The Flame Game (Magical Romantic Comedies #12) - R.J. Blain Page 0,70
another location of one of her trysts.”
“It looks like a lot more than that. What have you found so far?”
“A lot of missing women, the newest of which is six years ago, so they’ve been here a while. The oldest is from eleven years ago.”
“Long before you married Audrey.”
“Bingo. The real question is how do these women connect to Audrey or Morrison? If they connect to them. They might not. However, considering Audrey became a gorgon and killed her brother when he refused to go through the process, I’m starting to think this is far more than a mere coincidence.”
“Audrey had weak snakes, too. Like Michella.”
“And she was just as impotent, so that tells me that the batch of dust, while registering as high potency to the scanners, didn’t have sufficient magic to create strong gorgons. Perhaps it’s got a higher infection rate?”
“Easy to infect, hard to destroy.” I wrinkled my nose. “Which supports my general decision to torch 120 Wall Street. I really thought Yale would kill me for that stunt if the CDC didn’t get me first. In other news, that hangover really sucked.”
My husband shot me a glare, which promised retribution in some form or another. As his favored form of retribution involved trying to convince me I had value, I expected to enjoy every minute of it. “Without your napalm order, a huge number of weak gorgons may have been created, and they would have become easy targets for gorgon trafficking—and they would have become excellent pets for the wealthy. They would have fetched a high price on the black market.”
“They wouldn’t have been able to defend themselves.” I regarded the nearby statues with a frown. “How many of these women do you think were infected?”
“None of them. They would have reversed their petrification on their own if they’d become infected. Whoever did this probably dosed them with pixie dust to make them cooperative, had them pose, and then exposed them to the gorgon dust to see if they would become infected. Infection rates are typically low. But, considering there were at least two infections from this batch of dust, it’s not the normal one-in-a-thousand rate.”
“But why kill the gorgon they had? Do you think that one was infected, too?”
“No, she’s probably a natural gorgon. Gorgon males are usually the ones killed and used to create the dust, so she would have been killed for sport or to force the male to cooperate. The females can get quite vicious trying to defend their hive, and she wouldn’t have been useful to the dust producers.” My husband shook his head, checking something on his laptop. “Honestly, I’m impressed we have reception at all out here. I’m not getting any hits on the gorgon, so chances are the entire hive was wiped out. The hive was probably small, with one male, two or three females, and no whelps. Hives with whelps tend to be poor targets for schemes like this because the male will fight to the death along with the females, and they want the males alive.”
“But they just need the bodies for dust production, right?”
“The most common method of dust production involves the gorgon victim being alive at the start of the process, and then the decaying body used to strengthen the dust. It is possible to make the dust from just the bodies, but the dust is typically impotent and incapable of infecting others with the virus. You can view that type of dust as potent bile. If they took a male, they would have killed his females first to demoralize him before they began the batch of dust production—or held them hostage to force himself to be a more willing sacrifice.”
“Like that gorgon prince where we killed Audrey.” Technically, Quinn had done the killing, but I’d been there causing trouble, so I accepted my share of the responsibility for his ex-wife’s demise.
“Exactly right. He wouldn’t have done that unless he was trying to save his bride, his wives, and his children. That much of his sacrifice didn’t go to waste. He lost his wives, but his bride and youngest whelps survived—and his sole surviving daughter.”
“The little whelp was his?”
“Yes, from his previous hatching. She’s with her grandfather’s hive now.”
“Do you think she would get along with Beauty and Sylvester? They have a lot in common.”
“We can inquire for fostering. And yes, they do. I’ll call about fostering her after we’re back and we have a chance to talk with Beauty and Sylvester.”