Discount Armageddon: An Incryptid Novel (39 page)

Going by the clock, I was going to need to head straight to work after visiting Piyusha’s brothers. Dave would probably let me get away with working a half-shift, given the whole “dragon under the city and snake cult killing people” situation, but if I didn’t pick up some tips, I wasn’t going to be paying the power bill. Protecting the human race should really come with a per diem, I swear.

At least knowing that I’d be changing into my work uniform soon made it easy to get dressed, since I didn’t need to worry about looking good, just looking street-legal. By the time Sarah and Dominic made it back upstairs—both of them holding iced coffees, and Sarah
gnawing on a sticky-looking maple scone—I was in the front room, emailing copies of the pictures to Auntie Jane and Antimony. I was wearing clean jeans, a dark gray tank top, and a pair of broken-in running shoes that would allow me to take my usual overland route to work without needing to worry about adding blisters to my existing collection. A little heavy-duty foundation was enough to hide most of my bruises, including the ones forming around my neck. Always an important consideration before a dance competition, or a night of cocktail waitressing. Covering the shiner would take more work, and I’d do that later.

“Here,” said Sarah, thrusting the iced coffee she was holding at me. “Dominic insisted on buying it for you, so you can thank him.”

“She was intending to walk out without paying!”

Sarah shrugged. “I left a tip.”

“Let’s not have the ethics of shoplifting coffee fight right now, okay, guys? Thanks for the coffee, Dominic. Sarah, the apartment’s yours until I get back. Don’t let the mice watch anything on Showtime or Animal Planet, feel free to eat anything you find in the kitchen and, if you’re going to be playing with the computer, keep an eye on my inbox, okay?”

“I’ll call if you get anything that looks important.”

“I’ll keep my phone on vibrate.” I grabbed my backpack as I stood, slinging its reassuring weight over my shoulder. I was carrying a few dozen more weapons than I usually found necessary for casual city running, but with a snake cult making things complicated, I couldn’t really be blamed for a little paranoia.

Dominic gave me a sidelong, half-amused look, commenting, “You’re clanking.”

“Damn straight.” I waved to Sarah, who was already sitting down at the computer, and left the apartment without looking back.

Once again, Dominic insisted on taking a taxi, and once again, it just wasn’t worth the trouble of fighting him. Besides, he probably had some sort of an expense account (thus explaining why I wasn’t getting a per diem; the Covenant had all the ready cash). If the Covenant wanted to pay to move me around Manhattan, that was their problem, not mine.

Gingerbread Pudding was still closed. That made sense. If it was a family-owned business, they weren’t going to open the doors until they knew what had happened to Piyusha. The researcher in me wanted to ask what their funereal observances were like, and whether they’d be willing to let me attend. The part of me that actually cares about being a decent person promptly punched my inner researcher in the jaw and stuffed her in a closet at the back of my head, to be retrieved later.

Dominic looked at the darkened storefront, frowning. “Are you sure they’ll be here?”

“If you’d just sent a total stranger into the sewers to find your missing sister, would you run off before she came back with news?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I also wouldn’t send a stranger into the sewers to find my sister alone.”

“Do you even have a sister?” I knocked on the window next to the door, peering into the gloom. I didn’t see any movement. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. “You know way too much about my family, and I don’t know anything at all about yours.”

“No. No siblings. No family of any kind.” He continued watching the storefront, expression not changing. “I was an only child.”

“That must have been nice. Nobody stealing your stuff while you slept, or setting snares on your bedroom floor, or digging pit traps in the front yard.”

“Your siblings did all that?”

“My sister is special.” That was putting things as mildly—and nicely—as possible. I knocked again, squinting into the dark. “I really thought they’d be here.”

“
Perhaps you could leave them a note?” I gave him a sharp look. Dominic winced. “Perhaps not. I’m really not sure of the etiquette here.”

