“You’re setting snares for potentially intelligent creatures with the intent to kill them based solely on attributes that you don’t like.” Ahool weren’t intelligent, but they also weren’t going to get caught in a snare. Rooftop snares meant he was hunting for a wide variety of prey. “I think the situation’s pretty self-explanatory, don’t you?”
He started to step forward, the knife still in his hand. I had my gun drawn and pointed straight at him before he’d finished the motion.
“Do you really want to do that?” I asked. “Think hard. I’m having a lousy night, and I promise you’re not going to take me quietly.” The harpies were probably too far away to hear me if I screamed. That was bad. We were, however, reasonably close to a flophouse that I knew was frequented by a lot of bogeymen. Bogeymen are attracted by the sound of screams, and most of the city’s bogey community knew me. Even if Dominic was wearing body armor, I was no slouch at hand-to-hand, and I’d have backup before he had time to do much damage. I hoped.
Dominic hesitated. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t. I thought you’d been wiped out.”
“Wiping things out is your hobby, but no, we haven’t been.”
“They taught me about you. Your desertion.”
“What a great way of putting it. I’ll have to write that in my diary.”
“You were a glorious bloodline before you decided to turn traitor.”
Now I was starting to get pissed. I shifted as much of my weight as possible to my right leg, glaring at him. “Are we doing this thing or not? Because if not, I want you out of Manhattan, and out of my way.”
“I suppose that’s the answer, then,” said Dominic regretfully, before he lunged.
I have to give the Covenant this: they teach their people how to fight. Dominic moved with grace and deadly speed, turning a headlong charge into an attack before most people would have had time to do more than blink. Keeping the knife held slightly behind him, he balled his right hand into a fist and swung for the place where my head should have been.
He missed by what my mother would have called a country mile. I was already dropping to land balanced on the fingertips of my left hand and the toe of my right foot, knee bending as it accommodated my sudden half-crouch. Kicking my left foot upward in a maneuver I was certain to regret in the morning, I slammed my heel into his wrist, sending the knife flying out of his hand and away into the darkness on the roof.
He was good. I’m not sure he wouldn’t have been better, had he been attacking to kill and not to capture. I had no such qualms. Fighting like a gentleman is the sort of luxury reserved for people who can afford to lose.
Dominic recovered quickly, delivering a kick to my kidneys. I rolled with it, letting the borrowed momentum carry me several feet before springing to my feet and shoving the gun into his face.
“You are not a good listener,” I said, trying not to show how badly that kick had hurt, or how disgusted I was by the congealed ahool blood now staining my windbreaker.
For his part, Dominic was looking like a man who’d just learned the world wasn’t perfect. “You little—”
“Finishing that sentence gets you shot,” I said, and stepped backward. “Here’s a tip: never bring a knife to a gunfight. Here’s another: stop killing my cryptids, and get out of my city. If I hear one word about you harassing the people that live here, or see you one more time, I’m not going to fight fair.”
“The Covenant will be hearing about this.”
“What, that you met a random girl on a rooftop who told you she was a member of a family you guys wiped out years ago right before she kicked your ass? As if. Even if your pride would take it, they wouldn’t believe you.” I took another step backward. The edge of the roof was only a few feet away. “Get out of my city, De Luca. Next time, I won’t play nice.”
“Next time, neither will I,” he snarled, and pulled another knife from his coat, flinging it toward my chest—or at least toward the space where my chest had been. By the time the knife finished its flight, I was already over the edge of the roof, dropping like a rock into the darkness below.
Six
“Always remember two things about the Covenant: shoot first, and then keep shooting for as long as your ammunition holds out. You can’t reason with fanatics. All you can do is match them in your own fanaticism.”
—Enid Healy
A small semilegal sublet in Greenwich Village, cranky and in pain
RECOVERING THE HEIGHT I LOST during my getaway would have been too much trouble, especially when I could feel the bruises forming as I ran. My left ankle was throbbing steadily, making my footing questionable at best. One of the first rules of successful free running talks about how you do it with injured ankles, wrists, knees, or hips. It’s a simple rule: don’t. It’s a good way to do permanent damage, and unless you’re being chased by a hungry wendigo, no shortcut is worth that.
I found a fire escape three blocks from home that was close enough to the ground to let me finish my descent. I made the rest of the trip on foot. It was late enough that the only people I passed were drunk, homeless, drunk and homeless, or in the middle of traveling from one nightclub to another. None of them gave my outfit, or the blood covering it, a second glance.
The mice had either finished their religious ceremony or moved on to one of the quieter parts of the liturgy. The apartment was silent when I came in, and stayed that way as I dug my phone from my backpack and retrieved the first aid kit from the medicine cabinet. I dropped my windbreaker in the bathtub. I didn’t know whether ahool blood was acidic, but I’d be finding out soon. There was a little blood on my skirt. I stripped it off and threw it into the tub on top of the windbreaker. Then I turned and limped back to the living room.
The couch was covered in last week’s laundry. I swept it onto the floor as I sat down, groaning a little when my bruises brushed against the cushions. Once the aching slowed, I removed my left shoe and rolled down the sock.
