Burn, Baby, Burn

by R. J. Blain

  “You’re mean.”

  “All right. Take your neutralizer, get your puppy’s things packed up, and get ready to go. We’ll go find Sam a damned kitten. But know that this is a terrible idea, and I am doing this under protest.”

  “This whole trip was a terrible idea. But it’s not all bad. I got groomed when I took the puppy to the vet. I even got my teeth cleaned.”

  “Normal people would not be proud of that.”

  “If I were normal, would you even be friends with me?” I countered.

  Perkette sighed. “It’s all Arthur’s fault. He said you needed a friend of female orientation before you became worse than a man.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I refused to be offended by her statement, as when I thought about it, she was probably right.

  “Do you even own a dress?”

  Crap. I had, for brief periods of time, owned dresses. Quinn had a problem with dresses. They were fine until I put one on. At that point, their lifespan shortened considerably. “Well, no. I thought about getting a wedding dress once, but Quinn keeps breaking my dresses. I didn’t want to waste more money on clothes. The dresses survive until I wear them, then all bets are off.”

  “Chief Quinn has almost as many issues as you do. All right. Here is the rule about any additional pets on this trip. One: no more dogs. Two: we do not shop. We adopt. Three: you must find and catch the kitten.”

  I scowled and set my puppy on the floor. “Those conditions won’t make finding a kitten for Quinn easy.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Has anyone told you recently that you’re evil?”

  “Frequently. I enjoy it. You’re so tolerant of my evil ways.”

  “Perky was basically right. You’re the only woman I’m friends with who isn’t a cop.”

  “There’s a reason for that,” my friend countered.

  I thought about it. “Yeah. I’m an asshole.”

  “Not quite what I was going for, but you can be at times. No, you’re happily married to Chief Quinn, and those who know you by reputation alone are so jealous they can’t see straight. Personally, I think I need to send you a sympathy card. He’s a handful.”

  “But he’s a sexy handful.”

  “I feel this is a good time to remind you that you ran away from home so you could get some sleep.”

  Perkette existed to vex me, but damn it, she was right. “You suck, Perkette.”

  “Just get your shit packed up and ready to go before your man puts an end to our fun.”

  While I had no doubt Perky would chase his crazy wife to the ends of the Earth, I kept my mouth shut for once in my life. I really could be an adult when I put in some effort. I waited a few moments to see if the world would end. It didn’t.

  Fancy that.

  Quinn

  According to the CDC, the Dover hive lived in a former warehouse which had been converted into a mansion in Newark, New Jersey, which put his territory on the edge of my cousin’s. I found that amusing, as my cousin typically handled territory disputes with the violence I expected from gorgons. I’d count his tipoff as all the bride gift he needed to offer to Bailey, as he could’ve taken care of the entire issue without coming to me at all.

  As the Dover hive’s turf didn’t border mine, I lost several hours seeking official approval from the CDC to handle my business with the hive. No matter the outcome, I was covered legally.

  Commissioner Dowry wouldn’t be happy with me about it, especially since I’d ventured into a different state to handle the situation, but he’d cope.

  No one threatened Bailey on my watch.

  Once I was certain Bailey was safe, I needed to thank my family for the right to handle idiot gorgons threatening my bride with lethal force as necessary. If the Dover hive didn’t roll over and make amends, I’d make an example out of them.

  No sane gorgon in the country would look at my bride twice when I was finished.

  The former cadet gunning for my wife would prove the most problematic element of the situation. Unlike with gorgon law, I couldn’t just rip his head off, petrify his remains, and crush him to powder. I’d have to use the human legal system, which wouldn’t have a satisfying enough punishment. It never did. Men still received preferential treatment over women, especially in violence cases, and I’d be lucky if he served more than a hundred hours of community service for attempting to sell my wife into slavery.

  Then again, the same laws worked in my favor. If he made a move against Bailey and I witnessed it, few juries went against someone who came in defense of another.

  The line was thin, but if necessary, I could walk it.

