“Verity! On the left!”
I spun without hesitating, shooting the cultist who’d been charging me squarely in the chest. Two bullets left. His eyes widened in surprise, and he fell, momentum carrying him past me to land in a crumpled heap on the floor. It wasn’t until after he’d stopped moving that I realized who’d warned me—Sarah—and that the warning had been verbal, not telepathic. Eyes wide, I turned.
Dominic De Luca was standing at the entrance to the room, flinging knives at cultists with clinical precision. Those he wasn’t impaling had problems of their own, in the form of Ryan, who’d abandoned his human shape for something a hell of a lot more intimidating: a seven-foot-tall raccoon-man with talons longer than most kitchen knives, really sharp teeth, and the ability to block attacks by turning parts of his body into stone. Those were some cultists who were having a seriously lousy day.
Sarah was standing behind Dominic, her eyes so white that at this distance they seemed to glow. One of the servitors charged at the pair while Dominic was throwing a knife in the opposite direction, and she raised her hand, palm-out. The servitor promptly froze.
“What the—”
He can’t remember how his muscles work. I can’t hold him for long. Now go help Candy!
“On it,” I said, and took off running, slowing only to shoot a servitor before he could smash a lead pipe into the side of Ryan’s head. Candy was still shouting, her commands starting to take on a pleading, terrified note. I kept running toward her, elbowing a cultist in the throat and vaulting over two bodies before plunging into the knot of servitors surrounding her. Several of them were on the ground, bleeding from a variety of inexpertly placed bullet wounds. Three had moved to stand between Candy and the others, hissing and clicking furiously. Those had to be the ones she’d talked around to her side. Four others were trying to claw past them to get to her.
“I am so fucking tired of fighting with Sleestaks,” I grumbled. I only had one bullet left. I aimed at the nearest servitor, fired, threw the gun aside, and charged.
We were making a lot of noise. Between the screaming, the shooting, the rending, and the tearing, we were getting close to loud enough to wake the dead. Since that isn’t actually possible without some very complicated ritual magic, we managed to achieve the next best thing. One of the servitors went down with a final, ear-splitting shriek after I stabbed it in the neck, and then the Voice of God—or at least the Voice of James Earl Jones as God—came rumbling out of the darkness, so deep it seemed to shake the ground beneath our feet:
“What is going on here?”
The servitor that had been attacking me hissed and cringed back, posture turning subservient. Candy stopped shouting, the gun slipping from her hand to clatter to the ground as she stared with wide eyes into the space behind me. I turned.
The dragon looked at me.
“Oh,” I said faintly. “Hey, Candy, guess what? I found the dragon, and he speaks English.”
Candy whimpered.
Twenty-five
“The greatest joy is the joy of discovery. Followed closely by the joy of a discovery that doesn’t kill you.”
–Enid Healy
Somewhere below the streets of Manhattan, hoping dragons don’t usually wake up cranky
THE DRAGON’S EYES WERE a luminous pumpkin orange, like giant jack-o-lanterns burning in the face of the largest lizard the world has ever seen. He was still mostly prone, but his head was raised like the head of a snake getting ready to strike. The few remaining cultists cheered, apparently thinking he’d finally woken up at their command, and would now be happy to do their bidding. I wasn’t completely sure they were wrong.
“You!” One of the cultists ran forward, pointing imperiously toward me and Candy as she addressed the dragon. “Destroy these infidels!”
The dragon looked down at the cultist before turning those jack-o-lantern eyes back on the two of us. Sarah and Dominic were still near the door, and Ryan was kneeling next to Istas, trying to get her to wake up. As a fellow therianthrope, he probably had a better idea of what she needed than anybody else in the room. No one moved to attack anyone else; all of us were waiting to see what the dragon would do.
