The sound of a heavy thump traveled through the phone as Alex sat down on his end. “You found the dragon.”

“Not yet.”

“So how do you know this?”

“Because it turns out the Covenant didn’t wipe out all the dragons. Just the male ones. Think extreme sexual dimorphism, mimicry-based camouflage, and parthenogenesis. The dragon princesses are the female of the species, and they’re sort of excited by the idea of getting their boyfriends back.”

Alex swore quietly.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Like that, but louder.”

Most people are familiar with the theory of sexual dimorphism. It’s what gives peacocks those flashy tails while the peahens look like they’ve been dipped in boring, and what makes male lions so much bigger and lazier than the lionesses. Every gendered species is sexually dimorphic to one degree or another, even if it’s as simple as “one of us has an innie, one of us has an outie.” The female spotted hyena has what really looks like a penis from any sort of a distance. Lots of reptiles are visually sexless, which is why calling your tortoise “she” is silly if you’re not a zookeeper. Other animals are so sexually dimorphic that they don’t even look like the same species. We’re talking anglerfish where the males have no digestive systems of their own, barnacles where the females are basically internal organs feeding off their male hosts, and stuff that’s even weirder. Mother Nature is a freaky lady who probably created pot so she could spend all her time smoking it.

It’s unusual to find really extreme sexual dimorphism in anything bigger than a skink, but it happens. The dragons were definitely on the high end of the weirdness scale, and the parthenogenesis just upped the crazy ante. If extreme sexual dimorphism is rare in bigger animals, parthenogenesis—reproduction without access to the male of the species—is practically unheard of. Komodo dragons can do it (although since they’re Komodo dragons, they do it extra-freaky, and actually produce male offspring through what is essentially a method for self-cloning). Anything bigger than that? Not so much. But that explained why we’d never been able to figure out where the dragon princesses were coming from. They weren’t pulling the tanuki trick and mating with anything that moved. They were mating with themselves, all in the name of making it through another generation. Parthenogenesis means never having your mother tell you to stop doing that or you’ll go blind.

Anyone who thinks cryptozoology is the study of the impossible has never really taken a very good look at the so-called “natural world.” Once you get past the megamouth sharks, naked mole rats, and spotted hyenas, then the basilisks, dragons, and cuckoos just don’t seem that unreasonable. Unpleasant, yes, but unreasonable? Not really.

It took about ten minutes to finish explaining everything I’d learned from the dragon princesses, by which point the battery of my phone was on the brink of death. Emailing the pictures was going to need to wait until I got home to my charger. Alex agreed to call our parents and leave a message for them to pick up when they got back from the basilisk hunt, thus saving me from needing to go through the whole spiel twice in one afternoon. I was tired, I was sore, I still had to tell Piyusha’s brothers that she was dead, and I really didn’t want to deal with the risk that my parents were already home. The last thing I needed was to wind up getting grilled by Dad in full-on naturalist mode.

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Except for the cuts, contusions, bruises, damage to my pride, and slight dislocation of my worldview, I’m fine.” I stood, feeling the muscles in my thighs protest. A little run would work out the majority of the stiffness, and some painkillers would have to do for the rest. It wasn’t like I was going to be taking a hot bath and a nap any time soon. “I’m about to be unavailable for a little while, though—at least until I can charge my phone. I’ll be checking email, or you can call Sarah.”

“Doesn’t she have class today?”

“She always checks her messages between classes, in case Artie mysteriously decided to fly to New York and wants to have lunch.”

Alex snorted. “Yeah, like that’s going to happen. I don’t think he’s left the basement in a month.”

“Only a month this time? And you know Sarah. Hope springs eternal, especially when you’re a socially awkward math geek from a species of dangerous telepathic psychopaths. At least she’s fixating on the dork side, rather than the dark side. It could be worse.”

“Charming as ever, Very. I’m going to go call Dad and let him know what’s up on your end. Please try not to get killed before you can recharge your phone.”

“Love you too, big brother.” I hung up, tucking the phone into the pocket of my jeans before taking a step back and getting a running start toward the edge of the roof. If I got the trajectory right, I should be able to jump off, grab the fire escape on the building across the alley, and swing from there to the next roof over. It all depended on my building enough momentum before the first leap, but I had faith in my ability to clear the distance. I got one foot up onto the low concrete lip surrounding the roof, tensed to spring—

—and toppled backward as someone grabbed my arm.

I managed to avoid going into a full-out somersault as I yanked myself away, but I couldn’t dump speed fast enough to keep from tumbling to the roof, absorbing the majority of the impact with my elbows. I’ve taken worse falls with less preparation, and all I left behind on the hard-pack gravel of the roof was a few layers of skin. I bounced back to my feet with knives already drawn, whirling to face my assailant. I was pissed, but not quite pissed enough to go straight for my guns. That sort of escalation never does anyone any good.

Dominic was still standing by the rim of the roof, looking faintly surprised, like he hadn’t expected my interrupted leap to contain quite so much momentum. He was back in his duster and jeans, and there was fresh tape covering the wounds on his face. “Are you all right?”

“I’d be better if some asshole hadn’t just stopped me from jumping off the roof.” I straightened up, sliding my knives back into their sheaths. Sliding them into his sides would have been more satisfying, but not, in the long run, as productive. Stupid morals. “What are you doing here, De Luca?”

“I was concerned for your safety. You went into the sewers and didn’t come back out.”