Pocket Apocalypse: InCryptid, Book Four Read Free

Griffins are basically what you get when Nature decides to Frankenstein a Maine Coon and a raven into one endless source of mischief. Crow was about the size of a corgi, with the predatory appetites of a cat that had somehow been equipped with functional wings. I kept him inside most of the time, both to prevent him from being discovered by people who wouldn’t know what to do with a Church Griffin, and to protect the neighborhood birds, squirrels, frickens, and smaller dogs.
    “He’s going to spread that thing’s guts through a mile of treetops,” observed Dee mildly.
    “At least it means I won’t have to feed him tonight. Come on: this way looks promising.” Our hike had brought us to one of the more solid patches of marsh. The ground grew firmer under our feet as we continued, finally becoming rich, deep, subriparian loam. A small ring of frilly green plants poked up out of the dirt, each about three inches high. They stood out vividly against the autumnal background. I grinned. “So Dee, you were telling me screaming yams don’t exist.”
    “Because they don’t.”
    “Says the woman with snakes for hair. Watch and remember how much you have left to learn.” I stooped, picked up a rock, and lobbed it gently underhand into the middle of the circle. It hit with a soft thump.
    For several seconds, nothing happened. Then the earth exploded as a dozen screaming yams uprooted themselves and began hopping wildly around, their fibrous mouths gaping open, their characteristic screams echoing through the marsh. They had no legs, and propelled themselves like tiny pogo sticks, their threadlike root systems whipping in the breeze generated by their forward motion.
    After hopping several times around the clearing, they gathered on another patch of clear ground and burrowed back down into the earth with surprising speed, becoming a circle of standing leaves once again.
    “Screaming yams,” I said. “If it were spring or summer, they’d have run away from us, but they’re getting ready to hibernate, so they’re counting on confusion to drive us away.”
    “Works for me,” said Dee faintly.
    I laughed.

    Mapient, rodentlike cryptids which present as near-idenams weren’t a normal part of my work environment, they were a great bonus. After three years in Ohio, I was still discovering things about the state and its ecology that could surprise and delight me. That was good, since I’d never expected or planned to stay this long. When I had first come to the West Columbus Zoo to oversee the basilisk breeding program established by my predecessor in the back room of the reptile house—without the knowledge of the zoo administration, of course, since basilisks supposedly didn’t exist—I had thought I’d be there for maybe six months. A year, tops.
    That hadn’t exactly worked out as planned. Since my arrival, I had opened diplomatic relations with the local gorgon enclave, nearly been turned to stone, cataloged the native fricken species, nearly been eaten by a lindworm, fed two people to the zoo’s alligator snapping turtle, nearly been killed by a Pliny’s gorgon/Greater gorgon hybrid, and helped my grandparents nurse my cousin Sarah back to something resembling health after she managed to telepathically injure herself saving my sister Verity’s life.
    What was sad was that all of this was basically within my job description. I’m a cryptozoologist. As long as I’m working with things that science says don’t exist (including my cousin Sarah), I’m fulfilling my mandate, and serving the cryptid community.
    Fortunately for me, there are a lot of ways to serve the cryptid community. Verity is basically a cryptid social worker, with a side order of kicking people’s teeth in when they refuse to acknowledge that “being a good neighbor” doesn’t mean
eating
the neighbors. My mother is a cryptid health professional, and my father is a chronicler and general historian. (My youngest sister, Antimony, is still