Burn, Baby, Burn

by R. J. Blain

  “Good point. What are we going to do until noon?”

  “Sleep, then we’ll get a rental in the morning and follow our wives. I’d like to keep them one step ahead of us, so if we’re needed, we’re close.”

  “With a wolf puppy in tow?”

  “Well, she’ll be used to car rides soon. It’s training.”

  Shaking his head, my friend sighed again. “Whatever you say, Sam. How is it I became the bastion of sanity?”

  “I’m more concerned you think you’re a bastion of sanity. Your wife collects misdemeanors and community service hours when she gets bored.”

  “I really can’t dispute that. We even had a proper wedding, and it was my idea.”

  “Think I should give Bailey a proper wedding for Christmas?”

  “You got her a puppy. I think that’s a sufficient Christmas present.”

  “It’s really not. She deserves a proper wedding.”

  “In Vegas?” Perkins laughed. “That’s hardly proper.”

  “The Venetian has a nice chapel.”

  “If it hasn’t been booked.”

  In Vegas, everything could be purchased for a price, and a lot of people would work in the middle of the night for a nice paycheck. “Let’s find out. Planning a wedding will keep us busy while we pretend we have no idea where our wives are.”

  “This is going to be a disaster,” Perkins predicted.

  “Well, yes. I’m married to the Calamity Queen. What were you expecting?”

  “Caution.”

  I snorted. “Please. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  “What did Bailey tell you the last time you asked that?”

  “That it was hiding with her common sense.”

  “What she said.”

  Bailey

  I doubted I’d ever understand Quinn. How had he translated my list to mean I wanted a puppy? Would he realize Perkette and I meant to go to Vegas? Had we not left enough clues? Shaking my head, I retreated to the nearest bathroom with a warning to spray down the tiles with neutralizer once I finished transforming. The grade of transformative I used wouldn’t hurt anyone, but I played by all the rules, even the annoying ones.

  Ten minutes later, I emerged from the bathroom with my clothes dangling from my mouth.

  The groomer, an older gentleman armed with a utility belt loaded with combs, brushes, and clippers of various sizes, looked me over. “It’s not every day I get to groom a cindercorn. Set your clothes down; a tech will be by to neutralize the bathroom and handle the rest of the cleaning. You want a standard trim?”

  I set my clothes down and replied, “Puh-lease. Make mane pretty? Tail, too?”

  “Braids over the top to thin your mane somewhat while leaving the rest long? It’s too nice to hide.”

  “Some braids nice, puh-leash. Talk hard, sor-ree.”

  “That you can talk at all is impressive, ma’am. Please come with me.”

  He led me to a grooming room and retrieved a bottle of powder from a tall shelf. “Since your breed isn’t tolerant of water, I’ll use this instead. It’ll clean your coat and add some shine. Don’t ask how it works. I’ve been using it for years and still don’t get it. It’s expensive, but you’ll like the results.”

  “Water bad, fire good. Pow-dur bet-ter than water.”

  “I’ll admit, I never thought I’d get a chance to groom any sort of unicorn. We get a lot of centaurs, and some of the desert breeds hate the water, too. We’re trained in most species. Zoos and rehab centers contact the emergency clinics if they get an exotic. It’s free schooling for me, but I’m required to volunteer hours in emergency situations. As I’d do that anyway, it worked out great.”

  “That nice. They teach tooth clean-ing, too?”

  “You open your mouth, I operate the toothbrush. Sentients are easy. Carnivore?”

  “Yes. Very. Burn, eat. Eat ash and coal, too. And other things.”

  “Fuels? I can do a tooth check and brushing if you’d like. It’ll only add five or ten minutes.”

  “Yes, puh-lease.”

  It took him over an hour to trim my fur, tend to my mane and tail, and do a full nose-to-hoof check. As promised, he even gave my teeth a good brushing. I passed the basic examination with flying colors, which would make Quinn happy.

