by A. J. Aalto
“Visibility in the passes will be next to nothing. The altitude is harsh. You’re not used to it. You’ll get elevation sickness. The most recent den was at twelve thousand feet. And you don’t have sunglasses. You’ll get snow blindness.”
“I’ll buy sunglasses,” I assured him. “Where’s Batten?”
“And emergency oxygen?” he continued, giving a doubtful snort. “What are you gonna do? Even if you ran outside, stole my Jeep with all my equipment packed up in the back, and drove like the wind…it’s hopeless. There are no yeti left. They’re as good as extinct.”
I caught a flit of movement outside the window directly behind him, and a distinct click-rattle that I’d heard before; an automatic weapon adjusted in someone’s hands or against their side. I understood in a flash.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, giving a big, fake sigh. When Declan shot me a confused look, I said, “It’s rude to turn down food. Sit. So, Dev, weather is too bad, ya think?”
He looked suspicious and grateful at the same time. “Yes. Butter tea or darjeeling?”
“I’ve never tried butter tea, so I’ll try that. Thanks,” I said pleasantly. “I didn’t get a hug. Am I going to?”
“Better not,” he advised. “I could be contagious.” And by that, he meant I could be contagious.
I put my go-bag down beside the table and sat on the low bench beside a quiet Declan. As I sat, I subtly unzipped the bag in case I needed to get my gun in a rush. “Was my friend Batten able to help you out at all?”
He dunked his momo in some sort of sauce, the spicy red color of which seemed to warn of gastric danger. “He never showed.”
The Blue Sense reported: truth. “What did you want his help with?”
“Yak herding.” A lie.
I narrowed my eyes and took a dumpling as Dev poured pale butter tea into small bowls. “He’d be very good at that,” I said conversationally, “although he’s more accustomed to dealing with asses. Too bad he didn’t show. He’s usually pretty dependable.”
Declan unzipped his own go-bag and tucked it closer to his calf. I wonder what he had in there. I knew it wasn’t a gun.
Dev lit a cigarette and held it left-handed while he used the fingers of his right hand to scratch absently at his kneecap under the table. I thanked him for the tea and pretended to drop my second dumpling on the floor so I could bend over to retrieve it; while I was down there, I slid my gun out of my bag and placed it on my lap. I peeked under the table; his pants hung loose around the missing leg, without his prosthetic. Bringing up my Moleskine and No. 2 pencil, I sketched a little bowl of butter tea and the date and time.
I sat straight and sipped my salty butter tea. Dev refilled it to the brim after every sip that Declan and I took. “How’s the leg, Dev?”
“It aches some. A lot less than my shoulder. Tore my rotator cuff.”
“How’d you do that?”
“I fell,” Devarsi lied calmly, though his lips shrugged down sourly.
Another lie. I sipped. Dev sipped. Declan took our lead and also sipped. Dev poured some more. When he turned his face in the light from the window, I could see a fading bruise high on his cheekbone, and it stirred a protective urge.
“I heard you got an incredible prosthetic,” I said. “Very high tech. Where is it?”
“Being fixed,” he lied again, trying to tell me otherwise with his eyes. “Can’t hop for shit, so don’t ask me to run out to the Jeep for you.”
That was the second time he’d brought up running to the Jeep. “I won’t,” I promised him, nodding that I understood, peeling off both gloves. Sarmeela returned with another plate of food, something that looked like porridge. I waited for her to leave before turning my bare hand palm up on the table and offering it to Dev.
I watched him struggle for a full minute with his germ phobia, refusing to cringe away from me, and finally ended with a head shake. He knew what I could do with my Groping, but nothing would breach his phobia. I wondered if the people who were messing with him knew about the germ thing; if they had, they could have used the threat of germs to make Dev do anything.
Okay, we’ll do this another way. “Wish I could play some dinner music,” I said, and elbowed Declan, smiling tightly. “We Canadians love our dinner music.”
Declan’s raised brow asked you do? Then he nodded. “But you lost your old iPhone.”
“Right. But if we did have it, we could maybe play Dev’s favorite song. What is it, again?”
Dev jumped at it. “Mama Said Knock You Out.”
I tried to rap some and the three of us fake laughed. “LL Cool J.”
