"You don’t say," Clay said as they approached the Doric columns around which yellow crime scene tape had been wrapped.
"Couldn’t find any place to accept my internship though," Squire grumbled. "I think it’s because I’m a guy trying to break into an industry dominated by chicks. What do you think?"
Clay pulled away the tape, maneuvering around the column, searching for the latest Gorgon victim. "I think I might be able to find you something in New Orleans, if you’re interested."
An unusually wide, toothy grin spread across the hobgoblin’s face. "Hey, you’d do that for me? That’d be sweet."
"Here we go," Clay said as they came upon the petrified body. It was just as disturbing as the others, the features wide with fear and despair.
"All right, let’s deal with this Gorgon bullshit and get home to the important stuff." Squire began to move around the crime scene, examining every shadow.
Clay smiled to himself. Now at least Squire would be focused. He wondered briefly how Graves was faring in his more spiritual investigation, haunting the streets of the ancient city for a spirit or two that might give them some information about the Gorgon’s whereabouts. Hopefully, working both the physical angle and the ethereal, they could make some progress and find the creature before it caused anymore harm.
Still wearing the shape of the overweight detective, he turned his attention to the ossified figure before him. Its terrified gaze was frozen, staring blankly in the direction of the two columns. "The Gorgon must have been standing somewhere over there," Clay said, turning toward the columns.
"Let’s see if it left anything of interest behind." Squire walked over to the columns, surveying the ground around them. "No conveniently dropped cigarette butts or anything," the goblin observed, "but that doesn’t mean it didn’t leave a scent behind."
Clay took that as his cue to alter his form again. To track by scent he summoned the shape of an animal with an incredibly acute olfactory sense. The shape of Yannis Papathansiou melted away with a sound very much like the flapping of bird’s wings, to be replaced by a far more beastly form — a Dire Wolf, prehistoric relative of the common gray wolf, larger and more sturdy than its modern counterpart.
"Nice doggy," Squire said, stepping away.
Clay smelled it immediately, the aroma of something ancient and dangerous, hinting of desperation and unpredictability. It made the hackles of fur at the back of his neck stand on end.
"I’ve got it," he growled, altering the structure of the wolf’s mouth slightly to allow him to speak.
Squire jumped onto his back, grabbing a handful of thick, grayish fur. "Go fetch."
It was no simple thing to avoid the police already in the area, but Clay maneuvered in the shadows and the route of the Gorgon’s escape, neat the back of the ruins. Its scent was all over the place. The Dire Wolf leaped into the darkness. They paused a moment, waiting for voices to shout at them, but no one had noticed their exit.
Clay placed his nose closer to the ground and began to follow the trail, a path so obvious it was like following bread crumbs, or a line drawn with bright red crayon. The Dire Wolf and its passenger padded across the timeworn ground of the Agora, leaving the murder scene behind. The spoor was strong. At this rate, it would only be a matter of time before they found their prize.
A sound like the crack of a bullwhip filled the air as a bullet exploded from the barrel of a rifle. The steel-jacketed projectile slammed through the thick fur and muscle of the Dire Wolf’s neck, turning several of its vertebrae to powder. Clay flipped backward on his side with a roar of pain, bucking Squire from his perch. Already, the flesh was knitting as the shapeshifter assumed a more familiar guise, a human face.
"Squire, are you all right?" he hissed, altering the structure of his eyes, turning the darkness of night to the light of day and scanning for signs of their attacker.
Squire slunk up next to him in the shadows, an inch-long gash in his forehead. The two of them moved quickly against the face of a building, gauging the location of the shooter as best they could and hoping they would be out of the line of sight. Without another shot, Clay could only guess about the sniper’s location, and guessing would be dangerous.
"Think he’s still up there?" Squire asked, craning his neck back as though he might spot the sniper from their vantage point.
"Only one way to find out. Stay here."
The hobgoblin did not protest as Clay stepped away from the building and out into the open. No matter how destructive, a simple bullet wasn’t going to do more than tear him up a little, and Clay could always knit himself back together.
No second shot came.
Peering into the darkness at the tops of the neighboring buildings, even with his eyes adjusted, he saw only architecture. Nothing moved.
"He’s gone."
Squire grunted, cursing under his breath as he touched the wound on his head and stepped away from the wall. "What the hell was the asshole doing? If he thought he could pop us, he would’ve stuck around. But if he knew it wouldn’t be that easy, why bother?"
The question troubled Clay. He shifted into the form of the Dire Wolf again but this time Squire trotted along behind him. Clay was moving more slowly. They passed through a narrow alley, tracking the scent, but on the next street over, a cobblestoned road that seemed almost abandoned, the Dire Wolf sniffed and flinched away from the ground, nostrils searing and eyes watering.
Once more Clay metamorphosed into the familiar, human face he so often wore. He rarely revealed what he thought of as his true appearance. There was nothing human about him.
"He’s gone, all right. He shot me just to buy time."
Squire dabbed at his wound with a filthy handkerchief. "To do what?"
Even in human form, Clay found the strength of the pungent aroma was nearly overpowering. "Do you smell it?" he asked.
Squire sniffed, and his brow furrowed, causing a fresh trickle of blood from his wound. "What the fuck is that?"
"Ammonia," Clay answered. "To eradicate any trace of the Gorgon’s scent. I could pick up the trail again if I searched long enough, but there’s no way to know if it’ll be a fresh trail, or the path the Gorgon took getting to the ruins, instead of away."
Squire placed his hands on his hips. "Are you suggesting that our monster has a guardian angel looking out for it?"
"I’m suggesting that somebody else has an interest in our quarry," Clay responded, his dark animal eyes scanning the darkness. "And they’re willing to kill to keep us from getting to it first."
"Quickly now," Gull ordered as Hawkins sunk the blade of the shovel deep into the dry, black soil.
He chanced a glance over his shoulder at the commotion in the not-too-far distance.
Conan Doyle and his people are putting up quite a fight, he thought, the Hydra’s angry wails echoing through the night. Gull felt a momentary pang of guilt as he watched them fight for their lives against the many-headed beast, but then realized their lives meant nothing compared to his objective.
"Did you know it was there?" Jezebel asked, distracting him.
He turned from the battle in the distance. Hawkins was still digging, making excellent progress, each shovelful of dead earth bringing them closer and closer still. Jezebel was staring at him, large, green eyes glistening in the darkness, red tresses blowing across her face.
"Did you know the monster was under the ground?" the girl asked again, reaching out to touch Gull’s sleeve, urging him to reveal his duplicity.
She was a fragile thing, filled with such rage, sadness, and fear. He hated to show her the lengths to which he would go to achieve what he most desired, how easily established trusts could be torn asunder, but there was far too much at stake to concern himself with such flimsy concepts as loyalty and honor.