"Okay, this is officially the most boring mission ever," Ezekiel mumbled as he slumped against Jacob's shoulder, fighting off sleep.
Jacob didn't shrug him off, which was his way of non-verbally agreeing with Ezekiel. The creature was due for another appearance tonight, and the idea was that they'd get a good look at it, figure out what it was, and then find a way to safely catch/trap it and move it way away from civilisation, but it was going on four hours they'd been waiting, and there hadn't been hide or hair of anything other than themselves.
The Clippings Book had sent them to a slaughterhouse in the middle of bloody nowhere, Texas, where some kind of animal had been breaking in and apparently stealing the product. Which was gross, but it was in the book, so they had to go. Which was why they were currently sitting in a darkened slaughterhouse at two in the morning. Ezekiel didn't like it. The place was creepy and reminded him way too much of a horror video game level, not to mention it smelled. And they hadn't seen a single thing. Nothing. Nada. Jacob had done a lot of the talking for this one, spinning an impressive spiel of BS that convinced the owner of the place to let them have a little stakeout, something about exotic animals and private zoos and a wildlife study. Ezekiel wasn't sure 100% convinced, because it couldn't actually be legal to own a tiger here, right? But the owner and the foreman had both nodded and gone along with it so...
Cassandra suddenly stopped tracing idle patterns on Ezekiel's knee, and then her pointy little elbow dug into his ribs. "Guys, guys, look up there," she whispered, pointing to one of the high windows. There was something moving outside the window, no matter that it was fifteen feet off the ground.
They all went very still and quiet, listening intently as something scraped against the glass, sliding the window open; a soft tearing sound was heard as the...whatever cut through the bug screens that covered all the windows, pushing its way inside and climbing down the wall into the slaughterhouse.
It was a four-limbed animal, with muscular hind legs and a pair of wings that had three clawed fingers at the top of them, like an archaeopteryx, but it looked more like a bird than a lizard. Most of its body was covered in glossy feathers, with only its tail and hindquarters being scaly, and its head was more birdlike than reptilian, complete with a shiny black beak. "I think it's a snallygaster," Jacob realised, staring at the curious animal as it crawled down the wall, claws clicking softly on the stone floor. When it climbed, it used all four limbs, but once on level ground, it walked solely on its reptilian hind legs, folding its wings back.
"Bless you," Cassandra whispered, watching the animal closely.
"No, really. The snallygaster is like Maryland's version of the Jersey Devil, a half-bird, half-dragon demon that ate naughty children and stole livestock. Germans called it Schneller Geist, a quick ghost," Jacob explained. "We've found our big bad monster, then."
"That's what had all those blokes screaming like a bunch of ninnies? I thought it'd be bigger," Ezekiel mused, watching as the snallygaster sniffed around, moving around and crawling up onto the big steel drums. Snout to tail, it was probably only nine feet long, most of that being in its long, skinny tail, and standing on its hind legs, the top of its head would just barely level with Jacob's shoulder.
"Things always seem bigger when you're scared," Cassandra mused. "It's actually kind of pretty, isn't it?"
They nodded quiet agreement, watching as the snallygaster sniffed around before coming to one of the large steel drums. "What is that?" Ezekiel asked in an undertone.
Jacob shrugged. "Probably blood. They don't always throw it out because it's used to make other things, fertilizer, dog food, stuff like that."
The snallygaster coiled its tail around the drum and started to pry the lid off with its hooked beak, but it went still at the sound of a door rattling somewhere else in the slaughterhouse. With incredible swiftness for its size, the snallygaster whirled around and scaled the wall, scrambling back out of the window. The sound of a gun going off made them all startle, an animal screech of pain splitting the quiet. They ran outside to see the slaughterhouse's foreman standing near the window, holding a double-barreled shotgun in a white-knuckle grip; the snallygaster was nowhere to be seen. "Did...did you see that?" he asked in a shaky voice.
As Jacob strode over to snatch the gun away from the foreman, Ezekiel swore angrily, muttering under his breath; Cassandra clutched his hand tightly, and he let her. Jacob made the man leave with impressive ingenuity: it was not a monster, it was an exotic animal from someone's private zoo, and you might have just shot an endangered species, you moron, now go home and stay there, we'll handle this.
"He didn't hit it, did he?" Cassandra asked anxiously, twisting her hands uneasily as Jacob emptied the shotgun and pocketed the shells.
