The Chief

by John P. Logsdon

  The Chief

  An Ian Dex Supernatural Story

  John P. Logsdon

  Christopher P. Young

  Chapter 1

  It was the end of my second year in the Las Vegas Paranormal Police Department (PPD) and I was having the time of my life.

  The daily agenda was a thrill ride. It’d usually start late afternoon with a session of knocking boots with my partner, Rachel Cress, a beauty of a cop with a sexual appetite that was nearly as voracious as mine. Then we’d roll into the office of the PPD an hour or so after sunset and check the tickets to see if any supernaturals were out there being naughty on the Vegas Strip. Sure, we had to deal with reports and bogus calls and all that, but for the most part it was fun.

  Today wasn’t.

  A call came in from our department’s Artificial Intelligence dispatch unit—Lydia—telling us that there was something strange going on over at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

  “What’s up, Lydia?” I asked through the connector, a device that was planted in the brains of all PPD cops. It allowed us to communicate hands-free.

  “Hi, sweetums,” replied Lydia—she often spoke to me in a flirty way, which irritated the hell out of Rachel. “The chief was called over to meet with their new security manager, but he’s gone dark.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Rachel, motioning for me to step on it.

  “Just that, Agent Cress.” Lydia didn’t speak flirtatiously with anyone else. “His connector is non-responsive. This happens from time to time when he goes into one of the secret offices, but this time it happened the instant he walked through the main entrance.”

  Each one of the casinos had offices and areas set aside for supernaturals. They were surrounded by null zones, or areas that normals felt compelled to avoid. This allowed supers to roam freely without worrying about tipping their hand as to what they really were. Some normals were allowed into these areas, wearing special items that lifted the effect of the zones. These were usually casino workers or executives. There was no way to keep all normals in the dark about supers, after all. It just wasn’t logistically possible.

  “We’ll check it out,” Rachel noted.

  “Should I send the other agents?”

  “Not yet, Lydia,” Rachel replied. “No point in starting a stink. But if anything changes, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “Thank you, Agent Cress.”

  We pulled up to the front of the Hard Rock and I launched the keys to my white Maserati Quattroporte at the valet while showing my badge. He nodded and set to parking the car for me.

  The center bar was packed as the sounds of slot machines spinning, people cheering, and partying filled the room.

  We cut left and padded down toward the registration area, cutting right before we got there, and then headed up the escalator and into the Vanity Nightclub.

  The place was packed as a light show filled the room, combining millions of colors over thousands of designs. Music was pumping and people were dancing and generally having a good time. There were a number of babes that I wouldn’t have minded getting to know better, but right now it was work time.

  Back toward the restrooms was a small door that acted as a null zone. It was the connector to the supers’ area. We walked through, showing our badges to the attendant standing there.

  “May I help you, officers?” said the young woman.

  She had shoulder-length black hair with straight-cut bangs that sat perfectly over her deep brown eyes. Her skin was golden brown and she had a slight accent that marked her as being from India.

  “Come here often?” I said as my libido took over.

  “I work here,” she replied evenly, “so I’m here pretty much every day.”

  “Idiot,” Rachel said while slapping my arm. “We’re looking for Chief Michaels.”

  “Haven’t seen him tonight,” the woman replied.

  That was odd. This was the only supers-only area in the Hard Rock. At least the only one I knew about. If his connector was being blocked, it should have happened in this room.

  “Are there other supers-only areas?” I asked.

  “No,” she answered.

  “We need to contact base and…” started Rachel, but then stopped as the door opened and the chief walked in. “Never mind.”

  “Hey, Chief,” I said to our commanding officer. “We were just looking for you.”

  Chief Michaels was a big guy. Older, but fit, which made sense seeing that he was a wearbear. I liked the chief. He was a good guy who had been running things at the PPD since forever.

  “What are you two doing here?” he asked, looking confused.

  “Your connector went out, Chief,” Rachel explained.

  “It did?” He looked perplexed. “That’s odd. I was out on the floor talking to one of the managers when I got here, so it should’ve been working fine.” He rubbed his chin. “This is the first time I’ve been in this room since arriving, so it should have been clear until now.”

  “Maybe it just needs a diagnostic check,” I said. Rachel gave me a look. “What? Turbo says that kind of thing all the time.”

  “You’re probably right, Ian,” the chief agreed, causing me to give Rachel a smug look. “It would explain the odd sensation I had when I walked into the casino, too.” He glanced around. “Either of you get that when you walked in?”

  We both shook our heads.

  My connector had gone out once before, a few days after it’d been inserted, but it was quickly resolved. Turbo said that all connectors needed tweaking within the first week. After that they stayed solid. I was approaching my second anniversary on the force and hadn’t had an issue since that first one.

  “Anyway,” the chief said, motioning towards a middle-aged vampire with tanned skin and a perfect complexion who was sitting across the room, “I got a call from Preston Banks that they had a new security chief down here. Asked me to come down for introductions.”

