“She’s a telepath?” demanded Dominic.

“And he catches up with the conversation.” I patted his knee. “Yes, she’s a telepath. Sarah reads minds. Don’t worry, she’s not reading yours.”

“It would be rude,” said Sarah. Putting her phone down, she began arranging herself carefully in the chair. “Telepathic ethics say you should never read a sentient creature’s mind without permission, provocation, or legitimate reason to fear for your life.”

“Telepaths have ethics?” Dominic’s eyes narrowed, tone and posture united to convey his disbelief.

“My mother and I do,” said Sarah, letting her head settle against the back of the chair. “We mostly got them from Babylon 5, but they still work.”

“It’s a long story,” I said, cutting Dominic off before he could get started. “Anything you can find will be a big help, Sarah, really.”

“Got it,” she said, and went limp, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

Little exercises of telepathy—like scanning a crowded club for a known killer—can be difficult, but Sarah can still manage to carry on a conversation while she does them. It’s the big things that are dangerous. They take too much effort, and too much focus, to let her do anything else. A cuckoo in the middle of something big is essentially defenseless. That’s why I left my hand on Dominic’s knee, keeping him from getting up. He’d only promised to leave her alone under duress, and I didn’t want to risk it. I just wanted him to see a cryptid doing something to help us, rather than being something he needed to be afraid of.

Besides, it wasn’t like he’d ever find her again if she didn’t want him to.

Sarah’s breathing got shallower and shallower as she continued to stare at the ceiling, eyes wide and startled-seeming. She didn’t blink. After about thirty seconds, her irises began to glaze over, going from icy blue to a milky, cracked-ice white. Dominic stiffened.

“This is unnatural,” he hissed.

“For us, yes. For her, no.” I squeezed his knee, keeping my eyes on Sarah. “This is perfectly natural. It’s what she evolved to do.” It’s the reason she stays near one of the cousins at all times. So that if she ever goes back to her killer-cuckoo roots, there’s someone around who knows how to stop her.

“Still—”

“There’s something there,” said Sarah, in a remote, utterly disconnected tone. Dominic stopped. “It’s big. It’s old. And it’s hungry.”

“Where is it, Sarah?” I asked, keeping my voice level. Most telepaths respond better when people don’t sound concerned by the fact that they’ve fallen into a fugue state. I don’t understand the psychology behind it, but I’m not the telepath.

“I don’t know. Close. There’s too much earth between here and there, and the subway system is in the way—I can’t see it clearly. But it’s big.” She hesitated. “Did I say it was big?”

“You did,” I said soothingly. “How big is big? Is it bigger than a bulldozer?”

“It thinks big thoughts. It dreams big dreams.” Sarah twitched. “It’s asleep. It’s been asleep for a long time. I think … I think it’s hibernating. Waiting for something to change before it wakes up again.”

“Is it a dragon?” demanded Dominic. I shot him a warning look. His attention was focused fully on Sarah, posture tight with a degree of tension that I recognized from my own mirror. He was itching for a fight.

“I don’t know,” said Sarah, a note of peevish irritation creeping into her voice. “What does a dragon think like? You tell me, and I’ll ask it.”

“She can’t really do that,” I said, before he could ask her. “Sarah, is there anything you can give us as a pointer? What direction do we need to go?”

“Down.” She blinked, the blue returning to her eyes as she sat up in the chair and looked at us gravely. “You need to go way, way down, Very. And you need to go now, because I think somebody’s trying to wake it up.”

Twelve

“The problem with people who say monsters don’t really exist is that they’re almost never saying it to the monsters.”

–Alice Healy

Central Park, a block and a half away from the Plaza Athenee, preparing to do something stupid

THE FIRST OUT-OF-THE-WAY MANHOLE COVER we could find was located on the edge of Central Park, about a block and a half away from the hotel. It was mostly hidden in the middle of one of those little seating areas that spring up around the city like mushrooms after a hard rain. The few people who did walk by pretty much ignored us. “I love big city life,” I said quietly.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” Dominic had removed his duster and shirt before taking the crowbar Sarah somehow managed to wheedle out of the hotel manager—when a cuckoo gets involved, it’s better not to ask exactly how they accomplish things—and setting to work. Sarah was back at the hotel, gulping Tylenol and keeping a telepathic “eye” on the area. She’d let us know if she saw trouble coming.

In the meanwhile, I was absorbed with the all-important task of checking my weapons, including the emergency throwing knives and smoke grenades I’d retrieved from Sarah’s closet. Well, that, and watching the way the muscles of Dominic’s back moved every time he strained to get a better degree of leverage on the manhole cover. Sure, he was Covenant, and I might have to kill him before everything was said and done, but the man had the sort of physique professional athletes would kill for. In his case, he probably had. All the training in the world won’t take the place of knowing that your performance on the field literally means the difference between life and death. So what if he was a dead man walking? He wasn’t dead yet, and the way he was carbonizing my hormones reminded me, graphically, that neither was I.

Dominic glanced up, as if he could feel my eyes on him, and scowled. “You could help, you know,” he said sourly.

“There’s only one crowbar, and I’m busy making sure we get back from the lizard hunt in one piece.” I slotted another throwing knife into its holster. “Don’t worry. It’ll be my turn to sweat soon enough.”

Muttering something in a language that sounded suspiciously like Latin, Dominic shook his head and went back to work.