Midnight Blue-Light Special
Page 39
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(There are three species of gorgon. Carol could warn the lesser gorgons. Joe could warn the Pliny’s gorgons. No one was going to warn the greater gorgons, but then again, greater gorgons are generally what you’re warning people about. They’d be okay if the Covenant was armed with anything short of a tactical nuke.)
Once I was out of numbers and tired of being screamed at by people who were convinced that this was my fault, I went out into the main room and spent another twenty minutes placing dart boards around the area, hanging them off support beams and at odd angles on the walls. They’d work for target practice in a pinch, and this was not the time to let myself start getting sloppy.
The slaughterhouse didn’t have many windows. The windows it did have were narrow things set high to the ceiling, where even the most industrious burglar—or assassin—would have to really work for the kill. Even so, I found myself wishing Antimony were there. Not to stay; this situation was too dangerous to wish on my little sister, no matter how many times she’d tied me up when we were kids. I just wanted her around long enough to set trip wires and alarms on all the unexpected entrances. She had an eye for that sort of thing.
Without her, I was going to have to improvise. So improvise I did, scaling bits of exposed pipe and doorframes to place mason jars full of nails in front of every window I could possibly reach, and a few I probably should have left alone, since a fall at that angle could have left me with broken bones—or worse. (It seems to be an immutable fact of nature that any time you move into an empty building, no matter how recently it was vacated or how thoroughly it was cleaned, you’ll find roughly a dozen forgotten glass jars in cabinets and closets. No one knows why. It’s a mystery that may never be solved.)
I was trying to figure out what to do with myself next when my phone rang. I jumped before checking the readout—it was a blocked number, which meant Sarah—and answering. “Hello?”
“I thought you were going to turn the Internet on.” Sarah sounded peevish. “You haven’t checked in, you haven’t been online, and I was starting to worry.”
I sighed. “Mom put you up to this, didn’t she?”
“Your father, actually, but it’s still true. I hadn’t heard from you, the Covenant’s in town, I was worried. Then I thought, ‘Wait, there are these magical pocket telepathy machines that we all carry,’ and I dialed your phone. Ta-da.” The last was delivered, not with a flourish, but in a dust-dry deadpan.
“You’re a real comedian, Sarah.” I produced a throwing knife from inside my shirt and flicked it at the nearest dart board. It hit a little left of center. “What’s really on your mind?”
“How did it go with Dominic?”
My second throw went wild as her words forced me to finally think about what I’d been trying to avoid thinking about. I hate circuitous logic. Closing my eyes, I said, “Good and bad.”
“Good how?”
“He loves me.”
Sarah paused. “That’s good, right?”
“I just said it was good.”
“Do you love him?”
“That is a large and complicated question, affected by a great many outside factors, most of which are beyond my control.”
“Gosh.” She sounded almost impressed. Then: “That’s pretty much bullshit. I mean, even I can tell that’s pretty much bullshit, and I have the relationship sense of a wombat.”
“You just have biology issues. Your own species is made up entirely of sociopathic assholes, and Artie doesn’t know what to do with a girl who actually likes him, rather than just liking his pheromones.”
Sarah sighed deeply. “Tell me about it. Dominic loves you? Like, he said he loves you? In those words?”
“He told me he loved me, right before he told me to run, because he wouldn’t be able to protect me if the Covenant came back. Oh, and it gets better.”
“How does it get better than that?”
“There are three Covenant representatives in town. I should call Dad to get him to run dossiers on them.” That would mean telling him who they were, and that would mean telling him that we were up against family. “Two of them, I didn’t recognize their names. They’re not from any Covenant family I know.”
“Uh-huh,” said Sarah slowly. “Why do I get the feeling that behind door number three is something that’s going to explain your sudden radio silence?”
“The third is Margaret Healy.”
There was a long moment of awed silence before Sarah said, “Wow. When you decide to get into a bad situation, you don’t mess around, like, at all. Your boyfriend, who loves you, is totally hanging out with your evil cousin.”
“She’s not necessarily evil. Just misguided.”
“I’m on her magical hunter ‘kill it on sight’ list, so I think I get to call her evil if I want to,” Sarah countered.
I sighed, but I didn’t argue. She had a point.
According to the family record, there was a time when the Healys were the pride of the Covenant of St. George. They were faithful, they were devout, they bred like rabbits, and once they were aimed at a target, they killed without hesitation. They were the perfect monster hunting assassins. Dozens of my ancestors were canonized in the annals of the Covenant, heroes and heroines of the war they fought on mankind’s behalf.
They were demonized at the same time, recorded as monsters in the history of the world’s cryptids. There are two sides to every story, and history is a story like any other.
It wasn’t until my maternal great-great-grandfather came along that any of the Healys questioned the party line—and when they decided to start asking questions, they did it the way the Healys had been doing things for centuries: enthusiastically, and with suicidal levels of commitment.
It’s funny, but I sometimes wonder what the hell Great-Great-Grandpa Alexander was thinking. Every other defector we know of was motivated by something, love or death or a great epiphany in the field that changed everything. Great-Great-Grandpa did some research. That was all. He was trying to learn better ways to kill monsters, and what he found was something entirely different. He researched further, and when he didn’t like the things he found, he did more research. And then he not only threw away everything he’d ever worked for, he convinced my great-great-grandmother to do the same thing. We may be the only people in history to defect from their religious order not over a point of faith, but over footnotes.
