18. He’s not the brightest crayon in the box. #2
That girl? Me? Had Morrison missed the memo ‘that girl’ was a unicorn who ate meat, breathed fire, and was married to the police chief he spoke to? The breathe fire part would play a very important role in the end of that bastard’s life if I had anything to say about it.
But first, I needed to figure out what my husband was up to, because him talking to the bastard hadn’t been part of the plan. We hadn’t had much of a plan to begin with, but we definitely hadn’t discussed being civil.
How rude.
“And what, precisely, did you set out to do?”
“Reestablish who is human and who is not. We have a responsibility to our people. To humans.”
My husband stared at the man who’d caused us so many problems. “What do you mean by that?”
I wondered if Morrison underestimated my husband like most. Did the asshole really believe my husband would play ball rather than gather information to finish the flame game?
Knowing Quinn, he recorded every word of the discussion to make certain Morrison’s plans died with him.
“Humanity has become severely polluted. Centaurs and humans make humans. Pixies and satyrs? They make humans. Angels and demons? Make humans. Even gorgons can create humans. Vanilla humans and humans with truly dominant human genes are dying. We need to identify those of us who are still human and make sure they are truly protected. These false humans are making it so the real ones can’t be properly safeguarded. ”
How awfully twisted. If I scratched at the surface of Morrison’s insanity, I could understand his motivations—and why he would do something like use gorgon dust to flush out anyone who wasn’t human enough.
I bet, in his twisted little mind, he truly believed if someone was human enough, the gorgon dust wouldn’t infect them. Worse, he would have tested the dust himself to make certain he counted as human enough.
How disgusting.
“I see.” My husband gestured, and I realized he pointed to one of the dead animals littering the side of the road. “I stopped because of that,” he lied. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Ah. Rabies. Yes. Nature’s most efficient form of population control.”
Morrison viewed rabies as population control? The math made sense; airborne rabies plus time equaled a heavily reduced population, although everything I’d heard about it implied it would take years before any people actually died from the outbreak.
Hitting the gorgons first made sense if he wanted to get rid of non-humans, and his project with the gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys would have made certain there were enough infected mice not showing symptoms to infect the gorgons without signs of rabies taking hold until it was far too late to save them.
The wolf, which neither man noticed, continued his slow march to the road. Once on the snow-covered asphalt, his stride smoothed out, his ears pricked forward, and he walked better, as though somehow the infection killing him eased its relentless hold on his worn body.
He dropped the bone near my husband’s foot.
So focused on each other, the men still failed to notice the rabid animal.
Idiots, both of them. My idiot gorgon-incubus doohickey would pay for his idiocy through chores and intensive corrective therapy. I hoped the other idiot learned the hard way why it was a terrible idea to ignore his surroundings.
If Morrison even looked at my new wolf wrong, nothing more than a smear would remain when I finished with him.
I wiggled out of my snowbank and wormed to the shadows behind the abandoned tackle shop. I poked my head around the corner to keep an eye on my husband, the wolf, and Morrison.
“How are you hoping for rabies to control the population? I mean, it’s definitely an efficient killer.” Quinn once again gestured to the dead animals along the side of the road.
Now that I looked for them, there were a disturbing number of lumps under the snow that could easily be dead animals.
What an asshole.
“Oh, yes. You wouldn’t know. That’s simple. The filthy non-humans, with their disgusting habits, interact with even rodents. Those who act like wild animals and feed off wild animals deserve to die like wild animals.”
Marriage to my gorgon-incubus doohickey had taught me when he wanted to, he could beat any mere human to the draw, and in the blink of an eye, Quinn socked the asshole in the nose and dropped him to the road with a single hit. Bright red blood splashed onto the snow.
The wolf recognized prey when he saw it, and before my husband could even kick the downed asshole, the rabid animal lunged for the fallen man, froth flying from his mouth while he bared and snapped his teeth.
The first bite missed with an audible clack.
The second landed in the tender flesh of Morrison’s throat.
In the prime of health, wolves weighed over eighty pounds, although the rabid animal was more skin and bones than anything else. His scrawny build and poor health did little to hamper his ability to kill his prey.
Several shakes and hard bites later, and Morrison’s body twitched on the ground.
Quinn reached down, picked up the wolf’s bone, secured his hold on the leash, and lured the animal away from the corpse. I galloped over, skidding to a halt and snorting flames.
