Half-Off Ragnarok

by Seanan McGuire

  “Can I get a wet washcloth please?” I rasped. Speech hurt even more than laughter. I swallowed hard before adding, “And a glass of milk? I need to counteract some of this acid.”

  “Alex!” Shelby sounded like she couldn’t make up her mind whether she wanted to be stunned, delighted, or furious. “Are you all right?”

  “We’ll know in a second. I don’t want to open my eyes until I’ve wiped this stuff off.”

  “I’ll get it,” said Sarah. There was a scrape as she pushed back her chair, and she went padding away across the kitchen. The water in the sink started a few seconds later.

  “I thought you’d just committed suicide,” said Shelby in a hushed tone. “Alex, your eyes . . .”

  “It’s an allergic reaction to the thing that was out back. I’m just glad you didn’t see it.”

  “A visual allergy? Alex. Don’t treat me like I’m an idiot. There’s no such things as visual allergies.”

  “Sure there are. Haven’t you ever seen a pattern that made you feel dizzy, or an optical illusion that gave you a headache? Visual allergies exist. This is just a little more severe than most.” Something warm and wet was draped across my hand. “Thanks, Sarah.”

  “Okay,” she said serenely.

  “That’s Sarah for ‘you’re welcome,’” I said, and began using the towel to wipe away the jam that covered my face. I kept my eyes closed while I was working, trying to pretend that the sinking feeling in my stomach was anything but terror. If we’d been too slow getting the treatment prepared, if the proportions were off, if any one of a dozen things had gone wrong . . .

  The pain had stopped. I clung to that. Even if my eyesight was gone, I wasn’t going to turn to stone. That was better than the alternative.

  Wiping the last of the jam away, I cautiously cracked my eyes open. I immediately slammed them shut again as the light assaulted my retinas. “Okay, ow,” I said.

  “Alex?” demanded Shelby.

  “The petrifaction didn’t have time to penetrate his retinas, but there’s still strain,” said Sarah, sounding distracted, like she was explaining something that really didn’t matter. “It’s going to take time for his eyes to adjust to the kitchen’s light levels. There’s no dimmer switch. There was a clapper for a while, but Angela likes to watch opera on DVD. The applause would make the lights go wild. Martin took it out.”

  “Is that so?” said Shelby. She sounded faintly baffled. Not an uncommon reaction when Sarah decided to go off on a tangent.

  “I’m okay,” I said, and raised one hand to shade my eyes as I carefully opened them again. The kitchen came into view, blurry and over-bright, but visible, beautifully, blessedly visible. I could have laughed, except that I was afraid that if I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop again until I had all the panic out of my system. I did cry, both from relief, and from the pain of the light lancing into my eyeballs. It was a good pain, though, a clean pain, far removed from the grinding agony of petrifaction.

  “Alex?” said Shelby.

  “That sucked.” I lowered my hand and reached for my glasses, blinking as I tried to clear away the blurriness. The table, cluttered with items from the first aid kit, was the first thing to come into focus. Then came Sarah, who was sitting across from me with a quizzical expression on her face, like this was the most interesting thing she’d seen all week. I managed a faint smile for her. “Hi, Sarah. Thanks for your help.”

  “There’s a period of adjustment that comes with the sudden loss of a primary sense,” she said. “You would have had difficulty making the ice cream sundaes you promised me.”

  “That’s true,” I said. I realized that she could just as easily be describing herself: without easy access to the telepathy she’d depended on since birth, she was essentially “blind.”

  “Are you really all right?” asked Shelby.

  I turned to her, and blinked, suddenly struck by just how beautiful she was. The faint blurriness of my vision made the white hem of her dress look like actual clouds, and the kitchen light was reflecting in a corona around her head. All that, and she’d just saved me from an unidentified cryptid. If I hadn’t been afraid I’d topple over if I tried to get out of my chair, I would have been tempted to propose on the spot.

  “I’m going to be fine,” I assured her. “We got the antivenin into my system fast enough, and the stuff you mixed up with the jam was enough to fix the superficial damage.”

