10. Do you think my tendency to be excessive comes from my father? #2
“Good morning. Congratulations on your promotion, Chief Quinn.”
“Thank you,” I replied.
“How can I serve?” Thomas asked.
“We’re technically on vacation, but we’re trying to look into the rabies outbreak and the latest incident of gorgon dust production. You tend to be well-connected, so I wanted you to find out if you could approach the hives about a missing woman.”
“A woman?”
“A woman. We have reason to believe that former Chief Morrison, who served in the Hamptons as part of the NYPD, may be involved with the rabies outbreak at a minimum. As I’m of the opinion the dust production and rabies outbreaks are connected, I need to find out more about who he has been working with and why. He has a son—”
“Michella Hautlin’s boy. Human hatched. She was infected with gorgon dust at the start of her pregnancy, and she fled with her egg to Chicago, where she was taken in by a vampire hive.
She’s still in Chicago with her vampires.
She’s a propagator, so she can’t mingle with humans.
Vampires are immune to infection, as are the older incubus and succubus that work with them, so she’s cloistered with them.
From my understanding of the situation, an incubus recovered her egg and helped her care for him until he hatched, but he hatched human rather than gorgon.
She has several children now with incubi and succubi in Chicago, although she doesn’t have a gorgon male.
We have been building a case to assist in your efforts, especially when word spread this Morrison, the father of the boy, might target your bride.
Morrison has several daughters through other women, most of whom disappeared under similar circumstances.
I suspect they are statues somewhere, but this is only speculation. ”
“Jesus,” my husband whispered. “Does the boy have a gorgon mother?”
“We don’t believe so. We are of the opinion she was infected with gorgon dust after the boy’s conception, and the potency of the dust was such it partially converted her boy into a gorgon, in that he was hatched.
He is not contagious, and if he can embrace his other nature, we haven’t heard of it happening. I suppose he may be a hybrid.”
“Alexander,” I said, determined to humanize him despite my awareness he could be his father’s ally. “He was at our wedding. Well, at the demonstration. I thought I recognized him.”
“He looks similar to his father, an unfortunate enough thing for him. You likely spotted the resemblance. The boy often shows up where there are gorgons in public. It is our nature—possibly his. He would be drawn to a family unit because gorgons are not solitary creatures, and Morrison is not precisely a nurturing individual.” Thomas grunted.
“Alexander has not created any trouble for any hives, and he has made himself useful from time to time. He is known to rescue whelps from trafficking rings and returned them to their parents.”
My eyes widened as the memory of playing with the gorgon whelps flared back to life, and one of the boys had looked strikingly similar to Alexander Hautlin.
“He’s the boy from the time my parents tried to dump me with a bunch of gorgon whelps.
Traffickers tried to grab them. He was the one who took the lead on petrifying them. But he was a gorgon, not a human.”
“Perhaps the dust has made him a shapeshifter, and he wisely hides his form, much like you do, Samuel.”
“That doesn’t match the NYPD’s record on him going to boarding school,” Quinn stated, and his expression darkened. “But the NYPD’s databases have been wrong in the past.”
I huffed. “Or he wasn’t in school when that happened. Remember, Morrison’s close friends with my parents. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had been in on the attempt to get rid of me from the start.”
“And then he would have known about your immunities and would have wanted you for his projects. Assuming he’s involved with the dust production and rabies,” my husband speculated. “How does that sound to you, Thomas?”
“It sounds like your bride is wearing a rather large target on her back.”
“No kidding. Remember Winfield?”
“Yes. I heard he came to a rather abrupt end.”
“He pointed a gun loaded with ambrosia at me.”
“Well, that was rather stupid of him.”
“My bride, while in her fur coat, took offense to that. She squished him like a grape. Her words, not mine.”
“I popped him like a grape. But he was also squished. He deserved it. It was his fault. If he hadn’t threatened you, he would have survived for at least five more minutes. And that gorgon. Well, maybe not. He looked at you wrong.”
“My bride becomes very offended when rival males look at me wrong. It makes enrolling her into challenges quite difficult. We try to leave the other contenders alive,” my husband said in an amused tone.
“I better get to fight at least once, Quinn.”
“Not until the twins are born and you are no longer breastfeeding.”
I shrugged, as I couldn’t see myself seriously fighting when worried about their milk supply. “That’s reasonable.”