“Yeah,” Dev agreed. He sang it a bit under his breath, nodding along with the imagined beat.
“Your old favorite used to be something way different,” I said.
Dev said, “Every Breath You Take, by the Police.”
I shot him a thumbs-up as I put my gloves back on. “So, are you sure the weather’s too bad? Maybe you could come with me, help me out?”
“No, no, no. Don’t even try. You won’t get anywhere near the pit.”
“Pit?”
“The den, I mean. Or a den, any den. There are no dens.” He tapped the table with the knuckles of one thick fist.
I had one more momo to fill myself up and indicated to Declan that he should, too, if he was at all hungry. “We’re going back to our guest house,” I lied. “Then we’ll fly home in the morning. I’m sorry we couldn’t have gone to see a real yeti. That would have been neato.”
“Yeah,” Dev said. “Sorry.”
“Hey, you don’t control the weather. I should have known better. Who comes to Nepal in January? I’ll be back, though.”
He looked at me hopefully. I smiled to assure him that I’d be back.
Declan finished up his meal and wiped his mouth on his napkin. “If we did want to do some winter sport, which of the trails would take us far enough to reach a lodge or a base camp?”
“You’d still have to hike a ways unless you took a helicopter in,” Dev said. “Best to abandon the idea altogether. Besides, ‘Nuik’s not up for snowboarding.”
“I don’t snowboard,” I agreed. “And the Himalayas are not for beginners.”
Declan got up and strolled to the window. “It’s a shame. So sunny here in Kathmandu. It’s hard to judge what the conditions will be once you start the climb, though, isn’t that right?”
The dhampir’s body was completely blocking any shot that might come through the window and hit Dev, and I thought he might be doing that on purpose. Malas Nazaire’s assessment came back to me as though he were rasping it directly in my ear: Gaze with mortal eyes upon the dhampir… half human, half, revenant, and hated by both. Barren of Power. Immortal without Grace. Homeless and hopeless and godless.
Dev said, “I couldn’t guarantee any of the trails are safe, but you should definitely avoid the Sous-Sol. That one is very dangerous.”
Sous-Sol was French. We were both Canadian, and Dev was hoping I’d still speak some French. I couldn’t remember my French lessons from high school enough to translate, but nodded. I could Google it.
“You know,” I said, gathering my stuff and moving my gun from my lap to my holster, “you shouldn’t leave your Jeep out there like that, all packed up with equipment. It could get swiped. Aren’t you worried?”
“I keep the keys inside the house,” Dev said, and he sounded like he was mocking my paranoia. His eyes, though, cut to the hallway from which we’d entered. “Only thing worth stealing is the cigarettes in the glove box.” Urgency, urgency, the Blue Sense reported.
“Just take care of yourself, Dev. I’ll see you again soon, yeah?”
He nodded rapidly. “Sure hope so, ‘Nuik.”
Declan and I walked side by side out the front hall, our steps matching, our shoulders touching. My hand only had to flick to the side a tiny bit to snag Dev’s Jeep keys off a little table, though I can’t profess the way I did it was stealthy, as I knocked over
a small, colorful vase while doing it. It clattered to the floor and I whispered, “Go!” at Declan.
We bolted into the bright sun, squinting as it assaulted our eyes, and plunged toward Dev’s loaded Jeep. We slowed as we got closer to the car, making like we belonged there, looking over our shoulders only once in unison. No kerfuffle, so maybe Dev’s backyard guest hadn’t heard the vase. Maybe he’d bought our conversation. Maybe he hadn’t understood a word of it, only judged it by tone. Anything was possible, but as we got into the Jeep, it was clear that we weren’t being chased. I put the key in and turned it on before realizing the Jeep was manual. This was no time for a lesson.
“Drive stick?” I asked Declan.
He nodded and we raced around the Jeep, trading positions. The Jeep was diesel and stunk like it hadn’t been cared for in a while. Or Dev had been driving it with the windows up nonstop while he unloaded rich, aromatic, curry farts into the upholstery.
