The Flame Game

by R. J. Blain

  “More like stone, but that’s fair. Was your pride stung, my beautiful?”

  I held up my bitten hand, which didn’t bleed nearly as much as I thought it should. “No, but my hands and arms were.”

  “I have noticed you were given a rather high dose of his venom. The angels are likely making sure his venom doesn’t kick in until the victims are somewhere more appropriate.”

  “Victim is not the word I would use. The blessed. The receiver of great gifts.”

  “The soon to be incredibly frisky.”

  “Yes,” I purred. I scrambled out of the water, grabbed hold of his hand, and dragged him towards the nearest set of elevators. “Merry Christmas to me!”

  Four

  Are you ready to surrender?

  After at least four days of being under the influence of the venom, I decided I would need the help of an archangel to restore me to being a functional human rather than a fire-breathing unicorn turned succubus with a taste for gorgon-incubus doohickey. Quinn wouldn’t stop smirking, not that I blamed him.

  He ruled our hotel suite, I was putty in his hands, and I hadn’t come close to exhausting him. In the four whole days we’d kept each other company, we hadn’t opened a single damned present, I could barely move, and I wanted to drag my rather happy husband back to bed. Again.

  “Are you ready to surrender?” Quinn asked, his tone amused.

  Through a feat of extreme willpower, I’d managed to keep my hands off him for thirty minutes, long enough to eat a meal. I’d lost track of the time, the day, and anything else important. I’d lost my sanity along the way, too. I’d only eaten because he’d insisted on it, getting dressed and refusing to remove any clothes until all the food on my plate disappeared into my stomach.

  “We could go back to bed,” my mouth contributed.

  Damn. My mouth was going to get me killed one of these days.

  “We could, but we have presents to open.”

  “If you want me not taking you back to bed long enough to open presents, you need to tell your grandfather to turn this off, or I’ll kill us both. Or at least me. I might not make it.” Well, I’d probably make it back to bed, but I’d have to crawl to get there.

  “I’m not even tired. Incubus,” he reminded me.

  Evil, evil gorgon-incubus doohickey, using his sinful body against me in the best ways possible. In my last gamble to restore sanity, I replied, “I don’t know if we can keep the children pawned off on your grandfather much longer.”

  “That’s not a problem. They’re having a good time, and they’ve never gotten to interact with other hives before. They’ll be fine. Once you fully surrender, I can help with your little problem, not that I view it as much of a problem. You purr in your sleep, you’re warm, and I enjoy tiring you out.”

  I narrowed my eyes, and it sank in I’d married a gorgon-incubus doohickey. “How much of my problem is your fault?”

  “Right now? All of it. The venom only lasted six or so hours. After that, I was enjoying myself. Why not encourage you to show more of your wild side? I’ve been having a great time. How about you?”

  Evil, evil gorgon-incubus doohickey! “You’re going to pay for that.”

  “I’m sure you’ll try to make me pay for making you among the happiest of women alive. Is it my turn to be fed steak and grapes in the tub?”

  His smirk drove me wild, and I debated if he needed his clothes. As it was one of his favorite sets of pajamas, which he tended to put on in the mornings before getting ready for work so he wouldn’t prance around the house naked, I restrained myself. “Okay. You win. I surrender. I seem unable to overwhelm a gorgon-incubus doohickey. But I am expecting a really good reward for surrendering. You might talk me into feeding you steak and grapes, but honestly, I have problems. I’d probably make the steaks and eat them before bringing them to the tub.”

  “You really would, too. Your surrender is sweet, and it only took you four days,” my husband teased, and he kissed my cheek. The delicious incubus influence he liked tossing around eased to something I could ignore if I wanted. “I’m leaving a little going, as if I totally remove it, you’ll probably fall asleep on me, and that would rob you of time to open presents. Four days is apparently my limit on how long curiosity can eat away at me before I need to know what is in all of these boxes. I might perish if I don’t find out what is in all of these presents.”

