Half-Off Ragnarok

  “I’ll never understand the human idea that children are invariably more valuable than adults,” said Dee. “If you have twenty adults and twenty children, and half of them are going to die, you can’t save just the kids. They’d all starve to death.”

  Pragmatism is a gorgon trait. That sort of thing is important when you’ve spent centuries being hunted down and slaughtered for being something that humans think of as monsters. “I don’t disagree with you,” I said carefully, all too aware of my own human prejudices, “but remember that we’re in a human-dominant culture. If it had been a dead kid, or worse, dead kids, we’d have news crews crawling all over this place looking for answers, in addition to the police. That would make it a lot harder for us to find the killer and make it stop.”

  “Do you really think it’s still here, whatever it was?”

  “I think it would be stupid to assume it wasn’t.”

  Dee sighed heavily. “This isn’t what I signed up for when I took this job, you know. I thought the worst thing I’d have to deal with was my hair biting someone.”

  “Welcome to my world.” I unlocked my office door, stepping inside, and crossed to the window. It was still light outside: that made this trick a little more dangerous, but I couldn’t leave Crow in the office overnight. He’d freak out when he realized I wasn’t coming back, and the amount of damage he could do was limited only by his imagination.

  Crow was curled in my desk chair. He lifted his head, watching my progress across the room. The rat bag was on the office floor. It was empty.

  “At least that means I don’t need to worry about feeding you,” I said, and opened the window. “Crow, car.”

  Crow made an inquisitive croaking noise. He could see as well as I could that it was still daylight outside.

  “Crow, car.”

  He stood, performing a languid cat stretch before flattening and stretching out his wings like a raven. I stepped hurriedly to the side, and even then, he barely missed me as he took off and launched himself at the open window. I shut it behind him and left the office, moving fast now that I needed to race my griffin to the car. He’d beat me there, of course—he had wings, I had feet and gates I couldn’t just fly over—but I wanted to minimize the amount of time he was likely to spend sitting out in the open, casually preening himself.

  Wild miniature griffins move in flocks, and the ones that have survived into the modern day have learned to hide from humans, since natural selection—and men with guns—took all the ones who didn’t hide out of the gene pool years ago. Crow had none of those instinctive reactions. He was more like a house cat, raised from birth to believe that all humans existed solely to be a source of food and entertainment for him. If he tried to make friends with one of the other zookeepers . . .

  That was a bad thought. I set it aside and kept walking.

  I didn’t see Shelby again as I made my way to the parking lot. I was still feeling guilty about having lied to her, and I could recognize the start of a vicious cycle. My guilt would grow and grow until I saw her next, and then, just as I was getting it under control, I’d need to lie to her again. The conflict between what I could say and what I wanted to say was becoming a serious problem—and worse, it was messing with my focus. I couldn’t prioritize her life over anyone else’s. That didn’t stop me from wanting to.

  It wasn’t fair. My father found a woman who’d been raised by cryptids and saw nothing in the least bit unusual about them. My Aunt Jane married an incubus, which neatly sidestepped the issue of “how do you explain that not everything that looks human actually is.” And my sister went and hooked up with a member of the Covenant of St. George. Shelby was the first girl I’d met in a long time—who was I kidding; the first girl I’d met, period—who seemed right for me. She was perfect, except for the part where if she met my family, she’d scream and run away.

  Crow was nowhere to be seen when I reached my car, but judging by the angry squawks of the geese, he was definitely nearby. I unlocked and opened the door before calling, “Crow! Home!”

  He shot out of the midst of the gray-feathered waterfowl like a charcoal-colored missile, arrowing past me and through the open car door to land on the passenger seat. He had several goose feathers clasped firmly in his beak. Dropping them, he turned to me, beak open in what I would have sworn was silent laughter.

  “Yes, you’re a mighty hunter,” I said, and got into the car. “Come on, mighty hunter. Let’s go home.”

  Driving through Columbus during the middle of the workday was strange. Doing it with Crow wide awake and spun up from playing with the geese was nerve-racking. I kept waiting for the moment where he would pop up in the window like a demented jack-in-the-box and scare the holy hell out of the drivers around me. To my surprise, he did no such thing. Instead, he compacted himself into the classic cat loaf position, tail wrapped tight around his entire body, tucked his head under his wing, and went to sleep. I smiled a little. The world could end, and anything morphologically feline would find a way to take a nap.

  Grandma’s car was gone, but Grandpa’s car was parked in its place. I scooped the still-snoozing Crow out of the passenger seat and made my way up to the house, unlocking the door and letting myself inside. It was even stranger to come home and not smell dinner in progress, or hear my family moving around.

  Speaking of family . . . I paused and looked uneasily around the hall. Sarah sometimes liked to lurk in corners, perfectly still, waiting for something to attract her attention. It wasn’t normal cuckoo behavior, but what about Sarah was normal these days?

  She wasn’t there. I walked into the living room, put Crow down on the couch, and went looking for my grandfather. Date night was always on the evening of his day off.

