23. This is almost entirely your fault. #2
As long as I held the two baby blankets, I would be protected. Part of my certification with the CDC involved handling phoenix feathers, although the feathers had been used with the living bird’s permission, on loan to the CDC for training purposes.
Most students had gotten singed. I’d been one of the few to dodge any burns.
Now I could better appreciate the phoenix’s amused ‘don’t die’ since I faced the possibility of resurrecting two of its kind in one fell swoop.
Since I had used my magic to locate the gorgon hive, I expected to have my hands full of squirming baby birds soon.
I also expected Quinn would show up—or was already in the gorgon hive somewhere. What else could go wrong? I grimaced at the numerous possibilities. An angel could show up, or an incubus, or a succubus—or all of them.
Ah, I knew: the entirety of Quinn’s family could arrive.
I sighed, shoved my shoulder into the front door, and slipped inside.
An empty stone entry disappeared into darkness, and the place reeked of gorgons.
Surprise, surprise. My footsteps echoed.
Relying on the light from the open door behind me, I headed deeper inside.
Why hadn’t I gone to a more traditional school, earned a proper degree, and taken a job as a secretary or something else sane and safe? A few math courses would have helped; I could have determined the potential blast radius of resurrecting two phoenixes.
I should have made a pitstop for coffee on the way. Sighing, I crossed the entry to where it opened into a grand chamber, so large I couldn’t spot the far wall through the gloom. At least the fire would have plenty of places to go.
As long as I held onto the baby blankets, I wouldn’t have to worry about the flames, the heat, or asphyxiating. Setting the glass box down, I regarded the feathers inside. “Please don’t kill me, baby birds. I have a yummy treat of ambrosia in my pocket for you. Please don’t kill me, baby birds.”
All I had to do was hold onto both baby blankets, grip the feathers by their shafts, uncover the vanes, and wait.
The knitted yarn would protect me as the temperature went from safe to holy shit on a stick, everything’s on fire.
If I ended up with baby birds, I’d have to hold onto them for at least ten seconds until they cooled.
No problem.
I shivered, removed the bundles from their storage container, and slid the box away. When the explosion happened, the last thing I needed was molten glass shards tearing through my skin. “Please don’t kill me, baby birds. Please don’t collapse the mausoleum around my ears, either.”
What sort of idiot brought a pair of phoenixes to a gorgon fight, anyway?
Oh, right. The kind who could transform into a fire-breathing unicorn and was banned from having access to napalm.
I sighed at my own lunacy, prayed I wasn’t about to die, and began the nerve-wracking process of handling the blankets in the dark so I could locate the shaft and vanes of each feather without uncovering them.
Each feather was a little over two feet long. A full-grown phoenix had primary feathers up to six and a half feet in length, which made the ones I held likely secondary feathers from the wing. Body feathers often burned out fast, surviving a single use before crumbling into a pile of soot.
I wished I hadn’t looked at the tags on the blankets at the police station.
Knowing the names of the babies didn’t make things easier on me.
Someone had decided to give the blankets to me, respecting the wishes of two fathers bereft of their wives and children.
When the phoenixes rose and took the blankets with them, the two men would have, in a sad way, the miracle denied to them years ago.
No one could bring back the dead, not really. When a vampire rose, it never returned to its old life. Everything that made them human died with their mortal body, leaving precious few memories behind. With a phoenix, the lost unborn lived on as a cherished memory rather than in body and soul.
Why had I looked in the first place? It made the blankets hard to hold and harder still to use as a tool so I wouldn’t be incinerated.
Damn it, I was so stupid sometimes. Later, I’d blame Quinn—and stress—for making me cry. I wasn’t supposed to be the sentimental type. It hurt too much.
Yet there I was, crying my eyes out like I’d lost my puppy, not that I’d ever had a pet in the first place, but I imagined the chest-tightening pain had to be similar.
If there was ever a next time, I wouldn’t read the tags.
That way, I wouldn’t have to acknowledge why the blankets could suppress the magic of a phoenix.
I gripped the feathers below the vanes and took several long breaths to steady my nerves.
Blinding light and warmth erupted beneath my hands, and darkness smothered me. Pain stabbed through my eyes, deep into my head.
Fuck. I had forgotten to close my eyes before handling the blankets.
Next time, I’d remember phoenix feathers, much like the birds, had minds of their own.