“Do you know what the etiquette would be if they were human?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, assume that when Ms. Manners says ‘human,’ she really means ‘sentient,’ and run from there. It translates pretty well to everything but dining, dating, and divorce.”

Dominic eyed me oddly. “Divorce?”

“Oh, yeah. Like when nue split up, the male generally gets sacrificed by the female and fed to the relatives to avoid creating bad blood between the two sides of the family.” I shrugged. “People are weird.”

“It will never cease to amaze me that you say these things in places where anyone could overhear you. What’s to stop the populace from decrying you as a witch and rising against you?”

“I don’t know. A couple hundred years of social evolution, combined with a general failure to believe in anything that doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry? Except most cryptids have Wikipedia entries these days, so that’s maybe not such a good measuring stick. You know, most of the edits on the Sasquatch entry are actually made
by
Sasquatch? They think it’s hysterical watching the human editors argue about whether or not to let one of their corrections stand.”

“That’s something else that will never cease to amaze me. Your wealth of useless knowledge.”

“Everybody needs a hobby.” I knocked a third time. “I’m getting a little worried. The snake cult’s only been taking girls before this, but if the dragon isn’t waking up, they may have decided to mix it up a little. See if maybe the problem is that they’re offering him the wrong kind of snack food.”

“Should we break in?”

“Maybe.” Something finally moved in the darkened shop. I exhaled. “
Okay, good, maybe not. Please be nice to them, okay?”

“I shall do my best.”

Footsteps became audible as Rochak approached, undoing the deadbolt before opening the door. He looked worse than I felt. “You came back.” It was almost an accusation.

“I told you I would.” I gestured to Dominic. “This is Dominic De Luca. He was with me when I met your sister.” I didn’t offer Rochak’s name. If he wanted to identify himself to a member of the Covenant, that was his choice, not mine.

At the moment, he didn’t seem to be leaning in that particular direction. He stared at me like I’d just announced that I was standing on his doorstep with Jack the Ripper in tow, and demanded, in a low hiss, “And you brought him
back
? Are you trying to get us killed?”

“If I may,” interjected Dominic, “I already know the location of your business, having been here once before, and I accompanied Miss Price with no intention of either harming you or notifying my associates of your presence. You have my word that I intend you no harm.”

“See? He comes in peace.” I looked at Rochak gravely. “May we please come in? I can guarantee Mr. De Luca’s good behavior.”

“It’s true,” said Dominic. “She’ll shoot me if I misbehave.”

“With pleasure,” I added.

“I wouldn’t want to miss that,” said Rochak, and stepped backward. “Please, come inside. Sunil is upstairs.”

Even with the lights off and the customers gone, Gingerbread Pudding smelled of sugar and honey and the sharp sweetness of candied ginger. Rochak didn’t speak as he led us through the kitchen and past the employee break room to a set of stairs behind a door marked “Employees Only.” His silence wasn’t a surprise. He had to know what my showing up without Piyusha meant, and if
he wanted to wait to hear for sure until we were in the presence of his brother, that was his decision. I try never to tell others how to grieve.

The stairs ended in an airy, well-lit hallway. Jars of honey sat on low shelves with candles burning beneath them, covered by mesh lids to keep out any errant flies. The heat was enough to spread the sugary sweetness through the air like incense, until the whole place smelled like the home of Willy Wonka’s trendy older sister. The décor was a blend of traditional Indian and modern American, and the walls were covered with photographs of people who were clearly family. Pots of honeysuckle and live sugarcane lined the windowsills, all clearly thriving.

Dominic stuck close to my side, expression growing deeply uncomfortable as he looked around the upstairs hall. His training had probably prepared him for caves, dank lairs, and horror movie kitchens with bloodstains on the walls. Unless the Covenant had changed a lot more than he was letting on, it hadn’t prepared him for polished hardwood floors and lumpy modeling clay “vases” of the type I recognized from Antimony’s kindergarten year (before she moved on to homemade shrapnel grenades).

