Chaos Choreography (40 page)

“How the fuck do we kill it?”

Hearing her say “we” was like a shock to my system. Here I was, just standing there, staring at the giant snake as if it was someone else's problem. Well, it wasn't. It was my problem, because I was in the building, and if there's one thing I've learned from my family history, it's that sometimes responsibility and proximity are the same damn thing.

“Get to my grandmother,” I snapped. “I need a gun.”

“On it.” Malena took off at a run, seeming to turn inside out as soon as she reached full speed. She hit the stage on all fours, slick black-and-orange hide gleaming like oil in the light. Some more people screamed. It was hard to know whether that was due to her, or due to the giant monster snake. Sometimes “why” doesn't matter as much as we might want it to.

The snake was back in a holding pattern, swaying as it reared back to its original height. I needed more help. The edge of the stage was only about ten yards behind me. Careful to move slowly enough that I wouldn't attract unwanted attention, I took a half-step backward and turned.

Pax met my eyes without hesitation, like he'd been waiting for my cue. I nodded. He stepped onto the stage.

Jessica grabbed his arm.

“I don't think so, shark-boy,” she said. There was a gun in her free hand. Where did Jessica get a gun? More importantly, why was she holding it on Pax? He stopped, staring at her.

I started to take a step. Jessica turned her head, smiling sweetly.

“Move, and I'll blow his head off,” she said. “He's not human—did you know that? He's some sort of monster. But even monsters need skulls. They get squishy and sad without them.”

“You're one of the snake cultists,” I said. It made so much sense that I was almost ashamed of myself for not seeing it sooner—and actually ashamed of the snake cult for recruiting someone so
obvious
.

Then a gun cocked behind me, and I turned again to
find Clint holding a pistol only a few feet away. The snake was still swaying behind him, although it seemed to have lost interest in wreaking havoc on the theater. Anders was down on his hands and knees, using Lyra's blood to paint more runes on the stage.

“Oh,” I said. “You, too.”

“We don't like the term ‘snake cult,'” said Clint. “It's pejorative and retrograde. We prefer ‘dimensional capitalists.' We're going to be kings when this thing settles down and realizes who's in charge.”

“No one's in charge of a snake god,” I said. “That's where you people always screw up.” There were a few drops of blood on the collar of his shirt. It was Lindy's, it had to be. She'd had time to bleed before the giant snake swallowed her. “God, Clint, why? I liked you.”

“Why did you have to be a nosy parker who stuck her nose where it didn't belong? I liked you, too, Val. You're a good dancer. You've got a great ass. But you can't just go hiring inter-dimensional bounty hunters because you want to get an edge in the competition.”

I blinked. Clint smirked.

Everything suddenly made a hell of a lot of sense.

Alice had a reputation in certain circles: she was, after all, an apparently ageless, extremely violent woman who traveled from dimension to dimension with a large supply of knives, grenades, and chocolate chip cookies. Clint had only ever seen me as Valerie. He'd have no reason to think Alice had a granddaughter, much less suspect the granddaughter was me. If Alice was here, and keeping company with me—something Jessica and Anders would both have reported to him by now—I must have hired her. If I was hiring muscle with dimension-traveling capabilities, I must be trying to cheat.

The fact that a
snake cultist
was passing judgment on my ethics would have been funny, if not for the part where he was holding a gun to my head. “You know, if you have a problem with my hiring decisions, you should also have a problem with murder and summoning giant snakes through the stage floor.”

“It's the cost of doing business, sweetie,” said Clint. He adjusted his aim, keeping the muzzle trained on my heart.

Costuming is going to be pissed
, I thought nonsensically. Aloud, I said, “Now would be nice.”

Clint blinked. “I thought you'd beg for your life, not for a bullet.”

I smiled. “Who said I was talking to you?”

There was a scream from behind me, high, shrill, and feminine. Clint's eyes darted in that direction. It was a natural response: anyone human would have had trouble not looking in the direction of that scream, which was filled with pain and terror.