I spat curses at my idiocy. The unlucky became permanently blind without someone with strong magic around to restore their vision.
The majority recovered after a few hours to a few days.
Wiggling bodies beneath my hands confirmed my suspicions; I’d gotten two birds with one stone all right. The pain receded, but thunder rolled in my ears. I bet the little bastards squawked, not that I could hear them.
Idiot me had forgotten to request earplugs. Yippee.
“Please don’t eat me, pretty birds. Pretty please?” Oh. I wasn’t totally deaf. “Uh, good morning. I hope you slept well?”
Great. Not only was I an idiot, I sounded like one, too. I shook my head, and through the ringing, I heard disgruntled avian squawks. Yippee, the baby fire birds were unhappy.
“If you don’t kill me, peck me to death, or light me on fire, I have ambrosia. You can have some. You like ambrosia, right?”
The squawks softened to inquisitive chirps. Had ten seconds gone by? I sure hoped so, because if it hadn’t—or my information was wrong—I’d soon become a crispy critter. Bracing for the worst, I released the newborn phoenixes.
I waited.
Huh. I lived. Fancy that.
“Nice baby birdies,” I murmured, fumbling for my pocket so I could pull out the bottle of ambrosia pills.
At least I’d been smart enough to put the sedatives in my other pocket, else I’d be playing Russian roulette with a pair of flaming baby birds preparing to molt and evolve into flying cataclysms. “I made these treats just for you, but if you want them all, I need a little bit of help.”
The birds kept chirping, and I felt two small, warm bodies press against my legs.
They didn’t feel very big to me, much smaller than the feathers that had birthed them.
I fumbled with the bottle, muttering curses at my shaking hands and blindness. “Just give me a minute. Turns out if you keep your eyes open doing this, the lights go out.”
The chirps rose in pitch to the peeps of baby chickens.
One of the little bastards pecked me in the shin, and the stone castle blinked back into existence around me as though someone had flipped a light switch.
The stone around me had melted, stained black from soot.
Pressed against my legs, tangled in the baby blankets, were two birds.
One was white with red flames marking her feathers, so realistic I expected it—she—would burst into fire while I watched.
The other was red, and its—his—feathers were tipped with the blue-white of the hottest, purest flames.
In their previous life, they had been a mated pair, and in their rebirth, they would remain a family. When they took flight, they would take with them the hopes and dreams of two fathers left with nothing else.
Both looked like they’d been dunked in water and wrung out before sticking their beaks in electric outlets.
Too cute.
Part of me really wanted to grab them both and snuggle with them like I did with Quinn’s blanket and take them home with me.
How could anyone get upset with me for wanting to keep them?
I bit my lip, fumbled with the bottle’s cap, and eventually managed to pop it off so I could dig out a pair of the ambrosia capsules.
Once I secured the lid and returned the bottle to my pocket, I offered one capsule to each bird.
“One each for not killing me. I have more for you if you don’t fry me or my friends when you molt. ”
My negotiation skills were top notch. I barely resisted the urge to snort.
The little bastards pecked the shit out of my hand in their hurry to gobble down the ambrosia. The female broke her capsule, spilling the golden fluid on my skin, and then went to work licking it up with her surprisingly soft and pliable tongue.
Some of the ambrosia mixed with my blood. I froze, staring while holding my breath. The phoenixes drank up their ambrosia, and they licked at where they’d punctured my skin. A shiver ran through me, and the wounds itched.
Then they closed.
I regretted not bringing a meter. Had I gotten ambrosia in my bloodstream, or had the phoenixes licked it all up first? I wasn’t dead—yet. Would I fall over and die in a few minutes? Would I have a spectacular death, a slow one, or a fast one?
Quinn was going to kill me when he found out, assuming the ambrosia didn’t do the job first.
What did ambrosia poisoning feel like? No one really knew, since victims tended to kick the bucket before they could tell anyone they’d been contaminated. Great. Just what I needed on top of everything else.
The phoenixes stared up at me with black, beady eyes, chirping before opening their beaks in a demand for food. Their infancy wouldn’t last long, but until their first molt, the baby birds were my problem.
Yippee.
“Is it safe to come in yet?” Quinn’s grandfather asked from the doorway.
“One pill each not to kill Quinn’s grandfather.”