Discount Armageddon: An Incryptid Novel (22 page)

We turned to press our backs together, Dominic’s short sword held out in front of him, my halogen light bathing the tunnel walls. I pulled the telescoping baton from my belt, snapping it open and locking it in that position. There was no sign of whomever—or whatever—had drawn the knife, but I could hear the scuffle of claws on concrete, too large and too heavy to belong to the rats.

“What are our escape routes?” Dominic asked tightly.

“
Forward and back,” I muttered. More loudly, I said, “Okay, people. If you want to talk, we’re prepared to talk. And if you want to dance…” Again the sound of metal on metal, from a different direction this time. Well. That answered that. “Okay. Let’s dance.”

Deep beneath the streets of Manhattan, about to be attacked

T
HERE WAS A PAUSE AFTER MY LAST
bravado-fueled comment, long enough that I was starting to feel a little silly standing in a sewer in a defensive posture, my back pressed up against a member of the Covenant of St. George, waiting to be attacked like a coed in a horror movie. I was about to suggest we start moving again when the walls around us bulged, transmuting from flat stone into lumpy, uneven crags. The crags split away from the walls, becoming a group of roughly-humanoid figures in tattered, mismatched clothing.

I gasped. It was a stupid, girly thing to do, but I couldn’t help myself. I’ve been studying cryptids since before I knew my ABCs. I’ve been specializing in the humanoid cryptids since second grade. But these … whatever they were, it was nothing I’d ever seen before. That realization was almost as chilling as the one that accompanied it.

We were trapped.

The figures continued to separate from the walls around us; I counted at least ten, maybe more, since the way their outlines shifted and blended together made it difficult to say for sure. They were hairless, about six feet tall, and covered head to toe in tiny green-and-brown scales. None of them was carrying a gun, thank God, but they all had at least one weapon in their hands, and in close quarters, knives and lead pipes will get you just as dead as bullets. Holes torn in the seats of their pants allowed their long whipcord-thin tails to wave free. Several of them were clutching additional weapons with those tails, waving them with prehensile menace.

“Oh, fuck, killer Sleestaks.” I pressed further back against Dominic. They had us outnumbered, and while they might have fought against humans before, I’d never fought against
them
. I wanted to watch them move for as long as I could.

“You know what these are?” he demanded, sotto voce. “How do we defeat them?”

“I so don’t have time to explain
The Land of the Lost
right now.” I shifted my weight onto the balls of my feet, assuming the position I’d use to start a samba. Samba, street fight, it’s all the same once you find the rhythm. Pitching my voice toward the lizard-men, I said, “My name is Verity Price. My companion and I mean you no harm. We’re just passing through, on important business.”

Three more of the lizard-men produced knives from inside their grimy shirts. So much for that tactic.

Time to try another approach. “I work for Dave Smith,” I said. “The local bogeyman community will vouch for me.” They definitely understood that, since their reaction was different this time: two of them hissed balefully, and one produced a nasty-looking hacksaw from inside his vest.

I said “different,” not “better.”

“I don’t think you’re talking us out of this,” said
Dominic. Despite the precariousness of our position, he couldn’t quite keep the amusement from his tone.

Great. The man finally gets a sense of humor thirty seconds before we die. “I guess we’re just going to have to go the old-fashioned route.”

The lizard-man with the hacksaw hissed. That must have been a signal. The rest immediately stopped their baleful glaring and began to advance, clawed feet clacking on the sewer floor.

“What’s that?”

“Let’s kick some lizard ass.”

With a wild, ululating cry that was half reptile, half human, and all nightmare-inducing, the creatures charged. I took advantage of the fact that I was still braced against Dominic, leaning into him just long enough to kick the first of the attackers in the chin. Its jaws snapped shut on its serpentine tongue, and it made a wordless sound I assumed was lizard-man for “Ow.” My heel caught him in the forehead as I brought my foot back down. Then Dominic was lunging for a target of his own, momentum carrying him away from me and leaving me to dance my side of the battle solo.

Ten lizard-men, a Covenant trainee, and a Price girl: there’s no way to turn that into even odds. The lizard-man I’d kicked in the head was on his knees, blood running from the sides of his mouth. I kicked him a third time, sending him over backward before jumping up and using his chest as a source of higher ground. Without that extra bit of height, the lizard-men had more than six inches on me.

Six of the lizard-men were engaged in combat with Dominic, their tails whipping around to strike his back and shoulders as he hacked his way grimly forward. My count had been off by two, because even with my new stepstool groaning and motionless beneath me, there were six more closing in on my position. The odds were more than reasonably good that we were screwed.

“I’ve
always loved a challenge,” I said—more for effect than because I meant a word of it—and leaped, baton raised, toward the next of the lizard-men.

