Verity Alice Price

'Nothing' looked a lot like the glaring white of an active cuckoo's eyes. Verity opened her eyes. The unrelenting whiteness didn't go away, although it did change forms, becoming the overhead lights which were shining directly down into her face. She groaned and tried to block the light with her arm, only to discover that the various tubes connected to her body made that impossible.

( They didn't usually connect tubes to dead people. )

[Adapted from Midnight, Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire! Preplayed with and coded by entire genius firstofitskind. NFI, NFB]

Convincing Sarah to stay behind wasn't nearly as hard as it would usually have been. She'd been scared, and that was something she wasn't used to. Uncle Mike got her set up in one corner of the main room with a pile of computer pieces Verity didn't recognize. She settled in to connecting wires and configuring settings, looking happy as a clam. Everybody had their comfort zones.

Uncle Mike, however, refused to stay behind. Not that Verity complained much; with him along, they could take the car. They rode in his sedan, blending smoothly into the traffic. If the Covenant was watching for them suspiciously, they'd know to be watching the high ground. Hopefully, being on the roads would keep her and Liam under their radar.

( They drove down the streets in silence )

Sunil never returned to the counter, going upstairs to pack as soon as Verity came back downstairs. Then they left their (fully human) staff to clean and close up behind them, the five of them leaving with the last crowd about five minutes before lunchtime closing. Neither brother liked that very much, but Verity was going to use every trick at their disposal to keep them safe and that included taking advantage of the Covenant's refusal to involve ordinary humans in their 'holy work.'

It took almost two hours to get back to the Nest, thanks to Uncle Mike's evasive driving techniques, which included a trip over the Key Bridge. Verity and Liam spent most of the drive watching the mirrors for signs of pursuit. They never came.

Sunil and Rochak goggled shamelessly as they entered the Nest. Each of them had a suitcase, and Rochak was dragging a cooler filled with gingerbread, cookies, and jars of assorted types of sugar in both liquid and granular forms. Verity had never realized there were so many kinds of natural sweetener. ( Watching a Madhura pack his kitchen was definitely an education. )

[Adapted from Midnight, Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire and preplayed (and coded!) by firstofitskind. Up late because conventions are delightful but exhausting. NFI, NFB.]

Dominic left the roof and Verity stood there blinking after him for far longer than she really would have liked. She was in a daze, a thousand thoughts crashing through her brain at once while her brain tried to sort through the options she had besides 'panic.' It felt like she was moving in slow motion as she walked across the rooftop to where she'd dropped her bag. Her cell phone was tucked safely into the front pocket. It took her three tries to make the zipper work, and another five tries before she could successfully access her contact list and call ( the one number that had a prayer of helping her find her emotional footing: Liam. )

Liam was right; keeping Dominic close was a better idea than cutting him loose. Only one small problem with that: Dominic didn't pick up when Verity called his cell phone. She didn't have his home number, assuming he even had one; she'd never seen the place where he lived. He could have been emulating Sarah, and just moving from hotel to hotel, keeping a roof over his head without tying himself to a permanent address. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like she'd been deluding herself all along. There was no way he'd ever really trusted her.

Still, she needed to put that aside, at least for right now, and figure out how she was going to deal with the very real threat of a Covenant purge. Verity broke into a run, pushing her phone deep into the front pocket of her jeans, building to a full-out sprint. She needed to find Dominic. She needed to start warning people. And there was nothing saying she couldn't combine the two.

Gravity took over once she stepped off the edge of the roof, and she was able to push other concerns aside in favor of the pressing need to keep herself from splashing on the pavement. That was one of the nice things about free-running; it was very distracting when she needed it to be. She was focused enough on her surroundings that she could usually avoid things that present an actual danger, like pissed-off cryptids or booby-traps (like snares, for example), but she didn't need to think about her faltering dance career, or the fact that the man she'd been starting to think about as maybe being a real friend wasn't really real friend material, or the upcoming Covenant purge. All she had to think about was the run.

