Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 1035: On the Hunt

”She slammed the phone on me.”

The President of the United States remained seated at his desk after Vespera Ashborn ended the call, staring at the phone through which she had just threatened his country.

”Get her back.”

An aide reached for the desk phone. Across from him, a security adviser lowered the pen he’d stopped using halfway through the conversation.

”Mr. President, before we respond, we need to establish whether she’s preparing to attack.”

”She just offered to declare war on us. What would you call that?”

”A reason to get our personnel away from her.”

The President looked up sharply.

”We cannot have an awakened deciding which federal duties she feels like tolerating.”

”Sir, she has already removed them. If you send those people back, we need military support to keep them alive while they try to enter.”

The aide held the phone against his ear, listening to it ring.

”We have awakened response teams for a reason,” the President sighed. ”A rogue awakened cannot bring the greatest nation to its knees.”

Even before he finished his statement, a terrible voice rang in his head.

The voice of a real demon.

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

The adviser leaned forward, planting both hands on the desk.

”You’d be asking those teams to restrain Vespera Ashborn inside her son’s headquarters. Our people would be beside them, with traffic passing outside the fence. Sir, what do you expect them to do when she refuses?”

The President’s anger caught on that last question. ”Oh how I envy the presidents of old. Their jobs were so simple.”

He looked toward the phone again, but the aide shook his head.

”They’re putting me through to her staff.”

”...Fine. Give it to me.” The President held out his hand for the receiver.

...

At Eclipse’s headquarters, Vespera put her phone away while Rook closed the folder she’d been holding through the presidential call.

”What should I tell them when they call back?”

”That I’m occupied.”

Rook sent a file to her phone.

”Security pulled these while you were speaking. Businesses, meeting places, people suspected of dealing with the Pact. We haven’t had time to verify the connections.”

Vespera opened the first address. The entry listed a warehouse associated with a suspected Blood Pact intermediary, its unconfirmed status marked beside the name.

”I’ll need a collection and a cleanup team. A lot of corpses will need to disappear.”

”Yes, my lady.”

Vespera walked out of headquarters before the reception phone began ringing again, then dissolved into shadows.

...

The warehouse stood behind a vehicle repair yard, with its loading doors closed and an armed man smoking beside the pedestrian entrance.

Darkness slipped beneath the fence and spread across the concrete toward his boots. He dropped his cigarette when Vespera rose out of it.

”Hey! You can’t-”

He drew his pistol and fired into her chest.

Shadow hardened over Vespera’s coat, catching the rounds against overlapping black plates. She kept coming as the flattened bullets fell between them, and the guard backed into the door with his gun still firing.

”HELP!”

A blade swept out of Vespera’s shadow and cut through his neck. His head struck the door behind him, leaving a red smear as his body folded at her feet.

She tore the door off its hinges with a shadow cable and flung it into the warehouse.

Metal crashed against the far shelving. Men shouted from behind the stacked crates, reaching for rifles while the alarm began ringing overhead.

”At the door! Fucking light her up!”

Automatic fire hammered Vespera as she stepped inside. Darkness climbed over her shoulders and closed around her head, leaving her ice cold eyes visible through a slit in the armor.

Vespera walked straight into the muzzle flashes.

”It’s her... Monster...!”

She swept a blade of shadow through the men firing from the nearest aisle. It passed through their raised rifles and continued through their necks, sending their heads tumbling between the crates.

Blood sprayed across the man behind them. He dropped his fresh magazine and stared at the severed head rolling against his boot.

”Oh, God... Oh, fuck...”

Vespera’s next blade split him from shoulder to hip. His upper body slid off the lower half, spilling his guts across the magazine he’d been trying to load.

Farther down the warehouse, a woman in a gray suit stumbled out of the office with her phone in her hand.

”Ashborn?!”

Vespera’s darkness spread beneath the bodies, branching down every aisle toward the men still shooting.

”Shoot her!” the woman screamed. ”Keep shooting!”

She ran back into the office and slammed the door.

Vespera remembered Kaiden trying to hide his injuries from her. He had been hurting, and he had still tried to spare her the sight. Somewhere beyond these gunmen were the people who had done that to him.

Her rage was merciless. She wanted the men who had touched her children dead, and every armed bastard standing between her and them was going to join them.

She drove her shadows upward through the firing positions.

Black spears burst through bellies and lifted the gunmen off their feet. One kept firing as Vespera hoisted him toward the lamps, his shots tearing through the roof until a second spear entered beneath his chin and burst out of his skull.

”STOP! PLEASE!”

A man dropped his rifle and held his hands over his head. Vespera’s shadow caught him around the waist and pulled him into the path of her blade, severing his neck above his upraised shoulders.