Well. Anyone human who didn't know that it was caused by an Ukupani biting off the hand that threatened him. Knowing Pax wasn't human and seeing him suddenly twist and distort into an eight-foot-tall bipedal shark-beast was probably pretty damn surprising.

Judging by the look on Clint's face half a heartbeat later, it wasn't as surprising as my kicking the gun out of his hand. It flew across the stage, landing out of reach of either one of us.

“I'm a
tango dancer
, you
asshole
,” I snarled, and kicked him in the face. I was wearing four-inch heels. Blood spurted from his nose in a hot red gush that reminded me too clearly of the flood from Lyra's slit throat, so I kicked him again, harder. We generally make it a rule not to kill humans, but if a few bone slivers found their way into this dick's brain, I wasn't going to lose any sleep over it.

Jessica was still screaming. I started to turn, to order Pax to shut her up—through whatever means necessary, which sure, could mean decapitation, but I was out of fucks to give—when I saw the snake moving out of the corner of my eye, drawing back to strike.

There was only a second for me to make my decision, and I chose the path most likely to end with my survival. “Pax!
Move!
” I shouted, diving to the side. The snake slammed down on the stage a second later, striking
unerringly for the sound of screaming and the smell of blood.

Jessica stopped screaming. That was a mercy. My shout had given Clint time to move out of the way; when the snake pulled back again, he was still standing, glaring at me with blood on his face and shirtfront and hatred in his eyes.

“Catch!” Malena's voice came from above. I stuck my hand out, and the gun dropped into it. The weight was a great comfort. The feeling of the safety clicking off was an even greater comfort.

“Thanks!” I called. “Any eyes on Dominic?”

“Other side of the stage,” said Malena.

The snake was rising back into position, head moving back and forth with increasing speed as it took in the situation. It was recovering from whatever disorientation accompanied its passage through the wall between worlds; soon, it would be back to whatever served as normal for a massive fucking snake, and then we were going to have to deal with it.

I was fast. The striking snake was faster. Once I started moving, I was going to have to keep on going. “Pax, I need you,” I called.

The Ukupani's footsteps sounded like flippers slapping against the wood. I turned to the massive shark/human hybrid as soon as he was close enough, and said, “I need you to throw me at the snake.”

Pax no longer had eyebrows, or the sort of face that transmitted human emotions well, but he didn't need them for his dismay to show. I found myself grateful that he couldn't talk, either. If I had to explain myself to him, he might try to stop me, and I didn't see another way through this—not without risking a hell of a lot of people who hadn't had any idea this was going on. It had only been a few minutes since the snake broke through the stage, and two people were dead. Sure, Jessica may have deserved it, but not Lindy. I had to move. I had to act. And as soon as I did, I trusted my family to have my back.

“Seriously,” I said. “Throw me.”

Pax shook his head in pantomime disbelief. Then he knelt, forming a basket with his hands. I shoved the gun into the back of my dress, anchoring it as best I could, before running at him, my heels like gunshots on the polished stage floor.

My foot hit his hand and I was in the air, launched by all the force an eight-foot, four-hundred-pound Ukupani could generate.

Please realize what I'm doing,
I thought.
Please follow this lead.

I couldn't blame them if they didn't. I
wouldn't
blame them if they didn't, because I would be dead, and dead women aren't usually big on slinging blame around—well, except for a few of my relatives.

The sound of me hitting the side of a giant snake from another dimension was surprisingly mundane, the same dry slap I used to hear when my father dropped a leg of lamb on the counter. I'd expected something more exciting. There wasn't time to dwell on it: I had to scramble to get a handhold on its rough-edged scales, cutting up my fingers in the process. Another thing to worry about later. Right now, I had a giant snake to worry about.

Gunfire from the other side of the snake told me Alice had seen me move, and was reacting accordingly. Dominic was more of a knife man—a fact that was reinforced a few seconds later when the snake suddenly hissed and whipped its head around, so fast that I was sent flying.

This is it,
I thought, as my body inscribed an arc through the air.
This is how I die.

