His smile said he was proud, and she got a childish rush of pleasure at that. Her father had often expressed his pride, “for both my girls,” but in her mom’s eyes, Jamie had been the one to be prouder of, the one with the important job, the one who’d trained to carry on the monster-hunting, ghost-banishing legacy. But Ramses filled that gap in her heart a little.

  “I don’t think it’s a danger to anyone right this minute,” Chloe said. “But if someone decides to go in that barn and bother it?” She shrugged.

  Ramses nodded. “Like young Tabitha. Not to mention, someone unscrupulous could follow the same trail we did, and they might make sure its final days are painful and humiliating as they either exploit it or attempt to study it.”

  And monsters like this were supposed to stay secret. The more people who knew, the more who’d go looking for the things and get their asses eaten.

  “At the very least, we have to sedate and move it,” she said. Then they’d have options.

  “Looking past the problems of sedating such a creature, how on earth do we move it?”

  “One thing at a time.” Chloe turned to find Tabitha watching from the side of the barn and nearly leapt out of her skin again. “For fuck’s sake, will you people stop doing that?”

  “People?” Tabitha whispered. She took a few steps forward, but her eyes were wide, and she seemed to lean back as she walked, like someone sneaking up on a snake. “Who are you talking to?”

  Well, shit. Didn’t this round off the evening nicely?

  Chapter Seven

  Helen was forced to switch transportation once she reached Galveston. Riding a flying horse wouldn’t work over land, even at night. Flying high enough to remain unseen was just too cold and onerous—not to mention dangerous with all the flight paths—so she sent Pegasus home, planning to return to the sanctuary via the nereids’ boat.

  She couldn’t go alone on this trip, either. Strong as she was, she’d need a bit of help either convincing the creature currently living near Waxahachie to go with her or moving it once she’d incapacitated it. So along with renting a small moving truck, she’d brought along Ligeia, one of the sirens, who was often as annoyed by humans as Helen was, especially as she’d had to explain numerous times why she looked nothing like the Rossetti painting that bore her name and how she wouldn’t be caught dead just standing naked in a jungle playing a musical instrument like some sad weirdo.

  She currently had her bare webbed feet propped on the dash, their blue color seeming to fade into the sky beyond the windshield. She wore a hoodie over the crest-like fin that ran from her forehead back to her nape and the similar fins at her elbows and wrists. Her loose-fitting cargo pants covered the rest of her petite frame, the clothing almost swallowing her.

  With a sigh, she sank farther in her seat and blew a huge pink bubble with her Hubba Bubba gum. “How far is it again?”

  Helen fought her irritation, even when Ligeia smacked her gum and stared, her large blue-green eyes screaming, I’m so bored. She could no doubt lure many sailors to their doom with her pretty face, if she’d been interested in that sort of thing. Lately, she was more into body mods than anything else, sporting piercings in her septum, nostrils, lips, the frills of her ears, and her eyebrows. Gold tattoos done by an oni in the sanctuary covered her hands and the tops of her feet and probably everywhere else.

  “I’ve already told you,” Helen said. “You should have brought your e-reader.”

  Ligeia shrugged. “So talk to me,” she said with only a little whine.

  Gods, maybe she should have brought Maurice, after all. But she still hadn’t quite forgiven him for losing his head at that poker game. And Ligeia had more going for her than just her ability to hypnotize. She was the only one in Helen’s sanctuary who’d mastered the use of the tarnkappe, a helmet out of German folklore that made the wearer invisible and gave them ten times their normal strength. It sat under Ligeia’s arm, a simple design, rounded at the top, unremarkable save for the fine golden chainmail that dangled from the back.

  Ligeia’s boredom wouldn’t be cured by anyone else’s stories. But Helen knew one surefire way to keep her happy. “Tell me the story of how you mastered that helmet,” Helen said, trying to imbue her voice with excitement.

  Ligeia perked up. “Really? Again?”

  Three, two, one.

