Seanan McGuire - Discount Armageddon

I counted to ten, waiting for the sound of footsteps coming back in my direction. When that didn’t happen, I started trying to flex my fingers and toes, feeling very much like I’d just been cast in an unnecessary remake of Kill Bill . The tingling was getting stronger. It didn’t take long before my toes twitched in answer to my command, followed by my fingers, and then my hands. Sensation began rushing back into my skin so rapidly that it bordered on painful. I gritted my teeth, just glad that I could grit my teeth, and kept trying to get my body to respond.

The return of physical connection brought a host of information in its wake. I was definitely strapped down, not tied, since whatever was holding me in place was leathery-smooth (and given the suit my captor had been wearing, possibly real leather). I was also naked, or close enough as to make no difference, because the leather straps were pressing down directly against my skin. Three straps for my legs, one for my waist, one for my torso, and another for my shoulders. I had to give the snake cult this much, if nothing else; whoever was in charge of securing the sacrifices definitely did a bang-up job.

Someone groaned to my right. I turned toward the sound—abstractly pleased to realize that I could turn toward the sound—and saw Istas. She was strapped to a metal gurney, naked, with arcane symbols drawn in Sharpie all up and down the length of her body. The same symbols I’d found on Piyusha. Her hair was back in its sleek little girl pigtails, making the sight of her even more surreal.

She groaned again before licking her lips and whispering, eyes still closed, “Did we lose because of improper tactical behavior?”

“No.” I was trying to speak softly, but my voice came out as a whisper even fainter than Istas’. Lingering paralysis of the vocal cords, most likely. “We lost because that asshole we work for decided to sell us out.”

“Oh, good.” Istas’ shoulders tensed as she tried to move. The tension passed quickly, with no real visible effect. “I will enjoy removing his insides and displaying them to him as a part of his outsides.” She paused, considering, before she added, “I believe I will wear his liver as a hat.”

“Okay, well, good, that’s a goal,” I agreed slowly. “First we need to get loose. Then we can think about internal organ haberdashery. Can you change shapes?”

“I do not know.” Istas tensed again, the muscles in her neck visibly bulging as they twisted into a new formation. Then the skin smoothed out again as she sagged, chest moving in rapid, if shallow, heaves. “… no. I cannot.”

“Okay. Well, thanks for trying.” I could feel my shoulders again. I pulled them upward, feeling the drag as the leather straps caught my wrists. I was still feeling weak and disconnected from my body, but I could move it, and that was enough.

Growing up in my family meant ambushes on your birthday, crossbows for Christmas, and games of dodge ball where the balls were occasionally rigged to explode. It also meant learning how to work your way out of a wide variety of death traps. Failure to get loose on your own could lead to missing dinner, or worse, being forced to admit that you missed dinner because your baby sister had tied you to the couch. Again.

The leather straps were probably intended to keep us from bruising ourselves. Maybe sacrifices are like apples—they go bad when they’re bruised. Whatever the reason, leather was better than rope, since it wasn’t as likely to rip my skin off when I started squirming. I went as limp as I could, letting the remains of the Tooth Fairy dust do the majority of the work for me. By breathing out until my lungs ached, I was able to get almost a half an inch of give between myself and the leather. With this accomplished, I pointed my toes and began to pull.

I had to stop twice to breathe. The second time, I caught Istas with her head canted to the side, watching me intently. I offered her a wan smile and kept working.

Ballroom dancing teaches strength, stamina, and above all, flexibility. I gave my left leg one last firm tug and pulled my calf free of the two lower leather straps. After a pause to take a deeper breath I repeated the trick, this time pulling my right calf free. Most of me was still pinned, but now that I’d managed to get things started—

“Well, aren’t you the industrious one?” A hand slapped down on my shoulder. I tilted my head back, unsurprised to see that the well-dressed snake cultist was back. He beamed at me like a demented Santa Claus, giving a small shake of his head as he said, “My dear, you really are astonishing. It’s a pity someone with your training and potential has to … well, you can stop fighting now. It was a lovely try, but it simply wasn’t lovely enough. Boys!”

The hissing that greeted his call told me what was coming even before the first servitor came into view. It was limping, and the look it was directing toward me seemed to have more than the usual dose of reptilian menace. “I think we’ve met,” I said.

“Oh, you’ve met several of the boys,” said evil Santa, pulling his hand away from my shoulder. “It’s good to have the family together like this, isn’t it? Boys, take them to the Chamber of the Dragon.”

The servitors made sure to strap my legs down tight before they moved the gurney. The muscles in Istas’ neck bulged again when they began pushing her toward the door. That was the only visible change in her anatomy, and it passed quickly. Tooth Fairy dust must have a more incapacitating effect on waheela physiology, because I felt almost back to normal. Still a little shaky, and doubly naked without my weapons, but still, almost back to normal.

The servitors pushed our gurneys down a sewer tunnel that looked like it had been constructed and abandoned sometime in the early 1800s. The clacking of their claws and the rattle of the gurney wheels echoed off the rounded walls until it was impossible to estimate how many servitors there were. It could have been the six I’d managed to count; it could have been sixty. Not that it really mattered with Istas and me both strapped down, but miracles have happened before, and as Mom always says, no miracle has ever come off without assistance.

The room at the end of the tunnel made the chamber we’d woken up in seem small. The walls were natural stone, carved out of the rock by time and erosion, rather than by human intervention. People in long brown robes stood in a loose cluster up ahead of us, clearly waiting for our arrival. And behind them, with his massive head resting on his crossed forelimbs, slept the last of the male dragons.

My breath caught in my throat, all thoughts of captivity and impending sacrifice replaced by awe. Since the dragons supposedly went extinct before photography was a factor, none of the books or field guides came with anything other than drawings of dragons, and half the time those drawings couldn’t agree with each other, much less present a reliable picture of what dragons were really like. The number of limbs, the number of wings, even the number of heads was a subject for debate. At least one early Covenant bestiary showed the dragon as some sort of super-sized naga, with the dragon princess being nothing but a lure growing out of its tail. So it’s not a surprise that I was unprepared for the reality of what was in front of me. There was no way I could have been prepared.

The dragon’s head was shaped like a raptor-type dinosaur’s, assuming you like your Velociraptors super-sized; it was easily the size of a small car, covered in pearly green scales that managed to look delicate, despite being the size of dinner plates. His eyes were closed, but judging by the size of his eyelids, they were each somewhat larger than a bowling ball. He had hands—huge hands, covered in scales and ending in talons, but hands all the same—and a long, serpentine neck that led to the immense bulk of his body. His wings were furled like broken umbrellas along the length of his spine. There was no possible way they could have supported him … but maybe that was part of what got the dragons killed. Maybe the males were only mobile when they were young, before they outgrew the potential span of their own wings. They couldn’t start off too big, or the dragon princesses would never have been able to bear them.