The Flame Game (Magical Romantic Comedies #12) - R.J. Blain Page 0,118
custodians once they are deemed safe for the general public. The first stop is to somewhere they can be treated for rabies, because my meter is screaming about it from over here, and it’s the bad kind of rabies.”
“Bad kind?”
“Airborne.”
I froze. “It airborne?”
“We have confirmation this strain is airborne. It takes a long time to kill, but its death rate seems to be equal with the standard disease, and it can be spread through the air.”
Well, that explained the high level of spread in Long Lake and similar areas. “How treat wild animals? All? Many ill?”
“Neutralizer and prayer,” Professor Yale replied.
The sun set long before I marched my army of rabid gorgon-rat-mice doohickeys to the trailer brought in to transport them to a care facility until they could be treated and helped as much as possible. Someone had gotten the idea to put down blankets, and after each of the little critters underwent a brisk neutralizer bath from volunteers in hazmat suits and given a few spoonfuls to drink, they were put inside to settle in.
Their trust in us to do the right thing hurt.
As I was undoubtedly contaminated with the dust, I waited by the building for the next phase, which involved a lot of fire and burning the entire resort area to the ground. All of the buildings and everything around them would be destroyed before nature was left to regrow as it saw fit.
By the time they began pumping the neutralizer, no sane restaurant would be open. “No noo-dles with sea bugs tonight,” I said to my husband, who stayed closer than anyone else liked to the contaminated building. “Is okay. We get some tomorrow.”
“You’re still getting your noodles with sea bugs, but the husband of one of the CDC reps will be making it for you. She lives thirty minutes from here, so he’ll start making your noodles and sea bugs once we leave, we’ll eat there, and then head to a hotel for the night. Then we’ll continue our vacation. Again.”
“We get to spot on time?”
“We will, but you’ll be tired. We’ll need to skip therapy tonight.”
How sad. “Worth it, even if the gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys scared me at first.”
“Well, to be fair, if a bunch of beady, red little eyes stared at me, I would’ve made it halfway home before stopping. But my beautiful cindercorn will get her noodles with sea bugs tonight. Good behavior is rewarded, and you helped the rodents.”
“Gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys.”
“I really hope that does not become their official species designation.”
“They’re the ones who must deal. Give choice of designation, make vote. Most votes win.”
“For some reason, that terrifies me.”
“Well, they might willfully decide to become gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys, and while awesome, also terrifying.”
“All I will do is hope that they weren’t being fed to gorgons.”
I snorted my alarm. “No!”
“Well, they were getting rabid feeder mice from somewhere.”
“Oh. Maybe because airborne rabies? Hope because airborne rabies? And slow onset in gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys. So it spread to gorgons through normal mice and not these mice. These mice the starter mice.”
“Maybe. And even then, they’ve probably been here for years.”
“Is okay. We let CDC figure it out, we just prepare big nice home for many gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys.”
“Why do I have a feeling I’m going to regret this?”
“Because you have rabid wolf soon, rabid puppy, rabid cindercorn…” I bobbed my head. “We all rabid here.”
“Heaven help me.”
At three in the morning, I torched the bed and breakfast. The fires burned blue and white, and I refrained from having more than a bite or two of napalm, only enough to make certain I lit the entire batch and kept the flames going until the CDC was confident in its destruction.
It took me twenty minutes to reduce everything to ash.
While satisfied the gorgon dust would never bother anyone again, I mourned for the males used in its creation.
Ten minutes after the CDC hosed down the rubble, they lowered the shield and my husband braved the destruction armed with one of the CDC’s meters.
It remained silent.
“All right, my beautiful. While you were playing with your favorite treat and making fire, I had a rabies treatment, our pets were treated, the exterior of the rental was treated, and we’re ready to roll. You get to be treated after you shift back to human, and Yale wants to give you enough neutralizer he’ll be really annoyed if you don’t switch your marker to off. He wants divine-level purging on you because you’ve had so much exposure to gorgons lately. Then he glared