  “I mean, it is a pretty bitchin’ story. I guess I could tell it, like, one more time or whatever.” Her grin and the tinge of purple in her cheeks belied her words, and she rushed into the story of how the Sphinx had been cataloging the artifacts collected in the sanctuary, and several people had tried the tarnkappe but couldn’t handle the strength or freaked out at the invisibility. “And I was like, fine, if y’all can’t handle it, I guess I’ll try.” She rolled her eyes and turned as sideways as the seat belt would allow. “And the Lamia, like, laughed at me, but Dani the hippogriff was like, ‘Show ’em, Lig,’ and I was like, fuck yeah, I will, and the Lamia said something about how people couldn’t stand not seeing themselves in the mirror unless they were born invisible or something, and I was like, pssh, it ain’t my fault y’all aren’t comfy in your own skin, that y’all aren’t deep enough to, like, accept the nothingness inside.”

  Helen hoped her chuckle would be put down as agreement. “Totally.”

  “Right? So I put it on, and right away, looked in the mirror, and I didn’t see me, but I still was me. So I was like, boom, y’all, no probs, still sane, still me. What else you got? And the Sphinx asked me to move some stuff around, get a feel for the strength. And Dani was like, ‘All right, Lig, you got it,’ and I was like, hell, yes. You just gotta be careful. Just like with the siren song. If you have a special talent, which I do, you have to be careful. So I was, and I got it, and now I can use it whenever and not smash anything I don’t want to. Tried, tested, approved.”

  Helen offered a high-five, which was also approved, though the piercings in the webbing between Ligeia’s fingers grated against her skin. “And now you’ve mastered three powers.”

  “Right?” She turned forward again and blew another bubble.

  That story bought Helen a hundred miles of silence afterward. Luckily, Ligeia had lots of stories, and it didn’t matter how many times Helen had heard them. Something about the excitement in Ligeia’s speech drew her in every time.

  And earned her blissful silence in between.

  After the flight that morning and the drive—and a few stops for more gum—night was nearly falling by the time they reached the approximate location of the griffin. They pulled over at a gas station near the freeway, and Helen wished for the thousandth time that she could simply feel the presence of mythological creatures, but that wasn’t a talent she possessed.

  But that was what she had tools for. She grabbed her bag from the floor and carefully took out a velvet-covered box. Even Ligeia grew quiet with reverence as Helen opened it and lifted the silver necklace inside. A long, jagged sliver of bone served as its pendant, the tooth of Echidna, mother of monsters, stained with a bit of her blood. It swung back and forth like a pendulum, the stained tip glowing softly when it pointed at Ligeia. It was capable of pointing the way to any being or creature who could draw their family line all the way back to Echidna herself, which a griffin certainly could.

  “Come on,” Helen whispered as the tooth continued to tell her that someone with a monstrous bloodline was currently sharing the cab of the truck with her. “Tell me we haven’t driven all this way for—”

  The tooth slowed and added a gentle second location to its swing. Whatever they were after was either not very strong or still far away. Helen prayed for the first instance. One long soak in the tub last night hadn’t been enough.

  “Hell, yeah,” Ligeia said. She held out a hand, and Helen hung the chain over her webbed fingers before she started up the truck again and followed the second point by the most direct route they could find.

  “It’s gotta be big,” Ligeia said after they’d driven for nearly twenty minutes, having to turn around and try another path after several dead ends. “Since the tooth picked it up from all the way out by the freeway.”

  Helen nodded, her hopes for a quick expedition dashed, and now she had to concentrate on driving through the gloom on barely lit country roads. “I’m glad we brought the truck.”

  “What if this isn’t, like, big enough?”

  Then whatever they were hunting was larger than the Sphinx, maybe even as large as someone like Charybdis, and they’d have to call in more help as well as a larger truck. But she didn’t want to show any uncertainty if she could help it. “Don’t worry. I packed five large tranquilizer darts filled with carfentanil. We could keep several elephants sleeping for days if we had to.”

