Demonic Pornstar System

Chapter 1105: Strange Newcomers

"Please give them all my thanks."

"I will. But you can thank Yuno yourself when you get here. She’d like that much more."

"Then I’ll save a particularly good kiss."

"Several," his beautiful moon corrected softly. "I need them too."

"Mom! Tell them to stop too!"

Kaiden tipped his phone up toward Vespera, who looked down at the screen.

"Don’t make me go over to Japan, daughter."

Alice giggled, emboldened by the distance between them.

"You’ll need a visa first! You’re not welcome here!"

"I see."

Vespera turned around.

The giggling stopped. Alice watched her mother take a step, then caught Aria’s sleeve with both hands.

"Wait! Mom, I was joking!"

Vespera took one more step.

"Big Brother! Help! Keep Satan on your side of the gate! Don’t let her come here!"

Calypso laughed against his shoulder, and Kaiden had to steady his phone against his knee. On the screen, Alice was trying to catch his eye while Aria held her close, struggling to contain her own amusement.

"We’ll see you soon, Kai," his Moon Valkyrie managed.

"Big Brother, you have to promise-"

The call ended.

Kaiden remained silent for a long while. After everything the government had already put Eclipse through, it was still finding ways to trouble people simply for approaching his gate.

His guild members had families living beyond these fences.

Vespera returned to her place behind him as he called Doug in HR.

"Sir?"

"Doug, I’d like you to contact our members. Tell them I strongly recommend bringing their families to headquarters for now, given the government’s continued hostility. Start arranging temporary accommodation here."

"Certainly. Will this be for the duration of the intake?"

"Longer. Depending on how things develop, we may relocate them to Japan. I’d like that option ready."

Doug stopped typing.

"You understand the signal that sends, sir? We’d be gathering their families beside a route out of the country. If those families leave America, Eclipse loses its last real tie here. We’d be ready to establish ourselves anywhere in the world."

Calypso lifted her head from Kaiden’s shoulder. He kept his attention on the people below, watching a father bend to take his son’s bag.

"Do it."

Doug chuckled.

"Just making sure, sir. I’ll speak to them."

Kaiden put his phone away as another driver opened his bus’s luggage compartment. People gathered around it, searching for their belongings while a staff member directed those with their bags toward the building.

Vespera’s gaze followed a thin woman stepping off the bus with her child held tight against her, then moved to the family joining the queue behind them. Tired arrivals stooped over their bags or stood with their shoulders drawn inward, waiting to be told where to go.

Kaiden was watching a couple struggle with an enormous suitcase when his mother spoke.

"Kaiden."

He glanced up at her.

"The man in the gray coat. The woman beside him, and the pair following them. I would ask them to remove their concealing artifacts before letting them any closer to the entrance."

His gaze found the four arrivals approaching the tables. The man wore a threadbare coat over a plain shirt, with a canvas bag hanging from one hand. A woman in a faded cardigan was beckoning to an employee already helping somebody else.

Bastet uncrossed her ankles.

"Shall we, Master?"

"Would you?"

"With pleasure~" Calypso slipped away from his side and dropped from the roof.

She landed on the paving with a heavy thump, bending her knees before straightening in front of the approaching group.

Bastet followed in a flutter of gold-threaded silk, landing on the balls of her bare feet. Her knees yielded beneath her, then she straightened in one graceful motion, her skirts settling around her legs.

The woman in the cardigan stopped beckoning.

"Remove the artifacts concealing your faces," Bastet said.

The man in gray tightened his hold on his bag.

"We’ve already shown our identification."

"Then show me the faces that belong to those names."

"Is there a problem?" The other man stepped forward, presenting his documents to Calypso. "Your people checked these when we boarded. They checked them again at the fence."

She glanced at the papers without taking them.

"The kitty asked about your faces."

Above them, Kaiden tipped his head back to look at his mother. He was beginning to enjoy the stiffness spreading through the group below.

"How did you notice?"

"They don’t carry themselves like people who have nothing left. Most of those families are exhausted, their shoulders hunched, their children held close. Those four came off the bus with straight backs and their heads high."

"That was enough?"

"Enough to look more closely at their jewelry. The concealments are expensive, but I can feel the spells working now that they’re near us. And after the applications we rejected, I expected somebody to try buying another way in."

Below, the woman in the cardigan turned toward the employee she had been beckoning to.

"Explain to these monsters that we’ve been approved?"

The employee checked the name on her documents against his tablet.

"The person named here has been approved, ma’am. If you’re wearing a disguise, we need to see who you are."

"This is a medical device."

"You will remain outside until you remove it," Bastet replied.

The woman stared at her.

Beside Calypso, the second man tried to walk around the demoness. She moved into his path, and he put a hand against her upper arm as though she were an employee lingering in a doorway.

He pushed.

Calypso looked down at his hand. His face reddened with the effort before he withdrew it, leaving her exactly where she had been.

"We’re wasting time," the woman behind him said.

She wore a blue jacket with frayed cuffs. After a furious glance at the men, she reached beneath its collar and pressed a finger against her pendant.

Light rippled over her face. As the artifact’s illusion faded, her narrow features broadened into those of an older woman with carefully painted eyebrows and a mouth drawn tight with irritation. She pulled a wig from her head, exposing the glossy dark hair beneath it.

"There. May I speak to Mr. Grey now?"

The staff member’s gaze dropped from her face to the photograph on his screen.

"That isn’t you."

"Obviously."

Her companions began removing their own concealments. A ring slipped from the cardigan woman’s finger, changing the shape of her face as its magic faded. The man beside Calypso unfastened a charm from his collar and emerged silver-haired, with a complexion far better cared for than his worn clothes suggested.

Last came the man in gray.

When he released the clasp at his throat, the healthy face beneath his thinning hair aged into one hollowed by illness. The artifact had hidden how badly he was trembling. Without its illusion, the effort of standing there was painfully plain.

"Edmund Hensley," Vespera said.

Kaiden glanced up at her.

"He offered to finance the settlement in exchange for admission. When we refused him, he made himself unpleasant to your staff."

"Ah."

People in the queue began whispering familiar names. These were faces they knew from television and the papers.

Ms. Rook came through the headquarters doors and joined the employee with the tablet. As he showed her the documents, she looked from the revealed faces to the names under their photographs.

"Where are the people these belong to?"

"They chose not to come," the woman in blue answered.

"And gave you their identification?"

"We compensated them. Very generously. They received enough to begin again on Earth. I fail to see why anyone should object to an arrangement that benefits both parties."

A man waiting with his daughter lowered the cup he had been drinking from.

"You bought their places?"

The woman ignored him. Her attention had gone to the roof, where Kaiden sat with his mother behind him.

"Mr. Grey, could we discuss this directly? Your representatives have been unwilling to consider our circumstances."