyed enough that she would follow, if only so she didn’t have to stop sniping at me about the yams she was so sure didn’t actually exist. “Anyone who saw them would have kept it to themselves for fear of getting exactly this reaction.”

  “Yes, because screaming yams don’t exist,” said Dee, catching up to me. “I don’t know what human parents teach their children, but gorgon parents like to stick to things that are real.”

  “Like Medusa?”

  “Medusa was real,” said Dee. There was a dangerous note in her voice, accompanied by a low hiss from inside her wig.

  “Okay, bad example.” It’s never a good idea
to drag people’s gods into casual conversation. Medusa was the ur-Gorgon, the one without whom her two equally divine sisters would never—in gorgon cosmology—have been uplifted and allowed to shape their own children from snakes and clay. So maybe she wasn’t a good thing to call fictional. “Look, will you just stick with me and try to keep an open mind?”

  Dee rolled her eyes. “You’re paying me double-time for this. Don’t forget to file the paperwork with zoo HR.”

  “I wouldn’t,” I said, doing my best to look faintly hurt. “I keep my promises.”

  Technically, Dee was my administrative assistant at the West Columbus Zoo, where I was stationed as a visiting researcher from California. I’m not from California, and the zoo had no idea what I was really researching, but I provided enough value that I didn’t feel bad about deceiving them. The denizens of their reptile house had never been healthier, and we hadn’t fed anyone to the alligator snapping turtle in almost a year. I was happy about that. The alligator snapping turtle, maybe not so much.

  Crow flashed by overhead with a squirrel clutched in his talons, cawing triumphantly as he passed. I sighed. Church Griffins are basically what you get when Nature decides to Frankenstein a Maine Coon and a raven into one endless source of mischief. Crow was about the size of a corgi, with the predatory appetites of a cat that had somehow been equipped with functional wings. I kept him inside most of the time, both to prevent him from being discovered by people who wouldn’t know what to do with a Church Griffin, and to protect the neighborhood birds, squirrels, frickens, and smaller dogs.

  “He’s going to spread that thing’s guts through a mile of treetops,” observed Dee mildly.

  “At least it means I won’t have to feed him tonight. Come on: this way looks promising.” Our hike had brought us to one of the more solid patches of marsh. The ground grew firmer under our feet as we continued, finally becoming rich, deep, subriparian loam. A small ring of frilly green plants poked up out of the dirt, each about three inches high. They stood out vividly against the autumnal background. I grinned. “So Dee, you were telling me screaming yams don’t exist.”