Lyra’s eyes began to fill with tears, glittering like diamonds in the stage lights.
“Valerie and Lo, you are safe for another week and may leave the stage.”
Adrian’s voice sounded tinny and distant, filtered through the ringing in my ears. On automatic, I moved to hug Lyra. She wrapped her arms around me and clung as tightly as a limpet. She wasn’t crying yet, but it was coming; those tears were going to fall.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
Lyra didn’t say anything. She just nodded, and let me go.
Lo was there, waiting to grab my hand and pull me from the stage before we could get in trouble for lingering too long and screwing up the schedule. Together, we walked down the stairs to the space in front of the judges’ podium, joining the rest of the safe dancers. Lo pulled her hand out of mine and threw her arms around her partner, Will, who gathered her close.
My partner wasn’t there to gather me close, even if he’d been willing to consider it—or I’d been willing to let him. Anders was still on stage, waiting to hear his fate proclaimed by the implacable force of the judging panel. I turned to watch, lacing my fingers together and tucking my joined hands up under my chin, where I could take some small comfort from the pressure.
“Well, Adrian?” said Brenna. “We still have three dancers in danger here. Can you let us know who else will be leaving?”
“Anders, step forward,” said Adrian, and my heart soared. If I’d danced well enough to save myself, maybe I’d danced well enough to save us both. I’d follow Lyra, catch whoever had been killing dancers, and then bow out of the competition, leaving an open field for my friends to exploit. Maybe they’d even let her come back.
“Anders, you danced beautifully tonight, but I’m afraid it wasn’t enough to justify your remaining in this competition, and you will be leaving us.”
“Troy and Ivan, you are safe, and can leave the stage,” said Brenna. “Anders—”
“Shut up!” Anders whirled on her, suddenly scowling, brows drawing toward his nose and mouth twisting into a sneer. Brenna took a half-step backward, looking as stunned as I felt. “You stupid bitch, shut up! You always liked Valerie! You probably told the judges to save her! But what, you couldn’t be bothered to save me at the same time?”
“Anders, calm down,” said Adrian. “We know you’re upset, but that’s no call for that sort of language.”
“Yeah, because we’re live on the air,” murmured Malena. She had appeared at my elbow, working her way through the crowd of stunned and staring dancers. Her eyes were fixed, like everyone else’s, on the stage. “Swearing gets us big FCC fines, and too much could get us put on a tape delay. Not good. Not the sort of thing that makes the sponsors happy. Did you hit him in the head backstage or something? Boy’s having some sort of meltdown.”
“Chernobyl is a go,” I whispered, turning back to the stage.
Anders switched the target of his rage from Brenna to Adrian, glaring daggers at the head judge. “I’m a better dancer than either of those assholes you just saved and you know it. You’re trying to cover your asses because you don’t want a tapper to win—you don’t want me to win. Good thing it doesn’t matter, huh? This show is nothing. You people are nothing.”
“Anders—” began Adrian.
“Shut up, Dad!” shouted Anders.
Silence descended over the theater, broken a split second later by Lindy’s hushed exclamation of, “Holy shit.”
Anders wasn’t finished. “You know, I let you convince me to pretend we weren’t related, because it ‘wouldn’t be fair’ if people knew I was your kid. No one would believe I was as good as I am, even though they’d see me dancing with their own eyes. You didn’t stick around to raise me, but you stuck your dick in my mom once, so I guess that means there’s no way I could have gotten here on my own merits. Right? I let you ignore me and talk down to me and treat me like garbage, and for what? So you can eliminate me when we’re right on the edge of getting everything we ever wanted? I was going to save your show once I had unspeakable power, you asshole. Your ratings have been sliding for the last two years. I was going to make you. But now you’re going to die with the rest.”
“Adrian, is this true?” demanded Brenna. “Is he really your son?”
“Way to focus on the scandal and not the implication of mass murder,” I said. I didn’t have a gun. My dress was too skimpy to conceal one, and the tango had required me to kick my legs around too much for me to have strapped anything big enough to matter to my legs. I reached behind myself and drew one of the throwing knives from under my bra.