Her first destination was a little café called Gingerbread Pudding. Going there wouldn't help her find Dominic, but it would help her begin the process of warning the city's cryptids that they needed to keep their heads down and maybe consider taking that California vacation they'd been dreaming about. She'd been telling the truth when she'd told Dominic that there was no way she could evacuate the entire city. That didn't mean she had to leave the people she considered friends unprepared for what was coming.

Letting go of the last rooftop between her and her destination, ( she dropped down, into the dark beyond. )

[And thus we continue! Taken from Chapters 4 and 5 of Seanan McGuire's Midnight, Blue-Light Special and preplayed (and coded by) genuine lifesaver firstofitskind. NFI/NFB. Previous post. Next post.]

Between snake cults, dragons, and now singing fish going evil for a lack of participation trophies, it had been awhile since Verity and Liam had had anything resembling a real date. So Verity had skipped out on her shift at the Devil's Nest and headed out to the mainland with him, dressed to kill (both literally and metaphorically), and looking for a good time.

The club they'd ended up at was a lot smaller and quieter, one where they could have dinner the second floor up and actually hear themselves talk. "Oooh, good call," she said as they were led to their table. "Dinner and dancing. It's like you know how to show me a good time."

Tooth fairy dust was meant to be administered to sleeping children to make sure they stay asleep while the Tooth Fairy fed. (The specific dietary needs of Tooth Fairies were irrelevant and a little bit disgusting and really not what Verity needed to be thinking about right now.) The standard dose, according to Grandpa Thomas’ Field Guide to Pixies, Sprites, and Other Household Pests, was a small pinch. A small pinch, as measured against the hand of something a little bit bigger than a Barbie doll. Dave had blown two full handfuls on them. At that kind of dosage, it was no wonder that when Verity finally stumbled back toward consciousness, ( she felt like she'd been shot full of curare, chloroform, and cockatrice venom. )

[Adapted from Chapters 24 of Seanan McGuire's Discount Armageddon, preplayed with and coded by the darling firstofitskind, who also sends me candy so, like, BEAT THAT. First post | Previous post | Next Post. NFI, NFB, OOC is love]

After saving her from the Sleestacks--pardon, the servitors--Candy had first dragged Verity onto the Metro and then back off not far from the warehouse district. The dragon princess had informed Verity that she was being brought home with her; there were too many unanswered questions that they needed to discuss before Verity hared off and got herself killed. Verity would have liked to protest that, but considering Candy had just saved her ass from what would probably have been a very gruesome murder by Sleestack, she was willing to let it go.

Going through a maze of blind alleys and sudden turns--and even through a cramped and dirty bodega run by another dragon princess named Priscilla who'd looked at Verity like she held the last hope of the world in her hands--they ended up in front of a squat, ugly building. The building had started life as a slaughterhouse, and didn't appear to have changed much since. The alley door led into what had once been the holding pen for sheep or cattle; the floor was concrete, with spilled-wine bloodstains worked deep into the stone. A few of the low holding walls were gone, replaced by empty space. Overhead, the walkways and management offices hung in the gloom like spiderwebs, gray and sterile. ( The light was uniformly low, and an air of decay hung over the entire place, like no one had been there for years. )

[Adapted from Chapter 19 of Seanan McGuire's Discount Armageddon with wonderful coding help from my fave, firstofitskind. WARNING FOR NPC DEATH. First post is here, and here is the previous post. NFI, NFB, OOC is love]

JGOB was good, but Verity had woken up with a craving for frosted Madhura-baked gingerbread, even though it meant heading all the way into Baltimore for breakfast. Still, the chance to catch up with Piyusha, maybe convince her to head out of town until the snake cult that was chasing virgins was stopped, and score some delicious gingerbread was too much temptation to bear, so after her morning shower, Verity headed for the Causeway and the city beyond.

It took her the better part of an hour to reach the small bakery and she was very surprised to find it closed when she arrived. According to the hours in the window, Gingerbread Pudding was open from seven AM to nine PM every day. According to her watch, it was almost ten. ( So why were the doors still locked? )

[Adapted from Chapter 17 of Seanan McGuire's Discount Armageddon with wonderful coding help from the A++++ firstofitskind. First post is here, comes after this post and goes directly to this one. NFI, NFB, OOC is love]

The first out-of-the-way manhole cover they could find was located on the edge of a small park, about a block and a half away from Sarah's 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 them. "I love big city life," Verity said quietly, looking around.

