Half-Off Ragnarok
Page 36

“It is,” Shelby agreed. “Trouble is, we’re an island ecosystem. Sometimes things get in and turn out to be a great deal more destructive than they ever were in their original habitats. Game animals, mostly, imported by idiots thinking that Australia needs a native population of manticores or tailypo. But sometimes that extends to beings that can get their own passports and trick their way through immigration.” Her gaze slipped back to Sarah, who was peacefully drinking her sewage-colored orange juice and A-1 combination, seeming to ignore everything that was going on around her.
“Johrlac,” I said.
Shelby nodded. “Yes. A hive came over on a cruise ship about ten years ago. I don’t know why, or how they tolerated one another long enough to make it across the ocean without multiple murders, but they made it. We’d never seen a Johrlac in Australia before that. No one realized what they were until it was too late.”
Any story that started with “until it was too late” wasn’t going to end well. But if I wanted it to end without Sarah getting shot in the head, I needed Shelby to keep going. “What happened?”
“What always happens when Johrlac introduce themselves into an unprepared population: nothing remotely good. They spread out, and then one of them found a member of the Society.” Shelby stole another glance at Sarah. “She looked just like your cousin.”
“Cuckoos have minimal visual variance within the species,” I said. “It’s probably because they evolved from insects, not true mammals.” Every female cuckoo we had a record of looked enough like Sarah and Grandma to be their sister. Every male cuckoo we had a record of looked like their brother. Just one more clue that they didn’t handle mammalian biology the same way the rest of us did.
“Doesn’t make her look any less like the woman who killed my brother,” said Shelby calmly. She looked back to me. “She took out six Society members before someone found the anomaly in our records and we realized what was happening. Six! And she wasn’t the only one. There were eight Johrlac in Australia. It took us five years to catch them all.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t bring back the dead.” Shelby shook her head. “All of us juniors wound up in field positions years before we expected, and for what? Because some horrible brood parasites wanted a vacation? It wasn’t fair. It was never going to be fair.”
“No, it wasn’t, and I’m sorry. But killing my cousin won’t bring back your dead.” I frowned. “If all your juniors got promoted to seniors, why are you here? Why aren’t you back in Australia, making sure that nothing starts eating people?”
“Manticores,” she said, with a shrug.
“Manticores?” I echoed.
“Some damn fool imported three breeding clusters around the turn of the century, to use as game animals. They ate him and got loose—”
I groaned. “Of course they did.”
“—and now we have manticore issues in Queensland and the Northern Territory. I was hoping that by coming here, I could learn more about how manticores behave in the wild, and maybe find a few solutions.”
“There are manticores in Ohio?”
“Oh, yeah.” Shelby frowned. “Hadn’t you noticed?”
“No, I hadn’t. I’ve been studying the local fricken population, and trying to convince my basilisks to breed. Which they are absolutely refusing to do, the lazy stoners.”
“Why would you want to breed basilisks?” asked Shelby.
“They’re big ratters, for one thing, and they tend to avoid humans whenever possible. They’re also the only known predator of stone spiders. So they have their uses, as long as we can keep them out of the cities.”
“You had me at ‘spiders,’” said Shelby. She took a deep breath, letting it out through her nose. “So. Here we are.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Here we are.”
The sound of a crossbow bolt being notched into place drew our attention toward the kitchen doorway. Grandma was standing there, a pistol crossbow in her hands, the point aimed solidly at Shelby. Grandpa was a dark shape in the hall behind her. If I squinted, I could just make out the cudgel in his hands.
“Great,” said Grandma. “Now that we’ve established where we are, let’s move on to the part where no one ever finds your body.”
I put my hand over my face and groaned.
Ten
“Yes, dear, it does seem unwise to stand here and calmly wait to be devoured by the ever-expanding maw of the netherworld. If you have a suggestion as to how better to handle the situation, I’m quite eager to hear it.”
—Thomas Price
Still in the kitchen of an only moderately creepy suburban home in Columbus, Ohio, now dealing with a heavily-armed grandmother
“HI, GRANDMA,” I said, without taking my hand away from my face. “Have you met my colleague, Shelby Tanner? I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned her. I’m sort of dating her. She’s with the Thirty-Six Society. I know I didn’t tell you that part before. I just learned it myself.”
“She has a gun and she’s in my kitchen,” said Grandma. She sounded very calm. That wasn’t a good sign.
“Well, I have a gun and I’m in your kitchen,” I said, trying to be reasonable. “And technically, right now, the table has her gun.”
“You’re allowed to have a gun in my kitchen,” said Grandma. “Young women to whom I have not been properly introduced most emphatically are not.”
“Your grandmother is Johrlac?” squeaked Shelby, sounding more unsettled than I’d ever heard her.
Confused, Grandma asked, “You know what I am?”
“She knew what I was, and threatened to shoot me several times to avenge her brother’s death,” said Sarah blithely.
There was a moment of silence. I uncovered my face to find Grandma looking at Sarah, although her crossbow was still pointed at Shelby. Using the voice she reserved for my cousin, Grandma asked, “Sarah, sweetheart, did you kill this woman’s brother?”
“I didn’t kill anyone that I’m aware of,” said Sarah, and took another sip of juice. “But she helped mix the goo to make Alex’s eyes stop being stone. I like her.”
There was a long, dangerous pause before Grandma said, “What?”