Slithering from my perch, I began my search.
Without climbing equipment, a human wouldn’t have been able to make it to the top without risking life and limb. Claw marks scarred the stone at the base of the formation, and I didn’t want to get into an argument with their owner—or owners. Lycanthropes could tear metal apart, and centaurs were often blessed with inhuman strength, making them the targets of the CDC and law enforcement when anything big, bad, and equipped with swords attached to their fingers caused trouble. Too many options existed for me to confirm or deny what had made the marks.
I only knew one thing for certain: whoever had made them had gone to the top, which meant I’d have to follow for a closer look.
Why hadn’t I been born a cat? Or anything other than the daughter of a mermaid queen and a gorgon? Then again, with a saner heritage, I would’ve led a completely different life. A normal life seemed so nice, so calm.
Instead, I had grandparents who viewed me as a passing interest, a living toy capable of amusing them for five consecutive minutes; even my father’s parents had the same tendency, although they’d stuck around for an entire day. I considered it a record.
I wondered how long it would take someone to realize I had given everyone the slip. Hissing my amusement, I slithered up the stones, coiling my tail around rocks jutting from the formation so I wouldn’t splatter to the ground far below. I made it to the top to discover a disaster of abandoned equipment, most of it old. Someone had shoved the gear beneath an overhang, and upon closer inspection, I decided a helicopter search wouldn’t have revealed the cache, not without flying close to the formation. A pair of lions could bask on the peak, although it’d be a tight squeeze.
Brothers seeking a chance to escape civilization wouldn’t mind being crammed together, so I couldn’t eliminate the spire as a possibility.
That left me with the tedious job of sorting through the ruined equipment littering the stone. Decaying leather, rusting metal, and scraps of clothes hid a few coins, the newest of which was from five years ago, which matched the disappearance of the two lions. Despite the years, I doubted anyone other than some small animals—and me—had disturbed the remains.
The lack of bones implied the pair, if the pair had left the gear, hadn’t died on top of the formation. Had they fallen?
Anything was possible, but it’d be simple enough to burrow a few inches into the leaf-strewn soil in search of bones. I could work in a spiral pattern, nosing through the leaves and dirt, and find surface bones easily enough. If animals had gotten to the bodies, they could be a mile or more from where they’d fallen, although lion centaurs were large enough any predators and scavengers wouldn’t have moved them before eating.
If they’d died at the base of the formation, I’d find evidence of their bodies.
If they hadn’t, I’d have a mystery layered on top of a mystery, and I’d have to return as a human and gather the remnants to study and test. With my father’s meddling, I wouldn’t be able to make use of my normal resources. Finding new labs to get test samples from would be difficult, and if I wanted to have any DNA tests done, I’d be stuck with shipping samples to the deep south, making use of contacts that would put me at higher risk of discovery.
The last time I’d used those contacts, I’d drawn more attention than I liked.
Part of me hoped I’d find bones below, but the killer in me wanted a hunt that ended in the death, securing my place as the bigger, badder predator.
13
A good search covered as much ground as possible while also being thorough. Leaving no stone unturned meant I wouldn’t have to check over the same territory again unless I needed a metal detector, which I expected I would. Nosing through leaves and loose soil for humanoid remains wasn’t my favorite activity, but if someone had died beneath the stone formation, I’d find something. Most people wouldn’t recognize human remains unless they came across something distinctive, such as a skull or femur.
I’d studied enough to identify human remains, although I wasn’t all that good at judging the age of the bones once they’d been stripped of flesh and muscle. When I found bones I needed aged, I sent them to a black market lab for analysis, paying a small fortune for as much information on the deceased as possible. My favorite lab tech had access to CDC databases and could often identify the victim through DNA samples.
Knowing the identity of the victims made it much simpler to find the killer, as every murder had a story.
The trick was learning what bound murdered and murderer together. One day, someone would follow the trail of victims to their killers, and their deaths all told the same story: they died as they had lived, killed as they’d killed. The victims would lead the hunters to the hunter, to me, as I had patterns just like everyone else.
My patterns entangled me with the law, and the law would eventually crack the code, be it through the ties to the CDC entries, the payments to certain labs scattered across the United States and Europe, or the method I used to report the discovery of the bodies, which were always missing a few small bones. One day, someone would put together all the pieces I left in my wake and discover my contribution to the story.
Then it’d circle back to the reason why killers like me could never truly retire.
In the meantime, I’d do what I did best, poking my scaly nose where it didn’t belong. I found a lot of little bones and evidence of predators dining on the local wildlife before my spiraling search uncovered a pair of underwear, unfortunately used and vile enough I wanted to murder the desecrator of the otherwise nice forest. The sun fell towards the horizon, and as the temperature dropped, I searched for a place to curl up and hide until morning.
I debated between climbing a tree and curling up or burrowing within the rotted remains of a fallen giant; either would meet my needs, out of reach of other predators who might want to try their luck. The only beasts I truly worried about were honey badgers and mongoose; neither were inclined to just fall over and die. I disliked mongoose more than honey badgers.
