by R. J. Blain
“Who volunteer you?”
“Me, myself, and I. And my wife. Mostly my wife. You two would get into a fight because you’re two predators who get easily bored.”
I stared at him, trying to comprehend how someone could be even crazier than me. “You need help.”
“Despite your belief, I’m not crazy. It’s true. You’re a predator, and my wife is most definitely a predator. The instant you both got bored, you’d fight. You do want to save your energy for the adoption match, right?”
I pranced and tossed my head. “I win that fight, yes. I kick gorgons! I bite gorgons! They can’t petrify me! I win fight. Children mine!” I paused. “Quinn’s, too.”
“You have to fight them while human, Bailey.”
“Can still bite and kick.”
“You would. Sometimes, I question my grandson’s life choices, but then again, he’s proven himself to be quite sensible. I suppose good partnerships in life must balance.”
“I am sensible!”
Anubis glared at me. “Your solution to dealing with a human who threatened Samuel was to charge him and crash the entirety of your bulk into him. You crushed him against a wall. You popped him like a grape under foot.”
“Well, yes. He pointed gun at my Samuel. He’s mine. My Quinn. My Samuel Quinn. He deserve popped like stupid grape.”
“I’m relieved to discover you do, indeed, know your husband’s name. But I’m concerned you have zero remorse for popping someone like a grape.”
“If he hadn’t pointed gun at Sam, no pop like grape.”
“It disturbs me this logic is rather sensible.”
“Samuel Leviticus Quinn is also known as mine,” I announced in a solemn tone. “He pointed ambrosia dart at him. This off-en-sive.”
“Yes, it is offensive. I can’t fault you there. Still, you could have just lit him on fire.”
I thought about that. “No. Hit hard better. Squish him like grape. Faster to squish than snort big fire.”
“I can’t argue with that. Rather than arguing over the merits of squishing threats to Samuel like grapes, I should give you your Christmas gift.”
I perked my ears forward. “I like presents.”
“First, your wolf, Sunny. While you haven’t met her yet, her purpose is to help you find your way back to Earth when you accidentally teleport yourself here. This will happen when your magic becomes too strong. You took a rather large dose of ambrosia. When enough of the ambrosia has worn off, she’ll come help you get home if you can’t figure out how to get home yourself. There’s more than one way for you to return to where you belong, but Sunny is working her way here and will guide you back to Earth. Do try to avoid overexposure to ambrosia in the future.”
“Full ampoule,” I replied. “Way too much. Not good. So it brought me here?”
“Yes. You have a strong affinity with the Egyptian pantheon, although your line and my line never met, which is a good thing.”
“My line?”
“Your father.”
“My father vanilla human. He suck. Want to squish him like grape.”
“Please don’t squish your human father like a grape. If you want to make him miserable, I recommend you invite him to your proper wedding and show him how deliriously happy you are. That will upset him, as he is a firm believer in shared misery.”
“No squish like grape?” I blinked. “Wait. Proper wedding?”
“And no lighting him on fire, biting him, kicking him, sitting on him, or otherwise ending his life prematurely. The same goes to your human mother. And yes, there will be a proper wedding.”
“You suck. I like idea of wedding, but I no have pretty dress.”
“A pretty dress will be provided.”
“I like sound of this. What is present?”
“What I’m about to tell you should make things a little better. Your father was possessed by a divine when you were conceived, and your mother was likewise possessed by a divine when you were conceived. Technically, you have four parents. My Christmas present to you is the opportunity to have all four of your parents in the same room together at the same time. It will be delightfully chaotic.”
I bowed my head and groaned. “My family crazier than Quinn family? That not fair! Not fair at all!” I flopped onto the grass, rolled onto my back, and kicked my hooves. “Not fair! I was normal! Normal compared to crazy Quinn family!”
“Bailey, you transform into a fire-breathing unicorn. Did you really believe you were, at any stage of your life, actually normal? You view light as a mode of transportation. You deliberately goad one of my grandson’s snakes into biting you because you like it. You’re not normal.”
