by RJ Blain
It would do.
Five hours of dealing with an endless stream of cops eager to have a good cup of coffee convinced me I definitely never wanted to work as a barista ever again. As soon as the tides shifted and the cops no longer needed my help to play with the coffee machine, I headed for Quinn’s office. It took another twenty minutes of waiting before he got off the phone. I let myself into his office. “Do you still have the room at the Plaza?”
“Indeed we do. I decided to reserve it for a week before we left for Virginia.”
I came to a decision, and it involved the vial hiding in my cleavage. “I dealt with six hours of listening to you sing about beer on a wall and wheels on a bus. You owe me, Quinn.”
A sly smile creased my husband’s lips. “Okay. I’ll ask someone to drive us to the hotel.”
“I need a favor.”
“Oh?”
“I’m going to need a vial of neutralizer.” When I dosed him with the good pixie dust, I needed to get him down from the high after I finished making him the happiest of men.
“All right. What quality?”
“Best you have.”
“Why? Should I be worried?”
“I’m going to commit a felony tonight while making you the happiest man on Earth.” Consent was important. I didn’t know anyone who would reject such an offer, but with Quinn, I never knew.
His eyes widened. “Oh.”
“The neutralizer, Chief Quinn.”
When motivated, he moved fast. Within five minutes, I had a mason jar filled with pink powder. He also brought an unlabeled pill bottle with him. “D grade transformative. I thought it might be useful for you. There are a hundred pills in the bottle. Try not to abuse your unicorn privileges too much.”
I took the jar and bottle, set them on Quinn’s desk, and snatched a tissue from the box. Fishing out some of the pills, I wrapped them up. After a brief search, I located plastic bags in a drawer. Later I’d find a better way to keep them close at hand. The pills joined the vial in my bra. “You filed the papers to give me these properly?”
“Of course. What do you take me for?”
“A man hoping I’ll need an entire mason jar of neutralizer.”
“Can you blame me?”
“Yes. Let’s get out of here. Between the drive and teaching your cops how to make coffee, you really owe me. March, Chief Quinn. It’s time for you to pay up.”
I loved the way he smiled at me.
Everything went according to plan until Quinn decided he wanted to make plans of his own. I left him in the lobby talking to the concierge about something he promised I’d like a lot if I gave him five minutes alone to complete his scheming. The playful gleam in his eye intrigued me enough I agreed and headed up to our room.
I’d use the few extra minutes preparing the pixie dust for his consumption. I’d also change into one of the bathrobes so he’d have a soft, fluffy package to unwrap. Smiling at the thought, I swiped the key card for our room and opened the door. A pop startled me, bright blue powder puffed in my face, and within three breaths, someone turned all the lights out.
The world was blurred around me, and I had the faint sense of people nearby—and something not quite human, too. A feeling of wrongness clung to me, but every time I realized something was amiss, something soft and warm sucked me back into the darkness.
When I finally clawed my way free of the smothering, comfortable lethargy, spurred by the sense of something not being quite right, my ears rang and my entire body hurt. I groaned.
Ouch, ouch, ouch.
Why couldn’t I go an entire week without someone or something cleaning my clock? I blamed Quinn. The closer I got to sharing a bed with him, the worse my circumstances became. Then again, I wouldn’t change anything. He was worth it. However, we needed to have a long talk about his cursed luck.
“She’s awake, Mistress.” A man giggled from somewhere disconcertingly close to me. “Can I play with her now? Please? I’ve been good.”
Oh hell no. No, no, no. The only man I wanted playing with me was Quinn, and he wasn’t Quinn; his voice was too deep. My attention turned from my aching body to the man who wanted to play with me. I wanted to tense, but my muscles hurt enough I remained limp.
Would Sylvester’s fancy golden tattoo bracelet work? Where was I? What had happened? I remembered a pop followed by a big, black nothing.
Not good.
A soft, feminine voice laughed, and I recognized the sound. Yippee. I needed to have a long talk with Quinn about his ex-wife. Of course, if I had my way, we’d be having the discussion over Audrey’s corpse. It counted as self-defense if I killed her while escaping, right? I cracked open an eye.