“You are expecting twins?” Thomas asked.
“We are. Fostering your children won’t be a problem.
The chances our children will inherit her general immunities or my general abilities are rather high.
Beauty and Sylvester are currently with my grandfather learning how to socialize with other gorgons.
Their education has been unique. If you can, begin teaching yours how to read a little early, as our whelps are voracious readers.
You may want to inquire if your whelps would like to learn how to cook, as Beauty will be starting as soon as we move into a new home.
Ours is not sufficiently sized. We’ll also have pets in the house, so we can work with your whelps on that as well.
Sunny, my wife’s wolf, should be capable of handling defensive whelps, but our other pets are mundane in nature. ”
“I will begin their lessons immediately. When would you like to begin their fostering?”
“Bailey?”
“As soon as we have space for them is fine with me.”
Quinn smiled at me before focusing his attention back on the road. “I’ll get back to you on that as we start our house search. Do you have a contact we can reach in Chicago about Miss Hautlin?”
“Yes, of course. I will text you with the information, and I will warn him you will be calling. I have a relationship, as he sought out my advice regarding her. She misses humans.”
‘Bailey?”
“There is no reason we can’t take the kids to visit her and her family, especially if she can help us sink Morrison.”
“I think you will find her an eager participant in your investigation. She hates him with a burning passion. She only gave up her son because she was terrified she would infect him.”
That poor woman. “But he’s already gorgon enough he won’t be infected, will he?”
“It would be a mercy for him to be infected. He straddles two worlds without being welcome in either.”
Damn it. No wonder he had looked annoyed. The poor man likely wanted what we had, a caring family and a sense of belonging. “The chances he’s allied with Morrison? There are pictures of him with his father and Quinn’s ex-wife.”
“His hatred for his father is an equal for your love for your husband, I suspect.”
Huh. “Damn. He’d light him on fire while still alive and screaming, and he’d take his time about it while roasting marshmallows, then.”
My husband snickered. “I love you, too, Bailey.”
“I can help him with the fire part. I’m really good at making fire, and my father said I need to transform several times a week to keep the babies happy and healthy.”
“Your father?” Thomas asked. “Surely not that Gardener man?”
Sam laughed. “No. Ra. Her other father. She’s the daughter of a quartet. It might be worth informing the hives that her divine parents are very protective. Her mother is Menily, a moon goddess. A guardian divine from a tribe somewhere in the western United States, from the little I know about her.”
“I will pass the word. Her father being Ra explains much, especially about her willingness to engage in challenges for whelps. It is her nature.”
“She does like conquering. Mostly me, though. Oh, well. So much tragedy.”
Thomas laughed. “Continue your conquests without fear, Lady Quinn.”
“Oh, look. He thinks I’m a lady. Boy, do I have him fooled.”
My husband snickered. “What can you tell me about the Chicago vampires?”
“Ernesto Saven.”
With a low groan, Quinn took one of his hands off the wheel and rubbed his temple. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“I’m sorry, Samuel. I know you dislike when you must deal with him.”
“Do you know what happened the last time I had to talk to him?”
“I believe he asked if you would work his brothel for a few weeks, to overcome the grief of your divorce from that woman. He sent you flowers and a succubus, although he did not request the succubus seduce you, from my understanding of the situation.”
“She hugged me, because Ernesto is convinced there are no circumstances in which I would strike a woman, so I had to deal with accepting his affection. The succubus loved tormenting me. She left without doing anything nefarious beyond insisting she hug me every other damned minute. Making up for my ex-wife’s lack of affection, in her words. ”
I burst into laughter, as I could easily imagine my husband being grumpy a succubus was attempting to comfort him.
“Sam? At a brothel? He’d die of mortification before he made it through the door.
He’s an angel, Thomas. A real one. He’s just a little naughty sometimes.
And anyway, his snakes get nippy, so they’d have a lot of bodies at the brothel, and that wouldn’t work well at all. ”
“A little naughty?” the gorgon asked, his tone a mixture of amused and astonished.
“It’s the black wings. They suit him. He’s shy, so he doesn’t pose as often as I’d like. But those snakes of his are nippy, randy little bastards.”
“She processes their toxin in a unique and fully beneficial—for her—fashion,” my husband muttered.