Liam had removed his jacket and shirt before taking the crowbar Sarah somehow managed to wheedle out of the hotel manager--when a cuckoo got involved, it was better not to ask exactly how they accomplished things--and setting to work. Sarah was back at the hotel, gulping Tylenol and keeping a telepathic 'eye' on the area. She would let them know if she saw trouble coming.

In the meanwhile, Verity was absorbed with the all-important task of checking her weapons, including the emergency throwing knives and smoke grenades she'd retrieved from Sarah's closet. Well, that, and watching the way the muscles of Liam's back moved every time he strained to get a better degree of leverage on the manhole cover.

Look, they were about to descend into a sewer and possibly discover a dragon. Verity felt no shame in ogling Liam a bit.

( At least until he shoved the manhole cover off to one side, releasing an unpleasant gust of sewer smell. )

[Adapted from Chapter 12 of Seanan McGuire's Discount Armageddon with amazing preplay AND coding help from firstofitskind, who wins at everything forever. First post is here, the previous post is here, and the next post is here. NFI, NFB, OOC is love]

Verity's usual means of information gathering involved hitting the homes and workplaces of the local sentient cryptids and asking what's been going on at (or sometimes under) the street level. That wasn't an option with Dominic along; she wasn't going to introduce him to more cryptids than were strictly necessary.

Unfortunately 'more than strictly necessary' wasn't the same as 'none.' Verity had told Liam to meet them at Gingerbread Pudding, owned by a Madhura family. Verity had never met them; she usually visited near closing time when the owners were finishing up in the kitchens and left the running of the cash register to one of several human high school students. But today was early enough that one of them was behind the counter. She was a petite, attractive woman of Indian descent, wearing a sapphire blue T-shirt and a bright red apron embroidered with 'Come catch me! Be a Gingerbread Fan!' Her thick black hair was bound into two long braids that dangled over her shoulders as she served a slab of dark brown gingerbread and a cup of hot chocolate to a customer, smiling all the while.

The Madhura were attracted to sweet things. They thrived on honey the way dragon princesses thrived on gold, or bogeymen thrived on information. ( Owning a place that specialized in desserts was probably close to her inborn idea of Heaven. )

[Adapted from Chapter 10 of Seanan McGuire's Discount Armageddon with amazing preplay AND coding help from the adoration-worthy firstofitskind. First post is here, and here is the previous post and also the .next post NFI, NFB, OOC is love]

Living on the island didn't give Verity much of an opportunity to indulge in her other-other favorite pastime: free running. She loved free running, dashing across the open rooftops of Baltimore, darting over walls and along structures. It was like a form of dance, and her partner was the environment itself. It took the best elements of tumbling, gymnastics, and being a professional superhero and mixed them into one incredibly rewarding, incredibly fun package.

She had been dubbed the Arboreal Priestess for a reason.

The harpy family that Verity collected the mail for had mentioned that they'd seen an ahool flying nearby, which had sent Verity to this particular rooftop once the appropriate goodbyes had been said. Ahool were like the flying monkeys from Wizard of Oz, who brought down prey by means of the bacteria swarming in their filthy little mouths. A hungry ahool would take a chunk out of a person and wait for them to die before beginning to feed. Since they were cooperative hunters, a non-hungry ahool would do the same thing and leave the corpse lying around in case another member of its pack was hungry later. Either way, that added up to dead humans, which was something Verity tried to prevent at all costs.

Her eyes were scanning likely places for an ahool to nest and not on the rooftop under her feet, which was how she missed the snare until she was stepped in it. The rope snapped taut, the loop closed around her ankle, and all she had time to think before the deadweight hit the side of her head was ( how much Alex was going to laugh at her for this one. )

[So it continues! Adapted from Chapter 5 of Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire and and coded by the amazing firstofitskind. Part one and next post here. NFI, NFB, OOC is love]