Part 7 (1/2)

”I don't know when the next time Dominic is going to be able to get away from them will be. He made sure I was there to see the pickup. They didn't see me.”

”Very . . .” Sarah took a breath. ”If you're that sure he'll be easy to find, why didn't he give you an address? It would have been easier.”

”Because he's still trying to figure out who he's going to betray-me, or the Covenant.” I shook my head, not caring that she couldn't see the gesture. ”I honestly don't know which way he's going to go, either. Maybe he'll turn his back on the only life he's ever known. Maybe he'll sell me out. I guess we'll find out sooner or later.”

”If you really think there's a chance that he might turn you in, you need to get out of there. We don't know if the Covenant taught him to hide things from telepaths.” Sarah sounded alarmed, and rightfully so. ”You can come stay with me. Bring the mice, we'll make it a slumber party.”

”And when Dominic decides I'm the next one on the 'betray me now' list and comes looking for me? I can't disappear completely, Sarah. If they start looking for me, they'll find me, and they'll follow me straight to you.” More silence from her end of the phone. I sighed. ”Yeah, I thought so. Look, Sarah, there's no good answer here. I wish there was one. Just call Artie for me, okay?”

”What do you want me to tell him? I'm not going to be the one to say, 'Oh, hey, the Covenant's throwing a purge on the island of Manhattan and me and Verity are both invited.' I'm just not.”

”Tell him I need to know, and that I'll explain later.” If I'd called Artie myself, I would have been explaining now, because otherwise he would never have done it. If the request came from Sarah, he'd go ahead, minimal questions asked. And then the two of them wonder why the rest of the family is betting on when they'll just go ahead and start dating already.

”Verity . . .”

”I'm not leaving New York while the Covenant's here, and you're not leaving while I'm here, so will you just call Artie? Please, for me?”

Sarah sighed. ”Okay. I'll call him. But I'm really not sure this is the way to go about things.”

”I'll tell you what: if you come up with any better ideas, you be sure and let me know.” I hung up before she could say anything else, and sank down against the roof, briefly closing my eyes. This was one h.e.l.l of a mess, and it was going to get a lot worse before it got any better.

I stomped up the stairs to my apartment, taking my frustrations out on the poor, innocent banister, which had never done anything bad to anyone. None of my neighbors poked their heads out to see what the ruckus was about. Most of them probably had respectable jobs that kept them away from home during the day. That just served to make me grumpier. New York was about to be a battleground, and the rest of my building wasn't even going to notice unless the Covenant decided to firebomb me while I slept.

Somehow, that particular thought didn't do anything to help. I dug my keys out of my pocket, grumbling as I jabbed them into the lock- -and froze as the doork.n.o.b s.h.i.+fted under my hand. The door wasn't locked. But the door had been locked when I left the apartment. I'd locked it from the inside, and I'd left via the kitchen window, like I normally did.

Moving carefully now, I slipped my keys back into my pocket and pulled the pistol from the back of my pants. I pressed myself to the side of the door, reached over, and twisted the k.n.o.b, shoving the door open in the same gesture. It banged against the wall, and I spun into the doorway, pistol in front of me in a shooter's stance.

There was a tall, neatly-groomed man standing in my hall with an automatic crossbow in his hands. It was loaded, and aimed at my stomach. He raised an eyebrow questioningly. ”Is that how you say h.e.l.lo now?” he asked.

”Uncle Mike!” I didn't lower my pistol. ”What's the pa.s.sword?”

”There is no pa.s.sword,” he replied. ”If you need a pa.s.sword, you're probably already dead, and that makes it a moot point. Now get in here before you scare the neighbors.”

I beamed, clicking the safety on my pistol into place before replacing it in its holster and stepping through the open door. The mice-who had been obeying my edict never to let themselves be seen from the hall, and were consequentially plastered against the wall just inside-cheered loudly. ”What are you doing here?” I asked, while I closed and locked the door. I sniffed the air. ”Is that pot roast?”

Uncle Mike just looked at me, eyebrow still raised.

Oh, right. ”Before you scare the neighbors” was the first half of the family pa.s.scode. ”I mean, the neighbors don't scare easy,” I said. ”I'm pretty sure they've seen it all before.”

”Your father called me and said you needed backup,” he said, finally lowering his crossbow. ”And yes, it's pot roast. I figured you'd be going largely nocturnal for the duration of the s.h.i.+t that's about to hit the fan, and there's no such thing as too much readily available protein.”

”Hail!” chorused the mice. ”Hail the High Priest of G.o.ddammit Eat Something Already!”

I grinned. ”See, I almost didn't need to get a pa.s.scode from you. The pot roast would have been effective proof of ident.i.ty.”

”Yes, but if you hadn't confirmed my ident.i.ty, I would have shot you on general principle,” said Uncle Mike. Then he smiled. ”Come over here and give me a hug, or I may shoot you anyway.”

