by TJ Nichols
Jordan knew he was staring, but he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. As excuses went, it was one he’d never heard before, and he’d heard some bad ones. “Ever?”
“Only when I’m with someone, not just someone I’m going to have fun with.”
“You’re missing out.” He’d had sex without kissing, and it wasn’t the same. “I didn’t realize you didn’t.” Two minutes. He’d never wanted to get on a train so badly. “Well, clearly I kiss everyone and have no standards.”
“I’m not offended.”
Great. Good for you. Stop looking at me.
“Did you want to give me the gift?” Jordan realized that was much worse than the kiss faux pas. He was now making a deal at a train station like a regular junkie. Could tonight get any worse?
“You aren’t using it alone.”
“You aren’t using it with me. I’ve done it before. I don’t have a reaction.” If he had Bliss, he could forget this whole thing for a few hours.
“Darian told me not to let you use alone, or any ill effects would fall on his head.”
Smart satyr. A dead cop full of Bliss would shut them down. Jordan pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He wanted the taste so badly. If Edra had kissed him, he wouldn’t be hesitating.
“Maybe I shouldn’t.” He should quit. Yeah. He was quitting Bliss. The promise was hollow and cold.
“Your choice.” Edra sighed and shook his head. “I thought… never mind.” His tongue didn’t flick out, and his mouth turned down.
The train glided to a stop, and the doors opened. Jordan went through one set, and Edra another. It was for the best that he was going home alone.
He cradled his head in his hands, knowing he’d fucked it all up. Edra would have sat and watched him. He wanted to know what it was like to fuck on Bliss. That opportunity had gone too. Now he wouldn’t be able to sleep because he’d be thinking about a satyr working Edra over.
He leaned back in the seat, his panties too tight. Goddammit.
He took out his phone and pulled up Edra’s number but didn’t call.
What was he going to say?
Get off at my stop? We can fuck, no kissing?
No. He put his phone away. There were a hundred reasons why it was a bad idea to fuck a lesser dragon. They had to work together. It was a dumb thing to even think about. That, and he had no idea what lesser dragons had in their pants. Though he didn’t actually care at that point. He wanted to find out, and he was sure there was something they could do.
The trained stopped at Van Ness. Edra would be getting off, same as him, so they could head in opposite directions. He couldn’t face Edra again, so he went to his platform and watched his feet the whole way. Then he got on the 49.
There was a cold shower and a cranky cat waiting for him. He tipped his head back, knowing he’d fucked up his night. He was a stupid son of a bitch.
His phone buzzed, and he pulled it out of his pocket. Edra.
Let me know when you want it. The offer still stands.
Chapter 12
EDRA FLOPPED onto his bed and it creaked beneath him. Somewhere in the apartment block, someone was listening to music that really needed to be turned down. Above him someone was having sex—the rhythmic grunting was a giveaway. He closed his eyes and pulled his pillow over his head. The sounds became more muffled but didn’t go away.
Maybe he should’ve just let Jordan kiss him.
That would’ve been weird. He barely knew the man, but knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t mind getting him out of his clothes and checking out his slinky underwear. But he wasn’t going to lick just anyone’s mouth. That was something that was saved until later. Humans kissed first. He checked his phone again.
Jordan hadn’t replied to his text, so he’d probably incinerated that idea.
For a brief moment, he considered taking the Bliss himself. While red wasn’t his favorite kind, it would do. He could lie here and be swept away on a tide of pleasure—except he didn’t like getting swept away, and there wasn’t enough Bliss in the bag to even nudge him toward pleasure. He liked being involved or watching others succumb.
Jordan probably didn’t trust him to just watch.
He was a mytho… little more than an animal to most humans. That he could shift into an animal didn’t work in his favor.
Yet it was Jordan who stepped close. It was Jordan who wanted the kiss.
Edra swallowed. Nope, he couldn’t even imagine kissing him… not yet anyway. He shoved his hand into his pocket and ran his fingers over the plastic bag of Bliss. But he couldn’t even be bothered getting himself off to erase the tension and unsated lust.
Great. Now he was broken.
The noise above him stopped, but music still filtered through the walls. He really needed to find somewhere nicer to live, but he needed a better job for that, and mythos didn’t get better jobs. They were supposed to be grateful to have any job.
He curled up like a dead bug, missing what had been home. He’d had a house, a partner. Everything.
He should be grateful he’d survived with few side effects and that he passed, so he had an easier time among the humans. But no gratitude bubbled up. He had nothing and no one.
Would one kiss have been such a price to pay?
Chapter 13
JORDAN WAS woken by a phone call. It was Saturday. He was supposed to be sleeping in and doing nothing besides going for a run and catching up with friends that night. “Kells.”
“You need to get down to the Presidio. There’s a body for you,” the captain said too brightly.
“Where abouts?” But something in his gut told him he knew where. He hoped he was wrong.
“The temple. A satyr is dead.”
Jordan’s stomach sank. That was a body he didn’t want. He didn’t want more mytho cases, but he couldn’t say that. “I’m on my way.”
