Now she stared at me. “I didn’t figure you for a sicko.”
“I’m not,” I said. “Some of those symbols look familiar. I want to send the pictures to my dad, see whether he recognizes them.” They looked a lot like the symbols William’s captors had been using when they were sacrificing virgins in his name. Not identical, but similar enough that alarms were going off at the back of my brain.
William had been the living target of a snake cult that wanted to turn him into their devoted servant before they woke him up. No, they didn’t realize what a bad idea that was, and if they had, they probably wouldn’t have cared. People who think of virgins as a renewable resource are not usually the sort of people who listen to reason. Snake cults were bad news. I’d be happier if I didn’t have to deal with one.
Malena shook her head and stuck her hands to the wall, boosting herself up Spider-Man style. She still looked mostly human. There was something unusual about her hands, and her feet were almost twice as long as they should have been, with an oddly flexible bend at the pad of the toes, but those were still morphologically possible. The orange-and-black scales unfurling along her shoulder blades and circling her wrists were harder to explain away.
She got her feet braced against the wall and scuttled along it, quick and nimble as a gecko, to thrust her hand out toward me. “Give me the phone,” she snapped.
“Get as close as you can,” I said, handing it over. Seeing her sticking to the wall like that was both disorienting and envy-inducing. If I had been able to wall-crawl, there would never have been a day when I couldn’t be found lurking on the ceiling. Never.
Malena nodded before she scuttled up the wall toward the ceiling and began snapping pictures.
I turned back to Pax. “Did anyone see you come down here?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I was talking with Malena, and everybody else went on ahead. She’s a real nice girl, you know? And I figured we should stick together, since we’re both therianthropes and all.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Did you smell blood on any of the people who passed you? Specifically, did you smell this blood?”
He shook his head again. “No, and believe me, I would have noticed. Blood is the sort of thing that attracts my attention.” He cast another uneasy glance at the bodies, and I realized I was reading his expression wrong. It wasn’t discomfort born of squeamishness.
It was discomfort born of hunger.
“We have steaks in the fridge at home,” I said quietly. “I can keep Lyra distracted while you bolt one of them raw.”
“Can you make that two?” he asked, still looking at the bodies.
I elbowed him, pulling the motion at the last second so that he was barely grazed. “Hey, I thought humans didn’t taste good.”
“They don’t,” he said. “It’s just . . . there’s so much blood.”
“Pax, do you need to leave?” I watched him out of the corner of my eye, looking for any sign that he was about to lose control. I didn’t feel like following the discovery of two bodies with a fight against one of my best friends in this competition. I’d do it if I had to. “Malena and I have things under control here.”
“What are you going to do?”
This was the awful part. Well. The latest awful part in a long line of awful parts that had spanned most of my life. “The three of us are going to go cram ourselves into the car with Lyra and Anders, and we’re not going to tell anyone what happened here. I hate to do it, but we have to leave the bodies for the janitorial staff to find.”
“What? Why?”
I looked up. Malena was sticking to the ceiling directly over the bodies, my phone still clutched in one half-taloned hand. She was staring at me, expression aghast.
“Because you and Pax aren’t human, and I’m here under an assumed name,” I said. “I don’t think any of us wants the kind of scrutiny that comes with this sort of discovery. Maybe more importantly, at least for me, I need to get those pictures to my dad. Spending hours explaining what happened to the police is going to delay that, and someone else could get hurt.”
The janitorial staff would find and report the bodies before we had to come back to this theater. Dumping the situation on their heads was a shitty thing to do, but that didn’t change the necessity of it, or the sensibility of distancing the three of us from things as fast as we possibly could. Hopefully, Adrian had a good medical plan for his employees, and the people who found the bodies would be able to get some therapy after the fact.
Sometimes I felt like I needed some therapy after the fact. It was really too bad that was never going to happen.
“You’re cold as hell, dancing girl,” said Malena. She scuttled from the ceiling back to the wall and down to the floor, where she offered back my phone.
“I sort of have to be.” I tucked the phone into my pocket. “You didn’t panic when I walked in, so I’m assuming Pax told you I was a friend. Did he tell you why?”
“I was sort of busy hoping he wouldn’t go all SyFy Saturday on me and bite my head off,” said Malena.
“All those shark-themed monster movies are racial discrimination,” grumbled Pax. He sounded a bit more like himself, and a bit less like he was going to start licking blood off the floor. I had to take that as a good thing.
“Yes, they are, and that was a sensible concern, Malena,” I said. I held my hands where she could see them and be certain I wasn’t reaching for a weapon, as I said, “My name isn’t Valerie Pryor. It’s Verity Price.”
Slowly, Malena blinked. “Verity Price.”
“Yes.”
“As in, you’re a Price.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t suppose you’re secretly the granddaughter of Vincent Price, and you’re just hiding your celebrity pedigree?”
She sounded so hopeful that I sort of hated to let her down. Sadly . . . “No. I’m the daughter of Kevin Price. I’m a cryptozoologist. Sorry about that.”