We left Kathmandu on paved roads but lost asphalt soon after; the roads got bumpy in a hurry. It wasn’t hard to find a place to regroup because there weren’t that many options. I guided Declan down a couple terrifyingly dangerous cliff-side roads and back into a small town that I couldn’t even find on the map from the glove box. We had to slow our speed to make way for chickens and pigs and the occasional yak. Dev’s little arrows took us across a road that was more of a stream.
“He was being watched,” Declan said unnecessarily, his voice vibrating as the Jeep bumped and jostled. “What has he done?”
“Either someone wants the yeti he knows about, or someone wanted him or us,” I said, digging out my phone to text Batten. “What I wanna know is: where the fuck is Kill-Notch?”
“Poachers? Human trafficking? What is it?”
“Who'd poach him? If there was money to be made pimping him out, I'd be making it already.”
I thought about Devarsi’s song choices. Mama Said Knock You Out. I pictured LL Cool J in a boxing ring. (“You won’t get anywhere near the pit.” What pit?) “I want to get a better idea of what we’re dealing with before we contact local police, but I suspect Dev needs the kind of help we can’t give.”
In the next little town, we paused for bathroom breaks and to buy some Dal Bhat, rice and lentils. Devarsi’s arrows on his map showed us a circle back in town, not far from Sarmeela’s, along some back alleys. Dev had written the word “green” in tiny lettering, and also “GG.” Declan wandered away from the Jeep to get some advice about Batten being missing, speaking to a soldier on a bicycle, and I followed him over with my map. The soldier found the idea of human traffickers to be unlikely in this area, or in Nepal in general. Even wildlife smugglers and poachers were almost non-existent thanks to increased patrols by armed soldiers in the animal reserves. The soldier had heard of the local TV star and offered to speak to police about Devarsi’s safety. I whipped off a glove and shook his hand as I thanked him; the Blue Sense roared to life and slammed me with this guy’s sincerity and do-gooderness. Relieved, I agreed that this soldier, Nischal, could look into some of the police contacts for us, shared the map with him and our suspicions about the armed person outside Dev’s window, and left him to secure Dev’s protection, before doubling back in our search.
Batten didn’t text back for a while, but when he did, the text was brief and puzzling. I read it aloud to Declan. Just two words, but they hit me in the gut like a boot. “I’m out.”
Declan frowned over at my phone. “What does that mean, Dr. B.?”
“Guess we’ll find out?” I guessed, but it rang hollow. Or maybe it was the jet lag. Or the food wasn’t sitting right. Eating had turned out to be a mistake, because the bumpy roads knocked us around enough to make both of us car sick. We stopped for another breather and a little walk beside a stream, stretching our legs and taking turns studying the map on the hood of the Jeep. I thought about the pit and the song choices. The Police. The knockout reference. What was Dev trying to tell us?
I stared out at the sun over the highest mountains on the planet. Some of them roared toward the heavens at twenty-five thousand feet and more. In between them, jagged ice and snow and rocks waited to snap legs and laugh in the face of human hubris. I broke the news to him. “We’re not looking for a yeti den.”
“Then what?”
“We’re going back to town,” I told him, checking Google translate, “to find an underground fight club. Devarsi’s fake mountain pass name? Soul-Sol? That means basement.”
“Fight club? Like, cock fighting? Dog fighting?”
“It’ll be well-guarded,” I continued. “I think he wanted to pit Batten against a yeti in a cage match.”
Declan stared at me without blinking. “Devarsi Patel is running a yeti brawl?”
“Doubt it’s his idea. I’m betting he got strong-armed into it and can’t get out,” I said, checking my gun's magazine. Having shot Prost twice, I had four bullets left. “I feel very strongly that this is Sarmeela’s basement, or one very nearby.”
“This is the part where I wish I had kept Umayma’s gun.” He sighed. “What now, Dr. B.?”
“We’re going back, and I’m getting my yeti nail.” I pointed out, “We know where the yeti is, now.”
“I don’t think the fight club folks are going to let you saunter in and take their prizefighting yeti.” Declan grimaced. “Do you have a plan?”
“I have a splendid plan,” I assured him, showing him a flex and some finger guns. When he shook his head in disbelief, I put one hand on my hip and wiggled in a sexy fashion. He became visibly distressed by the ineptly suggestive spectacle, like he’d just won a lifetime supply of deep fried scorpions. Maybe my milkshake drove all the boys from the yard. “Look, do you wanna get killed backing me up, or do you wanna get killed hauling my body out of there?”
