Discount Armageddon: An Incryptid Novel (48 page)

“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?”

William 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.

“If you like ’em tall, dark, and scaly,” added Sarah.

Candy sighed dreamily. “Yeah,” she agreed.

Okay, that was weird,
thought Sarah.

Lay off,
I replied.
She just met her first boy. She’s allowed to be a little weird.

You mean
that
was the male of her species?
Sarah’s expression mirrored her mental “voice,” all shock and awe.
Wow. Talk about size really mattering …

My laughter lasted for the rest of our trip back up into the light.

Dominic and I reached Dave’s Fish and Strips an hour later, fully dressed and ready to kick some bogeyman ass. Ryan and Istas met us there, the latter looking even
grumpier than usual. Both of them glared at Dominic. I put my hands up, relishing the feel of having sleeves again. “Back down, both of you. He wanted to come, and after the little stunt Dave pulled last time, I didn’t think it would be bad to have the backup.”

“If you’re sure,” said Ryan, still eyeing Dominic with suspicion.

Istas was more direct. “If you interfere in any manner with our continued survival, I will play skipping games with your intestines while wearing your lungs as a hat.”

“That’s fair,” Dominic agreed.

“Enough,” I said. “Let’s go kill a bogeyman in the most painful way we can think of.”

“Works for me,” said Ryan.

The main club hadn’t been cleaned up at all—even the bodies of the fallen servitors were still there. I paused to retrieve several of my knives. “Poor bastards,” I said, and pulled a knife from a servitor’s shoulder. “They deserved better.”

“So did we,” said Istas. I followed her gaze to the white smear of Tooth Fairy dust on the bar floor. Her parasol was next to it, more battered than ever. She stooped to retrieve it, hugging it to her chest. “Mayhem now, please.”

“Right this way.” I picked up my last knife and started for the manager’s office.

Dave’s darks were on, turned higher than I’d ever seen them. They filled the hall for three feet on either side of the door, making it impossible to tell what was in the actual office. I stopped at the edge of the darkness, shouting, “Dave! Come out here right now and I won’t let Istas have you!”

Istas shot me a hurt look. I mouthed “I’m lying,” and she calmed, returning her attention to the wall of shadows between us and our target.

There was no answer from the office. “This is a limited time offer, Dave. We’ll come in there if you make us.”

There was still no answer from the office. We waited a
few minutes, until I was absolutely certain Dave wasn’t going to come out. Istas started to growl.

“Oh, fuck it,” I said, and strode into the blackness.

Finding the office door was a matter of finding the wall and feeling my way along. I kept a knife in one hand, groping along the wall next to the door for a light switch with the other. I kept waiting for Dave to grab me and yank me away from the safety of the walls, but it didn’t happen. My fingers found the switch, and the lights came on, leaving me first blinking and then staring at the scene in front of me.

“Verity! Do you—” Dominic rushed into the room with Ryan and Istas close behind him. All three of them stopped, joining me in staring at the ransacked office. The filing cabinets were open and empty, and Dave’s computer was missing from the desk.

“He’s gone,” I said. “The bastard pulled a runner.”

“Well, fuck,” said Ryan.

The dinosaur wing of the Museum of Natural History

Six weeks later

T
HE SKELETAL TYRANNOSAURUS LOOMED OVER ME
like something out of a horror movie, showing teeth longer than throwing knives and claws capable of gutting a human in less than a second. I looked thoughtfully up at it, wondering what it must have been like when it was ruler of the world. Did it think? Was the Tyrannosaurus one of the first intelligent cryptids, here and gone before the planet even thought of hairless apes?

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

“It’s okay. I’ve been bonding with the dinosaurs.” I gestured toward the skeleton. “Sort of makes you feel small, doesn’t it?”

Dominic gave me a look, half-amused, half-exasperated. “You remain the strangest woman I have ever met. How can this impress you, given what we’ve seen?”

“Hey, Bill’s a lot friendlier than this guy ever was.” William was also likely a lot happier, since he was now being pampered and cosseted by no fewer than forty-eight buxom representatives of the female of his species. Candy had taken over leadership of the Nest, thanks to
her defeat of Betty and her early bond with William, who called her the sweetest of his “dearest ones.” She’d actually started smiling after that. It was a little creepy, but better than being scowled at all the time.