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having a lousy night, and I promise you’re not going to take me quietly.” The harpies were probably too far away to hear me if I screamed. That was bad. We were, however, reasonably close to a flophouse that I knew was frequented by a lot of bogeymen. Bogeymen are attracted by the sound of screams, and most of the city’s bogey community knew me. Even if Dominic was wearing body armor, I was no slouch at hand-to-hand, and I’d have backup before he had time to do much damage. I hoped.
    Dominic hesitated. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t. I thought you’d been wiped out.”
    “Wiping things out is
your
hobby, but no, we haven’t been.”
    “They taught me about you. Your desertion.”
    “What a great way of putting it. I’ll have to write that in my diary.”
    “You were a glorious bloodline before you decided to turn traitor.”
    Now I was starting to get pissed. I shifted as much of my weight as possible to my right leg, glaring at him. “Are we doing this thing or not? Because if not, I want you out of Manhattan, and out of my way.”
    “I suppose that’s the answer, then,” said Dominic regretfully, before he lunged.
    I have to give the Covenant this: they teach their people how to fight. Dominic moved with grace and deadly speed, turning a headlong charge into an attack before most people would have had time to do more than blink. Keeping the knife held slightly behind him, he balled his right hand into a fist and swung for the place where my head should have been.
    He missed by what my mother would have called a country mile. I was already dropping to land balanced on the fingertips of my left hand and the toe of my right foot, knee bending as it accommodated my sudden half-crouch. Kicking my left foot upward in a maneuver I was certain to regret in the morning, I slammed my heel into his wrist, sending the knife flying out of his hand and away into the darkness on the roof.
    He was good. I’m not sure he wouldn’t have been better, had he been attacking to kill and not to capture. I had no such qualms. Fighting like a gentleman is the sort of luxury reserved for people who can afford to lose.
    Dominic recovered quickly, delivering a kick to my kidneys. I rolled with it, letting the borrowed momentum carry me several feet before springing to my feet and shoving the gun into his face.
    “You are
not
a good listener,” I said, trying not to show how badly that kick had hurt, or how disgusted I was by the congealed ahool blood now staining my windbreaker.
    For his part, Dominic was looking like a man who’d just learned the world wasn’t perfect. “You little—”
    “Finishing that sentence gets you shot,” I said, and stepped backward. “Here’s a tip: never bring a knife to a gunfight. Here’s another: stop killing my cryptids, andget out of my city. If I hear one word about you harassing the people that live here, or see you one more time, I’m not going to fight fair.”
    “The Covenant will be hearing about this.”
    “What, that you met a random girl on a rooftop who told you she was a member of a family you guys wiped out years ago right before she kicked your ass? As if. Even if your pride would take it, they wouldn’t believe you.” I took another step backward. The edge of the roof was only a few feet away. “Get out of my city, De Luca. Next time, I won’t play nice.”
    “Next time, neither will I,” he snarled, and pulled another knife from his coat, flinging it toward my chest—or at least toward the space where my chest had been. By the time the knife finished its flight, I was already over the edge of the roof, dropping like a rock into the darkness below.

Six

    “Always remember two things about the Covenant: shoot first, and then keep shooting for as long as your ammunition holds out. You can’t reason with fanatics. All you can do is match them in your own fanaticism.”
    —Enid Healy
    A small semilegal sublet in Greenwich Village, cranky and in pain
    R