Discount Armageddon

by Seanan McGuire

  “And?” There was caution under the excitement now, as logic overrode his instincts.

  I flung a knife into the darkness, aiming for a spot a foot to the left of where Dave’s head would normally be. I heard it hit the wall. “And if you insist on giving in to your nature and spooking me, I’m going to have to give in to my nature, and hunt you. Darks, Dave. Talk, Dave. Now, Dave.”

  The darks clicked off and the lights clicked on, revealing the dour, gray-skinned form of my boss sitting behind his desk and sulking like a petulant child. “What could possibly be so important that you needed to come in here like that?”

  “Candy went home.”

  Dave hesitated, visibly trying to fit that statement into any sort of logical conversation. “So, what, you want her tables?”

  “It was a personal emergency.”

  “What sort of personal emergency could possibly make a dragon princess give up her tips for the second shift in a row? I expected her to come in here black and blue after her Nest-sisters kicked holy hell out of her for missing work.” Dragon princesses view the income of one as the income of all, and they tend to get a little bit cranky when that income is threatened.

  Watching Dave’s expression, I said, “She had to go make sure the Nest was aware that there’s a representative from the Covenant currently resident in Manhattan.”

  I’ll give Dave this much: he managed to school his face almost instantly into a neutral state. Sadly, “almost” wasn’t fast enough to keep me from seeing the way the skin around his mouth tightened. It was a subtle tell, but it was what I had to go on. “Is that so?” he asked. “That’s a pisser. We’d better make sure the rest of the staff knows. How’d you find out, Very? Has this guy been bothering you?”

  “If we were on a bad cop show, this is where I’d point out that I never told you it was a guy, but since the Covenant’s field agents are ninety percent male, I’m going to let it pass,” I said, stepping forward until I could rest the heels of my hands against the desk. “Why didn’t you tell me he was in town, Dave?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Uh-huh. Let’s go again. Why didn’t you tell me he was in town, Dave?”

  Scowling now, Dave crossed his arms. “Aren’t I your employer? Thus making me the man with the power to sack your pretty little ass if you go around accusing me of things?”

  “Ignoring the part where I could double my income if I started teaching dance classes instead of working here, yes, you are,” I said, and smiled. “Aren’t I the one who could walk out into your bar and tell everybody you’ve been withholding information that could get them killed? I don’t think I’ll need to worry about you firing me after you’ve been slaughtered by the rest of your employees.”

  There was a pause as Dave measured out my statement, trying to figure out whether I was bluffing. I let him take as much time as he needed. I might have been more inclined to hurry him if I had been bluffing, but I was doing nothing of the sort. If the Covenant was in town, the locals needed to know. Whether I also told them Dave had been aware before they were was entirely dependent on him.

  Finally, he settled back in his seat and gave me a wounded look. “How did you know?”

  “About the Covenant, or about you having prior knowledge?”

  “Both.”

  “I know about the Covenant because I need a new pair of socks, which you, having been previously aware of their presence, will be kind enough to supply me with for free. I got caught in a lovely little rooftop snare last night. Not sure whether our boy was hunting Jersey devils, harpies, or just whatever happened to wander by, but he got himself a cryptozoologist for his trouble. He nearly got a bullet to the forehead to go with it. He’s already killed at least one ahool. I don’t know what else he may have done.”

  “What stopped you from shooting him?” Dave asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “Didn’t want to waste the ammo.” I kept smiling. “As for how I know you were previously aware, well. You’re a bogeyman who runs a strip club. If anybody would have heard it through the grapevine, it’s you. And you let Kitty go on tour with her boyfriend’s band.”

  “Wanting my employees to succeed in their chosen fields of endeavor makes me the bad guy now?”

  “Kitty’s one of the only girls you have who’s always willing to work the overnights, doesn’t complain about the skanky little uniforms, and puts up with you being a lech. You wouldn’t let her out of the building at the end of her shift if you didn’t have to. That means the only good reason for you to let her go on tour is getting her out of the line of fire. What do you know? What aren’t you telling me?”

