“I know of a few openings I could fill,” The Admiral was quick to note.
“I don’t think it works that way, Serena,” I answered for Valerie.
“Yes, anyone can apply to work here,” Valerie said, proving I was wrong. She studied Serena for a moment. “You are a little on the small side, though. I’m afraid we would only be able to offer you pleasuring duties.”
I raised an eyebrow at this.
Okay, yes, I was currently in the middle of a mental breakdown, but managing pleasuring duties for valkyries sounded like a dream job.
“Now, you’re talking,” The Admiral Agreed.
Serena’s voice remained steady. “Pleasuring duties?”
“Yes,” Valerie replied without inflection. “You would feed us, bathe us, give us massages, and meet our more carnal needs.”
“Where do I sign up?” said a voice that I suddenly realized was my own. I shook myself back to reality. “Shit. Sorry.”
Valerie gave me a wicked grin. “You are the one that we wish to pleasure, remember?”
“Even better,” The Admiral sang.
Yes, sang.
“Oh yeah,” Rachel said like she was all for that plan, “we’re totally going to discuss this again.”
Things were getting a little crazy at the moment. This made sense, seeing that there was a fair bit of horniness that came with being a PPD officer, but had everyone on my team suddenly forgotten that I had fired off some major magic against a werebear not too long ago?
One look at Griff and Chuck told me that they remembered. Of course, they were gay, so the prospect of pleasuring valkyries wasn’t as appealing to them as it was to the rest of us. The ladies on my squad were all bisexual, though. I knew this because they had essentially admitted it during the battle with our first ubernatural a number of months back. Well, Rachel, Jasmine, and Felicia had anyway. Serena’s interest in other women was kind of new to me, but seeing as how she’d just requested a job application, it was immediately apparent what her interests were. Warren had once claimed that he was pansexual. At first I thought this meant he liked screwing cooking equipment, but I learned later that he just had no issues with boning men, women, or even supers who were in their supernatural forms. He wasn’t into doing weird crap with regular animals or anything, though. He’d been clear about that.
Now, me? My sexuality was pretty straightforward. I was buy-sexual. If I couldn’t get sex, I’d buy it.
“Valerie,” I spoke up, taking her eyes off my crew, “something has happened to me and I really need to tell my agents what’s going on. Now, I know they’re all incredibly horny—you and your beautiful ladies will do that to people—but I have to talk to these guys right now.”
The look of concern on her face was kind of touching, if I was being honest.
“I think it’d be cool if she were kind of touching me right about now,” The Admiral stated out of the blue.
“Would you please shut up?”
“Are you well, Ian Dex?” Valerie asked.
“Not really,” I replied honestly.
Then I went on to explain everything that had happened to me, from the djinn fucking with my head, to the vampire biting me, and finally on to how I learned that my amalgamite bits and pieces were seemingly forming into one.
“You’ve already seen what I can do with magic,” I pointed out to my crew, “but there’s more.”
I showed them my fangs.
“Sexy,” meowed Valerie.
“It really is,” agreed Serena.
“Totally,” whispered Warren.
“Ew,” I said.
“Now, I must admit that I find this rather appealing,” Griff remarked. Chuck looked at him. “Sorry, Charles, but you know how I have a thing for you vampires.”
I threw up a little in my mouth. “Double ew.”
CHAPTER 21
We had all taken seats and the questioning began. Unlike the Directors, I didn’t want to keep my crew in the dark, but I was also a bit worried about providing too much information.
Valerie kept the valkyries away, giving us time to work through things. Since we weren’t being judged in battle, I knew Valerie and her crew were forbidden to read our thoughts, so I didn’t have to worry about that. She’d probably overhear our words, though.
Ah well. That couldn’t be helped. Besides, who was she going to tell?
“Have you ever been bitten by a vampire before?” asked Griff.
“No.”
“What about a wolf?”
