you my intention is purely to assist.”
“Next time, assist me by not setting snares on the rooftop, okay?” I ignored his hand and levered myself upright, gingerly testing to see how much weight I could put on my left ankle. The answer: not enough. I’d had worse injuries both in the field and on the dance floor, but a banged-up ankle is never an asset. “Ow.”
“I assure you, ma’am, your capture was not my intention.”
“What was your intention? That thing’s too big for pigeons, and you’re not likely to catch many rats up here.”
An expression of distaste flashed across his face. He was decent-looking when he wasn’t scowling like that; he had a good, strong bone structure, dark eyes, and hair that was either black or a deep enough brown that the low light stole its color entirely. Even standing six inches taller than me made him short by American standards, but perfectly reasonable by mine, and he was built like the men I usually danced with: lean and solid-looking. I knew he had to be reasonably strong. He’d managed not to drop me when he untied the snare.
“There are things, ma’am, that it is perhaps better of which you do not know.”
“Hold on.” I studied him, narrowing my eyes. The formal language. The snare. The holy water. The duster, stereotypical uniform of the “monster hunters” of the world. “Things it is perhaps better of which I do not know?”
“There are more things in Heaven and in Earth—”
I raised a hand, cutting him off. “First, do not quoteShakespeare at me. I get that quite enough from my grandma. Second, what are you doing here?”
He narrowed his eyes in turn, the expression barely visible with the flashlight pointed in my direction. “I don’t think I have to answer the questions of a strange woman who stumbles into my snares and refuses to give me her name,” he said.
I looked back toward the thing he’d been dragging when he first appeared. Before he had a chance to stop me, I half-limped over to where it had been dropped. It looked like an old brown sack at first, until I turned it over with my foot and saw the ahool’s characteristically apelike face snarling up at me. Its eyes were glazed with death.
“Miss—”
“You killed it,” I said numbly. “You killed the ahool.”
“You … know this fell beast?” His steps slowed, taking on a newly cautious edge. “You asked what I was doing here. Perhaps I should be asking you the same.”
“You killed it. It was just—just being an ahool, minding its own business, and you
killed
it! I mean, sure, eventually, that business might have included biting people, and then it would need to be relocated or exterminated, but you didn’t need to just
kill
it! Not without observing it and making sure it didn’t have a whole flock of buddies that would swarm and eat us both!”
“Miss.” Dominic’s footsteps stopped entirely. His voice was hard. “Who
are
you?”
“You killed it.” The urge to shoot him was overwhelming. Only a lifetime of etiquette lessons and the irritating fact that he was probably wearing some sort of body armor stopped me. I turned to face him. “You’re with the Covenant, aren’t you?”
I might as well have shot him from the way he recoiled. He took a step backward, one hand going to his hip and pulling a nasty looking hunting knife from a previously hidden scabbard. “How do you know that?”
“Simple.” Ioffered a sweet, sunny, entirely insincere smile, trying to pretend that I wasn’t standing in front of a dead cryptid that had been needlessly slaughtered in
my
city. “My name’s Verity Price. Now what the hell are you doing in Manhattan?”
No one knows exactly when the organization that became the Covenant was founded. Their ranks included a lot of scholars and scribes, but records get lost, libraries have a tendency to burn down—especially when the libraries belong to a secret society that goes around harassing dragons for fun—and if you give
“Next time, assist me by not setting snares on the rooftop, okay?” I ignored his hand and levered myself upright, gingerly testing to see how much weight I could put on my left ankle. The answer: not enough. I’d had worse injuries both in the field and on the dance floor, but a banged-up ankle is never an asset. “Ow.”
“I assure you, ma’am, your capture was not my intention.”
“What was your intention? That thing’s too big for pigeons, and you’re not likely to catch many rats up here.”
An expression of distaste flashed across his face. He was decent-looking when he wasn’t scowling like that; he had a good, strong bone structure, dark eyes, and hair that was either black or a deep enough brown that the low light stole its color entirely. Even standing six inches taller than me made him short by American standards, but perfectly reasonable by mine, and he was built like the men I usually danced with: lean and solid-looking. I knew he had to be reasonably strong. He’d managed not to drop me when he untied the snare.
“There are things, ma’am, that it is perhaps better of which you do not know.”
“Hold on.” I studied him, narrowing my eyes. The formal language. The snare. The holy water. The duster, stereotypical uniform of the “monster hunters” of the world. “Things it is perhaps better of which I do not know?”
“There are more things in Heaven and in Earth—”
I raised a hand, cutting him off. “First, do not quoteShakespeare at me. I get that quite enough from my grandma. Second, what are you doing here?”
He narrowed his eyes in turn, the expression barely visible with the flashlight pointed in my direction. “I don’t think I have to answer the questions of a strange woman who stumbles into my snares and refuses to give me her name,” he said.
I looked back toward the thing he’d been dragging when he first appeared. Before he had a chance to stop me, I half-limped over to where it had been dropped. It looked like an old brown sack at first, until I turned it over with my foot and saw the ahool’s characteristically apelike face snarling up at me. Its eyes were glazed with death.
“Miss—”
“You killed it,” I said numbly. “You killed the ahool.”
“You … know this fell beast?” His steps slowed, taking on a newly cautious edge. “You asked what I was doing here. Perhaps I should be asking you the same.”
“You killed it. It was just—just being an ahool, minding its own business, and you
killed
it! I mean, sure, eventually, that business might have included biting people, and then it would need to be relocated or exterminated, but you didn’t need to just
kill
it! Not without observing it and making sure it didn’t have a whole flock of buddies that would swarm and eat us both!”
“Miss.” Dominic’s footsteps stopped entirely. His voice was hard. “Who
are
you?”
“You killed it.” The urge to shoot him was overwhelming. Only a lifetime of etiquette lessons and the irritating fact that he was probably wearing some sort of body armor stopped me. I turned to face him. “You’re with the Covenant, aren’t you?”
I might as well have shot him from the way he recoiled. He took a step backward, one hand going to his hip and pulling a nasty looking hunting knife from a previously hidden scabbard. “How do you know that?”
“Simple.” Ioffered a sweet, sunny, entirely insincere smile, trying to pretend that I wasn’t standing in front of a dead cryptid that had been needlessly slaughtered in
my
city. “My name’s Verity Price. Now what the hell are you doing in Manhattan?”
No one knows exactly when the organization that became the Covenant was founded. Their ranks included a lot of scholars and scribes, but records get lost, libraries have a tendency to burn down—especially when the libraries belong to a secret society that goes around harassing dragons for fun—and if you give
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