  I would do anything to protect Bailey.

  The former cadet’s desire for revenge worried me, however. Revenge too often drove people to madness. I’d seen that with my ex-wife.

  I’d hid the truth about Audrey through violence, leading my beautiful Bailey to believe I’d killed only to protect her. I had. I would as needed. But there was more to the story than she knew—than I or my grandfathers had been willing to tell her.

  Audrey and her hive sisters had succumbed to madness and disease, and I wasn’t convinced the madness hadn’t been due to disease. Bailey still didn’t know the one four-day nightmare shift had actually been me spending a round in a glass coffin to ensure I hadn’t contracted the disease. My gorgon and incubus grandfathers had as well.

  My angelic grandfather had returned to the High Heavens and promised he would not be a carrier of any sort of disease.

  Thanks to a puppy in a dumpster and a rabies treatment, I’d been able to spare my bride from a trip into the glass coffin, too. I’d seen her eyes after I’d finished burying Audrey.

  Even the mention of a glass coffin terrified her.

  It terrified me, too. I never wanted to see her clinging to life in a hospital again, her immune system reduced to ash thanks to overexposure to neutralizer.

  Bailey also didn’t know I’d taken representatives of the CDC to Audrey’s body and exhumed her to confirm my initial belief they’d been infected with some disease.

  The tests had confirmed they’d been ravaged from rabies, although the illness hadn’t progressed to its final stages. It’d been too late to save them without extreme measures, but I’d left feeling a little better about what I’d done.

  I’d given them a merciful end despite everything.

  I regarded the warehouse with a sigh, wondering if I’d be facing yet another rabies situation. If so, treatment would be simple enough. I’d pull her trick, find a puppy in a dumpster, and call her to let her know I needed her to administer treatments. She wouldn’t think twice about it, she’d come home, and everything would work out well.

  Then again, I gave it two months before the NYPD implemented mandatory treatment of all officers once a month to prevent infection and spread of the rising disease. If rabies entered the civilian population as an epidemic, I doubted neutralizer could be produced in sufficient quantity to handle the demand. With so many medical treatments reliant on neutralizer, society would undergo an upheaval unlike anything seen since the emergence of magic.

  “Quinn?” Perkins asked.

  Woolgathering while outside of a rival hive’s warehouse-turned-mansion made me look like an idiot of the worst sort. I sighed. “I had a thought.”

  “That’s even more dangerous than this trip here. What’s up?”

  “What would happen if the neutralizer supply ran out?”

  “Nothing good. A major disease outbreak for certain. A lot of deaths. Why?”

  “Rabies,” I answered.

  “Ah. Tiffany wrote a paper about that.”

  Of course she had. “About rabies?”

  “Epidemics and neutralizer supplies, actually. You’re not the only one concerned. She got curious after the second time Bailey was exposed to rabies. She wrote the paper after running an experiment on the current rabies strain.”

  “Dare I ask?”

  “It’s so virule
nt Tiffany is worried it might become airborne with terrifying longevity outside of the body.”

  The idea of rabies mutating into a virulent, airborne catastrophe stunned me into silence.

  “It probably won’t. She pegged it at a ten percent chance.”

  “That’s disturbingly high, Perkins.”

  “It really is. What got you worrying about rabies?”

  “Bailey.”

  “Right. Dumb question. It might be worth keeping some extra stock of neutralizer around. Tiffany keeps a fifty pound bag locked in our basement.”

  A fifty pound bag could treat thousands of people of most ailments, rabies included. “That’s excessive.”

  “Tiffany enjoys excess. What’s really excessive is her basement lab.”

  Shit. She’d finally talked Perkins into a home lab? While I’d married the Calamity Queen, Perkins had married a mad scientist who might one day fight for my wife’s title. “What were you thinking?”

  My long-time friend sighed. “I wasn’t. She’s trying to create a new version of neutralizer with home-grown ingredients and common magic.”

  “Practitioner magic?”

