The Ian Dex Supernatural Thriller Series: Books 5 - 7 (Las Vegas Paranormal Police Department Box Sets Book 2)

by John P. Logsdon

  “Red is fine,” he snarled. “It’s not like you’ll be living long enough for it to matter anyway.”

  “Right.”

  I took a mental inventory of where everything was in the room.

  There was a razor, but it was one of those electric kinds, so that wouldn’t exactly be useful. I suppose I could offer each of them a nice clip and a flea dip, but something told me that wasn’t a great idea. My hairdryer had potential as a weapon, but I’d have to be quick if I decided to go with that. There were bottles and other stuff in the shower, but nothing out here in the open.

  Basically, I had my hands and feet, and possibly that hairdryer. Okay, I also had access to magic and fangs and such, but I didn’t like using those. They made me feel dirty. I’d always prided myself on my ability with a gun, my hand-to-hand combat skills, and my cunning.

  One of the wolves by my feet was starting to rouse, but a swift kick to the jaw put him out again. Just in case, I snapped an extra kick at the second one, too.

  Each of those strikes seemed to irk Red, and even his two lackeys were snarling at me now.

  “Before you kill me,” I said, “would it be okay if I put on a robe first? I mean, I don’t really feel comfortable grappling with you guys while my dick is flopping about, and I’d rather not be found lying in my bathroom naked when the police arrive, you know?”

  Red rubbed his chin.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said, holding back his comrades. “But make it quick. We have a few more visits to make tonight before we get paid.”

  I reached for my robe and began putting it on.

  “Anyone I know?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he replied with a snarl. “Your other officers.”

  “Only if we get there first, boss,” noted one of his lackeys.

  “Quiet!”

  I looked up, showing them what smoldering eyes looked like on a fully decked-out amalgamite.

  They shuddered in response.

  “Yeah,” I commented through gritted teeth as I tied a knot on the belt that held my robe together, “I don’t think you killing my team is going to work for me.”

  CHAPTER 3

  I knew they were all planning to attack me at once, so I’d have to make the first move if there was any chance of getting through this without suffering too much damage.

  Why did I always have to do things the hard way?

  “Open the fucking door, Ian,” Rachel said through the connector as the handle moved back and forth.

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll blow the damn thing in if you don’t,” she replied.

  “Please don’t,” I said as I saw the muscles rippling on the wolves before me. “It’ll destroy my resale value.”

  “Then you’d better get over yourself and use magic so you can get the hell out of there.”

  “I don’t like using magic, Rachel,” I replied. “You know that. Now, just give me a second so I can get everything under control in here.”

  It was a command, which I knew Rachel was fond of these days. My dark attitude had turned her somewhat submissive as of late. Not really a whips-and-chains type of submissive, but she did seem to get off on being bossed around some. It was odd for me since it used to be the other way around.

  The Admiral took my thoughts as a cue to start rising up again.

  “Stop!” I told him.

  Fortunately, he listened this time.

  Then, with lightning-fast speed, I reached out and snagged the hairdryer from its place on the wall.

  Like a ninja flinging a throwing star, I launched the appliance directly at Red.

  It was perfectly on target, flying straight toward his forehead.

  I thought for certain this was going to be like one of those awesome moves you see in action films.

  And it was…until the cord reached its maximum distance, anyway.

  It paused for a millisecond in mid-air before flying back at me.

  “What the fuck, dude?” shrieked The Admiral as the hairdryer collided with him and his downstairs neighbors.

  I grunted and crumbled to the ground.

  Red began laughing uncontrollably. His goons joined in on the merriment. I’d sufficed in racking myself, which the wolves clearly found hilarious.

  “What a moron,” Red howled through bouts of laughter. “We should just stand over here and let this dickhead kill himself!”

  The others laughed even louder at that.

  “What happened, Ian?” Rachel yelled through the connector.

  “Nothing,” I whimpered.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t sound fine.”

  It took a fair bit of effort, but I stood back up and wobbled on my feet for a moment. Okay, so I wasn’t exactly fine. It’s amazing how getting knocked in the marbles can take you from being a powerful force of mayhem to a groveling mass of sadness.

  “Take your time, dude,” Red said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “We can wait to kill you. Besides, maybe you’ll accidentally shove your toothbrush up your own ass next or something!”

  I frowned at him, thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to use magic on him and his stupid cohorts. A nice energy spell would turn their laughs into screams, after all.

  It was tempting.

  Again, though, I wouldn’t go there unless I had absolutely no other choice.

  If the situation were truly bad enough for me to fear for my life, I’d go with magic in a heartbeat. It wasn’t.

  Yeah, the hairdryer thing was an oopsie.

  Shit happens.

  But I honestly wasn’t worried about these idiots killing me. I was concerned Rachel may be hurt by them, but not me. Of course, if they knocked me out, I wouldn’t be able to help her in any way.

  I was going to need to make a move.

  “Okay, assholes,” I spat while faking the need to reach out for the door handle to keep myself steady, “which one of you wants to die first?”

  “Me,” groaned The Admiral.

  “Dude, shut the fuck up!”