  “We absolutely couldn’t have that happen, now could we?”

  “Absolutely not.” My husband strutted across the suite, which was overwhelmed with presents, and he went to work sorting through them. The only places without presents piled everywhere were the bed, the couch, and in the bathroom, with narrow pathways linking them. “I got a present for you, so you get to open that one first.”

  Damn it! “But I didn’t get anything for you.”

  “You ran through the snow as a unicorn to adopt an ocelot for us. As I like cats, that counts. Sure, Avalanche is really your kitten, but I pretend she’s mine when you’re not looking.”

  As my gorgon-incubus doohickey did an excellent job of making my common sense dribble out of my ears, I made a mental note to thank our various relatives for putting up with us at our worst. “Please thank your relatives for watching over our pets.”

  “Already done. Anyway, our pets are with our kids, as they would whine without the pets around.”

  “We’ve lost our pets to our children, haven’t we?”

  “It seems so. I’m strangely okay with this. They’ve been really careful with them, too. There have been no accidental petrifications. Apparently, their father impressed upon them Daddy and Mommy time was sacred, and my grandfather somehow convinced them you needed an entire week’s worth of Daddy and Mommy time.”

  “Your grandfather is the best grandfather.”

  “All of them are, and I’m happy to share them with you, although you’ll find you have tolerable grandparents now. Ra didn’t want to overwhelm you, so you’ll meet your grandparents gradually. Honestly, I think Ra is more worried you might be ambushed the instant the rest of your family learns of your existence. Your mother remains a mystery.”

  “Because of the moon phase.”

  “Right. Apparently, when she has been around, she’s been dragging your father off somewhere, and nobody is brave enough to disturb them.”

  I giggled. “Hopefully they are not indulging during any possessions this time.”

  My husband found what he searched for in the pile and returned to the couch, placing a red-wrapped gift on my lap before sitting beside me. “Yes, I will continue to pretend I’m actually helping you with any technical stuff you may ask when you want attention and don’t know how to ask me for it.”

  Busted. “Perkette snitched on me, didn’t she?”

  “You have been thoroughly caught, but I will indulge, just please stop checking out weird porn on my laptop. Or any laptop. Please.”

  I snickered. “I wasn’t really watching them. I was looking for ideas. They’re not even all that good. Most of the time, the poor women look bored. You just made the best expressions, so I had to find weirder things to blurt out to see what you’d do.”

  “Maybe I should make one of your presents a promise to endure one or two instances of your insanity a month, especially as I now know you were badly trying to get my attention.”

  “But your expressions are the best!”

  “Just my expressions, huh?”

  Double busted. “What you do after you make those expressions is also the best. I win from top to bottom. And in the bedroom. Or, if I had found a particularly naughty kink, somewhere on the way to the bedroom.”

  He bowed his head and sighed. “Children are going to make our adventures far more restrained.”

  “Babysitters,” I reminded him.

  “We can’t get a babysitter every time I want to take you to bed, Bailey.”

  “Quinn, I love you, but if we went to bed every time you wanted to take me to bed, we would
never leave bed. We’ll somehow survive.”

  “But are you sure?”

  As always, he made me laugh. I took my time admiring the pretty paper on the package, debating if I wanted to go through the ritual of trying to determine what was in it before tearing my way inside.

  “You shouldn’t shake that one. It’s heavy plus you might break it.”

  “Do you read minds now?”

  “No, I just know that look in your eyes. That’s the look of a naughty little cindercorn about to destroy something.”

  Busted yet again. Without any reason to delay, I tore into the paper to discover two laptop boxes stacked on top of each other, taped together to give the illusion they were a single package. Neither had their original shrink wrap, and upon investigation, I discovered he’d marked one as for home and one as for work. “I’m still going to use yours because I can,” I warned him.

  “I bought your personal one aware that would likely be the case. However, you’ll be able to play games on it with me now, rather than sigh sadly when I’m playing a game and you want to play, too.”