  “Yes. Her thought is if an outbreak does happen, she wants to be ready.”

  “I’m not sure I want to know how her experiments are going.”

  “Frighteningly well, actually. If we hurry up and get this over with already, I’ll tell you more in the car.”

  Delaying would only make my plethora of problems worse, so I rang the doorbell.

  A gorgon whelp, likely the male heir my cousin had mentioned, cracked open the door. A faint tingle of gorgon magic brushed against my skin, and I relaxed when Perkins showed none of the preliminary symptoms of petrification. “You’re not Papa.”

  I showed the whelp my badge. “I’m Police Chief Samuel Quinn of the NYPD. Are any of your parents home?”

  He deflated, and I tensed at the warning sign something was wrong. “He never came back.”

  Shit. He? What had happened to the hive’s females? Gorgon whelps typically used ‘they’ or mentioned their mothers—however many they had. “May we come in?”

  “Are you going to help us find him?”

  Damn it, damn it, damn it. I couldn’t tell him no, and I hadn’t come ready to rescue the damned hive after my Bailey. “I’ll do what I can,” I promised. “Who is us?”

  “Me and my sister. He left us home three days ago. He said he’d be back in a few hours.”

  Shit. Even if I wanted to brush off the whelp’s concerns, when a gorgon male said a few hours, he meant it, which escalated the situation to something severely wrong.

  No male would leave his whelps unattended for days.

  I turned to Perkins. “Please contact my grandfather.”

  “On it.” He strolled to our rental, his stride brisk without conveying any signs of panic.

  “Your grandfather?” the whelp whispered.

  “He’s a former king, and he’ll be able to help more than human law enforcement. Despite appearances, I’m a gorgon prince.”

  He pointed at me. “Shapeshifter!”

  “Yes, I am.”

  His eyes widened. “That’s so cool.”

  “Would you and your sister hood your serpents and put your glasses on, please? Officer Perkins isn’t a gorgon.”

  “Yes, sir! Please come in? You can wait in the entry. We won’t come into the entry until we’re hooded and have our glasses.” He held open the door, and the hope on his face hurt.

  Poor kid. I followed him in, and I left the door cracked so Perkins could come inside. Careful to keep my expression neutral, I examined the foyer while he ran off to fetch his sister and prepare to interact with Perkins. The shoe racks, empty save for two pairs of children’s shoes, worried me. My grandfather’s hive had so many shoes that their entry often transformed into a maze. The coat rack told a similar story.

  Where were the hive females? The hive females would have had spare shoes and coats for all seasons in the entry. A hive seeking a surrogate would have had evidence of females everywhere.

  Perkins slipped into the entry, and he wore his sunglasses despite coming indoors. “Situation?”

  “I’m concerned.”

  “Why?”

  I pointed at the shoe racks. “The male left his young completely alone, and he didn’t return for them.” Gorgons were a lot of things, but they lived and died for their whelps, especially their sons, who were so rare. In the male’s shoes, the only thing that would prevent me, my father, or his father before him from returning for his children, male or female, was death.

  Within five minutes, the male whelp returned with his sister. The little girl, with the exception of her cobras, appeared to be human. She even had human hair flowing beneath her serpents, something so unusual I’d only seen it once before.

  No wonder the Dover hive wanted Bailey. To have a son and a daughter like her in the same hatching, the hive’s breeding male likely hoped his children might one day rule the gorgon world.

  Between the two, they might, as the young male had eleven king cobras. If he didn’t develop the Right to Rule, I’d be surprised.

  “Before I ask any questions about your family, when was the last time you two ate?”

  They stared at the floor, and in the following silence, two empty tummies gurgled.

  “Officer Perkins, please bring Sunny inside. I’ll arrange for their care.”

  “Sunny?” the little girl asked.

  “My bride’s new puppy. An early Christmas present. She’ll become a police dog down the road. But first, let’s get you two something to eat. Can you show me to the kitchen?”

  Perkins shot me a salute, turned around, and ventured back outside.

