Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 1032: Empowered Manouver

He felt the hot trickle beside his eyes as tiny horn tips broke the skin. The pain barely reached him through his fury; he was closing on Viktor while Yunohana pressed the man back toward the bench.

"You used her brother to hurt her."

Kaiden’s voice carried a second, guttural resonance beneath the words. Viktor looked at the blood running from his temples, and his smile faded as he took in the horn tips.

Yunohana’s fan flashed toward his exposed throat, but Viktor caught her wrist with the hand Luna had broken. Bone clicked beneath his skin as red light burned through his shirt below the collar, and the tendons in his hand drew tight as he forced Yunohana’s fan away from his neck.

Kaiden felt the foreign mana a moment later, a suffocating pressure pouring through the portal into the mark on Viktor’s chest. His gauntlet prickled against his skin at its approach.

Viktor drew a deep breath. When he smiled again, the pleasure on his face was startlingly sincere.

"Ah... Thank you, my Lady."

He twisted Yunohana’s wrist outward and struck her beneath the ribs with his other palm. Alexandra caught her against a golden barrier as the blow threw her off her feet, and Kaiden lunged past her with his gauntlet drawn back.

His fist met Viktor’s palm with an explosion that threw water out of the pond. The man slid backward into the bench, crushing its broken frame beneath his heels, but his fingers stayed closed around Kaiden’s gauntlet.

’What the fuck...?’

Kaiden drove harder, Wrath burning through their locked hands. Viktor’s skin blistered against the metal, and still he leaned into the grip, looking at Kaiden with open delight.

"I’ve watched that punch more times than you could imagine. It really is better in person."

He hauled Kaiden forward and drove his elbow toward his face. Kaiden twisted aside, taking the blow across his cheek, and tasted blood as Viktor flung him toward Yunohana.

Yunohana gritted her teeth as pain tore through her ruined left shoulder, then forced that arm around Kaiden’s upper arm and turned with his momentum, keeping them both upright. Her fan snapped open in her right hand beside his shoulder while Alice fired at the hand Viktor was reaching toward the portal.

Viktor swept his palm upward. Blood rose from the wound in his side, spreading into a red shield that burst under Alice’s beam while he ducked behind it.

<He’s drawing that power through the opening!> Alice told Kaiden. <The mark on his chest!>

"The last convoy is clear!" a radio crackled from Viktor’s belt.

He pressed his palm to the portal’s rim. Red light stretched its lower edge down beside the bench until the passage beyond met the garden paving.

"Through you go," he called to his surviving fighters, turning to face Kaiden and Yunohana again. "I’ll follow."

"Kai, he’s forcing it wider!" Nyx cried. Blood welled beneath her nose as she fought the expanding opening. "I can’t close it while he’s feeding it!"

David’s escort broke toward the bench. One man dragged him by the collar while another fired at Nyx, trying to break her concentration.

Alexandra caught the shots against her barrier, and Aria sent a crescent through the caster’s legs. He fell screaming in front of Calypso, who buried her axe in his back before he could crawl after David.

"Darling, behind you!"

Kaiden turned as a fighter drove a shield at his spine. His gauntlet crushed its rim, then he shoved it aside and caught the man by the face.

"No! Wait-"

He drove the man headfirst into the paving. Bone burst beneath his fingers, and he was already rising when Alice’s beam tore through the next fighter trying to reach the portal.

Across the pond, Theodore’s companion seized his arm and hauled him along the walkway toward the same opening. By the time they reached the bench, Luna was coming after them in a streak of lightning.

"Let go of him!" she screamed.

She materialized beside Theodore and cut through the hand gripping him. His escort shrieked, but his other palm was already driving into Theodore’s chest, knocking him backward through the portal as Luna reached for him.

"Luna!"

She lunged after her brother. Viktor thrust his hand across the opening, spreading a sheet of blood between Luna and Theodore. Her fingers struck the red surface hard enough to split it.

Theodore was already beyond her reach. Through the tearing veil, she saw David being pulled down the passage by his escort.

"I’LL KILL YOU!"

Her lightning shredded Viktor’s blood barrier. He turned his forearm against her sword wrist, knocking the blade past his chest, but Yunohana’s threads caught his other arm before he could strike back.

"You’re staying," the High Shrine Maiden hissed, hauling him away from the threshold.

Kaiden went straight for him. A shout that had a demon’s voice beneath it tore from his throat, rattling the windows in their frames.

Viktor braced to meet him with his free hand, red mana gathering over his palm. Kaiden dropped Wrath for Envy before they touched, driving his suppression into the mark Alice lit with gold beneath the man’s collar.

The pressure against his skin eased. Viktor’s red shield thinned, and Kaiden tore through it with his gauntlet, catching a fistful of shirt over the burning mark.

’Let’s see you do it without her.’

Kaiden dragged him into a knee to the ribs. Viktor grunted against his shoulder, his heels scraping the stones as Yunohana pulled his trapped arm out to the side.

"There!" Nyx cried. "Keep doing that!"

The portal buckled behind Viktor as Envy choked off the borrowed power. His smile vanished with the jolt of Kaiden’s next knee, and he caught Kaiden’s free fist before it could reach his face.

"Ah... So that’s what you did to the prison."

Blood gathered beneath the threads on Viktor’s forearm and hardened into a blade, forcing its edge against the silver. He drove his forehead into Kaiden’s face as the binding began to fray.

Pain burst behind Kaiden’s eyes. His grip held, but his suppression faltered, and a pulse of red mana poured through the mark before he could smother it again.

Viktor ripped through the silver binding with his blood blade. Yunohana cut across his upper arm as he pulled free, opening it to the bone, and he hissed while twisting out of Kaiden’s grasp.

Kaiden’s gauntlet tore away the front of his shirt. Viktor was already stepping backward into the portal when Aria’s crescent swept across the opening.

He raised a shield of blood from his bleeding arm. Moonlight shattered it, cutting into his shoulder and spinning him against the side of the passage.

"Ghh...!"

Kaiden lunged after him with his gauntlet open. Beside him, Luna became lightning again, racing for the gap through which her brother had disappeared.

Viktor swept his blood blade across the red mark on his chest and threw himself deeper into the passage.

The power running through him stopped feeding the portal. Nyx crushed the opening before Kaiden’s fingers reached Viktor, but Luna’s lightning struck the closing edge.

"No!" Nyx caught Luna with a spatial fold and hurled her back into the garden before the collapse could take her with it.

Luna landed beside Kaiden, her boots skidding through the blood on the stones. She stared at the blank air with her hand still outstretched.

"...Kai..."

Kaiden stood beside her, trembling with the force of what he still wanted to do. Viktor’s torn shirt hung from his gauntlet, and through the throbbing pain in his face he could still feel the bastard wrenching free.

He’d had his hand on him. Yunohana had held his arm, Alice had shown him where to strike, and he’d still let the fucker get away with Luna’s brother.

Circle reinforcements shouted from the entrance as Yunohana came up beside them, blood dripping from the fan in her hand.

Kaiden looked at Luna’s empty hand, hearing her broken whisper calling his name again while blood trickled from the horn tips at his temples.

His demonic roar shattered the windows facing the garden.