I went over there and gave him a hug. It wasn't an unpleasant experience. Uncle Mike-full name Michael Gucciard, a cryptozoologist from the Chicago area who specializes in water-based cryptids-was large, solid, and an excellent hugger. He also wasn't related to the family in any biological sense, but anyone who puts up with as much of our c.r.a.p as he does should get to be an honorary relation, or at least get hazard pay. (Being an honorary relation is why he's only a High Priest, and not a G.o.d. If you want to be a G.o.d, you need to bang a Priestess, and Aunt Lea wouldn't approve.) ”Where's Aunt Lea?” I asked, pulling away. I paused. ”Please tell me she stayed home.”

”She stayed home,” he said rea.s.suringly. ”I love your family, and you know there's nothing I wouldn't do for your father, but the day I bring my wife into the path of a Covenant purge is the day the papers report on my mysterious drowning.”

I relaxed slightly. ”Good.” Like so many cryptozoologists, Uncle Mike had fallen in love with his work-specifically with an Oceanid he met in Palm Beach. The Covenant had a history with Oceanids. It wasn't a pretty one. Then again, the Covenant didn't have a pretty history with anyone, so far as I could tell.

”Your security is terrible,” Uncle Mike informed me, pleasantries apparently completed. ”I picked the locks in under a minute. No one came out to see what I was doing. I even pa.s.sed someone in the downstairs hall, and he asked if I was heading for the second floor, since he didn't want to carry a misdelivered newspaper all the way up the stairs.” He scowled briefly. ”It's a miracle you're still alive.”

”I tell myself that every day,” I said. ”Where are you staying?”

”Here, at least for tonight,” he said, in a tone that left no room for arguing.

I looked around my postage stamp of an apartment and considered arguing anyway. ”Where?” I asked.

”There's a couch,” he said. ”I fold.”

”Uncle Mike-”

”Your father gave me a precis on the whole situation, Verity, including your on-again, off-again boyfriend.” He fixed me with a stern eye. ”I'm the last person who's going to tell you who you should be dating-”

”Yeah, at this point, everybody else has already had their shot,” I muttered.

”-but if you think I'm going to leave you alone while he and his compatriots run loose in this city, you got another think coming. If it were up to me, we'd be relocating to somewhere more secure. We may have to do that anyway, but I figured I'd hear your game plan before I started packing your bags for you.”

”That's very considerate, thank you,” I said dryly. ”Do you want the update, or do you want to lecture me some more about how lousy my apartment is?”

To my surprise, he grinned. ”Honey, I live in Chicago. I understand that this is a perfectly reasonable apartment for someone on your budget. But your security is s.h.i.+t, your neighbors are basically cannon fodder, and there's no one close enough to help if things get bad. We shouldn't stay here.”

”You're right.” Even the admission hurt. Not as much as the one that came after it: ”Dominic knows where I live. He's known for a while now. I can't trust him not to tell the Covenant where to find me.”

There was a pause while Mike looked at me, trying to figure out whether I was serious. Finally, deciding that I meant what I was saying, he asked, ”There a reason you haven't moved house already? Aside from wanting to be here to see my smiling face-and that's a lousy reason, by the way, since you didn't know that I was coming. I don't recommend trying to convince me of that one.”

”This has all happened really fast, and I didn't totally believe it until this morning,” I said. I shrugged. ”Besides, where are we supposed to go? I can't stay with Sarah, that'll just put her in the line of fire. The dragons won't have me, and I'm pretty sure my boss would kill me herself if I tried sleeping at work.”

”Don't you still dance with that goat-sucker guy?”

”You mean James?” In my alternate ident.i.ty as Valerie Pryor, professional ballroom dancer, I was usually partnered with a very sweet, very gay chupacabra. He didn't mind that I kept guns under my tango costume, and I didn't mind that he occasionally turned into a semi-reptilian quadruped and went hunting deer in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Like any partners.h.i.+p, our a.s.sociation was based on mutual trust. I trusted him not to sell me out to the Covenant. He trusted me not to shoot him in the head.

”Yeah. He lives around here, doesn't he?”

”Yes, he does, and if I tried to hide at his place when I potentially had the Covenant of St. George on my tail, his husband would kill us both. Dennis puts up with a lot for James' sake, but there are limits.” I paused. ”I need to call him anyway, and tell them both to get out of town.”

Mike sighed. ”You've made a pretty good mess for yourself, kiddo. Isn't there anywhere you could go that the Covenant doesn't know about?”

”Wait-maybe.” I started toward the living room, mice dodging out of the way of my feet as I walked. ”The dragons used to have a Nest in the old meatpacking district. They'd been living there for more than a century, and that means they must have managed to ride out previous purges. The place is essentially a fortress.”

”Sounds great,” he allowed. ”But where are the dragons now?”

”They couldn't get their husband out of the cavern he was asleep in, so they've relocated to be closer to him,” I said. ”They seem perfectly happy down there.” Then again, they were female dragons in the presence of the first male anyone had seen in centuries. Between that and the heaps of gold they'd been ama.s.sing since they arrived in North America, they had everything they could possibly have needed.