Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 1037: Found You

The President of the United States had stopped answering his office phone. Now his private one wouldn’t stop ringing.

”Mr. President, she is in my building.”

He recognized the voice before he looked at the name. The man had helped pay for his campaign.

”Where are you?”

”Upstairs. Security told us to lock the conference room. We can hear her downstairs.”

The President covered the microphone and looked at his security adviser.

”Another address.”

The adviser held out his hand for the details while the caller kept speaking.

”My people have permits for everything in that building. Everything. If she has some kind of complaint, my lawyers can meet with hers. This is completely unacceptable.”

Vespera truly wasn’t kidding; be they random gangsters, human traffickers, or legal businesses, Vespera did not care. She would visit every address with the potential to lead to the organization that dared hurt her children, and she would do it her way.

The Shadow Monarch refused to be contained any longer.

Something crashed beyond the man’s phone.

”Jesus Christ!”

The President stood so abruptly that his chair rolled back into the wall.

”Stay where you are. I’ll have someone contact her.”

”You said that two minutes ago!”

The call went dead.

Before he could call back, another name filled the screen.

”Sir,” his aide said from the doorway. ”The foundation’s chairwoman is on your other line. She says it’s urgent.”

He took the call at his desk.

The woman began speaking before he could greet her.

”My husband is at the hospital.”

”Was he attacked?”

”She walked through our offices. He tried to introduce himself, and he...”

Her breath caught. The President knew this woman. He had watched her make a roomful of executives laugh while extracting more money from them than some towns earned in a year.

”He fell down,” she managed. ”He couldn’t breathe. Half the staff couldn’t. They were crawling under their desks, and she kept going, emanating this immense pressure.”

He pressed his fingers against the edge of the desk.

”What was she looking for?”

”How should I know?! She opened the records room, took everything inside, and left! My assistant is still hiding in a bathroom. She’s twenty-four years old, and she won’t come out because she thinks that woman is coming back!”

His private phone started vibrating against the wood.

The President stared at it while the chairwoman demanded to know what he intended to do.

”The distribution center is clear,” his adviser said. ”Nothing illegal. Everyone survived, but their awakened couldn’t even get close enough to ask her to stop.”

The private phone stopped, then immediately began again.

Vespera was walking through properties whose owners could reach him without going through a secretary. These people had sat beside his wife at dinner and expected a problem to end when he picked up.

He couldn’t even tell them which building she would enter next.

”Get that assistant of hers on the line again,” he said.

”We’re trying, sir. Ms. Rook isn’t picking up.”

The chairwoman was still waiting on the desk phone.

”Mr. President?”

He put the receiver back to his ear.

”I’m here.”

”Then do something!”

...

Vespera Ashborn emerged from the shadow of a parked delivery van outside a private medical storage facility.

The address on her phone belonged to a supplier. Its public entrance had a reception desk, a rack of safety notices, and a woman in a white coat who fled before Vespera reached the glass.

Vespera pulled the locked door open with a shadow tendril.

An alarm sounded behind the desk. She passed it and followed the corridor toward a steel door at the rear, where a man’s muffled shout had cut through the ringing.

”Please. I can’t do it again.”

Vespera wound her shadows around the steel door and tore it out of its frame.

Beyond it, adult men and women lay strapped to narrow beds. Clear tubing ran from their arms into collection bags hanging beneath the mattresses. Some turned toward the crash. Others kept staring at the ceiling.

A woman near the door tried to raise her head.

”Help...”

Her cheeks had sunk against her teeth. Beside her bed, a chart recorded collections and feeding times, with another column marking when she could be used again.

The beds stood in two rows, leaving a straight aisle to a delivery shutter at the far end. An office opened off the right side, opposite an empty steel trolley.

Beside the shutter, a worker was loading filled bags into a refrigerated case. He dropped one when he saw Vespera.

”Intruder!”

An armored woman stepped into the middle of the aisle and raised a green barrier between herself and Vespera. A guard emerged from the office on the right side of the aisle, drawing a blade of red light.

”Seal the ward!”

The guard sent a red slash down the aisle before the barrier reached the wall.

Dozens of tendrils rose from her shadows, pushing the strike aside.

At the rear of the ward, a pale man stepped out from behind the refrigerated cases. Blood rose from a collection bag in his hand, hardening into a hooked spear above his shoulder.

Vespera looked from the spear to his bared fangs.

Her tongue darted out, and with crimson red eyes shining violently, she licked her lips.

”Found you.”

The vampire hurled his spear.

”Die!”

The armored woman opened a gap in her barrier, and the guard slashed through it as the hooked spear bored into the darkness over Vespera’s chest.

For the first time since entering the ward, Vespera stopped walking.

”We have her!” the guard shouted.

The spear pushed through one layer of shadow. Its hook tore into the next while the armored woman’s barrier trapped the tendrils trying to reach them.

The guard sent another slash over the beds. Vespera knocked it into the ceiling, and concrete rained down as the nearest captive screamed beneath her restraints.

Darkness spread over both rows of beds before the debris could reach them. Black roofs sealed the captives away from the fighting, leaving their tormentors alone with her in the aisle.

Through one opening, Vespera saw the nearest woman squeezing her eyes shut.

Kaiden had smiled through his injuries. Her son had tried to make his mother feel better while blood dried on his face, and the people before her kept human beings strapped down until their bodies produced something worth stealing.

Her children could have woken in beds like these.

Vespera’s fury became unbearable.

Every lamp in the aisle burst. The hooked spear exploded into a sheet of blood, and the guard’s triumphant shout became a choking gasp as Vespera’s killing intent crushed the air from his lungs.

She resumed walking.

”Hold!” the male vampire screamed from beside the shutter. ”Fucking hold her!”

The guard braced the woman’s barrier with both hands, but Vespera’s shadows crushed their combined shield inward, forcing her arms back until one shoulder tore out of its socket.

”AAAGH!”

The barrier collapsed around her. Green shards burst across her armor as the shadows hurled her onto the steel trolley, crushing its frame beneath her back.

The guard stumbled toward the office and slashed wildly behind him. A thick tendril smashed through his red blade, struck him in the chest, and drove him through the partition. Both forearms snapped beneath him when he folded over the desk.

”Ghh... Please...”