The damage was both better than I’d been expecting and worse than I’d been hoping; not an uncommon combination when it comes to me and injuries. I’m pretty resilient. That doesn’t mean I enjoy getting hurt, or the complications that come with it. At least it was all just surface damage; the snare had done a good job of scraping my skin through the sock, but the rope never actually touched me. I slathered the scrapes liberally in antibiotic cream, pasted on some gauze, wrapped an Ace bandage around it, and called it good. As long as I didn’t need to win any foot races or dance any Paso Dobles for the next few days, I’d be fine.
I leaned back into the couch, wincing, and snapped open my phone. If the Covenant was in Manhattan, there was only one reasonable place to call.
Home.
* * *
The story of my family winding up in a sprawling farmhouse outside of Odell, Oregon is simple, even though it takes the mice three days to tell. My great-great-grandparents left England and settled in Pennsylvania; the Covenant promptly sent a man to check on them. The family sent him packing and moved inland, to Michigan. The Covenant sent another man to check on them. They didn’t send this one packing. Instead, my grandmother married him.
The family stayed put for a few years, largely due to issues involving a contract with a demon, an open dimensional rift, and preschool, but once the demon finished doing its thing, the survivors weren’t that keen on Michigan anymore. They moved to Oregon. According to the mice, the whole family originally lived in the house where I grew up, which was selected for reasons of geographic isolation and ease of potential defense strategies. I find that concept horrifying. Putting Dad and Aunt Jane in a room together on the holidays is bad enough. Making them share a house should have resulted in homicide. Dad went to Cleveland, met Mom, and brought her home; Aunt Jane went to Portland, met Uncle Ted, and settled down close enough to be a nuisance, yet far enough away that nobody dies.
We don’t really have a family tree at this point; it’s more like a family branch, given the way people ke
ep getting themselves killed or sucked into alternate dimensions that may or may not be capable of supporting human life (the jury’s still out on what happened to Grandpa Thomas, although Grandma Alice insists he’s alive, and my mother raised me never to contradict anyone who regularly carries grenades).
It’s always been assumed that my siblings and I will settle in the Pacific Northwest. It’s not empty nest syndrome: it’s practicality. We’ve lost a lot of family members since Alexander and Enid Healy decided to move to America, and none of their tombstones say things like “died peacefully in her sleep” or “lived a good long life.” If we don’t stick close to home, we don’t make it home.
And people at school used to wonder why I laughed when they tried to tell me how weird their families were.
* * *
“Can I help you?” That was all. No hello, no “this is the Price residence, Antimony speaking,” nothing that might encourage the person on the other end of the phone to keep talking. My baby sister wasn’t being rude; that’s how we were taught to handle unexpected callers. There was always the chance that cold call might be someone from the Covenant. Paranoia as a family tradition: it’s not a good one, but it’s ours, and we’re fond of it.
Sarah once asked why we didn’t just change our surname and go all the way into hiding, rather than screwing around with unlisted phone numbers and keeping our heads down. Sarah’s a cryptid, and the concept of not letting the bastards win wasn’t something I could explain to her. She understood hiding. What she didn’t understand was being willing to be found, as long as it was on your own turf and your own terms.
“Hey, Timmy. Is Mom there?”
“Don’t call me Timmy,” said Antimony, the words carrying the distinct stamp of reflex. “Mom’s not home.”
“Not home where? Will she be back soon?”
“Uh, no.” Antimony is three years younger than I am, but what she lacks in age, she constantly makes up for in insulting my intelligence. “Did you miss the part where there’s a big planetary alignment going on? This week is going to be one of the only times of the year where there’s half a chance in hell of getting into, y’know, Hell.”
I groaned. “Mom’s spelunking the Underworld with Grandma, isn’t she?”
“Mom’s spelunking the Underworld with Grandma,” Antimony confirmed.
“Crap.”
The dimensions align between six and fifteen times a year, depending on the position of the stars, whether or not the groundhog saw his shadow, and lots of other mystical crap I’ve never bothered trying to understand. When that happens, there’s an even chance my grandmother will show up demanding ammunition, additional grenades, and a shower. Thanks to the time dilation that happens in most of the layers of the Underworld, she looks like she’s about my age, which gets a little weirder every year, and means she’ll probably still be making these little visits when the house belongs to my grandchildren.
My mother’s unique skills can come in handy in the various layers of the Underworld, and they’re most required when attempting to navigate the Netherworld, a confusingly named subdevelopment that Grandma Alice is convinced borders on the Christian version of Hell. She’s been trying to find her way into that dimension for the past twenty years. There is no cellular network that extends beyond the first three levels of the Underworld. Mom would be out of touch until she got back.
At least Grandma’s field trips were usually entertaining. But it always took weeks to get the smell of sulfur out of my hair.
“Well, if Mom’s in the Underworld, can I talk to Dad?”
Antimony paused. “Verity? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. Is Dad there?”
“Do you need me to come out there? I can be on the next plane.”
The image of Antimony in Manhattan was enough to bring me stuttering to a horrified stop. She considers pit traps and high explosives the appropriate solution to almost every problem. There was no scenario I could envision where putting her in contact with the Covenant would improve the situation. Elevate it to explosive new heights, possibly, but improve, no.
