Under the Nocturne City Moon

The semi gray, hazy dusk that greeted Henry as he stepped off of the streetcar and onto the litter strewn pavement was the closest thing Nocturne City got to actual daylight. The limited solar exposure and almost perpetual night really only impacted the city's human population, of which Henry was (well mostly) a member, to any real degree though Henry himself was used to it by this point. To most of the city's non-human residents; the demons, vampires and other assorted supernatural monstrosities that called these twisted streets home, the nearly forever nighttime suited them down to the ground. He fished a crumpled pack of filter-less Brimstone cigarettes from the breast pocket of his black flannel suit and patted one out. Placing it between his lips he muttered the Egyptian word for light "nur" under his breath and a small spark of flame leapt from his fingertips to the end of the Brimstone allowing him to puff the cigarette to life. Nobody seemed to take any notice of his actions. Magic was cheap and plentiful in this town and a gumshoe lighting a smoke with just his fingertips was hardly enough to draw a crowd. Henry adjusted the battered fedora on his head and made his way up the darkening street.

"Looking for a date, handsome?" Purred a voice from the shadows as a pale streetwalker lounged in a doorway trying to look as alluring as possible without actually letting any part of her body come into contact with the pale imitation of direct sunlight that was still hanging about or smiling widely enough that he got a gander at her canines.

"Sorry, dollface." Henry said with a smile and a tip of his hat as he passed. "I'm on the clock at the moment myself."

She snarled a bit in disappointment but didn't pursue the matter. It wasn't that she wasn't a looker mind you or that Henry was speciesist in any way. He knew plenty of vampires in this burg. He also wasn't some wide-eyed rube straight out of the portal either. Nocturne City had plenty of undead working girls and most of them would happily do things to a man's dick for a buck that a living gal simply lacked the strength to, but Henry also knew that this early in the evening, a vamp's thoughts were hyper focused on breakfast and he had no intention of losing a few pints just so she could get her own heart pumping for the night. He also wasn't lying about being on the clock either. He was on his way to meet a client about a case and it was never a good idea to keep demons or paying customers waiting for long. He made a right onto Bleake Ave and headed towards the brightest fairy-lit sign on the block. It depicted a large beast with a lion's body, a moving scorpion's tail and enormous batlike wings which also appeared to flap slowly in place while purple smoke poured out of its nostrils. In curved, glowing letters beneath the creature were the words "CHIMERA LABORATORIES INC." Henry reached out his fingertips and drew a complex magical sygil on the surface of the thin stone touchpad right beside the glass door. A few moments later a squeaky, high pitched and highly annoyed sounding voice snapped.

"READ THE SIGN, YA MOOK! WE'RE CLOSED!" from the touchpad.

"Heya, Snooky." Henry said to the voice which, he knew from experience, belonged to a perpetually exasperated imp who was the personal secretary of the imp he was actually here to see. "It's Henry Dexter. I got a meeting with your boss in ten minutes."

A slight tinkling sound could be heard faintly as the magical lock unfastened itself and Henry was granted access to the lobby. He crushed out his cigarette before he entered and took his hat off as he did so. Snooky, the imp he'd been speaking to, sat on a large pile of phonebooks on an office chair sized for a human. Her skin was a vibrant red and she wore a tight little quasi professional looking number which was designed to show off her magically enhanced ass that she was so terribly proud of.

"Sorry about that, Mistah Dextah." she said as she filed her razor sharp black fingernails on what looked like a piece of actual steel. "It's been a freakin' zoo around here today."

"You make literal chimeras around here, Snook. Ain't every day basically a zoo?"

The imp rolled her eyes hard at the so-called joke and seemed about to reply when the red leather door behind her opened up and a young, curvaceous brunette exited giggling and wiping the corners of her mouth. Her lipstick was smeared and her shirt buttoned incorrectly (though as topheavy as she was the buttons not in use were probably relishing the break) and her skirt was too short to hide the dusty spots on her knees which were painfully visible to all on her black silk stockings.

"Oopsie." she said wiping her mouth a bit more forcefully now. "Didn't realize we had company." and then made her way quickly towards the bathroom door. Snooky rolled her yellow, vertically slitted eyes as the other woman departed.

"I'm guessing Mr. Mezzryk will see you now." she said with a sardonic grin.