"Oh, he definitely got it," Ezekiel said grimly, directing his torch beam at the wall; there was a large, thick splatter of near-black blood on the wall just below the window. More blood made a dark, drippy trail down the wall onto the pavement, leading away through the gap in the fence. "Come on, we'll see if we can follow it."
They trudged through the wide band of grass that was between the slaughterhouse and the edge of the trees, stopping occasionally to make sure they were still going in the right direction. Jacob took lead because he'd gone hunting before and knew how to track a wounded animal. "I hope it's not badly hurt," Cassandra murmured as they walked. The historian didn't quite have the heart to tell her that it was. The foreman had probably hit something vital if there was this much blood to follow.
Ezekiel was so busy trying not to trip on anything that he didn't notice Jacob had stopped walking until he ran into the other man's back. "Why'd you stop?" he asked.
"The trail ends right here," Jacob replied, puzzlement lacing his voice as he swept the torch beam back and forth. "That's it, there's no more blood. Do you see it anywhere?"
"No, but look there, mate." Ezekiel stepped around him and crouched on his heels, dragging one hand through the dirt; a swirl of silvery dust rose up from the disturbed soil, catching in the torch beams, and he scooped up a handful of brittle bones that crumbled to the touch. "End of the line." A lot of cryptid animals decomposed at an exponentially accelerated rate, which explained why hardly anyone found remains; their bodies broke down in minutes instead of weeks, even their bones. Only ones that were preserved with magic could be kept intact for study.
"Damn. I guess that means our job's done. Sorry, Cass—Cassandra? Where'd she go?" Jacob exclaimed, turning around and finding the redhead no longer standing behind him.
"Over here!"
Following the sound of her voice, they pushed through a tangle of low-hanging branches into a low, enclosed thicket, having to stoop at little to avoid being blinded by twigs. Cassandra was kneeling on the leaf matted ground, and a baby snallygaster, no bigger than a housecat, had crawled into her lap, cheeping loudly, and began rubbing its head against her. She stroked its downy-soft baby feathers gently, offering her fingers for it to nibble on curiously. "I guess we know why the big one was breaking into the slaughterhouse now," she mused aloud. "She was feeding her baby."
"So...what do we with that one?" Ezekiel wondered.
Jacob nearly said 'I don't know,' but then he glanced back at the redhead's face and smiled. He knew that look. Grinning, he nudged Ezekiel with an elbow and murmured in an undertone, "I know what she's gonna do with it. Your turn to tell Jenkins."
Jenkins took one look at them and walked out of the room.
Cassandra decided to name it Teddy, after President Theodore Roosevelt, who once proposed hunting the snallygaster but changed his mind. The triplets all seemed to like him, since he was currently the same size as they were, with the same feathers and scales, though not in the same place. Sissy was the biggest worry. She was growing fast, and already she stood as high as a Great Dane, and she was starting to grow the bone spurs that marked adulthood in Greek hellhounds on her back and jaw. She still acted like a puppy, though, and sometimes forgot how big she actually was in her exuberance. Sissy was careful with him, though, and it wasn't uncommon to see her pick him up by the neck like a puppy and walk around with him.
Three days after rescuing him, though, they ran into a different problem. "He won't eat," Cassandra fretted, kneeling on the floor of the pet room. The bowl full of warmed blood sat untouched next to her; the snallygaster would sniff at it but it wouldn't drink any, only wander around making miserable noises. "I don't understand why. This is what the mother was drinking, so why won't he eat?"
"I have an idea. Come here, bring the bowl," Jacob said, gesturing her over. "A lot of animals that young, they aren't weaned yet. Since a snallygaster isn't a mammal, I don't think it can actually nurse, but maybe it's more like a bird, it regurgitates food for its young." He opened one of the cabinets that held the animal-care supplies. "So maybe it doesn't know that it's food because it's not coming from anything." He dug out a large plastic bottle, one of the big ones used to bottle-feed livestock. Taking the bowl from Cassandra, he carefully tipped it into the bottle. After rooting through the cabinets again, he came up with two plastic bottles, unscrewed the lid, and used a spoon to scoop out a coarse brown powder from each one.
"What is that?" Cassandra asked.
