Silk & Steel

by Ellen Kushner

  “Weird? I don’t know, there are hipsters everywhere these days.” She shook her head. “And the goats weren’t exsanguinated, so that rules him out.”

  She was probably right. Plus, any man rocking a wig with an epic bun like that was probably into kale and fancy heirloom goats. Dollars to donuts he’d turn up his snout at this herd.

  “Maybe we should do a divination,” Sophia said, and I made a face. “I know, I know, they’re messy. But—”

  She stopped, staring at me.

  “What? Do I have a bug on me?”

  “Jane, what’s this?” Sophia reached up and pulled the little yellow flowers out from behind my ear.

  “Oh, just one of the weeds.” I gestured around at the random spots of green in the grass and trailed off at the look on her face.

  Sophia in full Sherlock mode was one of my favorite things on earth. Perfectly sculpted eyebrows frowning in concentration, she muttered under her breath as she made tiny gestures with her fingers, sketching things out in her head. I could practically see the gears in her brain turning, then bam! She’d make this amazing leap to the answer. It was the best magic trick I knew.

  “Rue,” she said, breaking into a smile like the sun and grabbing my arm. “Not weeds, Jane, it’s rue.”

  She tugged me toward the van. “I didn’t make the connection. Rue’s not native to this region. But the chemical residue all over the bodies... and the chicken farm across the street...”

  “What?”

  “Basilisk. It’s a basilisk. Rue has a natural immunity to their fumes, but I bet the rest of the flora and fauna in the area are dead. Not just dormant for the winter.” She halted at the gate. “No, that can’t be right. They prefer caves, but the geology is all wrong...”

  I looked at the construction cones. “What about storm drains?”

  She followed my gaze. “Jane, you’re a genius.”

  The van blossomed lemon yellow as I yanked the back doors open. Inside, it looked like someone had cut the vans of two very different serial killers in half and stitched them together with duct tape. Sophia’s domain was all computers and stainless-steel countertops, plexiglass drawers up to the ceiling, carefully labeled with color-coded tags. Everything perfectly organized and Instagram-ready.

  Meanwhile, across the divide from the shining lab on wheels was my territory. Kept safe from Sophia’s encroachment with the magic of duct tape, my stainless countertops might have been dented and scratched, but the tools of my trade were easy to hand and ready to rumble. Shields and pikes strapped to the ceiling, Kevlar vest hanging next to Dad’s old twelve gauge, my favorite machete in its sheath.

  Sophia had climbed up behind me and was scrolling through the company wiki on her workstation touchscreen.

  “Hey babes, how big a Danger Noodle are we talking here? Huge like the movies?” I asked as I pulled open the middle drawer below my worktop and my new double-bladed battle axe gleamed up at me, To My Pocket-Sized Warrior engraved on the handle. Best first anniversary present ever, even with the short joke. Especially with the short joke.

  “Danger Noodle.” I could practically hear her roll her eyes behind me, and I grinned. “It’s not a snake. Picture a rooster-headed snake-bodied reptile. Maybe three to five feet long, not huge. Hollywood always exaggerates.”

  Not the axe then. Bummer. I slid the drawer closed.

  “So what’s the rundown?” I asked. Pulling my kukri off the wall, I slid the curved knife out of its sheath to inspect it.

  “You’re not going to like it.” Sophia wrapped her arms around my waist from behind, laying her cheek on my head.

  “I never do. That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” I laced my fingers through hers as I debated my machete before deciding against it—too big for a sewer.

  “Poisonous fire breather. Relatively fast, but with a chicken brain, so not exactly Einstein.”

  “Wait, isn’t this one of those things I have to fight with a mirror? Like that bro Perseus?” I rummaged in a drawer. “I have a compact in here somewhere...”

  “No, the death glare is an old wives’ tale. You don’t have to go all Medusa murderer on it.” Sophia had Opinions on men who hunt women down in their own homes. “The fumes are the problem, odorless but lethal.”

  I dropped a kiss on her hand before moving to the large cabinet at the front of the van, just behind the seats.

