24 hours later Tabitha reported, “All clear,” and lowered her rifle as we rolled up to the corner office of a downtown highrise.
“You’re sure this is the right place?” I asked one last time.
“Damn right I am,” she confirmed.
“Good.”
“Hold on, I’ve got a lock-pick somewhere,” Blitz said as we approached the door.
I kicked the door open without breaking stride and moved in with my gun up.
“Or, we could just do that.”
“Clear,” Tabitha and I announced at the same time, sweeping through the office in seconds. This was one of those cushy corner offices we had seen linked up to those magic doorways lining the hallway outside of Aleksei’s office. It was a backdoor into the Bureau. If we could get it to work, and it would take us to the big man himself.
“Alright Io. Show us what you got,” Tabitha said, waving one of Io’s magical drones into the room with us. It floated in and landed on the desk.
Io’s voice spoke to us both without any need for an electronic comm. Since our binding the night before, she had woken up with the ability to communicate with us telepathically. Not nearly to the same extent as Tabitha and my bond, where each of our bodies felt like extensions of the other, but more like a not-so-distant observer. If our minds were all occupying a movie theater, Tabby and I were alone in the front row and Io was somewhere in the middle seats, guiding us.
From her place back by the Oceanfront Galleria, Io said, “Anytime, gorgeous. Say the word and I’m your girl. Now step back and watch a master work her craft.” Her drone flitted to the other doorway in the room and started to hover. Magical light and arcane symbols flashed across the door as she began hacking her way through the enchantments. Or rather, her drone did. Io herself possessed a very low MQ, but through her enchanted drones she could cast a whole arsenal of spells—and from long distance.
“I’d rather watch her work your shaft,” Tabitha confided in me.
“I heard that.” Io imparted to us.
“Damn it. I’m not used to this telepathy shit yet, okay? That was meant to be for Ryan.”
“Wasn’t a complaint darling. Give me a few days to recover from last night and I’d be more than happy to make your dreams come true. You two stay focused over there. I want my paramours returned to me in one piece,” Io scolded.
“Your paramours?” I chuckled. “I’m pretty sure you two are my paramours, actually.”
“No, no. Don’t get it twisted, hotshot. You and Io are the first two members of my budding harem,” Tabitha joked.
“Ladies, ladies. We have a couple of worlds to save. If we could please stay focused here. I will not allow infighting in my harem.”
Smiles split all three of our faces at the same time.
“Oh that is just too weird. Please, please for the love of fuck just have your conversations out loud?” Blitz demanded. “You guys just smiled the exact same way at the exact same time and I’m not about it. Creepiest shit ever. Please knock it off.”
Tabby and I chuckled. This was probably at least somewhat pre-game jitters making us flirty with each other, but it was better than mentally acknowledging how dangerous what we were about to do really was.
“I’m in. Door should open in 10 seconds,” Io announced; all business.
I nodded to Tabitha and she yanked a detonator from her pocket and depressed the trigger.
A deep rumble shook Eastport as roughly a dozen vampire nests were suddenly awakened all at once. Drone footage from Io’s birds hit our HUD as vampires flooded out of their hives and ran right through clouds of radioactive markers leftover from the explosions—a trick we learned from Agent Philips—, suddenly splashing a whole swarm of blinking black dots all across the blue-and-white holographic map of Eastport. It looked like a constellation of dark bees angrily buzzing out of their hives to float across a gleaming field of stars.
The perfect backdrop for what we had in mind.
“Alright gorgeous. Tell Alan ‘happy hunting’ from us.”
Io smiled and said, “Stay frosty, don’t get killed, and send the Bureau back to Hell where they belong,” before refocusing on her tasks. The Bureau was too heavily warded for her drone signal to penetrate, meaning we were on our own once we stepped through that portal. Which was fine. Guiding Alan through the streets of Eastport was going to be enough to keep her busy without worrying about us as well. She had her mission and we had ours.
Tabitha, Blitz, and I all stacked up on the magical doorway as the portal opened.
It was gametime.
We stepped through the doorway into the hall and found it deserted.
An alarm was already filling the Bureau, which we were expecting. A robotic voice was announcing, “Vampiric activity all throughout Eastport! All hands on deck, this is not a drill! I repeat. Vampiric activity all throughout Eastport. This is not a drill!”
The elevator doors on one end were closed, along with every other door lining the walls—minus the one we just breached. Aleksei’s office, however, was standing wide open.