"Blood meal, meat and bone meal," Jacob replied as he spooned the powder into the bottle and shook it vigorously to stir it in. "They're also made in slaughterhouses as a by-product, and they're used as an organic fertilizer for plants, but also as a nutritional supplement in animal feed. Full of protein, calcium, all the good stuff found that's usually in a nursing animal's milk. Since our mama monster was breaking into those containers too, she was probably eating them, mixing it up in her belly for Teddy."
Cassandra stared at him when he handed over the bottle; the blood inside was now the approximate texture of a very thick milkshake. "Why do you know all this stuff?" she asked.
He smiled. "I grew up around farms, Cassie. Animal Science is a required course in high school," he replied. "Now, see if he'll take that."
She knelt down and held out her arms; Teddy slunk over to her, still crying pitifully. Cassandra offered him the bottle, squeezing the rubber nipple so some of the thickened blood mix oozed out. Teddy lapped at it, then took it in his beak. He couldn't exactly suckle, but his softened baby teeth worked well to squeeze it out. Once he got the hang of it, he gulped down the blood eagerly, coiling up in Cassandra's lap, reaching up to grasp at the bottle with soft claws.
"I cannot believe that worked, oh, Jacob, thank you," she sighed in relief, stroking Teddy's feathers.
"No problem. Now, she was only breaking into the slaughterhouse about once a week. From the size of her, I'd guess a full bottle is about how much she could fit in her belly."
"Only once a week?" Cassandra asked.
Jacob shrugged. "Some species of snakes can go several weeks without eating once they get a good meal in. I'm sure he'll let you know when he needs to eat again." He kissed her cheek and stood up. "And while Teddy finishes his dinner, I'm going to make sure Jonesy hasn't spoiled our dinner yet. You know we can't leave him unattended around food for extended periods of time."
Laughing, Cassandra waved him off with her free hand. Only a moment after he'd left the room, she could hear his and Ezekiel's voices, echoing slightly up the corridor. Scooting closer, she used one foot to nudge the door open a little, their voices clearing, and she tilted her head to listen to their conversation.
"—just gross, mate."
"Oh, get stuffed, Jonesy. You can put Vegemite on pretty much everything you eat, but I can't have mayo with my chicken nuggets?"
"Vegemite is good!"
"What do you know about good? You put sprinkles on buttered bread and call it a dessert."
"It's called fairy bread, you uncultured swine, and bugger your sense of taste. Americans deep-fry anything they get their bloody hands on!"
"And a deep-fried Twinkie is better than butter-bread-sprinkles, thank you very much."
"Oi, don't you dare talk shit about fairy bread. Who do you think you are?"
Cassandra shook her head and looked down at Teddy, coiled up placidly in her lap as he sucked on the bottle, his tail curling and uncurling around her wrist. "You better get used to that, Teddy. Those are your daddies, and that's how they flirt. It sounds like they don't like each other at all, I know, but that is because human men are very simple-minded creatures. They're both too stubborn to just say how much they love each other like normal people do, so they pick on each other instead," she informed him. Teddy only purred knowledgably, his eyes half-lidded and drowsy. "Yeah, I know, I love them, too."
Jacob put a few of his old welding skills to use and built a reinforced steel climbing frame in what'd been officially labeled as the pet room, strong enough for Teddy to climb on once he started getting more active, and Ezekiel presented Cassandra with a gilded leather collar with the appropriate engraved tags. It wasn't uncommon for them to come in and find Teddy and Sissy stretched out side-by-side on the floor with Magda, Zsa Zsa, and Eva curled on top of them like feathery pompoms. And it also wasn't unheard of to find all three Librarians asleep in the pet room with their animals piled up around them.
For all he liked to grumble about them, Jenkins had been caught slipping Sissy pieces of jerky and petting Teddy on several different occasions, not to mention all the times that Magda would perch on his shoulder like a very strange owl. They'd all witnessed Eve indulging in a game or two of fetch, either with a cattle thighbone for Sissy, regular sticks for the triplets and Teddy.
Flynn, however, had the misfortune of unknowingly taking Teddy's favourite bath towel when he got out of the shower one night, which led to everyone waking up at three in the morning, emerging from their rooms to find the senior Librarian screaming and running around the Annex in only a towel, pursued by a juvenile snallygaster very determined to get his blankie back from the interloper.
After that, all pets were required to wear a bell on their collar.
And the Librarians were under no circumstances allowed to bring home any more strays.