  Damn. At the rate he was busting me, I’d have to find a pair of handcuffs so he could handle the matter properly. “I can’t help but notice one is labeled for work.”

  The laptop reminded me I had a bunch of pictures to sort through to see if I could remember why I’d recognized the man in the crowd or what I might have done to annoy him.

  “We still have a few days before the kids are back, and now that you’ve surrendered, I thought we’d try to get a head start on teaching you what you need to know and investigate Morrison. To the limited degree we can. I’ll teach you our systems, go over the rules and regs, and I’ll set you loose on the budget. It could use your magical touch.”

  “Isn’t the budget for the year already set?”

  “Yes and no. We can make adjustments if we need to, but the commissioner will need to get it approved, then it’ll have to pass through the city government, and depending on the budget issue, it might get bounced up to the state level. This year’s was particularly bad. We took a lot of cuts, but we’re supposed to be doing more work. We do have authorization to do program fundraisers, but we haven’t figured out how to pitch it to the commissioner, who has to get the final approval for the specifics. Some things we’re not allowed to do fundraising for, like our staff budget. However, we can do fundraising for new K-9s, domestic violence support programs, animal rescues when animal control is overwhelmed, and community outreach. We need to do a lot of PR; while our precinct is generally okay, mismanagement and poor training has been an issue. Holding our precinct at a higher standard only does so much good. But that’s what the commissioner wants, especially after Morrison’s less-than-legal activities.”

  “Have you been sneaking in work, Mr. Samuel Leviticus Quinn?”

  He grinned at me. “I’m an incubus. I don’t need nearly as much sleep as you do, especially after spending hours making you happy. As I wanted to make sure you were getting enough sleep, I worked when I wasn’t cuddling with you. I set your work laptop up while you were asleep, and I mostly set your home one up, installed some games, and otherwise got it ready for you to customize to your preferences. I got laptops for the children, although they’re heavily restricted, they’ll only be able to access the internet when we’re supervising them, and they’re meant for education purposes. My grandfather has been helping me set up a schooling plan for them. They’re far more advanced than most gorgon whelps at their age, but they’re behind on some of the basic survival techniques. That’s part of why my grandfather has them for another few days—possibly up to a month. We need them able to defend themselves and have better control of their abilities. Beauty is a biter, and Sylvester will reflexively petrify, although it’s tiring for him. My grandfather is concerned that the circumstances of their birth has damaged their development.”

  “And their rabies treatment?” I scowled at the thought of what had brought the pair of gorgon whelps into our lives. If I got a hold of whomever was responsible for attempting to weaponize rabies, I’d bring them to justice one way or another. With my track record, justice would involve a quick death during some brawl or another, but I could handle that.

  It beat leaving them out to hurt or kill others, and enough people—and animals—had perished already.

  “That wouldn’t have helped matters any, and while their father paid out for a miracle before his death, there’s only so much an angel can do, and the angel would have only helped because of a perception of injustice.”

  “The rabies infection would have been a part of an attempted murder,” I guessed.

  “That’s my thought. They’re children, and any angel would have wanted to right that wrong.”

  “But their mothers? What about them?”

  “It’s miracle enough the whelps survived a round in a glass coffin, Bailey. Gorgons are magic. Everything about them is magical. Their mothers would have died in the coffins from that much exposure to neutralizer. I suspect part of the miracle was them surviving through treatment in the glass coffin. But they may have survived because of how they were born. I haven’t been brave enough to ask.”

  I struggled to imagine Quinn being afraid of something like the answer to a question. “Why are you afraid to ask?”

  “There are some gorgons who would risk cracking their children’s eggs if they think they can create another Beauty or Sylvester.”

  I sucked in a breath. “That’s horrible. But why?”