“So mean.”
“But honest. Aren’t you curious about why you shapeshift into a cindercorn?”
“Maybe little.”
“It’s because one of your great-great-great-great grandparents—add a few extra greats in there for good measure—was a cindercorn.”
“That weird. How get feet instead of hooves? Weird!”
“Cindercorns are inherently shapeshifters. So are standard white unicorns. Add in your divine relations, and you have a very high percentage of shapeshifter DNA. Transformatives don’t really bother natural shapeshifters. They can just shift back at their whim. You should feed Samuel a good transformative sometime. You’ll get to see something truly special.”
“It won’t hurt him?”
“He’ll be able to shapeshift back as he wants.”
“Neat! And cindercorn stallion? He so pretty as stallion.”
“Thanks to his incubus heritage, he can shapeshift to any form he’s been before, and he can be nudged in the right direction by properly motivated divines. He was a cindercorn because the Devil nudged him along. Ironically, a Christmas present to you.”
“The Devil likes me!”
“Most people would not be excited to know the Devil likes them, Bailey.”
“Better than Devil not liking me. That would be bad. May go to hell if he no like me. Much better this way.”
“Your logic sometimes terrifies me.”
“Only some-times?”
“Yes. Also, sometimes, I wonder about you.”
“Only some-times?”
Anubis bowed his head and sighed.
Quinn
I found Tiffany pacing along the fence, and she gaped at me while I rubbed my temples and debated how to survive through the rest of the night. All things considered, getting straight to the chase would work best. “I need you to call the CDC and request a napalm tanker, please.”
Tiffany hung her head and sighed. “I sent Bailey in there, and you come out? This is not normal. Where’s Bailey?”
“Cruising an ambrosia high somewhere. Winfield got a hold of an entire ampoule of ambrosia. Because Bailey was involved, of course she got dosed with the ambrosia. What can go wrong does go wrong, and I, being the fool I am, left my medications with your husband.”
Tiffany’s brows shot up. “That was stupid of him. Is she inside going on a bender? If you need the medication, I can get it for you, so don’t worry yourself about that. And if needed, I can insert my foot in your ass and deliver a dose that way.”
She would. I opted to ignore the threat; if she needed to insert her foot in my ass, it was because I deserved it. “I don’t know where Bailey is, precisely,” I replied, unable to keep my tone neutral. “And Janet has the name of a potential conspirator.”
“Shit. Who?”
“Chief Morriston,” Janet replied, stepping to my side. “Hey, Tiffers.”
“You look like hell, Jan-Jan. You all right?”
I foresaw a lot of trouble in my future, as I had not expected Tiffany to be close enough friends with Janet to warrant cutesy nicknames. When Tiffany used cutesy nicknames, it meant trouble was surely on the horizon.
Tiffany plus Bailey plus Janet might give me a full head of gray hair and a complex.
“I think so.” Janet pointed at me. “Do you see
this?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I do. He’s part incubus and part gorgon, and his genetics created quite an interesting secondary form. He won’t let me experiment with him. It’s no wonder Bailey gets so flustered about him. She knows exactly what goods he’s packing, and she’s one of the most jealous women I’ve ever met. In a good way, of course.”
Janet nodded.
“The napalm, Tiffany?” I begged.
“Hold your horses, Chief. We won’t have a way to reliably light it. I’m trying to figure that part out. What excuse am I giving them for the tanker?”
I sighed. “An entire hive of gorgons died in there, and I have no way of knowing if there’s any dust or if there’s dust in production. The entire structure has to go. It’s also possible the bodies are a rabies vector.”
“How long have they been dead?”
I shrugged. “No idea. Gorgons don’t decay quite the same way humans do. It’s been long enough I’m worried their ashes will convert to dust if left alone.”
“We’ll need containment mages, then. And Bailey to light it. Any idea on her ETA?”