Malena dropped from the ceiling above me, wrapping her arms around my waist as she fell. The sudden added weight dragged me down, and we both landed, with a thump and a grunt, on the judges' table. It collapsed underneath us, dropping us at the feet of a stunned Adrian.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I demanded, pulling away from Malena and staggering upright. “
Run
!” I
kicked off my heels and followed my own advice—although sadly, I was going in the wrong direction. If Adrian was smart, he'd be heading for the door as fast as his legs could carry him. I was heading for the giant fucking snake.

At least I wasn't doing it alone. My fall had put me on the side of the stage with Dominic and Alice. They'd pulled back to the wings, out of the snake's direct line of sight, and they beckoned Malena and me forward as we ran.

Dominic broke cover when we got close, grabbing my wrist and dragging me the rest of the way to temporary safety. “Are you hurt?” he demanded.

“Later,” I said, pulling my hand away and drawing my gun for a second time. “We need to stop this thing.”

“How?” asked Brenna. She was farther back in the shadows, where I hadn't noticed her at first. She looked terrified, and there was blood on the front of her previously spotless dress. It was the first time I'd seen her look anything less than perfectly groomed.

Oddly, seeing her shaken made me think of something. “Does Osana have a cellphone?”

Brenna blinked. “Yes.”

“Good. Call her. Tell her Clint's our magic-user, and he needs to be stopped. There are so many dragons in this place, there shouldn't be any problem restraining him.”

“Anders was the one who finished the ritual,” said Malena.

“Anyone could have finished it once it was that far along,” I said, unable to suppress the stab of betrayal accompanying the words. “Anders spends too much time dancing to have done the necessary research. Clint recruited him. Both of them.” Had he been trying to recruit me? I sort of thought he might have been.

“I'll call her, but she's not going to risk my sisters for this,” said Brenna.

“Tell her if she does, I will move heaven and earth to get you that baby.” It felt like I was bargaining with things that weren't mine to give, and I'd feel bad about
that later, when this was over and we were still alive. Right here, right now, I needed everything I could get.

Brenna's eyes widened. “Got it,” she said, and retreated, presumably to make her call.

I turned to the others. “We have to stop it.”

Alice nodded grimly. Dominic just looked at me. Then, with no warning, he grabbed me by the shoulders, pulled me close, and kissed me.

Maybe it was the mortal peril, and maybe it was the adrenaline, but that might have been the best kiss I'd ever had.

When Dominic pulled away, his eyes were bright and his breath was coming a little too fast. “Do not die,” he said, and his words were a plea and a command, all at the same time. “Do whatever must be done, but do not die.”

“Same to you,” I whispered.

“This is fun and all, but let's go see where on a giant snake we can stuff a grenade,” said Alice.

We turned.

The snake was still swaying, tongue flicking constantly. Anders had stopped painting with Lyra's blood and moved to Clint's side, both staring at the snake with expressions of proprietary satisfaction. This was their terror, their great accomplishment, and they were planning to enjoy it.

I still didn't know if they could control it, and I wasn't waiting around to find out. “The scales were rough but graspable; I think I could climb it, if nobody stabbed it while I was on the way up.”

“Gunshots seem to hurt it less, maybe because it's so damn armored,” said Alice. “I can distract it without making it thrash. Then you see about feeding it something it won't like.” She held out a grenade.

I took it and stuffed it down the front of my dress. It wasn't like I had anyplace else to put it. “Great, let's do that. Malena, think you can make it up with me?”

Malena stared at me like I'd just grown a second head. “Are all humans this suicidal, or are you a fringe case?”

“My mother always said I was special. Dominic—”

“I will help your grandmother.
Do not die
.”

I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice as I said, “Enough people are dead already. Now move.”

We moved.

I ran for the snake like I was being timed, leaping at the last moment and grabbing hold of the rough scales on the side of its body. Malena didn't jump. She just slipped back into her quadruped form and swarmed up the snake, talons finding grips where I would have sworn there were none. I struggled to hold on, before realizing there was a better way.