  “I suspect that may be why Audrey wanted you in the first place. To conduct experiments just like that. Your immunities would make you the perfect surrogate for that sort of thing. Had you been their mother, you wouldn’t have died bringing them into the world—and the other child may have survived, too. I won’t be surprised if you are asked to carry a cracked egg in the hopes the shell would heal or the child might survive as a live birth.”

  It never failed to amaze me how much gorgon society could amaze and repulse me at the same time. Worse, I couldn’t see myself saying no, especially in the case of a cracked egg where the whelp might survive. “How often does that happen?”

  “Not often. Broken eggs usually kill the whelp immediately, and it’s rare an egg will crack without being fully broken. Beauty and Sylvester were likely banged together during conception and their eggs cracked but didn’t break until a few weeks later, when the eggs would have started to grow. The father would have known when he’d attempted to retrieve the eggs. That probably finished breaking their eggs. His bride must have loved him—and them—very much to have wanted to try to carry them to term. The human child was likely from superfetation—conceived after the whelps, usually by a matter of days or weeks. Human embryos wouldn’t be able to survive the rigors of petrification, and gorgon whelps are born able to petrify.”

  “Thus the third child died along with their mother.”

  “Right. A cracked egg happens every few years, and even then, one in ten might make it if the surrogate is willing to attempt a live birth. Cracked eggs rarely survive, so the surrogate willing to take the risk would have to be flown in immediately. Gorgon magic would allow the woman to carry the whelps to term, though—or for however long was necessary. It’s never really been tried before. Most gorgon fathers make the difficult decision to save their bride or surrogate.”

  “But Beauty and Sylvester are proof it can happen.”

  “That’s right. Their mother must have fought hard to try to bring them to term. Most gorgon males just won’t risk losing their bride. The brides are often the heart and soul of a hive, and losing her hurts the whole hive.”

  “If the bride has a cracked egg, won’t she get upset if somebody else takes over being the surrogate?”

  “It would be better than losing her child, I would think—and most surrogates wouldn’t survive after month six or seven. The petrifications would be too taxing.”

  “Like what happened with their mom.”

&nb
sp; “Exactly. Beauty and Sylvester are very lucky to be alive.”

  “How many women are like me? Who don’t get petrified by gorgons?”

  “There are no other women like you, Bailey. There are some resistant women, but they’d probably die, too. If the petrification doesn’t kill her, their venom would.”

  My eyes widened. “Do you think their serpents…?”

  “Think? No. Know? Yes. I had the toxicity reports pulled from her autopsy. It showed lethal amounts of their venom in her bloodstream. Infant gorgons have weakened venom, but they likely bit her internally countless times during the stress of being born. That’s the only defense they have, and they had no way of understanding what was going on.”

  “We’re never telling the kids that. It’s bad enough they’re convinced their petrification killed their mom…” I couldn’t imagine how much it must have hurt. “Their mother was truly amazing.”

  “The petrification certainly didn’t help, but their snakes were the actual cause of death. Make no mistake. Their mother wouldn’t have survived either way. And yes, it takes an amazing woman to do that. She refused to give up until her babies were born.”

  My poor little children. “But I could save eggs like theirs, couldn’t I?”

  Quinn sighed. “Assuming the eggs were left in the surrogate until the transfer, and if it isn’t during your period. Gorgons plan for when their surrogates are at peak fertility to make certain their magic takes hold. In theory, if you wanted to take over being the surrogate, the hive male would retrieve the egg or eggs in question, hand them over to me, and I’d handle implanting them. It would not be a very comfortable process for you, especially if the eggs are more than a few weeks old. A little magic can help with that, though. Then you’d probably endure a pregnancy from hell, and the delivery would be complicated.”

  “Complicated? It would be full of sharp, pointy teeth!”

  “Yes. Then there’s an issue of the little gorgon having even more mothers than normal, so we’d end up with another child around. The child’s father would not want you to be excluded, the bride would probably fawn all over you until the day she dies, and don’t get me started about what the gorgon mother—or mothers—would do. It would be a mess.”