I thought of Sarah, who came from a species the entire world—including Shelby—was ready to write off as beyond redemption, monsters from birth. “Children are a blessing,” I said. “Nature doesn’t define everything that we’re going to be. Love can change us.”
“You think I didn’t love him? I loved him more than any mother has ever loved a hatchling. I cradled him to me and protected him from the world. But the world kept forcing its way in. The world couldn’t let us be.” Hannah scowled, a flash of fang showing through the dimness. “The world deserves whatever it gets.”
“Does Shelby? Do the people you built this community for?” I gestured behind me, trying to indicate the mouth of the cave. “Dee and Frank are outside. They respect your privacy too much to come inside with me.”
“They fear me,” she said.
“They respect you,” I said. “They introduced you to me as their protector, their founder, the reason they’ve stayed safe here while so many gorgon communities have failed. They love you. Whatever may have happened in the past, they love you. But if Lloyd isn’t stopped, if he doesn’t see reason, all of this is going to be lost. Do you get that? You’re not giving the world what it deserves. You’re hurting the people who love you.”
Hannah stared at me, the snakes atop her head hissing. Then, slowly, they began to settle, dropping back into a neutral position. She dipped a little lower, still holding herself off the ground. “You’re here to kill him,” she accused.
“Yes,” I said. “I am. I’m sorry, Hannah. He’s been responsible for the deaths of three people so far—that I know of—and that makes him a danger to all of us.”
“So you will kill him and then what?” Hannah tilted her head, watching me. “Will you walk away? What if your woman is dead?”
“I’ll be honest: I don’t know,” I said. “My first response is that if she’s dead, I’ll burn this place to the ground, but I know that’s not fair to people like Frank and Dee, who didn’t do anything. I’ll do my best to restrain myself. It’s not going to be easy. So really, the best thing would be for me to find her alive, and that means I need to find her soon. Will you please tell me where Lloyd is, Hannah? For Shelby’s sake, and for his?”
She sighed. It was an old, tired sound, like wind blowing over bones. “And what if I kill you right now? Won’t that solve the problem for everyone?”
“I’m getting really tired of playing chicken,” I muttered. “If you kill me, I guess I’ll be dead, and Shelby will probably be dead too, since no one’s going to show up in time to save her. But my grandparents will come looking for me, and when they find out what happened, they’ll call my parents, and my sisters, and a lot more people will die. None of that has to happen. If you tell me where to find Lloyd, we can end this all today.”
“You’ll kill him. You’ll kill my son.”
“Yes.” I looked at her, a strange calm spreading over me. “So I guess this is where you decide. You need to kill me right now, or you need to tell me where to find Lloyd. Otherwise, I’m going to go looking for him, and I’m going to find him, and you’re going to have no say at all in what happens next.”
Hannah froze, holding herself still as only a snake can, like she no longer possessed even the potential for motion. Then she dipped lower, until her eyes were level with mine, and her entire body seemed to slump, giving the impression that she was barely holding herself away from the floor. “He was a good boy once,” she said dully. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“Where is he, Hannah?”
She looked at me. “It is fitting that you’re of Jonathan’s line,” she said. “This is all his fault.”
And she told me where to go.
Dee and Frank looked surprised when I emerged from the cave, probably because they’d both expected to be sending me off to my death. I straightened my coat, pulled the pistol out of my belt, and said, “You need to take me to the old barn.”
“The old barn?” said Dee. “But that was abandoned years ago.”
For a moment, I just stared at her. “You abandoned the old barn years ago, and you didn’t take me there first?” I asked. “You people need to watch more horror movies. Yes, take me to the old barn—just you, though. Frank, you need to go back to your office.”
“What?” He frowned at me, the snakes atop his head hissing quizzically. “Why?”
“Because Shelby’s hurt. Go get your first aid kit, and meet us at the barn.” Hopefully, she would still need whatever help he could give. Hopefully, we weren’t already past the point of her needing any help at all.
To my surprise, Frank nodded and turned without argument, walking briskly into the woods. He was still in sight when he broke into a run, leaving me alone with Dee. She looked up at me and sighed, the hissing of her snakes providing a strange counterpoint to the sound.
“This way,” she said, and beckoned for me to follow her through the trees in yet another direction. Lacking any better options, I matched her stride, letting her lead me.
“It was nice working with you, Alex,” she said, after we’d been walking through the woods for about a minute and a half. “I appreciated having a boss who didn’t mind that I wasn’t a mammal.”
“Why would I have minded? You did your job.” The frickens were creep-creep-creeping in the trees, their tinny, piping voices providing a degree of background reassurance. We were alone here, or at least, there was nothing nearby that the frickens recognized as a threat. “You still have a job, you know, unless this is how you turn in your resignation—and if it is, you have shitty timing, since I can’t really focus on anything but Shelby at the moment.”
“I sort of figured I was fired.”
I bit back the urge to swear. “Look, I know human-gorgon relations aren’t always peaceful, what with us hunting you for your heads and you turning us into stone, but I thought we had worked past that, and I really, really don’t want to have the speciesism conversation when I’m preoccupied with wondering whether or not my girlfriend is dead.”
Dee nodded quickly. “I know, I just . . . this might be the last time I see you. And I didn’t want to let that slip past without my telling you how much I respected you as a boss, and as a friend. You did a good job.”
“Ah.” I gave her a sidelong look as I stepped over a fallen branch. “You’re pretty sure I’m about to get myself killed, aren’t you?”
“Lloyd is older than anyone here, except for Hannah. If you’re walking into his lair, you’re walking into more than you can handle.”
“Age isn’t everything,” I said. “You should meet my little sisters.”
Conversation died as we reached the edge of the woods. I thumbed off the safety on my pistol, standing for a moment at the tree line as I scanned the decrepit old barn in front of us for signs of life. The structure was the sort of classic Americana that looked like it had been assembled over a weekend by the cast of Little House on the Prairie before being left to the elements for twenty years. Patches of iconic barn-red paint remained, but most of it had been ripped away by wind and weather, exposing wood slats the color of old bone. I couldn’t get a real feel for the roof from where I was standing, but it looked like it was on the verge of caving in.