  The whelps led me to a house in dire need of cleaning, exactly what I expected from a pair of children left alone. Every step deeper into the house worried me more.

  Once upon a time, the hive had had females; pictures decorated the walls, promising the mansion had once been a happy home. I worried all that remained of them were loving memories.

  Disaster waited for me in the kitchen, the evidence the children had attempted to feed themselves with no luck. I could only assume the hive hadn’t begun teaching them how to survive on their own—or the females had passed away recently enough the male hadn’t been ready to rebuild his hive. I checked the freezer to discover several frozen pizzas, which would be the safest and easiest option for feeding them.

  If I could tolerate cooking in the filthy kitchen. I gave it five minutes before my tolerance for the mess faded to nothing. I’d think about feeding them pizza to tide them over.

  One choice was clear, though. I wouldn’t be leaving without the whelps. “Until your hive is found, my hive, my father’s hive, or my grandfather’s hive will care for you. There’ll be no adoption match scheduled yet; this is a temporary arrangement while we look for your family.”

  “Daddy wanted to find us a new mommy because our mommy died giving birth to us,” the little girl whispered. “We’re weird.”

  “Weird?” Their entire story was weird. Gorgons didn’t become egg bound, and surrogates didn’t carry eggs to term.

  “We were live birthed. Our eggs broke in our mommy. It’s not our fault,” the girl assured me. “But we kept petrifying her, and she died after we were born. Our little sister didn’t survive, but that wasn’t our fault, either. Mommy loved us.”

  No wonder their father wanted Bailey. Broken eggs happened sometimes, but rarely in a case where the surrogate became pregnant with a human child at the same time. I’d never heard of any of the children surviving such a thing.

  I beheld two miracles, the kind I doubted I’d ever see again. “Your mother must have loved you very much.”

  “But we’re weird. We have big snakes. I’m the wrong color. I have to petrify people intentionally. It’s tiring. My brother, too. It’s really tiring. Daddy always worries someone will take us from him. But you’re going to help us find ou
r daddy, right?”

  All the anger I’d carried over the hive’s audacity of wanting my bride crumbled beneath the reality of their situation. I doubted their father still lived, and I didn’t want to be the one to tell them. I’d have to, likely within a few days, but they stared at me with such hopeful eyes.

  “I’m going to do everything I can to help you find your daddy,” I promised. “What are your names?”

  “I’m Beauty, because Mommy said I was beautiful before she died. My brother is Sylvester, because she told our daddy she liked the name.”

  My grandfather would love the boy because of his name alone. “It’s a good name. What can you tell me about your daddy?”

  Sylvester stared at his feet, and I recognized I’d have a lot of work ahead of me preparing him for life as a lead hive male.

  “He’s lonely,” Beauty admitted.

  “He is? Why?”

  “Our other mommies got sick and died. Daddy took us to a fancy doctor, and we had to take a long nap, but we got better. Our mommies didn’t.”

  Shit, shit, shit. Sometimes, I truly hated my job, and I hated myself for having to ask the pair more questions. “When did this happen?”

  Both whelps sniffled, and I crouched in front of them, taking the time to stroke their cheeks and pay attention to their serpents, who nuzzled my hand in a heartbreaking bid for attention. “You can tell me when you’re ready.”

  Their reactions cemented my new plan, one that involved taking them out for something nicer to eat and a change of environment.

  “Did your daddy teach you how to make an evacuation bag?” The wise hives did. War between hives happened, and when angered, gorgons acted. Even I, who straddled several races, was guilty of a gorgon’s base inclination for violence. It defined us all. It spoke of our history, heritage, and origin.

  We’d learned, as a race, to temper our instincts with the necessities of modern times, but we remembered—even those of us born long after the first age of mythology and magic.

  The children nodded.

  “Go fetch your bags. Take a few minutes to gather a few things you feel are important. I can’t promise when we’ll return here, but I’ll have my grandfather’s hive handle tidying.”