  Ligeia’s smile flashed even in the dark cab.

  Helen smiled back, though she was a bit worried, too. Still, she wouldn’t let her calm facade crack, not even when the tooth began to pull harder in one direction, leading them down a gravel road near an abandoned car. She didn’t even let her true worry show when two other cars roared past, nearly forcing them into a ditch.

  “Damn,” she said, braking hard but keeping control.

  “Whoa,” Ligeia said, craning her neck out the window. “What’s their fucking hurry?”

  “I think we’re about to find out.” They reached a makeshift parking lot seconds later. One car remained, and even in the truck’s dim headlights, Helen could tell by the churned-up gravel that this was probably where the other cars had come from. “Time to put on the helmet, Lig.”

  With a nod, she did so, vanishing on the spot as they pulled to a stop. Helen lamented that she couldn’t see through invisibility, though she could sometimes sense the unseen. But to truly see them required the blood of a particular Egyptian god, a pantheon she didn’t know as well as some of the others.

  Still, the chances that the creature they were hunting had the blood of that particular god running through their veins was so low, she’d never place a wager.

  She slipped from the truck, took her rifle and the case of tranq darts out from behind her seat, and slung both across her body. All that stood between them and an open field was a sad-looking barbed wire fence. A relic of a barn stood in the distance, but to Helen’s dismay, a campfire burned near the rear of it.

  “Great,” Ligeia said from her right. “Humans.”

  “Maybe not anymore,” Helen whispered. “Remember the cars that blew past.” They quickly helped each other through the fence, and Helen loaded the rifle. “Maybe all the humans were scared—”

  Voices interrupted her in the distance. Shit. Two dark forms passed in front of the fire. Helen moved quickly, hoping no one would see her or Ligeia by the slight glow of the sliver of moon, but these two seemed focused on each other. Two young women, from what she could see when she pressed her back against the side of the barn.

  “Let me explain,” one was saying.

  “You know what that thing is? What’s going on? And who exactly were you talking to? Or do you often carry on one side of an entire conversation with yourself? Fuck, I don’t know what to write down first. Maybe if I just record it all—”

  No.

  “No,” the first woman said as if reading Helen’s mind. She wrenched a phone out of the second woman’s hands.

  “Hey, freedom of the press.”

  By the gods, that was all they needed.

  “That smell ain’t no griffin,” Ligeia whispered near Helen’s shoulder.

  As the women continued arguing, Helen tilted her nose up. It was a musty odor, one she’d either never smelled, or it had been so long, she’d forgotten. She cast her thoughts back, crossing creatures rapidly off her list before she hit on one.

  “OMG, it’s a wyvern,” Ligeia said right as Helen thought, dragon.

  She exhaled. Nearly as bad as a dragon. Still, she thanked the gods she’d been wrong. And that still left them a fucking wyvern to deal with. And two young humans who were too damn close to a wyvern for comfort. It had to be in the barn, so why wasn’t it out here tearing everyone to pieces?

  And there was something else prodding her senses, some magic in use perhaps. Not very likely to be the wyvern, but perhaps something that would help or hinder in sedating and moving it? She’d find out later. Right now, she had to move the humans along before they became wyvern chow.

  She stepped into the light, the rifle up. “What the hell are you doing on my property?” she asked, bluffing for all she was worth.

  The women turned with wide, disbelieving eyes. The pale, petite redhead who’d been barking all the questions stared at the gun, her mouth open as if she’d been petrified where she stood. The other seemed a little older, her skin darker like Helen’s natural shade, and her tight jeans and T-shirt revealing an hourglass figure one could die for, highlighted by the satchel she wore across her body. She flicked her dark ponytail over one shoulder and gave the gun a cursory glance, brown eyes darting everywhere as if creating a strategy for a counterattack.

  And she didn’t seem the least bit afraid.

  Impressive. But as always, Helen didn’t have the time or inclination to get to know another human. “Go on,” she said, waving the rifle. “Get outta here.”

