Basilisks were… he struggled to remember his mythology… creatures so monstrous their breath alone could kill.
“Are you beginning to believe me?” al-Kalli asked.
As if in mockery, the huge red bird, alighted now on the lip of its aerie, let out a stuttering cry that echoed down and around the cavernous walls of the bestiary.
“Shall we move on?” al-Kalli said. “We have only so much time before the concert is over and my other guests have finished with their dessert and coffee.”
The entire menagerie was awake now and making itself heard. The basilisks were grunting and snorting — Carter wondered if there were more in there than the two he had seen — and as he was led toward the next double gate, he wondered if he should be putting the goggles back on.
“No,” al-Kalli said, intuiting his question, “you won’t be needing those again.” Carter handed them to Jakob, while Captain Greer, his limp more noticeable now, brought up the rear. Reluctantly, it looked to Carter.
“But you may wish to stay back a bit from the bars,” al-Kalli warned.
Carter did as instructed, and stepped only halfway into the next gate enclosure. This pen was as large as the one next to it, easily a couple of hundred feet in every direction, but where the first one had been barren and stony, this one was lush and filled with thick shrubbery and flowering plants. There was a dense carpet of weedy grass, speckled with dandelions. Fans in the ceiling directed a steady low breeze at the greenery, so that everything seemed to be in constant motion, gently undulating, swaying and waving in a delicate play of light and shadow… a play that was suddenly broken by a ferocious growl and a headlong rush at the bars. Carter barely had time to step back before a spotted beast, the size of a lion, had flown at the gate, its claws scrabbling at the iron bars. He had not seen it coming; he had no idea where it had even come from. It was as if it had launched itself from the lower branches of one of the ficus trees planted in the pen.
The creature snarled, its head back, and Carter saw a pair of fangs to rival those of any saber-toothed cat. But these fangs, even in his present state, he recognized were curved backward, like scimitars. The creature slipped down from the bars and stepped back, planting its paws flatly on the ground, the way a man, not a cat, might walk. Its claws were like twisted fingers, long and sharp and yellowed. Its forelegs were longer than its rear, so that it had the hunched look of a hyena, but a hyena with wings. Its massive shoulders were blanketed with a thick matt of feathery black fur, fur that right now, in the moment of its attack, had billowed out like a cape.
Again, Carter was thunderstruck.
“The griffin,” al-Kalli said simply, brushing back his ruby cuff link to glance at his watch. “There is just one more—”
But they were interrupted by a man’s voice, filled with fear and worry, carrying toward them. Al-Kalli looked displeased.
“Mr. al-Kalli, Mr. al-Kalli,” the man was calling, barely able to catch his breath, “why didn’t you tell me you were coming? If only you had told me you were coming!”
The man, a reedy Arab in an open lab coat, who looked like he had just fallen out of bed, came panting up to them. Carter noticed Captain Greer glancing at his new boss, as if wondering how this should be handled.
“You weren’t needed, Rashid,” al-Kalli said, and it was as if he’d struck the man in the face. His features froze, but then, taking in the sight of Carter — this stranger in his domain — he composed himself again.
“This is Dr. Cox,” al-Kalli explained, and Rashid nodded his head quickly. “He will be helping us.”
“Helping us?” Rashid mumbled. “With the… animals?” He glanced at Carter with panic. “Are you a doctor, sir, of the veterinary sciences?”
“I’m a paleontologist,” he replied.
It looked as if it took Rashid a few seconds to process that information — and after he had, he looked just as perplexed.
“Come along, Dr. Cox,” al-Kalli said, turning toward the last gate at the far end of the facility, and striding off. “You have yet to see the piece de resistance.”
Carter, and the rest of the entourage, followed in al-Kalli’s brisk footsteps and at the last gate, al-Kalli himself stepped into the gated enclosure. “This,” al-Kalli said, leaving room for Carter to step in, too, “is the oldest and most prized of our collection.”
It was resting now, half in and half out of an enormous rocky cave raised several feet above the dirt. It lifted its massive, scaly snout, its long, leathery tongue flicking dismissively at the air. Its yellow eyes stared coldly across the vast expanse of the pen.
“The manticore,” al-Kalli intoned. “It’s a corruption of an ancient Persian word for man-eater.”
But Carter hardly heard him. He was looking at a creature more ancient than the dinosaurs… a reptile… and a mammal… a beast whose bones were the paleontologist’s Holy Grail. It was a monster that had ruled the earth a quarter of a billion years ago, the
And now he was looking right at it.
Not, as al-Kalli would have it, the manticore of legend. Not some mythical beast.
But what paleontologists had dubbed — based on a scattering of bones and teeth, some of the oldest and rarest fossils on earth — the gorgonopsian. Or gorgon, for short.
But these bones were walking, these teeth were wet, and these eyes radiated a malevolence as old as the earth itself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Sadowski had parked the car a few hundred yards down the street from the gatehouse, where the low overhanging branches of a California live oak provided extra shadow. He’d been sitting there for over three hours, and every once in a while he’d been able to hear the sound of violin music being carried on the wind. But the music had stopped, and Sadowski began to hope the party would be breaking up soon.
In his lap, he had a map of greater L.A., folded open to the west side. There were little red Xs wherever he and Burt had decided would be good places to start. Several of the Xs were located right up around here, and Sadowski chose, on his own, to add a couple more. When he lowered his head, the night-vision goggles, strapped to the top of his head, teetered, and he had to flip the scope back up again.
He also had to take a leak.
He was just about to get out of the car when he saw the front gate to al-Kalli’s estate swing open, and a gleaming Rolls, one of the old-fashioned kind, emerge. He pushed the map to the passenger seat, dropped the goggles, and lowered himself in the seat. The Rolls drove slowly past him, down the hill, with an old man in an Arab headdress sitting in the backseat.
A few seconds later, a Jaguar convertible followed, with a sleek couple already arguing about something in what sounded like Italian.
Sadowski wondered if he should look into some audio surveillance equipment, too. Now that he wasn’t working for Silver Bear anymore — now that that asshole Greer had gotten him shit-canned by sneaking around behind his back, showing up at the gatehouse with a fucking blackmail letter (oh yeah, he couldn’t wait to tell him about everything Reggie, the gatekeeper who’d also been canned, had filled him in on) — now that he might be setting up a security business on his own, well, he might have to invest in some more stuff. Wasn’t that the kind of thing, though, that you could, what was it, claim as a deduction?
A few more cars came by, including an old white Volvo — definitely out of keeping with the Rolls and Bentley and Jaguar parade — with a tall, young guy at the wheel, who looked vaguely familiar, and in the passenger seat a very good-looking brunette, who instantly took his mind off the guy; she was turned toward the driver, smiling and saying something. Very fuckable indeed. Sadowski flashed on Ginger Lee; after he’d settled with you-know-who, he’d have to make a stop at the Bayou.
He was beginning to give up hope — had his information been wrong? — when he finally saw the beaten-up
