Half-Off Ragnarok: Book Three of InCryptid (31 page)

I’m a herpetologist, not a botanist; I couldn’t have named any of the trees, climbing vines, or flowers that filled the enclosed glass box of their yard. A fountain chuckled quietly to itself in one corner, feeding into a pond filled with decorative fish. Birds flashed by in the canopy, as captive as any denizens of the zoo. And in the middle of it all, coiled on a large, flat stone intended for that very purpose, was the master of this household, a spectacled cobra fully seventeen feet in length. As we approached him, he lifted the first third of his body into the air, looking down his nose at me as he opened the great flare of his hood. Shelby’s hand closed on my upper arm, fingers clenching convulsively tight.

I smiled. “Hello, Daksha. It’s nice to see you again. Your scales look remarkable. Did you shed recently?”

The massive cobra continued to study me, his tongue flicking in and out three times before he closed his hood, lowered himself back to the basking stone, and slithered down to the garden path. Moving fast enough to be the stuff of nightmares, he zigzagged to Kumari and twisted his way up her body, moving like the stripe on a barber pole. She held perfectly still, helping him along, until his head was resting on her right shoulder and his body gathered in a thick belt around her waist and torso.

“He greets you, and thanks you for your continued hospitality toward our daughter,” she said, walking over to take his recently abandoned place on the central stone. “As you ask, yes, he did shed recently, and is pleased with his pattern brightness in this current molt.” Daksha arranged himself around Kumari as she sat, moving with her to avoid any unpleasant accidents, like her settling her full weight on his tail. Her lips turned downward in something that was closer to a frown than I liked, and she said, “He wishes to know why you have brought your colleague from the zoo here, as he did not believe she was aware of our nature.”

“If you didn’t think I knew what I know, why are you telling me what you think I didn’t know but might have come here looking to find out?” Shelby paused. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure even I understand what I just said.”

“Dr. Tanner is from an organization with goals much like those of my family,” I said, taking a seat on one of the decorative benches. I tugged Shelby along with me, and she settled to my right. “She studies the cryptid world in Australia, and hopes to someday bring the human and cryptid populations of her home continent into a peaceful coexistence. This meant that when people at the zoo began dying of petrifaction, I couldn’t keep her from becoming involved with the investigation of their deaths, and she found out about a great many things. At this point, I feel that it is safer for all of us if she knows as much as possible about the local community. That way, no one can slip and tell her something she’s not meant to know.”

“I agree with Alex, husband,” said Kumari, speaking in a slightly more casual tone now that she was speaking for herself and not the great snake that she wore around her waist and torso. “He called before he came, and I agreed to this visit.”

There was a pause while Daksha adjusted his grip. She nodded, and said, once more in the formal tone that meant she spoke for her husband, “He knows what I have told him, but wanted to hear your reasoning for himself. It seems sound; he does not question your motives as much as he did before you came here.”

“That’s good,” I said sincerely. Wadjet are incredibly venomous. Having Daksha question my motives could end in my untimely demise. “I do trust Shelby with my life at this point: she’s saved it several times.”

“Bringing her here means you are trusting her with ours, and that you are trusting us with hers,” said Kumari, a faint edge on her voice. “It is not a trust to be cheaply given.”

“It hasn’t been,” I assured her. “There was, however, a motive for bringing her to meet you now, rather than waiting until things were calmer. I assume Chandi told you about what was happening at the zoo before I did?”

“She’s very put out,” said Kumari. “She was counting on spending more time with Shami before she had to resume her schooling at the end of the summer. If the deaths continue, her bond could be set back by a matter of years.”

Shelby sat up a little straighter. I put a hand on her knee, squeezing, and hoped she would read the touch as a request that she not say anything. She shot me a quick look, confusion writ large across her face, but nodded, and kept silent. I smiled gratefully before returning my attention to Kumari.

(For Shelby, and for most human beings—myself honestly included, when I didn’t make an effort—referring to the deaths at the zoo so casually was almost like erasing the suffering of the victims. For Kumari and her family, while the death of a few humans was sad, it was by no means a tragedy. The human population of Ohio was in no danger. For Chandi and Shami, however, failure to properly bond could mean they would never be able to have children. It could also mean she would fail to develop the appropriate adult physiological responses to his venom, which would make her vulnerable to him later in life. Wadjet biology is not forgiving of things like zoo closures, and they only had one shot at a happy ever after.)

“The zoo closures are likely to continue, but if necessary, I can help smuggle Shami out of the reptile house,” I said. “The difficulty will be finding a place for him to stay until we’re ready to reopen. I’m terribly sorry, but my grandparents’ house isn’t an option, due to the presence of a colony of Aeslin mice. I know Shami is well-mannered and would do his best to abide by the local rules, but . . .”