Once I was out of numbers and tired of being screamed at by people who were convinced that this was my fault, I went out into the main room and spent another twenty minutes placing dart boards around the area, hanging them off support beams and at odd angles on the walls. They’d work for target practice in a pinch, and this was not the time to let myself start getting sloppy.
The slaughterhouse didn’t have many windows. The windows it did have were narrow things set high to the ceiling, where even the most industrious burglar—or assassin—would have to really work for the kill. Even so, I found myself wishing Antimony were there. Not to stay; this situation was too dangerous to wish on my little sister, no matter how many times she’d tied me up when we were kids. I just wanted her around long enough to set trip wires and alarms on all the unexpected entrances. She had an eye for that sort of thing.
Without her, I was going to have to improvise. So improvise I did, scaling bits of exposed pipe and doorframes to place mason jars full of nails in front of every window I could possibly reach, and a few I probably should have left alone, since a fall at that angle could have left me with broken bones—or worse. (It seems to be an immutable fact of nature that any time you move into an empty building, no matter how recently it was vacated or how thoroughly it was cleaned, you’ll find roughly a dozen forgotten glass jars in cabinets and closets. No one knows why. It’s a mystery that may never be solved.)
I was trying to figure out what to do with myself next when my phone rang. I jumped before checking the readout—it was a blocked number, which meant Sarah—and answering. “Hello?”
“I thought you were going to turn the Internet on.” Sarah sounded peevish. “You haven’t checked in, you haven’t been online, and I was starting to worry.”
I sighed. “Mom put you up to this, didn’t she?”
“Your father, actually, but it’s still true. I hadn’t heard from you, the Covenant’s in town, I was worried. Then I thought, ‘Wait, there are these magical pocket telepathy machines that we all carry,’ and I dialed your phone. Ta-da.” The last was delivered, not with a flourish, but in a dust-dry deadpan.
“You’re a real comedian, Sarah.” I produced a throwing knife from inside my shirt and flicked it at the nearest dart board. It hit a little left of center. “What’s really on your mind?”
“How did it go with Dominic?”
My second throw went wild as her words forced me to finally think about what I’d been trying to avoid thinking about. I hate circuitous logic. Closing my eyes, I said, “Good and bad.”
“Good how?”
“He loves me.”
Sarah paused. “That’s good, right?”
“I just said it was good.”
“Do you love him?”
“That is a large and complicated question, affected by a great many outside factors, most of which are beyond my control.”
“Gosh.” She sounded almost impressed. Then: “That’s pretty much bullshit. I mean, even I can tell that’s pretty much bullshit, and I have the relationship sense of a wombat.”
“You just have biology issues. Your own species is made up entirely of sociopathic assholes, and Artie doesn’t know what to do with a girl who actually likes him, rather than just liking his pheromones.”
Sarah sighed deeply. “Tell me about it. Dominic loves you? Like, he said he loves you? In those words?”
“He told me he loved me, right before he told me to run, because he wouldn’t be able to protect me if the Covenant came back. Oh, and it gets better.”
“How does it get better than that?”
“There are three Covenant representatives in town. I should call Dad to get him to run dossiers on them.” That would mean telling him who they were, and that would mean telling him that we were up against family. “Two of them, I didn’t recognize their names. They’re not from any Covenant family I know.”
“Uh-huh,” said Sarah slowly. “Why do I get the feeling that behind door number three is something that’s going to explain your sudden radio silence?”
“The third is Margaret Healy.”
There was a long moment of awed silence before Sarah said, “Wow. When you decide to get into a bad situation, you don’t mess around, like, at all. Your boyfriend, who loves you, is totally hanging out with your evil cousin.”
“She’s not necessarily evil. Just misguided.”
“I’m on her magical hunter ‘kill it on sight’ list, so I think I get to call her evil if I want to,” Sarah countered.
I sighed, but I didn’t argue. She had a point.
According to the family record, there was a time when the Healys were the pride of the Covenant of St. George. They were faithful, they were devout, they bred like rabbits, and once they were aimed at a target, they killed without hesitation. They were the perfect monster hunting assassins. Dozens of my ancestors were canonized in the annals of the Covenant, heroes and heroines of the war they fought on mankind’s behalf.
They were demonized at the same time, recorded as monsters in the history of the world’s cryptids. There are two sides to every story, and history is a story like any other.
It wasn’t until my maternal great-great-grandfather came along that any of the Healys questioned the party line—and when they decided to start asking questions, they did it the way the Healys had been doing things for centuries: enthusiastically, and with suicidal levels of commitment.
It’s funny, but I sometimes wonder what the hell Great-Great-Grandpa Alexander was thinking. Every other defector we know of was motivated by something, love or death or a great epiphany in the field that changed everything. Great-Great-Grandpa did some research. That was all. He was trying to learn better ways to kill monsters, and what he found was something entirely different. He researched further, and when he didn’t like the things he found, he did more research. And then he not only threw away everything he’d ever worked for, he convinced my great-great-grandmother to do the same thing. We may be the only people in history to defect from their religious order not over a point of faith, but over footnotes.