  Dave fixed me with an eye, giving me his best piercing glare. It was the sort of look bogeymen excel at, all supernatural menace and the promise of nasty things lurking in your closet. I met it with an even sweeter smile.

  Dave knew when he was beat. He sagged, and said, “He got here about a week and a half ago. Boy’s been keeping his head down. I wouldn’t even know if he hadn’t flown through JFK.”

  Raising my eyebrows, I asked, “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I have some friends in the TSA. Most of the agents spend their time looking for signs of human terrorism. These folks are looking for a different sort of terrorist—the sort of terrorist who starches his socks and keeps silver flasks full of holy water in his checked bags.” Dave shrugged, looking slightly smug. “They caught him coming in, passed me the info, I did some checking, and bingo, we’ve got us a tasty little piece of intelligence.”

  “Well, that’s dandy and all, but when were you planning to bring me into your little circle of trust? Before or after he killed me for being a cryptid sympathizer?”

  Holding up his hands, Dave said, “Hey, now, Verity, that’s not the deal, now, is it? I’m not informing for you. A man’s got to eat, and you work for cash on the barrel, not for gossip.” A smile wormed its way across his face. “Of course, if you wanted to add a little rider to your contract, maybe something about dancing for data—”

  “You go to hell, Dave,” I said pleasantly. “I’m going to go talk to the bouncers. If you hear anything else about this guy, I expect to be informed. Got me?”

  “Or what?”

  I took my hands off the desk and straightened, still smiling. “I become the monster under your bed.”

  Not pausing to give him a chance to respond, I turned and walked out of the office, leaving the knife sticking out of his wall. I had warnings to pass on, a pair of socks to collect from the wardrobe locker, and a shift to work. No rest for the wicked.

  The lunch rush was more of a lunch trickle by the time I hit the floor, apron in place and new socks pulled securely over my knees. The other girls on duty were walking laconically among the customers, taking orders and providing the occasional panty-shot in an effort to drive up tips. They looked profoundly bored. Even without Candy, they had things more than under control. Istas was at the bar picking up a round of cocktails for one of the few occupied tables as I approached. I offered a respectful nod, which she returned without comment. Like most waheela, she wasn’t particularly comfortable with interpersonal interaction, but she made more of an effort than the bulk of her kind. I had to respect her for that, even as I continued to wonder what the hell would drive a member of a solitary, semiferal species to take a job at a Manhattan titty bar.

  Ryan was leaning against the bar nursing a cup of something that smelled suspiciously like pickle juice. He smiled at me, waiting until I was close enough to hear him over the thumping music to say, “Hey, Verity. Those new socks? What happened this time?”

  “I got snared by a representative from the Covenant while I was making my rooftop rounds and sort of bled through the cotton. Also, your nose for fresh cotton remains creepy and means I want you nowhere near my underwear drawer, ever.” I slid myself onto a stool. “Hey, Daisy, can I get a plate of hot wings? I’m starving to death over here.”

  “Got it, hon,” c
alled the bartender, heading for the kitchen.

  Ryan, meanwhile, was staring at me like I’d suddenly announced my desire to get wasted and catch a nice social disease. “Come again?”

  “The Covenant’s in town,” I said, turning to face him straight on. “Dave didn’t give you the info either?”

  Ryan didn’t answer in words. He just growled, lips pulling back to show incisors considerably sharper and more pointed than the average human’s. Those teeth were normally the only sign that he’d inherited more from his Japanese mother than black hair and the sort of exotic features that kept the tourist ladies throwing themselves at him.

  I nodded. “Thought not.”

  “How many?”

  “One that I’m aware of, about my age, pretty good at the hand-to-hand, but not smart enough to avoid bringing knives to a gunfight.” I held up a hand. “Pass the word that he’s out there and people need to be careful, but also pass the word that nobody should do anything stupid, like try to kill him.”