  I found him upstairs in the office he shared with my grandmother. He was seated at his computer, glasses perched on his nose and sleeves rolled far enough up that I could see the faint discoloration where one body’s skin ended and the next began. He was usually careful to conceal his seams, unless he was certain that he wasn’t going to be seen by anyone who might find them strange.

  I rapped my knuckles against the doorframe. He turned toward the sound and blinked, frowning slowly. “Alex? What are you doing home?”

  “They closed the zoo early.”

  There was a pause as he ran through the reasons this might have happened. Finally, he said, “Either a kid got into one of the big predator enclosures again, or there’s been a murder.”

  “We don’t know yet whether it was actually a murder, versus an accidental death, but yes.” I walked across the office and sat down in Grandma’s chair, explaining the situation with Andrew as quickly and succinctly as I could. Grandpa only interrupted a few times, asking terse questions about where the body had been found and exactly what the vegetation around it had looked like.

  When I finished, he sighed. “You realize what this means, don’t you?”

  “That a man is dead?”

  “That’s a problem for him, but for the rest of us, it means there’s an increased chance we’ll catch the Covenant’s attention. That’s not good.”

  I nodded. “I know. I’m going to need you to get me a copy of the autopsy report. If it doesn’t say anything particularly shocking, maybe they won’t catch wind of this death.” Grandpa was a coroner for the City of Columbus. Dead bodies didn’t bother him, since he’d been one (or two, or three) himself at one point, and while he didn’t need replacement parts—all the ones he had were good for at least another forty years, barring accident or assault—others weren’t always so lucky. By working where he did, he was able to keep the Revenants, ghouls, and other humanivores of the city from bothering the living population. It was really a public service, and one that was helped along by the number of people who got into truly stomach-churning automobile accidents.

  “I assumed you’d be asking for that,” he said. “Although we may have a problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They may decid
e to send his body someplace like the CDC for autopsy, since this is the sort of thing that qualifies as ‘unusual circumstances,’ and petrifaction could be mistaken as some sort of strange new disease. If that’s the case, we’re going to need to work much harder to get those results.”

  “And there’s a much higher chance the Covenant will get involved,” I said slowly. “Is there any way you can find out who’s going to do the examination?”

  “I can make a few calls.” Grandpa made a small “shoo” gesture with his hand. “Go get some food in you and call your father.”

  “What?”

  “We both know that as soon as you’re done with me, you’re going to call home and update everyone on what’s going on. I endorse this, since it will allow me to check in with the morgue without you hovering over my shoulder. Now go on, scat.” He smiled, making the scar on his cheek pull upward. “I can take care of this part by myself.”

  “You’re the best, Grandpa,” I said.

  “I know.”

  Feeling better than I had since we found Andrew’s body in the bushes, I turned and left the office. Grandpa was right. It was time for me to work on my part of the plan.

  Dad picked up the phone on the third ring. “This is an unlisted number,” he snapped.

  “You know, Dad, I don’t mean to push, but there’s this thing called ‘caller ID’ that you can get these days. It might mean being a little less rude to your children when they call home.” I reclined on the bed, watching the Aeslin mice systematically dismantle the plate of cheese and apple slices I’d prepared for them.

  “Ah, but what if someone steals your phone?” Dad countered. “What then? Maybe I answer with ‘hello, beloved only son, how are you today,’ and that confirms your identity as my eldest child to the horrible monsters that have kidnapped you for their own nefarious purposes.”

  I laughed. It was impossible not to. “Nefarious purposes, Dad? Really?” My parents raised us to answer the phone like we hated the entire universe and wanted it to go away. It was supposedly part of the smokescreen that protected us from the Covenant of St. George. Given how memorable it was, I suspected that Dad actually just enjoyed having an excuse to snarl at people for a change.

  “It could happen,” he said serenely. “Verity got taken by the Covenant last year.”

  “Yeah, and she called us after she’d kicked their asses.” One of the mice led a conga line across the floor, all of them singing the praises of cheddar. “Is Mom there? I’ve got some information, and it’ll be easier if I don’t need to repeat myself.”

  “She’s at the flea market with your sister.”

  “Mom and Antimony at the flea market? Really? Is there a betting pool on what the body count is going to be?” It’s not that I thought my baby sister was a danger to life and limb, exactly. It’s that I knew my baby sister was a danger to life and limb, and I was happier when my mother wasn’t the only member of the family inside her potential blast radius. Mom wasn’t very good at defusing an angry Antimony.

  “We needed more cleaning supplies.”

  “Got it.” Given the family business, it was no surprise that we went through enough bleach, lye, hydrogen peroxide, and other questionable chemicals to pass ourselves off as a crime scene recovery service. Most of those things are traceable when bought in large quantities . . . unless you happen to, say, buy them off the back of a truck at the local flea market. It’s amazing what you can obtain without leaving a paper trail if you’re willing to put the hours in. The dealers we bought from most frequently probably thought we were a family of serial murderers, but hell. That’s not the worst thing that’s been said about us.

  “So what’s going on that’s important enough for you to need to call? I’m afraid I didn’t have time to read your report. Did you find conclusive evidence that the fricken population is increasing?”