As a human, Audrey had been pretty, a good match for Quinn in appearances. Becoming a gorgon had changed her, giving her skin a gray-green cast, narrowing her face, and giving her cheekbones a sharp edge. Her smile revealed a pair of fangs, and a writhing mass of black snakes coiled around her head.
If the kings and princes of the gorgon world had venomous snakes for hair, Audrey appeared harmless although uglier than sin. She didn’t wear sunglasses or a shroud, which made me wonder. I thought I remembered someone mentioning some gorgons were so weak they could easily learn to control their powers, petrifying their victims only when their emotions were heightened, including during sex—or when they bit someone. Was the male her gorgon lover? That would also explain the lack of a shroud. Peeking through my lashes, I checked.
Nope. I recognized the incubus, although the last time I’d seen him, he’d been tangled with three human women in a bar. Wonderful. Why wasn’t the incubus a statue? Was Audrey really that impotent, or had she somehow learned to control her gaze, petrifying her victims only when she wanted rather than by accident?
If she had become a gorgon through exposure to gorgon dust, she should have been able to petrify even other gorgons.
The incubus knelt beside me, his tail lashing from side to side while his wings quivered. He stared at Audrey with wide eyes. “Please, Mistress? Can I play with our harem queen now? I’ve been waiting, just like you wanted. She’s awake.”
I bit my lip so I wouldn’t groan from a mix of pain and disgust. Since they knew I was awake anyway, I forced my eyes open all the way and took a good look around. Musty, threadbare blankets, check. Abandoned warehouse-like building, check. An incubus reduced to an adoring teenager in lust, check. Evil ex-wife gloating over me, check.
I wiggled my hands and feet, and with a little experimentation, I determined they hadn’t tied me up or removed my clothes. A quick glance down my cleavage revealed the pixie dust vial and the pills remained where I’d stashed them. The number of felonies I could commit within ten minutes would enter the double digits. Would I get off with a light or suspended sentence if I committed them escaping a gorgon and an incubus working together? Self-defense went a long way as justifiable motive, but would the law bend enough in my favor?
Quinn would still love me if I broke more laws, right? I could afford bail at least.
Yippee.
“Give her a few minutes, darling. She’s still sleepy. Be gentle when you play with her. Soon she’ll be our harem queen, but we need to wait a little while longer.” Audrey leaned over and kissed the incubus’s cheek. “You’ve been so good.”
The incubus pulled the gorgon into his embrace, covered her with his wings, and did things to her that made her moan. I shuddered. Ew, no. No, no, no.
In the future, I’d remember there were worst fates than catching people in compromising positions when I worked my magic. Then again, my magic could still be biting me in the ass in the form of Quinn’s ex-wife being obsessed with me having her babies.
When the pair separated, the incubus relaxed. Audrey straightened her clothes.
“Yes, Mistress. Soon.” The incubus smiled with wide-eyed innocence, which creeped me out considering the creature specialized in having sex with anything that moved.
Audrey’s attention turned to m
e. “It’s been a while, Bailey. I’m pleased you handled my dust so well. We’ll make beautiful children together. I knew you’d be perfect.” Like her incubus, she smiled, but instead of child-like innocence, I preferred to think of her expression as the purest form of bat-shit crazy. “Aren’t you grateful? You’ll get to be a mother. I’ve heard how no one else wants you. No friends. No family who cares for you. I’ll take care of you, and so will Lexington. You saved me from a terrible marriage. Until you, I wasn’t free. Now I am.”
Wow. What was she on? First, she gave her brother a bomb loaded with gorgon dust. Second, she viewed marriage to Quinn as terrible. Sure, Quinn and I hadn’t gotten along so well from the start, but that was as much my fault as his, and even when we’d been busy dodging each other, I’d lusted for him.
Quinn’s officers respected him because he was a genuinely good person who worked hard for the sake of others. Everything I knew about Quinn pointed in the same direction.
