Discount Armageddon

I bit back the urge to scream. There it was again: the belief that we were still Covenant, that nothing my family had done since leaving could change the fact that once upon a time, we stayed. “You bitch.”

“Yes, dear, and I’ve had a very long time to practice.” She stroked bloody fingertips along my cheeks before moving down to work on my stomach and legs. Voice back to a normal conversational volume, she said, “This one will be ready in a moment.”

“Good,” declared another of the cultists. “We’ve never had a double sacrifice before, and I need to get up early tomorrow.”

“So sorry my death is going to inconvenience you, asshole,” I said.

He glared at me. “We’ve never had a human sacrifice before, either. Are we sure this won’t set us back?”

“Oh, no,” said evil Santa, while Betty painted arcane symbols along my thighs. “Her family was instrumental in the slaughter of the great dragons back when they still ruled the skies. Her death will be a signal that we truly mean our assurances of renewed dominion—that even as the dragon serves our interests, we shall serve the dragon’s.”

“Killing me won’t wake him up!” I snarled. “Dragons don’t run on the human sacrifice alarm clock model!”

Evil Santa cast a glance at Betty, who shook her head. “She’s lying,” she said.

“Even if it would wake him, do you people have, like, no concept of how mass works?” I asked. “How are you planning to get the dragon out from under the city? A forklift? Dig a really big pit in midtown and hope nobody notices the super-mega-size lizard before you’re ready? In case you’ve never seen a Godzilla movie, let me remind you that one fire-breathing monster versus a major metropolitan area never ends well for anybody.”

“We have more than ‘one fire-breathing monster,’” said evil Santa, and waved a hand to indicate the servitors. “We have an army of the blessed.”

“Stop arguing with the little bitch and kill her already,” snapped Betty, picking up her bowl of blood and stepping back from the gurney. “I’m going to develop a migraine if I have to listen to her much longer.”

“Know your place, you unnatural whore,” said Santa, in a mild, almost reasonable tone. Betty took another step backward, expression furious—but not, I realized, particularly surprised. When she got into bed with these people, she knew what she was doing.

“My apologies, master,” she said, her Mae West voice dripping with loathing.

“Don’t forget again.” Evil Santa stepped back, gesturing for the others to come closer. “The virgin is prepared to make her glorious journey into the abyss, to carry news of our faith and earnest plea for the dragon’s support! Soon, she—”

“Wait, wait,” I interrupted, involuntarily straining against the straps as I attempted to sit up. “You think I’m a what?”

The snake cultists turned to stare at me with expressions ranging from sheer bafflement to anger. Several of them produced long, wicked-looking knives from inside their robes. The combination was just too much. Sagging back against the gurney, I burst out laughing.

* * *

The snake cultists had apparently never tried to deal with a sacrifice who laughed at them before, because my hysterical laughter threw them into utter chaos. Cultists swarmed around me, demanding to know what I was laughing about, demanding to know what I knew that they didn’t, and most of all, demanding I cut that out right now. Evil Santa seemed to get the picture, because he wheeled on Betty, cheeks going red with fury as he shouted, “You said she’d be a virgin! You assured us that she was a viable offering!”

“Just look at her!” said Betty, pointing a finger in my direction as she backpedaled rapidly away from him. “She looks just like her grandmother, and I know this family! There’s no way she’s not eligible!”

“Grandma did have sex eventually, or I wouldn’t be here,” I said, between gusts of laughter. “That’s what ‘grandparents’ means!”

Verity, are you there?

Sarah’s query came half a second before the static hiss of “telepath in range” kicked in at the back of my mind. I was startled enough to stop laughing for half a second before resuming, even more loudly than before. The cultists kept arguing. Only one of them seemed to have the presence of mind to realize that a laughing sacrifice would probably stop laughing if you killed her. The man with an early morning ahead of him started toward me, knife held in front of him at chest level. If I wasn’t going to be a cooperative sacrifice, I could at least be a cooperative corpse.

Istas’ front paws slammed into his chest when he was still four feet from me, carrying him to the stone floor. The sound of her snarls was almost loud enough to drown out the sound of tearing flesh, although nothing could have blocked his shrieks. The rest of the cultists stopped arguing, and there was a moment of stunned silence before most of them started screaming and ran for the exit. The servitors reacted better, maybe because the servitors were created, on some level, to fight; they produced weapons from inside their tattered clothing and fell into a defensive formation around evil Santa, all hissing viciously. If Istas was intimidated, she wasn’t intimidated enough to make her stop shredding the fallen cultist.

Betty backed up until her hip hit the gurney. It rocked a few inches to the side, wheels screeching, and she jumped with a small shriek. Whirling on me, she grabbed the top strap and demanded, “If I release you, will you protect me? For old times’ sake?” Her attempt at a smile looked more like a grimace of sheer terror. I couldn’t say that it was a bad look for her. “For everything I’ve been to your family?”

The man Istas knocked down wasn’t screaming anymore, although the sounds of tearing flesh continued. I wondered how long it would take her to realize that he was dead and go for a more interesting target.

“If you’d made that offer five minutes ago, I might have been a hell of a lot more interested,” I said. “How about this offer: you let me go, and I don’t call Istas over to rip your face off? She may do it anyway, but you’ll stand a better chance of running if she isn’t directly after you.”

Betty stared at me, face contorted with rage. “Why you little—”

“Offer’s not forever, Betty. Take it now, or run like hell, and hope I don’t send her after you.” Istas’ massive, shaggy head appeared behind her, almost level with Betty’s shoulder. A deep rumble started in the waheela’s throat. “Looks like the offer’s just about expired. Let me go, or Istas eats you.”

Istas kept growling, voice taking on a lilt I could only interpret as agreement.

“All right—all right. Just don’t kill me.” Betty moved her shaking hands toward the buckle on the first strap. Then she spun away, producing a pistol from inside her brown cultist robe and emptying the clip into Istas’ chest. Istas howled, and fell. Betty turned back to me, snapping a new clip into place. “You stupid little bitch,” she snarled, leveling the muzzle on my forehead. “I’ve been waiting to kill a member of your family for fifty years. And after you’re dead, every cryptid in this city is going to know that it was you who sold us out, you who told the cultists where to find us. Be proud. You’ve finally killed your family name.” She cocked back the hammer. A gun went off.

It just wasn’t the gun in her hand.

Betty wobbled, raising her hand to the bullet hole in her throat. The shot had gone clean through, missing the major arteries … but really, when you shoot someone in the throat, the major arteries are sort of extra credit. With blood running through her fingers and an expression of utter perplexity on her aging Mae West face, Betty fell, revealing her shooter. Candy stood behind her with soot marks on her face and throat, wearing nothing but a cheap cotton slip, the kind that doesn’t really need to fit to render you decent. She had both hands wrapped around the pistol grip, and their shaking was visible, even from a distance.

“I didn’t know you could shoot,” I said inanely. Candy forced a wavering smile, which fled as several of the servitors went for her, blocking her—and that entire side of the cavern—from my view.

I tried bucking against the straps holding me down, to no avail. The telepathic static was still there, and getting louder. “Sarah?” I shouted, trying to think it as hard as I could at the same time. “A little help?”

We’re on our way, Sarah replied. Candy ran ahead. Are you hurt?

“Not yet!”

We’re almost there. Try not to die.

“Wait, ‘we’?” I bucked against the straps again, trying to get a look at Istas, who hadn’t moved since Betty shot her. “Sarah, what do you mean ‘we’?”