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.”
“That doesn’t seem highly problematic. We’d just have play dates with all the kids. At the rate we’re going, is anyone going to notice an extra gorgon whelp running around under our feet?”
“Probably not,” he admitted.
“Just make it clear I’ll cut the dick off any gorgon who deliberately cracks their eggs. And I’m unavailable for any other gorgon nookie.”
Quinn chuckled. “If being an emergency surrogate is something you want to do, I can register you with the CDC for specifically that exception. I’ll give you a full list of when a second surrogate might be needed, and you can pick the options that you like best. They’re all post fertilization, so that’s not something I mind.”
“As you’d be the primary participant, at least as far as I’m concerned.”
“That’s right.”
I pointed at my flat stomach, which wouldn’t show any signs of pregnancy for at least a few months. “What stage does this become a no fly zone for such efforts?”
“No gorgon male will use a pregnant surrogate. It’s too dangerous for the unborn, and it goes against their general beliefs. Brides are precious—and even the paid surrogates are, for the time she’s carrying their child, effectively their bride and precious. They won’t risk the unborn. However, I’d just ask my grandfather to verify if it’s safe, which would override that. But until we see how you handle pregnancy in general, this is only a theoretical discussion. I fully support the idea, but it needs to be done safely for you and all children involved. And that said, it’s so rare it might only happen once every twenty or thirty years.”
“Because most cracked eggs break?”
“That’s right.”
“Even if it doesn’t happen, I’d still feel better if we could.”
“Then we will. And now that we’ve detoured from the main point, if we can’t get to the bottom of the rabies issue, gorgons will have a lot more problems than the rare cracked egg.”
Right. “My father had a few suggestions.”
“If your father is offering advice, it would be wise of us to listen. What did he tell you?”
“He told me that I’d be a lot happier with the situation if I dealt with three key things, including activities on your ex-wife at the time of and before she’d decided to be a cheating asshole, the rabies problem, and Chief Morrison and his whereabouts. There was also someone in the crowd at the demonstration I want to look into. I