Chapter 4
Why Do Aliens Care about Assholes?
WTF had just happened?
Yordan watched the Scotsman stride out of the locker room like a god finished with his mortal acolytes. He spun on his heel and walked his cute ass straight out before Yordan could even think to shut his mouth.
He shouldn’t have found that sexy. Damn it, everything about the bureaucrat ought to disgust him. But the man had brought him food and beer and had somehow turned Yordan’s arrogant posturing into a put-up-or-shut-up promotion.
And he was perverted enough to find that sexy as hell.
The man had sat here with a hard-on—yes, he’d noticed that despite the clever placement of Kit’s hands—and listened to Yordan’s blathering criticism.
He’d let Yordan go on and then showed him exactly how much of an idiot he was.
And then he’d nailed Yordan with more work and more responsibility.
Put up or shut up. The perfect, no-nonsense response to a blowhard.
Hard not to respect that in a man. And given the man’s broad Scottish good looks, intelligent green eyes, and pert rear end... Well, now Yordan was the one sporting a hard-on.
He leaned down and took a swig of the beer. Damn, it was good. And the meat casserole? Fantastic.
He dropped down onto the bench where McHottie had been sitting and picked up the plate.
The food was welcome, the beer warming by the second, but he didn’t care.
Compared to the swill they’d had in the Everglades, this was ambrosia.
He leaned back as he chewed, his mind quieting as his food settled. He was clean, warm, and now fed.
This was contentment, so long as he didn’t think too deeply about anything but being clean, warm, and fed.
“It is time for your appointment now,” a sibilant voice said.
Yordan’s eyes jerked open as a translucent alien walked in. The man (creature?) was naked and see-through, except for the remains of his last meal floating somewhere around his right calf. There wasn’t a lot that grossed Yordan out, but that was downright unsettling.
Gelpack worked as Wulf, Inc.’s shrink, though he had no official credentials. The alien had shown up one day like the Silver Surfer, and the higher-ups had given him an office on the second floor. Yordan did his best to avoid the alien, but his opportunity to duck away was lost.
Served him right for loitering naked in the locker room with lunch and a beer. Still, he did his best to escape.
“Crap, Gelpack. Get out of here. Let me get dressed, and we can meet in your office like civilized people.”
“Your appointment time is now,” Gelpack answered. His voice held no inflection. None of the usual cues to help a man read his opponent. Gelpack was a fluid outline of a body with fried chicken in his leg. And he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Fine,” Yordan grumbled. “What do you want?” He stuffed a huge bite of casserole into his mouth so he wouldn’t be able to answer whatever question came at him.
God, this casserole was delicious.
“What behaviors make an asshole?”
“Wha—?” The word was cut off as he swallowed his food. “What?”
“This word is used often by you and others. There are synonyms if you would prefer to define one of those. Dickhead. Asswipe. Prick. The linguistic obsession with anatomy proximal to the pelvis is well-documented.”
“I know the synonyms,” he grumbled. Then, as a way to delay, he fumbled through a closet in the corner.
It was filled with Wulf, Inc. attire, and Yordan pulled on a pair of sweatpants.
The clothes he’d worn here would have to be burned unless he wanted the Swamp Thing moniker to stick. Which he didn’t.
Once he was dressed, he paused a moment and pondered his options.
He could find some excuse to delay, but Gelpack was well-known for following recalcitrant people everywhere.
The bathroom, the bedroom, the middle of a fucking battle.
He’d stand exactly one foot away day and night until the “subject” broke.
One stupidly stubborn werewolf had started punching the creature.
But beating on a thing made of gel was worse than useless.
Gelpack absorbed all blows, sealed up all cuts as if they’d never been, and worse, his residue ate like acid on the skin. Fire didn’t even seem to harm him.
Which meant Yordan’s choices were to give in to the creature’s questions or live with a gel shadow forever. Unless distraction worked.
“Did McBastard send you in here?”
“Who is McBastard?”
