Of Gods & Tigers: Discord Jones, #8

By Gayla Drummond

When a case involving alien abductions lands in her lap, Discord's skeptical that the perps are really extraterrestrials.

Her suspicion proves correct when Logan's abducted. A rescue attempt leaves Discord and Leglin trapped in a pocket realm.

Her priorities are simple: Find Logan and return home.

Then Sal pays a visit and it becomes clear the situation is life or death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Katarr Kanticles Press
• Release date: Oct 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393113270

Gayla Drummond

Author and rescue advocate. Metal Dog. Adopt, don't shop!

Book preview

One

A picture containing weapon, gun Description automatically generated

I’m sorry, I’m not certain I heard that correctly. Did you say—

My newest client interrupted me. Aliens. Little gray men, but they weren’t little and didn’t have the big, all-black eyes. They had noses and lips too.

I see. I had to look at my notepad to keep from laughing, and wrote WTF, aliens?! on it. Can you give me a better description?

Are you laughing at me? The woman, one Leslie Ringer—and wasn’t that a last name to be saddled with?—was glaring at me when I looked across my desk. She was a tiny thing with an unfortunate orange beehive hairdo that overpowered her triangular face. The 1960s-era hairstyle was at odds with her apparent age of perhaps thirty. The police laughed at me. I’m telling the truth.

Who did you speak to at the...

Detective Schumacher. Ms. Ringer kept glaring. He sent me here. To you. Your boss didn’t laugh at me.

Because Mr. Whitehaven had a better poker face than I did. I was so going to call Schumacher as soon as she left, and give him an earful. Sending me crazy cases was not cool. I’m not laughing at you, ma’am. Can you please describe the aliens in as much detail as possible?

She proceeded to do so, her tone sharp and her eyes narrowed. I took notes, wondering if this were going to be my life from now on. There were worse things than working on alien abduction cases, sure, but right at the moment, I couldn’t think of any.

Then again, any case was better than none, and after a second week spent doing zero detective work, I was sick of being sidelined. My new training arena was currently undergoing repairs, since it had suffered from the bulk of my frustrations. And you were in your backyard when they beamed you up?

Yes. She rattled off her address, and I wrote it down, though I could’ve asked Tabitha for it, since our receptionist collected client info with their payments.

I carefully didn’t ask if she’d been probed. Fortunately, Ms. Ringer didn’t offer that information. After her rather flushed-face description of the aliens as beautiful, gray-skinned humanoids—kind of like elves, but with gray skin, and black eyes and hair. Oh, and their ears were pointy like elves’ ears.—I didn’t want particulars on what had happened while she was aboard their spaceship.

All right, I’ll have to do some research before...

She interrupted me again. Don’t you need to collect evidence from my backyard? There’s a scorched spot, where the beam burned the grass.

Oh. Yes, we will need to do that. Um, I glanced at the door of my office, wishing someone would interrupt. No such luck. I’ll be out around two, if that’s convenient?

Ms. Ringer nodded, satisfied. A moment later, I was ushering her out of my office and toward the elevator. Arcane Solutions had moved. Mr. Whitehaven’s decision that the old office building wouldn’t be large, or secure, enough had been a slight shock. The bigger shock had been our new location. We were on the third floor of the Andraste Building, owned by none other than Prince Snootypants himself. One bonus: It shaved off ten minutes of our drive to work. Once the doors shut, I turned around to survey the reception area and loosed a loud sigh. Are you freaking kidding me?

Tabitha’s reception desk faced the elevator. You had to pass it to reach the offices’ doors, of which there were two on both sides of the hallway, with Mr. Whitehaven’s as a cap at the end. Another hallway circled the elevator’s position, and led to our conference room, which doubled as our War Room, as well as restrooms, storage, and a break room.

I did like having a bigger office, especially since Logan was sharing with me. Kate had her own across from ours, and to Dane’s joy, he’d gotten the one next to hers, along with a promotion to full-fledged PI. Which left one office empty, and my fingers were crossed on who would end up there after our rather adventurous weekend getaway two weeks prior.