  Ryan eyed me. “He’s from the Covenant, Verity,” he said, like that explained everything. From Ryan’s perspective, it did. The Covenant did a lot of “cleansing” in Japan, and Ryan’s species suffered pretty badly. Tanuki are therianthropes—shapeshifters powered by magic, rather than by the virus that causes lycanthropy—and they’ve never had much success with outbreeding. They probably would have died out entirely if not for the fact that they’re incredibly determined and spent several generations sticking it into anything that would wiggle as they tried to find species they could mate with to produce children who would live. My family has a lot of reasons to hate the Covenant. Ryan’s family has more.

  “Yes, he’s from the Covenant, and if we go messing with him, the rest of the Covenant is going to find out. If everyone just lies low, stays out of his way, and passes the word around, maybe we can handle him without this turning into something worse. Or we can mess with him, and the Covenant can send a legion to put us down.” Daisy put my wings on the bar. I offered her a nod of thanks, reaching for the tray. “The way I see it, the choice is ours.”

  “I don’t like this,” Ryan rumbled. His voice was getting deeper as his vocal chords constricted, modulating toward animal. He’d get control of himself in a minute, and it would be rude to point out the changes. Like most therianthropes, Ryan was very sensitive about his slips.

  “You don’t have to like it. You just have to help me pass the word along.” I picked up a hot wing, dipping it in bleu cheese dressing before offering a wry smile. “Besides, maybe if we all go underground, he’ll get bored and go away. Stranger things have happened, right?”

  “Stranger than the Covenant letting go of a purge before they get to skin somebody?” Ryan gave me a dubious look. “I’m not sure anything that strange has ever happened.”

  I shrugged. “There’s a first time for everything.”

  “Not for this.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Ryan sighed, throat visibly contorting as his vocal chords slipped themselves back into their human configuration. “Yeah,” he said, sounding doleful. “I guess we will.”

  Eight

  “Remember that most people, human or cryptid, don’t like what they don’t understand. They’re not wired for that kind of compassion. Feel sorry for them, unless they form an angry mob and march on your house. When that happens, release the hounds.”

  —Evelyn Baker

  The rooftops of Manhattan, sometime after midnight, three weeks later

  THE SUMMER HEAT HAD DEEPENED as June slid into July, going from “unpleasant” to “unbearable” and bathing the entire city in a faint but distinctive scent of unwashed bodies, spoiled food, and chemical perfume. The smell was heaviest at street level. After an hour on the rooftops, going back to the ground was unbearable. Sadly, the part of my training that focused on blending in with the natives was firm on the topic of gas masks: they were a big no-no.

  Paradoxically, the worse the smell of the city became, the more comfortable the lycanthrope and therianthrope populations seemed to be. As Ryan explained things, they didn’t like the modern attitude that people should be perfumed at all times, but as long as no one squirted strong scents actually on them, they could cope. The hazy, sweaty days of summer made tracking easier while they were in their human forms, and that made it easier for them to remain calm while surrounded by actual humans. Summer in the city is like having the lights turned on in a dark room for a shapeshifter. Interesting. Good to know. Definitely relevant to my field of study. And doing nothing for my reluctance to come down from the rooftops.

  It had been almost a month since my last—and thus far, only—encounter with Dominic De Luca, better known as “the asshole from the Covenant.” Ryan, Candy, and everyone else at Dave’s refused to dignify the fact that he had a proper name. I couldn’t blame them. We’d been short-staffed since people learned he was in town, as everybody came up with sudden, pressing reasons to get out of harm’s way. (Most people used the standards: sick relative, family funeral, impending childbirth, whelping, or ovipositing—normal things. Marcy was the only one to take off her apron and say, without prevaricating, “I’m out of here until he’s gone, dead, or both.” Her pure self-interest was refreshing, even if it didn’t do anything to help cover her shifts at the club. At least we knew when she’d be back.)

