Discount Armageddon
Page 37
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You do realize you’re broadcasting, right? asked Sarah, implied laughter coloring her mental “voice.”
I nearly stabbed myself in the leg. The first time she pulled that trick, I actually did—cuckoos mature into projective telepaths in their teens, riding what Antimony and Sarah call “the X-Men effect.” (My sister and my cousin: both enormous nerds.) Before that, she’d been strictly limited to feelings and vague impressions that were to actual sentences as interpretive dance is to the Viennese waltz.
Shut up and get out of my head, I shot back. I’m not a telepath, but that hasn’t stopped me from learning how to communicate with them, if only out of self-defense.
So are you going to jump his bones? I ask purely out of academic interest, and because if you’re taking brooding, dark, and inappropriate home with you, I’m not auditing any classes near your apartment for a week.
“God, Sarah,” I muttered. Dominic glanced sharply in my direction, and I offered him a quick, reality-show-perfect smile. He shook his head again, looking baffled as well as disgusted, and bent back to his work. Don’t you have anything better to do?
Not until you get back. Safely, please.
I’ll do my best, I replied, approvingly. Dominic was shoving the manhole cover off to one side, releasing an unpleasant gust of sewer smell. I wrinkled my nose. Looks like we’re ready to head down the rabbit hole. Thanks for all your help.
Call me when you get back above ground. The soft background static of an active telepathic connection cut off as Sarah turned her attention elsewhere, leaving me alone with a half-naked member of the Covenant of St. George, an open manhole cover, and a plan consisting mostly of “look for something to hit.”
“One subterranean tour of the island of Manhattan, coming right up,” I said, sheathing my last knife before sliding off the dumpster I’d been perching on. I trotted over to help Dominic get ready to descend into the darkness. The things I do to keep potentially extinct monsters from eating the human race, I swear.
The New York City subway system is a large part of the reason for the city’s massive cryptid population. Many species of cryptid prefer to live in darkness—hence the popularity of creepy old houses, supposedly haunted forests, and complex cave systems. When those aren’t available, a sufficiently large and complicated subway system will suit most cryptids just fine. As an added bonus, city subways tend to come with water and power systems that can be tapped with relative ease, allowing city cryptids to live in comfort, yet not miss out on their modern conveniences. A surprisingly large number of bugbears really enjoy their daytime talk shows.
Because of the city cryptids’ tendency to retreat underground when given the opportunity, I never go anywhere without a light, bug spray, and a water bottle in whatever bag I happen to be carrying. Just in case.
The manhole opened to reveal a rusty metal ladder bolted into the concrete and pointing straight down into the sewer system. Dominic insisted on taking the lead, presumably so he’d have the first opportunity to fight off anything that felt like attacking us. I didn’t object. If he wanted to feed himself to the monsters, it would both keep them from eating me and solve that nagging question of whether or not to kill him. Two birds, one stone.
By bracing my feet against one side of the narrow tunnel and my shoulders against the other, I was able—barely—to get sufficient leverage to let me pull the manhole cover back into place. Most of the light died once the opening was sealed, leaving only a few narrow beams to illuminate our descent.
“In a sewer, in the dark, with a Covenant member,” I muttered. “Can this day get any better?”
The ladder ended after about fifteen feet, when my questing foot hit a chilly layer of half-congealed water. Grimacing, I dropped off the ladder, letting water soak through my socks, and pulled the cave light out of my bag, clipping it to my belt before saying, “Close your eyes. I’m going to turn the light on.”
“What?” asked Dominic.
I flipped on the cave light—a miniature halogen designed for deep spelunking and hunting basilisks in the woods on moonless nights. Dominic’s pained yelp told me he hadn’t listened. “I warned you,” I said, and turned to survey our surroundings.
I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the tunnel we were in was labeled as “generic New York sewer tunnel, model 16-C” on the official maps. The walls were just the right shade of grimy, slightly-mossy concrete gray; the slime covering the floor was just the right depth, with just the right questionable texture. I glanced up and nodded, satisfied. “Thought so.”
“What are you talking about, you insufferable woman?” demanded Dominic, still scrubbing at his eyes in an effort to recover from looking directly into my halogen light. The gesture was made amusingly awkward by the short sword he was holding in one hand, which begged the question of where, exactly, he’d been hiding the sword before he got into the sewer.
“Look up.” I jerked a thumb toward the ceiling to better illustrate my point.
He looked, scowl turning slowly into a bewildered frown. “What am I looking at?”
I decided to take pity. If I didn’t, we’d be standing in the faux sewer all afternoon, and that was so not the way I wanted to spend the hours before my shift. “Look at the light fixtures.”
“I don’t see what you’re talking a—oh.”
“Yeah.” The light fixtures dangling from the concrete ceiling were ostensibly for use by city maintenance personnel. That would have worked fine, if they’d actually been functional. With my cave light directed at the bulbs, it was clear that they might look like lights from a distance, but were really nothing but blown glass covered in Halloween store cobwebs. They even had lengths of yarn where the filaments should have been, guaranteeing that no amount of tinkering would get them to turn on.
“Monstrous deceits,” snarled Dominic.
I turned to face him, careful to keep my light aimed downward as I gave him a dubious look. “What, swapping a light bulb for a decoy is a monstrous deceit in your world? Remind me never to eat the last of the Thin Mints.”
“What’s a Thin Mint?”
“That’s it: after we save the world, we’re finding some Girl Scouts to mug for cookies.” I did a slow turn, checking the tunnel branches around us. There were three. Two of them looked naturally broken-down and unpleasant, while the third wouldn’t have looked out of place in a midnight monster movie. “That way.”