  “So you’re fit? Intact and stable?”

  “I think so.”

  “Oh, good.” Shelby was abruptly on her feet, sending her chair toppling over backward. It was still falling when my eyes focused on the important part of this scene: the pistol she was holding in her hands, with the barrel aimed squarely at Sarah’s chest. “Now that we’ve got that taken care of, let’s move on to the important things. Like extermination.”

  Well, crap.

  Nine

  “Expectations are dangerous things. They’ve probably killed more people than any creature or cryptid that you care to name.”

  —Kevin Price

  In the kitchen of an only moderately creepy suburban home in Columbus, Ohio, dealing with a suddenly homicidal girlfriend

  IF SARAH WAS UPSET about having a gun aimed in her direction, she didn’t show it. I wasn’t even sure she realized the thing in Shelby’s hands was a gun, as opposed to a stapler or something similar.

  “You can leave the kitchen if you like, Alex,” said Shelby. “I know this must be very confusing for you, but I promise, it’s all going to start making sense soon.”

  “What are you—”

  “You never gave it to her, but I couldn’t hear her,” said Sarah, blinking her enormous blue eyes with Disney princess guilelessness. “I didn’t even know she was in the house until she started talking to you. She should have been here until you gave it to her, and she wasn’t.”

  “Gave what to her? Sarah—” I glanced at Shelby, who was holding her perfect shooter’s stance with a casual ease that implied she could do this all night if she needed to. I was in favor of that. As long as she was standing still, she wasn’t shooting my cousin. “Maybe this isn’t the best time to talk about what you could and couldn’t hear, okay?”

  “But you never gave it to her.” Sarah’s eyes stayed fixed on Shelby, but her tone turned petulant. She seemed more perturbed by me than she was by the woman with the gun. Oh, priorities. “You promised.”

  “Gave what to . . . oh.” I froze, feeling the blood drain out of my face.

  I had never given Shelby the anti-telepathy charm. I left the kitchen to get it for her, but I’d been distracted by the cockatrice in the backyard, and I’d never given it to her. I risked a glance over my shoulder, confirming that the little glass-and-copper pendant was still lying on the floor. I’d dropped it and then forgotten about it in the scramble to keep me from turning to stone. Shelby couldn’t be wearing it—but if she wasn’t wearing it, Sarah should have been able to “hear” her presence. Having a stranger in the house should have been driving my cousin’s telepathy into a frenzy.

  And instead we were all gathered calmly in the kitchen, except for the part where Shelby had a gun. I looked back to Shelby, trying to assess the distance between us. What had I invited into my home?

  More importantly, what could I do to fix things?

  “Shelby . . .” I began.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart,” said Shelby, in the sort of wheedling tone she normally reserved for her charges at the zoo. She never took her eyes off of Sarah. “We’re going to get you all sorted out, and then I’ll explain everything about what’s happening here. Assuming you remember there’s anything to explain. You may not.”

  There was a gun strapped to my calf. I bent casually forward and reached for the holster, trying to make it look like I was just scratching an itch. Please don’t make me shoot you, Shelby, I thought. That would be a bad breakup, even by my admittedly low standards. “I don’t understand what you’re talking abo
ut.”

  “No, you wouldn’t, would you?” The sympathy in Shelby’s expression died, replaced by a sneer as she focused her attention back on Sarah. “Where’s the rest of your flock, you filthy brood parasite? There’s no point in protecting them. I’ll find them with or without your help.”

  Sarah looked bemused. “I don’t have a flock,” she said. “They abandoned me on a doorstep, and they never came back. Fly little bird, fly and be free. But I’m not a bird, you know. Biologically, I have nothing in common with birds. Well. Lungs, I suppose.” She looked to me, sudden curiosity lighting up her eyes. “Do birds have lungs?”

  “Yes, Sarah, birds have lungs,” I said, as soothingly as I could manage when I was trying to unclasp my holster without Shelby realizing I was going for a gun.

