Page 49 of Aftermarket Afterlife

She drew back. “That’s disgusting.”

“But that’s what happens if you force my hand.” I shrugged, watching her. “The ball’s in your court. You can go back to the Covenant, tell them there was nothing here, and ask for another assignment. Or you can go back to the Covenant, tell them there was nothing here, and walk away. Things are about to get really unpleasant for anyone who doesn’t walk away. I’d hate to see you stuck in the middle of what’s about to go down.”

“If I have to die for the glory of the human race, so be it!”

“Oh.” I sighed. “You’re one of those, aren’t you?”

By now, Alex would have glanced out a window and seen the inexplicable tree-service truck parked across the street. He’d be on his way out to meet us, and the longer I could keep the person who was watching the cameras distracted, the better.

“What do you mean, ‘one of those’?”

“I mean one of those people who think humans are better than everybody else, just because of their genetic makeup.” I shook my head, watching her face. “No one chooses who their parents are going to be, or what species they’re going to be born as. People are just people. It’s what they do that matters, not how they’re born.”

“God gave this world to the human race,” she countered.

“Lady, every species I’ve encountered has gods. Even humans have more than one, depending on where they’re from and what they’re hoping to get out of their religion. Even the dead have gods. Just because you say one god handed the world over on a platter, why does that mean none of the other gods get a say?”

Someone hammered on the outside of the van, and I smiled.

“Maybe you should have prayed to a better god,” I said, and disappeared.

Ten

“Everyone thinks their way of doing things is the best way of doing things, no matter how much evidence they’re presented to the contrary.”

—Juniper Campbell

Standing outside a creepy surveillance van in Columbus, Ohio

ALEX DIDN’T BLINK WHENI appeared beside him, just went back to hammering on the side of the van. The driver’s-side door opened and the driver emerged, a short baton in one hand. He was holding it low by his hip but was clearly ready to swing if necessary.

Alex looked at him, unflinching. The man appeared faintly nonplussed at being stared down by a bespectacled man who had visually settled into his profession as a herpetologist and reptile keeper without a single word of complaint or attempt to look like he did something more interesting with his time. Alex was a man who’d been born to study things, and was quite happy knowing that he’d be able to spend the rest of his life doing it.

He was also, when pressed, his father’s son, and that made him a lot more dangerous than most people realized on first glance. His eyes were narrowed behind his glasses, and he was standing with an easy looseness that could quickly translate into whip-fast motion.

“What the hell, man?” demanded the driver.

“Surveillance kit’s in the back,” I said. “They’re definitely Covenant.”

That was either the right or the wrong thing to say, depending on your perspective. The driver put two and two together at once, identifying Alex as a threat, and swung his baton hard for the side of Alex’s neck, apparently seeing it as a soft, exposed target. It would have been, if he’d had any chance of hitting.

See, every modern member of the family has been encouraged to take up some sort of physical hobby that can translate into a combat discipline. It lets them train without risking Covenant attention, since they were likely to be watching the mixed martial arts and boxing communities for signs of Price survival, but not the dance studios and the roller derby courts. Alex, when he was younger, had been a remarkably active member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, voluntarily traveling back in time every weekend to an era before the Covenant had been quite so successful at their “holy mission.”

He made a lot of contacts in the cryptid community through his time in the past, and he became a dismayingly good fighter. Sure, he used a padded foam sword instead of a steel one, but they treated their historical stakes like they were the real thing, and when someone hit you with a fake sword, you were supposed to go down. He got very good at not being hit. The baton swung, and Alex wasn’t there, leaving it to slam into the side of the van, making a dent in the paneling.

The sound must have been incredibly jarring inside. I turned to watch the back doors, waiting to see if the surveillance tech would appear, and thus missed whatever Alex did next. But I heard the driver yelp, and the clatter as his baton hit the pavement. When I glanced back over my shoulder, Alex had him pressed against the van, one hand on the back of his head, the other engaged with twisting his arm up and behind his back at a painful angle.

“Hi,” said Alex. “I’m Alexander Price. That’s my house you just sent your flunkies to break into. My daughter is in that house. She’s very young, and doesn’t understand danger yet. She could have been hurt. People get hurt when you do things like this.”

The man made a pained squeaking noise, his cheek squashed against the metal and preventing him from speaking clearly. Alex gave him a harder shove, grinding him against the side of the van.

“Now,” he said, voice very low. “This is what’s going to happen now. I’m going to take you inside, and we’re going to ask you some questions. As a family. And if we don’t like the answers, you’re going to join your friends in the basement, waiting for our next run to the dump.”

“What keeps this one from going the way of the last two?” I asked.

“They don’t tend to equip the observers with suicide pills,” said Alex. “Too much chance they’ll bite down by mistake. The risk/reward balance doesn’t check out.”

“Ah, good.”

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