So I forced myself to smile, and I said, “I’ll do whatever I can to make the dragons of New York understand how good you’d be for their son, and why they should listen to your request. William’s a friend of mine. I’m sure he’ll pay attention when I speak.”
Chantelle clapped a hand over her mouth. “Thank you,” she squeaked, voice muffled by her fingers.
“Verity’s nice that way,” said Brenna. She put her hand on my shoulder, steering me toward the office door. “We’ll be back in a bit, all right? Keep watch on the register.”
“Yay, guard duty,” said Chantelle, dropping her hand—but she was smiling, and her eyes were bright with tears.
Alice waited until we were through the door to the manager’s office before she asked, “What was that all about?”
“We’ve asked Verity to help us purchase a husband from the dragons of New York,” said Brenna blithely, as she pulled a set of keys out of her pocket and walked to the door on the other side of the room. “They should be having sons about now, and we have only daughters, naturally enough. We’d like to get some new blood in.”
Alice said nothing.
Brenna must have interpreted her silence as a criticism, because she turned back and said, with great good cheer, “I know it’s not the human way, but it’s the way we have, and we need a husband for our little girls.”
“I wasn’t judging,” said Alice. “I was just thinking about the logistics, that’s all.”
“Baby dragons are small,” said Brenna. “They have to be. Females have human-esque hips, and we’re the ones who lay the eggs.” She unlocked the door and pushed it open, revealing a tunnel on the other side. “Come on, then. Osana will have seen the light go off on the security board, and she hates it when people dawdle in the tunnel.” With that, she started into the dark, leaving the rest of us with little choice but to follow her.
The tunnel ran the length of a football field, passing under the motel before beginning to slant up again. The walls were shored up with concrete and wood pilings, and looked similar in construction to the sub-layers of the Crier Theater. “How long has this been here?” I asked.
“The original tunnel was built in 1922, when we acquired the property that would become our main Nest,” said Brenna. “We hired local contractors for the bulk of the work. The expense stung, of course, but better to pay for something that would last than to be patching and renovating every ten years, right?”
“Local contractors,” I said. “Not human ones, right?”
Brenna looked appalled. “And have humans know where we lived? No offense, Verity, you and your family . . . you’re a special case. But most of the species is dangerous, callow, and not to be trusted.”
“Preaching to the choir,” said Malena. “There’s a reason most humans didn’t even think chupacabras were an urban myth until fifty years ago. We’ve always been there. We just didn’t feel like getting skinned and sold to tourists in six-inch squares.”
Alice didn’t say anything. But I could see her profile, and the downturned corners of her mouth made it clear that she was far from happy. Whether she was upset by the defamation of humans or thinking about all the humans she hadn’t killed in the last fifty years was harder to say. My grandmother wasn’t much on species loyalty. None of the members of my family are, when you get right down to it. It’s just sometimes difficult to know where her loyalties actually lay. She isn’t a danger to people she’s related to. Everyone else is a different story.
I had another question, and this one felt considerably more pressing. “If the same people built the tunnels here and the ones under the Crier Theater, why were you able to hold on to your property while they lost theirs? Why didn’t you help them?” I was wagering she would know what I was talking about.
I was right. Brenna shot me a startled look. “We kept our property because we invested in the local area, and made sure the place was run-down and unappealing to human residents. We own half the buildings in a three-block radius. We do have humans living here—we couldn’t manage absolute control—but with us fighting gentrification and them happy to have rents they can afford and a relatively low crime rate for an area in this apparent state of disrepair, they mostly keep to themselves. They even afford a reasonable smokescreen if someone from the Covenant comes sniffing around.”
Dragons frequently became black holes for an area’s wealth. I had never heard of them investing in infrastructure before, but it made a certain amount of sense: they could always recoup their money by selling some of their property, since anything in the Valley would go for way more today than they had paid for it fifty years ago.
“As to why we didn’t help them . . . they didn’t ask,” Brenna continued. We’d reached a sturdy door, set into a metal frame. She produced a set of keys from her purse and began undoing the locks. “Honestly, we didn’t even know anyone was looking to buy the land the theater’s on now until it was already done. We have little contact with the wholly subterranean communities. They’re mammals. Mammals are messy and unpleasant to deal with on a day-to-day basis. Present company excepted, of course.”
“No one’s sure whether I’m a mammal or not,” said Malena, far too cheerfully.
(She was right, though. Chupacabra looked human in their bipedal form. They had hair, presumably they had bones in their inner ears, and females had what looked like mammary glands, although that could have been a case of Batesian mimicry. No one had ever worked up the nerve to ask a female chupacabra whether she lactated. On the other hand, they transformed into terrifying lizard-wolves from the dawn of time, and were known to be egg layers. Maybe they were mammals. Maybe they were reptiles. Or maybe they were something old and ostensibly extinct—the most common theory held that they were therapsids, and should have died out millennia ago. But that was an argument for another time.)
Brenna blinked at Malena, looking momentarily nonplussed. Then she shrugged, turned back to the door, and pulled it open to reveal the cavernous depths of the dragon’s Nest.
