Seanan McGuire: Half-Off Ragnarok

Pliny’s gorgons usually have one or two members of their community working in the local human settlements, where they can keep an eye out for any possible mobs with torches, or anything else that might be bad for the family. Always females: most male Pliny’s gorgons are more than seven feet tall, which can be difficult to explain, while the females are more human-normal in height. Dee was right around five-seven, making her about four inches shorter than me. She’d been my assistant since the day I arrived at the Columbus Zoo, and I couldn’t have done it without her.

“Is there anything else you need, boss, or can you take things from here?”

“I think I can manage.” The report to zoo management was essentially finished; all I needed to do was check my grammar and hit “send.” I’d write up the encounter with the lindworm and email it to my parents later this evening. Maybe Dad could find something in the family records about lindworms in Ohio—or maybe I was right, and this really was a new species. Either way, I had plenty to get done tonight.

“Good boy,” said Dee, and left the office, her hair hissing softly beneath her auburn wig.

I chuckled, shrugged my jacket on, and followed her out.

The reptile house was mostly empty when I emerged from my office. The late afternoon was always our slowest time. The more interesting shows—which we were supposed to call “interactive exhibits,” according to the latest flyer from the head office—always took place after lunch, and most people were happier watching koalas or performing tigers while they tried to digest their processed cheese food sandwiches than they were wandering through the dark, snake-infested building where I worked.

Individual heating lamps lit the various enclosures, and hooded lights on the ceiling lit the rest of the room, although not very brightly. Many of the species we had living there were more active at night, and so we tricked them into thinking this was nighttime. They slithered and skittered around their artificial environments, exploring the boundaries they had explored a thousand times before. Crunchy, the aptly-named alligator snapping turtle, hung in the water of his tank like a floating, bad-tempered boulder, his mouth hanging open in silent invitation. It was an invitation I had no intention of accepting any time soon.

An old fellow like Crunchy can weigh in excess of three hundred pounds, and can take off a human leg in one bite. Two boys I judged to be about eleven years old were standing near his tank, watching him with rapt fascination. I paused, raising an eyebrow.

“You boys need something?” I asked.

“He moved last week,” said one of the boys. “He might do it again.”

I smiled to myself. There was a time when I would have been the one standing patiently outside the big turtle’s tank, waiting for that split second when he would close his jaws and the world would be awesome. “Here’s hoping,” I said, and walked on, heading for the front door. If I hurried, I could make it in time for the show.

As much as I loved the reptile house, it was always a sweet relief to step out of it and into the zoo proper. Inside, the air smelled of snake, a hot, musty, dry smell that never quite went away. The air outside smelled like freshly cut grass and a hundred types of blooming flowers, many of which had been imported solely to make the zoo seem wilder and more exotic. Tigers looked more realistic, somehow, when they were framed by flowers that didn’t come from the grocery store florist’s department.

Tourists and school groups milled listlessly on the paths, slowed down by their recent meals, while the diurnal animals did basically the same thing inside the open-air habitats. The African wild dogs were barking again, their strange, yodeling cries splitting the air. I sped up, until I was walking at a pace that was just shy of a run.

The big cats had their own private corner of the zoo, with multiple outdoor enclosures spreading out around the main building like the petals on a flower. A small amphitheater of sorts had been constructed between the lion and tiger enclosures, providing a space for the zookeepers to show off their animals. Cheers and applause were coming from that direction. I abandoned the pretense of walking, and ran the rest of the way.

Shelby’s tiger show was packed, leaving only a few seats at the rear of the amphitheater. I murmured apologies to the people already sitting on the benches as I sidled past them to get as close to the center as possible. People cast glares and irritated looks in my direction, but no one paid attention to me for long. There were better things for them to focus on.

The stadium-style benches of the amphitheater extended down to ground level, where they gave way to an eight-foot median, followed by a four-foot wall topped with a chain link fence. On the other side of the fence was a grassy lawn spotted with super-sized cat toys—and with super-sized cats to boot, in the form of five orange-and-black–striped tigers. They prowled and lounged just like their smaller cousins, and I couldn’t help thinking that Crow would be fascinated.

Three zookeepers in khaki and white moved around the edges of the enclosure, keeping the tigers under close watch, while the woman I’d come to see strutted at the center of the enclosure. Shelby Tanner.

I wasn’t the only one in the audience who was watching her rather than the tigers. The tigers were beautiful, but Shelby . . . Shelby was gorgeous. She was pleasantly tall, with long legs that only looked longer in her khaki shorts, and the kind of figure that comes from manual labor and good genetics. Her wavy blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, keeping it from becoming tangled in the hands-free microphone that was clipped over her left ear.

“Now this big beauty is Mitya, one of our Siberian tigers,” she said, her Australian accent slathered so broadly across the words that it was almost difficult to understand her. “Isn’t he a looker? Come on, Mitya, give us a kiss.” She tapped her thigh with one hand. The largest of the tigers in the enclosure responded by rearing up onto his hind legs, putting his forepaws on her shoulders, and licking her cheek like a dog. The audience applauded and cheered. I shook my head, wondering how many of them could tell how nervous the rest of the zookeepers were. This was grandstanding, pure and simple. But grandstanding gets butts into seats, and we needed that. As long as Shelby didn’t actually get eaten during one of her shows, management would let her decide what happened.

Hell, even if she did get eaten, management would probably let the show go on according to her notes. Anything to keep ticket sales up.

Shelby Tanner and I had arrived at the zoo at the same time, me as a visitor from California, no, really, we swear, and her as a visitor from Sydney, Australia. It was only natural for the rest of the staff to shove the two outsiders together. She hadn’t known what to make of me at first, and the confusion was mutual. Shelby was boisterous, enthusiastic to a fault once she had decided on a course of action, and prone to leaping before she looked. I was a man of science, and science was always going to be my first love, no matter how attractive the alternatives might be. And Shelby was a very attractive alternative. She didn’t carry a hunting rifle on a regular basis, but aside from that, she was everything I’d ever wanted in a woman, and I’d been very careful not to pursue her. I don’t make promises that I can’t keep.

Our first date had happened three months before, and it had almost certainly been a dare. She’d marched up to me after a staff meeting, looked me up and down, and informed me I was taking her out for a drink that coming Friday night. I said no. She laughed and said this might be fun after all, and somewhere in the discussion that followed, my no turned into a yes, and one date turned into two, then three, and then four.