“I’m going with you,” he said, as if it was a silly question.
I didn’t think it was. I didn’t even wanna go with me; I couldn’t imagine anyone else would.
We retraced our path into town, double-checking Dev’s map to make sure we were on the right track following the arrows back to Sarmeela’s neighborhood. We dropped the Jeep off a few streets down, locked it, and struck off on foot with just our go-bags, wondering what Dev’s “green” notation on the map meant. We wandered alleyways on our approach to Sarmeela’s, and found a green door. I'd kind of been hoping for a Rhuby Rhod impersonator.
“Just, you know,” Declan said, “get the nail and get out. Don’t be a hero.” I stared at the side of his face until he felt it; he did a double take at me. “What?”
“When have I ever been a hero?” I said, and gave him an admonishing cuff upside the head. His unruly black curls tousled further.
“Good point, Dr. B.” He nodded in the direction of the door. “How do we get them to let us in?”
I considered giving him another hip wiggle and finger guns, and scrapped the idea. “We tell them we have a great fight proposition. Gigantopithecus giganteus against the one and only living dhampir.”
“Oh, please tell me you’re joking, Dr. B.”
“You’ll move around a lot. It’ll be fine. And while you’re distracting everyone, I’ll find where they keep the yeti, find a good spot to hide, and wait for them to bring him back. Then presto-poof, I get a nail clipping, easy-peasy, and we amscray.”
“Just like that?” Declan said. “Presto-poof?”
“And easy-peasy. Don’t forget that part. Are you with me?”
“Aradia’s Great, Swaying Diddies, I do hope you know what you’re doing, Glenda.”
It didn’t look like a fight club, but the green door made me think of an old song from the fifties, and I did wonder what was going on behind it. Only one way to find out. We knocked loudly, faking like we belonged there, that of course we were expected. When nobody answered, we tried the door, figuring it would be locked. It squealed open. Declan and I exchanged worried glances and poked our heads inside. The stink of animals hit us immediately, and as DaySit
ters, our sense of smell was particularly sensitive; fur and urine and kibble and feces and straw all blended to make quite the zoological funk. The stairs went down. So did we, closing the door solidly behind us. I took my mini Cougar out and held the gun behind the small of my back, just in case.
The cellar hall was lit by flickering fluorescent lights; a thick wire strung along the low ceiling ran a few long bulbs.
“You play lookout. Maybe I can get the nail without having to talk to anyone.” I told him, double-checking my clip and my safety. “Stay right here. Call out if you see anything.”
Declan nodded, putting his go-bag on the floor.
I pressed on, hearing animals huffing and breathing; some primal instinct begged me to flee. Cages ahead were shadow-filled until I got closer.
Five tigers. Panthera tigris tigris, the Bengal. One of the big males had a radio collar on. Each pen was metal, secured with locks and chains. The tigers slept. They didn’t even flick an ear as I passed.
There were two crates that leaked fluid next. The fluid smelled like a mix of blood and urine, and I tiptoed past, avoiding the darkest spots. One of the crates was open and there was a clipboard on top of it without papers. I found two sedated snow leopards next. The second to last cage held a Red Panda.
Finally, there was a giant wooden pen, simple bamboo tied with rope. Inside lay a giant grey lump, snoring away. Gigantopithecus giganteus. The very simple peg-lock on the door was held closed by a gold-colored nail.
The gold seed pod of Lilith’s Heart. The Golden Sap of Huxtahotep. Both of my rescue-artifacts so far had been gold, just like the nail was. Was this, in fact, what I needed? I had assumed a “nail from the yeti” meant a nail clipping from the yeti’s claw. I hadn’t considered a fastening-type nail. What happened if I took it out? Would the yeti attack me? It seemed sedated, matted grey fur rippling as its slow breath puffed its chest and then deflated. I surmised that it must be heavily and frequently sedated if it was held in this flimsy bamboo pen by a tiny nail and some rope. I was pretty sure even Bob, my cat, would have been able to paw that makeshift catch open.