The dragon lifted one enormous hand and slammed it down on the cultist, smashing her the way I might squash a bug. There was a long pause as everyone considered this. Then the remaining cultists went back to screaming and running away. Candy stepped around me and broke into a run of her own—but unlike the cultists, she was running toward the dragon. The servitors stayed frozen where they were. I ran after Candy, but more slowly. I was, after all, covered in blood and dressed like a cultist; I wanted the dragon nicely distracted by the female of his species before I started bothering him.
Dominic and Sarah started moving when I did. We met at the center of the room. Dominic grabbed my arm, pulling me to a halt, and then—before I could protest that I was trying to get to the giant lizard—pulling me into a hug. “You frightened the life from us,” he said, without letting go.
“I’m sorry I got captured by a snake cult.” I hugged him back. It seemed like the easiest course of action, and it wasn’t an unpleasant position to be in. He hugged solidly, without crossing the line into hugging too hard.
“This is sweet and all, but dragon? Remember, dragon?” Sarah tugged on the sleeve of my borrowed robe. “It’s really big, and it’s really confused right now, so this would be the time to tell it that you come in peace.”
“How do you know?” asked Dominic, pulling back and giving her a wary look.
“Telepath, remember? Now come on.” She grabbed my arm, pulling me out of his embrace and starting toward the dragon. I didn’t put up any resistance. This was, after all, a real live dragon we were talking about. That’s not the sort of thing a cryptozoologist gets the opportunity to meet every day.
Candy beat us to the dragon by a considerable margin. She wasn’t actually saying anything when we got there; just standing with her hands pressed against her mouth, looking up at the dragon and crying silently. I shook my arm free of Sarah’s grasp and put a hand on Candy’s shoulder, looking up at the dragon.
“This wasn’t in the manual,” I murmured to Sarah, before saying, more loudly, “Um, hello, Mr. Dragon. I’m Verity Price. This is Candice. She’s a dragon, too.” Dominic and Sarah both gave me startled looks. Candy kept crying. The dragon wasn’t saying anything, and so I added, “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Who are these others?” asked the dragon, lowering his head to what passed for eye level. He had an accent, faintly British, that made me think of period dramas about the American Revolution on PBS. “Who has sent you? What is going on here?”
“Um, no one sent us, and what’s going on is sort of a long story. This is my cousin, Sarah Zellaby.”
“Hi,” said Sarah.
“And this is our friend Dominic De Luca.”
Looking unsure as to whether or not he was doing the right thing, Dominic bowed to the dragon. “Sir,” he said.
Candy took her hands away from her mouth and pointed at Dominic. “He’s from the Covenant,” she announced. Catching my expression, she added, “But he came to help save you from the snake cult.”
“Is that what these noisy little people were on about?” The dragon lifted his left hand, studying it. “My fingers are quite sore.”
“The, um, ‘noisy little people’ have been trying to wake you up, and while you were still sleeping, they were taking blood and using it to turn people into servitors,” I said. “I’m sorry I don’t have any bandages.”
“I am sure I will recover without them, but I appreciate the offer.” The dragon transferred his orange gaze to Dominic. “The Covenant of St. George is here? I have never seen one of your kind so poorly armored, or so alone. What do you think you can do against me, small one?”
“Nothing, sir,” said Dominic. I’d never heard him sound so respectful. “I came here to assist my friends, not to bring challenge. This is not my city to defe
nd.” He nodded toward me. “It’s hers. I, and by extension, the Covenant, will stand by her decisions in this matter.”
I stared at him.
The dragon seemed to take this much more in stride. Maybe he was used to humans being insane. Turning back to me, he asked gravely, “And what are your decisions in this matter, Miss Price?”
“I promised the dragon princesses I’d find you for them, and I promised the cryptids of the city that I’d make the snake cult stop sacrificing virgins to you. I think both of those are pretty much done. Candy? What do you think?”
Candy nodded, still crying.