Mongoose went out of their way to annoy the hell out of me. Between their thick fur and resistance to venom, I classified them as a top threat. Honey badgers were dangerous, too, but mongoose enjoyed their attempts to kill me.
I left honey badgers alone, and they left me alone. I viewed it as an amicable relationship of avoidance. Despite their reputations, I found honey badgers rather reasonable—as long as they weren’t pissed off. Once angered, a honey badger stopped at nothing until it acquired revenge, supper, or both.
I liked America; it had a pleasantly low number of annoying predators.
After consideration, I coiled in the branches of a tall tree to wait out the night. If someone bothered me from below, I’d put every inch of my length to good use and teach them why black mambas were to be feared.
The day started colder than I liked, and it took me until noon to uncoil from my branch and return to the ground. Moving helped, although my movements remained sluggish. I cursed South Dakota and its weather, regretting my decision to leave the castle designed to keep gorgons toasty warm. The chill turned searching into a slow, miserable affair, although I dutifully nosed through the leaves and debris for any evidence a humanoid had died in the area.
I found nothing.
Night once again encroached on the forest, and instead of climbing a tree, I searched the trunks for a place to hide until the weather turned in my favor. I struck gold among the roots of an ancient giant. Age had killed the mighty tree. Although it still stood, its insides were hollowed so that even a human—or a pair of bored lion centaurs—could fit inside.
Some sentient had discovered the niche, too, carving through the trunk and into the ground. Packed dirt steps spiraled down. A dim glow promised something lurked below.
I considered my options for all of two seconds. The cold mystery I hunted could wait until my curiosity was satisfied. Who—or what—would create a dwelling beneath a long-dead tree? Careful to keep my movements
slow and smooth, I descended, tasting the air with my tongue.
Death, in all its stages, had scents and tastes, and the stench of old decay teased my senses. The ground warmed beneath me the farther I ventured, and I basked long enough for the worst of the chill to ease.
The illumination steadily intensified and stained the worked earth with red, creating the illusion blood soaked everything. I nosed at the packed soil to discover it far drier than the moist loam above. The illusion annoyed me into hissing, and I slithered deeper into the ground. Why would anyone build such a place?
I could think of a few reasons, and they all circled to the type of men and women I hunted for sport and justice. If I wanted to terrify someone, I’d begin with a stairwell much like the one I explored. Gouges marred a few steps, and I wondered what had created them. They were deep and long enough to make me believe a large predator had found the space.
The marks reinforced I didn’t know enough about the victims I sought; could the marks belong to a lion? Whatever owned the claws could probably cleave bone in half with ease.
No matter what, I couldn’t allow the owner of those claws to get a hold of me. I liked being in one piece.
The staircase ended at a tiled landing. More than dirt stained the floor, although I couldn’t tell the blood’s age. Small bones, shattered by powerful jaws, had been swept out of the way, lining the walls. The bones worried me; sentients tended to sweep the remains of their meals out of the way, not leave them lining a tunnel in a macabre display of lethality.
Some of the larger fragments could’ve come from a human, which decided me. After I scouted, I’d find somewhere to hide for the night, grab a mouthful of fragments, and head for my father’s home and send the bones away for analysis. Some species viewed humans and other sentients as prey, and while they didn’t classify as serial killers, I’d hunt them all the same.
If the bones belonged to sentients, I’d have my work cut out for me identifying the victims—and killing the killer without joining the collection of remains littering the hallway.
Had I been a little wiser or smarter, I would’ve turned tail, slithered up the steps, and found somewhere colder but safer to sleep. I’d plan to return as a human so I could collect as many bones as possible before retreating and making plans.
Scouting would give me a better idea of what to expect, as long as the being responsible for the broken bones remained unaware of my presence. My scales rasped on the tiles, and wary the sound would betray me, I waited and listened.
The quiet disturbed me more than anything else; forests weren’t supposed to be so eerily still. That mice and the local creepy crawlies avoided the place meant one thing alone: a predator lived nearby.
If I ever did find a way to retire—or found a man willing to put up with me—I needed to make sure I never had a chance to become bored. Boredom got me into so much trouble. Boredom drove me into exploring creepy underground lairs decorated with the shattered bones of some predator’s meal.
If I managed to catch Justin, I’d have to warn him about my tendency to create trouble when bored. Nice girlfriends did that, or so I’d been told.
If I tried a little harder to be a nice girlfriend, maybe I wouldn’t have trouble keeping a man around longer than a couple of nights. I was my mother’s daughter—and my father’s daughter, too. No matter how I flipped it, I wasn’t a promising prospect to a sane man looking for a stable wife.
If, if, if. There were too many damned ifs in my life, and I needed to change that—if I could.
Damn it.
I’d have to put some serious thought into whether or not a man was worth the hassle of being nice, good, or whatever it was men wanted in women. I suspected a stable career, non-murderous tendencies, and sane hobbies topped the list.