  “Stop prattling and answer the question,” snapped Shelby.

  The gun came free in my hand. I sat up straight, pulling it out from under the table and aiming at Shelby’s shoulder. I flipped the safety off with my thumb. I’d be shooting to wound, not kill, as long as she didn’t move. Please, Shelby, don’t move. “Put down the gun.”

  Shelby—who had stiffened at the small, clean snap of the safety being released—didn’t move. “How far has she managed to get her claws into you, Alex?” she asked. She sounded almost regretful. “I’m so very sorry. I didn’t realize what was happening to you at first, and by the time I did, it was too late.”

  “Put down the gun,” I repeated. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I do know that we’re not having a rational conversation about it until you stop holding a gun on my cousin.”

  “She’s not your cousin, Alex. She’s not even human.”

  Oh, crap. I stiffened in my seat, considering half a dozen solutions and rejecting each one before I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think today may have upset you more than I realized.”

  “She’s messed with your mind, Alex. That’s what her kind does.” Shelby kept her gun trained on Sarah, who was still sitting calmly in her chair. Thank God for small favors. “They scramble your perceptions until you don’t know right from wrong, up from down, or your family from the things that would destroy it.”

  “Shelby . . .” Sometimes you have to take risks—and I was willing to bet that I was a faster shot than Shelby. Taking a deep breath, I said, “Sarah’s not human, but she’s still family. Her being what she is just means we have to clean ketchup out of the toaster every now and then.”

  “What?” Shelby finally turned to stare at me, although her aim didn’t waver, and she didn’t take her finger off the trigger. “You know she’s a Johrlac?”

  My family calls Sarah’s species “cuckoos,” but their real name is “Johrlac.” I nodded slowly, my own gun staying raised. “She always has been, and she’s not messing with my mind. She’s family.” Shelby, on the other hand . . . she’d been a better girlfriend than I deserved, maybe, but I didn’t really know her. I stood, adjusting my position as necessary to make certain that my aim never wavered. “Who are you?”

  “What?” Shelby blinked, eyes going wide as she did her best to look innocent. “I’m your girlfriend. Don’t tell me she’s forced you to forget me.”

  “Sarah isn’t capable of forcing me to do anything. I’m wearing an anti-telepathy charm that keeps her from getting into my head without my permission.” I steadied my gun hand against the opposing wrist. “I know who you’ve been to me for the last few months. I know who I think you are. But who are you really?”

  “I could ask you the same question,” Shelby shot back. “All those nights you said you weren’t available for dinner, all those dates you canceled, and for what? I was getting ready to break it off with you, write you off as a bad deal, when I realized what was happening. Your Johrlac ‘cousin’ isn’t here because she loves you. She’s here because she’s a brood parasite, and you’re her latest nest. So what are you to her? Are you her next meal, or are you some sort of collaborator, luring her prey into range?”

  “They call us ‘cuckoos’ here, but you got the rest right,” said Sarah. She leaned back in her seat, looking at the ceiling. “We infect nests that should belong to other birds. Just a crack in the eggshell . . .” She started humming to herself.

  Shelby glanced at Sarah, frowning. “Is this some kind of trick?” she asked. “She’s not acting like a normal Johrlac.”

  “That’s because she’s not a normal Johrlac. She’s my cousin, and she’s not well. She was injured saving my sister’s life. She’s here in Columbus to recover.” I shook my head. “She’s not a danger. Unlike you.”

  “Me?” Shelby actually looked shocked. “What did I do?”

  “You came into my house and drew a gun on my cousin. I find that pretty damn dangerous.”

  “You’re the one who had a gun hidden in your trouser leg!”

  “Shoulder holsters mess up the line of the shirts I’m supposed to wear to work.”

  Shelby blinked. Blinked again. And then, apparently against her will, she snorted in amusement. “Right,” she said. “Fashion. That’s what ought to be the concern here. Whether or not something looks good under a tweed professor’s coat.”