  Red’s laughter slowed, but his face was still lit up.

  “Oooh,” he said, stringing on his crew, “we’re so scared.”

  I smiled at him.

  “I love overconfidence,” I remarked. “It makes it so damn easy to beat people at their own game.”

  Red obviously caught on to the fact that something was suddenly amiss because he stopped laughing completely. He then growled at his goons until they stopped laughing as well.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “Just that you’re all idiots,” I replied, opening the door and slamming it behind me.

  It hadn’t given us much time, especially since the door locked from the inside, but it allowed me to grab Boomy from his holster while Rachel got her hands glowing.

  Boomy, my Desert Eagle .50 caliber gun, glistened under the overhead lights. I loved him like a son. It was because he was such a badass that I’d had to name him.

  Before you ask, yes, I sometimes talked to Boomy.

  And, no, he did not talk back.

  The door latch to the bathroom turned and three wolves fought to get out at the same time.

  “Me first, idiots,” yelled Red as he stepped out to meet his demise.

  Boomy was not forgiving.

  When a breaker bullet left my gun, it did so with vicious intentions. Breaker bullets were the projectile of choice for the Vegas PPD because they contained shards of wood and silver, and they also housed negation strands. When the bullet struck someone, these items launched throughout the body explosively. The wood would inevitably strike the heart of a vampire, killing them; the silver would fly through a werewolf and take them out; and the negation strands worked swell against magic users. You didn’t really need anything special to kill a pixie because the .50 caliber bullet would completely annihilate one of those little bastards.

  Some officers had started adopting a new type of project
ile that was growing in popularity among Retrievers. Those were the cops from the Netherworld who came topside to bring back supers who had outstayed their welcome. They’d been using Death Nails, which were similar to breakers, but they looked more like, well, nails. One nice thing about those was that you could drive them into a person by hand. You didn’t have to fire them. But they were yet to be approved for use by non-Retrievers.

  Fortunately, Rachel held her magic in check, obviously noting that my breakers had done a fine job of eradicating Red and his two goons. I really didn’t want fireballs and ice storms flying through my condo.

  “What about the two you knocked out?” she asked. “Are they still alive?”

  I nodded at her.

  “Cuff them and put in a call to Lydia to have Portman send a crew out to pick everyone up,” I said as I rummaged through Red’s pockets. There was nothing. Not even a cell phone. Finally, in his hip pocket, I found a set of car keys. “We’ve got keys. The remote will help us find the car. Hopefully there’ll be something in there we can use.”

  “Good,” replied Rachel. “Lydia said Portman will have some folks on the way. I told her the door was open and that we’d probably be gone before they got here.”

  “Yep,” I agreed. Then I gave her a kiss. “We’ll have to finish what we started in the shower later, okay?”

  She gave me a disturbed look. “Well, it’s not like I’m interested in doing it now.”

  “Me either,” agreed The Admiral in a sullen voice.

  CHAPTER 4

  A ccording to Red’s key fob, his car was a Mercedes of some sort, but I didn’t know what model. I pressed the ‘panic’ button, hoping to hear the horn blare on his car.

  Nothing.

  “Maybe his car is in the garage,” Rachel said, leading the way.

  We walked around, hitting the button, but nothing sounded. Finally we headed outside and crossed the street toward Tommy Rocker’s, thinking maybe the goons parked that way.

  Still nothing.

  “Maybe it’s dead,” I stated, looking at the fob.

  “Or he disabled it somehow,” suggested Rachel. “Either way, that’s not going to do us any good.”

  “Guess not, which really…” I paused as I glanced up and saw a beat-up white ’76 Impala. I flipped over the fob and spotted a white ‘i’ painted on it. Yes, it was even in lowercase. “Huh,” I sniffed, showing the fob to Rachel.

  “What kind of idiot carries around an electronic key fob for a Mercedes when they drive a junker like that?”

  I was thinking the same thing. Clearly it couldn’t be used to open the car door, unless he’d gotten someone from Mercedes to install an alarm for him. I highly doubted they’d comply with such a request.

  No, something else was going on.

  “Maybe it’s his wife’s?”

  Rachel gave me a look. “So he drives a piece of shit like this and she gets a Mercedes?”

  “Could be that he’s divorced.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” she admitted with a half nod while staring at the car. “Poor bastard.”

  “Yeah,” I scoffed, remembering his intention to kill us both. “Well, he’s in a better place now.”

  Rachel chuckled and followed me to the car.

  I didn’t believe it would actually be locked, but it was. What could he possibly have in this old wreck that anyone would want?

  After cracking open the doors, we started going through the car, piece by piece. There was nothing in the front or back, so we opened the trunk, fully expecting to see a body in there.

  We weren’t disappointed.

  There was most certainly a body in there, but it was alive, and it looked pretty pissed off.

  “Turbo?” I said, staring down at the little pixie who worked as the lead tech for the PPD. He was wearing his standard police officer’s uniform and everything. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Those fucking dildo fondlers locked me up in here!” he blurted. Then he growled to himself while making fists with both hands. “If I get my hands on those rump rangers, I’ll sign them up for the Butt Plug of the Month Club!”