In the movies, when the hero is surrounded by a gang of ne’er-do-wells who mean to do him (or her) harm, they always offer the courtesy of approaching one at a time, thus letting themselves be mowed down by the hero’s superior fighting skills and devastating repartee. Our lizard-men clearly hadn’t seen that many movies, since they belonged more to the school of “run at the enemy until the enemy stops fighting back.” I could appreciate the tactic—even respect it—but that didn’t mean I appreciated being on the receiving end.

My first lizard-man didn’t move even after I launched myself from his chest. I slammed my baton into the throat of the next one in the line, hearing the distinct breaking-plywood sound of his larynx giving way. He went down immediately, clutching at his throat. With two lizard-men down and five remaining, I was no longer devastatingly outnumbered, just horrifyingly outnumbered, and those were odds I was better-equipped to deal with.

I swung my baton at the next lizard-man, aiming for his kidneys at the last moment. Unfortunately, that was the moment when another of the lizard-men caught me in the back of the thighs with a length of what felt like rebar, sending me staggering for balance. The lizard-man I’d been swinging at whipped his tail around and yanked the baton from my hands, flinging it away into the darkness.

“Hey!” I yelped, from anger as much as from surprise. That baton was a gift from my brother. I didn’t appreciate having it taken away by a crazy cryptid with territory issues.

Since I was already staggering, I let myself hit the ground in a runner’s
crouch, pulling the throwing knives from the holster strapped around my left ankle. It was difficult to tell exactly where the lizard-men were—the distortion from the cave walls made it almost impossible to know what was the original noise, and what was just a decoy—but Dominic’s breathing was distinct enough from theirs that I could tell where it
wasn’t
safe to aim. Whipping myself around to face the attackers coming up behind me, I half rose and snapped my wrists forward in the throwing motion Antimony and I spent three summers studying with the local circus.

We may have driven the Incredible Christopher crazy with how long it took us to learn the fine art of knife throwing, but he would have been proud of me in that moment, assuming he could get past the part where I was applying his lessons to an underground battle with an unidentified race of lizard-men. The knives flew straight and true toward their targets, one burying itself in the throat of a third lizard-man, while the other caught the fourth in the shoulder. The one I’d hit in the throat went down like a sack of potatoes. The other remained standing, but squealed, losing his hold on the larger of his two knives.

A severed head went flying overhead from Dominic’s direction, signaling that at least one of his opponents was no longer an issue. I was liking the odds better all the time.

My allotment of lizard-men was starting to advance again, faster this time, their tails waving wildly. Their hissing had acquired a distinctly pissed-off note, distinguishable from their earlier hissing only because it came with a healthy dose of snarling and exposed teeth.

“Dominic?” I shouted, barely ducking a blow from a lead pipe clutched in a scaly tail. “What’s the situation on your end?”

He answered with a grunt of exertion before calling, “Somewhat busy!”

“I know!” I dodged another blow, pulling a stiletto
from my sleeve and stabbing the lizard-man’s tail before he could pull it away. He shrieked as he yanked his tail back, taking my stiletto with it. Fighting in quarters this cramped was resulting in a surprisingly large number of lost weapons. “How many do you have left?”

“Three! You?”

“Two and a half!” One of the downed lizard-men staggered to his feet, and I amended, “Three and a half!” The nearest lizard-man lunged for me. I jumped clear, barely, jamming a hand into the waistband of my jeans as my left shoulder slammed into the wall. I hit stone, not concealed lizard-man; that was one possible complication down the drain.

“We need to retreat!”

“I know!” Yanking the .32 from my hip holster, I released the safety and opened fire.

Here’s the thing about friendly fire: it isn’t. Once Mr. Bullet has left Mr. Gun, he is no longer your friend. Shooting a firearm in an enclosed space is a dangerous proposition at best, because the closer the walls are, the more likely you are to set off a ricochet. Even if your bullets don’t come bouncing back at you, there’s a good chance that pieces of the wall will. Stone chips
hurt
when they’re traveling at that sort of speed.

I fired first at my two most intact lizard-men, catching one in the forehead and the other in the throat. They went down hard. I put two more bullets into a third lizard-man, the reports leaving my ears ringing until I could barely hear the shrieks echoing through the sewers.

The lizard-men must have been even more sensitive to sound than humans. They stopped attacking, all of them turning to me as they hissed and bared their teeth.

Mouseguns are intended for self-defense and designed to be easily concealed in street clothes, not to
hold enormous numbers of bullets. I kept my .32 raised, trying to look cool and unruffled, despite the blood I could feel trickling down my cheek from a cut near my hairline. I was going to be sore in the morning, assuming we lived through the night.

“I know you understand English,” I said, focusing on the lizard-man with the hacksaw. He was still standing, and he was my best guess for the leader. “Let’s see if you can understand this: back off and let us leave, or I start shooting again.” If they knew firearms, they’d know I was bluffing. If they knew firearms, they’d probably have brought some.