“No idea, but I can take care of lighting the napalm.”
“How?”
“I called in a favor and got a lesson in shapeshifting to a cindercorn,” I admitted.
“Damn, Sam. Bailey’s going to go nuts when she learns you’re an on-demand stallion for her amusement.” Tiffany snickered.
I wished triplets on her as a special form of revenge, and I’d have to have that little Christmas present of hers contain some extra bite. Maybe quadruplets. Arthur and Tiffany definitely deserved quadruplets. “I’m so glad you’re enjoying yourself, Tiffany. Anyway, she already knows.”
“When it’s at your expense? Always.”
“Can you please just call for a tanker, Tiffany? I don’t have my phone.”
Tiffany handed me hers. “You can call. If I ask, they’ll laugh at me and accuse me of wanting to feed it to the crazy unicorn. Just don’t tell them you’re going to be the crazy unicorn tonight.”
I hated she was right, and sighing, I looked up the number for the primary CDC switchboard and placed the call. It took over twenty minutes of snarling at idiots to be put through to the last man on Earth I wanted to deal with, Marshal Clemmends.
“What do you need, Chief Quinn?”
“There’s an old gypsum mine in Nevada, and I need a napalm tanker, a containment team, and pyros to light it up. There are a lot of dead gorgons inside, and it should be flagged as a high risk of becoming contaminated with gorgon dust.”
“Why must you insist on toying with gorgons, Chief Quinn?”
“I didn’t toy with any gorgons this time. They kidnapped a police officer. She’s been safely recovered, but she’ll require treatment for rabies, as it’s unknown if she was exposed. It’s probable the gorgons were rabid, and it’s unknown if the virus will spread.”
“If I hadn’t already had several documented cases of gorgons infected with rabies hit my desk this week, I would say you were screwing with me, Chief Quinn. I just have one question. Will your wife be on hand for this napalming?”
“Unknown. She’s currently not at the site, but if the techs are incapable of lighting the napalm, I can handle it.”
“You can? How?”
“Through a careful application of fire,” I replied, careful to keep my tone neutral. “You were aware of my unique ancestry, correct?”
“Yes. Unfortunately. Very well. If you say you can get it lit, I’ll trust you. How big of a site is it?”
“It’s on old gypsum mining operation that seems to have been abandoned. It’s miles from civilization, so there’s no chance of the fires spreading to any buildings nearby.”
“Got an address?”
I turned to Tiffany. “What’s the address of this place?”
“Hell if I know. It’s a gypsum mine east of Vegas. There’s only one of them just east of Vegas.”
One day, I would retire, life would become normal, and I meant to enjoy it. “It’s a gypsum mine just east of Vegas,” I informed my wife’s ex-boss. “There’s only one of them.”
“You have no idea where you’re at, do you?”
“I teleported to the site.”
“Ah. I see. I’m sure I can find it. I’ll authorize the tanker. Is there water accessible?”
“Doubtful.”
“I’ll send two napalm tankers and several water tankers to make certain there’s sufficient volume. What grade?”
“Use the same stuff used on 120 Wall Street.”
Clemmends sighed. “I was hoping you wouldn’t say that. Very well. I’m only authorizing this because it’s a remote site and you’ll be in charge of the operation.” There was a long moment of silence. “Actually, scratch that. I’m going to authorize your wife to help ignite the napalm should she show up. I may as well earn some good favor with her for a change.”
“That will make up for assigning her to work with the bomb squad.”
“Found out about that, did you?”
“Not from her. Someone snitched.” I arched a brow in Janet’s direction, one of several snitchers.
The woman grinned and waved at me.
“It was good developmental training for her new job. I had her trained in the traditional disarming of most devices. She’s also been trained to handle nuclear weaponry, although we did no live testing. She tests quite high on working with schematics. She’s wasted in the CDC as a contractor.”
My brows shot up at that. “Was that a compliment I heard, Clemmends?”