I nearly stabbed myself in the leg. The first time she pulled that trick, I actually did—cuckoos mature into projective telepaths in their teens, riding what Antimony and Sarah call “the X-Men effect.” (My sister and my cousin: both enormous nerds.) Before that, she’d been strictly limited to feelings and vague impressions that were to actual sentences as interpretive dance is to the Viennese waltz.
Shut up and get out of my head, I shot back. I’m not a telepath, but that hasn’t stopped me from learning how to communicate with them, if only out of self-defense.
So are you going to jump his bones? I ask purely out of academic interest, and because if you’re taking brooding, dark, and inappropriate home with you, I’m not auditing any classes near your apartment for a week.
“God, Sarah,” I muttered. Dominic glanced sharply in my direction, and I offered him a quick, reality-show-perfect smile. He shook his head again, looking baffled as well as disgusted, and bent back to his work. Don’t you have anything better to do?
Not until you get back. Safely, please.
I’ll do my best, I replied, approvingly. Dominic was shoving the manhole cover off to one side, releasing an unpleasant gust of sewer smell. I wrinkled my nose. Looks like we’re ready to head down the rabbit hole. Thanks for all your help.
Call me when you get back above ground. The soft background static of an active telepathic connection cut off as Sarah turned her attention elsewhere, leaving me alone with a half-naked member of the Covenant of St. George, an open manhole cover, and a plan consisting mostly of “look for something to hit.”
“One subterranean tour of the island of Manhattan, coming right up,” I said, sheathing my last knife before sliding off the dumpster I’d been perching on. I trotted over to help Dominic get ready to descend into the darkness. The things I do to keep potentially extinct monsters from eating the human race, I swear.
The New York City subway system is a large part of the reason for the city’s massive cryptid population. Many species of cryptid prefer to live in darkness—hence the popularity of creepy old houses, supposedly haunted forests, and complex cave systems. When those aren’t available, a sufficiently large and complicated subway system will suit most cryptids just fine. As an added bonus, city subways tend to come with water and power systems that can be tapped with relative ease, allowing city cryptids to live in comfort, yet not miss out on their modern conveniences. A surprisingly large number of bugbears really enjoy their daytime talk shows.
Because of the city cryptids’ tendency to retreat underground when given the opportunity, I never go anywhere without a light, bug spray, and a water bottle in whatever bag I happen to be carrying. Just in case.
The manhole opened to reveal a rusty metal ladder bolted into the concrete and pointing straight down into the sewer system. Dominic insisted on taking the lead, presumably so he’d have the first opportunity to fight off anything that felt like attacking us. I didn’t object. If he wanted to feed himself to the monsters, it would both keep them from eating me and solve that nagging question of whether or not to kill him. Two birds, one stone.
By bracing my feet against one side of the narrow tunnel and my shoulders against the other, I was able—barely—to get sufficient leverage to let me pull the manhole cover back into place. Most of the light died once the opening was sealed, leaving only a few narrow beams to illuminate our descent.
“In a sewer, in the dark, with a Covenant member,” I muttered. “Can this day get any better?”
The ladder ended after about fifteen feet, when my questing foot hit a chilly layer of half-congealed water. Grimacing, I dropped off the ladder, letting water soak through my socks, and pulled the cave light out of my bag, clipping it to my belt before saying, “Close your eyes. I’m going to turn the light on.”
“What?” asked Dominic.
I flipped on the cave light—a miniature halogen designed for deep spelunking and hunting basilisks in the woods on moonless nights. Dominic’s pained yelp told me he hadn’t listened. “I warned you,” I said, and turned to survey our surroundings.
I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the tunnel we were in was labeled as “generic New York sewer tunnel, model 16-C” on the official maps. The walls were just the right shade of grimy, slightly-mossy concrete gray; the slime covering the floor was just the right depth, with just the right questionable texture. I glanced up and nodded, satisfied. “Thought so.”
“What are you talking about, you insufferable woman?” demanded Dominic, still scrubbing at his eyes in an effort to recover from looking directly into my halogen light. The gesture was made amusingly awkward by the short sword he was holding in one hand, which begged the question of where, exactly, he’d been hiding the sword before he got into the sewer.
“Look up.” I jerked a thumb toward the ceiling to better illustrate my point.
He looked, scowl turning slowly into a bewildered frown. “What am I looking at?”
I decided to take pity. If I didn’t, we’d be standing in the faux sewer all afternoon, and that was so not the way I wanted to spend the hours before my shift. “Look at the light fixtures.”
“I don’t see what you’re talking a—oh.”
“Yeah.” The light fixtures dangling from the concrete ceiling were ostensibly for use by city maintenance personnel. That would have worked fine, if they’d actually been functional. With my cave light directed at the bulbs, it was clear that they might look like lights from a distance, but were really nothing but blown glass covered in Halloween store cobwebs. They even had lengths of yarn where the filaments should have been, guaranteeing that no amount of tinkering would get them to turn on.
“Monstrous deceits,” snarled Dominic.
I turned to face him, careful to keep my light aimed downward as I gave him a dubious look. “What, swapping a light bulb for a decoy is a monstrous deceit in your world? Remind me never to eat the last of the Thin Mints.”
“What’s a Thin Mint?”
“That’s it: after we save the world, we’re finding some Girl Scouts to mug for cookies.” I did a slow turn, checking the tunnel branches around us. There were three. Two of them looked naturally broken-down and unpleasant, while the third wouldn’t have looked out of place in a midnight monster movie. “That way.”