Malena looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and amazement. “Do you go anywhere unarmed?”
“The bathroom sometimes, if I know I’m on a secure property,” I said. The knife was small enough to conceal in the palm of my hand. I held it there, tense and waiting for the moment when I’d need to let it go.
“Fuck you,” snarled Anders. He grabbed Lyra, who’d been standing in stunned silence throughout his outburst. She squeaked as he jerked her against his chest. “Fuck you all.”
“That is quite enough,” snapped Adrian. “You will stop that, right now. You will be silent, and you will get off of my stage. I am ashamed to call you my son. I refuse to call you my son. You’re never going to work in this town again.”
“Wow, Dad, way to embrace the cliché.” Anders slid a hand between Lyra and his chest. The gesture was surprisingly familiar. I knew it. Why did I know it? Why—
He pulled his hand back into the open. He was holding a knife, a wickedly curved thing that looked like it had been designed for use in a butcher’s shop.
Oh. That was why.
“Didn’t have to go this way,” said Anders, and jerked the knife across Lyra’s throat in a hard arc, severing her jugular and carotid veins in one continuous motion. Blood sprayed everywhere, splattering the stage. Lyra jerked like she’d been shocked, her hands going to the wound. There was nothing she could have done: the blood was coming too fast, and she couldn’t possibly stop it. She didn’t even have the chance to scream.
I screamed for her. I was already moving, my heels finding little purchase on the blood-slick stairs to the stage as I thundered toward Anders. My knife flew straight and true, catching him in the wrist. He swore and dropped his own knife. It landed in a pool of Lyra’s blood.
Lyra fell a heartbeat later.
She hit the stage like a sack of wet cement, limbs splayed and open eyes staring at the ceiling. Anders jerked my knife out of his wrist and dropped to his knees next to her, rolling her onto her stomach before dragging his hands through her blood. He started painting symbols on her back, smearing the careful makeup provided by our costumers. Lyra would hate that. She hated looking anything less than perfect.
“He’s our cultist!” shouted a voice, and I turned to see Alice running from the wings, onto the stage.
But there are cameras here, I thought dazedly. She’d be caught on film. If this was going out live, the Covenant would see her—and while they might believe she was dead and buried, there was no way they didn’t have her picture in their files. She was virtually Covenant Public Enemy Number One, thanks to what she’d done to my grandfather. The Covenant didn’t look kindly on traitors. They looked even less kindly on those who led their people astray. And none of that mattered, because we had lives to save.
Alice was running. I was running. She had a gun in her hand, a complicated, old-fashioned pistol. I was still trying to draw a second knife from under the tight nylon strap of my dress.
Then the center of the stage exploded, and we had bigger things to worry about than a few cameras.
The snake that came bursting into the light was something like a king cobra, something like a python, and something like a SyFy Channel Saturday night special. Its head was the size of an SUV and its body was sized to match,
flowing out of the hole it had created in a seemingly endless river of scales and heavy musculature. The stage lights glinted off its side, making its reality all-too-concrete. This was real. This was happening.
Alice and I had both pulled to a stop as soon as the wood began to splinter, recognizing that we were charging straight into something a little too big for us to handle without a plan. Its body was between us now, blocking easy access. That wasn’t good.
“Aw, shit,” I said. “He finished the ritual.” Lyra’s death had been the tipping point.
The first screams from the audience sounded almost hesitant, like the screamers were afraid this was a hoax and didn’t want to be the only ones who fell for it. The snake kept coming, until its terrible head brushed the ceiling. Then it turned, tongue flickering, and looked at the people behind it.
“Holy shit,” said Adrian.
The snake opened its mouth and hissed. It was a sound from the dawn of time, one that hit my simian hindbrain like a jolt of electricity, reminding me that I was something snakes might enjoy eating, if they were large enough. This snake could swallow a Guernsey cow if it wanted to. Eating me would be no big deal.