“I don’t…” I paused and thought about that. “Actually, more than once over the years, yes. We’ve all taken down a number of them while on the beat. I’ve fought vampires, too, of course, but never been bitten. Werewolves, though? Definitely.”
“But a werewolf bite is not the same as a vampire bite,” Chuck was quick to point out. “Werewolves don’t inject venom.”
Griff gave his partner an appraising look. “It’s a fair point, Charles.”
“I’ve also been hit by tons of magic over the years, Griff,” I stated. “That never turned me into a mage.”
“True.”
“And we all know that I’ve recently had a Joke-Off with a pixie. Again, nothing came of that.” I shook my head and sighed. “No, it was definitely the venom that sparked everything. Possibly the djinn, too. I’m not sure if that played into things any more than just making me disoriented enough to allow the vampire to have a snack.”
Again, though, it brought up the question as to how the djinn was able to mess with my head in the first place. That had never happened before either.
“Do you think the djinn was an uber?” asked Felicia.
“No,” I replied as the answer dawned on me. “I think the djinn was given stronger powers, just like the goblin mage and the werebear.”
“Ah,” said Griff while rubbing his beard. “That makes sense.”
Mr. Mystery was doling out powers to key people in order to make my life miserable. But why? I wasn’t about to ask that question aloud because people would just claim that I’d boned Mrs. Mystery or something. It didn’t matter how many times I’d told them that I didn’t do that kind of thing, they still made the assumption.
“Did you bone Mrs. Mystery, Ian?” asked Jasmine.
So much for that.
“No, I did not bone Mrs. Mystery,” I answered dryly. “Or, if I did, I didn’t know it was Mrs. Mystery. I’m pretty careful about that sort of thing, as you know.”
“My assumption is that we have another ubernatural who is bent on destroying you in a way that is not so direct,” announced Griff, clearly ignoring the side conversation. “But why this person would go out of their way to make you stronger is beyond my ability to understand. It would seem to me that weakening you is far more sensible.”
I crossed my legs and flicked a lint ball off my knee.
“Exactly what I’m thinking, Griff.”
“Maybe the guy thought it’d make you weaker?” suggested Warren. We all looked at him. “Well, think about it. If you wanted to take a guy out, you’d just kill him, right?”
“But a bite wouldn’t kill him,” remarked Chuck. “In fact…” He slowly looked up at me. “In fact,” he said again, “a vampire injecting venom is for the purpose of controlling the victim. He wasn’t trying to kill you, Chief. He wanted you as his slave.”
“Ew,” I choked.
“Not that kind of slave, Chief.”
“Oh, right.”
A slave? To do what? Comb his hair? Help him pick out nice suits? I was good at that, but it seemed like a big risk just to get a personal shopper. But what else would a vampire need a slave for? They already had everything.
I was being stupid.
He wanted me to serve his nefarious intentions. I was strong. I was fast. I healed quickly. Basically, I was a weapon, and if whoever this guy was wanted to cause some major damage, he’d have to…
A thought struck.
“So the vampire who b
it me would have to be the guy trying to lord over me, right?” I was staring at Chuck.
“Yeah.”
“But he seemed so freaked out when I turned on him.”
“That doesn’t surprise me, Chief,” Chuck said. “Vampires aren’t supposed to do the old venom trick anymore, but imagine doing it and finding out that the person you bit can rip you in two? It’s like his venom failed to put you under his spell. In fact, all it really accomplished was building him an enemy that was stronger than he could ever hope to be.”
“But the goblin and the djinn and the werebear,” I said, feeling confused. “They had power boosts, too.”
“That’s because the infused venom will improve your power,” Chuck explained. “I’m guessing this guy didn’t know all the powers you already had. The weird thing is that it’s also supposed to have made you loyal to him. Clearly, that didn’t happen.”
Rachel leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees.
“Are you saying that Spanx didn’t tell us who the vampire is because he was really covering for him?”
