Lovesick
Gods
by
Amanda Meuwissen
Genre:
Superhero
GLBT Romance
Heroes
aren’t meant to act like their villains—or fall in love with
them.
The
elements touch everyone on Earth—Fire, Water, even Light—but
every so often someone becomes more attuned to their elemental
leaning and develops true power. When an evil Elemental known as
Thanatos arrived in Olympus City, it saw the rise of its first
hero—Zeus. But the death toll caused by defeating Thanatos changed
Zeus, who by day is young detective Danny Grant.
It’s
been six months since Thanatos terrorized the city at the start of
Lovesick Gods. Danny should be used to his duty behind the mask, but
the recent past haunts him. His girlfriend left him, he snaps at the
barest provocation, his life feels empty—he needs an outlet, any
outlet to pull him out of his depression.
Enter
notorious thief Malcolm Cho, the Ice Elemental Prometheus. There was
a time when Danny welcomed a fight with Cho, filled with colorful
banter and casual flirtations that were a relief compared to
Thanatos. Even as a criminal, Cho had recognized the threat Thanatos
posed and promised to help Danny stop him, but the day Danny needed
Cho, he never showed. Cho was the reason so many people died that
day—including Danny’s mother.
Danny
decides to teach the man a lesson and fan the fire of their
attraction into something more. At worst, he’ll get some
no-strings-attached sex out of the deal and finally blow off steam;
at best, he’ll get Cho to fall in love with him and then break his
heart to spite him.
Danny
doesn’t expect to fall for Cho in the process, and he certainly
can’t predict the much darker threat on the horizon.
“You and Detective Edwards were the lead officers on the Thanatos case when he first appeared. Correct?”
Danny shifted in his seat. Doing these Internal Affairs interviews in interrogation rooms always made him feel like the walls were closing in. “You already know that, Lieutenant. Rick and I had the case right up until his death.”
Liu nodded neutrally. “And after Thanatos killed your partner, you were taken off the case?”
“Technically.”
“Nothing technical about it, Detective. Captain Shan pulled you from the case, the official report says so,” she tapped the file folder in front of her on the table between them, “yet you continued to pursue Thanatos on your own. Did you have a vendetta against him?”
Danny shifted again, twitching in want to scratch his neck or run his hands through his short, ginger hair, which was foofed enough on top that it tended to disobey him. “He killed my partner. What do you think?”
“Detective—”
“Olympus had never seen an Elemental like Thanatos before.” Danny leaned forward over the table. Even a city like theirs with close to two million people would only see a few dozen Elementals every other decade, though the numbers were unreliable since many of them chose to live in hiding. “The things he could do… He could drown someone in their own shadow, did you know that? Did you know that’s how he killed Rick? Right in front of me. Darkness shoved down his throat until he choked, and there was n-nothing I could do.” Danny grimaced at the catch of emotion in his voice. He could feel the tears forming. Twenty-eight years old and he was still so quick to cry. “Thanatos started to do the same to me, but then…”
“Then?” Liu prompted when he didn’t finish.
Then Danny’s latent Elemental powers had triggered.
Electricity had discharged from his body like a power surge, forcing Thanatos’s shadows away from him. Danny hadn’t been able to control any of it at first. Thanatos had reached for him, and he'd lightning jumped for the first time. One moment he was on the ground next to Rick’s body, Thanatos leaning toward him in all his awful glory, tendrils of black and deep purple shadow slithering off of him like snakes, and the next moment Danny was blocks away in an alley near the precinct.
He couldn’t use that part of his powers too frequently in too short a time, but he could become lightning itself when the need arose and teleport long distances in the span of seconds. He’d saved himself that night from whatever Thanatos might have done to him, but his powers hadn’t triggered in time to save Rick.
“Detective,” Liu said with impatience again.
That had been a year ago. It was time to close the case against Thanatos for good, however many pieces to the puzzle remained unsolved, which was the only reason they were having these follow-up interviews now.
“Then he let me go.”
Amanda
has a Bachelor of Arts in a personally designed major from St. Olaf
College in Creative Writing, and has been posting content online for
many years, including maintaining the blog for the digital marketing
company Outsell. She spent a summer writing screenplay script
coverages for a company in L.A., and is an avid consumer of fiction
through film, prose, and video games.
Amanda
lives in Minneapolis, MN, with her husband, John, and their cats,
Helga and Sasha (no connection to the incubus of the same name).
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Thank you so much for sharing this excerpt today and for being part of this tour! It's an emotional GLBT romance read with a superhero twist that I hope readers will enjoy!
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