"Guessing he'll be in a pretty good mood too." Dexter quipped as he made his way through the red leather door.

Mezzryk was also an imp though his skin had more of an orange-yellowish tint to it and his eyes and horns were dark red as opposed to yellow. His flapping leathery demon wings kept his chubby four foot body afloat as he hovered by his office bar pouring himself a glass of bourbon.

"There he is!" he said with a toothy grin and took out a second glass for Henry and began to fill it. He was still in his shirtsleeves though he'd managed to pull his suspenders back up and make a half assed attempt to tuck his shirt back in. His fly was still partially down but Henry was a pal and didn't point it out to him. He accepted the glass of whiskey and took a seat across from Mezzryk's large wooden desk which, Henry was almost positive, the office girl had just been kneeling beneath moments before.

"So what's the skinny, Mezzryk?" Henry asked as he took his seat. "Your message said it was urgent."

"Course it's urgent, Dex. I'm a busy man. You're a busy man. I wouldn't have called you if it wasn't about a job."

"What kind of job?"

"Your kinda job. A detective job. Why in the name of Beelzebub's ballsack would anybody in this two bit town call Henry fucking Dexter if they didn't need a demonologist detective?"

"You could be getting sentimental in your old age." Henry said with a wry grin.

"Bite your fucking tongue and who're you callin' old, flatfoot? I'll have you know I don't look a day over 612!" he sipped his whiskey laughing. "And Imps don't do sentimental."

"You're breaking my heart over here, Mezz. I thought you and that little office gal that just shuffled out of here were really gonna make it work."

The demon threw back his head and laughed out loud at that. "What can I say, Henry? I'm a sucker for nice gams, a great pair of tits and I love me some performance review season."

"Not exactly new information, Mezz. So what's the job?"

"See!" Mezzryk exclaimed. "Straight to business with this guy! Love it! We had an attempted break in last night. Inside job I'm absolutely sure of it."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because they tried to get in using an employee arcane entrance code but it didn't work."

"If it didn't work what's the trouble?"

"The trouble is that someone managed to get their hands on one of our employee's AECs but didn't know we mystically key them to the individual and they could come back and try again."

"If someone who works for you gave them the code why wouldn't they have told them they needed to physically be here to open the door for them? That, to me, sounds less like an inside job and more like one of your people is being watched or followed."

"See! This is why you're the detective."

"So what's the real worry about this attempted break in?" he asked taking a sip of his bourbon. "A failed burglary attempt where nothing actually got stolen if it was even a burglary at all? No actual threats made against any of your people that you know of? It doesn't add up why you'd come to me with something like this. Why not go to the cops?"

"Why would I go to those joker's instead of my old pal, Henry Dexter huh?"

"Because I charge an hourly rate and the NCPD doesn't."

Mezzryk shook his jowly head and grumbled. "Alright, alright. You always were too damned smart for a fucking mortal. It's like this, the geniuses at the NCPD think I'm lying about the attempted break in last night. They practically accused me of having one of my people use someone else's code to make it look like someone tried to get in here last night."

"Nocturne City cops aren't the brightest but they're not that stupid. Why would they think you tried to fake a break in at your own place of business? They'd have to have a reason."

"Between you and me, Dex? It's because they're fucking amateurs who've got a homicide they can't solve and they're grasping for straws. They think I'm trying to cover up an escape by one of our creatures. Apparently some elf whore got herself all torn up the other night and in the absence of actual suspects they're making lazy allegations at a well known chimera company. It's bias pure and simple. They hate to see a demon doing well for himself."

"Yeah I'm sure that's it. So let me see if I got this straight elf girl gets mauled in a city full of monsters the same night you had someone try to use one of your people's codes to get into the building and couldn't because they weren't that person and now the cops seem to think that you staged the would be break in to cover up what was actually a break out by one of your beasties. Did I miss anything?"

"No that basically covers it. Snook noticed the attempted entry when she got in this morning. I told her to call the cops like you said and the cops show up in like 15 minutes because, as it turns out, they were already coming to talk to us today to see if anything had gotten out of its cage. Barely even listened to me when I was trying to explain the break in situation."

"And had it?" Henry asked taking another pull of whiskey.

"Had what?"

