“I take it you think your team will be the winning one?” asked Frank, a dangerous glint in his eye. His snakes rose into a strike position, hissing. Some of them opened their mouths, displaying dangerously sharp fangs.
“We always have been so far,” I said. “You’re five feet, eight inches away from my current position, Frank. Do you think you can close that distance before I put three bullets in your chest? It’s a math problem. I am very good at math. Unless you’re sure of the answer, I don’t recommend you try to run the numbers.”
“Frank.” Dee put a hand on his arm, her own snakes hissing and slithering over each other like in an eternally moving knot. “We can trust Alex. We have to trust Alex. He’s right. If this doesn’t stop soon, we’re going to be discovered.”
“Mammals,” spat Frank. Then he turned and stepped into the woods. Dee glanced back at me, expression somewhere between apologetic and resigned, and went after him.
I was about to follow two angry gorgons into the woods. I had no cell service, and no one knew where I was. My only potential backup was injured, missing, and presumably being held captive.
“No turning back now,” I said, and stepped into the trees.
The smell of snake was stronger once we were past the tree line, like they had somehow been holding it back, preventing it from coming out into the open. Dee and Frank picked a confident trail through the underbrush, following a series of landmarks that I couldn’t distinguish from everything else around us. I tried to stay close behind them, even as my monkey brain shrieked louder and louder, telling me that I needed to turn back at the first possible opportunity.
As we walked, I started to see glimpses of rock face through the trees. Finally, we moved around a particularly dense clump of elms, and there it was: a cave, cut like a gaping black hole into the side of the Ohio hills. Moss grew thick on the rocks around it, and roots overhung the edge, some of them dangling almost down to the ground. Dee and Frank stopped, allowing me to catch up with them.
“Hannah lives here,” said Dee needlessly. The smell of snake emanating from the cave was so strong that there was no way Hannah could have lived anywhere else.
“I got that,” I said. Neither of them looked inclined to go any further. I eyed them. “Are you staying out here?”
“You’ve been a great boss, Alex, and that’s rare,” said Dee. “You’re even a pretty good guy, which may be rarer. Most of the time these days, I almost forget that you’re a mammal. And none of that is good enough reason for me to go into that cave with you.”
Frank didn’t say anything. He simply stood there, stone-faced and silent, save for the soft hissing of the snakes atop his head.
“Fine,” I said. “Cowards.”
“Better a live coward than a dead hero,” said Dee.
“Dead heroes are sort of the family business,” I replied, and started walking toward the cave. The smell of snake got stronger with every step I took, underscored with a thick layer of old blood and older decay. I took my last breath of semi-clean air, put my hand on the pistol at my waist, and stepped through the curtain of roots into the darkness.
The temperature dropped several degrees as soon as I was inside the cave. The air grew cool and damp at the same time, creating a strange sort of cognitive dissonance. Snakes normally prefer to den in warm places, and the smells of both serpent and decay are hot smells, like chili peppers or sunbaked rock. I slowed my pace, giving my eyes time to adjust to the dimness.
“Hannah?” I called, hand still on my pistol. “It’s Alexander Price. I need to talk to you.”
Something slithered in the dark ahead of me. I swallowed hard, fighting back the wave of panic unleashed by my monkey brain. There were a hundred good reasons not to do this. There were a thousand good reasons to turn around and run.
There was one good reason to be exactly where I was. Her name was Shelby Tanner, and there was a better than good chance that I was in love with her. I kept walking.
“I’m not here to hurt you, and I don’t want to cause any trouble, but I need to talk to you, and I’m not leaving until that happens,” I said.
The sound of slithering came again. It was louder this time, which meant that it was probably closer. I had a real hard time thinking of that as a positive thing.
“I know about Lloyd, Hannah. I know what he’s been doing, and I know you’re protecting him, because he’s your family. I understand how important family is. But do you remember Shelby? The woman who was here with me before? Lloyd hurt her. He stabbed her, and I think he took her, because there’s nowhere else she could have gone. She’s going to die if I don’t find her. Shelby is my family, Hannah. She’s my family, and she didn’t do anything to deserve this.”
Slithering, followed by silence.
“You said my great-grandfather helped you. You said he helped your parents find each other. That means you wouldn’t be here to refuse me without him. Honor his memory. Help me.”
“You would make me choose between you and my son?” Her voice was closer than I’d expected from the slithering; I somehow managed not to jump, but it was a close thing, based more on the fact that I was too terrified to move than on any aspect of my training. “How dare you. I may owe my life to your great-grandfather, but that is all I owe him. I owe the life of my son to no one at all.”
“Your son’s life is his own,” I said. “He’s killing people. You know what that means.”
“You came here to kill us. I knew that as soon as I set eyes on you.”
“I came here for reasons of my own. It was Lloyd who made this a hunt.”
“Yet you have always been a hunter.”
“I’m not here to hunt anyone but Lloyd,” I said. “I just want to stop the deaths and get my girlfriend back.”
“You lie. Humans always lie.”
“Did Jonathan lie to you?”
Silence fell in the cave, broken only by the low, constant sound of hissing. I hadn’t noticed it when she was speaking; either it had just started, or the silence was really that absolute. Finally, she said, “Yes, he did. He told my parents they would be happy here in Ohio. He told them they would be safe here, that they would have good lives here, and that they would never have children. They were happy with their choice and with each other, but were they happy with me?” Her face loomed out of the dark, close enough that this time I did jump, taking an involuntary step back. “He lied when he said I would never be, and when they learned to love the thing I was, he lied again when he said that I would never have children of my own.”
“Biologically speaking—”
“Do not speak to me of science, little mammal,” hissed Hannah, and slithered into the light. Yes, slithered: her legs were gone, replaced by a tail that gripped the rocks like a rock python. Shapeshifting is a trait of the greater gorgon, one they share with the gorgons of legend. She circled me, creating a barrier with her tail when she stopped, her human half raised off the ground in parody of a standing woman. She was naked, having eschewed the trappings of humanity here in her cave, where no one with half a brain would dare to bother her. “Science did not stop my birth, and it did not stop the birth of my son. His father left me when the egg hatched; when he saw what we had done together. Children should be a blessing. Your family took that from me.”