Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 1034: No More Patience

Aria pressed her lips to his shoulder. Above him, Alice’s halo dipped until its lower edge brushed his hair.

”I promised your mother I’d protect you... But to think that my own guards... How shameful. I don’t even have the face to ask for forgiveness.” Yunohana spoke with extreme dejection. She was visibly ridden with guilt.

The woman flexed the fingers of her left hand, and Alexandra smiled with visible relief when they moved.

”You’re speaking pure nonsense. Would you try your arm? Carefully, please.”

The High Shrine Maiden lifted it from her lap. Her ruined sleeve shifted over skin that had closed beneath the gold, and Kaiden felt another part of the fear in his chest loosen.

”Thank you, Alexandra.”

”I’m glad you let me help this time.”

Yunohana accepted the gentle reproach with a tired smile, then looked up at Kaiden.

”My lord, I am deeply sorry that your family was attacked while under my protection. Again. I’d like to ask you to return to your mother, for I have proven to be unable-”

He crouched beside her, with Luna lowering herself at his side and keeping hold of his arm.

Smiling, Kaiden placed a finger on her lips.

”You’re mistaken, Yunohana Tsukikage.”

Her eyes widened as she looked at the finger that silenced her.

”It isn’t that you’re a terrible host who can’t stop things from happening to me. Things happen to me no matter what, whether I’m alone, with my mother, or with you. That’s just how my life is. But you kept me alive. I’m in your debt, yet you’re making it sound like it’s the other way around.”

”...May I speak now?” she asked from behind his finger.

”Oh.” Kaiden pulled it away. ”My apologies. Got a bit too familiar.”

”I do not mind. As for what you said, I cannot accept such logic. I have failed.”

Kaiden looked at the blood on the silver cord around his wrist. She had made it for him with such tenderness, and he’d watched her take a lance through the shoulder rather than stop feeding it.

”I won’t debate logic with you. I believe what I believe. I saw you choose to stay,” he said. ”You could have moved, and you stayed because I was still trapped. I’ll remember that for the rest of my life.”

Yunohana’s gaze softened as he offered her his unarmored hand. She rested her newly healed fingers in it.

”Thank you for protecting us,” Kaiden decreed, closing the argument once and for all.

Her composure faltered at the warmth in his voice. ”...I am a hopeless woman.”

She closed her hand around his and bowed her head toward him, accepting the gratitude and all that he said.

Sonoda approached with a phone held against her chest.

”Lord Grey. May I? Your mother is calling.”

Kaiden reached for it.

...

Vespera Ashborn sat in her office at Eclipse’s headquarters while her son tried to find an angle at which his face looked less injured.

”Keep the phone still, Kaiden.”

He stopped moving it. Behind his shoulder, Aria held a bloodied cloth, and Luna was sitting so close to him that Vespera could see only part of her face.

She had been crying.

”We’re all here, Mom. Alexandra’s taking care of everyone.”

”Good. Alice?”

The dark halo above his head bobbed into view.

”I’m here too, Mom. Big Brother didn’t let them take him.”

Vespera’s hand tightened around the phone.

Her daughter said it with fierce pride, and Vespera wanted to reach through the screen and gather them both against her. She wanted to examine every wound herself, to have Kaiden within reach when she asked him whether anything still hurt.

An ocean separated them. And more than that, a world of duty.

”Tell me what happened.”

Kaiden did, with the others adding what he’d missed while trapped. Vespera listened to the account of the prison, the portal, and the vampire who’d turned their guards against them.

When Yunohana described the mark feeding power into Viktor’s body, Vespera asked her to repeat it.

”Someone was supplying him from the other side?”

”Yes. Lord Grey suppressed the connection, but Thorne restored it long enough to escape.”

Vespera had gone deathly cold.

”Mom?”

”I have to go. Yunohana. Thank you.”

The screen went dark. Vespera remained seated with the phone in her hand.

The Blood Pact.

She knew the name, the criminal organization skulking around America, buying desperate people and hiding behind businesses that changed their names whenever someone looked too closely. There were always people like them, and she had never cared enough to make finding them her personal occupation.

Now they had attacked her children in Japan.