  “Tweed is a valid lifestyle choice,” I shot back. “Now please answer my question: who are you?”

  “My name is Shelby Tanner,” she said, without inflection. I’d never heard her voice so dead. “I am a visiting naturalist from Australia.”

  I stared at her in horror. There’s only one group of people I know who are that bent on destroying cryptids, even to the point of following them home. “Oh, God,” I said. “Covenant.”

  I’ve mentioned the Covenant of St. George, but I haven’t explained them very well, and a little understanding is important if you want to know why having a Covenant operative in my home was such a terrifying concept.

  Several hundred years ago, relations between humans and what we’d later come to call “cryptids” were . . . well, strained. The fact that all nonhuman intelligences were referred to as “monsters” may give you some idea of how bad things were. This was exacerbated by the fact that many cryptids didn’t regard eating humans as wrong. If we could eat cattle, why couldn’t the occasional meat-eating cow eat us? It was an egalitarian approach to the problem, and naturally, some people didn’t like it. The Covenant of St. George was founded to rid the world of dragons, werewolves, basilisks, and anything else that might threaten mankind’s dominion.

  I can’t exactly call their original mission statement “wrong.” It’s a lot easier to be live-and-let-live about ghouls and harpies when they aren’t sneaking into your home and stealing your children in the middle of the night. The problem arose when the mission statement expanded, coming to serve as an order of execution for anything that wasn’t explicitly listed as accompanying Noah on the Ark. (Where they got a full shipping manifest for the contents of a boat which may or may not have actually existed is anybody’s guess.)

  The Covenant of St. George never tried to understand the things it killed, and the modern Covenant still doesn’t make the effort. They slaughter whatever they judge unnatural, and leave history littered with the bodies of those who crossed them. If it seems like there’s a little resentment there, it’s because I’m descended from two good Covenant families—the Healys, who were among the best assassins in a society filled with killers, and the Prices, whose scholarship and devotion to the cause helped move the Healys into position. Killing is in our blood. My great-great-grandparents turned their back on the cause, but they couldn’t change who they were, or who their children would grow up to be.

  My sister, Verity, met a Covenant operative in New York City, and true to family form, she promptly seduced him, convinced him to abandon his holy calling, and brought him home to meet the parents. Talking to Dominic had just confirmed what we’d believed for years: the Covenant of St. George thought that the Price-Healy bloodline had died out in Buckley, Michigan, but they were more than willing to be proved wrong if the o
pportunity arose.

  And the orders regarding our family weren’t friendly ones.

  If Shelby was Covenant, I wasn’t going to have any choice about what I did next. I was going to hate it, possibly forever, but I was going to do it anyway. Family comes first. That’s the one good lesson that we took away from our time with the Covenant. Family always comes first.

  Shelby blinked, expression turning quizzical. Then, to my surprise, she burst out laughing. “You—I—you really—oh, Alex.” She raised a hand to wipe her eye, and somehow turned that gesture into a full-body turn, bringing her gun around to aim at my chest. I guess saying the word “Covenant” had rendered Sarah the lesser threat. Bully for me. Face gone suddenly cold again, she demanded, “What do you know about the Covenant? Are you working for them, is that it? A double agent? Because don’t think I won’t shoot you where you stand.”

  “Wait—what? One second you’re threatening my cousin for being a cryptid, and the next you’re threatening me because you think I’m with the Covenant? Don’t you think you should make up your mind before you shoot me? And if I were with the Covenant, why the hell would I be asking if you were with the Covenant?” I frowned. “You’re not with the Covenant, are you?”

  “Are you mad? I’m from Australia!”

  That seemed to answer everything for her. It just raised more questions for me. “What the hell does Australia have to do with anything?”

  “The Covenant tried to have the entire continent declared anathema and cleansed, you moron!” Shelby was yelling now. “They’d have wiped out our ecosystem and replaced it with things they considered ‘acceptable’! Idiots. Destructive, shortsighted idiots. I can’t believe you work for them!”