  The redhead took a step away. The brunette took a deep breath and stood tall as if about to argue when a new voice said, “No one moves.”

  Helen glanced to the right as Fatma stepped around the other side of the barn, also with a gun in hand, though her pistol looked like it fired more than darts. Ali followed with a rifle that seemed more like Helen’s, clearly there to take prisoners.

  “This has got to be the most sought-after wyvern in the world,” Ligeia whispered.

  And Helen couldn’t shoot any of them with the darts in her gun, not if she wanted them to survive. And she did. She hated having to kill anything, let alone a human, and part of her was actually happy to see Fatma alive and well. She didn’t seem permanently scarred from their last encounter. And this new brunette had a cunning expression and a stubborn set to her shoulders that said she wasn’t leaving without a fight.

  All thoughts of a comfy bed and long baths vanished from Helen’s thoughts. Finally, something truly interesting.

  Chapter Eight

  This night was just full of surprises. Chloe usually expected one or two unknowns, but now she had four, three armed, all staring, and by the look of the tranq rifles, both parties were after one sick old wyvern.

  As if telling everyone to keep it down, the creature emitted a coughing half roar that managed to miss being scary and landed squarely in pathetic. Nobody even looked.

  “Chloe?” Ramses said, and she knew he was asking permission to possess her. She nodded and tried not to react as he stepped into her. Her mind shifted to the side, letting him size up the situation.

  The two newest-comers seemed wholly human, the black-haired woman pointing a pistol confidently between Chloe and Tabitha and the other interlopers, ready to shoot whoever acted first. The man—who looked so much like the black-haired woman he could have been her twin—kept his tranq rifle pointed at the sky. They began a tense, whispered conversation Chloe couldn’t make out.

  The other two were much more interesting. This woman was tall, willowy, her features slightly pointed, striking. When she’d first appeared, Chloe hadn’t known where to look: the gun that was quite obviously another tranq rifle, or the firelight dancing off her brown hair, or maybe the athletic figure with the legs that seemed eight feet long. Her eyes flashed silver, hypnotic. It took a whole bushelful of energy to look away from her.

  Except that her companion looked so out of place for a pasture in central Texas that they might as well have been at a neon-coated German sex club.

  They had a slight glow, and Chloe could see the outline of the barn through their torso, though not as well as she could see through Ramses. No doubt they were invisible to most eyes but not hers. They wore baggy clothes, including a hood that rested about six inches above their blue head, and a helmet sat atop that. They either had the largest forehead in The Guinness Book of Records, or something else was going on up there.

  “That’s a siren,” Ramses said in their shared mind.

  She was caught between wonder and panic. “I’ve got the special earplugs in the second pocket of the bag.”

  When he twitched their hand in that direction, the black-haired woman’s gun and attention jerked her way. “I said, don’t move.”

  “Are we supposed to just stand here while you decide if you want to kill us?” the willowy woman asked. She pointed her rifle at the ground while her invisible companion crept toward the other couple.

  “I suppose I could spare you the suspense and kill you now,” the black-haired woman said with a wry smile. “Or wound you as payback for our last encounter.”

  The willowy woman smirked, but whatever their history, these two seemed more irked with each other—in an enemies-to-lovers story, they might have been making out by now—than actually antagonistic. “Get a room,” Ramses said with Chloe’s mouth.

  “Oh my God, Ramses,” she said in their mind. If she’d been in charge of the body, she’d have been blushing up a storm when everyone looked at her again.

  “Well, you were thinking the same thing,” he said. “While also feeling a little jealous at being left out, I might add.”

  Yep, she was definitely going to banish him later. “Shut. Up.”

  “What’s going on?” Tabitha said, her voice barely a whisper. She shivered so hard, her red curls seemed to tremble, but there was still something hungry in her eyes, some reporter gene that spied a scoop. “Chloe?”

  Ramses reached for her hand, and she took it eagerly, her skin clammy and cold. “Just repeat after me,” Chloe told him, and with a sigh, he agreed.