The dragon tilted his head to study her before looking to the servitors clustered at the back of the cave. A deep sadness seemed to fall over him like a burial shroud, and his voice was very soft as he said, “None of the others survived. After all that we did to flee, none of the others survived. Oh, you poor dearest one.” He placed one fingertip on Candy’s shoulder. She grabbed hold and cried even harder. “So long without us to protect you.” He looked toward me. “How long?”
“It’s been about three hundred years since you went to sleep,” I said. “There haven’t been any reports of dragons in that time. Everyone thinks you’re extinct.”
“Everyone except you.” He studied us thoughtfully. “What stops me from destroying you all, and keeping myself secret?”
“I have a family, and Dominic has the Covenant,” I said. “They’d come looking if we disappeared. Besides, we came here to help, and you’re going to need allies if you’re going to restart your species. Candy isn’t the only dragon princess left.”
The scaly ridges over the dragon’s eyes—what would have been his eyebrows, if he’d had any hair—rose. “Truly?” He turned a quizzical eye on Candy. “We always knew the females could survive without us for a little time, but everyone assumed there was a limit to the number of generations.”
“If there is, it hasn’t been reached,” I said. “There are more than a few women waiting eagerly to meet you right now.”
Candy sniffled, still holding onto the dragon’s fingertip. “We prayed and prayed that somewhere, somehow, one of the males had survived. I never thought I’d still be alive when we found you.”
“Poor dearest ones, waiting so long. I would have woken long ago, if I had realized.” The dragon tugged his fingertip gently, leading Candy closer to him. Turning his eyes back to the rest of us, he said, “I was hunted. I was hurt, and I was weak. I asked my sisters to guard me while I slept and healed. I thought I would wake … sooner than I did.”
“The local settlers found your sisters, and took them,” I said. “No one thought you might still be alive down here. I’m so sorry.”
“Perhaps it was better this way. The Covenant seems to have changed—at least enough that one dragon may be left in peace with his family.” His jack-o-lantern eyes blazed. “Is that not so?”
“Unless you directly threaten the human population of this city, I will not tell the Covenant you are here,” said Dominic. “You have my word that I will not take away your peace … as long as you do not take away ours.”
“The Covenant has changed.” The dragon sounded somewhere between amused and amazed. Looking past us to the servitors, he added, “But humanity has not. You say this ‘snake cult’ made them of its own?”
“I think they probably made them of the city’s homeless and a few mysterious tourist disappearances, but yes, it was humans that did this. One of your females—” I glanced at Candy. “One of your females sort of lost sight of what it means to keep other people’s best interests at heart, and she told them how to do it. She was trying to help them wake you up.”
The dragon narrowed his eyes. “Where is she?”
“I killed her.” Candy’s voice was very small. “She was going to shoot Verity. She was dressed like all the others. She was saying things … and she lied to us. She didn’t tell us you were here. She knew, and she wasn’t going to tell us.”
“Shhh, my little dearest one. You did nothing wrong. If you hadn’t, I would have.” The dragon bent his head, blowing gently on Candy’s cheek. Sparks danced along her cheek like firefly kisses, leaving more soot marks in their wake. “You are more beautiful in my eyes than you could ever know.”
Ryan stepped up next to us, back in his human form, with a semiconscious Istas lying sprawled in his arms like a starlet on a bad B-movie poster. Tanuki Terror, coming soon to a theater near you. At least he’d managed to coax her back into her own human shape, which was probably easier to carry. “Hey, Very.”
“Hey.”
“That’s a dragon.”
“Yup. That’s two dragons, actually. Candy, and…” I paused. “Excuse me, Mr. Dragon? What’s your name?”
“William,” replied the dragon, with immense gravity.
“… okay,” I said. If the dragon wanted to be named “William,” I wasn’t going to argue. “William, this is Ryan—he works with Candy and me—and the naked, unconscious one is Istas.”
“Hi,” said Ryan.
“Hello,” said William.
“I’m talking to a dragon. Cool.” Ryan looked at me. “Istas is in a pretty bad way. I need to get her to a first aid kit.”