The remaining gunmen broke for the loading bays, slipping in the blood as they shoved past each other. One fell beneath his companions’ boots and crawled after them, sobbing her name.

”Lady Ashborn! Please! Please, I-”

Vespera caught his ankle with a shadow and swung him into a support column. His skull burst against the steel, and she let the body drop while her darkness raced ahead of the others.

At the loading doors, a caster threw up a blue barrier. The men behind him fought with the locking bars, one screaming for them to hurry as urine ran down his trouser leg.

”Hold it! Hold it, you fucking-”

Vespera’s cables wrapped around the barrier and squeezed. Blue light bowed inward against the caster’s palms, driving his arms back until both forearms snapped.

His scream carried through the collapsing shield. She punched her shadows through his chest and hauled him apart, drenching the men behind him in blood.

Vespera swept a broad shadow blade through the loading bay. Heads struck the doors with a series of wet impacts, and the bodies collapsed against each other beneath them.

The woman in the gray suit fled through a door at the back of her office.

Beyond it, cages filled a windowless room. Young, good-looking adult women with collars around their necks huddled together on thin mattresses while guards shouted into their radios.

They had been recruited in poorer countries with promises of hotel work and restaurant jobs in America. Their passports had been confiscated on arrival, and the jobs had never existed. The woman in the gray suit was a pimp who kept them here until she could sell them into forced prostitution.

Mara pulled the woman beside her down and covered her head with both arms. Neither of them could see the yard, but they could hear someone screaming for help outside.

The guard at their cage drew his pistol.

”Shut up! All of you!”

Mara pressed her lips against her companion’s hair, trying to smother her own sob. They had been told a buyer was coming today. She’d spent the morning wondering whether she would ever see the other women again once he chose who to take.

Now the shooting was coming closer, and she couldn’t even get away from the bars.

The guard aimed toward the doorway as darkness spilled across its threshold. Vespera rose out of it, black armor closing around her face while he emptied his pistol at her.

”Die! Fucking die!”

Bullets flattened against Vespera’s shadows. She caught him around the chest with a black cable and dragged him away from the cages, lifting him clear of the floor.

More tendrils closed around his wrists and ankles. Vespera pulled his limbs outward while the cable around his chest held him in place.

”Wait! WAIT! Awakened violence against non-awakened people-”

”-is a federal offense,” Vespera finished for him.

His eyes lit up with hope. ”Then-”

His shoulders came out of their sockets with a pair of wet cracks. He screamed as Vespera kept pulling, stretching the skin beneath his armpits until it split and exposed the muscle tearing underneath.

”Please stop!” Mara cried, pressing herself against the bars behind her.

Vespera ripped both arms off. Blood jetted from the open sockets, striking the wall behind him while his severed limbs swung from her tendrils.

His legs were still straining against their restraints. She wrenched them wider until his pelvis broke apart, then tore them free of his hips with strips of flesh hanging from the ragged ends.

”AAAGH... Ghh...”

His scream collapsed into a bubbling choke. Entrails spilled from his ruined abdomen, hanging beneath the torso her shadow still held above the floor.

Vespera dropped the pieces in front of the doorway. The torso hit the concrete with a wet slap, and one severed arm landed beside Mara’s cage.

Mara stared at the hand still holding his pistol. She knew that hand, the rings on its fingers, the split nail on its thumb. He had put it around her throat yesterday when she’d asked for her passport back.

His fingers twitched against the concrete, then went still.

Vespera turned toward the other guards.

One was already running down the aisle between the cages. Another fired over his shoulder, screaming as the shots struck the darkness spreading across her chest.

The women shrank back from the bars. Vespera spread a lattice of shadow across the cage fronts, catching stray bullets in its black strands before sweeping her blade through the shooter’s neck.

His head struck the floor beyond the protective lattice. The fleeing guard stumbled over it and fell onto his hands.

”Him!” a woman screamed from the last cage. ”Don’t let him go!”

She was pointing through the bars, her whole arm shaking. Vespera pinned the man’s legs with shadow and hooked black tendrils beneath his ribs.

She tore his upper body off at the waist. His spine snapped, and his entrails uncoiled across the floor as she flung his screaming torso against the wall.

At the back of the room, the woman in the gray suit unlocked a cage and dragged a captive out by her hair. She pinned her against her chest with a pistol beneath her chin.

”Stay there! I mean it!”

The captive’s bare heels slid across the concrete as her captor backed toward the rear exit. She clutched the suited woman’s forearm, trying to lift her chin away from the barrel.

”What do you want?! Money? Take it! Take the fucking whores too!”