“Don’t have a heart attack. Despite my lack of a functional relationship with your wife, I do respect her learning capacity and general skills. She’s miserable in the CDC, and while I recognize she’s excessively well-trained, she’s in a better position to be productive with you in the NYPD.”
“And here I thought you were just trying to get rid of her.”
“That, too.”
“What’s the CDC’s jurisdiction in dust cases and potential involvement with the kidnapping of a law enforcement officer?”
“I can get jurisdiction joint with the FBI. Why?”
“John Winfield, a former cadet of the NYPD, was behind the kidnapping. He is the ex-son-in-law of Chief Morriston.”
“Morriston?”
“He’s the kidnapped officer’s chief. He oversees the Hamptons.”
Bailey’s ex-boss mulled over that in silence, and I waited, aware of Janet glaring at me. Finally, the man sighed. “And her chief would have access to her schedule and be able to make arrangements for such a kidnapping in a way where no one would be aware of the officer’s disappearance—which is exactly what happened until she was scheduled to show up for her shift. While her chief isn’t specifically named in this file, there was an accusation of abandoning her duty. That was overturned when it was exposed she had likely been a kidnapping victim.”
I could see a vindictive ex-cadet attempting to frame his target, and the NYPD took such accusations seriously. “You’re aware of the situation?”
“The documentation hit my desk because of your country-wide jurisdiction. Let me guess: you’d like to be involved with Morriston’s questioning.”
“I certainly wouldn’t mind being the arresting officer along with my wife.”
“You know full well why that won’t be happening, Chief Quinn.”
I grumbled curses over standard protocols. “I’d like to file the official request for angelic verification in the case, especially as there are ties with Winfield’s attempt to sell my wife into slavery.”
“Now that is a request I can meet. I’ll keep you in the loop, and I’ll notify the FBI about your interest in being involved. If he puts up a fight, I expect you’ll be given the nod to deal with him. And if he runs, we’d be involving your wife anyway. How did the napalm experiment go?”
“Tiffany? What napalm experiment?”
“Gassing a unicorn up on napalm before a long run. I
t worked great. The second leg of the trip, I gassed her up on diesel. That wasn’t as efficient, but she broke records. Hell, she beat most planes.”
I relayed the information.
“Excellent. I’ll mark on her file to allow access to small amounts of napalm for when she needs to make a run. I’m still barring access to large quantities of napalm, however.”
“Wise. How long do you think it’ll take to get a tanker here?”
“Call it three hours; we’ll have to make a batch of napalm in Vegas. Can I call you back on this number?”
“Yes. It belongs to Tiffany Perkins.”
“More trouble,” Clemmends muttered.
I laughed because it was true. “Indeed.”
“I’ll notify you when Morriston is dealt with. Stay accessible,” Clemmends ordered before hanging up on me.
Shaking my head, I gave Tiffany her phone. “Three hours. I’m going to see about shifting to a unicorn and doing a sweep of the building.”
“While a unicorn?”
“Easier to prevent spread of rabies and possibly gorgon dust. If I become contaminated, I’ll burn it off with the napalm. Just have them flood the entire complex with napalm when they arrive. I’ll take care of the rest.”
Bailey
The next time Anubis suggested I play twenty questions with him, I’d just stab him with my horn. Death at his hands seemed a great deal more merciful than trying to figure out how the hell I could possibly have four parents, who my other two parents were, and how I’d gone for so long believing a lunatic like me had come from a pair of vanilla assholes.
In retrospect, it’d been rather obvious something had been very, very fishy about my ancestry.
“This game suck,” I announced, stomping a hoof. “I never guess right.”
“Try again,” Anubis replied, mocking me with his canine grin. “I’ll pretend I didn’t give you several tries already. Your mythology can’t be this bad.”
“Can be. Divines suck. It hard enough to keep track of crazy Quinn family,” I complained. “Why you make me guess parents? You mean.”