Seanan McGuire - Discount Armageddon

His breath was slow and easy. Whatever the snake cult had been doing to try to wake him up, it clearly wasn’t working. That was almost a pity. I might not be able to sweet-talk my way around snake cultists, but I was pretty sure “I know where you can get some girls” would have been a bargaining chip worth having.

One of the servitors pushing Istas suddenly snarled and jumped away from her gurney. I looked over, and smirked as I saw the blood running down her chin. “Get a little close, did you?” I called. He turned and hissed at me.

“Now, now,” said evil Santa. “There’s no call for that sort of behavior. You’re both about to assist us with a great undertaking.”

“Um, not so much, really. Snake cults are pretty passé. Couldn’t you have joined a swing dance club or something? Not to get overly personal or anything, but you could stand to lose a few pounds, and it would be a way to meet women that doesn’t involve stripping them naked and drawing on them.”

Santa scowled. “I see that you’re not going to be reasonable. Well, I suppose we can take care of that by letting you be the first one to leave us today. Marcus! Claude! Prepare the ritual circle.”

Me and my big mouth. Two of the men in brown ropes stepped forward to my gurney and wheeled me away from Istas, toward the slumbering dragon.

I estimated the ritual circle as about twelve feet in diameter when they wheeled me into it. It was drawn onto the rough stone floor with Sharpie, and looked like it had been retraced at least once in blood; the lines were rust-brown and irregular around the edges, like they’d been working with an uncooperative medium. It smelled like a half-dozen different kinds of blood—the sharp copper-iron of human, the slightly acidic bite of harpy, and the maple-sugar sweetness of Madhura. A bubble of fury rose in my chest, making me buck involuntarily against my restraints. I wanted to kill these people. I wanted to kill them all.

All I had to do was break through a bunch of institutional-strength leather straps and kick all their asses, naked, without a weapon. Somehow, I didn’t think this was going to be as easy as it sounded—a thought that was only reinforced when one of the figures in brown stepped forward, holding a bowl of deep ruby blood between her outstretched hands. I gaped at her.

“ Betty ?”

The dragon princess matriarch smiled her smug little Mae West smile as she asked, “You were expecting someone else?”

“But—”

“If I helped them, they left my girls alone. I’m sure you understand the importance of family in matters like this one.” She leaned over me, setting her bowl down on my stomach and dipping her fingers into the liquid. “Besides, I have a—shall we say, vested—interest in their success. Once that beautiful boy in there wakes up, everything will change.”

“Even if he’s being controlled by a snake cult?” I spat. “I thought we were on the same side here.”

“I’m on the side of whatever wakes the male,” she said, and began using her fingertips to trace over the symbols on my body in what was now indisputably blood. Leaning closer, she whispered, “Why else would I have given you the gold? You just had to go and tell Candice that this lovely buck was down here, and she told the Nest, because she didn’t know any better. I had to do something to show them I was serious about finding him—and giving you the gold meant you couldn’t be changed, only killed. You aren’t worthy of such a transmutation. What the Covenant stole from us will be restored, and you won’t have any part in it.”

I bit back the urge to scream. There it was again: the belief that we were still Covenant, that nothing my family had done since leaving could change the fact that once upon a time, we stayed. “You bitch.”

“Yes, dear, and I’ve had a very long time to practice.” She stroked bloody fingertips along my cheeks before moving down to work on my stomach and legs. Voice back to a normal conversational volume, she said, “This one will be ready in a moment.”

“Good,” declared another of the cultists. “We’ve never had a double sacrifice before, and I need to get up early tomorrow.”

“So sorry my death is going to inconvenience you, asshole,” I said.

He glared at me. “We’ve never had a human sacrifice before, either. Are we sure this won’t set us back?”

“Oh, no,” said evil Santa, while Betty painted arcane symbols along my thighs. “Her family was instrumental in the slaughter of the great dragons back when they still ruled the skies. Her death will be a signal that we truly mean our assurances of renewed dominion—that even as the dragon serves our interests, we shall serve the dragon’s.”

“Killing me won’t wake him up!” I snarled. “Dragons don’t run on the human sacrifice alarm clock model!”

Evil Santa cast a glance at Betty, who shook her head. “She’s lying,” she said.

“Even if it would wake him, do you people have, like, no concept of how mass works?” I asked. “How are you planning to get the dragon out from under the city? A forklift? Dig a really big pit in midtown and hope nobody notices the super-mega-size lizard before you’re ready? In case you’ve never seen a Godzilla movie, let me remind you that one fire-breathing monster versus a major metropolitan area never ends well for anybody.”

“We have more than ‘one fire-breathing monster,’” said evil Santa, and waved a hand to indicate the servitors. “We have an army of the blessed.”

“Stop arguing with the little bitch and kill her already,” snapped Betty, picking up her bowl of blood and stepping back from the gurney. “I’m going to develop a migraine if I have to listen to her much longer.”

“Know your place, you unnatural whore,” said Santa, in a mild, almost reasonable tone. Betty took another step backward, expression furious—but not, I realized, particularly surprised. When she got into bed with these people, she knew what she was doing.

“My apologies, master,” she said, her Mae West voice dripping with loathing.

“Don’t forget again.” Evil Santa stepped back, gesturing for the others to come closer. “The virgin is prepared to make her glorious journey into the abyss, to carry news of our faith and earnest plea for the dragon’s support! Soon, she—”

“Wait, wait,” I interrupted, involuntarily straining against the straps as I attempted to sit up. “You think I’m a what ?”

The snake cultists turned to stare at me with expressions ranging from sheer bafflement to anger. Several of them produced long, wicked-looking knives from inside their robes. The combination was just too much. Sagging back against the gurney, I burst out laughing.

The snake cultists had apparently never tried to deal with a sacrifice who laughed at them before, because my hysterical laughter threw them into utter chaos. Cultists swarmed around me, demanding to know what I was laughing about, demanding to know what I knew that they didn’t, and most of all, demanding I cut that out right now . Evil Santa seemed to get the picture, because he wheeled on Betty, cheeks going red with fury as he shouted, “You said she’d be a virgin! You assured us that she was a viable offering!”

“Just look at her!” said Betty, pointing a finger in my direction as she backpedaled rapidly away from him. “She looks just like her grandmother, and I know this family! There’s no way she’s not eligible!”

“Grandma did have sex eventually, or I wouldn’t be here,” I said, between gusts of laughter. “That’s what ‘grandparents’ means!”

Verity, are you there?