Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 1033: Messy Aftermath

Kaiden Grey was still half-transformed as his demonic roar rolled through the ruined garden. Luna caught his face between her hands before the last broken glass struck the paving.

"Kai... Please... Look at me."

Blood ran over her fingers from the horns pushing through his temples. She moved her thumbs away from the wounds, trying to hold him without hurting him, while his gaze remained fixed on the empty air behind her.

He could still reach for it. There had to be a way to open that passage again.

Viktor had been right there.

"Please stop doing this to yourself," Luna whispered. "You’re bleeding. Kai, I..."

Her voice failed, and Kaiden finally looked down at her.

Luna was trying so hard to sound reassuring. Her lips trembled around the next attempt, her eyes wet as she searched his face for some sign that he was listening.

She had just watched her brother disappear among the people who’d attacked them, and she was standing here worrying about the blood on his face.

"I’m here," she managed. "Could you just... stay here with me?"

The question hurt worse than Viktor’s attacks.

Kaiden had been staring at where the bastard had gone while Luna stood within reach of his arms, asking for him. She needed him so badly that she could barely get the words out, and she was still trying to take care of him first.

"Luna..."

He let Viktor’s torn shirt fall from his gauntlet and brought his hands to her waist.

The pressure beneath his skin resisted him for a moment. Kaiden drew a rough breath and forced the transformation to stop, holding himself still through the pain as the horn tips ceased pushing outward.

His next breath came easier. The black veins along his forearm began to fade beneath Luna’s fingers as she lowered one hand to his wrist.

"There you are..." she whispered, attempting a smile that broke before she finished it.

Kaiden pulled her against his chest.

Luna’s arms went around him so tightly that his injured ribs protested. He held her closer anyway, tucking her head beneath his chin while her first sob caught against his shirt.

"I’ve got you."

"I know. I know, I just..."

She couldn’t finish. Her fingers closed in the cloth at his back, and the effort she’d been making to keep herself together gave out in his arms.

Kaiden bent over her, holding her through the tears. She had screamed at Theodore to stop, tried to reach him, nearly followed him into a closing portal, and then turned straight to Kaiden because he was hurting too.

He wanted to take every part of this away from her. He could only hold her, and when she pressed herself closer, he understood that she was asking him to keep doing exactly that.

"I’m sorry," he murmured into her purple hair. "I wanted to catch him."

"You nearly got taken too." Luna’s words came muffled against his chest. "I saw that fucking thing pulling you away, and then Theo..."

She shook her head against him and clung harder.

"Please don’t apologize right now."

Kaiden kissed her hair and stayed with her while the reinforcements spread through the garden.

...

Viktor Thorne struck the wall of the passage shoulder-first as the portal collapsed behind him.

Pain shot down the arm Yunohana had cut open. He pushed away from the concrete, leaving a broad smear of blood, and looked back at the sealed end of the corridor.

"Fuck."

One of the vampires waiting beneath the ceiling lights stepped toward him with a folded coat.

"Sir, your arm-"

"Is fine."

Viktor took the coat and worked his wounded arm into its sleeve. The fabric caught against exposed flesh, but he pulled it into place while examining the survivors crowded farther down the corridor.

Too many familiar faces were missing. The men who’d made it through were leaning against the walls or sitting on the floor, pressing their hands over wounds that continued to bleed between their fingers.

Grey had torn through them.

Viktor touched the ragged opening in his shirt where Kaiden’s gauntlet had caught him. He remembered the sudden loss of strength, the knee driving into his ribs, and Yunohana pulling his arm out for another cut.

His mouth tightened with displeasure.

"Boss!" David pushed away from the man supporting him. "What the hell was that? You said we’d have him contained! That bastard almost-"

Viktor slapped him across the face.

David hit the opposite wall with a crack, then dropped onto his hands and knees. Blood spilled from his mouth onto the concrete.

The men beside him hurried out of Viktor’s path.

"I watched you hide behind people who were dying for you," Viktor said. "Then one of them had to remind you that you could cast."

David spat a tooth into his palm. "You..."

He looked up, saw Viktor waiting for him to finish, and lowered his face again.

"Who knew I’d be wasting resources by recruiting an A-tier awakened?"

