Chaos Choreography (41 page)

“Malena!”

She knew. Immediately, she knew, and climbed back down, moving to cling to the snake next to me. I swung over to cling to her back, locking my left arm around her neck while I dug the grenade out with my right hand. Malena climbed.

I looked behind me. Dominic and Alice were on the stage, shooting at the great snake's body as they ran around it. They were fast. It was faster. It tensed to strike, and then recoiled, nearly knocking us off. I twisted. There was Pax, still in his half-and-half form, burying his teeth in the snake's side. It hissed like a steam engine getting ready to explode and tensed again. Alice and Dominic resumed their shooting. It was like a terrible game of whack-a-mole, and I found myself feeling almost bad for the snake. It hadn't asked to come here. It was just an animal, doing what animals do, and we were doing our best to kill it.

At the same time, there was one thing the Covenant of St. George got right, all those years ago. When your choice was kill or die, kill was the only answer worth giving.

Malena climbed higher, moving from side to side to avoid the worst of the thrashing. I leaned close to her ear.

“When we get to the head, I'm going to climb off, and you're going to run,” I said. “I'll try to feed it the grenade.”

Malena grunted. Whether it was from exertion or because her face was currently too distorted to allow for human speech, I couldn't tell.

“I'll find my own way down,” I assured her. “It'll be fine.”

This time, I didn't need a translation for her grunts. Profanity is the universal language.

The snake thrashed and squirmed beneath us, presenting a difficult climb as only a living thing truly could. I held on for dear life, until we had reached the head, and it was time to put my terrible, awful, no-good plan into effect.

Letting go of Malena was harder than I expected. I rolled onto the top of the snake's skull, and it hissed, irritated by the fact that something was touching its head. It pulled back, nearly knocking me off. I grabbed the ridge over its left eye at the last second, anchoring myself.

If it started shaking, I was going to fly. That couldn't happen.

“Hey, big guy,” I said, pulling the pin from my borrowed grenade. “How's it hanging?”

The snake hissed. I let go of the eye, letting gravity pull me down the length of its nose. I was going to get one shot at this. If I missed, well. It wasn't going to matter much to me, after that. It would matter to my family, and to everyone else the giant snake killed before someone took it down.

I fell.

The natural urge of the falling human is to claw at empty air, looking for purchase, some miraculous rescue from the force of gravity. I've been falling recreationally for most of my adult life. I did no such thing. Instead, I pulled my arm back and chucked the grenade into the snake's open mouth before balling myself up to minimize my area of impact and giving myself over to the inevitable.

Fifteen feet was enough of a drop that I'd break an ankle if I tried for a normal landing. It was still short enough that I might be okay, if I got lucky about where I landed. I clung to that thought. I might be okay.

There was an explosion above me as the grenade
went off, and warm wetness splattered over the world, marking the giant snake's demise. That was a good thing. I had succeeded.

Then I hit the edge of the stage, and stopped thinking about anything but pain, even as the stage shook from the impact of the snake's body, which fell beside me and mercifully
not
on top of me.

“Verity!” Dominic's shout was loud and terrified.

I opened my eyes and pushed myself up on one hand, trying not to look as sick and disoriented as I felt. “Anybody get the number of that freight train?”

“You're alive!” Dominic dropped to his knees, wrapping his arms around me and setting off a whole new cascade of exciting agony.

“Your ex-partner isn't,” said Malena. I turned toward the sound of her voice. Her dress was shredded, but she was relatively clean, presumably because she'd been outside the blast radius when the grenade went off. She wrinkled her nose before continuing, “Snake landed on him. Asshole deserved it.”

“Clint!” I pulled away from Dominic, scrambling to my feet. Everything hurt. I had never let that stop me before. “Where is he?”

“Here.”

Alice sounded pleased with herself. As well she should have; she was standing over Clint's body, tying his hands behind his back. She beamed when she saw me looking her way. “Hi, baby girl. I'm going to take this back to my home base with me, if that's okay. I have some friends who have strong opinions about pulling endangered super-snakes through the walls of the world.”