What? Logan stopped, forcing Dane to as well. They simply stood there, holding a heavy, over-stuffed sofa and blocking the doorway of Kate’s office.

New client claims she was abducted by aliens. Not little gray men either. Gorgeous, elf-like aliens. I walked over to one of the couches meant for clients to wait on, and plopped down. Remind me to call Schumacher. This is his fault.

You were bitching last night about not being assigned a case. Now you have one. Dane jiggled his end of the sofa. Can we get this in place?

I wasn’t bitching. Even Tabitha looked up, her eyebrows rising along with Logan’s and Dane’s. Fine, I was bitching.

A Cordi without cases to work on was a cranky Cordi. I wasn’t much fun to be around lately, and had blasted a section of the stone wall around my arena to dust and pebbles the morning before. No one had been on the other side, and frankly, the destruction hadn’t done a thing to relieve my frustration.

Even Logan was growing tired of my whining. I didn’t blame him, since he heard it constantly. He’d taken to changing the subject each time I started griping. Bitching. Whatever.

Sofa? Dane said, and the two men wrangled it through Kate’s office door, disappearing from sight. Tabitha folded her arms and leaned on her desk.

Do you think it might really be aliens?

I blinked, not having expected such a question from a supe. I know there’s a history of people claiming to have been abducted by little gray men from outer space, but considering magic’s back and didn’t actually totally leave anyway, no, I don’t think it’s real aliens.

Oh. She shrugged, sat up, and began tapping at her keyboard again. I guess you’re right.

I eyed the top of her head, or rather, the faux zebra ears adorning it. Do supes have tales about alien abductions?

We pretty much always knew who abducted our people. Logan walked out of Kate’s office, Dane following. It was either elves, or other unfriendly supes.

Elves, elves, elves. Somehow, elves were always involved. Two floors above us, Thorandryll was probably busy with his plan for city domination. I mean, being elected the next mayor of Santo Trueno. A short ride up the elevator was far more convenient than visiting his sidhe. Even though I’d been doing my best to avoid him as much as possible, he was the head honcho of the local elven population, if I discounted his mother. Which I preferred to do. Ergo, Thorandryll was the best guy to question to discover if any elves were behaving badly. I sighed. Guess I’ll go upstairs.

Do you want me to go with you? Logan glanced at the boxes of office furnishings piled to either side of the boss’s office door. Whitehaven had decided our old office furniture wasn’t fancy enough for the new digs, which meant all new furniture. Logan and Dane had volunteered to put stuff together or bring up the things that didn’t require assembly. My boyfriend’s fingers twitched as I watched, signaling his eagerness to build things.

They still had quite a bit of work to do, so I shook my head. That’s okay. I can handle him.

Don’t blast him, Dane advised. If you do, they’ll just run a story about ‘trouble in paradise’ or something.

My scowl made him laugh. Avoiding Thorandryll hadn’t been successful at stemming the tide of articles about our supposed romance. The public consensus was that we were keeping it on the down low to surprise everyone with an engagement announcement.

How people were coming to that conclusion had me stumped. I couldn’t even figure out exactly why people were so freaking fascinated by the idea of the two of us being a couple. Or why they kept on about there being an us since we hadn’t been photographed together since New Year’s Eve. That had been a fake date thing anyway. I’d owed him dinner for changing me back to myself after having been cursed into the shape of a dog.

I’d avoided him at his brother’s first adoption event, since there’d been reporters present. Kethyrdryll had agreed to take on the huge task of animal rescue, and was doing a damn fine job of it. Such a fine job, I didn’t even care that Thorandryll had claimed credit for the idea. It had been my idea, when he’d offered me a gift after we’d worked out an alliance deal.

I’ll be back. I got up and headed for the elevator. Having to use it was another mild irritant; we’d had to go through security clearance checks, and I’d learned the building was warded against psychics as well as other threats. Some magical interfacing had been necessary to allow me to teleport onto our floor, and out of the building. I’d agreed because being able to was convenient, and both the boss and Kate had kept watch over the process to make certain nothing else was done.

