Just
a few days after that, Maurice rode over to my house to visit, on Cerb. I
hadn't seen my guardian hound-angel for a while, and one look at the smaller,
cuter hound sitting next to him told me why.
"Cerb,
you dog." I couldn't help it.
The
hound was a girl, and since she was visibly pregnant, chances were good she was
the sweetheart for whom Cerb had taken voluntary exile and guardian service on
Earth.
He
snorted and his mouth fell open, tongue lolling out extra long, with lots of
drool. His gross way of laughing at me. Maybe getting back at me for the
teasing.
"Hey,
Lanie," Maurice said, and leaped off Cerb's back to hover in front of me.
I knew he was uncomfortable with all the sparkle and glitter of his wings,
which were part of his punishment when he was exiled to Earth, but watching
them go at nearly sonic speed to keep him hovering was … mesmerizing. "We
need your help."
"Felicity
is as close as you're going to get to an OB-GYN for … well, anthropomorphic
interdimensional travelers."
"No,
not that." He swallowed and looked a little green for a few seconds. The
color hovered longest in the tips of his tiny pointed ears. The guy was only
five inches tall, but that was a vibrant shade that just stayed visible.
"At least, not yet. Loralee isn't due to pop for another month."
Cerb
made a sound somewhere between a cough, a choke, and a grunt.
"At
least, we hope. We need a safe place for her to hole up until the demon spawn
are born."
So help me, I wished I had a fly swatter. I knew Maurice liked Cerb, so he wouldn't say something like that unless he was either in a viciously snarky mood, or he was joking. Still, I wanted to hit him hard enough to send him all the way to home plate at Progressive Field. Considering how far away we were from Downtown Cleveland and East 9th street, that would take a lot of muscle power, aided by my telekinetic talent. I was sure I could manage it. How dare he say something like that about babies who hadn't been born yet?
Unless he wasn't joking?
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