Page 25 of Lime Gelatin and Other Monsters
“I’ve always liked you, Monroe,” Zacchini said in her deadpan way. “Only man around here with sense.”
“Don’t leave me with her,” Loveless groaned. “You see how she treats me?”
“Don’t pretend she doesn’t spoil you rotten,” Kyle shot back. “Even I’ve been here long enough to see that.”
“Tough love,” Vikash patted the vampire’s shoulder on his way out. “It’s good for you.”
Back in the squad car, back to Vikash being a silent ice sculpture, Kyle tried to keep his brain from spinning. He shouldn’t read things into the silences, not when he’d gotten so accustomed to them before they’d slept together. He took them up Ridge Avenue and as they were passing the Fairmount Septa station, Vikash blinked rapidly as if he had been asleep.
“Snapping turtle.”
“Spread it out for me, Kash. What did you just think of?”
“What Caitlin described sounds like a snapping turtle.”
“Was it the Gamera thing?”
Vikash stretched, cracking his knuckles, and damn it, Kyle didn’t need to think about those hands. “Partly. I grew up in Perry County. We had alligator snapping turtles. The beak. The claws.”
“They usually get the size of taxis?”
“No.” The word was short and clipped. Kyle braced for another flat tire, but Vikash went on. “Something in this city’s making monsters.”
Kyle chewed on his bottom lip before he answered. “Yeah. You’re not the first to say that. There’ve been rumors. Things the top brass won’t say. The real reason they put our unit together. I’ve tried to find things out. Looked into other cities’ paranormal units. No one seems to have the kind of cases we do. Nothing like this.”
“Kyle…”
“Yeah?”
“Would you think less of me if I said I was a little scared?”
Kyle patted his partner’s knee. “I’d think less of you if you tried to pretend you weren’t. This is some pretty scary shit.”
“More or less scary than Lime Jell-O monster?”
“I’ll let you know when we catch sight of this thing.”
The kid at the hospital, Colin, didn’t have much to add to Caitlin’s statement. He echoed the sighting of beak and claws, and added that the thing definitely had a shell, adding fuel to Vikash’s giant snapping turtle theory. That and the fact that his leg wound matched the shape of the ones on the two homicide victims. Beyond that, the poor kid was drifting on pain meds while the surgeons tried to decide if they could save his leg.
“I don’t suppose anyone’s going to see this as an Animal Control issue,” Kyle muttered on the way out of Emergency.
“Doubtful.”
“Two dead, one badly injured, and a monster that uses the Schuylkill as his hideout and personal rapid transit. What the hell are we supposed to do here?”
“Put everything in front of the lieutenant.”
“Without a plan of action? Without anything concrete beyondwe think it’s a giant fucking turtle? Seriously?”
“It’s her job. To make decisions.”
Kyle turned in alarm at the frost in Vikash’s voice. Invisible electric spiders raced up his spine. “Kash…don’t…not here.”
Vikash closed his eyes, a muscle jumping in his jaw, but the tingling didn’t fade. Desperate, Kyle grabbed his arm to shake him and gasped as the tingling became an electric storm raging through his veins. The world tilted underneath him as the electrical surge echoed inside him. He had no other word for it as he clutched at Vikash’s shoulder, trying to stay on his feet.
“Kash,” he whispered, and there might have been a whimper, his, Vikash’s. Someone was dragging him down the sidewalk. A sudden turn, an alley with Dumpsters.
Vikash, it was Vikash still beside him. The lean muscles under Kyle’s hands tensed and Vikash let out a sharp cry as if he flung an angry verbal spear into that alley. The charge in Kyle’s body ripped from him, directed by that resonant cry. One of the Dumpsters shuddered, rumbling a few inches across the ground. Then its lid flew back, its contents exploding to send trash raining down in sodden, squelching clumps. The metal sides of the Dumpster had buckled outward, sharp, twisted bits of metal protruding in unruly patterns.