"Had anything gotten out of its cage?"

"Of course it hadn't. Every single manufactured creature on the premises was present and fucking accounted for as always. We're Chimera Labs, baby! We know what we're doing around here and we should we've been at it for centuries longer than the competition!"

"Accidents can still happen, Mezzryk."

"Well sure they

can

happen but they're a hell of a lot less likely too if you take precautions and here at Chimera Labs we take security VERY seriously. I'm not kidding. You should see some of the contracts we make the people in our actual R&D department sign before we given them access to the labs."

"People break contracts all the time."

"Not like these they don't. We're talking old school, soul-of-your-firstborn-child type Faustian pacts here. Money and sex are great but they're temporary. Eternal damnation not so much if you know what I'm saying here."

"I'm familiar with hellish bargains, Mezz."

"Oh right...hehe...forgot who I was talking to here for a minute. In addition to the actual security precautions we have in place we've also got practices in place that make our critters...shall we say, less inclined to roam."

"Such as?"

"Why don't I show ya?" Mezzryk said setting his empty glass aside and beginning to flap his little batlike wings once more lifting himself out of his seat.

Henry killed his own drink and set the empty glass on the edge of his friend's desk and rose to follow him out the leather bound door he'd entered. As they passed Snooky's desk she didn't look up from her etherphone as it hovered just above the desk in front of her even when her employer said.

"Hey, Snooky I'm taking Dexter here down to the lab to talk with Dr. Ploúsia hold my calls will you?"

"Hold 'em yourself. I clocked out 15 minutes ago." she paused to deliberately smile at Henry and add "Goodnight, Mistah Dextah." in a tone so pleasant that Henry instantly knew it had been used to annoy her boss more than anything else. He chuckled inwardly but didn't let it show. The two stepped into an elevator and Mezzryk drew a magical symbol with his stubby little clawed hand and it began to descend.

"I swear, Dex I don't know why I don't fire that insolent bitch yesterday."

"Because she's your second wife's first cousin, devilmother to six of your larvae and they'd both ritually disembowel you if you sacked her." Henry said with a smirk.

"You got me there, wiseass." Looking over at the human he continued "As I was saying, chimera are, for the most part, animals and animals up to and including strategically shaved apes like you humans, are disinclined to roam where food and orgasms are plentiful. Shocking stuff I know but if you provide an animal with the things it tends to go roaming in search of, the lazy pricks tend to stay put. With me so far?"

"So you keep your beasties well fed and well fucked you're saying?"

"Precisely. I'll let the good Dr. Ploúsia explain it as it's really her area of expertise and all." the elevator arrived with a ding and opened into a wide, sterile looking white tiled room. A petite yet extremely curvy woman with light brown hair put up in a stern looking bun with horn rimmed glasses wearing a white lab coat met them at the door. "And here she is now. Dr. P, this is Henry Dexter the private investigator I told you about earlier. Henry, this is Dr. Lyra Ploúsia our head researcher." Her nose wrinkled in annoyance at the abbreviation of her name but she seemed appeased by his use of her full name and title upon her introduction.

"A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Dexter." she said extending a hand. It was at that moment that Henry first noticed the tiny pair of horns on her forehead just below her hairline and the fact that her feet ended in tiny black hooves. She was no demon, however. The good doctor was a satyr which hailed from the Fey Realms. That also explained why she managed to still have smokey bedroom eyes even with her hair up and her glasses on. Beneath the lab coat she wore a tight green sweater that showed off enough cleavage to make it readily apparent, even if the tightness of the garment had not, that she had no bra and her chest was simply that obnoxiously high and firm. Her black pencil skirt was slit up the side and confirmed that female satyrs' legs above their backwards bent knees, were only as hairy as a humans and this one obviously waxed. When she turned to lead them further into the lab Henry was genuinely impressed, despite trying hard not to stare, at how hypnotically her ass seemed to move even covered up by that lab coat.

"I'll leave you in the doctor's care, Dex. I'll be in my office, check in with me before you go and we'll talk details." Mezzryk said before fluttering his bulbous little body back onto the elevator. Henry turned and followed the doc as directed. She showed him the triple locked metal door which led to the actual chimera area as they passed it on their way to her office. As they passed by the, at the moment empty, examination tables and alchemical stations around the massive underground room they came by a group of three younger looking people in lab coats laughing about something but quickly trying to look more professional as their supervisor and a stranger came in.