“But there is no sense in testing his resolve in such a direct and potentially damaging way,” said Kumari. “I quite agree, and I appreciate that you have both considered this, and rejected it for good cause. I will ask around about arranging another safe house for him. If only my husband,” she caressed the head of the great snake that encircled her body, “could already tolerate the presence of his son-in-law to be, this would be so much easier.”

“Yes, it would,” I said, and tactfully didn’t ask any more questions about the situation. I might not like the answers I got. “Do you mind if I go back several steps in the conversation?”

“Not at all; I was the one who derailed us. You were asking whether I was aware of the deaths. I responded that I am.”

“Shelby and I went to visit the local Pliny’s gorgon community, to see whether they might be able to tell us where the cockatrice we believe is haunting the zoo came from. We have some good leads to follow. In the meanwhile, we needed to sleep, and we returned to her apartment for the night. I woke to the smell of gasoline . . .”

It only took a few minutes to tell the full story, including our escape via the second-floor window. Kumari looked appropriately shocked and dismayed. Daksha remained wrapped around her the entire time, his tongue occasionally flicking out to taste the air. Normal snakes don’t hear, exactly; they soak up vibrations with their bodies. I wasn’t sure how male wadjet were able to listen to verbal communication, but knew from my dealings with Shami that they could, probably due to an inner ear structure that was dramatically different from their serpentine cousins. When I finished, the male wadjet turned his head away, letting out a long, low hiss.

“My husband is shocked and saddened by the trouble you have experienced, but wonders what it has to do with us,” said Kumari. “Surely you don’t think that we had anything to do with the burning of Miss Tanner’s building.”

“Actually, I came here because I thought the opposite, and because we need your help,” I said. “The local bogeyman community has never been exactly friendly toward me.”

“They mistrust your grandmother,” said Kumari.

Shelby snorted. “A Johrlac not being trusted. What are the odds, really?”

I eyed her but didn’t say anything. Instead, I returned my attention to Kumari, and said, “They have their reasons. That doesn’t change the fact that I need to know who is trying to have me killed—or whether I was the target in the first place. The arsonist could have been attempting to murder Shelby, and been willing to take me out as collateral damage.”

“I find it more likely that they were hoping to kill both of you,” said Kumari. “I will ask around, however. Perhaps someone has opened a contract, and your life is now valued in a small but viable number of dollars.”

“What a lovely way of putting it,” Shelby said, wrinkling her nose.

“Everything has a price.” I stood. “Thank you for your hospitality. Will you call me if you learn anything?”

“Everything has a price,” agreed Kumari. “Will you help us find a place to house Shami if it proves needful?”

“I will.”

“Then, yes. I will call you.” She stood, her husband slithering into a new position around her shoulders. He looped himself there, head bobbing like a wax museum prop. The temptation of Eve, as recreated by cobra and pediatrician. “For both your sakes, I hope the killer was trying for the two of you together.”

Shelby blinked. “Why’s that?”

Kumari smiled. “Because it will make you twice as difficult to destroy.”

“Being smart isn’t good enough. You need to be educated, and you need to be open-minded, and you need to remember that what you don’t know can most definitely hurt you.”

—Martin Baker

Driving through downtown, returning to an only moderately creepy suburban home

“A
LL RIGHT,” said Shelby,
once we were back on the road and moving away from the Sarpa household. “Do you want to explain to me how a woman can be married to a cobra? Because I’m afraid that’s where I got lost.”

“Kumari may look like a human woman, but she and Daksha are the same species,” I said. “Wadjet demonstrate extreme sexual dimorphism. Kumari is female, Daksha is male.” That wasn’t necessarily a given. Kumari had more in common biologically with an alligator than she did with either Sarah or Dee. Specifying gender seemed like the safest way to go.

Shelby blinked several times. Finally, she asked, “Is that why the bossy little girl who let us in is always lurking around the reptile house when she thinks you’re not looking?”

“Yes. Her fiancé, Shami, is the zoo’s spectacled cobra. It’s only temporary, until Chandi gets old enough to move into a place of her own. Male wadjet don’t coexist well.” That was an understatement. Male wadjet had a nasty tendency to try to kill each other. “He was placed here shortly after I arrived in Ohio. I figured I could handle his care along with my basilisk breeding program and the fricken survey.”

“What’s a fricken?”

“Uh—little frog with feathers.”

“You have those here?” Shelby sounded delighted.

“We do, and I’ve been researching them in my spare time. I can take you out to see them next time we have a minute to ourselves.”