“Possibly,” Chuck replied with a shrug. “It could also be that he genuinely doesn’t know.”
This new bit of information put us all into thought. If the vampire was really doing all this through a bite, why wouldn’t we have seen marks on Spanx’s neck? And the same with the djinn. I saw his neck clear as day before I ripped through it. There were no marks.
“Serena,” I asked, “were there any holes on Smokey’s neck?”
“Ian,” warned Rachel.
“Oh, sorry. I mean the werebear’s neck.”
Serena and Warren shared a look and then both shook their heads.
“Are there any other places that—”
“You have no marks on your neck either, Chief,” Felicia noted, pointing at me.
“Because I heal quickly, remember?”
Felicia face-palmed. “Right. Sorry.”
“Any large vein will do,” Serena stated.
The only way we could know for sure is if we got in touch with Portman at the morgue. We couldn’t do that from down here, though. There was no connectivity. But even if we could verify that it was the vampire who bit me, how would we find him? Vegas wasn’t huge, but it was big enough for a vampire to hide in. Granted, he was going out of his way to pester me, so eventually we’d find him. My worry was how much damage he’d be able to do before then.
There was one lead we had, though.
It may have been a slip of the tongue, but Spanx said he was down here on the goblins level when a wizard contacted him. Goblins were known for keeping records of things when it involved agreements—verbal or otherwise. While it was definitely a long shot, it could just be that someone on level six knew the identity of Mr. Mystery.
I knew it was a risk, but my gut said it was time I spoke to Lucy Für.
CHAPTER 22
“Wait,” said Rachel after I’d told her my plan, “why would you want to speak with Lucy Für? She’s a demon, not a goblin.”
“Yes,” I replied, “but Spanx said that he was going to get paid to make a run on New York-New York. That’s a verbal contract.” I then looked up and pursed my lips. “Hell, maybe he even got a written one. I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Regardless, there was a contract, and that means demons are involved.”
Rachel seemed taken aback by this. “Huh?”
“He is correct,” said Griff. “Contractual agreements are the domain of demons, large or small.”
“What’s the size of the demon have to do with it?” asked Chuck.
Griff appraised his life partner as if judging the man’s intellect. The sigh that followed was one of those good-thing-he’s-pretty kind of sighs.
“I was speaking about the size of the contract, Charles.”
“Ohhh…right.”
“At any rate,” Griff continued, “the majority of people aren’t aware of it, but demons oversee every agreement.” He looked studiously from face to face. “Every agreement.”
I’d known about this because of the notes left to me by Chief Michaels, the man I replaced as the head of the Las Vegas PPD. He’d been my boss for a couple of years, but it wasn’t until he’d handed over his notes that I learned a lot more about the happenings in the world…and the Netherworld.
You would have thought the entire demon thing would be common knowledge to the supernatural community, but that would be like expecting everyone to know the ins and outs of the legal system in Dubai. If you were a lawyer in Dubai, you’d know, but if you were just some schmuck living on a farm in Iowa, you’d have no idea. Granted, this was a little different because demons lording over contracts applied to everyone, whereas the legal system in Dubai only applied to people living or vacationing there. The advanced level of secrecy over this wrinkle in the contract code was because people would generally freak out if they knew that demons kept tabs on all contracts. Folks were terrified enough of attorneys. Personally, I would imagine it’d be a good thing if people knew the truth of it. A lot more contracts would be fulfilled, for one, and a lot fewer of them would be ratified in the first place.
I couldn’t be too proud of myself, though. The last time I was here I thought Lucy Für’s actual name was Satan.
The chief didn’t put any details in his notes about that.
“Shall I request that Lucy Für join us,” asked Valerie, “or shall I summon her?”
“Let’s request her first,” I replied. I didn’t know what the difference was between a request and a summons, but Valerie sounded somewhat ominous regarding the summoning option. “Thank you.”
She nodded at me and closed her eyes.