“Oh, great. ‘I’m just going to go on reality television again, no big deal,’ she said, right before she wound up in a room with two corpses, a hungry shark-man, and a member of the Covenant of St. George.” Malena shook her head. “I should’ve stayed in the desert.”
“I don’t belong to the Covenant,” I protested. “My family quit generations before I was born. I’m on your side, and that’s why I’m saying we need to get out of here. We can read about this on the Internet tomorrow.” And I could wait a few days before bribing someone for the autopsy results. That would tell me how worried I needed to be.
I was pretty sure that I needed to be extremely worried.
Cramming five people into one of the town cars supplied for our use was easy once we put Pax in the front seat. He had the longest legs. More importantly, he was still light-headed from all the blood he’d been inhaling, and by putting him closer to the air conditioning, I hoped he could clear his head a little.
The party was raging in the courtyard when we got to the apartments—and I do mean raging. The celebration after the eliminations was always loud, enthusiastic, and guaranteed to leave more than a few dancers to face the next morning with hangovers. But we’d made it through another cruel cut, and the urge to rejoice was strong. Anders and Lyra tumbled out of the car already cheering and pumping their arms in the air. They took off running, leaving me, Pax, and Malena to watch them go.
“I don’t think I can do this,” said Malena, as the car drove away behind us.
“You have to, if you don’t want to blow your cover,” I said. “Pax and I will go up to the apartment so he can bolt a steak and I can contact my family. You’re going to head for the party and watch to see whether anyone is behaving oddly.”
Malena turned to stare at me. “What the hell makes you think I’m helping you with this? I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That doesn’t mean I’ve been recruited.”
>
“Kinda does,” I said apologetically. “Just see whether anyone’s being weird.” One of the jazz dancers had apparently been a cheerleader in a past life, and was organizing a human pyramid. “Weirder than usual,” I amended.
“Do you really think one of us did this?” asked Malena.
“No,” I said. “But we’re going to need to know that for sure.” Dancers wanted to dance more than they wanted to do anything else. Killing people would distract from the dancing. Whoever had done this, I didn’t think we were going to find them here—and yet I needed to be sure, which meant we needed to start watching our surroundings.
“I thought I was supposed to be able to relax when I wasn’t in the bottom three,” muttered Malena, and stalked off toward the revels.
“Come on,” I said to Pax.
No one came to ask us where we were going or why we weren’t coming to the party as we made our way upstairs. We’d pay for that in the morning, when the main breakfast conversation was about whether or not we’d hooked up. That was fine: we could weather a few rumors more easily than we could weather Pax having an incident and eating half the dancers.
He made a beeline for the fridge once we reached the apartment. I kept going, making my way back to the bedroom I shared with Lyra. We both had laptops on our nightstands. Mine had a pink shell, and was covered in sparkly stickers. I ignored it as I dropped to my knees next to my bed, reached under the mattress, and pulled out a sleek, steel-colored notebook computer. It wasn’t as big or as powerful as a full-sized laptop. I couldn’t use it to manipulate graphics or play games. But it was small, it was fast, and best of all, it was equipped with its own wireless hotspot, thanks to the tireless efforts of my cousin Artie.
Pax was still rattling around in the kitchen when I returned. I sat on the living room floor, balancing the notebook on my crossed ankles, and activated the wireless. It would use the local cellular signals to boost itself, allowing me to get messages out without Adrian’s network IT people seeing them. That was important. Somehow, I didn’t think transmitting a bunch of bloody corpses over the Crier Inc. network connection would have been good for my career.
My lifestyle has equipped me with a variety of interesting skills and coping mechanisms. As it turns out, knowing how to word the “Hey, Dad, found some unexpected corpses in the basement of my dance show, can you check them” email was not one of those skills. I finally wrote a quick line warning him about gory contents and asking whether he could tell me anything about the runes cut into the bodies. Dad would be able to take it from there.
He took it faster than expected. My phone rang only a few seconds after I hit “send.” The caller ID showed unknown number. I answered.
“Hello?”
“Where did you find those bodies?”
“Hi, Dad.” Just hearing his voice was enough to relax me. He would know what to do next. He always did. “In the basement of the theater. Those are the two contestants who got eliminated tonight.”
“You need to get out of there.”
He always knew what to do, and I always refused to do it. “Why?”
“Because those runes are intended to summon a snake god, and if the snake cultists are carving them into dead people, I’d rather they not decide to carve them into you.”
I leaned back until my shoulders rested against the arm of the couch. “See, and that’s why I can’t leave. I don’t think we can convince Adrian to shut down the show—officially, the bodies haven’t been found yet. Maybe when they are, he’ll decide this is too dangerous, but I think he’s just going to turn it into a bid for better ratings. Dancing for our fallen comrades and all that. Right now, I’m the only one here who could potentially make things better.”
