Chapter 28
"Wasn't Invidiva enough? Now you're going to pull this same garbage?" The shouting had been going on for an hour.
I'd stopped trying to track everything Robert was saying. Chase and Blond Blazer had taken up positions on either side of him. It wasn't that I didn't care — I had nothing left. The fight and the hours of fear for Mal had consumed the last reserves I was running on, and Golem had carried me back to the office on his back because my legs stopped functioning somewhere around the port.
Then there were the agonizing minutes waiting for the doctor's verdict, and only when the elderly, stereotypically Jewish physician left the room beaming and nodding at everyone gathered did I finally allow myself to properly exhale and nearly go unconscious on the spot.
There was nothing in me. Moisture was running from the tips of my fingers in slow, maddening drops, irritating not just me but several nurses who were regarding my retreating figure with pointed expressions.
"You could have died! Who would have benefited?" Robert continued in the tone of a strict but genuinely worried father managing a child who'd done something genuinely dangerous. That was more or less how I was receiving it, which was why I couldn't be angry at him or argue. The anxiety in his eyes hadn't fully faded. "You abandoned your team — after the exact same thing happened to you not long ago—"
Blazer had attempted to intervene several times, shifting concerned looks between me and the dispatcher, but Chase, stationed vigilantly at her side, had intercepted her hand before it reached Robert's shoulder and shaken his head without a word.
The lecture continued. I had no words to offer — just the quiet warmth of knowing we'd won, and that Mal was alright. A half-demon's physiology was more durable than a standard super, and she wasn't in any danger.
"That little son of a gun isn't listening to a word you're saying, kid." Ironically, it was Chase himself who finally broke the stream of reproach. "Save it for tomorrow morning, when this one's had sleep and gets to see his precious girl. Then we take him to the red room."
"Is that from Twilight?" Invidiva appeared, with her characteristic absence of warning, in a chair nearby, pulling from her inhaler. She surveyed the assembled tableau in the office, then rolled her eyes with a theatricality that made the old Black man actually grind his teeth.
"Fifty Shades of Grey, you country simpleton." He waved at her as though dispersing smoke, visibly fighting a blush he would never acknowledge. "You've got no business in here. Get out before we start on your white—"
"I'm mixed race, you old racist." She showed him her tongue and peeled herself out of the chair. "Robert, why are you all tearing into him? The job got done, didn't it? Most of the enemies are down, the Alfacha crowd is thinned out — what else do you want?"
"It wasn't Alfacha." I heard myself speak for the first time since walking into Blazer's office. "They were Yachtsmen. Rich soft-bodies playing mafioso."
"And how would you know? Look at that — it speaks." Robert, Chase, and Blazer all turned toward me at once, closing the distance. "Waterboy, you have information on this?"
"Mal told me about them. And about the Alfacha cultists too." I cupped my hands, generated a palmful of water, and pushed it firmly into my own face to wake myself up. "The approaches are different. The resources are different. Even the way they dress is different — they've been doing it that way for decades. Yachtsmen are spoiled brats who like sitting on thrones shaped like golden lions. Alfacha cultists are more like a university secret society — except instead of drinking games and hazing, you kill someone in the name of Alfacha to prove yourself."
"Well, that's illuminating."
"Miss Blazer. Chase. Robert." I addressed my immediate chain of command in order — Blazer's nose did something charming when I said Miss. I exhaled slowly and turned toward the door. "I'm sorry, but I'm completely done. I'm going to leave before I fall over."
"Of course — go rest. We're all exhausted, and this conversation will be better with fresh minds. Stay in the office tonight, there are plenty of open rooms, and the team lounge is still accessible." Blazer moved forward for the first time during the entire dressing-down, warm and bright.
Before either dispatcher could insert themselves, she'd already released me and was steering me toward the door — and had apparently fired a sequence of instructions at Invidiva in the same motion, because the girl fell into step behind me a moment later.
Invidiva caught up at the corridor bend and walked beside me, hands behind her head. She worked at a nicotine lollipop, which Freud would have had opinions about.
"What?" She caught my look, tensed briefly, then made some internal decision and let it go. "Go ahead."
Something was off about her energy. Resolution in the eyes. Hands slightly clenched, posture slightly locked.
"Just wondering why you enjoy putting elongated objects in your mouth but haven't sampled our dispatcher's particular offering."
"Kff—" The lollipop left her mouth at velocity and connected with the glass panel of the nearest room, leaving a small spiderweb of cracks before shattering. A fragment landed on my chest and hooked into the fabric.
While she coughed and assembled her response, I peeled the candy shard off my shirt under her look of pure disgust and put it in my mouth.
"God, what is this." I spat it immediately, grimacing at the bitter, astringent hit. "Is this what that's supposed to taste like?"
"You'd know better than me, gay boy." She produced a replacement from her pocket, unwrapped it with the practiced ease of someone who had done this approximately four thousand times, while I experienced a brief nostalgic memory of fighting with the packaging as a child. She put it in her mouth. "Nicotine lozenges, idiot. If you wanted to get in my mouth that badly, get a few scars first and then maybe—"
"No thank you." I waved her off as she began ramping back up to her usual pace. I was already smiling faintly, having spotted the relevant door down the corridor. "I don't want to break myself on your rocks."
"Rocks? Did you mix something up? You were grabbing my ass — are you saying it's flat? Like a sheer cliff face?" She turned her back to me and presented the disputed region. It received a passing glance. "HEY."
"I was joking. You have a perfectly good backside. It's just not for me." I shrugged apologetically, which drew a noncommittal noise from her — but no escalation.
"Right, I know your type." She nudged my elbow. "You like when bones break during the main event?"
