I shot Morales a rueful glance. “How do you know it’s not a girl?”
“Please, all the best monsters are dudes: Mothra, Godzilla, King Kong.”
“What about Nessie?” I asked, raising a brow.
He grimaced. “He probably hates that sissy nickname. Admit it—males are superior at the whole monster thing.”
I knew he was just trying to distract me, but the very real monsters I’d known in my life came in all genders and sexes. If I wanted to get into an argument, which I didn’t, I’d have told him it wasn’t men who made the best monsters, but humans. But I didn’t want to start an existential debate, so I told him what I knew about the Lake Erie Lizard.
Back before a Chinese alchemist and some unfair trade laws destroyed the American steel industry, the city of Babylon was hardly a mecca of progressive thinking. There was lots of money, sure, but it was earned at the expense of the area’s abundant natural resources. Factories churned chemicals into the Steel River unchecked—which incidentally is why the damned thing caught fire several times over the years—and into Lake Erie.
Once the factories closed down, most of the city’s pollution was caused by neglect instead of apathy. Buildings sat like empty, rotting shells. Mother Nature started reclaiming the buildings on the outskirts of town; in the center of the city the structures became rabbit warrens filled with the homeless, the strung out, and the clinically insane. It was only in the last decade that major efforts had been made to revitalize the city’s lagging economy and culture.
As for the waterways, there was a pretty determined effort by the city to clean up the river. Eventually you hardly ever saw rats riding rafts of garbage down the canals anymore and the fires stopped altogether—with the exception of the occasional floating alchemy lab explosion.
Despite that cleanup effort, some damage couldn’t be undone. A lot of the pollution’s legacy could be seen in the animal population, especially in the lake. Every couple of years, there was the inevitable news story about some kid who managed to hook a three-eyed fish or a bird born with a leg sticking out of its head. But no story got as much play in the annals of Babylon folklore as the Lake Erie Lizard.
“The first stories started back in the sixties,” I began. “According to the legend, a man was out fishing alone one night. When he was pulling the hook out of his final catch, the hook pricked his finger. He rinsed it off in the lake, but it wouldn’t stop bleeding. He started rowing back to shore because his wife would worry if he was too late getting home. Apparently he was about two hundred yards from shore when something bumped his boat. It was dark, so he couldn’t see anything, but he assumed he’d just rowed over a large log or something.”
I shook my head and smiled, remembering the fevered accounts of the monster whispered by kids in my neighborhood. They always involved some variation on someone cutting themselves in the water, as if the monster was some sort of shark-like creature that could detect a few drops of blood in the trillions of gallons of water that made up Lake Erie.
“What happened next to our fisherman depends on the teller,” I continued, “but most versions involve a large lizard-like creature rearing up over the boat and forcing it to capsize. The man had to swim for his life back to shore, but the monster swallowed his boat whole.”
“I take it you find the tale suspicious.”
I shrugged. “You ask me, it’s just a story parents made up to keep their kids away from the water. Rip currents can get pretty bad.”
Morales leaned his forearms on the boat’s edge and peered into the steel-gray water. “I dunno, Cupcake. This lake’s gotta be what—a hundred feet deep?”
“Two hundred in some places.”
“Right. Just saying, maybe there’s things down there we don’t want to believe in.”
“One time Uncle Abe told me he had summoned the lizard using a potion he cooked with blood and dew gathered from a rose petal under a full moon.” I rolled my eyes.
“Did it work?”
“He said it did, but Abe said lots of things.”
Unbidden, a memory rose from the depths like the Lake Erie Lizard. Me at age five, sitting on Uncle Abraxas’s lap.
“Mama says I don’t have no daddy.”
Abe laughed, making his belly jiggle. “Darlin’, you don’t need a daddy.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll always have your old uncle Abe.” He chucked me under my chin. “I’ll always take care of you.”
“And my mama?”
When he smiled, his eyes twinkled like he knew all my secrets. “Yes, Katie Girl. I’ll take care of your mama, too.”
A cold wind rose up off the lake. Goose bumps spread over my arms, but they had more to do with the memory than the temperature.
“Hey?” Morales said. “You’re not gonna get seasick, are you?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Good, because we’re almost there.” He pointed over the bow.
The black shores of Crook’s Point rose out of the lake into steep cliffs. On the far rise, the gray stone walls of the prison loomed like a storm-shrouded castle out of an old faerie tale.
But the inhabitants of the prison weren’t warmongering goblins or dragons guarding faerie gold. They were hardened magical criminals—rapists, murderers, criminally insane masterminds who’d hex you dead for your last smoke.
I leaned against the ferry’s railing and ignored my sudden urge to tell the captain to turn back around. To call Gardner and tell her I’d give up my task force role and return to patrol, but then I remembered that she’d said I wouldn’t even have that shitty job to go back to.
Morales leaned in and whispered, “Don’t let him see your fear.”
I looked up to see hundreds of small windows facing out from salt-blackened walls. My gut was churning like the Great Lake before a midwinter storm. Without a doubt, I knew Abraxas Prospero watched me from behind one of those thick, bulletproof panes.
Cold spray from the gathering waves hit my face like a slap of sanity. I stood straighter, shoving my anxiety down to the deepest recesses of my psyche. Morales was right. Abe Prospero was like a snake—he’d taste my fear on the air. Then he’d use it against me by spewing venom from that forked tongue.
I pasted on a smile and looked up at Morales. “What fear?”
The corners of his lips rose and he tipped his chin as if to say “Atta girl.”