They had people abroad, vampires controlling an escort, a prepared extraction spell, and someone powerful enough to intervene through a portal. Whatever she’d thought of their reach, it had been insufficient.

Vespera set the phone down beside the federal correspondence awaiting her attention.

Her son had endured their inspections. Her people had answered questions, produced records, accommodated officials who kept finding another reason to remain on his property. They had treated his patience as permission to continue.

Then he had gone where he was wanted, and terrorists had tried to carry him away.

Had someone helped arrange that sequence?

She looked at the names beneath the latest request for information. A department, a supervisor, another official invoking authority several signatures removed from whoever actually wanted the answers.

The inspections could have been rented to pressure Kaiden into leaving. The Pact could have used an opportunity someone else created. Either possibility left the same people occupying her son’s headquarters while she watched his blood dry on another woman’s hands.

He had called her Mom and tried to smile through a split cheek.

Vespera’s fury deepened and deepened, until it became overwhelming.

They could have taken both her children.

The shadow beneath Vespera’s desk rose around its legs, and the wood cracked where darkness tightened against it.

She stood.

Outside, her assistant rose as Vespera passed through the office door.

”Lady Ashborn? Your-”

”Cancel it.”

Vespera left headquarters through the front entrance. Morning traffic was gathering outside the compound, and a government sedan waited beside the main building with its engine running.

Its driver opened the rear door when he saw her approach.

”Lady Ashborn, Deputy Director-”

”Begone.”

”Excuse me? I’m-”

Her eyes began swirling, a cruel darkness refusing to stay still.

”I’ll kill you.”

”H-hie!” The man fell on his back, then began screaming in primal terror.

She went inside.

On the operations floor, a federal liaison stood beside a folding table covered in document boxes. He turned with a practiced smile, already lifting a folder.

”Good morning. We will need access to the-”

”Leave.”

His smile remained for a moment after the rest of his face had stopped cooperating.

”I’m sorry?”

Vespera’s shadows erupted, grabbing onto every single government agent or scientist and tossing them outside.

Soon, her phone rang.

It was the president.

”Lady Ashborn.” The man’s voice carried the restrained irritation of someone who’d already received several incompatible accounts of the morning. ”I’m told you’ve expelled federal personnel from Eclipse’s headquarters and threatened a scientific delegation. What exactly are you doing?”

”Ending their access to my son’s property.”

”Those personnel were carrying out authorized duties Kaiden Grey agreed to. If you have a complaint about their conduct, there are channels through which-”

”Someone tried to abduct Kaiden.”

The President stopped.

Vespera watched the last government sedan pass through the compound gate.

”I’ve received a preliminary report. You must know that the United States government had nothing to do with that attack.”

”Then you should have no difficulty finding the people who arranged the harassment that preceded it.”

”Those are separate matters.”

”Are they?”

She heard movement near his microphone, followed by a muffled exchange with someone in the room.

”Your agencies pursued my son through inspection after inspection,” Vespera continued. ”He answered them. He let your people into his headquarters. They kept asking for more until he was forced to leave the country, and now the Blood Pact has attacked him abroad.”

”Coinciding events do not establish a conspiracy, Lady Ashborn.”

”Then establish what happened. Bring me the people who commissioned those audits, the people who paid them, and the officials who made their requests happen.”

”You are asking me to surrender federal employees to you on the basis of a suspicion.”

”I’m not asking anything. I’m telling you what to do. Until you do as I say, I will consider your administration complicit in the attempted murder of my son and I will act accordingly.”

”...What?”

”Your people made themselves useful to terrorists. Whether they were paid to do it or were simply too rotten to care matters little now.”

For several seconds, the President said nothing.

Vespera could hear someone breathing near the microphone. She waited while her shadow crept all over her surroundings.

”You cannot issue an ultimatum to the United States government,” he said at last.

”I can and I will, for I am the Shadow Monarch.”

The words left her with enough fury that Rook looked up from her folder.

”I have been patient for far too long. That ends today. Either you expose the people responsible, or I will tear your circus down with my own two hands.”

”Lady Ashborn, any attack on a federal institution would-”

”It seems I’m not being clear,” Vespera spoke with perfect flatness. ”I am ready to declare war on you and your rotten nation. Do your worst. I will do mine. That is all.”

She ended the call.