“McNabb. He just left. Did he send you to me?”
“Alpha Gummy put you on my calendar.”
Oh yeah. Gummy had said he was going to do that. “And he called me an asshole?”
Silence.
“What did he say about me?”
Silence.
Fuck it. He knew this game. He’d used it many times on new puppies. You stood there while they twisted in the wind with delay after evasion. Eventually, they got tired and answered the question.
Which was what Yordan was going to have to do.
“Fine. What do you want to know?”
“Please define the behaviors that make an asshole.”
There were a lot of smart-ass responses he could make, but once again, Gelpack could out-patience a rock. Yordan decided to give the question a serious answer.
“Anything that intentionally hurts or endangers another person.” And he wasn’t so sure on the intentional part.
“How many such actions are necessary to become an asshole?”
Again, there was no emotion in the question. It could have been asked by a computer. Maybe that was what Gelpack was. Either way, Yordan had no answer.
“How the fuck do I know? It depends on how often and on how serious the asinine things are.”
Gelpack didn’t respond, but then again, he didn’t really need to.
The next question was obvious. Had Yordan done things without regard to other people’s feelings or the injuries that might occur?
Of course, yes. Had he intended for Joey to get thrown into a tree?
No. But he’d lit a fuse when he’d poked at Fuse.
And never had a guy’s handle been more accurate.
Then he’d sat back and laughed as Joey had landed hard against a tree and their day’s work had turned into fighting gators in a swamp.
And that was the most recent example of him being a dick.
All during the long drive up from Florida, Yordan had stewed on what he’d been doing. Gummy was right. He’d never been this reckless before, and yet the last three months had seen him becoming increasingly obnoxious.
The question was, why?
“I’ve been feeling twitchy lately,” he finally confessed. “Like an itch right at the base of my brain. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know. I just keep thinking about everyone who has died.”
They’d lost so many in the past eighteen months.
Not all of them died. In fact, most of them opted out after facing ghouls and psycho fairies, monsters of every ilk and mundanes who thought up every stupid excuse not to see what was right in front of their noses.
So many of their fighting forces had simply thrown up their hands and called it quits.
They wanted to settle down, have families, and not risk their lives on the latest demon doll that caught the public consciousness.
Thanks to the internet, new scary monsters were popping up everywhere, and whack-a-demigod got old really fast.
Yordan had considered stopping as well, but unlike the others, he had no one to go home to, no family outside of Wulf, Inc.
His mother and older brother were long dead, both from overdoses.
He’d never known his father. Even the town he’d grown up in had been sucked into the Wisconsin dead zone.
The best thing that had ever happened to him was getting bit by a preteen werewolf who’d thrown himself into horror flicks until he’d become one.
Both of them had been scooped up into Wulf, Inc., and suddenly, Yordan and Coffee (real name Dwayne) had an entire werewolf family. They’d both thrived here, and while Yordan had worked with Gummy, Coffee had joined Nero’s elite pack.
Coffee died a few weeks before the Wisconsin black hole of death appeared. Which meant Yordan had no close friends left except Gummy, who was now calling him an asshole.
Hell, was he a loser or what?
“I’m not going to be a dick anymore, okay?
” He didn’t exactly know what he was going to do or how he was going to apologize to Gummy, but he wasn’t going to continue like this.
Twitchy, acting out, and never thinking beyond the boom in the next gator mound.
He was too old to be acting like a moody teenager.
But what was he going to do? He felt so alone sometimes that causing an adrenaline rush—even a stupid one—was the only way to fill the emptiness.
He finished off the last of the beer. Maybe figuring out what fairy bullshit was going on at the motor pool would distract him for a bit.
And while he was doing that, he was going to decide whether it was time to quit Wulf and find a gay bar somewhere.
Maybe one in Scotland with a whole bunch of redheads with pert behinds.
He looked back at Gelpack. “Any other questions?”
“Thank you for your time. I will let you know if I require more definitions.”
Oh joy.