Covenant “purges” are legendary in most cryptid circles, including the ones my family moves in. The Covenant of Saint George sends in a team of their best men, and when the dust clears and the blood has been hosed off the streets, nothing inhuman remains standing. When Dominic had first arrived in Manhattan, I’d asked my father to look up any historical records relating to purges in the New York area. The things he’d been able to find were bad enough to give me nightmares for weeks, and that was saying something, given all the other nightmare fodder that particular summer had offered me.
Some people call the Covenant “monster hunters,” and if there’s anything that demonstrates how wrong that label really is, it’s the way they purge a city. True hunters spare the children and the pregnant females, allowing the population to remain stable. That’s how they ensure that they’ll always have something to hunt. The Covenant has no such concerns. They don’t wantto ensure that they’ll always have something to hunt. They want to wipe every breathing cryptid off the face of the planet. I don’t knowthat they give out merit badges for confirmed extinctions, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
The members of the Covenant aren’t monster hunters. They’re exterminators.
The phone rang for what seemed like forever but was probably only a few seconds. Then my father’s voice was in my ear, asking in that warm, familiar tone, “Why shouldn’t I hang up on you? You have five seconds.”
My family has been answering the home phone as rudely as possible for as long as I can remember. It’s a mechanism for screening calls without raising suspicion from the wrong quarters. As far as we’re concerned, that’s pretty much everyone who isn’t a relative or on the extremely short list labeled “allies.”
“Dad, it’s me,” I said.
“Verity!” he said, delighted. “That’s an excellent reason not to hang up on you. Hello, sweetheart. What’s going on? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“Yes. Normally, I would be. Daddy, there’s a problem.”
His tone sobered in an instant. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Honey, you don’t soundfine. Is it Sarah?”
“Not yet.” Any purge of Manhattan would naturally affect her . . . assuming the Covenant could find her. There’s nothing in this world or any other that hides as well as a cuckoo that doesn’t want to be found, and that includes the hidebehinds.
“Then what’s going on?”
“It’s the Covenant, Daddy.” I walked back to the couch and sat down, covering my face with my free hand. That helped, a little. Maybe if I stuck my head under something and waited patiently, the Covenant would go away. “Dominic says they’re coming to check his work. They want to see how far along he is in preparing the city for a purge. Which means the next step is either them figuring out that he isn’t prepared at all, or the Covenant starting the purge.”
There was a long pause before my father asked, “Did he tell you this?”
“Yes.”
“Is he there with you now?”
“No. I asked him to leave.”
There was another, longer pause. Finally, my father said, “I don’t think you should have done that.”
“What?” I straightened, pulling my hand away from my face. “Who are you, and what have you done with my father?”
“If he was willing to tell you that the team was coming—”
“—but not willing to stand up to the Covenant! Not willing to stop them from—”
“—then he may be willing to work with you to minimize the damage to the population.” My father’s tone was firm, and left little room for argument. He’s been in charge of our branch of the family since before I was born, and that means he’s had time to get very, very good at giving orders to people who aren’t very good at taking them. “I know it’s hard. I can tell that you feel betrayed right now.”
“Um, just a little. Why are you on his side?” I stood, pacing across the living room to the hallway door. The mice were finishing up their celebration. I stopped there, leaning against the wall and watching them. At least the mice could still find things to be happy about. “I thought we hated the Covenant.”
“I also thought you’d decided that Dominic deserved to be judged as an individual.”
I didn’t say anything.
Dad sighed. “Verity. Please. I’m glad you called me. That was the right thing to do, and I’ll do my best to get you some backup. But that doesn’t mean you can neglect the resources that you already have at hand. I’m not telling you to trust him. I’m telling you to use him, for as long as you possibly can.”
“Hold on a second,” I said, my stomach sinking. “Are you telling me that you mightbe able to send me backup, and that until then, I have to work with the man who may or may not be in the process of selling me out to the people we’ve been hiding from since before I was born?” I paused. “I lost track of that sentence somewhere in the middle. Dad, you can’t. You can’t expect me to work with him. Not now.”
“You have to.”
“I won’t.”
“Are you saying that because you think it’s the right thing to do, or because he hurt your feelings by not cutting ties with everything he’s ever known as soon as it came into conflict with what you wanted?” I didn’t have an answer for that, so I didn’t even try. Dad kept talking: “I know this is hard. I will do everything I can to get you the help you need. But Dominic is right there, Very, and he wouldn’t have told you if he didn’t want to help, at least a little.”
My voice was very small as I asked, “What if he doesn’t want to help me anymore? I turned him down hard.”
“Then we’ll figure something else out.”
“Okay.” I pushed away from the wall, turning my back on the mice. “What do I tell Sarah?”
“Tell her that she should come home. She has no business staying in that city while a purge is going on.”
I wanted to make a snarky comment about how he’d leave me to die while he evacuated my adopted cousin for her own good. I couldn’t do it because he was right. I was raised fighting, whether I wanted to or not. Sarah was raised doing her homework, obeying curfew, and trying to pass for human without constantly rearranging the brains of the people around her. She could keep herself out of sight better than damn near anyone else in the world, but she wouldn’t be any help if things got really bad.
“I’ll tell her,” I said, quietly. “I can’t promise that she’ll listen.”
“Of course not,” he said, and laughed. “She’s a member of this family, isn’t she?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “She is.”
Dad and I talked for a few minutes after that, but if anything of substance was discussed, I didn’t remember it after I hung up. All I really remembered was the tone of his voice, struggling to reassure me without letting his own panic show. It’s times like that that make me wish my parents were just a little better at lying to me. It would be nice to have them say, “Don’t worry, honey, everything’s under control,” and actually be able to make myself believe them.
I found myself back in the kitchen doorway, watching the mouse acolytes as they dutifully cleaned up the remains of their celebration. I don’t really understand the full details of the Aeslin religious structure. I don’t think anyone human—or even demi-human, like Sarah or my Uncle Ted—can. The logic of the Aeslin is not like our Earth logic.
One of the acolytes noticed my observation and straightened, tiny oil-drop eyes fixed on me in rapt fascination. “Priestess,” it said, solemnly. “I am Blessed by your Observance.”
Nobody pronounces capital letters like an Aeslin mouse. “Hey,” I said. “Do you know when the night prayers will be over? I need to talk to the Head Priest at some point.”
“The Catechism of the Patient Priestess is to be recited tonight,” said the acolyte. “It should conclude with the sunrise. Would you like me to go to the Head Priest, and request his Attendance upon your Holiness?”