The wolf accepted Quinn’s praise and offering of the bone, lying down and gnawing on his treat rather than on Morrison’s body.
“Wolf steal kill?” I blurted. “Wolf!”
The wolf continued to chew on his bone, and my husband bent over and scratched the animal behind his ears. “Good boy. Relax, Bailey. Wolves are smart, and he knew we were helping him. That, plus we just fed him. We’re acting like a pack for him, and he’s by himself and hungry.”
“No save you from wolf. Wolf eat you? Give rabies.”
“I can defend myself from a wolf, I’m sure.”
“He could, too.”
My husband regarded Morrison’s body with a frown. “Huh. You’re right. I’m being stupid, aren’t I?”
“Wolf sad and cute, easy to fall prey to. Poor hus-band. We teach wolf no eat us. No lie to help wolf? CDC get mad about wolf killings.”
“Shit. Right. I’ll make sure the wolf isn’t put down for killing him. I was about to, anyway.”
“With what? Fist?”
“No. My gun. At point blank range. I punched him because I wanted to. He pissed me off.”
“Okay.” I approached and sniffed the wolf, who was in a dire need of a bath. “Call. Request tanker. Much napalm. This area? This area bad.”
“I’m not sure how burning it to the ground will help.”
“Much rot, no scav-en-gers. Frozen until spring. More infection.”
My husband retrieved his phone and called someone, explaining how Morrison had somehow located them and had attempted to recruit him. With a smug smile in place, he reported that the local wildlife, quite rabid, had taken offense to Morrison.
“No hurt my puppy,” I warned, flattening my ears.
“My wife, apparently, is very fond of the rabid wolf and wishes to rehabilitate him. I’m not brave enough to tell the cranky and pregnant cindercorn she can’t turn our home into a zoo.
Right now, her new pet wolf is chewing on some of Sunny’s bones and behaving himself.
Yes, we’re feeding a wild, rabid animal.
What? He’s hungry, and I’d rather not get eaten by a hungry, rabid wolf.
That he handled a rather bad problem with grace tells me he should be rewarded with more bones.
He’s pretty bad off, though. Bailey thinks this whole place needs to be napalmed.
The towns are abandoned and there are dead animals everywhere. ”
The wolf finished with his bone and stretched out in the snow, resting his muzzle on my husband’s foot.
I worried the wolf was yet another victim of transformatives, as I couldn’t imagine a wild animal behaving in such a way, especially not while rabid.
Either way, we’d find out soon enough.
Quinn kept the sick wolf on a tight leash, and I worried the animal cooperated because my husband kept feeding him.
As I expected I would need to help light a massive fire, I remained a cindercorn.
Our pets slept in the SUV, which we kept running with a window slightly cracked open so they got fresh air.
“Sleepy puppers, sleepy kitten, Quinn,” I said, lifting a hoof to point at the rental. “Good puppers, good kitten.”
Quinn stared down at the wolf, who had polished off our entire supply of food for Sunny and was working on Blizzard’s. “I know I asked for something to feed him, but I hope they’re anticipating how much a starved wolf can eat. He’s really well behaved, though.”
“Trained or transformative?”
“I think trained.” Quinn sat, clucked his tongue, and held out his hand. “Shake.”
The wolf immediately lifted his paw and placed it on my husband’s hand.
“Oh, knows trick!”
“He failed the sentience test.”
“You tested?”
“Yes. I gave verbal instructions to do something, and he just stared at me in confusion. But he knows shake and some other commands. So, he’s probably trained.”
“Why nice for us, not nice for Morrison?”
“No idea. Good taste in people, better sense for assholes.”
I eyed the wolf with interest. “Make police dog! With Sunny. I have two police dogs. He already do good work. Kill bad guy. I hire. Pay in bones, love, meat, and more love.”
My husband opened his mouth, his brows furrowed, and he closed his mouth, his teeth clacking together.
“Idea good, yes?”
“I’ll pitch the commissioner if he can be cured of rabies, but I’m not promising anything more than that.”
The first of the CDC’s vans rolled up, and the wolf whined, grabbing the rest of his meal in his paws and pulling it closer. I took the leash in my teeth so Quinn could handle the reps.
A cranky Professor Yale emerged from the front passenger seat, and Alan came out of the back.
My husband chuckled. “No hand shaking. I’m surely rabid now. Honestly, if you’re here, you’re infected. There are dead animals everywhere, and the wolf’s pretty sick.”