Him being part angel didn’t hurt his case, either.
I swallowed, and it took a little effort to make my dry mouth and tongue cooperate enough to speak. “You gave your brother the cell phone with the gorgon dust in it.”
“Yes. I asked him to talk to you and give you the phone. He didn’t find out what he had given you until later. It’s a pity he didn’t approve of my plans. He would have made a good sire for my sisters’ children. He refused. Poor Magnus. All he would have had to do was take in a single breath of my dust. He could have shared eternity with me and my sisters. Why did he refuse?”
Tears welled up in the gorgon’s eyes and fell down her gray-green cheeks. Had she actually killed her own brother? The woman needed a permanent stay at a mental institution. I decided informing her I was the new Mrs. Quinn would be a really, really bad idea. I’d also use my newfound skills at being a polite adult to avoid her wrath. “I’m sorry.”
I even spoke the truth. No one deserved to be murdered for refusing to become a gorgon’s reproduction toy, and from my understanding of the situation, Magnus McGee hadn’t had a good death.
She had left him the way I had found her with her college stud, and no one deserved that.
Audrey wiped her tears away and smiled at me. “We got off to a poor start. I’m Audrey McGee. You’re a very special woman. I’ve been watching you for months.”
Okay, that was creepy. “You’ve been watching me?”
“I needed to protect you from that vile man after he coerced you into sharing a room with him. If I left you alone with him, he would have worked his evil magic on you and lured you to his bed.”
The crazy ex-wife’s insanity rating went up another level. I needed to remain polite. Laughing hysterically at her assumptions wouldn’t do me any good. “That would be tragic.”
Crap. Mouthing off to my kidnapper was not polite or wise.
“Yes, it would be.”
Wow. How had she not noticed my use of sarcasm? My mouthing off skills needed work. “Right.”
She smiled, showing off her snake-like fangs. “Your virgin body will bring our children into the world. I can’t allow him to taint you.”
The incubus’s expression changed, but he remained quiet. He knew. He knew I wasn’t a virgin anymore. Instead of telling Audrey, he stretched his wings and wrapped them around his body.
“Why me?” I whispered.
“No one will be able to oppose our children. My powers and your immunity will give them everything they need to thrive. Through them, we will rule the world.”
Next time, I wouldn’t ask stupid questions. Stupid questions had stupid answers, and it took every scrap of my self-restraint to keep from bursting out into helpless laughter. She thought she could rule the world with my contribution of genes? Did she not know of Quinn’s relatives?
I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Audrey seemed to interpret my silence as agreement. She straightened, waved, and left, strolling to a door across the empty warehouse.
The incubus turned to me and unfurled his wings. “Time to play,” he cooed.
Oh crap.
Chapter Nineteen
The incubus pulled a deck of cards out of his pants, and I gaped at him while he shuffled. My stunned silence lasted until he cleared space between us and started dealing. At first I thought he meant for us to play Blackjack, but then he started dropping cards in the river.
By play, he had meant cards? Not just cards, poker.
The incubus wanted to play poker with me. He seemed to have missed the memo that it was a betting game, but I went along with it anyway, at a complete loss of what else to do. Play to an incubus always involved sex.
Why were we playing poker?
After the second hand, the absurdity of my situation hit home along with a skull-splitting headache. The incubus exhibited a few of the classic symptoms of high-grade pixie-dust intoxication, including suppressed willpower and child-like tendencies, but I was worried something else was influencing the incubus.
An incubus high on pixie dust sought out lovers, and anyone would do. They lost control of their powers, influencing everyone in their maximum range. Most incubi were banned from having pixie dust, and the ones who got it enjoyed it under very controlled situations.
A+++ pixie dust would create complete and total chaos centered around the incubus, and I’d get a full blast of it. If I could transform into a unicorn, maybe I’d escape without having to put Sylvester’s bracelet to the test. I gulped. Would the angelic magic work on an incubus so high he’d touch the heavens?