  I was getting annoyed at the people who turned tail and ran, even though I couldn’t blame them for doing it. I was a cryptid sympathizer, after all, not a cryptid, and that meant I had a lot less to lose. Even Sarah and the mice were relatively safe. Aeslin can vanish into a normal rodent population in less time than it takes to say “exterminator,” and Sarah would be the last person any representative of the Covenant tagged as outside the norm. Her camouflage was good enough to see her through anything short of a nuclear attack. Most of the city’s cryptids didn’t have that luxury.

  The deserters didn’t worry me. That honor was reserved for the ones who’d simply disappeared. It seemed like more members of the city’s cryptid population went missing every day. It started small, with just a few outliers from the community, people no one really kept very close tabs on anyway. There are totally valid ecological reasons for the existence of ghouls, bug-a-boos, and wendigo. That doesn’t mean anybody sane wants them for neighbors. There was no way of getting an exact number on the missing, but I knew it was higher than I liked. The members of the various species that remained in town had been calling relatives and information brokers, but if anyone knew anything, they weren’t sharing it with me.

  The few estimates I could get on the missing only covered the humanoid cryptids. Nobody knew how many animal cryptids were in Manhattan and, without a starting census, I couldn’t tell how many were gone. Everyone I talked to agreed that the numbers were dropping. Not encouraging, especially when I couldn’t give them any reassurance that things were going to be all right.

  The impulse to blame all the disappearances on De Luca was strong. There was just one problem with that convenient answer to my problems: I’d only found a few bodies, all of them at roof level, and all of them obviously hostile cryptid “monsters,” like the ahool. I didn’t care how good a hunter the asshole was. If he was responsible for all the deaths, there would have been more bodies. He was still the closest thing I had to a lead.

  Which brought me back to the rooftops, having bribed Candy to bring in two of her “sisters” to cover my shift for the night. I was hunting a hunter. The best place to do that is on the killing grounds.

  All my life I’ve been dismissed as the dilettante daughter, the one who’d rather dance than deal with the realities of the family business. Alex graduated from high school two years ahead of his peers, got his degree in veterinary medicine, and took off for South America to spend a year hunting for dinosaurs—long story—before settling at the Columbus Zoo with his menagerie. Antimony was still living at home, but she was also taking classes at the local college, helping Mom with her hospice duties, an
d helping Dad with his research. Me, on the other hand? I went on national reality television. Way to forward the cryptid cause, Verity.

  But here’s the thing: it was the best way to forward the cryptid cause. My specialization is in the humanoid cryptids, and by making a spectacle of myself, I also made myself seem harmless. The Prices belonged to the Covenant for too long to be totally accepted overnight. Once the cryptids who actually watched TV found out who I was—and more specifically, found out that I’d gone undercover to be on a reality show—they started dismissing the idea that I might be a threat. They spread the word through the rest of the community. It turned out people were a lot more likely to trust me when my silhouette made them think of foxtrots and waltzes, not serious collateral damage. Image is everything.

  Image doesn’t change reality. Under the sequins, the flashy makeup jobs, and the designer shoes, I’m a Price. I know how to do my job. I just wish my job wouldn’t insist on getting done the night before a dance competition.

  I’d been prowling the rooftops every night for weeks, and the only signs I’d seen of De Luca were the corpses in his wake. Dave insisted that his contacts didn’t know where Dominic was, but I wasn’t sure I trusted Dave. It’s never a good idea to take a bogeyman at his word when you’re not holding a gun to his head, and even then there’s a chance he’ll try to play you before you pull the trigger.

  At least this time I was prepared for a fight. I was wearing a skintight gray bodysuit that rendered me virtually invisible when I stepped into the shadows, and the soles of my boots had been treated with one of Antimony’s weird science projects, giving me traction on practically any surface. They didn’t even leave footprints unless I was dumb enough to step in a puddle. My face was visible, my hair seeming almost white against the dark, but I wasn’t willing to wear a mask. It wasn’t pride or vanity; it was the desire to avoid having my head dive-bombed by confused gargoyles who thought I was competition intruding on their territory.