My heart hammered in my chest as we crept towards the puppetmaster himself, assuming he was in there, and I swallowed hard before letting out a slow breath to even myself.
I shot a sympathetic look at Tabitha, because I knew she would take this hard, but she didn’t look at me.
Tabitha immediately moved towards that end of the hall, and I backed her up. Blitz trailed behind us toting a single pistol. Tabby seemed to believe that he had earned it after saving her from getting a nasty scratch by a vampire the night before. Not life-threatening but certainly painful. I still had my doubts about him, but if Tabitha was good with him watching our backs then so was I.
We rushed into Aleksei’s immaculately spartan office to find it…littered with corpses. Hunters, Keepers, and hellhounds had been dropped left and right. And sitting at Aleksei’s desk, smoking a cigar and clutching at his side, was none other than the man himself.
My mouth opened and closed several times as I tried to pick sense of the mess.
Aleksei was sitting in his leather chair with bruised knuckles and a splattering of blood marring his otherwise pristine appearance. He held a blood-smeared bowie knife in one hand and a cigar in the other. His white-and-gold hand cannon rested on the desk. Smoke rose from the lit end of his cigar and from the barrel of his revolver alike, and joined the cloud he was breathing out when we walked in.
“Daddy?” Tabitha shouted. A strange sensation came over me at hearing her say that word and having it not be directed at me. Arousal, jealousy, weirded-out-ness. She rushed to Aleksei’s side and he smiled up at her somewhat feebly. It was then that I noticed a dagger sticking out of his side.
“Ah, hello there my prodigal daughter. I see you brought him.”
“Daddy, you’re hurt.”
“It’s just a flesh wound,” Aleksei claimed.
“Tabitha, be careful,” I said, putting myself between her and Aleksei. “We don’t know what happened here.”
“There are hellhounds on the floor, it’s obvious what happened,” she replied.
I looked at Aleksei, who nodded. “Boris.” It was all he said, all he needed to say.
Aleksei hadn’t been in on everything. We weren’t staging a coup, we were interrupting one.
Tabitha moved to Aleksei’s side and examined the dagger embedded in his ribs.
I glanced back down the hallway. A chill crept up my spine.
Bianca was headed our way with a pack of agents at her back. Presumably she had fucked them all and thus they were under her thrall just like Derek. Great.
Attack of the Simps.
“Incoming! Blitz, with me. Tabitha, defend Aleksei.”
“‘Defend’ me? Preposterous! This is my house, boy. I will defend it myself!” Aleksei attempted to rise and immediately let out a sharp, “Ach!” and sat back down heavily.
“Right,” I said dryly. “Well don’t let me stop you.”
“Upstart,” Aleksei hissed. Mostly in pain but a little in annoyance too.
“Oldtimer,” I fired back.
“Prick!”
“Asshole!”
“Ugh, please. Blitz, watch after my father.” Tabitha slid over the desk and leveled her rifle down the hallway, squeezing off three bursts that sped towards Bianca.
The succubus shrieked in outrage as the bullets zipped through the heads of a few of her enthralled goons. “You shot at me? How dare you! Boys, attack!”
I saw through Tabitha’s eyes how all the agents raised their guns and fired at the same time. Without thinking, I activated my dino-arm to get that impenetrable skin and rushed her, tackling her to the side before the hail of bullets could rip through the air where she was standing.
Instead, the bullets either ripped right through me, as my dino-skin failed to fully emerge, or flew straight toward Aleksei.
“No!” Tabitha roared, point-three seconds after we landed.
All of the bullets shredded through his beautiful desk and punched through his immaculate clothing, leaving it filled with bullet holes as each round struck him full on. Aleksei rose from his chair, recoiling from the staccato impacts. His cigar was blasted apart. His leather chair toppled, bullet-ridden, and his bowie knife went clattering across the floor.
Yet somehow Aleksei stood there without a mark on him. His suit was in tatters to reveal that he really did have tattoos all across his torso. But his skin had not even been breached by a single round in all of that fire.
What kind of bulletproof monster are you, dude?
I got my answer as Aleksei spat out what remained of his cigar and raised his now slit-pupiled orange eyes up to see Bianca’s herd of simps approaching. He started to swell, growing taller and straining the fabric of his three-piece until it started to tear. “You know something? I think it’s time we renegotiated that contract with Hell. They keep sending us sluts when we asked for agents!”
