The ducks continued to squawk and complain around me, although my presence seemed to be calming them somewhat. Humans brought bread and other tasty things. Humans might throw rocks or kick, but they never really hurt ducks. Humans were safe.

“Sorry, guys,” I said to the ducks, straightening up as I continued to study the petrified drake. I couldn’t tell how long ago the petrifaction had been complete; the drake was smaller than either a human or a lindworm, so the process wouldn’t have taken long. Death would have been virtually instantaneous. I’d need to crack the drake open to know whether the entire thing was stone, or whether it was still flesh inside, but that wouldn’t tell me anything. It would just destroy something beautiful. That seemed unfair, somehow.

If the ducks were still this upset, however, the cockatrice must have been here recently. I peered at the mud. Duck tracks obscured any tracks the cockatrice might have left on this side of the pond, and so I inched carefully around the water, aware that I was breaking a good dozen zoo rules as I made my way deeper into the enclosure. No capybara showed themselves, but I could hear them grunting and huffing at me from inside their artificial jungle. That was reassuring. They were mammal noises, nothing like the hiss or croak of the cockatrice. If it was still lurking here, it hadn’t petrified the capybara.

Not yet, anyway. I moved faster, scanning the ground . . . and there, at the edge of the pond, I found what I was looking for. They could have been mistaken for chicken tracks, if they’d been smaller, and if we’d had any free-range chickens at the zoo. As it was, they were clearly out of place.

The trail began in the bushes, made its way to the pond, and stayed there, driven deep into the mud. The cockatrice had stopped for a drink. That was probably when it petrified the duck. I followed the track to the other side of the enclosure, hoping that it wouldn’t disappear into the underbrush.

It didn’t. Instead, it just disappeared. “Shit,” I murmured, and peered closer. There were no scrapes to indicate that the cockatrice had taken flight; it was walking, and then it was gone. I straightened, trying to take in the enclosure around me. I was almost to the back, and that meant I was probably near the wall. I reached into the foliage. My fingers penetrated only a few inches before I hit stone. Feeling around, I found the latch that would allow the zookeeper standing on the other side to open the feeding hatch and toss in treats for the capybara—or, if they had a more nefarious goal in mind, allow them to lean in and lift out a runaway cockatrice.

Whoever was using the cockatrice as a murder weapon was still here at the zoo.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, dialing Shelby’s number. It rang until the call rolled to voicemail and her cheerful voice offered me the chance to leave her a message. There was a killer loose in the zoo, and my girlfriend wasn’t answering her phone.

Somehow, I managed to walk non-disruptively through the enclosure to the retaining wall. The ducks quacked angrily as I bent to press the stone drake into the mud at the edge of the pond. Then I hopped over the wall and broke into a run, heading as fast as I could for the far side of the zoo, and hoping that I was being paranoid. God, I hoped that I was being paranoid.

Even though I knew I probably wasn’t.

Twenty-one

“Nothing good has ever come from splitting the party.”

—Thomas Price

Ohio’s West Columbus Zoo, running like a bat out of hell toward the big cat enclosures

THE GEESE HAD TAKEN over most of the zoo’s walkways without humans to shoo them away. They scattered as I ran, spreading outward in feathery waves to either side of me. Between the motion and their angry honks and hisses, there was no chance I’d have the advantage of surprise on my side: anyone with eyes or ears would know that I was coming. So I put my head down and focused on speed. The faster I could get to Shelby, the faster I could convince myself that everything was all right; that I was the first person in the history of my family to be paranoid for no good reason.

I actually found myself wishing that security would spot and stop me. At least then I’d have some backup.

The roar of a big cat—lion or tiger, I didn’t know, although Shelby would have—sounded from ahead, loud and angry and filled with a territorial possessiveness that I didn’t need to speak feline to understand. The cats never roared at Shelby like that. They’d eat her if she gave them the chance, but they didn’t see her as an intruder. I ran faster.

The geese tapered off as I got closer to the roaring. They knew a predator when they heard one, and they wanted nothing to do with what they heard. The smaller big cats were outside in their daylight enclosures, prowling and snarling, clearly agitated. The zoo’s two snow leopards were crouched atop their rock, tails puffed out to three times their normal size, snarling in low, almost subsonic tones that put my teeth on edge. Eyes flashed from the darkness of the lynx enclosure as I ran past it, and I found myself grateful for the fences between us.

Humanity is on top of the food chain because we have weapons, and fences, and the ability to run from danger. I was running into danger, and since I didn’t want to get tackled by any security guards I might happen to run into—possibly literally at my current speed—I was doing it without my gun drawn. This was stupid. It might actually cross the line into suicidal. And it was what I’d been training for since I was a kid who didn’t understand that someday, the world would come with consequences.

The door to the big cat house was ajar. I managed to slow down before charging inside, putting a hand on the gun I had concealed beneath my jacket as I eased my body through the gap.

The hot stink of cat hit me as soon as I was inside: raw and primal and vitally alive in a way that was entirely different from the smell of my reptiles. There was blood beneath the surface stench, freshly-spilled and lingering in the air. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. The big cats were obligate carnivores, and they required a lot of meat to get through their days.

The cats themselves were watching me as they prowled their cages, growling in agitation. A big male lion occupied the enclosure to my left, while an equally large tiger of indeterminate gender was to my right, lips drawn back to display massive canines. Looking at them, I guessed that the lion had been the source of the roaring. He still looked unhappy, although he wasn’t roaring anymore. I couldn’t tell whether or not that was a good sign.

Moving carefully, so as to minimize the amount of noise my footsteps would make, I made my way down the length of the big cat house. The lion and tiger followed in their enclosures, matching their steps to mine. Eerie as the giant predators were, I was strangely grateful. Their growls and the thudding of their paws would cover any noise I happened to make, muffling it and making it easier for me to reach my destination.