Discount Armageddon

already killed once. I didn’t want to encourage him to do it again. “What are you doing in my city?”

He pulled himself a little straighter, trying to look imposing. I’ve been dancing the tango with men a foot and a half taller than I am since I was fourteen. I wasn’t impressed.

“I wasn’t aware that you’d been granted the authority to claim cities. How quaint. Who backs you?”

“Me.” I shrugged. “The rest of the family. Oh, and most of the city’s cryptids, who happen to be big fans of me and my tendency not to kill them. They won’t be happy if you try arresting me. Or with the idea that there’s a hunter in the city.”

“This city has gone without a purge for far too long.”

“This city is doing just fine without a purge, thank you very much. It’s not in the market for a serial killer.” I glanced at the dead ahool one more time. “No one asked you to come here.”

Dominic actually looked affronted. “Are you implying that I—?” He left the question unfinished, but the intonation was clear.

“You’re setting snares for potentially intelligent creatures with the intent to kill them based solely on attributes that you don’t like.” Ahool weren’t intelligent, but they also weren’t going to get caught in a snare. Rooftop snares meant he was hunting for a wide variety of prey. “I think the situation’s pretty self-explanatory, don’t you?”

He started to step forward, the knife still in his hand. I had my gun drawn and pointed straight at him before he’d finished the motion.

“Do you really want to do that?” I asked. “Think hard. I’m having a lousy night, and I promise you’re not going to take me quietly.” The harpies were probably too far away to hear me if I screamed. That was bad. We were, however, reasonably close to a flophouse that I knew was frequented by a lot of bogeymen. Bogeymen are attracted by the sound of screams, and most of the city’s bogey community knew me. Even if Dominic was wearing body armor, I was no slouch at hand-to-hand, and I’d have backup before he had time to do much damage. I hoped.

Dominic hesitated. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t. I thought you’d been wiped out.”

“Wiping things out is your hobby, but no, we haven’t been.”

“They taught me about you. Your desertion.”

“What a great way of putting it. I’ll have to write that in my diary.”

“You were a glorious bloodline before you decided to turn traitor.”

Now I was starting to get pissed. I shifted as much of my weight as possible to my right leg, glaring at him. “Are we doing this thing or not? Because if not, I want you out of Manhattan, and out of my way.”

“I suppose that’s the answer, then,” said Dominic regretfully, before he lunged.

I have to give the Covenant this: they teach their people how to fight. Dominic moved with grace and deadly speed, turning a headlong charge into an attack before most people would have had time to do more than blink. Keeping the knife held slightly behind him, he balled his right hand into a fist and swung for the place where my head should have been.

He missed by what my mother would have called a country mile. I was already dropping to land balanced on the fingertips of my left hand and the toe of my right foot, knee bending as it accommodated my sudden half- crouch. Kicking my left foot upward in a maneuver I was certain to regret in the morning, I slammed my heel into his wrist, sending the knife flying out of his hand and away into the darkness on the roof.

He was good. I’m not sure he wouldn’t have been better, had he been attacking to kill and not to capture. I had no such qualms. Fighting like a gentleman is the sort of luxury reserved for people who can afford to lose.

Dominic recovered quickly, delivering a kick to my kidneys. I rolled with it, letting the borrowed momentum carry me several feet before springing to my feet and shoving the gun into his face.

“You are not a good listener,” I said, trying not to show how badly that kick had hurt, or how disgusted I was by the congealed ahool blood now staining my windbreaker.

For his part, Dominic was looking like a man who’d just learned the world wasn’t perfect. “You little—”

“Finishing that sentence gets you shot,” I said, and stepped backward. “Here’s a tip: never bring a knife to a gunfight. Here’s another: stop killing my cryptids, and get out of my city. If I hear one word about you harassing the people that live here, or see you one more time, I’m not going to fight fair.”

“The Covenant will be hearing about this.”

“What, that you met a random girl on a rooftop who told you she was a member of a family you guys wiped out years ago right before she kicked your ass? As if. Even if your pride would take it, they wouldn’t believe you.” I took another step backward. The edge of the roof was only a few feet away. “Get out of my city, De Luca. Next time, I won’t play nice.”

“Next time, neither will I,” he snarled, and pulled another knife from his coat, flinging it toward my chest—or at least toward the space where my chest had been. By the time the knife finished its flight, I was already over the edge of the roof, dropping like a rock into the darkness below.

Six

“Always remember two things about the Covenant: shoot first, and then keep shooting for as long as your ammunition holds out. You can’t reason with fanatics. All you can do is match them in your own fanaticism.”

—Enid Healy

A small semilegal sublet in Greenwich Village, cranky and in pain

RECOVERING THE HEIGHT I LOST during my getaway would have been too much trouble, especially when I could feel the bruises forming as I ran. My left ankle was throbbing steadily, making my footing questionable at best. One of the first rules of successful free running talks about how you do it with injured ankles, wrists, knees, or hips. It’s a simple rule: don’t. It’s a good way to do permanent damage, and unless you’re being chased by a hungry wendigo, no shortcut is worth that.

I found a fire escape three blocks from home that was close enough to the ground to let me finish my descent. I made the rest of the trip on foot. It was late enough that the only people I passed were drunk, homeless, drunk and homeless, or in the middle of traveling from one nightclub to another. None of them gave my outfit, or the blood covering it, a second glance.

The mice had either finished their religious ceremony or moved on to one of the quieter parts of the liturgy. The apartment was silent when I came in, and stayed that way as I dug my phone from my backpack and retrieved the first aid kit from the medicine cabinet. I dropped my windbreaker in the bathtub. I didn’t know whether ahool blood was acidic, but I’d be finding out soon. There was a little blood on my skirt. I stripped it off and threw it into the tub on top of the windbreaker. Then I turned and limped back to the living room.

The couch was covered in last week’s laundry. I swept it onto the floor as I sat down, groaning a little when my bruises brushed against the cushions. Once the aching slowed, I removed my left shoe and rolled down the sock.

The damage was both better than I’d been expecting and worse than I’d been hoping; not an uncommon combination when it comes to me and injuries. I’m pretty resilient. That doesn’t mean I enjoy getting hurt, or the complications that come with it. At least it was all just surface damage; the snare had done a good job of scraping my skin through the sock, but the rope never actually touched me. I slathered the scrapes liberally in antibiotic cream, pasted on some gauze, wrapped an Ace bandage around it, and called it good. As long as I didn’t need to win any foot races or dance any Paso Dobles for the next few days, I’d be fine.

I leaned back into the couch, wincing, and snapped open my phone. If the Covenant was in Manhattan, there was only one reasonable place to call.

Home.

* * *

The story of my family winding up in a sprawling farmhouse outside of Odell, Oregon is simple, even though it takes the mice three days to tell. My great-great-grandparents left England and settled in Pennsylvania; the