“But you still hold yourselves as judge, jury, and executioner when you feel like it’s appropriate, don’t you? You wouldn’t be here otherwise.” Lloyd remained next to the bed, straightening slowly, until he stood taller than I had ever seen him. It wasn’t just a matter of hunching or not hunching; his torso seemed to have elongated, adding a serpentine cast to his silhouette. “That’s why you had to go before I could have my revenge. Andrew was an accident, you know. I was planning to put my cockatrice in your office, take care of the biggest threat around before things got started. So I put it in your yard, and even that couldn’t get rid of you. Slippery bastard.”
“Sorry I didn’t want to die.”
“I shouldn’t have expected anything different from a Price. Self-appointed saviors of the cryptid world, who know what we need better than we do.”
“You know, I’m used to people being mad at me because of who my ancestors were, but most of the time, they’re pissed off because someone I’m related to killed someone they were related to, not because my great-grandfather helped their parents get married.”
Lloyd laughed bitterly. “You’d best change your thinking, then. You do more damage when you let us live than you ever did when you let us die.”
“So you put the cockatrice in my yard—then what? Why keep letting it kill random people? Why set Shelby’s building on fire? Why did you need revenge in the first place?”
“You would have caught me eventually. I needed to get rid of you, even if it meant hurting her.” Something about the stress he put on the word “her” made me profoundly uncomfortable. “As for why I needed revenge . . . those bastards told me I’d be retiring at the end of the year. They said I was too old to do my job and that it was an oversight I’d been allowed to stay as long as I had. Said their insurance didn’t like it when they kept on old men past a certain point. No telling what kind of health problems we could have. Wouldn’t want to see us dropping dead in front of the paying customers. So they were cutting me loose after sixty years of service, and all because I had the nerve to survive past the point where I was convenient.”
“There are other jobs,” I said, aware of how inane that sounded almost as soon as I spoke.
It was too late to take the words back. Lloyd sneered. “Maybe for you. When I took that job, no one asked for high school diplomas or proof of residency. It was enough that I showed up for work every day. But you humans, you never stopped hunting us, did you? Not really. You just built different traps. Red tape and fences everywhere. I’m trapped.”
“I could help you . . .” I tried.
Lloyd wasn’t listening. “You humans, you make your rules, and you never consider what they’ll do to the people who get in their way. Retirement ages and well-meaning meddling, and for what? So you can feel powerful when you’re the only damn things in the world who don’t have an advantage past ‘thumbs’? Lots of critters have thumbs. You don’t see us prancing around shouting about being the lords of creation.”
“Hold on a second, okay? Just . . . hold on.” I shook my head. “What are you mad about? Are you mad that you were born, or that you got old, or that the zoo fired you, or that paperwork exists, or something else altogether? Because people have died over this, and I’d really like to understand why.”
“I’m mad about all those things,” said Lloyd. “And I’m mad about you and Doctor Tanner, too.”
I froze. “What do you mean?”
“You’re not much of a catch, are you, Price boy? She’s a pretty girl, and she could have done a lot better than a weedy science boy with glasses and scuffed shoes. But she didn’t look twice at anybody else, especially not the old man at the gate. Not even when I brought her flowers and didn’t check her ID on mornings when she was running late. She didn’t see me. I was willing to let her burn for that, but I came up with a better idea.” He shook his head. “She’s going to see me now. And then she’s going to stay with me forever.”
“But . . . you’re not even a mammal,” I said, before I could think better of it. The horror of him turning Shelby to stone and keeping her as his captive bride was too much to focus on, and so I went to the safe haven of biology.
“You think that matters?” Lloyd’s voice took on a sneering tone. “My mama is a crossbreed, and my daddy was a Pliny’s gorgon who wanted nothing to do with me. He couldn’t even look me in the face. My species cast me out a long time ago.”
“They still take care of you. They let you live here—”
“Only because they’re so scared of Ma that they don’t know what else to do,” Lloyd spat. “Pa founded a whole new place because he didn’t want to look her in the eye.”
“The fringe,” I guessed grimly.
“Why do you think I went there for my cockatrice?” He laughed. “Can’t keep your hands clean forever, no matter how hard you try. Can’t hide forever, neither. Eventually, the world’s going to figure out we’re still out here, that all the monsters are still out here, and then there’s going to be hell to pay. You can’t blame me for trying to hurry that along.”
Actually, yes, I could blame him. At least three people were dead, assuming no one had died in the apartment fire, and a lot more people had been hurt, either physically or emotionally. Not all damage is visible to the eye. “You didn’t have to take Shelby. She needs medical care.”
“We have a doctor,” said Lloyd. “Once I get rid of you, Frank will have to patch her up. Then, when she’s awake, I’ll offer her a deaclass="underline" be my girl like she was yours, and I won’t feel the need to look her in the eyes.”
“No thank you,” said Shelby’s voice, weak and welcome. Relief flooded through me. Until she’d spoken, I hadn’t realized just how afraid I was that she was never going to speak again.
“What?” Lloyd whipped around to face her. She hadn’t moved so much as a muscle, and was still a dark, huddled form on the bed. That forced him to lean in closer, and I saw my chance, beginning to cautiously pick my way through the darkened barn as I tried to line up a clear shot on him.
Hannah, I’m sorry, I thought. It was him or me, him or Shelby, him or a lot of other people . . . maybe Lloyd was right, and my family was too quick to judge the cryptid world. Most of us were human. So what made us qualified to decide who lived and who died?
He had a point. I didn’t care. If I had to choose one of them, I chose Shelby.
“I said, no thank you,” repeated Shelby. Her voice was a broken echo of itself, washed out by pain and blood loss. “I have no particular interest in becoming your next meal, or your tethered love slave, or anything else that you may have been considering for me. Alex is quite sufficient to suit my needs. Now do me a favor and go fuck yourself.”
“You . . . you . . . you mammal,” hissed Lloyd, and did exactly what I had been hoping he wouldn’t do: he grabbed her, pulling her halfway into a sitting position and shaking her. Shelby made a small sound that was halfway between a whimper and a gasp. “Forget healing you. Open your eyes! You stupid human bitch, open your eyes!”
“No thank you,” said Shelby, for the third time.
I couldn’t get a clean shot, not in the dark with him half-blocking her from sight. With as much blood as she’d already lost, I wasn’t sure Shelby would survive even being grazed by a flying bullet.
“Put her down, Lloyd,” I said. “She’s not the one you’re mad at.”
“I’m mad at all you bastards,” he said, and shook Shelby again. “Open your eyes and look at me.”