I blinked. “Oh. Okay.”

Pax came trotting up. “We have a problem.”

“Of course we have a problem. Is there ever a time when we
don't
have a problem?” I looked at him. “What's the problem?”

His face was a grim mask, streaked with blood and lacerated where he'd been sliced by the snake's scales. “We've been on the air this whole time.”

Slowly, I turned to the nearest camera. The red light was on. The red light had never gone off.

“Oh,” I said.

“We need to get out of here,” said Malena.

“Too late,” I said. Dominic and Alice had both appeared on camera. Even if the Covenant didn't include any fans, someone would put this on the Internet. Someone would
already
have put this on the Internet. The Covenant would watch. They would see.

They would know we were still out there.

As if in a dream, I walked toward the camera, reaching up with one hand to pull my wig off. It was so sodden with blood that it felt like a dead animal in my hand. I dropped it and kept walking.

Then the red light was right in front of me, and I was looking straight into the lens. I pulled the gun from the back of my dress.

“My name is Verity Price,” I said, enunciating each word clearly and distinctly. “This is my continent. Stay the hell out.”

The sound of my gunshot was somehow softer than the sound of the lens shattering.

Silence fell.

“Everything changes.”

—Frances Brown

A cavern underneath Manhattan, surrounded by dragons

Two weeks later

O
SANA AND
C
AN
DY WERE LOCKED
deep in negotiations, the members of their respective Nests milling around them. The L.A. dragons were trying to act like they weren't awed and speechless in William's presence, while the Manhattan dragons were trying to act like they weren't prepared to commit murder to protect their husband. Good times all around. I was sticking close to William, staying out of the way and observing the chaos without involving myself in matters that didn't involve me.

“This is really okay with you?” I asked, for what must have been the tenth time.

William chuckled. “Yes,” he said, in a cultured English accent that would have sounded perfectly reasonable coming out of a human man, but was a little weird coming from a lizard the size of a Greyhound bus. “This is as it has always been for us. I was sold shortly after I was hatched, to a Nest capable of sustaining me. Our ways may seem odd to you, but I assure you, they've worked for a long time.”

“I believe you,” I said. I was leaning against the cavern wall, trying to look casual and hide how much the descent had taken out of me. I was still healing after my
fall from the giant snake. I'd managed to crack my pelvis when I hit, in addition to leaving bruises along the length of my legs and hips. It was a good thing the rest of the season had been canceled after our little “special effects display.” There was no way I would have been able to dance.

Adrian was in a
lot
of trouble with the network, since we'd violated more than a few FCC rules during the fight—but the show's ratings had been spectacular, and he was going to be all right. He was a human cockroach. He always found a way to come out ahead.

“Are you well, Miss Price?”

“As well as I'm going to get.” I closed my eyes.

Malena and Pax had gone home to their respective families, melting back into the therianthrope communities they belonged to. Pax would be fine. He could live in the water until all this blew over. I was more concerned about Malena, but she'd assured me she'd be okay, and I was choosing to believe her. She had my number if things got bad.

As for Clint . . . Alice had taken him with her when she went back to whatever dimension she called “home” in between trips, and something in her eyes had told me that I didn't want to ask for any details about what was going to happen to him there.

I had my own problems. My parents had been understanding about my spur of the moment decision to essentially declare war on the Covenant. That didn't mean they knew what was going to happen next. Dominic and I were in New York to make introductions between the two groups of dragons, and so we could check in with my contacts, warning them that trouble might be coming, and setting up a network for notifications in case the Covenant came looking.

My Valerie ID was well and truly blown. I hadn't even been able to go to Lyra's funeral, since she'd never officially met “Verity Price,” and my showing my face in public could have brought the Covenant down on my head. I'd had to leave her to be buried without me, and
could only hope she was at peace. Aunt Mary hadn't been able to find any ghosts in the theater, so there was that. Maybe Lyra had been able to move on.

Maybe.

As for Dominic . . . a hand touched my shoulder. I opened my eyes and offered him a weary smile. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn't know it would take this long.”