  “So PPE then, what are we talking here, like C?” I pulled open the cabinet door just enough to snake a hand inside and reach for my mid-level respirator.

  “Probably more like A.”

  That stopped me in my tracks and I gave her a Look.

  “Yeah, no. You expect me to kill a fire-breathing rooster snake in full hazmat gear?” I closed the cabinet door and stepped over to her touchscreen, scrolling through the wiki entry. She always exaggerated the need for protective gear when my ass was on the line.

  “No, of course not, I expect you to catch a basilisk in full gear.”

  I snorted.

  “One, this says the fumes are not absorbed by the skin but have to be breathed or ingested. Since I’m not gonna eat the thing, a respirator is fine. I’ll even do full-face SCBA if it’ll make you feel better. If someone remembered to refill the air tanks.” I narrowed my eyes at her. “And two, why in the name of all that is holy do I need to catch a Level Six Hazard instead of killing it?”

  “Oh, I’m sure they’re protected somewhere.” She avoided looking at me and stepped toward the PPE cabinet. “I mean, they’re beyond endangered since, most of the time, they’re extinct.”

  Just dropping that illogical comment about extinction as if she was saying the sky was blue.

  “Uh-huh.” I blocked the cabinet and crossed my arms. “You’re not distracting me with the extinct thing, and we’re not wearing plastic suits to dance with a fire breather. That’s how you end up in a burn unit coated in melted plastic versus just having to draw your eyebrows on for a few weeks. Answer the question. Why should I catch this poisonous Danger Noodle instead of putting it down?”

  “Okay fine.” She huffed. “Basilisk hardly ever occur in the wild. They hatch from chicken eggs that are brooded over by a toad. Do you know how hard it is to convince a toad to sit on an egg? They’re not exactly maternal.”

  She ran her hands through her hair, making her curls stand up in a halo. “Los Alamos is the only successful research program in the country and they never let any of them into the private sector. It’s ridiculous. Who knows what advancements we could make if they’d open it up to the scientific community? They don’t even share their findings!”

  To Sophia, not sharing research was a crime against every sentient being on the planet and beyond. She ran out of breath and gave me the Look.

  Here it came.

  “This would be the best first anniversary present ever.”

  I leaned back against the cabinet doors. Well, fuck. I’d screwed myself on that one by letting her think I hadn’t gotten her a present. I’d dropped a ton of hints that I had plans for later when she gave me the axe, but she’d still gotten mad. If I fessed up now it would have all been for nothing.

  “You want a Fire Noodle for an anniversary present.” I shook my head but turned and reached into the cabinet to pull out our full-face masks, careful to keep my body between her and the suitcase hidden inside.

  First anniversary was paper, and our passes to the Weird Archive in Austin were in an envelope on top of the bag.

  I’d had to call in some major favors, but we had full access the entire weekend, including a breakfast meeting with the Archivist themself tomorrow. Sophia was going to be a kid in a candy store. After how snappy she’d been all day, no way was I missing the look on her face when we pulled up to the gates tonight.

  “This is the last critter we’re bringing home for a while.” Thunking the face masks down on my work table, I rummaged in a cabinet for air tanks. “Also, new house rule. If it’s scaly and more than moderately poisonous, venomou
s, whatever, it has to stay off the furniture.”

  In addition to the kukri on my hip, I hooked snake tongs to my belt and reached up for my round shield, but Sophia handed me a small white umbrella instead.

  “Welding cloth umbrella. Just push the button, and instant fire shield. Push it again and it contracts.”

  “You just happen to have a fire-proof umbrella?” I asked.

  “Flame-resistant. And after what happened with the dragon? You bet your ass I do.”

  “That wasn’t my fault—he had the flu.”

  “Yeah but you’re not the one who ended up with bangs, are you?”

  She had a point there, and I added it to the gear on my belt and stepped out of the van.

  Once I’d hit thirty my body had given me an ultimatum. Stretching, warm-ups, and drinking actual water—or else. It was a debate if coffee counted as water, but I began loosening up while Sophia talked quietly to our Backpack of Holding.