  In all the chaos, I’d almost forgotten about the frickens. “I can’t prove an increase, but I can prove some new species in the area—previously native to surrounding states, never sighted in Ohio before—and that they’re not suffering the same sort of fungal infections that the frogs are. If the frog population continues to decline the way it has been, I’d say we’re looking at reclassification of the fricken from ‘cryptid’ to ‘normal’ within the next five years. Maybe less if this is a worldwide phenomenon.”

  “Which it almost certainly is,” said my father grimly. “That’s bad news.”

  “I know. It’s still not the reason I called.”

  There was a pause. Then, tone sharper, he asked, “Did Sarah get out?”

  Sarah escaping from the house was currently the family’s greatest nightmare: an uncontrolled, unstable cuckoo who we had nurtured to adulthood getting loose amongst the local population. There was literally no telling how much damage she could do. We’d never dealt with a case like hers before. But since the only way to be sure she wasn’t going to hurt anyone was to kill her, we were living with the fear. Sarah was family.

  “No, Sarah’s fine, or as fine as she gets right now,” I said. “One of the other keepers from the reptile house was killed sometime between closing time last night and lunch today.”

  “Murder?”

  “Unclear. Whatever killed him was a petrifactor.”

  There was another pause, longer this time, before he said, “Alex, the basilisks . . .”

  “Are still hibernating. I checked them myself, and their skins are too calcified for them to have woken up—or been woken—left the enclosure, turned a man partially to stone, and gone back to sleep. Not that they would have gone back to the enclosure anyway. They didn’t do this. And before you ask, yes, I also talked to Dee. I don’t think she had anything to do with it.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “It is, except for the part where I started out with three petrifactors who could have been responsible for this and promptly eliminated all three of them as possible candidates.”

  “So what are you thinking?”

  “If it was a gorgon, it was murder. The victim’s eyes were definitely stone. Lesser gorgons can’t truly turn you to stone, and Pliny’s gorgons can’t always stone you with a glance; they’d need to have either uncovered their hair and locked eyes with him for long enough, or milked their hair beforehand for venom and sprayed him with it. I can’t rule out a Pliny’s gorgon, but it’s more likely that we’re looking for a purely glance-based petrifactor.”

  “The greater gorgon is glance-based.”

  “Yes, I’m aware. You’ll forgive me if I try to find any other possible answer before I go to the place where I get eaten alive, won’t you?”

  “Your mother would never forgive me if I encouraged you to take any other course of action. There’s always the simpler answer, you realize.”

  “I thought of that. A cockatrice would fit the situation as I currently understand it. It’s glance-based, it likes to hide in low bushes . . . it’s perfect.” And it wouldn’t be murder. Your average cockatrice makes an iguana seem like a super-genius. When animals kill people, it’s tragic, but it’s not malicious. “There’s just one problem with that theory.”

  “Lots of things aren’t native to Ohio, Alex. You’ve just said that some of the frickens you’ve caught aren’t native to Ohio.”

  “Yes, but there’s a big difference between something moving into an open ecological niche and something like a cockatrice showing up for no good reason.”

  “So maybe there’s a good reason.”

  That wasn’t the sort of statement that inspired confidence. I sighed, removing my glasses and putting them on the bedside table before pinching the bridge of my nose. “Maybe. Grandpa’s going to see about getting me access to the autopsy records. We should know more after that happens.”

  “Keep us posted. You know we’ll be right there if you need us.”

  “I do.” I also knew a family invasion of Ohio would mean things had gotten very bad. I wasn’t too proud to ask for help, but mobilizing the
troops was the sort of thing that should only be used as a last resort. “Tell Mom I said hi and send my love when she gets home.”

  “Any messages for your sister?”

  “Tell her to stay out of my room.”

  Dad laughed. We exchanged farewells and I hung up, slumping over backward onto the bed. Crow hopped down from the dresser to curl up, catlike, against my side. I stroked his wings absently, and he purred in response.

  “It’s a mess, Crow,” I said.

  He made a contented churring noise. I sighed and closed my eyes, continuing to stroke his wings. I had a lot of work to do, but other than preparing my notes on the situation, there wasn’t much that I could do now. I lay on my bed and listened to the joyful songs of the mice, trying to let my worries slip away, just for the moment, just for now. I needed to get some food in me like Grandpa had instructed. I didn’t want to move.

  If this situation turned out to be as bad as I was afraid it was going to be, I wasn’t going to have any more moments like this one for a while. So I stayed where I was, and tried to enjoy the moment while it lasted.

  I tried.

  Seven

  “Perhaps you misunderstand me. I am not afraid to die. Neither am I afraid to kill you. Now how about we put down the guns and discuss things like breathing men, rather than continuing this conversation in the afterlife?”

  —Jonathan Healy

  An only moderately creepy suburban home in Columbus, Ohio, waking up after an impromptu nap

  CROW WAS CURLED UP on my stomach when I woke up. I blinked at the ceiling, only gradually coming to realize that I’d been woken up by the sound of someone knocking on my bedroom door. I sat up, sending Crow tumbling, and rubbed my face with one hand while he squawked in irritation.

  The knocking continued, now accompanied by my grandmother’s voice calling, “Alex? Are you awake?”