9. As soon as the CDC got hold of me, I was a dead unicorn.
NINE
As soon as the CDC got hold of me, I was a dead unicorn.
As long as I lived, I never wanted to experience a napalm bender hangover ever again.
I’d gotten drunk more than my fair share of times over the years, but none of my other next-morning regrets compared.
Even my horn hurt, although I suspected ramming my head through various walls and doors factored into my discomfort.
My eyes ached and added to the din in my skull, which was further agitated by the pulsing iridescent shield trapping the smoke and ash until phase two of the napalming process began.
The shield thrummed, and within several seconds, a cold rain began to fall.
With my ears flopped in misery, I struggled to dig my way deeper into the ash to hide from the neutralizer-infused water.
I still wasn’t sure how I ended up on top of the debris pile instead of beneath it, but I already regretted not having been buried.
At the bottom of the ash, concrete, and steel, I’d stay warm for a little while longer.
I blamed magic. If physics had had anything to do with my situation, I’d already be dead rather than slowly freezing to death.
It was the napalm’s fault, too. My decision to gobble it down had nothing to do with it.
The volume of the spray intensified, and I unsheathed my claws to aid digging into the pile so I could hide from the wet.
My efforts to burrow didn’t help, not one bit.
I curled into a shivering ball, tucking my hooves as close to my body as I could.
Why did they need to spray so much? The dust was dead.
The neutralizer was blatant overkill. I had reduced an entire skyscraper to ash.
Why did they have to drench the ash and me along with it?
Then again, leveling one of Wall Street’s predominant skyscrapers wasn’t exactly a good thing.
I expected a lengthy lecture on proper napalming techniques.
The CDC would probably start with the fact I’d gobbled down napalm like it was candy.
Maybe if I pitched my excessive rampage of destruction as reducing the cost of debris removal, they’d look the other way.
Who was I kidding? As soon as the CDC got hold of me, I was a dead unicorn. I missed the magical fire’s searing intensity. A final attempt to burrow ended with me tangled in the mess of twisted metal and chunks of concrete somehow left intact.
More neutralizing spray rained down, chilling me until I couldn’t even snort smoke. I rested my chin on a steel girder and whimpered. Maybe my napalm binge had something to do with my survival, but did it have to hurt so much? How had I avoided being crushed?
Stupid magic, breaking the laws of physics without being nice enough to prevent the worst hangover of my life from pummeling me. The idea I had survived an inferno only to freeze to death in the final stages of decontamination capped my already miserable day.
As though hearing my thoughts, the universe decided to remind me things could get worse. The man-made rain intensified to a deluge, washing away my blanket of ash.
“Noooo,” I whined, uncurling to dig into the debris so I could steal its residual heat. The remnant chunks of concrete broke apart and washed away, leaving me with the more stubborn metal, which caught on my fur.
Great. Not only was I inflicted with the worst headache I’d ever experienced, I was cold, I was soaked, and I was stuck.
Why did the CDC have to go to extremes to make sure the dust was eradicated?
I had no doubt the fires had gotten rid of every last speck of it.
Then again, I couldn’t blame them. The real issue was me; had my flames purged the contamination from my body?
I thought so. For one blissful moment, I had been one with the inferno. I already missed the wild and destructive freedom—and its warmth. The cold numbed me and smothered me until bone-deep lethargy pulled me into miserable darkness.
The crackle of the shield shattering roused me and signaled the end of the cold rain. The respite didn’t last long, as someone had the bright idea to spray the ruins with a fire hose. Why? Why would they do that?
If I could have gotten up, I would have hunted the culprit down and stabbed them with my horn before eating them. My fur plastered to me, and I wailed, “Noooo. Wat-ter bad.”
The stream cut off, and someone in a white hazmat suit braved the rubble, picking their way towards me, a meter in one hand. I lifted my head and snorted a warning, baring my teeth as a promise of what I’d do to them and their protective gear if they messed with me.
“Scan is clear. I seem to have located an aggressive, oversized drowned rat, sir.”
Ah, good old Perky. He always knew the exact thing to say to piss me off. “Rat? Rat? Purr-key, I will eat you! Cold. Fire gone. Bring fire back.”
Perky crouched in front of me and shoved the meter in my mouth. “Breathe on the sensor, Gardener. It’s on close-range, high-sensitivity. If you’ve got any dust in your system, it’ll detect it.”