Dragon Nests are like human homes: every one is unique, even if they began from the same original floor plan. At the same time, just as all human homes will include features like “kitchens,” “bathrooms,” and “beds,” all Nests contain certain points of similarity. Chief among them is the gold.
The dragons of Los Angeles had made their home in an artificial cave created by gutting the interior of what looked like a hospital building. I glanced to Brenna for confirmation.
“The Shady Oaks Mental Institution,” she said. “Constructed in 1885, abandoned in 1912, following a severe outbreak of tuberculosis among the staff and patients. We were able to buy the property for a song.”
“And, of course, you’re immune to tuberculosis, so there was no need to be concerned,” I said. “Clever.”
Brenna smiled. “We try to be.”
The building may have started as a place of human suffering, but it had been reforged since then, becoming something wonderful and new. The windows had been boarded over; I could see the ghosts of those structures beneath the layers of gold leaf that covered them. Heaps of gold covered the floor, coins and chains and random bits of cutlery, like the world’s most expensive thrift shop had been emptied out for everyone to walk on. Brenna reached down and removed her heels before stepping, barefoot, into the nearest pile of golden rings and wiggling her toes in evident delight.
Malena was staring around herself, eyes wide. “This is all real?” she asked.
“And quite pure,” said Brenna. “We have a few Cash for Gold franchises scattered around the city. We melt the cheaper pieces, clean out the impurities, and make them into coins before we bring them here. It keeps the atmosphere nicely balanced.”
Alice was narrow-eyed as she looked around. I paused, realizing what had to be wrong.
“Betty isn’t here, Grandma,” I said quietly. “She was in New York. S
he’s dead.”
Alice cast me a startled look, eyes going back to normal. Then she nodded, and said nothing.
Betty was a dragon—a dragon princess, according to what we’d known when we’d first encountered her—and she’d hated my family for reasons I still didn’t understand, but which had originated when Grandma and Grandpa Thomas had been active. There was clearly some history there. If I was going to keep working with the dragons, I was going to need to find out what it was. And this was not the time.
“Actually, it looks like nobody’s here,” said Malena. She looked to Brenna, shoulders suddenly tight with tension. “Is this a trap?”
“No, it’s a safety precaution,” said Brenna. She cupped her hands around her mouth and called, “All’s clear! It’s me, with Verity and her friends. We need to talk to Osana.”
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the ghost of Brenna’s voice echoing in the high, gold-coated rafters. Then doors began slamming open, and piles of gold leaf and gold chain began to explode with little golden-haired girls who climbed out and swarmed toward us in a sea of prepubescent pseudo-mammalian excitement.
“Verity?”
“The Verity?”
“We watch the show every week! I voted for you!”
“I voted for you twice!”
“Don’t listen to her, she forgot and slept through the whole thing!”
Brenna put her hands up, laughing despite herself, and said, “Girls, girls! There will be no swarming of our guests! We want them to see how respectable and dignified we are!”
Her words had an electric effect on the younger dragons. They skidded to an immediate halt before shuffling themselves around into a configuration that would have looked perfectly natural at a finishing school for young ladies. Their clothing broke the illusion: they were dressed in patched hand-me-downs and thrift store finds, as well as a wide assortment of clearly homemade sundresses, some of which had started life as sheets, curtains, and pillowcases.
“We’re sorry, Auntie Brenna,” chorused the girls.
“I know you are,” she said. “Now go on. I need to take Verity to see Osana, and I don’t want any of you making our guests feel like they’re being spied on.”
The girls nodded and scattered, running past the adult dragons who were closing, more sedately, on our location. It was hard to determine exact numbers, but going by the number who were awake and in the Nest, I was placing this group as slightly larger than the Manhattan group. They clearly had the space, the resources, and the cover story necessary to keep expanding for a while yet before they’d need to talk about creating a new Nest. That was good. Male dragons were essentially solitary creatures, due to their size, functional immobility, and the resources needed to keep them healthy, but female dragons did better when they lived in higher numbers. They were social creatures, even if they were fairly antisocial toward most non-dragons.
The first of the adults reached us and stopped at a polite distance, although the way they looked us up and down was anything but polite. Alice looked calmly back. Malena squirmed. I smiled my brightest stage smile, and waved.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Verity Price. It’s a pleasure to meet you all.”
“So, the famous Verity finally came to see what she’d be bringing our new husband into.” The other dragons parted, allowing the speaker to walk toward me. I blinked.
Brenna was unusually tall for a dragon; this woman, on the other hand, was unusually short, even shorter than me. Her hair wasn’t blonde, which was normal for the European exemplars of the species; it was red-gold, almost matching the freckles on her nose and cheeks.
She smiled. “Laidly worm,” she said.
I blinked again. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said, laidly worm,” she said.
“I thought you were extinct,” said Alice.
The woman—Osana—turned to my grandmother and said, “No offense, but that’s what we wanted you to think. Those of us who survived have been living with the dragons for centuries. We make good administrators, and the dragons have been happy to accept us as full members of their Nests. That’ll change if we can find a husband of our own, of course. Our species are similar, but not that similar. I don’t suppose you’ve heard tell of any great worms sleeping in the earth, have you?”