  It made a loud burping sound and I leaned around the door to watch as she pulled out a squirt bottle of yellow liquid.

  The Backpack was a grumpy old man spirit who lived in a yuppie commuter bag in exchange for free wifi and pizza on Saturday nights. The deal was one necessary item a day, so if he felt we might need a bottle of pee, who was I to argue?

  He’d never admit it, but he liked us, ’cause we sprang for mozzarella sticks with the pizza. So I wasn’t surprised when he burped again and Sophia pulled out a pair of bluetooth speakers on pink harnesses and a plastic containment box. I made a mental note to order him a Dr Pepper and some breadsticks this weekend for going above and beyond.

  She handed a harness to me and pulled the other one on, settling the speaker in the middle of her chest.

  I eyed my harness. The Backpack knows I hate pink with a passion. You beat a guy at Mario Kart one too many times...

  “Don’t be a baby.” Sophia was linking the speakers to her phone, each one making electronic happy noises as they connected. “We have to be able to hear each other but still drown out the basilisk crows, what with the insanity thing.”

  I decided to ignore the fact she’d failed to mention there was an “insanity thing.”

  We headed out after putting on our face masks and checking each other’s tanks and gauges. Sophia snagged a fire extinguisher as we left, and I tried not to take that as a comment on my flame-dodging abilities.

  The mist let up as we followed the construction around a bend in the road to the entrance of the preserve. Clambering over the gate with its Horny Toad Haven sign, we rounded another curve to find a concrete pipe emerging from the side of the hill. The sun broke through the clouds to shimmer off a dingy waterfall, illuminating the culvert like the entrance to a final boss dungeon in a video game.

  Lovely.

  “I guess it was too much to hope for manhole access, huh?”

  “It’ll widen out.” Sophia smiled as she reached up and switched my headlamp on. “I don’t know why you’re complaining, shorty. You’ll be fine.”

  Sure, I can’t reach the top shelf at the grocery store, but the bright side was I’d be fine crawling through a sewer hunting a fire-breathing bird snake. Thanks, genetics.

  “Wait one sec,” she said, and flipped through her phone. I had to smile as the opening strains of Bohemian Rhapsody started playing from our speakers. Sophia was of the opinion that Freddy Mercury’s voice was antiphase to most audible threats, and her Sound Shield playlist was three hours of Bohemian Rhapsody on continuous repeat.

  Freddy Mercury, our last line of defense against siren songs and poisonous Poultry Danger Noodles.

  Climbing up into the pipe, I was able to move in a squat, one gloved hand braced on the tunnel wall and the other holding the fire umbrella in front of me like a religious icon against the gloom.

  Sophia wasn’t so lucky, and cursed as she crawled on all fours, her jeans immediately soaked in storm runoff and the gods knew what else. Yeah, basilisk or no basilisk, she was first in the decon when we got back.

  Glancing around, my headlamp danced over “Devon loves Stephanie” spray painted romantically in red on the wall above what looked like rat shit at the water line. I decided we were both taking bleach baths with steel wool loofahs before going anywhere near the van.

  The tunnel widened out into the first junction and we stood, Sophia rubbing her knees as she did so.

  “I don’t like it,” I said over my shoulder.

  “What?” she yelled back, holding a hand up to her ear.

  “I don’t like it!” I shouted over Freddy’s falsetto and gestured to the smaller tunnel openings emptying into the junction. “With the water level, it’s probably in the big one with the access ledge, but it could flank us.”

  “I got this.” She pulled the spray bottle of pee from her belt and began misting the edges of the smaller tunnels.

  As I watched her sprinkle pee in a sewer, I marveled again at how lucky I was to have found her. She was truly special.

  “Babes... what the hell?”

  “Weasel pee,” she shouted happily. “Poisonous to basilisks, it won’t go near this, so we’re golden.”

  Possibly the wrong word to use to describe our situation, but apt considering she was showering pee all over the place.

  She finished and I led the way into the access tunnel, this one tall enough that we could walk upright.