I clamped my teeth on the device hard enough to keep hold of it, snorting out my nose to remind him I couldn’t breathe out of my mouth. I gave it a few licks and spit it out. “No breathe through mouth, idiot Perky. Nose only.”
“Ah, right.”
I should have known he’d ram the sensor up a nostril. It hurt, and I snorted in my effort to dislodge the obnoxious device. It remained silent.
“You’re clean.”
“Yippee. No box for me. I’m cold, Purr-key. Cold. Make wat-ter go away. I’m wet.”
After hanging the meter from his utility belt, Perky gave my shoulder a pat.
“Sir, she’s clean. Body temp seems really low, but otherwise, she seems fine.
There is one problem. She’s tangled in the debris, and I’m not sure I can get her out.
Yes, I’m certain she’s clean, sir. The napalm must have gotten it all, and if she breathed any in, the high temperatures must have cooked it out of her. ”
I lifted my head enough I could use Perky’s foot as a pillow. “Lit napalm. Did good?”
Perky scratched behind my ears. “You did great, Gardener. Sit tight. We’ll get you out of there. I’m not sure how, but we’ll figure something out.”
It took a crane, a couple of blowtorches, and some elbow grease to extricate me from the rubble.
Perky kept me company the entire time, and my whining bore fruit when someone finally took pity on me and brought over a high-powered lamp to help ward away the chill.
Full darkness had fallen by the time I staggered onto the sidewalk in front of the destroyed building.
I’d never seen Wall Street so deserted before, and I shivered at the disconcerting sight. Without a reason to delay asking, I mumbled, “Quinn safe?”
While I’d burned the napalm for Perky, my worries for the police chief had driven me to ensure the whole place toppled in an inferno so intense I questioned if I had existed as anything other than flame while it had burned.
Perky ditched the containment suit in a pile on the road before pointing at the nearest traffic barricade. “He’s over there. Last I heard he was screaming something about skinning a crazy, suicidal pyromaniac unicorn.”
I spotted a stack of blankets off to the side, and I shuffled to them, lowering my head to grab one in my teeth, turning to hold it out to Perky. Around a mouthful of plush fabric, I said, “Still cold. Want blanket.”
With a quiet chuckle, he took it from me, shook it out, and draped it over my back. “Poor thing. You’re still shivering. Baths are not good for crazy pyromaniac unicorns, are they?”
“Wat-ter bad,” I agreed. “Go? Fire. Sleep. Meat. Not in that order.”
“Just promise me you won’t pick a fight with Chief Quinn. We’ve all had a miserable day.”
“Yes. Want fire. Cold. Hun-gree. Tired.”
“I feel like I should yell at you for being so whiny, but you’ve earned it. Come on, let’s get to the barricade. The CDC promised to send over a trailer so you wouldn’t have to hoof it.”
I surrendered with a sigh, and we made it half a block before a tall, dark, and handsome figure stormed in our direction.
“Gardener!” Quinn stomped up, got in my face, and bellowed, “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
The rage in his voice surprised me so much I recoiled, bumping into Perky and knocking him aside.
I flattened my ears. A shiver ran through me, and a bone-deep tension warned me of trouble.
Like some living elastic band stretched too tight, I snapped back into my human body, yelping at the blinding surge of pain. My legs buckled, and I pitched forward.
Warm, strong arms wrapped around me, and my face collided with Quinn’s chest rather than the sidewalk.
Perky spewed curses. A moment later, he draped the blanket over my shoulders. “Couldn’t you have done that an hour ago?”
“I’m sorry. It’s not my fault!” Go me. At the rate I was whining and wailing, they’d nickname me Manhattan’s Banshee.
Worse, without Quinn’s hold on me, I would’ve oozed to the ground in a limp Bailey puddle.
My body refused all my orders, leaving me slumped against the man, my nose pressed against his uniform, forcing me to breathe in his scent.
He smelled of smoke and cologne. One moment, I struggled to stand without help.
The next, Quinn held me cradled in his arms while Perky tucked the blanket around me.
“Ambulance,” Quinn barked. It didn’t take Perky long to relay the order using the police chief’s radio.
“Not again, damn it. I’m fine. I don’t need to go—”
“You were in a burning building, exposed to gorgon dust again, and trapped in debris. Any one of those things warrants a trip to the hospital.” Quinn inhaled and launched into a tirade detailing every last one of my sins, beginning with my decision to remain in a condemned building instead of leaving with the two cops assigned to me.
“That’s not fair. I was contaminated. I couldn’t risk public safety.”
“Gardener,” he growled.