“I don’t like the thought of you out there without backup. Your mother and I—”
“Are so not coming out here,” I interrupted. “You have work to do, and there’s nowhere for you to crash. Besides, I have backup. Dominic is here. The local cryptids include a chupacabra, an Ukupani, and a whole Nest of dragons that really wants to stay on my good side. I’ll be fine.”
“That isn’t enough,” he said. “These runes aren’t amateur work, like the ones you found in the sewer. Someone has been working for a long time to bring their god to this plane of existence.”
“Do you even know which god?” Pax stuck his head out of the kitchen, mouth bloody and eyes wide. I covered the receiver with one hand and mouthed “snake god” exaggeratedly at him. He looked blank, shrugged, and withdrew back into the kitchen. I uncovered the receiver. “Because there are a lot of snake gods out there. Maybe they’re summoning Uncle Naga, and we can have a fun chat about how dance proves that bipeds have too much nervous energy. Again.”
(Uncle Naga was a very nice, well, naga from a parallel dimension. His real name was unpronounceable by humans. He’d originally been summoned by a snake cult to eat my grandmother when she was a kid. Being a respectable professor of extra-dimensional studies who didn’t believe in eating people he could have conversations with, he’d declined and has been a friend of the family ever since. And this is why we don’t invite strangers over for Thanksgiving.)
“Naga cannot be summoned using these runes,” said Dad. “Honestly, I’m not sure what can be summoned using these runes, only that I’d rather you not meet it face-to-face, and especially not without backup.”
“Already told you, I have backup,” I said. “I just need you to find out whatever you can about these runes, and pass it along, so my backup and I have a better chance of staying alive.”
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “The two people who were eliminated tonight, they weren’t the first, were they?”
“See, you say that, but I know you’ve been watching the show,” I said. “I know because your mice have been sending Facebook messages to my mice. They really like the caps lock key. Someone should teach them about proper email etiquette.”
“Thanks for volunteering,” he said, before he sobered and asked, “The other people who have been eliminated . . . are they all right? Has anyone talked to them?”
I didn’t drop the phone. I may as well have. My mouth going slack, I stared off into the distance, considering the terrible implications of his words. Because we hadn’t heard from them, had we? Danny—he’d been eliminated in week three. He was a ballroom boy. We should have swarmed him with hugs, covered him with kisses, and sent him infinite supportive messages on social media. That was part of how this worked. You made a fuss over the outgoing contestants to remind America that you were still there, still alive and kicking. And we hadn’t done it.
Why not? Where the hell were they?
“Verity? Are you still there?” Dad’s voice turned sharp. “If you’re in distress, breathe in sharply twice. We’ll find a way to get help to you.”
“I’m fine, Daddy,” I said. The last thing I wanted was for my father to start mobilizing the troops. He’d start with Dominic—that was fine—but there was no telling where he would go from there. “I was just thinking about what you said. I wasn’t close to any of the people who’ve been eliminated. My season is intact. But it’s still weird that I haven’t spoken to any of them. I’ll look into it.”
“See to it that you do,” said Dad, and sighed. “You know, Verity, when you told us that ballroom dance was your life’s true passion, I thought it meant you would be safer than your brother. Basements full of bodies sort of go against that.”
“I am safer than my brother,” I protested. “I haven’t been bitten by a werewolf or turned to stone. Compared to Alex, I’m little Susie Safety.”
He chuckled ruefully. “I wish that weren’t reassuring. All right: your mother and I will stay here. But I’m sending backup, and you’re going to accept it, or I’m coming down there and carrying you home.”
“What kind of back—” I began.
It was too late. He had a
lready hung up.
I dropped my phone on the carpet and began hitting my head against the couch. It was soothing. I was still hitting my head against the couch when Pax emerged from the kitchen again. He walked across the room to loom over me, a concerned expression on his face.
“It didn’t go well?” he asked.
I stopped hitting my head against the couch. “Dad says the runes are intended to summon a snake god, although he doesn’t know which one, and that they’re really old, which means they have a better chance of working. So he’s sending me backup, because apparently what I already have here is not sufficient. He also says we should be checking up on everyone else who’s been eliminated, because that’s the sort of thought that helps me sleep at night.”
“I see.” Pax sat down on the couch, still looking down at me. “What’s a snake god?”
I blinked. “Okay, that was something I hadn’t considered. Um. So most major human and cryptid religions have snakes in them somewhere. There’s the whole Garden of Eden shtick, the Rainbow Serpent, Medusa, all that fun stuff. And maybe that’s because of monomyths and things like that—ask my mother if you ever want to have your ear talked off—and maybe it’s because all religions are a little bit right, but it’s at least partially because there are a really disturbing number of dimensions filled with nothing but snakes.”
“Snakes,” said Pax slowly.
“Yup, snakes. You know how dimensions work, right?”
He looked at me blankly.
“You . . . don’t know how dimensions work?”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised,” he said, sitting up straighter. “I bet you don’t know how the benthic zones of the sea function, but I understand them intimately.”
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