He hung up, dressed in a hurry, and poured more of Sinner’s kibble on the floor than in her bowl. She glared at him. No doubt she’d been thinking it would be bacon and eggs for breakfast. That had been his plan too.
Because the corpse was mytho, Edra would be there, or he would hear about it, and then they’d have to talk. He’d been hoping to put that off for at least a week, maybe forever.
When he got to the temple, a large area was taped off and several uniformed officers were trying to keep curious people away. And how did the press hear so quickly?
Forensics was there, which was a relief. At least it was being treated seriously.
Edra came out of the temple, talking to several satyrs. Jordan’s step faltered. He couldn’t do it. Why couldn’t it have been a nice, normal human overdose? He wanted off the mytho cases before he was lumped with them, and with Edra, for the rest of his career. But he’d wanted to work in homicide, and here he was. It wasn’t a mytho case. It was a homicide… a satyricide?
He flashed his ID and spoke to the first officer he reached. “When was the body found?”
“Sixish, by a jogger.”
That was three hours ago. “Why wasn’t I called sooner?”
“Looks like some mating ritual gone wrong.” The cop shrugged.
It was far too soon to be making assumptions about the cause of death.
The body was hidden from the public, so Jordan followed the path that had been set up through the scene until he reached the screen that concealed the body. The satyr’s dick had been cut off, balls and all. There were defensive wounds on his arms and hands. His face was too familiar. Jordan stared for a moment trying to place him and then remembered him from the den. He’d been wearing the nice leather kilt.
“No ID card, so we don’t know who he is,” an officer said.
“Did you ask the mytho liaison officer?” Jordan didn’t want to admit to knowing.
“He said the creature is Darian. It looks like there was a fight. Waste of a Saturday getting involved.”
“Knife wounds. I don’t see any knives around. And wher
e is his dick?” The officers should be asking these questions.
“No idea.”
They were there to look the part, but they didn’t actually care, and he couldn’t make them care. But they at least needed to do their job. He highly doubted there had been a mating ritual. “Well, he didn’t get those defensive wounds on his own.”
The officer stared at him.
“Treat it the same as you would if he were human.”
“But it’s not. It’s a two-legged goat. Should be calling in animal protection.”
Jordan turned away before he said something unflattering about the cop’s police work. He made a call to request a canine unit to help find the missing body part and then steeled himself to talk to Edra, who was waiting a safe distance from the tape with a reporter in his face.
Jordan strolled over. “Tendric, a word.”
The reporter turned on him. “What can you tell us about the dead satyr? Can you confirm it was a mating ritual gone bad? Are they safe to be around people? Should we be imposing curfews at this time of year?”
“There are no such things as mating rituals,” Edra said through gritted teeth as he curled his fingers into fists.
“Howard, right?” Jordan asked as though he cared who the man was.
The reporter nodded.
“No comment. This is an active case.” A man was dead and the press was already searching for the scandal.
“Murder? Will you be arresting more satyrs? Will the dens be shut down?”
Jordan leveled a glare at Howard, and he stepped back. “I said. No. Comment. I suggest you pack up and wait until there is an official statement, like the rest of the press.” Then he walked away and hoped Edra would follow.
He did, but it was Edra who led them to the temple steps. The temple was a little crooked, as though it had sunk when it appeared. But according to the city, it was sound, much to the dismay of a small but vocal portion of the public who felt a satyr temple in their park was some kind of injustice.
“What do you know, Tendric?” He couldn’t call him Edra. That was too personal after last night’s mess.
“Darian is dead, and it wasn’t anything to do with mating.” He spat out the last word, and his eyes were hard, as though he was ready to snap and bite off heads—which he might be able to do if he shifted. “Howard will whip up a story that’s all lies. Darian was murdered.”
It certainly looked that way, but they had to wait for the evidence. “I’ll treat it as such.”
“Really? Last time a mytho was killed, it was all cleaned up with the human acting in self-defense. They mutilated Darian. That isn’t self-defense.”
Jordan glanced back at the taped-off area. He wanted to be able to promise a different outcome but couldn’t. “I know. I’ll do my best.”
Edra narrowed his eyes. “You don’t get it. They cut off his dick. That was deliberate. The satyr community is going to be pissed. Darian was only twenty-three. He was studying. He was, as you like to say, integrating. We were making progress after years of work. Now this. What do I tell them? How do I say that humans like us and accept us?”
“People kill. They kill humans, they kill their spouses, their children. Some people are shits.” And there was another angle to consider. “Could this have been mytho-on-mytho? Did Darian have enemies? Jilted lovers? Was there a woman he was interested in? A rival?”
“He helped run his father’s business. He wasn’t looking to settle down.” Edra blew out a breath. “Sometimes there is rivalry for a woman, but satyrs don’t solve it by fighting. That’s vampires. If a satyr woman likes two, she might have two if the men are agreeable and also like each other. This isn’t a mytho attack.”
“How can you be so sure?” Jordan wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
“It’s not how we work.”
“What do you mean?”