“It will take as long as it takes,” he said. “Kitty sends her regards, and has agreed to host a meeting tonight at her club. I told her we'd be there.”

“Of course we will.” I pushed myself away from the wall, only wincing a little. “This is our job.”

I'd warned the Covenant to stay out of North America, and I'd meant every word. I glanced at the sea of dragons around us, intelligent cryptids who only wanted to be allowed to live their lives in peace. Humans were a much greater danger. Humans summoned snake gods and killed their own kind. Cryptids just wanted to go a little longer without becoming extinct.

If the Covenant came here, if they pushed the issue, we'd fight. And we'd win. That was the only acceptable outcome for this particular competition.

Dominic smiled at me wryly as he slipped an arm around my waist.

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose it
is.”

Aeslin mice (Apodemus sapiens).
Sapient, rodentlike cryptids which present as near-identical to noncryptid field mice. Aeslin mice crave religion, and will attach themselves to “divine figures” selected virtually at random when a new colony is created. They possess perfect recall; each colony maintains a detailed oral history going back to its inception. Origins unknown.

Basilisk (Procompsognathus basilisk).
Venomous, feathered saurians approximately the size of a large chicken. This would be bad enough, but thanks to a quirk of evolution, the gaze of a basilisk causes petrification, turning living flesh to stone. Basilisks are not native to North America, but were imported as game animals. By idiots.

Bogeyman (Vestiarium sapiens).
The thing in your closet is probably a very pleasant individual who simply has issues with direct sunlight. Probably. Bogeymen are close relatives of the human race; they just happen to be almost purely nocturnal, with excellent night vision, and a fondness for enclosed spaces. They rarely grab the ankles of small children, unless it's funny.

Chupacabra (Chupacabra sapiens).
True to folklore, chupacabra are bloodsuckers, with stomachs that do not
handle solids well. They are also therianthrope shapeshifters, capable of transforming themselves into human form, which explains why they have never been captured. When cornered, most chupacabra will assume their bipedal shape in self-defense. A surprising number of chupacabra are involved in ballroom dance.

Dragon (Draconem sapiens).
Dragons are essentially winged, fire-breathing dinosaurs the size of Greyhound buses. At least, the males are. The females are attractive humanoids who can blend seamlessly in a crowd of supermodels, and outnumber the males twenty to one. Females are capable of parthenogenic reproduction and can sustain their population for centuries without outside help. All dragons, male and female, require gold to live, and collect it constantly.

Ghoul (Herophilus sapiens)
. The ghoul is an obligate carnivore, incapable of digesting any but the simplest vegetable solids, and prefers humans because of their wide selection of dietary nutrients. Most ghouls are carrion eaters. Ghouls can be easily identified by their teeth, which will be shed and replaced repeatedly over the course of a lifetime.

Hidebehind (Aphanes apokryphos)
. We don't really know much about the hidebehinds: no one's ever seen them. They're excellent illusionists, and we think they're bipeds, which means they're probably mammals. Probably.

Jackalope (Parcervus antelope)
. Essentially large jackrabbits with antelope antlers, the jackalope is a staple of the American West, and stuffed examples can be found in junk shops and kitschy restaurants all across the country. Most of the taxidermy is fake. Some, however, is not. The jackalope was once extremely common, and has been shot, stuffed, and harried to near-extinction. They're relatively harmless, and they taste great.

Johrlac (Johrlac psychidolos)
. Colloquially known as “cuckoos,” the Johrlac are telepathic ambush predators. They appear human, but are internally very different, being cold-blooded and possessing a decentralized circulatory system. This quirk of biology means they can be shot repeatedly in the chest without being killed. Extremely dangerous. All Johrlac are interested in mathematics, sometimes to the point of obsession. Origins unknown; possibly insect in nature.

Laidly worm (Draconem laidly)
. Very little is known about these close relatives of the dragons. They present similar but presumably not identical sexual dimorphism; no currently living males have been located.

