Discount Armageddon

tired, I was sore, I still had to tell Piyusha’s brothers that she was dead, and I really didn’t want to deal with the risk that my parents were already home. The last thing I needed was to wind up getting grilled by Dad in full-on naturalist mode.

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Except for the cuts, contusions, bruises, damage to my pride, and slight dislocation of my worldview, I’m fine.” I stood, feeling the muscles in my thighs protest. A little run would work out the majority of the stiffness, and some painkillers would have to do for the rest. It wasn’t like I was going to be taking a hot bath and a nap any time soon. “I’m about to be unavailable for a little while, though—at least until I can charge my phone. I’ll be checking email, or you can call Sarah.”

“Doesn’t she have class today?”

“She always checks her messages between classes, in case Artie mysteriously decided to fly to New York and wants to have lunch.”

Alex snorted. “Yeah, like that’s going to happen. I don’t think he’s left the basement in a month.”

“Only a month this time? And you know Sarah. Hope springs eternal, especially when you’re a socially awkward math geek from a species of dangerous telepathic psychopaths. At least she’s fixating on the dork side, rather than the dark side. It could be worse.”

“Charming as ever, Very. I’m going to go call Dad and let him know what’s up on your end. Please try not to get killed before you can recharge your phone.”

“Love you too, big brother.” I hung up, tucking the phone into the pocket of my jeans before taking a step back and getting a running start toward the edge of the roof. If I got the trajectory right, I should be able to jump off, grab the fire escape on the building across the alley, and swing from there to the next roof over. It all depended on my building enough momentum before the first leap, but I had faith in my ability to clear the distance. I got one foot up onto the low concrete lip surrounding the roof, tensed to spring—

—and toppled backward as someone grabbed my arm.

I managed to avoid going into a full-out somersault as I yanked myself away, but I couldn’t dump speed fast enough to keep from tumbling to the roof, absorbing the majority of the impact with my elbows. I’ve taken worse falls with less preparation, and all I left behind on the hard-pack gravel of the roof was a few layers of skin. I bounced back to my feet with knives already drawn, whirling to face my assailant. I was pissed, but not quite pissed enough to go straight for my guns. That sort of escalation never does anyone any good.

Dominic was still standing by the rim of the roof, looking faintly surprised, like he hadn’t expected my interrupted leap to contain quite so much momentum. He was back in his duster and jeans, and there was fresh tape covering the wounds on his face. “Are you all right?”

“I’d be better if some asshole hadn’t just stopped me from jumping off the roof.” I straightened up, sliding my knives back into their sheaths. Sliding them into his sides would have been more satisfying, but not, in the long run, as productive. Stupid morals. “What are you doing here, De Luca?”

“I was concerned for your safety. You went into the sewers and didn’t come back out.”

I immediately regretted putting the knives away. “Wait, you were following me? Have you been following me all day? Because I could really have used some backup, if you were all that damn concerned.”

“I haven’t been following you all day.” He sighed, stepping away from the edge of the roof. “How many weapons are you carrying? I’m beginning to think you have an entire armory in your bag.”

“Don’t start with the flattery. How long have you been following me?”

“Since your cousin called to ask if I’d abducted you.”

“What? Sarah called you?” He nodded. I scowled. “I am going to kill that watery- blooded little—”

“Apparently, you were absent when she came back from class and, given your accounting of our evening activities, she became concerned for your safety.” Dominic’s expression darkened. “What, exactly, did you tell her?”

“Are you actually asking me whether I told the telepath we had sex? Because she knew before we did. Seriously, you do not want to ask Sarah about your sex life, or anyone else’s sex life, because she can draw you diagrams. She will draw you diagrams, with helpful labels, if you push her. I’d say she needs hobbies, but we sort of are her hobbies.”

Confusion tinting his voice, Dominic asked, “So you didn’t tell her?”

“Oh, the Covenant. What wonderful training programs they must be running.” I crossed my arms. “Sarah called you and asked if you’d decided to run off with me, so you decided to track me down. Is that it?”

“Essentially, yes.” He tucked his hands into the pockets of his duster, looking uncomfortable. “I managed to locate the sewer grate you descended through. I followed the blood trail from there to the PATH station. It took a while to figure out where you’d gone after that and, by the time I got to the appropriate district, you’d vanished again.”

“I was getting the biology rundown from the dragon princesses, who do not,” I raised a finger warningly, “need to be harassed right now. They’re creepy and a little unpleasant, but they’re still having a really hard week, and I think we just need to give them some time before we go prodding at them further.”

“I wasn’t going to harass them.”

“Just kill them a little?”

Dominic cleared his throat. “Dragon princesses have long been filed as essentially harmless. I see no reason to adjust that designation. Unless you’d like to provide me with one…?”

I gave him a measuring look. Either he’d arrived after I hung up on Alex, or he’d been listening to the whole conversation, and was just waiting to hear me tell him to his face. I liked Dominic, I really did, except for that superior “humans first” streak of his. That streak was the reason I had to at least try to lie to him.

“No, there’s no reason to adjust the designation,” I said blithely, with my best haughty Viennese waltz expression. It was the sort of face that implied that lemons would be too sweet for me. “They’d like the dragon under the city to be unharmed, since they’re sort of fond of the idea of having an actual dragon around again, but they’re pretty much harmless in and of themselves.” Not even technically a lie, I thought. Let’s see you poke a hole in that.

Dominic looked faintly disappointed, like he’d been expecting me to say something else. “I see. Well, then, may I ask what drove you into the sewers a second time? You already knew it wasn’t safe down there—not that I don’t think you can handle yourself in a fight,” he added hurriedly. “It’s just that even with two of us, we were hard-pressed to escape intact. I wouldn’t have expected you to return to the depths alone.”

“I … oh, crap, you really weren’t following me for the entire day, were you?”

“I believe I just said that.”

“Dominic…” I hesitated, unsure of how to continue. Would he even care about one more cryptid death? If he didn’t, would I be able to resist the urge to shove him off the edge of the roof? I took a breath and said, “Piyusha’s dead.”

“What?” Dominic’s shock didn’t look feigned in the least.

I let out a breath I’d been only half aware of holding, and said, “I went to stay with Sarah last night after you left.” His expression turned hurt. I raised my hands, palms outward, and lied, “I wasn’t hiding from you. The mice went into full-out exultation mode, and I needed to get some sleep. This morning, I went to check on Piyusha at Gingerbread Pudding, and the place was closed. Her brothers were waiting for one of us to show up. She went out to the store last night and never came back.”

“And they thought we had something to do with it?” he asked darkly.

“Hey, you’re Covenant and I’m an urban legend, remember? It was completely reasonable for them to think that we did it.”

“We gave our word.”

“They have no reason to consider it worth anything.”

“I suppose,” he said, not sounding at all happy about it. “Her trail led to the sewer?”

“Yeah. I found the body. I managed to take some pictures with my phone—not because I get my jollies from the corpses of innocent women; whoever killed her covered her with some sort of ritual symbols before they