  I stepped out of the way and let him pass. Rachel followed.

  Before I joined them, I pulled out a card and handed it to the receptionist.

  “If you want to experience something like you’ve never imagined, give me a call.”

  “I’ve been with a vampire before,” she said while rolling her eyes, “but thanks.”

  My eye twitched. “I’m not a vampire.”

  I clearly said this a little too loudly because the rest of the room went quiet and a number of vamps gave me a steady glare.

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with being a vampire,” I called out, trying to salvage the situation. “I’m just not one of them.”

  Rachel was shaking her head at me from where she was seated. Her mouth wasn’t moving, but her eyes very distinctly said, “Idiot.”

  The chatter resumed in the room.

  “Anyway,” I said more quietly, “I’m not a vampire. I’m an amalgamite.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “You’re Ian Dex?”

  “That’s right,” I said with a hint of pride. It was always nice when the ladies recognized my name. It made me feel how someone like Rembrandt or Picasso must have felt when someone recognized one of their paintings. “So, if you—”

  “You boned one of my best friends and never called her back.”

  “Oh?” I frowned. I always called the ladies the day after a tryst, unless they specifically asked me not to, of course. “That doesn’t sound like me.” I mulled it over in my head. “What’s her name?”

  “Katie Hill.”

  I remembered Katie. She was one of the ones who told me never to contact her again. This was because Katie had an identical twin named Beth who had been playing me.

  “Now, wait,” I said, holding up my hands. “That�
��s not fair. Katie walked in on me and her identical twin doing the no-no.”

  “So I heard.”

  “I had zero idea that Katie even had a twin. She never told me about her.”

  “That’s because Beth is always going behind Katie’s back and…” She paused and tilted her head. “Oh, I see. So you got played.”

  “Big time. I may be a lot of things, but I don’t cheat. Now, it’s also very rare that I get into committed relationships because of my job, but when I do, I don’t cheat.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, taking the card and looking it over. “Katie did say you were amazingly giving.”

  “She’s right,” I said with confidence. What could I say? I knew my strengths.

  “I guess we’ll see,” she replied as the chief waved me over.

  “Well, I gotta run,” I said and then stopped. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Riya.”

  I took her hand and gave it a kiss. “Pretty name.”

  “Thanks,” she said as if I were being silly.

  Most of the ladies acted this way when I did the hand-kiss thing, but it worked nearly every time. She’d remember. And, no, I didn’t send any of my amalgamite energy through the kiss either. That would take the fun of the game out of it all.

  I walked over to the table where Rachel, the chief, and Banks were seated. They were just getting up.

  “You remember Officer Dex, I assume,” the chief said.

  “I do,” he’d answered in a not-so-pleasant way as he shook my hand. “If you’ll follow me, I have requested that our new security chief meet us in the other room.”

  He took us down a winding hallway that led to an inconspicuous door. We walked through into a small conference room.

  It was full of vampires wearing security uniforms, except for a fae who stood on the opposite side. My guess was that this was their new chief.

  Being able to determine the race of a supernatural was part of my gifts as an amalgamite, along with speed, strength, ability to heal, and a plethora of other things. On top of that, being part of the PPD meant that all of my features got genetically tweaked, making me even better at all of those things. The side-effect was that I also got hornier with each bump in skill. Weird, I know, but that’s the way it was. Seeing that I had so many genetic enhancements, I was essentially the horniest dude on the planet. Fortunately, I was also a gentleman…most of the time.

  The fae was a decent-looking chick. I especially liked the way she had her red hair pinned up. It set off against her golden eyes, which seemed fitting for a casino.

  “This must be the crew from the Las Vegas Paranormal Police Department?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Banks replied.

  I found it odd that he would address her in such a formal manner. He was clearly more highly ranked than she was in the organization. Maybe he was just one of those guys who called everyone “ma’am” or “sir.”

  I shrugged.

  “I was only expecting Chief Michaels,” the fae said. A moment later she shrugged too and adjusted something she was holding. “I guess it can’t be helped.”

  Chief Michaels leaned on the table and said, “What’s that supposed to—”

  A beam of light flew from her device, hitting all three of us at once.

  Chapter 2

  The world was fuzzy and it was moving like a moon bounce.

  My thoughts were clear enough, but I felt something…odd.

  “You now belong to me,” said the fae in a strong voice, “and you will do everything I command of you. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Chief Michaels and Rachel said in unison.

  “You got it, baby,” was my response.

  The fae raised an eyebrow at me.

  Something felt incredibly wrong about all of this, and that’s coming from a guy who regularly accepted the “will do everything I command of you” declarations from succubi. But this wasn’t a succubus, and I was keenly aware that this wasn’t some kind of game that allowed the use of safe words.

  “My name is Fay,” said the fae. I chuckled and she gave me a tight glare. “Something funny?”

  I glanced at the others. Nobody else was giggling.