In the elevator, I punched the correct button and crossed my arms as the doors slid shut. Aliens. Hmph.

While I did believe aliens could exist, thanks to information from Kethyrdryll, I couldn’t think of any good reason aliens would come back to Earth just to snatch, probe, and return people. Plus, there were better suspects available who were perfectly capable of creating illusions, and big enough jerks to play on human fears and fantasies.

The elevator doors slid open, revealing an exact copy of our office floor, though decorated far more grandly. I stepped off the elevator and headed for the reception desk. There were people waiting in the seating area, but I ignored them in spite of a few startled looks of recognition.

I, however, didn’t recognize the lovely elf woman sitting behind the desk. It wasn’t as though I’d met every elf in town. Hi, I need to see Thorandryll.

She raised her azure eyes and smiled, revealing perfect teeth. Welcome, Lady Discord. My sincere apologies, but His Highness is in a meeting. If you’d like to wait, I’ll inform him...

Perhaps I may be of assistance? Another elf, male this time, had approached. His brown hair was liberally streaked with green, and he looked vaguely familiar. He smiled and executed a half-bow. I am Salaristil, my lady. I’m currently in charge of building security.

Oh, I remembered him now. He’d been one of the three elves on guard when the psycho psychic gang had broken into Thorandryll’s sidhe. He hadn’t been present during our security clearance appointment. Thank you, but I’m not certain you’ll be able to. I have some questions about, uh, I remembered the humans behind me and grimaced, something.

I will attempt to answer them, and if unable to do so, will inform His Highness that you are here and wish to speak with him. Would that be satisfactory?

Deciding that was the best offer I was likely to get immediately, I nodded. Sure.

If you’ll come this way? Salaristil gestured for me to follow him. I thanked the receptionist before becoming his shadow. He led me to the office on the left of the end one, or the same one I occupied two floors below. Please, have a seat.

Since he indicated the little seating area arranged on the left side of his office, I picked a chair and sat. The elf chose a chair directly across from me. Would you care for refreshment?

No, thank you.

Quite welcome. Now, what questions have you?

I hesitated, not having asked case-related questions of anyone but Thorandryll or Kethyrdryll before. There had been other elves present from time to time though, and I’d never heard of any of them sharing what they’d overheard. This is confidential.

Of course.

All righty then. I sat back. I have a new case, and the client claims she was abducted by aliens.

Aliens. Salaristil allowed one eyebrow to rise slightly. Actual not-of-this-planet beings?

That’s what she thinks. Me, not so much. I think maybe someone’s playing games. I’d learned that elves had a history of abducting human women to be their love slaves.

Ah. So of course, my people came to mind. For a second, I felt like squirming as his pale green eyes narrowed, but the elf smiled. Logical. In general, we are quite skilled with illusions.

Well, yeah, but also, she basically described her alien abductors as gray-skinned elves, with black eyes and hair. I shrugged. So...

Salaristil’s face lost all suggestion of expression. That, however, is illogical.

I resisted the urge to ask him if he watched reruns of old science fiction shows and knew how much he sounded like a certain alien himself. Plus, he had the pointy ears. How so?

It wouldn’t be intelligent to simply change the color of our skin, eyes, and hair. If elves were involved, they would create illusions to fulfill human expectations.

So they’d make themselves look like little gray men, with the huge black eyes, bald heads, etc. I should’ve thought of that myself. My personal opinions of Thorandryll and his mother aside, elves weren’t stupid. Right. It’s not elves.

I don’t believe so, however, I will make inquiries and inform you of my findings. And I do thank you for bringing this to my attention, my lady. The timing of such a claim seems a bit suspicious, considering His Highness is vying for political office, and is the first, ah, supe to do so. A tiny line had formed between his eyebrows.

Guess so. I hadn’t considered that view, but why would I? I didn’t care if Prince Snootypants won his run at political office, though I had kind of promised I’d vote for him. Salaristil’s take on it at least gave my case the potential to become more interesting. I’ll let you know if I discover anything that points toward political sabotage.

The elf’s smile returned. "Thank you, my