Lamia (Python lamia).
Semi-hominid cryptids with the upper bodies of humans and the lower bodies of snakes. Lamia are members of order synapsedia, the mammal-like reptiles, and are considered responsible for many of the “great snake” sightings of legend. The sightings not attributed to actual great snakes, that is.

Lesser gorgon (Gorgos euryale).
One of three known subspecies of gorgon, the lesser gorgon's gaze causes short-term paralysis followed by death in anything under five pounds. The bite of the snakes atop their heads will cause paralysis followed by death in anything smaller than an elephant if not treated with the appropriate antivenin. Lesser gorgons tend to be very polite, especially to people who like snakes.

Lilu (Lilu sapiens)
. Due to the striking dissimilarity of their abilities, male and female Lilu are often treated as two individual species: incubi and succubi. Incubi are empathic; succubi are persuasive telepaths. Both exude strong pheromones inspiring feelings of attraction and lust in the opposite sex. This can be a problem for incubi like our cousin Artie, who mostly wants to be left alone, or succubi like our cousin Elsie, who gets very tired of
men hitting on her while she's trying to flirt with their girlfriends.

Madhura (Homo madhurata).
Humanoid cryptids with an affinity for sugar in all forms. Vegetarian. Their presence slows the decay of organic matter, and is usually viewed as lucky by everyone except the local dentist. Madhura are very family-oriented, and are rarely found living on their own. Originally from the Indian subcontinent.

Manananggal (Tanggal geminus).
If the manananggal is proof of anything, it is that Nature abhors a logical classification system. We're reasonably sure the manananggal are mammals; everything else is anyone's guess. They're hermaphroditic and capable of splitting their upper and lower bodies, although they are a single entity, and killing the lower half kills the upper half as well. They prefer fetal tissue, or the flesh of newborn infants. They are also venomous, as we have recently discovered. Do not engage if you can help it.

Oread (Nymphae silica).
Humanoid cryptids with the approximate skin density of granite. Their actual biological composition is unknown, as no one has ever been able to successfully dissect one. Oreads are extremely strong, and can be dangerous when angered. They seem to have evolved independently across the globe; their common name is from the Greek.

Sasquatch (Gigantopithecus sesquac).
These massive native denizens of North America have learned to embrace depilatories and mail-order shoe catalogs. A surprising number make their living as Bigfoot hunters (Bigfeet and Sasquatches are close relatives, and enjoy tormenting each other). They are predominantly vegetarian, and enjoy Canadian television.

Tanuki (Nyctereutes sapiens).
Therianthrope shapeshifters from Japan, the Tanuki are critically endangered due
to the efforts of the Covenant. Despite this, they remain friendly, helpful people, with a naturally gregarious nature which makes it virtually impossible for them to avoid human settlements. Tanuki possess three primary forms—human, raccoon dog, and big-ass scary monster. Pray you never see the third form of the Tanuki.

Ukupani (Ukupani sapiens).
Aquatic therianthropes native to the warm waters of the Pacific Islands, the Ukupani were believed for centuries to be an all-male species, until Thomas Price sat down with several local fishermen and determined that the abnormally large Great White sharks that were often found near Ukupani males were, in actuality, Ukupani females. Female Ukupani can't shapeshift, but can eat people. Happily. They are as intelligent as their shapeshifting mates, because smart sharks is exactly what the ocean needed.

Wadjet (Naja wadjet).
Once worshipped as gods, the male wadjet resembles an enormous cobra, capable of reaching seventeen feet in length when fully mature, while the female wadjet resembles an attractive human female. Wadjet pair-bond young, and must spend extended amounts of time together before puberty in order to become immune to one another's venom and be able to successfully mate as adults.

Waheela (Waheela sapiens).
Therianthrope shapeshifters from the upper portion of North America, the waheela are a solitary race, usually claiming large swaths of territory and defending it to the death from others of their species. Waheela mating season is best described with the term “bloodbath.” Waheela transform into something that looks like a dire bear on steroids. They're usually not hostile, but it's best not to push
it.