Felicia looked like she was about to say something, but I held my finger to my lips. There was no point in distracting a valkyrie as she was attempting to request the presence of a demon, after all.
The room grew dark after a moment.
I felt the hairs on my neck stand up and a shiver ran through my spine. While I still wasn’t incredibly versed with magic, I knew what was going on. They were working together to build a portal for Lucy Für to travel through.
Even though the demon queen was only down one level, she could not simply take the stairs.
It would destroy her.
The only way she could escape the nine levels was via a mutual portal or a summoning.
Ah…so that’s why Valerie had asked the question before. Whenever one summons an entity from the nine levels, there must be a contract in place or a taking. A taking involves a sacrifice of some sort, making it impossible for the one being summoned to resist. Spanx and his goblin gang, for example, were probably just traveling on contract. The sacrifice option typically happened when those being summoned didn’t want to go. This is why the original uber mage, Reese, had been very unpopular with the demons he used as batteries. They didn’t want to partake in his power play, but they’d had no choice. Essentially, Reese had kidnapped and enslaved them for his own nefarious gain.
Valkyries were a bit different, too, of course. They traveled wherever there was battle. It was part of their gig. But even they could be summoned to fight, should the proper spells be cast.
But Valerie and Lucy were working together on this portal, which told me the demon queen was willing to help.
We all took a step back as a whirlwind of light began spinning faster and faster. There were multiple colors and the sound of air rushing, to the point of sounding like a small tornado.
Then a blinding light flashed and knocked us all to the ground.
I leaned on one elbow and held my opposite hand up to shield my eyes until the light faded away.
Standing there was Lucy Für.
She was massive. I’m talking five werebears big. She also wasn’t what you might call “a looker.” Honestly, the first time I saw her those months ago, I’d have sworn she was a dude.
“Ah, Officer Ian Dex,” she said after nodding at Valerie. “What a pleasant surprise.”
I got
to my feet and bowed slightly. “It’s…good to see you again, madam.”
“I’m sure it is.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “Well?”
“Ah, right.” I coughed. “There was a contract taken recently by a goblin named Spanx. He was told to go topside, to a hotel in Las Vegas named—”
“New York-New York,” she interrupted. “What of it?”
“We need to know who the requesting party is on that contract.”
Lucy Für regarded me for a moment. Then she glanced around at the other officers. Finally, she peered at Valerie and grunted.
“You realize that contracts are private matters, yes?”
I nodded.
“Then you must understand that I cannot simply divulge information about the parties involved.”
“He’s causing all sorts of problems topside,” Felicia blurted. “There are already multiple deaths due to what he’s done.”
Lucy Für tilted her head at Felicia. “So?”
“So,” I answered before Felicia could, “it’s only a matter of time before he starts summoning demons.”
I didn’t know that for sure, obviously, but it seemed like a logical step for him. Besides, while demons were quite powerful, it didn’t mean they were incapable of feeling concern as well.
“You know this to be true?” she asked me with a directness that made me feel like I had just taken the stand.
“No,” I admitted, “but after what I’ve experienced, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that he’s capable of it.”
She nodded slowly and she released a long breath.
I only caught wind of a hint of it, but that was enough to make me feel like I’d just face-planted in a pile of horse shit. Everyone on my team winced. Warren gagged.
“What is it?” Lucy Für asked.
“Hmmm?” I said, glaring at everyone. “Nothing. Just the memory of a werebear that Mr. Mystery overtook. It was pretty rough. I’d hate to see him do that to a demon.”
“Ah, right.” Her eyes snapped to mine. “Mr. Mystery?”
“That’s what I’ve been calling him because…” I stopped and looked up at her. “Hold on. You’re not going to tell me that’s really the guy’s name I’m looking for, right?”
The Ian Dex Supernatural Thriller Series: Books 5 - 7 (Las Vegas Paranormal Police Department Box Sets Book 2) Page 20