  In the distance, something moved just beyond the edge of the light, and we froze as Queen’s choir of voices swelled from our speakers. A pair of eyes reflected our headlamps back at us for a moment, then blinked out with a small snort of flame.

  Hello Chicken Noodle.

  I checked that Sophia was ready with her fire extinguisher and gave her a V for victory when I saw she was recording on her smartphone. She rolled her eyes dramatically behind her mask and I grinned. Then, snake tongs in one hand and umbrella in the other, I sang along with Freddy as we moved into the dark.

  At the next junction, I eased the closed umbrella out into the larger open space.

  Flames hit it from the right and I pulled back. I counted to ten and stuck the umbrella back out. More flames, maybe a little less intense. Counting to five, I tried again and a comparative trickle washed over the umbrella.

  As it faded, I stepped into the room and met the silver gaze of the basilisk. A black comb mohawk on his head, midnight feathers iridescent in my headlamp melding into scales coiled below mantled wings, he swayed like a cobra at waist height.

  Oh mama... Sophia had failed to mention fucking wings.

  As Rhapsody broke into the guitar solo, the basilisk took a deep breath. I threw myself at him and he sprang into the air with a startled look, beak open wide enough that I was grateful to Freddy for the insanity protection.

  The next few moments were a strobing nightmare fight. Headlamp swinging wildly, I dodged his tail as it whipped for my face, then struck out with the tongs. I missed, but caught a couple feathers as he darted into the dark.

  Leaping across the channel running down the center of the junction, I planted my feet on the ledge with my back against the wall.

  A flash of scales and feathers from the right. I flicked the umbrella up to protect my face against a burst of blinding flame.

  Chicken Noodle flew around for another pass and I lunged blind around the umbrella as the fire struck. I connected, but couldn’t hold as a wing got me in the face. The thing hit like a prize fighter. I dropped the tongs to save my mask and he flapped back into the shadows.

  Right. Now I was mad.

  “Light me up!” I yelled to Sophia as I scooped up the tongs.

  From the tunnel mouth she shouted something guttural like a German heavy metal singer and tossed a glittering handful at the roof above the channel. A fist-sized, black-light firework burst from the ceiling, reflecting off the basilisk’s iridescence like a dayglow rave girl against the graffitied walls.

  Chicken Noodle puffed up like hell’s feather duster in challenge and strafed the Blue ’
Shroom firework with flames, lashing out at me with his tail as he went by.

  Sophia couldn’t hold the ’Shroom for long, and she had to maintain focus the whole time. I needed to end this fast.

  I looked around for something to pen the damn thing in with, but other than mounds of trash at the edges of the room, there was nothing. Just Chicken Noodle, me, and Sophia.

  Sophia, who was waving the bottle of pee at me as she stared at the ’Shroom and chanted.

  Any harbor in a storm, I guess. Jumping the channel, I snatched the bottle and squinted through my face mask, trying to read the words on the nozzle. Bless her, she’d already set it to Mist.

  Scooping up an empty beer can, I chunked it at Chicken Noodle as I ran toward the far corner. Come and get me, bird brain.

  I dropped to huddle under the umbrella as he swooped past overhead, raining down fire. Jumping up, I misted the air like a department store perfume girl, forming a wall of weasel pee in front of me. He’d turned around for another pass and back-winged out of the way, tumbling in the air before righting himself.

  Got you now.

  I misted for all I was worth, blocking with the umbrella as he darted in and out, trying to blast a hole in the mist as I backed him into a corner. After a weaker gout of flame, I dropped the umbrella and yanked the snake tongs up from my belt, snatching for his neck.

  “Jane—down!” Sophia screamed, and the ’Shroom went out just as something rose from the trash to my left. I hit the ground as fire tore through the air where my head had been.

  Half blind in the light of my headlamp, I scrambled back as a snow-white basilisk rose like a ghost in the dark.

  Two. Two fucking Chicken Noodles.

  I’d lost the weasel pee, but bashed the thing in the side of the head with the tongs as it dove for me, sending it careening into the wall. Scrambling after it, I pinned its neck with my hand, then yanked my knife from my belt and whipped around to fend off the Black Noodle.