Chaos Choreography (InCryptid, #5)(113)

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.

“Malena!”

She knew. Immediately, she knew, and climbed back down, moving to cling to the snake next to me. I swung over to cling to her back, locking my left arm around her neck while I dug the grenade out with my right hand. Malena climbed.

I looked behind me. Dominic and Alice were on the stage, shooting at the great snake’s body as they ran around it. They were fast. It was faster. It tensed to strike, and then recoiled, nearly knocking us off. I twisted. There was Pax, still in his half-and-half form, burying his teeth in the snake’s side. It hissed like a steam engine getting ready to explode and tensed again. Alice and Dominic resumed their shooting. It was like a terrible game of whack-a-mole, and I found myself feeling almost bad for the snake. It hadn’t asked to come here. It was just an animal, doing what animals do, and we were doing our best to kill it.

At the same time, there was one thing the Covenant of St. George got right, all those years ago. When your choice was kill or die, kill was the only answer worth giving.

Malena climbed higher, moving from side to side to avoid the worst of the thrashing. I leaned close to her ear.

“When we get to the head, I’m going to climb off, and you’re going to run,” I said. “I’ll try to feed it the grenade.”

Malena grunted. Whether it was from exertion or because her face was currently too distorted to allow for human speech, I couldn’t tell.

“I’ll find my own way down,” I assured her. “It’ll be fine.”

This time, I didn’t need a translation for her grunts. Profanity is the universal language.

The snake thrashed and squirmed beneath us, presenting a difficult climb as only a living thing truly could. I held on for dear life, until we had reached the head, and it was time to put my terrible, awful, no-good plan into effect.

Letting go of Malena was harder than I expected. I rolled onto the top of the snake’s skull, and it hissed, irritated by the fact that something was touching its head. It pulled back, nearly knocking me off. I grabbed the ridge over its left eye at the last second, anchoring myself.

If it started shaking, I was going to fly. That couldn’t happen.

“Hey, big guy,” I said, pulling the pin from my borrowed grenade. “How’s it hanging?”

The snake hissed. I let go of the eye, letting gravity pull me down the length of its nose. I was going to get one shot at this. If I missed, well. It wasn’t going to matter much to me, after that. It would matter to my family, and to everyone else the giant snake killed before someone took it down.

I fell.

The natural urge of the falling human is to claw at empty air, looking for purchase, some miraculous rescue from the force of gravity. I’ve been falling recreationally for most of my adult life. I did no such thing. Instead, I pulled my arm back and chucked the grenade into the snake’s open mouth before balling myself up to minimize my area of impact and giving myself over to the inevitable.

Fifteen feet was enough of a drop that I’d break an ankle if I tried for a normal landing. It was still short enough that I might be okay, if I got lucky about where I landed. I clung to that thought. I might be okay.