“Not yet, but I’m starting to feel like I’ll have a lot of spelunking in my future,” I said. “Osana, I presume?”
“The very same,” she said. “My family’s been here since the Nest was founded. Since my mother was the former Nest-mother, I took over when she passed on. It usually goes to the eldest, but Catherine is a little slow these days. It was better to let her have her space.”
I tilted my head. “I hadn’t heard about dragons having senility issues.”
“We’ve been cloning ourselves for hundreds of years, with no new genetic material,” said Osana. “I did go to college. I read a lot on parthenogenesis. It seemed relevant to my life. If you’re a member of a species that has both sexual and asexual reproduction—”
“You need both to remain healthy,” I said. “Got it.”
Osana nodded. “Now you see why we were willing to empower Brenna to approach you, and why we haven’t set an upper limit on what’s to be paid. Finding a husband for the girls here won’t save me or my sisters, or our daughters, but it will save our family. That makes it worth whatever it costs. We’re even willing to send them one of our own to act as a financial adviser, if that would sweeten the pot. We’re even better with money than most of our kind.”
The more I learned about the damage the Covenant had done in their blind rush to protect humanity above all else, the more convinced I became that the real monsters had won. But that was a conversation for another time. “We’re here because Brenna wanted us to tell you what’s been going on at the theater.”
“Oh?” Osana’s attention shifted from me to Brenna, going hard and cold at the same time. It was suddenly easy to see how this tiny woman had been able to convince a whole Nest to let her be in charge. She had a way about her that was pure Nest-mother, ruthless where the protection of her people was concerned. “What’s been going on, Brenna?” What haven’t you been telling us? floated behind the question, as clear as if it had been spoken aloud.
“I just found out tonight,” said Brenna, shooting a pleading glance at me and Malena. We were the ones she knew: Alice was the terrifying new factor.
Having mercy on Brenna wasn’t hard. She’d been my friend for a long time, and she’d always been kind to the dancers, even when they had nothing to offer her but their good regard. “There’s a snake cult operating out of the theater,” I said. “They’ve been killing the eliminated dancers every week, using them to fuel a summoning ritual. They’ve killed at least eight people so far.”
“At least?” asked Malena, giving me a sharp look.
“At least,” I repeated. “They only have the dancers in their summoning configuration, but there’s no way of knowing whether they’ve also killed audience members or local residents and not added those bodies to the circle. It’s unlikely. It’s not impossible.” Had I noticed any absences among the crew? No, but until recently, I hadn’t exactly been looking.
“How is it that this has been going on under your nose without your noticing, Brenna?” asked Osana.
“They have confusion charms all over the theater,” said Alice. “Strong ones, too. I have anti-telepathy sigils and anti-compulsion runes in my current suite of tattoos, and I was still led astray by the charms. I’m going to need to talk to my artist about that.”
“We didn’t realize our friends were leaving and then disappearing, because the snake cult was making us forget they’d ever existed unless we were actually confronted with the evidence,” I said. “We’re still trying to find them. There are a lot of tunnels under the theater, and these people seem to know how
to use all of them.”
“Charming,” said Osana. She looked from Brenna to me, raising an eyebrow. “Is this where you tell me that there are strings attached to your offer to negotiate us a husband?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, I’d like your help. It’s not connected to your request. Brenna mentioned using dragons to bulk out the audience, which would also give us a lot more eyes on the ground. We know the snake cult won’t be killing anyone before next week’s show—at least not if they stick to their current pattern—but that just means we have a deadline, and we’re going to need to keep eyes on all nine of the remaining dancers in danger.”
“Nine?” said Osana.
“I’m a chupacabra,” said Malena.
“I can keep an eye on myself, and one of the other dancers is an Ukupani,” I said. “That leaves us with nine humans who don’t know what a snake cult is and don’t know they’re in danger. We need to keep them safe, we need to find the people who are killing them, and we need to put an end to this.”
“But you’re not going to make negotiating on our behalf conditional?” asked Osana.
I shook my head. “No, I’m not. I mean, technically my negotiating on your behalf is already conditional: if this snake cult kills me, I’m not going to be able to help you. But I’m not going to stand here and say that you have to risk yourselves before I’ll help you. We’re talking about the survival of a species here, not loaning me a pair of earrings.”
“Humans.” Osana chuckled wryly. “Sometimes I think I could have a wend’s lifespan and not have the time to understand you. The show’s Thursday night, correct?”
“Yes,” said Brenna.
“We’ll be there. I’ll flood the audience if that’s what I have to do. Brenna, you’ll be helping me get the tickets. We’ll pay for as many as we need to in order to avoid raising suspicion.” Osana turned back to me, looking me square in the eye. “You didn’t try to blackmail me, and I respect that. It doesn’t mean I won’t happily blackmail you. We need that male. I want you to remember, when the time comes, that we were willing to step up.”