I inched my way forward, and the glow dimmed along with the warmth, tempting me to nest beneath the bones until morning. I endured, restraining myself from hissing my displeasure.
Why couldn’t I find a predator with nice accommodations for a change? For some reason, I ended up hunting the sickos who thought an underground lair decorated with bones was actually a good idea.
Ugh.
More importantly, why couldn’t I leave well enough alone? I could’ve turned around when I’d found a staircase spiraling down inside a dead tree trunk, but no. I had to poke my scaly nose where it didn’t belong yet again.
I really would get myself killed if I didn’t get my head out of my ass and stop testing my luck for no reason other than I could.
A lunatic with too much money and time had built a maze beneath the forest, and when I found the bastard, I’d put my venom to good use. One bite wouldn’t do. No, I’d tap out every last drop of my venom to rid the Earth of the asshole behind the lair.
It wasn’t even a good maze; in an effort to disorient, the hallway branched, except the tunnels always circled back to the main corridor, and the idiot with a digging fetish only bothered to decorate the main hall with the remains of its dinner.
To add to my annoyance, the stench of death and decay intensified, leading me to where the predator likely killed and ate its meals—and left them rotting for a while before cleaning the meat and marrow from the broken bones. Most serial killers I’d hunted relocated the bodies once they finished with them. The more depraved kept the bodies long enough for putrefaction to begin, but all of them had eventually removed the bodies.
I’d only killed one man who’d kept trophies, but his collection had been hair—only hair. It’d made for an easy identification of his victims, leading to closure for the families of his twenty-two victims, all brunette women between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. The hard part had been finding the dumping spot. Of all the killers I’d hunted, he’d been the most creative.
I hadn’t been able to save his last victim, but her body had led me to the others, and I’d taken a great deal of satisfaction in his death and sending a lock of his hair to the loved ones of his victims along with a note informing them justice had been served. I’d told their families the stories of their deaths, and I’d left it to each and every one of them on how to get the closure they needed.
Years later, I still felt like I hadn’t done enough, that I hadn’t found the truth fast enough, that I hadn’t acted in time. No matter how many times I’d tried to console myself about my failure, that I couldn’t have prevented the last woman’s death, I still doubted.
I always doubted.
I’d always arrived a little too late to save their last victim.
I wanted to beat the killer rather than kill between kills, and my failure to do so weighed down on me almost as much as my inability to truly retire.
My long string of failures likely had a lot to do with my flagging desire to keep my true profession the secret it needed to be if I wanted to keep breathing. I liked breathing. If I stopped breathing, I couldn’t annoy Justin into running so I could chase him and determine if he wanted to just get away or if he was interested in getting caught.
Once I finished my business in the death cave beneath the Black Hills, I’d do what I should’ve done in the first place. I’d take a much closer look at Justin and see if I could turn my games into something more. My first job would be to determine Justin’s species. It didn’t matter what he was; it was the effort I spent learning about him that mattered. Everything mattered, from what he transformed into to his favorite colors, his hobbies, and what he liked to do when he wasn’t following my father around.
Once I was certain he’d match with me and I’d match with him, I’d ease him into the truth. He could accept black mamba gorgons. A real black mamba wasn’t a far leap. If he could deal with my father, he could deal with me, too.
Worrying about Justin kept me from worrying too much about the denizen responsible for the hellhole I explored. Even if I landed a few good bites, unless I caught the predator off guard, I’d probably be the loser. However oversized I was for a black mamba, no matter how potent, I wasn’t immun
e to harm, nor did I possess a lycanthrope’s swift regeneration.
After I transformed, my busted hand would still hurt, and I’d have a new collection of bumps and bruises from my adventures as a snake. I’d probably need a full week to recuperate—assuming I didn’t get myself killed being an idiot. I lost track of time slithering down the hall, and when I finally found another stairwell down, I regretted my insistence on exploring the place.
I could’ve just headed to my father’s home, called the police, and let them deal with it. I should’ve done just that, but no. I’d gotten it into my stupid, scaly head I needed to be the one to determine the truth. I’d seen it before; the police often wouldn’t be bothered to check out strange reports until it was far too late to prevent another death.
If there was a predator lurking beneath the Black Hills, I needed to know. If I could do something about it, I would.
In a den filled with the stench of death, I held little hope of survivors, but if someone did endure through a living hell, I would do what I could to defy history. I could live with failure as always.
I couldn’t live without having tried at all.
And so went the life of a serial killer princess.
14
What sort of asshole covered a hole in the step with an illusion and left it for innocent explorers like me to find? Normal humans would’ve taken a nasty stumble, probably down the steps where they’d break their necks at the bottom. Me? No, I had no such luck.
I fell.
And fell, and fell, and fell until I splashed into nasty, stagnant water. Had I been human, the fall might’ve killed me, assuming a human could fit through the hole, which one couldn’t. Had I landed head first, I would’ve submerged, drowned, and added to the motley collection of bones. As it was, it hurt like hell, I’d be a living bruise from head to toe, and I’d suffer broken ribs as a human.
Sirens and Scales Page 42