  Then, under the watchful eye of the veterinarian, I met my new puppy as a unicorn. He growled once, cast a doubtful glare at the vet, and then regarded me like a challenge to overcome, which beat him running away while yipping from terror. “He no run. This is good. Can work with this, yes?”

  “He’ll need training.” The woman considered my puppy for a long moment, and then she smiled. “No, this is promising. I had the urge to run when I first saw your teeth.”

  Wise people did. My teeth could crunch through bone without much effort.

  “Hus-band po-leese off-ee-sur. He know dog train-ers. I hire one.”

  “Oh! A police trainer would work nicely. I’ll give you a sheet with his future vaccination schedule. I took the liberty of selecting the basics you’ll need for his care. It’s waiting for you in reception. If you have any questions, please ask. I’ve also prepared your first rabies treatment and had the rest packaged for you in individual dosages.”

  “Clothes clean?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll bring them to the bathroom for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Twenty painful minutes later and one rabies treatment down the hatch, I emerged from the bathroom so tired I shook. The aftermath of forcing myself to shift didn’t help any, but I hadn’t bled anywhere. I was proud of myself for that. The first time I’d shifted without waiting for the transformatives to wear off, I’d terrified a few years off Quinn’s life and left a disturbingly large puddle of blood on the floor. Five minutes later, a thousand dollars in the hole, and armed with new supplies for my puppy, I left.

  My puppy still regarded me warily, but he didn’t growl. I carried him with his supplies hanging from my arms. At the station, I shouldered my way inside. “I’m sorry that took so long. We both needed to be treated for rabies.”

  I set my puppy on the floor and secured a hold on his leash. “Is Perkette booked and ready to go?”

  The cop behind the counter grinned. “She’s in general holding, rather miffed she’s alone. You can take her.”

  “Please tell me she was only charged with misdemeanors.”

  “I wouldn’t know, ma’am. How did your puppy do at the vet?”

  I beamed. “He did great.”

  “Named him yet?”

  “Not yet. He deserves a good name, so I’m going to think about it for a while.”

  “That he does. I’ll call for your friend to be released, so feel free to take a seat. It won’t be long.”

  Chapter Six

  Quinn

  Without Bailey around, I didn’t sleep well. My mixed heritage let me get away with only a few hours of sleep each night, but the little sleep I did get left me tired, sore, and crabby. Perkins waited in my kitchen, engaging in a staring contest with my wife’s beloved monster of a coffee maker, heaving sighs.

  “It’s just not the same. No matter what we do, it’s just not the same,” he complained.

  I smiled, still amazed she’d happily whipped out her bank card and bought the same maker for the station but had hesitated to get one for herself. I’d gone behind her back, had it ordered, and set it up in the kitchen. Her expression when she spotted it had been worth every penny and then some.

  Sometimes, I got a little jealous over how much she adored the machine, but I tried my best to never let it show. She loved coffee.

  I gave the machine a fond pat. “I’m beginning to think it’s magic. Since she doesn’t use much magic often, it has to be bleeding off somehow. I think she makes magic coffee as a result.”

  “I don’t know if I can deal with an idiot hive of gorgons without magic coffee.”

  “With luck, all I’ll need to do is warn them off.” I pushed Perkins
aside and went to work making him a cup of coffee for the road. “My coffee isn’t quite as good as Bailey’s, but she keeps a stash of pixie dust in the kitchen, and she made me get certification to handle everything but the higher grades. She takes substance safety to the extremes.”

  “Well, she’s a specialist. She really made you get certified for handling pixie dust?”

  “A and lower. She keeps all grades of dust in the house, but the grades above A are locked in the biometrics safe the CDC sent over.”

  “They gave her a biometrics safe?” Perkins whistled. “Those things are wickedly expensive.”

  “Yeah. I have a code to get into part of the safe, too. It’s ridiculous how many layers and doors are in that thing. If she wants to access the most secure section of the safe, it takes her half an hour just to open it. It’s reinforced with magic, too. She, at the CDC’s invitation, gave it all she had while a cindercorn. She couldn’t even scuff it.”

  “That must have pissed her off.”

