Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 960: Axe Lady

The operation had come together in the war room an hour before departure, and it had started with Nyx killing the obvious idea before anyone could pitch it.

”You’re not hiding them,” she said. ”I want that dead on the table first. There is no version of a disguise that survives contact.”

She demonstrated with a mock-up anyway, because she’d already made it for fun: Calypso in a sun hat and enormous sunglasses, this being the only sun hat all day to survive contact with those horns, on account of being a drawing. The committee reviewed the image in silence.

”She is bright red with horns, bestie,” Nyx said, presenting her own exhibit. ”The hat makes it worse. The hat makes her look like a red woman in a disguise.”

”I think I look mysterious,” Calypso said.

”Motion denied,” said Ms. Rook.

”Then we don’t hide,” Kaiden said. ”I’m not smuggling two monster queens through a service entrance like contraband.”

”So the date is also bait,” Nyx said, tapping through camera coverage of the east wing with visible professional joy. ”A gorgeous, well-fed piece of bait that picked its own pond and stocked it with sharks first. I can work with this, Kai~”

She flicked the mock-up of the sun hat off her screen. ”And besties, you will be the loudest thing in that building the second you walk in. Good. Loud is the plan. Subtle died in committee.”

So they went the other way, and the other way was Eclipse’s own ground rules.

Kaiden was honest with the room about what the afternoon was for, and it was for two things at once: his monster girls got a real date in the open, and whoever had been circling this family got a clean look at the bait, with every chance to bite.

The venue got swept in advance, and plainclothes, less recognizable Eclipse members would rotate through the crowd on shifts.

The real firepower went invisible. Vespera announced without inflection that she had errands in the city today, unrelated errands, and nobody at the table believed her, and nobody was meant to. Scarlet volunteered the same fiction about the same mall.

The two most recognizable women in the country would spend the afternoon fully out of sight, and if anything worse than a pickpocket surfaced inside that building, the Shadow Monarch and the Flame Monarch would already be falling on it.

The last piece, Kaiden requested by name.

”Park,” he said.

Yuna Park materialized at the war room door fast enough to raise questions about where she had been standing, back straight, dark eyes burning. She had watched every stream. She had waited her entire career for a sentence shaped like the one coming.

”I need you on close protection. I’m taking Calypso and Bastet to the mall this afternoon, and I want someone I trust watching over them the whole time.” Kaiden held her stare, and there was warmth under it. ”You’re the best shadow we’ve got, so I want it to be you.”

Yuna Park inhaled, and it was audible.

”Nobody will touch them, guild leader,” she vowed. ”Nobody will touch anything. I will inspect everything they-”

”Normal amounts of inspection, Park.”

”Understood,” she said, understanding nothing, and was already gone.

The only real addition to the premise came from Aria, who had spent the morning picking walnut and had no intention of letting the afternoon happen without her fingerprints on it.

”One improvement,” she said. ”We own an entire guild of smiths. Runewoven could enchant every piece they bring back, and then I never have to hear the word durability again.”

”Their forges are spoken for,” Bastet said, and she sounded insufferably pleased about it. ”Talia’s smiths are hammering wards into Master’s walls. I will not pull a single one of them off a defense rune to upholster me a chaise.”

Aria’s mouth flattened at how pleased she sounded.

Calypso slung an arm around the kitty in question and pulled her in. ”Once their schedule frees up, though! We pick what feels good, the smiths make it survive us.”

Bastet permitted the hug, which from her was applause.

”Fine,” Aria conceded, waving them off. She had a rooftop dinner booked out of this already and saw no profit in pushing further. ”Go. Break their furniture. Bring me receipts.”

Alexandra giggled under her breath and pretended it was a cough.

...

The Meridian Galleria was the kind of mall that called itself a lifestyle destination, four floors of glass and brand names built around a fountain atrium, with a commercial design showroom anchoring the east wing for clients who came with floor plans.

The black SUV rolled up to the east entrance at ten past one, and the mall’s afternoon lasted about four more seconds.

Calypso came out of the SUV first, horns and tail and warm red skin in printed cotton, and stretched in the sunlight with a happy growl that carried across the drop-off lane.

The first civilian to see her was a man carrying a pretzel, and he stopped walking so completely that the people behind him hit his back in a chain.

Somewhere in the gathering stillness, a child’s voice rang out, fearless and clear.

”MOM. MOM, LOOK. IT’S THE AXE LADY.”

”That’s me,” Calypso told the child warmly. ”I’m the axe lady.”

The child pointed at the white bow tied to the base of her left horn, beyond further speech.

”I know,” Calypso agreed. ”It’s a cute ribbon, right~?”

”Yeah! Mommy, buy me one!”

”Hahaha!” Calypso broke into laughter.

She was still laughing when she found Kaiden over the top of the crowd, and for half a second the laugh went somewhere quieter. The whole drop-off lane had its phones up, and not one person in it was running. A child had just asked her for a ribbon.

She had expected this country to take a great deal longer to stop being afraid of her. She squeezed Kaiden’s arm once, hard, and said nothing about it.

The stillness broke just like that, and it broke toward phones. The terror had nowhere to go, that was the thing. Every soul in that entrance had watched these two on a stream somewhere, the axe and the sun, holding a mountain pass while the sky came apart, and the shape of them read dangerous for half a heartbeat before it read famous.

”No shot,” a teenager said reverently, filming in portrait mode. ”No SHOT. Chat, I’m at the mall with the Manifestation of Carnage.”

Bastet descended from the SUV like the vehicle had been an unworthy throne. She slid her arm through Kaiden’s offered one and settled into it, then surveyed the gawking crowd, the fountain, and the four floors of commerce.

”Acceptable,” she ruled, anklets chiming as she stepped onto the marble. Then she looked up at her beloved Master, and the ruling softened into a smile. ”Walk me?”

They walked. The crowd peeled open ahead of them the whole way, phones tracking, voices rising and falling in waves.

One grandmother by the fountain looked the entire procession up and down over her glasses and returned to her crossword, unmoved, having lived through the actual apocalypse.

If anyone noticed the young woman drifting along the mezzanine railing above them, all long bare legs and compact muscle under a cropped jacket, matching their pace exactly with her eyes moving in a constant sweep, they noticed her for the wrong reasons entirely, and assumed she was somebody’s very intense and very pretty personal trainer.

...