The room at the end of the hall seemed designed to serve as a combination kitchen and dining area, and was larger than the living room at my sublet. Sunil was at the stove, sautéing something in what smelled like more honey. He looked up when we entered. Seeing the look on Rochak’s face, his own face fell, expression fading by inches from mere worry into something utterly empty of emotion.

“Piyusha’s dead, isn’t she?” he asked.

Unable to find the words to answer him, I nodded.

“What happened? Where is she?” His voice was even blanker than his expression, as flat as day-old soda.

“She’s still underground where I found her,” I said, once I could force myself to speak. It was hard to make
myself look at him, rather than staring off at some point in the distance—some point that wouldn’t look at me with accusing eyes. “I found her shortly after I went down. I’m … I’m sorry.”

“You just
left
her there?” asked Rochak incredulously. “You found our sister, and then you just
left
her? What kind of a monster
are
you?”

“Rochak, be nice,” said Sunil.

“Why? So they won’t kill us, too?” Rochak glared, hands balling into fists as he looked from me to Dominic and back again. “How dare you leave her behind?”

“I left her behind because I thought you’d like to know what happened to her, instead of sitting here forever wondering if she was going to come home.” I shook my head. “The people that took your sister, they’re … they’re not good people, and she wasn’t the first.”

“We knew that,” snapped Rochak.

“Well, they apparently knew that somebody might come looking for her, because they left guards with her body.” The two Madhura were silent. “Have either of you ever heard the dragon princesses mention something called a ‘servitor’?”

“I … I don’t believe so,” said Sunil, a note of caution creeping into the emptiness of his voice. Rochak glanced at him with clear alarm. Sunil didn’t acknowledge the look as he continued, slowly, “The term isn’t familiar.”

“Your brother seems to recognize it.” I focused on Rochak. “What do you know?”

“Nothing! I—nothing.” Rochak looked away. “It’s not right to leave her down there. We need to recover her. See that she has a proper burial.”

“Which will be easier if we know what’s going to try to eat us when we go down to bring her back for you,” I said. “What do you know?”

“I—”

“It wasn’t the dragon princesses,” said Sunil. All three of us turned in his direction, Rochak looking relieved by his brother’s decision to speak up. “There were some
men here about a week ago. Human men. Piyusha waited on their table; she said they were very dismissive of her service, called her a ‘servitor.’ At the time, we thought it was just general unpleasantness. I told her to pay it no heed. People have been casually nasty ever since we moved here.”

“From India?” asked Dominic.

Sunil looked at him like he was an idiot. “From San Jose. Do we sound like we’re from India?”

Dominic glanced in my direction, clearly startled. Apparently, the idea of cryptids being natural-born citizens of a country their species didn’t originate in had never crossed his mind. “I see,” he said.

I kept my attention focused on Sunil. “What did these men look like? And if they were just men, why so worried?”

“Like businessmen. They were middle-aged, they wore suits. They ordered gingerbread, but didn’t eat it. As for my concern … they were here. They knew to come here, and we had no idea that we should be stopping them.” He frowned slowly. “They were servitors?”

“No. But I think they may be controlling the servitors.” If the men knew enough about cryptids to be trying to wake a dragon, they’d probably know how to identify the more common humanoid species. You can tell a Madhura by the sweet smell they use to mark their territory … or, if they’re confusing their territory markers by working in a dessert café, by the taste of their baking. Relief washed over me. “They scouted out your sister a long time before Dominic and I showed up here.”

“Wait.” Sunil raised a hand. “This is the man from the Covenant?”

“She brought him with her, and vouched for his behavior,” said Rochak.

“No harm will come from my hand to anyone in this house.” Dominic’s statement was as abrupt as it was unexpected. I jerked my head around, openly gaping at
him. He met my eyes without flinching. “I have made no reports of your existence to the Covenant, and no such reports will be made. I am truly, deeply sorry for your loss. Your sister was a lovely woman. She deserved better.”