Lindy’s scream was high and shrill, and would have been ear-piercing even without the microphone to amplify it. As it was, I could feel it all the way down to my bones. I wasn’t the only one. The snake’s head whipped around, homing in on the source of the irritation. Then it struck.
I caught a glimpse of its teeth as it shot past me, enough to know that they were long and sharp and far too plentiful. It moved like a freight train, mouth closing around Lindy and cutting her off in mid-shriek. The rest of the audience picked up the slack, screaming and rising from their seats as they stampeded for the doors. Most of the audience, anyway. The blonde women who’d been scattered through their ranks remained where they were, going so still that it felt like a joke to think anyone could mistake them for mammals. Nothing hot and fast could ever be that still.
“Thought snakes didn’t have ears,” said Malena. She was at my elbow again. I glanced at her long enough to see that she was in her human form before focusing my attention back on the snake.
“They don’t,” I said tightly. Anders was laughing and capering around Lyra’s body, the hole in his wrist apparently forgotten. He was one of our snake cultists, absolutely. But he hadn’t acted alone. I knew he hadn’t acted alone. “The vibrations from the noise must have been enough to catch its attention, and that was all it took.”
Poor Lindy. She hadn’t been my biggest fan, but she’d deserved better.
“How the fuck do we kill it?”
Hearing her say “we” was like a shock to my system. Here I was, just standing there, staring at the giant snake as if it was someone else’s problem. Well, it wasn’t. It was my problem, because I was in the building, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my family history, it’s that sometimes responsibility and proximity are the same damn thing.
“Get to my grandmother,” I snapped. “I need a gun.”
“On it.” Malena took off at a run, seeming to turn inside out as soon as she reached full speed. She hit the stage on all fours, slick black-and-orange hide gleaming like oil in the light. Some more people screamed. It was hard to know whether that was due to her, or due to the giant monster snake. Sometimes “why” doesn’t matter as much as we might want it to.
The snake was back in a holding pattern, swaying as it reared back to its original height. I needed more help. The edge of the stage was only about ten yards behind me. Careful to move slowly enough that I wouldn’t attract unwanted attention, I took a half-step backward and turned.
Pax met my eyes without hesitation, like he’d been waiting for my cue. I nodded. He stepped onto the stage.
Jessica grabbed his arm.
“I don’t think so, shark-boy,” she said. There was a gun in her free hand. Where did Jessica get a gun? More importantly, why was she holding it on Pax? He stopped, staring at her.
I started to take a step. Jessica turned her head, smiling sweetly.
“Move, and I’ll blow his head off,” she said. “He’s not human—did you know that? He’s some sort of monster. But even monsters need skulls. They get squishy and sad without them.”
“You’re one of the snake cultists,” I said. It made so much sense that I was almost ashamed of myself for not seeing it sooner—and actually ashamed of the snake cult for recruiting someone so obvious.
Then a gun cocked behind me, and I turned again to find Clint holding a pistol only a few feet away. The snake was still swaying behind him, although it seemed to have lost interest in wreaking havoc on the theater. Anders was down on his hands and knees, using Lyra’s blood to paint more runes on the stage.
“Oh,” I said. “You, too.”
“We don’t like the term ‘snake cult,’” said Clint. “It’s pejorative and retrograde. We prefer ‘dimensional capitalists.’ We’re going to be kings when this thing settles down and realizes who’s in charge.”
“No one’s in charge of a snake god,” I said. “That’s where you people always screw up.” There were a few drops of blood on the collar of his shirt. It was Lindy’s, it had to be. She’d had time to bleed before the giant snake swallowed her. “God, Clint, why? I liked you.”
“Why did you have to be a nosy parker who stuck her nose where it didn’t belong? I liked you, too, Val. You’re a good dancer. You’ve got a great ass. But you can’t just go hiring inter-dimensional bounty hunters because you want to get an edge in the competition.”
I blinked. Clint smirked.
Everything suddenly made a hell of a lot of sense.