If I stuck around too long, I’d find out what it’d be like to have an incubus’s full attention, which would be even harder to resist. No matter what, I needed to get out of the warehouse and as far away as possible.
“Hey. Can I leave now?”
The incubus looked up from his cards. “Oh no, my beloved harem queen. The mistress would get mad at me.”
Right, of course. I should have known. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, stare at the ceiling, and pray for patience. I ended up praying for patience but didn’t expect an answer. If I couldn’t leave without having to fight an incubus, maybe I could get some information out of him. “So, how long have you been with your mistress?”
“Oh, I don’t know how long. I’m blessed. She wants me to father her children.”
What kind of children was Audrey expecting to have? If an angel, an incubus, and a human made a human, the Sphinx and Anubis made a human, a gorgon and a centaur made a human, I suspected a gorgon and an incubus using me as their surrogate would also produce a human—or a lot of humans born from gorgon eggs.
Hell no. Over my dead body. Since there was no way in hell I’d be involved in such a sick threesome, committing felonies was my only option. I’d start with the illegal handling of pixie dust. I’d add to that with the very illegal intentional overdosing of transformative substances. At least I’d be able to write that one off; I’d be taking the pills instead of forcing them on someone, but I could lose my certification over it. Bonus.
I could try to get a pill or two down the incubus’s throat and hope they cancelled his seductive powers, but I doubted they would work. A higher grade might, but D grade pills wouldn’t do much to him. I’d be better off overdosing myself and seeing what happened. Maybe I’d shift faster, maybe I’d flare and burn hotter than normal. I had no idea what would actually happen.
Some risks were worth taking.
Once I busted out of the warehouse, I’d make my escape. If Audrey tried to stop me, I’d put an end to her idiocy.
First, I needed to make sure the incubus wasn’t packing anything other than his sex drive and desire to spread the love. “How about we play a spicier game?”
I captured his undivided attention. “What game, my queen?”
The real idiot was me for even suggesting a game of strip poker to an incubus. I hoped Quinn would forgive me. “How about strip poker?”
Heat built in my body, the kind I only wanted to be from Qui
nn’s hands on me. I clenched my teeth and ignored the stirring of my desires. I would not do any sort of dance with an incubus. I just needed to get him naked to make sure he wasn’t carrying any weapons. If he had weapons, I might be able to get hold of one.
I would not succumb to a damned incubus, no matter what.
“That’s my favorite type of poker,” he purred, soft and seductive.
I bet it was. “Deal the cards.”
He did, and I concentrated on winning every hand. Fortunately for me, incubi lived to lose at games like strip poker, and within five hands, I had him down to his socks.
Holy hell. No wonder women jumped at a chance to be with an incubus. The creature’s sculpted beauty went from head to toe, and he wasn’t at all shy about giving me a show to stoke my interest in him.
Yep, Quinn had definitely gotten more than his fair share of genes from his incubus grandfather. I’d thank God for that later—after I escaped. Of course, Quinn wouldn’t be happy with me for working up an incubus and trusting a shiny gold tattoo to keep me out of trouble long enough to make my break. Then I’d have to stay out of trouble until I reversed to human shape, hunted Quinn down, and found relief in his bed.
He wouldn’t mind that part of my plan, right? He’d understand. I didn’t want the incubus. I just needed to dose him long enough I could rescue myself. At least the actual orgy I’d trigger when I dosed the incubus with the good pixie dust wouldn’t count as a felony; if anyone charged me with anything, I’d get off with a misdemeanor.
I lost the next hand on purpose, breaking a pair of aces and hoping he could beat my pair of fours. He won, and I made a show of taking off my sock. I wrinkled my nose at its stench and flicked my wrist. I hadn’t meant to be seductive, but the incubus’s eyes flashed anyway.
“You’re going to make me work to see you in your full glory, aren’t you?” he purred. “I can’t wait to taste you.”
Hell no. My body squealed a different tune, but I fought to ignore the temptation. With me letting him win, it didn’t take long for me to lose my shirt. In a show of shyness, I turned my back to the incubus.