My eyes widened. “How bad?”
“She’s alive, but she could use some stitches and some britches.” He smiled, showing teeth that were still longer than the human norm. “Get it? ‘Stitches and britches’?”
“You’re a riot, Ryan. Can you get her to someplace safe?”
He nodded. “I can, if you’re sure you’re going to be safe with a dragon, a murderer,” he wrinkled his nose at Dominic, “and some chick who called saying she was your cousin.”
I smiled a little. “I’ll be fine. You go on—and if Istas wakes up, tell her she’s not allowed to kill Dave until I get there. He isn’t getting off that easy.”
“Dave?” asked William.
“It’s a long story.” Catching the looks that Sarah and Dominic were giving me, I amended, “But I’m happy to tell it. See, Candy and I have been working as waitresses—that would be serving girls to you, I guess—in this place called Dave’s Fish and Strips, and the owner’s a real asshole—”
The servitors crept over to huddle against William’s side as I provided a summary of everything that had gone down since my arrival at Dave’s earlier that night. Sarah and Dominic broke in a few times to add details I hadn’t been present for, like what happened after Candy showed up at Gingerbread Pudding, hysterical and with her clothes burned half off, having barely evaded the snake cult goons Dave sent to grab her. Sarah called Ryan, and between my telepathic cousin and his tanuki tracking powers, they’d found their way down into the sewers and into the cult’s secret sacrifice cave in no time. Not the way any of us had been planning to spend our evening, but it beat being sacrificed hands down.
When the story was finished, I glanced at the servitors, and asked, “What are you going to do about them?”
“Done is done, I’m afraid; what they are now is what they’ll be the rest of their lives.” William sounded honestly regretful. “We’ll care for them. There are ways to bring them closer to intelligence, if properly looked after.”
“And you’ll make no more,” said Dominic. It could have been a question. It wasn’t.
“The properties of our blood are not a weapon,” said William, in the sort of tone an adult might use when speaking to a small child. “They are a defense. I will not promise not to protect myself and my family if someone comes to trouble us, but I will not be seeking out humans to claim. It was only ever a necessity when the females became rare, usually due to humans ‘rescuing’ them from their mates.”
“Good,” said Dominic. “I appreciate your candor.”
Candy stepped away from William, looking up at him. “I don’t want to go,” she said regretfully, “but I have sisters, and they’ll want to know that we’ve found you. Can we … can we come back? Can we come to you?”
Wil
liam blew on her face again, this time igniting the tips of her hair. They burned for only a moment. When they went out, her hair looked even better than it had before. “I will wait more eagerly than you can imagine for your return.”
None of the fallen cultists had shoes even remotely near my size, and while they’d kept my weapons in the antechamber—thank God—my clothes were nowhere to be found. Dominic solved the problem by picking me up and toting me toward the exit. I considered protesting, but decided that having fully functional feet was more important than my pride. Besides, anything that gave him something to focus on beyond changing his mind about killing William was probably a good thing.
Candy walked at the front of our little group, looking as lovesick as a teen who’d just met her Disney Channel idol for the first time. Sarah brought up the rear, and smirked every time I looked at her over Dominic’s shoulder.
So I guess you’ve converted him through the power of your naughtiness and flexibility. What are you going to do with him?
“Shut up,” I hissed.
Dominic cast a startled look my way, then looked back to see where my attention was. Seeing the smug look on Sarah’s face, he chuckled. “Whatever she’s saying to you, it can’t possibly be as bad as the argument we’re going to have when we get back to your apartment.”
“What argument is that?”
“The ‘never run off to get kidnapped by another snake cult’ argument.” He sounded completely serious. I raised an eyebrow. “I’m quite serious. I think I aged six years tonight.”
“Wasn’t he beautiful?” asked Candy.
There was a pause while the rest of us tried to make sense of this apparent non sequitur. “Yeah, Candy, he was gorgeous,” I said carefully.