The group were two male humans, one chubby and the other thin and gangly looking, while the third was a tall, willowy blonde who wore only a lab coat that did little to hide her long legs and shapely tits being at least two sizes too small for her. She blushed adorably as she quickly tried to hide the fact that the thick strand of hair she had hurriedly and only quasi successfully hidden behind her pointed right ear was matted with something thick and sticky. She gave off a similar, if different, aura of magically hyper charged sexuality as the head researcher. A nymph of some kind most likely.

"Ahem." coughed Dr. Ploúsia. "Mr. Dexter this are my research assistants Dr. Moore," she said indicating the lean man; "Dr. Rufus." indicating the heavyset one; "and Bellana. Team this is Mr. Henry Dexter a private investigator looking into the incident last evening. I'll be answering his questions in my office for the next little while, if you could please make sure that all the samples are labeled and put away. Bellana, I see Bors really got you when you finished him off."

The nymph giggled and waved awkwardly yet still managed to make it sexy without really trying. "Yeah, sorry about that. The boys had just pointed out that I'd missed that he'd gotten some in my hair too when I cleaned up after. I'm gonna go have a shower if that's okay." She turned to Henry and smiled playfully before saying. "It was nice to meet you, Mr. Dexter. Hopefully I'll get to meet you sometime when I don't have minotaur cum in my hair." in a giggly yet perfectly conversational tone before she made her way towards another door on the opposite end of the lab which seemed to lead to locker rooms and showers of some sort. The two other assistants headed off to their work and Henry was led to a well appointed office by the doctor.

She hung her lab coat on the door after closing it behind the two of them. It became exponentially more difficult not to stare without the coat's admittedly meager barrier between her body in that outfit and his eyes. Still he did his damnedest. Just because a fella's got a little demon in him doesn't mean he can't be a gentleman too. He took the offered seat in the high backed leather chair across from her desk. She, elected to perch on the edge of her desk rather than her office chair leaving only a few feet between them.

"I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me, doctor." Henry began taking out a leather bound notebook out of his coat pocket which proceeded to hover in the air a few inches to his left silently. "I just had a few questions about the attempted security breach last night and shouldn't take up too much of your time."

"I'm happy to help and please, call me Lyra." she said in her faintly Mediterranean accented voice. "I'd like to be as direct with you as possible...may I call you Henry?" she asked and continued with a smile when he nodded his ascent. "Obviously I can't discuss any company secrets without Mr. Mezzryk's express permission and I'm sure you're aware of the Fey's natural inclination to...be less than direct."

"Obviously and yes, ma'am I've interviewed Fey before many times."

"I'd be happy to offer you a workaround to the latter if you'd be inclined to make a small donation of your seed to aid the endeavor."

"Excuse me?" Henry said arching a dark eyebrow in surprise and thankful he hadn't commanded the notebook to start writing yet.

"I'm sure you're familiar with the fact that with various kinds of Fey, when they have certain conditions met their thinking and behavior can be compelled to change, yes?"

"The Dharmaak Vax, yeah? The 'Contracts with the Worlds', that kind of thing?"

"Very good, Henry. With satyrs, we become, shockingly direct and honest for a brief time with people we've just been intimate with. Well, more specifically after we've consumed some of the individual's ejaculate. I was here last night and it was my code they used to try to get in so it's in both of our best interests for me to be as honest as possible with you and for a small contribution of your semen I can increase the chances of that occurring."

"Are you serious?"

"Quite. You can cum in a cup if you prefer but you're quite handsome and I'm happy to collect the sample the old fashioned way if you'd rather." She said licking her lips to send her point home. Without waiting for him to answer she removed her glasses and then deftly slipped her sweater up and off setting those absolutely gravity defying tits free to bounce provocatively without even messing up her hair. "It will aid your investigation and I promise I'm quite good at it." she then slid nimbly down from the edge of her desk and onto her knees, well tops of her thighs, in one smooth motion almost as though she knew exactly how much room she needed to get from the edge of the desk to a blowjob ready position and had placed the chair accordingly. Henry had to admit he was almost impressed as well as hard as a brick.