Alice had a reputation in certain circles: she was, after all, an apparently ageless, extremely violent woman who traveled from dimension to dimension with a large supply of knives, grenades, and chocolate chip cookies. Clint had only ever seen me as Valerie. He’d have no reason to think Alice had a granddaughter, much less suspect the granddaughter was me. If Alice was here, and keeping company with me—something Jessica and Anders would both have reported to him by now—I must have hired her. If I was hiring muscle with dimension-traveling capabilities, I must be trying to cheat.
The fact that a snake cultist was passing judgment on my ethics would have been funny, if not for the part where he was holding a gun to my head. “You know, if you have a problem with my hiring decisions, you should also have a problem with murder and summoning giant snakes through the stage floor.”
“It’s the cost of doing business, sweetie,” said Clint. He adjusted his aim, keeping the muzzle trained on my heart.
Costuming is going to be pissed, I thought nonsensically. Aloud, I said, “Now would be nice.”
Clint blinked. “I thought you’d beg for your life, not for a bullet.”
I smiled. “Who said I was talking to you?”
There was a scream from behind me, high, shrill, and feminine. Clint’s eyes darted in that direction. It was a natural response: anyone human would have had trouble not looking in the direction of that scream, which was filled with pain and terror.
Well. Anyone human who didn’t know that it was caused by an Ukupani biting off the hand that threatened him. Knowing Pax wasn’t human and seeing him suddenly twist and distort into an eight-foot-tall bipedal shark-beast was probably pretty damn surprising.
Judging by the look on Clint’s face half a heartbeat later, it wasn’t as surprising as my kicking the gun out of his hand. It flew across the stage, landing out of reach of either one of us.
“I’m a tango dancer, you asshole,” I snarled, and kicked him in the face. I was wearing four-inch heels. Blood spurted from his nose in a hot red gush that reminded me too clearly of the flood from Lyra’s slit throat, so I kicked him again, harder. We generally make it a rule not to kill humans, but if a few bone slivers found their way into this dick’s brain, I was
n’t going to lose any sleep over it.
Jessica was still screaming. I started to turn, to order Pax to shut her up—through whatever means necessary, which sure, could mean decapitation, but I was out of fucks to give—when I saw the snake moving out of the corner of my eye, drawing back to strike.
There was only a second for me to make my decision, and I chose the path most likely to end with my survival. “Pax! Move!” I shouted, diving to the side. The snake slammed down on the stage a second later, striking unerringly for the sound of screaming and the smell of blood.
Jessica stopped screaming. That was a mercy. My shout had given Clint time to move out of the way; when the snake pulled back again, he was still standing, glaring at me with blood on his face and shirtfront and hatred in his eyes.
“Catch!” Malena’s voice came from above. I stuck my hand out, and the gun dropped into it. The weight was a great comfort. The feeling of the safety clicking off was an even greater comfort.
“Thanks!” I called. “Any eyes on Dominic?”
“Other side of the stage,” said Malena.
The snake was rising back into position, head moving back and forth with increasing speed as it took in the situation. It was recovering from whatever disorientation accompanied its passage through the wall between worlds; soon, it would be back to whatever served as normal for a massive fucking snake, and then we were going to have to deal with it.
I was fast. The striking snake was faster. Once I started moving, I was going to have to keep on going. “Pax, I need you,” I called.
The Ukupani’s footsteps sounded like flippers slapping against the wood. I turned to the massive shark/human hybrid as soon as he was close enough, and said, “I need you to throw me at the snake.”
Pax no longer had eyebrows, or the sort of face that transmitted human emotions well, but he didn’t need them for his dismay to show. I found myself grateful that he couldn’t talk, either. If I had to explain myself to him, he might try to stop me, and I didn’t see another way through this—not without risking a hell of a lot of people who hadn’t had any idea this was going on. It had only been a few minutes since the snake broke through the stage, and two people were dead. Sure, Jessica may have deserved it, but not Lindy. I had to move. I had to act. And as soon as I did, I trusted my family to have my back.