“I’m good for right now, but I really need to talk to Dad.”
“But—”
“Dad.”
“Oh, fine,” said Antimony, pouring every ounce of scorn she could muster into the word. Putting a hand over the receiver, she shouted, “Dad! It’s your other daughter!”
There was a clunk as my father picked up the extension. “Thank you, Annie. You can hang up now.”
“But I want to know why she’s calling.”
“I’ll brief you later. Hang up now.” He went silent. An old trick: he was waiting for the sound of Antimony hanging up her end of the line. After a few seconds, a click signaled her doing exactly that, and he said, sounding only a little concerned, “Now what’s this about, Very?”
“What makes you think I’m not calling to bask in the loving warmth of my family?” Silence greeted the question. I laughed, more from exhaustion than anything else, and said, “Okay, you win. Dad, do we know anything about a ‘De Luca’ family?”
“Covenant, Spanish branch, joined up about three hundred years after the Healys,” he said, without hesitation. One advantage to having a history nut for a father: if it’s ever encroached on the supernatural world, he probably knows its pedigree. “The last recorded encounter with a member of the family was your great-grandmother, Fran, when she met Jacinta De Luca during a routine sweep of the naga breeding grounds outside Albuquerque. Jacinta was in the process of destroying several nests when—”
“Dad?”
“—she was located, and requests that she—”
“Dad!”
“—stop were met with—what?”
One disadvantage to having a history nut for a father: sometimes it’s hard to keep him focused on what’s actually going on. “That’s not the last recorded encounter.”
“What do you mean?” I could practically hear him frowning. “It’s in her diary, and since there’s no mention in any of the volumes since then—”
“The last recorded encounter happened about a half an hour ago, on a rooftop in Manhattan, between Verity Price and Dominic De Luca.”
Silence.
“He was setting rooftop snares on my route. He may still be setting snares, although if he’s smart, he’s gone home to lick his wounds and write ‘here be dragons’ on his subway map. He killed an ahool! In my city! It wasn’t doing anything wrong! I mean, eventually, sure, but it hadn’t been given the chance!”
More silence.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“Well, thank God for that. Did he ID you?”
“Afraid so,” I said, leaning farther back on the couch. “I lost my temper. It’s hard to remember to play the innocent bystander when you’re hanging by one ankle a couple hundred feet above street level.”
“Did he tell you what he was doing there?”
“The Covenant’s decided Manhattan’s ripe for a purge. I think he’s the only one in town, at least so far, but there’s no guarantee things are going to stay that way. Before you say it, no, I’m not willing to be pulled out of here. I’m still in the middle of my survey, Sarah just got settled at her new hotel, and I promised Dave I’d give at least two weeks’ notice before I left.” I also had an Argentine tango competition in three weeks that could qualify me for Nationals, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I’m not intending to pull you out of there.”
I hesitated. “You’re not?”
“You’re already involved. I’m not going to pull you out just because a member of the Covenant is in town. I will, however, warn everyone that we may be needed for backup, and I’ll email you anything I can find in the records about the De Luca family, their methodology, and any previous Manhattan purges.”
“You’re the best Daddy ever.”
He chuckled. “Let’s see if you’re saying that when you’re getting swarmed by Covenant assassins a
nd wanna-be conquistadors.”
“That’s when I’ll start saying you’re gunning for Father of the Year. Give Mom my love when she gets back from the Underworld.”
“She’d hurt me if I didn’t.”
We exchanged the standard pleasantries and I rang off, feeling considerably better. Sure, I was the one standing at what might be about to turn into ground zero, but if the Covenant took me out, the family would descend on New York in a heavily-armed, extremely irritated wave. None of that would make me any less dead, but it would make me feel better. Besides, if I died, I could be the first person in thirty years to figure out whether Grandpa Thomas is alive or not.
After testing to be sure my ankle was willing to bear my weight, I stood and made my way to the bedroom. Things would look better after a few hours of sleep. Things usually do.
I was on the verge of drifting off when I remembered my earlier determination to eat something healthy. Getting up would have been too much trouble. I rolled over, pulled the blankets over my head, and slipped into the comforting simplicity of sleep.
* * *
I opened my eyes to the sound of my alarm blaring a cheerful imitation of a fire siren. I rolled over to smack the snooze button, triggering an ecstatic cry of “Hail the renewed consciousness of the Arboreal Priestess!” from the Aeslin mice surrounding my bed. None of them were on the bed, a fact that I attributed less to politeness than to their admittedly stunted sense of self-preservation. Not even the Aeslin are dumb enough to get too close to someone who sleeps with as many guns as I do.
“The Arboreal Priestess isn’t awake enough for you to hail things,” I informed the congregation. They answered with muted cheers. Sitting up, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and glared at the time displayed on the clock. Nine-thirty in the morning. These double shifts were going to kill me if they went on for much longer.
“Oh, shit,” I said, remembering. “I trashed my uniform socks.” That meant buying a new pair. Dave recommended we all keep backups, but since the socks seemed to get shredded as quickly as I bought them, buying extra just doubled my bill.
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