“Is this part of your research?” Shelby twisted in her seat enough to face me as I drove. “Explain it.”

“It’s boring,” I cautioned.

“I’m dating you,” she countered.

I snorted. “All right,” I began. “We’ve been seeing a dramatic decline in amphibian populations lately . . .”

The explanation of what I was doing with the state’s fricken population took most of the drive home, especially since I’d never tried to discuss the details with another biologist outside my own family. Shelby asked several questions that required actual thought to answer, forcing me to assess my replies more carefully. I finished as we were turning into the driveway.

“All right; let’s go see if your clothes are back from the dry cleaner’s,” I said, reaching for my seat belt. “If not, we can always stop by the Old Navy and pick up something you’ll be more comfortable in before we head for our next step.”

“Hold on,” said Shelby. She hadn’t moved, and was still watching me thoughtfully. “Isn’t the end thrust of your research basically that the discovery of the fricken by mainstream science is inevitable, due to the ongoing decline of the frogs and such?”

“Yes,” I said. “The problem becomes managing that discovery. I can’t be the one to make it. We’d really rather have warning. So that means navigating someone into a position where they can find out that frickens exist without realizing they’ve been managed. This is going to have huge repercussions for the cryptid world. Among other things, it may force the reexamination of a lot of ‘rumors’ that science currently dismisses out of hand.”

“Like snakes with wings,” guessed Shelby.

I nodded. “And fish with fur, and all the other ‘that could never happen’ hybrids. This isn’t going to lead to someone discovering the vegetable lambs or barnacle geese—not yet—but it’s going to open a lot of doors, and if we’re not braced when that happens, things could turn ugly, fast.”

“Sounds fun.” Shelby finally undid her belt and got out of the car. I followed suit, and we walked together up the pathway toward the house. Outside the door, she paused and asked, “Are you sure your grandmother isn’t going to mind me staying with you for a little bit?”

“If she minded, she’d tell you. Grandma is pretty good about mimicking human behaviors—she grew up with humans. But she never quite picked up the habit of social lying. It makes her uncomfortable.” Probably because normal cuckoos are the most dishonest things in the world. Grandma never did like being compared to her relatives.

“Good,” said Shelby, looking relieved.

“Nothing to worry about,” I said, and opened the door. “Grandma? Are you home?”

“I’m in the kitchen,” she called back. I glanced at Shelby, shrugged, and pushed open the kitchen door.

Grandma was sitting at the table, which was covered in a thick layer of financial reports from one of her clients. Most of the people whose accounts she handled were cryptids or otherwise involved with the cryptid world; when it came to accountants, you couldn’t find one who was better with nonhuman spending patterns than my grandmother. She looked up as we approached. “How did it go?” she asked.

“Not too badly; Kumari is going to ask around and see if she can get us more information about who might be trying to hurt us.” I walked past her to the fridge. “How have things been here?”

“Calm. The police came by.”

I nearly dropped my can of V-8. “
What
?”

“
What
?” echoed Shelby.

“Don’t worry about it. They know you had nothing to do with any of the current troubles, and they won’t be questioning you again. You could probably commit murder in front of the officers and they wouldn’t notice.” Grandma turned over a piece of paper, studying the back. “You’re welcome.”

I gaped at her, but it was Shelby who spoke, saying, “I thought you weren’t a receptive telepath.”

“Brainwashing is projective, as it turns out. Who knew?” Grandma raised her head and smiled sunnily. “Again, you’re welcome.”

“Thank you,” I said hastily, as I closed the fridge. “Has the dry cleaner called yet? We need to get Shelby into something a little less obtrusive before we break into the zoo.”

“They have, and her clothes are upstairs,” said Grandma. “It’s amazing what a fifty-dollar tip will do for a rush job.”

Shelby’s eyes widened. “I—”

“Don’t worry about it.” Grandma dismissed the matter with a wave of her hand. “If our little arsonist hadn’t burned down your apartment, they might have come after Alex here, and there’s no way we would have been able to get the mice out in time. Consider it hazard pay, and go get your clothes on. I don’t want you getting that skirt dirty.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Shelby, before turning and fleeing the kitchen for the dubious safety of my bedroom.

“She thinks you don’t like her,” I said, opening the V-8. “Brainwashing the police probably doesn’t help, although I think she’ll understand your reasons once she’s done being unnerved.”

“I don’t,” said Grandma, with a shrug. “But you do, and that’s good enough for me, at least for right now. If she hurts you, she’s going to learn the real reason you shouldn’t mess around with cuckoos.” She stood, walking over to ruffle my hair. “It’s nice to see you with a girl of your own species. I want great-grandchildren someday, and let’s face it, you’re my best bet.”