  “Just a bit. She tried to chew on the safe, which was when I lured her away from it and made her shift back.”

  “Lured? Do I even want to know?”

  I snickered. “All I had to do was unbutton the top two buttons of my shirt. One of the CDC evaluators was a woman, and Bailey got territorial. She chased me all the way to our bedroom and wouldn’t let me out until I buttoned my shirt.”

  “Bailey’s unbelievable sometimes.”

  “She really is. That safe drives me nuts, though. Any time the CDC gets something they want secured, it goes into the safe until they’re ready to transport it. They’ve got some samples of something in there, and they want Bailey in a hazmat suit if she comes anywhere near its compartment.”

  “Damn. There’s a toxin that can actually affect Bailey?”

  “I don’t even know if it’s a toxin or a disease sample or what, but the CDC is storing it in my basement in that safe.”

  “Think it’ll stay put in the safe?”

  “They promised even if someone lifted the safe and dropped it from space back down to Earth, that the compartment would hold and not spill a drop. I figured that should be safe enough, but I’m not sure I want her ever accessing the interior compartment again.”

  “I wouldn’t, either. Will her job shift change that arrangement?”

  “If they cart that safe off, I will be a happy man. So. What grade pixie dust would you like today, Perkins?”

  “Give me a light dose of the good stuff. I’m going to need it if I have to deal with potential petrification today.”

  “A light dose of the good stuff it is.” As Bailey would kill me if I got a hit of pixie dust without her around to enjoy the consequences, I took my time making his drink. I didn’t wear the gloves or the face mask like she wanted, but I took my time giving his coffee a light hit of the good stuff. It would make his day more bearable, especially if he did get petrified. Perkins didn’t take to petrification as well as others, and he’d be a miserable mess if he needed a neutralizer bath to revert him from a stone statue.

  Worse, if someone did petrify Perkins, the hive would get me at my worst.

  I didn’t appreciate when another hive infringed on my territory, and Perkins—along with the rest of my cops—counted as my territory.

  “You’re tense. Dealing with a gorgon hive doesn’t usually make you that tense,” Perkins observed. “Even ones with their eye on Bailey. What else is bothering you?”

  I wanted to protest, but I didn’t waste my breath. He could read me better than an open book on a bad day. “It’s that idiot ex-cadet I’m worried about. He’s out for revenge. What will he do if his gorgon plan doesn’t work?”

  “He’ll be sore out of luck if he tries any toxins on her. Not even ambrosia can take her out.”

  I scowled at the reminder of her last evaluation, which had involved enough ambrosia to summon a divine twice over. The CDC had wanted to test an exposure method. The method had worked; Bailey had become distant, but she’d been able to handle a world-record amount of ambrosia.

  Some world records I didn’t want my wife to hold, and surviving a ridiculous amount of ambrosia exposure ranked pretty high on the list.

  “Sam?”

  I sighed and handed Perkins his coffee. “It took over a week and exposure to rabies to get her back to normal.”

  “You never told me what the blood test showed.”

  “One of her grandparents is a divine, but the only time the damned scanner registers the DNA is when she’s been exposed to ambrosia. And the rest of her genetics report back differently, too. When she’s not exposed to ambrosia, she’s a genetic match for her perfectly vanilla human parents. But once ambrosia is added? It’s like she becomes a completely new person. And worse? The DNA scrambles the scanner, so while the CDC was able to register a grandparent was divine, they have no idea what the genetic makeup of anyone else in her line is.”

  “What does that even mean?” Perkins asked before taking a sip of his coffee. “I’d say you need one of these to get you through today, but we don’t need you edgy because Bailey isn’t around.”

  “I’m going to be taking a vial of low-grade pixie dust with us just in case. I figure that’ll do an equal job to whatever the hell prescription my great-grandfather wrangled.”

  “Yeah. It’s a serious prescription. I’ll only force it down your throat if you really need it. I’m concerned he seemed so confident you’ll need it, though.”

  “We’re talking about Bailey, here. With her luck? I’m going to need it.”

