Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 1031: Overwhelming Fury

”Oh, I can see that.”

He moved around her next sweep toward the ruined bench, keeping his injured wrist tucked against his chest. Above the seat, the abandoned portal widened again.

Nyx caught its edges with spatial force before it could reach Kaiden’s back. The opening buckled inward, exposing a stretch of dark passage beyond the garden, then strained against her hold.

”Someone’s keeping it open from the other side!” she called. ”Kai, move away from the bench!”

Kaiden stepped clear as Aria moved along the walkway to cover him. Nyx squeezed the portal narrower, her pink hair lifting around her face with the effort.

Kaiden released Envy and chose Wrath, driving off his back foot as a swordsman rushed to block his path to David.

Stone burst beneath his boot. The man barely got his shield up before Kaiden punched through its center, crushing the arm braced behind it against his breastplate.

”AAAGH!”

Kaiden seized the screaming man’s armor and dragged him close enough to see his face.

This fucker had run past Yunohana bleeding on the stones to finish the job. He still had his sword raised, still thought he might get it into Kaiden’s throat.

Kaiden drove his fist through the breastplate. Wrath detonated inside it, blasting blood from the neck opening as the sword fell from the man’s hand.

He hurled the corpse into David’s escort, knocking the front rank off their feet.

”Shoot him!” David stumbled behind another shield. ”Fucking shoot him!”

Kaiden’s bloodied face turned toward him, and David flinched so violently that his back hit the man behind him.

”Then help us!” his defender shouted, struggling to hold the shield up with its broken straps. ”You’re a fucking mage!”

”I-”

David looked down at his empty hand.

Oh. Right.

”[Arcane Lance]!”

He shoved his palm past the shield and fired, then fired again, shouting the spell’s name as though it might help him remember what to do.

Alexandra caught the first lance against a barrier beside Kaiden’s head. He ducked beneath the second and rammed his shoulder into David’s defender, driving both men back along the pond.

”Aria!” he called as another caster aimed at his exposed side.

Moonlight punched through the caster’s mouth. Aria sent her next crescent over Kaiden’s shoulder, forcing David to throw himself behind the men still standing.

”Keep going, Kai. I have you.”

Alice dissolved into golden light across the pond and swept into him, her dark halo forming above his head. Strength surged through his aching arms as her Conduit settled into place.

Her first beam burned through the wrist of a man raising his sword behind him. Kaiden heard the weapon strike the paving and drove on, trusting his sister to finish its owner.

With Nyx occupied at the portal, the enemy casters turned their fire toward her. Alexandra raised a barrier in front of Nyx while Bastet poured solar flame through the gaps between the enemy shields.

”Get out! Get out of the fire!”

The men surged sideways, armor glowing around their legs, and Calypso met them with a sweep of her axe. Luna flashed through the gap she opened, lightning snapping between the burning plates as her Stormblade found the casters behind them.

”You wanted to shoot someone, huh?!”

Kaiden heard her furious shout over their screams. Minutes earlier she’d been arguing about the dragon she wanted on his kimono, indignant that the girls had rejected her suggestion.

He’d wanted to hear her complain about it over sweets. He wanted Aria back in his arms, showing off her blue silk, and Alexandra smiling at the flowers Yunohana had chosen for her.

They should have been enjoying themselves. He had watched them help people all day, then spend one afternoon letting someone take care of them, and these pieces of trash had followed them here to take even that away.

”You...”

An attacker thrust a spear at his stomach. Kaiden caught the shaft beneath his arm and hauled its owner off balance, bringing his palm down on the man’s chest.

The detonation hurled the body through a wooden pillar. Kaiden felt the impact through his entire arm, savagely pleased when the man struck the ground beyond it and stayed there.

’Come on, then. Try it on me.’

Crimson flooded his eyes as he turned toward the next weapon. His skin burned along the gauntlet’s edge, black veins spreading up his forearm.

He pulled the spear from beneath his arm and threw it through the man raising a blade behind Calypso.

The demoness looked from the impaled attacker to Kaiden’s arm. Recognition widened her golden eyes before her lips parted in a delighted smile.

He knew that look. Calypso had knelt before him when she first saw his Great Demon form, and now she was looking at him with the same wonder through the blood on her face.

”Oh... There you are, Darling.”

”His eyes!” a caster cried from behind the shields. ”What the fuck is happening to his eyes?!”

Kaiden kept coming. His killing intent pressed through the broken formation, and the caster’s next spell fizzled between trembling fingers as he backed into a fallen comrade.

”Thorne! Get us out!”

”To the bench,” Viktor called back. ”Keep your shields facing Grey.”

Yunohana caught his good wrist in a loop of thread as he spoke. He stepped with her pull, driving his shoulder against her forearm before she could bring the fan up beneath his chin.

Her silver threads cut into his skin. Viktor planted his foot behind her ankle and tried to throw her, but she pivoted around his leg, pulling the thread from his trapped wrist across his throat.

Viktor stopped the throw immediately. A red line opened beneath his chin as Yunohana tightened the thread.

”You are welcome to keep struggling,” Yunohana murmured.

Viktor met her eyes, smiling with his throat pressed against her silver. Then he sprang upward and drove his knee into her wounded shoulder.

”Ghh!”

Her grip faltered with the jolt of pain, and he tore free before her fan could finish the cut. They separated beside the pond, Yunohana’s sleeve soaked to the cuff and Viktor breathing harder through his smile.

Then Theodore called Luna’s name again.

”Luna, please! I need to talk to you!”

She had been rushing toward a spearman attacking Nyx. Her lightning stuttered, only for an instant, before she reformed behind the man and drove her Stormblade through his back.

”Shut up!” Luna ripped the blade free and turned on her brother. ”If you love me at all, then shut the fuck up!”

Theodore tried to come around the shields toward her. His face was pale, and his hands shook as another Blood Pact fighter kept pace beside him.

”I just wanted to see you. They said you would listen if I came.”

Kaiden heard the pain beneath her shouting. Even now, with her brother standing among the people trying to kill them, Luna was asking him to love her enough to stop.

Viktor had brought Theodore here for this. Every cry of her name demanded that she split herself between the family fighting beside her and the brother who had once been her everything.

Kaiden could catch a blade, break the arm holding it, put himself between Luna and anything that wanted her dead. But she heard Theodore no matter how many enemies he tore apart.

A deep growl dragged through his chest. His throat hurt around it, the sound dropping beneath anything his human voice should have been able to make.