“Grandma!” I said, scandalized.

“What?” She shook her head. “Verity won’t have children as long as she’s dancing professionally, Antimony is . . . well, she’s Antimony and requires special considerations, and even if she completely recovers, Sarah is unlikely to ever get within ten yards of a male Johrlac without screaming her head off.”

“There’s always Artie,” I said.

Grandma sighed. “Oh, believe me, I know there’s always Artie. He called again this morning to find out whether I was ready to have him come for a visit.”

“That might not be such a bad idea,” I said carefully. “Sarah’s more focused lately. Seeing him could be what she needs to pull herself the rest of the way together.”

“Or it could make her fall further apart when she panicked and tried to put herself together without being ready,” said Grandma. She shook her head. “No. Artie won’t be visiting until she can ask for him herself. And even if those two eventually figure things out, they’re not genetically compatible.”

“True.” Artie was a blood relative, half-human, half-incubus. Sarah was well, Sarah. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to jump straight into the baby-making business with Shelby.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Grandma, with a smile. “Either way, she’s good for you. Now go do something illegal and dangerous with your girlfriend.”

“My family did not prepare me to date like a normal human,” I muttered.

Grandma just laughed.

Even closed, the zoo was easy to access; it had its own road, after all, and they couldn’t seal that off from the public. Still, we didn’t want to head down the main drive. We would have been too obvious. I turned off onto one of the maintenance roads as soon as the opportunity arose, driving through the trees as we paralleled the zoo’s rear retaining wall.

“There’s a skeleton crew on the grounds taking care of feeding and vital maintenance and security’s been stepped up, although that’s just going to take it from ‘joke’ to ‘slightly better joke,’” said Shelby, reading from her phone. Management had sent us all an email with the updated schedules and information on the closure. “I’m supposed to be on duty tomorrow to clean out the lion enclosure. Seriously? The zoo’s closed, I’m not even the one doing the feedings, and I still have to change the kitty litter?”

“Do you actually use kitty litter?” I asked, pulling off the road and parking behind a particularly thick copse of oak trees. They would almost completely hide my car from anyone who wasn’t really looking for it. As long as we didn’t somehow trigger a full police sweep, it should be fine here.

Shelby gave me a withering look. “Of course not. It’s a figure of speech.”

“Hey, I don’t look at you like that when you ask dumb questions about snakes,” I said. I got out of the car, easing the door carefully closed behind me. The forest was quiet; out here, a slammed door could echo like a gunshot.

“I don’t ask dumb questions about snakes,” she protested. “I’m Australian. We’re born knowing more about snakes than you will ever learn.”

“Uh-huh.” I crouched down, studying the loam around the car. “I don’t see any cockatrice tracks here. We should be safe, for the moment. Put on your glasses, okay? I really don’t want to explain to your parents that I have no idea where you went.” Explaining her disappearance to the police would be even less fun. Getting involved in a murder investigation after my girlfriend went missing would be a guaranteed way to blow this identity.

“Are you sure these are necessary?” asked Shelby, producing a pair of wire-framed glasses from her pocket and slipping them on. The non-prescription lenses were polarized, and would give her a measure of resistance to petrifaction.

Besides which, maybe I’m shallow, but I’m also a science geek. Shelby in glasses was
hot
.

“Yes, they’re necessary,” I said, straightening. “You should try not to lock eyes with a cockatrice if you can avoid it, since there’s always the chance that your glasses could be knocked askew or something, but they’ll buy you time. Even if it’s only a few seconds, a few seconds can save your life.”

“All right,” said Shelby.

“Follow me.”

We slunk through the woods parallel to the fence, watching our feet as we tried to minimize the amount of noise that we were making. I grew up in the woods outside of Portland, Oregon, and while I didn’t have Verity’s knack for moving through the landscape like it was just another dance floor, I did all right for myself. Shelby, on the other hand, had a nasty tendency to step on branches and slip on patches of dried leaves, making it very apparent that
something
was moving through the trees, even if it wasn’t quite clear
what
. I tried to focus on forging the quietest trail possible, rather than getting angry with her for not knowing the terrain. This wasn’t the kind of forest she’d trained in. Of course she wouldn’t know how to use it to her advantage.

A gnarled old oak pressed up against the fence about two hundred yards from our parking spot. The bricks were warped and bowed around the trunk of the ancient tree, and I estimated that we were less than ten years away from the zoo management needing to make a decision about either removing the tree or rebuilding the fence around it. I hoped they’d decide to keep the tree. It had been there a long time before the zoo showed up.