With a metallic sound like a dozen swords being drawn from their sheathes at once, Aleksei’s human form morphed into the body of a dragon roughly twice the size of a grizzly bear—before even factoring in his new wingspan. He dropped onto all fours and unleashed a gout of white-hot fire that poured through the doors of his office and raced through the enchanted hallway; scorching everything in its path.
One second Bianca was standing there wearing a sneer and this weird sexy nun meets slutty police officer getup, the next she was a skeletal outline and a whole lotta ash. Her army of sex-slaves fared no better than she did. Neither did the hallway for that matter.
Explosions ripped their way across the Eastport skyline as offices all across downtown suddenly erupted in flames. What with the blindingly bright sun-lion galloping throughout the city scorching vampires left and right, I’m sure the city had bigger problems to worry about right then. That was probably the coolest thing I had seen since discovering the existence of monsters. But if anyone ever told Aleksei I said that I would hunt them for sport.
Aleksei shriveled back to his human form to reveal that the dagger was still buried in his chest. He slumped to the ground and grew very still.
“Dad?” Tabitha asked softly. She and I rose to our feet and approached him cautiously.
“He’s still breathing,” I reported, seeing his chest rise and fall.
As Tabby dropped down to one knee to check on him, Blitz and I both glanced down the ruined hallway and exchanged glances. The whole hallway was completely…fucked. Hope the Bureau had it in the budget for a remodel.
“Uh, Ryan? Your pouch is um. It’s jiggling,” Blitz said lamely, pointing to my waist.
A glance down confirmed that one of the pouches hanging off my belt was indeed jiggling. I cracked open the lip and reached down to cradle what was inside, pulling out the pink orb with great care. I gently lifted Euna’s core out of the pouch and held her up at eye level. “You okay, girl? What is it?”
Her core practically leapt out of my hands as her soft little voice called out, “Hungry!” In a trance-like tone. The core dropped to the ground and rolled up to the nearest hellhound corpse; sizzling through its side and embedding deep into its chest cavity without even slowing. In seconds the entire corpse was just molten goo that quickly resolved into pink Biomass. This process repeated itself twice more with two more hellhound bodies. Euna, admittedly a paper-thin version of her, suddenly got to her feet and turned to me with a happy smile.
She ran to me and gave me a big hug. “Thank you, Ryan, I was starving! Still am actually.” Euna spun in place and looked at Blitz. “Are you going to eat that?” she asked, pointing to the body of a human agent Aleksei had killed before we arrived.
“Uh… I already ate,” he answered, looking positively pale.
“Great! More for me.” Euna knelt down and pushed her hand through the chest of the human corpse, dissolving it in its entirety and absorbing it into her mass once more. She then moved off to keep at it with the other remains of Aleksei’s would-be hit squad.
I turned to Tabitha to see her looking deeply afraid. “Ryan, Aleksei isn’t waking up!” Panic tinged her voice, and bled through our connection so much that I could almost feel it welling up in me and threatening to overwhelm me.
No. I am the master of myself. I am in control.
The panic faded as I centered myself.
“Does anyone here have any medical training? Blitz?”
Blitz shook his head and started to explain, but I didn’t care.
“Euna?”
Euna frowned as she stepped away from her latest meal. She was already looking closer to her old voluptuous self, though her pink tone was paler, like she was not nearly as dense as she had been when we first met. “Not training, per se, but I healed lots of fellow monsters after their fights in Club Ouroboros. I can take a look!”
“Please do. Aleksei is Tabitha’s dad. It’d be a really big help if he stayed alive.”
Euna nodded excitedly. “Anything I can do to help you two, just say the word!”
She rushed over to Aleksei’s side and yanked the blade out of his chest. Tabitha started to shout in anger that the blade was the only thing keeping the wound sealed, but her protest died on her lips as Euna pressed her palm to Aleksei’s wound and started to glow. Pink biomass filled the stab wound and she lost some of the thickness she had just regained.
Aleksei gasped awake a moment later and glanced up.
“Young lady, you are not wearing any clothes.”
“Neither are you, Tabby’s Dad. And I look cuter than you.”
Aleksei did not argue. How could he?
“Did she just heal me?” he asked Tabitha, who nodded in confirmation. “Is she a succubus?” His voice was tinged with fear.
“No. She’s a slime.”
“Oh thank fuck. Dr. Caroline would never forgive me if I accepted ‘healing’ from a succubus. How refreshing to have a healer whose powers do not rely on sex magic. What is your name, young lady? Are you looking for a job?”
Before introductions could be made, a new sound interrupted.
The elevator doors opened to reveal Agent Boris.