  While it was absolutely normal for pixies to swear like sailors and to come up with creative names to call people, it was totally out of character for Turbo. He was more the nerd type of pixie than the cursing type. For him to be spewing out vulgarities meant he was incredibly fired up.

  “Did they get you at your house?” asked Rachel.

  “Of course they got me at my house, you slutty jizz target,” he spat back, but then he slapped a hand over his mouth as his eyes went wide. Finally, he took his hand away and said, “I’m sooo sorry I just said that.”

  Rachel was typically not the type who tolerated being spoken to in such a way. To be fair, she had requested that I call her names as of late while we were roleplaying, but that was an anomaly due to our new situation. With other people, though, she was known to leave a shoe in your ass if you treated her with anything less than respect.

  Fortunately for Turbo, she understood he was merely flustered and therefore let it go.

  “It’s all right,” she said, reaching out and patting him on his head gently. “I know you didn’t mean it.”

  Both Turbo and I sighed in relief.

  “Thanks,” he said, lucky to still be in one piece.

  “What I don’t understand,” I said while eyeing the pixie, “is why Red didn’t just kill you? Seems like that would have been his smartest move.”

  “Who’s Red?” asked Turbo as he scratched his head in thought.

  “That’s the name I’m calling the werewolf who had red eyes.”

  “Ah, him.” Turbo shrugged. “I don’t know. I couldn’t really hear them while I was stuck in the trunk. There was a lot of mumbles and growls, but nothing I could make out.” He then held up a finger. “They grabbed me just after I left my house to head into work. Shoved me in his pocket. Fucking clit thumber.” He scowled for a moment. “Anyway, I could hear him from inside that pocket, and he did mention something about collateral.”

  Maybe that meant Red had planned to use Turbo as a bargaining chip to get to me, should the need arise? Or maybe he needed to keep one of us alive so his employer couldn’t just up and kill him when the job was done? Honestly, I wasn’t sure what the logic was there, but I couldn’t think of any other reason to keep Turbo around.

  “I don’t know,” I said, looking down at the keys again. “I don’t suppose you have a clue why this guy was carrying around a Mercedes key fob, do you?”

  “No,” Turbo replied, waving at me to bring it closer to him. “Hmmm…the side is slightly opened.” He pulled out a tiny flashlight and looked inside. “There’s another key in there.”

  “For what?”

  “How should I know, you gargantuan nipple pimple?” he fumed, and then he softened again. “Dang it! I’m sorry.” He breathed out heavily. “I have to relax.”

  “It’s cool, man,” I said. “Why don’t you come out of there and get some fresh air?”

  He pointed at his ankle. There was a little chain attached to it.

  “Oh, shit,” I said. “I didn’t see that before.”

  “I would have just picked the lock,” he said, “but there isn’t one. The guy connected it and then magic sealed it in place.”

  Rachel leaned in and fired off a little spell that broke the device from Turbo’s leg, freeing him. He flew out and zipped around the area like a little bird who had just tasted flight for the first time.

  “Thanks, Rachel,” he said as he flew back and landed on my shoulder. “I really didn’t want to spend the rest of my days in the back of a crap car like that.”

  I turned to my partner.

  “Good thing we decided to look through the car,” I said via the connector, not wanting Turbo to think about how he might have actually died in there. “That would have been a nasty way to go.”

  “Quite,” she agreed.

  “Well,” I said aloud,
“we should probably—”

  “Chief,” came the voice of Chuck, one of my other officers, “Griff and I need help pronto. We’re being attacked by something…uh…well!”

  “Werewolves?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he replied. “Definitely not werewolves.”

  “Right. Vampires, then?”

  “I am a vampire, Chief,” Chuck replied. “I think I might recognize those without much fuss.”

  “Sorry,” I said, taking a breath while realizing I was being an idiot. “We just got attacked by werewolves who were apparently hired to assassinate us.”

  “Hopefully they didn’t succeed,” Chuck remarked.

  “Funny. So what are you dealing with, then?”

  “Are you sitting down?” Griff asked before Chuck could reply.

  “No.”

  “Well, you might wish to do so,” Griff replied after a moment. “From what I’m seeing here, I believe we may be dealing with your…brothers.”

  I sat down.

  CHAPTER 5

  M y brothers? How would that even be possible? Unless we were all split up when we were kids or something. But wouldn’t we have known about each other somehow? Perhaps I wasn't the only one who was given a trust fund from my parents after all. Having a few wealthy dudes who all had similar backgrounds would be too coincidental and would definitely warrant investigation.

  I explained the claim to Rachel and Turbo, and then patched them in on the call.

  “Sorry, guys,” I said as I rubbed my temples, “did you say you saw my brothers?”

  “They’re not dead ringers for you, Chief,” Chuck answered, “but they’re casting spells, their fangs are out, and they’ve got that werewolf eyes thing going.”

  “And they are also clothed in fine attire,” Griff added.

  So they were amalgamites.

  Well, damn.

  I thought I was the only one.

  “Do they look like me at all?”

  “Just in that they’re attractive and well-dressed,” Griff answered.