  “Uh…no. Sorry.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” she corrected.

  “Right, sorry, ma’am,” I said, hoping that she wasn’t calling me ma’am. I was all about trying new things, but I did have my limits. “You were saying?”

  She held her gaze on me for a couple more moments before looking at the rest of the faces.

  “Now that we have these three officers on our side, we will be able to get the rest of the PPD with us.” She tucked the device into her fanny pack. I hadn’t seen one of those in a while. “Once they’re all under our control, we’ll be able to infiltrate the rest of the supernatural community. After that, we take over the town completely.”

  There was a chorused, “Yes, ma’am.”

  The weirdest part was that I found myself chorusing with the others.

  My head began to pulse, like it was being ripped in two. Not so much like a headache, or even a migraine, but rather like I was being separated from myself. I don’t mean physically; I mean psychologically.

  As an amalgamite, I had a number of skills that others didn’t have. I’d only discovered a few so far, but those I knew about had come in handy. One thing that seemed to happen before a new skill arrived, though, was some physical discomfort, such as a headache, chest pains, the feeling like someone just kicked me in the furries…that kind of thing. It didn’t always happen that way, but it was pretty common.

  “Now you will all go back to your normal selves,” Fay directed. “When I have need of you, instructions will be given. Understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She tapped a button on the device and the world righted itself again.

  I still felt trapped under her spell, and I no longer sensed any animosity from Banks. He was now smiling at me as if we were suddenly on the same team.

  We were escorted out of the room and back down the hall.

  “We’ll be in touch,” said Banks, shaking the chief’s hand.

  “Looking forward to it,” the chief replied.

  He was?

  I gave a sideways glance at Rachel. She was nodding along with the chief, and she had a smile that spelled enthusiasm.

  Banks looked me in the eyes and I smiled and nodded, too. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t control it.

  What the hell was going on?

  Chief Michaels headed to the door with Rachel in tow.

  Riya gave me a wink as I passed on by. I winked back, but there wasn’t much oomph in it.

  There was no sexual desire.

  Zero. Zilch. None.

  This was a feeling I didn’t like at all.

  Rachel and the chief were walking ahead of me, acting like nothing had happened. I’d known them both for a couple of years and they should have been pretty freaked out right about now, but they weren’t.

  Honestly, I wasn’t freaked out about it either. Not entirely anyway. I did feel that it was very odd, and I wasn’t all that fond of having the libido of a corpse, but another part of me was finding solace in this.

  How? I don’t know. Again, it was like I was being split down the middle.

  I wanted to want Fay the fae to call the shots.

  I wanted to want to just be a foot soldier in whatever army she was building.

  I wanted to want to lay waste to whatever stood in her way.

  It wasn’t like I wanted these things, per se. It was more like whatever hocus pocus Fay did to me was making me want to want to do these things.

  But where it seemed like Rachel and the chief were a hundred percent bought-in, I wasn’t.

  Obviously I didn’t know what thoughts were running through their heads, though. I could only hope they were having the same “there’s someone in my head, but it’s not me…” contemplation that I was having, but some
thing told me they weren’t.

  They were too relaxed and…normal.

  We stepped outside and found our cars were already waiting for us. My guess was that someone had signaled that we were on our way back down.

  “See you back at the office, Chief,” Rachel said as she approached my car.

  “Say, Rachel,” I said, doing my best to look like I was feeling just fine, “I forgot something back at my condo. Why don’t you head to the office with the chief and I’ll be in shortly.”

  “You sure?”

  “No point in us both going back there,” I replied. I then felt like it’d be out of place for me to not make a naughty comment, so I added, “Unless you want to have a quickie?”

  She grimaced. “Uh, no.”

  That was both hurtful and understandable. Obviously her libido was as shot as mine.

  “Right. I’ll be in shortly.”

  She nodded and jumped into the chief’s car and they drove away.

  I was in no condition to drive, but I had to at least get out of the casino’s parking area. So I pulled onto Harmon and made a left into the Grand Desert Villas, found a secluded spot to park, and put in a call to Lydia.

  “Hey, lover,” she said, “what can I do for you?”

  My head was spinning. I could only hope it was due to a new skill being birthed.

  I already knew that I could do what I called Freeze. It was a skill that made me become cold and calculating, leaving my emotions dull. Think about the need to cut a swath through a bunch of bad guys and feel absolutely nothing while doing it. It meant zero hesitation. There was rarely a need for such a thing, obviously, but I could do it if I called on Freeze. There were other skills I’d learned, too, such as Haste, which made me really fast. And I had quite a few abilities that made me really good in the sack, too…which could include Haste, if you see what I’m saying.

  “Lydia,” I said with some effort, “I would just like to say seven-one-six-four-four-three-Dex-protocol-eleven.”

  “Password?” she replied.

  “Lovin’ the ladies.”

  “Channel secured,” she replied. “What’s up, puddin’?”