“We have ways of settling disputes, and no disputes have been brought forward regarding Darian or his father. Satyrs don’t usually attract that kind of attention. No one would want the bad luck that comes from cutting off a satyr’s dick. Teeth, on the other hand, are trophies. You might have seen the older satyrs wearing strings of them. If his teeth were missing, then it could be a satyr dispute.”
He had seen the strings of small oddly shaped objects, but he hadn’t realized they were real teeth. “How did they get them?”
Edra almost smiled. “War.”
There was a threat beneath the word. The mythos had tried to fit in, but in some countries they had fought for a place. Djekistan was in the middle of civil war, as were some of its neighbors.
An officer jogged over. “They found Bliss in his skirt pocket. Looks like a drug deal gone bad.”
Edra hissed, and the officer stepped back. “It’s a hate crime. It’s murder. It’s not a drug deal or a mating ritual. One of you killed one of us.”
“Thank you,” said Jordan to the officer. Then he turned to Edra. “I need to work this.”
“You do that.”
Was he snarky about last night or was he just angry about the murder? “How well did you know Darian?”
Edra paused for a moment. “Intimately.”
That admission stopped Jordan’s heart for a second. Edra had said he went out back at the den, but now one of the satyrs he’d fucked was dead. Was Edra a suspect? “Are you the jilted lover?”
Edra’s glare was iced razors. “Really? I thought it was clear I was interested in someone else.”
Was. He’d blown it. “You think you can be objective enough to assist as required? Because I’m not going to be able to talk to the satyrs and be trusted or believed that I am doing my job.” Could he be objective enough to work with Edra? Maybe it was better that nothing had happened between them…. He didn’t believe that.
“You need to try. That’s your job. That’s why you get paid so well. I’m not a cop. I’m a public bloody servant.”
“I will find out who did this.”
“That doesn’t mean minotaur crap if the charges don’t stick.” Edra stalked away.
Jordan went back to the scene. “What can you tell me that is fact?”
“He wasn’t killed here. There’s not enough blood,” said the other forensics officer. “The penis and scrotum were removed while he was alive.”
“Is that how he died?”
“Maybe? If he were human, I’d say yes.” She didn’t know or wasn’t willing to guess, and her colleague was giving her a filthy look.
How many times had he heard talk about a case involving a mytho that had been brushed aside. No one even bothered to look for leads. It was all treated as a joke. While mythos weren’t protected under hate crimes, this one was definitely murder, and that was a crime. It had taken three years for mythos to be recognized as potential crime victims, and even then, only the ones on the UN list of humanoid mythos received protection. And it also meant they were subject to human laws.
Somewhere there was a crime scene with a whole lot of blood and a large penis. That wasn’t the kind of thing one could get stuffed and mounted without someone talking. And from his time in Personal Crimes, he knew there was a trade in mytho body parts, both as trophies and for magical cures.
He understood Edra’s fury at the system that let them down at every turn.
And Jordan was part of that system. He needed to prove it could work before the mythos started acting on their own. Vigilantism would not be tolerated.
BY THE afternoon there were two very different spins on the story. One was that it had been rivalry among the satyrs over drugs and sex and that they should have curfews and the dens should be shut down. That spin was hardly surprising, nor was the byline—Carlin Howard.
The current mayor promised to crack down hard on the sex and violence the mythos brought into the city. The opposition, Sherry Lew, wanted to make sure that violence against mythos was stopped. They were here for good, and everyone had to adapt. She wanted a special investigative branch that dealt only with
mytho crimes.
That, of course, had triggered a backlash and cries of special treatment. Jordan was sick and tired of bullies getting their way.
He showered and changed. The last thing he wanted to do was go out, but he couldn’t blow off his friends again. For the moment there was nothing he could do on the case. They had no leads, and the body had been dumped just out of range of the cameras on the temple.
He didn’t want to have nothing when Edra called. And Jordan knew him well enough to know Edra wouldn’t sit back and wait.
Jordan dressed and put on eyeliner and mascara, but not too much. Never too much. The first few months he’d been in San Francisco, he’d done exactly that. It was amazing and liberating, but since the collapse, everyone was more cautious about looking too different.
As much as he’d admired the satyr’s leather kilt, he knew he’d never wear one out. He styled his hair and put on small earrings. His heart gave a flutter knowing that if he ran into someone from work, he’d never hear the end of it. But he doubted they hung out at the same places. His boots had little heels, enough that he’d be the same height as Edra if they were to meet. The thought didn’t make him smile. Instead he felt a stabbing, twisting loss that he couldn’t quite explain.
He needed to go out, even if he didn’t want to. Maybe he’d meet someone he’d be interested in and who’d be interested in him. But he’d already met someone, someone he was missing, even though dating a mytho would draw the wrong kind of attention at work and in public.
Edra didn’t even want to kiss him, for some strange reason. The dragon had a long blue tongue. Jordan would probably choke on it. He had to stop thinking about Edra.
He’d have a few drinks and try and forget him, but he wasn’t sure that was possible.
THE BAR was lively, and Jordan didn’t stand out at all. His friends hugged him.
“You look bland,” Mason said between mouthfuls of chips.
“That’s exactly the look I was going for.” He knew he didn’t look bland—his office look was bland, boring, and entirely safe.