  Perkins sighed and took another sip of coffee. “You know it’s bad when the good stuff doesn’t pack enough of a punch to stop worrying over one woman’s bad luck.”

  “Well, as long as she’s not exposed to ambrosia, she can handle just about anything on her own. However much it pains me to admit that, she can take care of herself. Usually.”

  Perkins raised his travel mug in salute. “A month ago, you would’ve been freaking out rather than admitting she does have some basic survival skills. Good job. I’m seconding you on the ambrosia thing, though. The last thing we need is Bailey contracting a severe case of divinity. Will we have time to swing by my place? I’m going to need clothes unless we’re shopping on the way.”

  Sunny sat on my foot and stared at me. Right. I had a wolf, and I needed to feed her. “Take the cruiser, head to your place, pack, and then come back. I’ll feed Sunny, get a rental reserved, and pack, too.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I should be back within an hour.”

  “Drive carefully,” I ordered. Once he left, I began my sacred duty of feeding Bailey’s new puppy and taking her on a walk. “Here’s hoping you like road trips, Sunny. I have the feeling it’s going to be a while until we come back home.”

  Bailey

  My new puppy hated Perkette, hiding behind me whenever possible. I found the whole situation hilarious. She didn’t.

  That made me laugh even harder, especially when the hotel gave Perkette a hard time for having a dog. The circumstances, the weather, and a bribe smoothed the way to keep the puppy in the room, but we wouldn’t be able to maintain our plan of hitting the first hotel we liked anymore. We needed to find a hotel that would welcome a dog.

  For that reason, Perkette hated me, too.

  I still laughed despite having angered my friend.

  “I still don’t understand how my quest for misdemeanors resulted in yet another damned case of rabies and a puppy. That thing is a white devil.”

  The so-called white devil cowered behind my legs. “He is not.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Is not.”

  “Bailey, he’s a ball of fluffy hatred and loathing.”

  “He’s a traumatized puppy in need of love.” I’d learned he didn’t appreciate sudden movements, a sign of abuse we’d need to address before Quinn noticed, flipped, and hunted for the abuser. While I’d love to see the abuser punished, my chief of police would take things too far. />
  He liked to pretend he didn’t love animals as much as I did, but I was on to him.

  “I’m not able to argue that point, but do you have to be the one to love that fluffy ball of hatred and loathing?”

  Less than a year ago, I’d been a mess of hatred and loathing, too. “Yes.”

  “This is going to make our trip interesting. Do you even know how to take care of a puppy?”

  “Not exactly. That’s what the internet is for. Anyway, I need to learn. Quinn got me a puppy, Perkette.”

  “He got himself a guard dog and disguised it as a puppy. We both know he’s going to train that puppy to protect you when you’re more than five feet away from him.”

  He would. “My poor puppies. I’ll have to protect them from Quinn.”

  “I wish you the best of luck with that.”

  “Is this a bad time to tell you that Quinn told me I could get him a cat?”

  “Yes. You already have a puppy. We do not need a kitten on this road trip.”

  “I disagree. I need a kitten my new puppy likes. He needs a friend.”

  Perkette sighed. “We’re supposed to be road tripping. Road tripping is not another word for pet shopping.”

  “We’re not pet shopping. We’re rescuing.”

  “Bailey. Cats aren’t exactly renowned for their love of long car rides. How would we transport the cat?”

  “Carefully. In a kitty and puppy play pen.” I lifted my chin. “You can’t stop me.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  I pointed at her. “Lying, misdemeanor collecting witch!”

  Perkette laughed at me. “Be reasonable, Bailey.”

  “No. Quinn said I could.”

  “Chief Quinn has obviously been replaced by an alien.”

  Picking up my puppy, I hugged him. “He got me a puppy, so I’m getting him a kitten. I bet this beautiful baby will love Quinn. He doesn’t mind me. He’s probably a good police dog and doesn’t like your misdemeanor collecting ways.”

  “I don’t think they’ll train him to be a police dog. He’s a husky.”