A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters - Martin Harry Greenberg [48]
(She’s the only instructor who insisted on a hotel room. Even the bestselling discord thriller writer, from week two, had no trouble staying in graduate student housing for the duration of his instructorly duties.)
Then Margarite waggles her fingers at us, says, “Toodles,” and goes out the door into the courtyard. We watch her walk away, except Raj, who scurries after her.
He catches her arm, which makes me wince, and then gestures as he talks to her, probably telling her he needs to come with her to check her into that hotel.
Poor guy. He’s always been good and fair to me whenever I’ve had issues with the workshop (and I’ve had a few). I don’t envy him that moment of contact, which probably sent a small shock through his already-overburdened system.
They disappear through the courtyard’s main door. Our sad sack western writer, still nominally our instructor for the week, sighs, and somehow refrains from commenting. Instead, she holds up the three manuscripts we’re to critique today and asks who wants to go first.
Class ends a half an hour late, what with book signings and hugs and heartfelt cries of I thought you were the best instructor so far (which the other instructors also heard on their Fridays). I go back to my room and make myself a bologna and cheese sandwich, then carry it to the kitchen table where I bring out my other laptop, so I can catch up on industry news while I eat.
I probably should be with the group, eating lunch and gossiping. They’d be surprised, though, because it’s not my thing. I have to do my job—my real job—but I can’t be obvious about it either.
I figure the murder won’t take place until tonight. That gives me most of the afternoon to finish a story and probably the early evening to make sure my weaponry is in the proper state.
I bring a kit with me wherever I go. Different evil magical creatures must be killed by different real-world tools. But you already know that. You’ve seen it in a variety of stories.
The stories get various elements right, but not all of them. For example, the wooden stake that kills vampires must be made out of the no-longer existing cedar of Lebanon. The silver that kills werewolves must be old-fashioned European silver, not the purer, prettier stuff from the Americas.
Chaos dragons are a modern phenomenon, so they die in more modern ways. First, you have to touch the thing with an authentic bowie knife, preferably one from the nineteenth century. That makes the human form dissipate. Then you have render the thing immobile, which is a lot more difficult than it sounds because, at this point, you’re fighting with a small alligator. It has alligator claws and alligator teeth and in addition, really big tusks.
I’ve only killed one chaos dragon, which is one more than my colleagues, and even though my handlers like to attribute that to skill, I know that the death was simply luck.
Because there’s a third step: you have to remove the tusks or the thing will regenerate. The tusks are pretty simple to remove. You grab one and tug. The tusk comes out easily, like a fake fingernail comes off a hand. But you have to be able to get close enough to tug.
I learned my lesson the last time. I have reptile tranquilizer darts—the large kind used for crocodiles. I didn’t use this the last time. Instead, I managed to knock the chaos dragon unconscious.
But, as I said, that time, I was lucky.
This time, I doubt luck will run my way. That’s probably the other reason I’m finishing the story.
Because a part of me thinks it might be my last.
I’m finished with the bologna sandwich when someone knocks on my door. I sigh. I thought I’d discouraged knocking during the first week when I made it clear that I wasn’t into socializing or making nice.
Still, the knock’s pretty insistent. I peer through the window to the left of the door and see Raj standing there, fist up, looking frazzled.