Viktor sighed and walked past him to Theodore.

The young man stood beside a steel door with his arms hanging at his sides. Blood covered one sleeve where Luna had cut through his escort’s hand, and his eyes remained on the blank wall behind Viktor.

"She came after me," Theodore murmured.

Viktor studied him. "Eventually."

"She reached for... I saw her."

"And before that? You called her name so many times. She still found it remarkably easy to keep fighting for Grey."

Theodore’s gaze moved toward him without quite finding his face.

Viktor had seen Luna’s fingers tear through his barrier. His forearm still hurt where he’d knocked her sword aside, and her scream had followed him into the passage.

He watched Theodore struggling to hold on to that last glimpse of her.

"You couldn’t distract your own sister for more than a moment," he said. "How little of her affection have you managed to keep?"

Theodore opened his mouth, but the answer never came. His gaze dropped to the blood drying on his sleeve.

Viktor adjusted the coat over his injured shoulder and straightened.

"The mission is finished. You may go and rest. Bennett, think your behavior through. I don’t need PTSD-ridden cowards following me."

Viktor turned toward the vampires waiting by the lights.

"Follow."

"Of course, sir."

They fell in behind him as he walked toward the staircase at the other end of the corridor.

Theodore remained beside the open door, staring at his sleeve.

...

In the garden, Alexandra knelt beside Yunohana on a patch of paving that Sonoda had cleared of glass. Golden restoration light filled the torn shoulder beneath the High Shrine Maiden’s blood-soaked sleeve.

"Please tell me if it hurts more," Alexandra asked. "There was quite a lot of damage and I couldn’t get to you instantly..."

"It already hurts considerably less. Thank you."

Yunohana’s fan lay closed beside her knee. Beyond the pond, guards were carrying their freed comrades out of the fighting area while a healer checked the unconscious captain.

Kaiden stood nearby with Luna still tucked against him. Her crying had eased, but she kept her face against his chest when someone passed them.

Aria reached his side and touched the cut across his cheek.

"Could you lower your head a little, Kai?"

He did. She wiped the blood away with a damp cloth Sonoda had brought, taking care around the small wounds at his temples.

Her hand stopped beside one of them.

"He was smiling while he did it," she said. "He tried to take you away from us, and he was enjoying himself."

Kaiden covered her wrist with his hand. Aria met his eyes, furious enough that her voice had gone thin, then leaned forward to kiss his uninjured cheek.

"I wanted to kill him so badly."

"So did I."

"He can join the fucking queue," Luna muttered into Kaiden’s shirt.

Nyx lowered the cloth she’d been holding beneath her nose. "David is the biggest coward ever. He’s still traumatized by your level one duel..."

"His friends kept trying to reach Lexi, trying to rush by me," Calypso added. She stood beside Alexandra with her axe resting against her leg, watching the wounded guards being carried away. "I’m going to be upset about this for a very long time, Darling."

Their anger kept finding new reasons to grow as they compared what each had seen. Bastet listened with her ears pressed back, while Alice’s halo brightened above Kaiden whenever David’s name came up.

Kaiden looked at the broken plate beside the pond. Yunohana had been pleased that they liked the sweets.

"I had my hand on him," he said. "Another second, and-"

"Kai." Nyx came closer. "They surprised us, turned our escort against us, and put you inside some weird prison spell. We broke it, killed a lot of their people, and made the survivors run."

Her gaze moved over the blood on his face before returning to his eyes.

"I’m furious he escaped too. But we beat them. They came here for us, and we’re still together."

Luna shifted against his chest. Kaiden looked down as she lifted her tear-streaked face toward him.

"We fucked them up real bad..." she said hoarsely.

He brushed her damp hair away from her cheek.

She was right. All of them were. He could remember every hand that had kept him here: Yunohana sustaining the ward, Aria attacking the prison, Alice guiding him toward the mark, Nyx fighting the portal while the others held off the men trying to finish them.

His family had fought for each other through the entire ambush, and they had won.

Relief finally reached him strongly enough to hurt. He held Luna against him and looked at the women gathered around Alexandra, grateful beyond anything he could fit into a quick thank-you.

"You were amazing," he told them. "Every one of you. I saw what you did to keep us together."