"That's one way to put it." She pulled ahead by a couple of steps and leaned against the wall beside the door to Mal's room. "And seriously — do built women really appeal to everyone that much?"
The last sentence was barely above a whisper, barely audible in the silence of the nearly-empty ward.
I stepped closer and put a hand on her shoulder, gripping it firmly.
"Probably not the physique that's the real factor." She looked up with a complicated expression, already preparing to snap back reflexively, and I cut her off before she could. "Robert almost certainly looks at other things first, and the appearance second."
She bit her lip. Quietly, she moved my hand from her shoulder, stepped back from the doorframe, and cleared the way for me. But she wasn't leaving without the last word. She never did.
"Or I just have terrible taste and I like people I'll never get."
"Hey — it's not that bad. I'm not telling you to give up." I was already gripping the door handle. I decided to put a stupid thought into words — probably not what my colleague expected to hear, but — "It's the twenty-first century. Progressive arrangements. Think about it. You might still get your shot."
"Oh please, I like guys." Our eyes met and held for a few seconds. Then her slightly flushed gaze traveled down my arms and further. "Damn. Now you're starting to look like less of a terrible option."
"Is that the offer, or is it me being a decent perceptive human being?"
"Both," she said, and held up two fingers.
"Really? A couple of kind words and you're ready to climb into my bunk?"
"God, no—" She genuinely shuddered. "I mean. You're just. Not that terrible. Add a little edge. And you've got these sad eyes like a baby deer—"
"Look, if that's your bar, please do not get a dog—" I was halfway through the door, leaning back into the corridor for a final moment, refusing to let the awkwardness settle. "Good luck with Robert. If it works out, I know a website with the number thirty-four — you two would make the front page easy."
"Go to hell, Ginger! I'm not going down on the cheerleader so you can sit at home enjoying the footage—" She pointed a fist at me, took several furious steps down the corridor, and stopped. Her head dropped, hair falling over her eyes. "Hey. Ginger."
"What now?" I stepped back out to avoid waking Mal. "I didn't press for anything — I'm fine entertaining my left hand-chan—"
"I wanted to apologize. Wait — left? You're right-handed, aren't you?"
"How else do you scrub through to the good parts?"
"Have you tried watching the whole thing?"
"God, woman. What do you actually know about men?"
I closed the door behind me, leaving a thoroughly recalibrated Invidiva experiencing what appeared to be a genuine crisis of worldview, and turned toward the bed—
"Mal? Why are you up?"
"Damn, almost." Not remotely embarrassed, she winked at me cheerfully and continued pulling a cropped t-shirt over her head, spectacular chest swinging freely in the process. Two substantial objects moving through space with their own gravitational properties — enough to briefly smooth out my remaining brain function.
"Y-you — damn it." I gently slapped my own face and gathered most of myself. My eyes then moved to her bare legs and the active tail. "M-Mal, you need to r-rest—"
"I'm sorry, Hermi." She dealt with the formidable task of getting denim shorts over that particular backside — a non-trivial operation — and straightened. "But I have to finish this while Micki and his people are still compromised and before they hire new protection. It needs to happen now."
"Micki? The Yachtsman?" I was standing close enough to catch it — the brief involuntary twitch of her eyebrows, the yellow irises igniting with something ancient and unsettling. "Just leave it. When you're recovered, we bring everyone and drop on them together—"
"You remembered. I only mentioned it once." Her smile spread warmly. She closed the distance between us, leaving barely safe margins, and put her palm against my cheek. "But I need to do this myself."
"That's a c-cliché straight from the bad superhero movie handbook." My attempt to step back was stopped by a red tail already wrapped around me. "At least wait until morning and we swarm the lion — though in this case, more of an opossum or a ferret, but still—"
"Hm. I just want to kill him myself, then rob the house and the accounts without having to split it with anyone."
I took a moment to truly appreciate how blank and mildly disappointed my own expression must have looked.
"What? You genuinely expected something grand? Don't worry, Hermi, it's much simpler than that—"
"I'll be honest — yes. I was expecting something involving magic or a blood oath or something—"
"Oh, if you want—" Her voice shifted register, dropping and vibrating at a frequency that went somewhere below my sternum. Her eyes blazed yellow. "I can summon the darkness of this room and in a terrible resonant voice pronounce the dreadful curse that shall fall upon any who attempt to slay a member of the Pierson family of the Yachtsmen — and only I, who laid it, may undo it."
The darkness in the room genuinely thickened as she spoke. The claws at my cheek pressed slightly sharper, and she leaned in until the margins were no longer safe by any measure.
"I honestly cannot tell if that's real or not."
"Hmm." She pulled back suddenly and opened a portal with a casual swing of her palm. "Just be careful—"
I stepped through first into open air, arriving on a hillside somewhere outside the city with a stunning view of nighttime Los Angeles spread below. The lights of expensive homes moved past in the darkness, but the girl who'd stepped through behind me pointed wordlessly at a large estate sitting at a deliberate remove — a zone of emptiness around it, whether by design or because the Yachtsman wasn't welcome even among his own kind.
I didn't care which. What interested me was how few guards I could see, even by my unprofessional eye.
"Alright. Let's go finish this." She swung the terrifying blade onto her shoulder and moved first toward the house of her long-standing enemy.
"Listen — when we're done with this — I wanted to tell you something."
Strange. Even my phobia-soaked, anxiety-riddled interior wasn't raising objections. My hands were dry. My thoughts weren't spinning. And when Mal answered, the confident smile I gave her back was entirely genuine — slightly at odds with the fact that we were walking toward what was, rationally, a deliberate decision to kill a number of people.
"Of course, Hermi." She glanced back over her shoulder, grinning, sharp canines catching the light. "I'll be very happy to listen."
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