Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 1021: Questioned

Her cheeks had hollowed. The muscles straining beneath his hands softened as her strength failed, and her dangling legs ceased to kick.

Kaiden sucked savagely, wrenching more strength out of her. Her attempted cry escaped as a wet, breathless rasp, and she folded against him with her head trapped in his grip.

He pulled his teeth out of her neck.

Blood ran over his lips as he lowered her to the concrete, keeping her captured arm behind her back. Her knees buckled the instant her shoes touched down, and he followed her fall into a crouch.

She braced an elbow to lift her face from the ground, but it gave out beneath her. Mizuno lay there shuddering, unable to push herself up.

”Caly, can you hold her?”

”Of course, Darling.”

Calypso knelt beside the ruined vampire and secured her wrists. Bastet kept her sunlight trained on Mizuno while Kaiden rose, his torn hand already whole again.

Nyx released the loop in front of the ramp once Luna had helped the last survivor sit. Alexandra worked inside her barrier, moving her healing light between the exhausted patients.

Sonoda held the phone by Toru’s ear when he reached for it.

He took the phone from Sonoda and held it against his chest. His hands were obeying him again.

”Toru?” his wife called.

He clutched it to his ear and answered her. Sonoda covered her mouth, listening as his words tumbled over one another.

”What is he saying?” Alexandra whispered. ”Could you tell me if anything hurts?”

The analyst looked from the blood on Kaiden’s mouth to the man sitting beside her.

”He’s asking her to come get him.”

”...Thank God.” Alexandra smiled, relieved.

His wife’s crying laughter came through the phone. Toru pressed it closer, answering in a rush while Alexandra’s gold moved over the punctures in his arm.

Kaiden let him have that moment. Then Calypso looked up from the woman beneath her hands.

”Darling. She’s awake.”

Mizuno had turned her face against the concrete to look at him. Her lips moved twice before any sound came out.

”What... are you?”

Kaiden crouched in front of her. Gluttony had left her skin gray and loose across her cheeks, and she could barely lift her head from the ground.

”Why were you feeding on these people?”

A breathless laugh caught in Mizuno’s ruined throat. ”I fed. They lived.”

”You kept cutting them open,” Alexandra said from the ramp. Her restoration closed another puncture beneath Toru’s skin. ”Where were you taking them?”

Mizuno’s gaze slid toward the survivors inside Alexandra’s barrier.

”...Away.”

”Where?” Kaiden asked.

She smiled through the blood on her teeth.

Sonoda stepped closer to Kaiden, though she kept well outside Mizuno’s reach. ”You knew Lord Grey was clearing the nearby dungeons. Why did you remain here?”

”Knew?” Mizuno coughed, smearing red across the concrete beneath her mouth. ”The whole world knew... I watched your little parade.”

Her gaze crawled to Kaiden.

”Three gates...” Hatred gave the words more strength than her body had left. ”In one day.”

The vampire tried to pull one wrist free. Calypso tightened her grip, and Mizuno’s arm stopped trembling against the concrete.

”We should’ve had time...” she rasped.

Alexandra stared at the woman she was healing. The punctures covering Toru’s arm were only the wounds Mizuno had left on one man.

”How many others were there?” she asked.

Mizuno gave her another bloody smile. ”Enough.”

”You didn’t save anyone,” Kaiden said. ”You were trying to leave with your food.”

Her smile broke.

”You ruined everything for us, you damned monster.”

”Who is us?”

Mizuno fell silent.

At the edge of Alexandra’s barrier, Luna had gone pale.

Theodore’s message thread still sat in her interface because she had never made herself block it. He had once tried to deliver her to people who rewarded their members for bringing in family of their own blood.

”The Blood Pact...” Luna’s voice came out low and sick. ”Is this their doing?”

Mizuno looked at her.

For the first time since Kaiden put her on the ground, the hatred vanished from the vampire’s face.

”H-”

Her eyes snapped wide.

”Everyone, get away from her!” Kaiden shouted.

Calypso, quick on the uptake, hurled the vampire into the open loading yard, putting thirty feet of empty space between her and the survivors.

Nyx folded Kaiden and Calypso back behind Alexandra’s barrier, bringing Aria, Sonoda, and Bastet in with them. Gold sealed across the ramp while Luna pushed the closest patients flat behind its wall.

Mizuno struck the ground on her side. Her body arched, heels drumming against the concrete as black lines raced along the veins in her throat.

Gluttony had been inside every vein in her body seconds ago. He had drained Mizuno until she could only twitch beneath Calypso, and there had been no packed mana or hidden charge waiting inside her.

’Where the hell did that come from?’

Alice’s halo flared above him.

”No...” Mizuno gasped at someone who wasn’t standing in the loading yard. ”I didn’t tell them anything, I didn’t-”

Her fingers shrank inside her sleeves.

Black veins spread across Mizuno’s face as the skin collapsed against her bones. Her cheeks sank farther, exposing the shape of every tooth beneath her lips.

Mizuno tried to scream. The sound thinned into a dry hiss as her throat shriveled, and the torn flesh Kaiden had left around her neck crumbled into black flakes.

The remote spell kept feeding.

It drank the last blood from her limbs, then took the muscle with it. The bones followed. Mizuno’s legs shortened inside her trousers with wet cracks while her back folded against the concrete.

Alexandra pushed restoration through her barrier. Gold struck Mizuno’s chest, but there was no living flesh left for it to hold together. The light passed over a rib cage already collapsing into ash.

”Please...” Mizuno’s lips barely moved around the word.

Her eyes caved inward.

The body inside the gray raincoat broke apart. Skin, bone, and organs collapsed into dark red powder, then the powder lifted from the clothes in a twisting stream.

Bastet’s sunlight closed around the stream before it could reach the sky. Her fire held the powder for a heartbeat, but a remote pull tightened it into a dark red thread and yanked it beyond the flames.

The same pull lifted the blood Mizuno had spat from the pavement and made it vanish.

”Alice, can you still feel it?”

The halo dimmed.

”No, Big Brother. I can’t. There’s nothing left.”

”...Damn it.”