Blood Pact (Darkling Mage 7)

“I can take it from here,” he told the gathered Wings and Hands. He dismissed them with a wave, sauntering in, one hand in the pocket of his jacket, the other twiddling fingers as he greeted the Fuck-Tons.

“Thanks, ladies,” Bastion said.

“You know them?” I guess I wasn’t done gawping.

“Sure I do. What, you think you’re the only person who’s ever walked into a BDSM club?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Goodness, Bastion, I had no idea.”

He flustered immediately. “Not what I meant. For information.”

I turned to the Fuck-Tons. “And you ladies have a direct line to the Lorica?”

The man on the ground cried out one final time when Metric tugged her hand away. The threads of pink light at her fingernails disengaged, wrapping even tighter around him. She dusted her hands off, sneering.

“We have a direct line when it’s convenient,” she said.

“Or,” Imperial added, scratching her nails lightly over Bastion’s shoulder, “when we know that the voice at the other end of the line is cute.”

Bastion chuckled again, sweeping one hand through his hair in that kind of gesture that I’d long recognized to be preening and patronizing, yet patently fake. Calculated. I gritted my teeth.

I sighed to myself as Bastion approached. I knew that his ego would have very much loved for me to acknowledge and fawn over his newfound Scion status, but I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.

“This guy one of yours, Brandt?” I glared pointedly down at the man – barely more than a teenager, truthfully – squirming on the ground in his glowing restraints. “He’s attacked us twice now.”

“I don’t like this one,” Sterling said. “It’s got a mean streak to it.”

“I have a name,” the man snarled, still defiant and struggling despite his position.

Bastion sighed, shaking his head at us. “And that would be Donovan Slint. One of our Hounds. Relatively new hire. Good potential, except for what happened here tonight.”

“And on that other night,” Sterling said. “Back in Heinsite Park. Kid went invisible and attacked us for no reason.”

“I’m not a kid,” Donovan growled.

“But your behavior hardly makes you worth being called anything else,” Bastion said, his voice as hard as the steel gray of his eyes. “Going out on your own, defying Lorica protocol and your orders? That’s just stupid on its face.”

Wow. I’d never experienced that side of Bastion before. He was wearing his big boss pants surprisingly well. So authoritative and – I don’t know, commanding. Okay, maybe I even shivered a little.

“Do you even know who you’re up against?” Bastion continued. “These guys could have killed you.”

Donovan scoffed. “I handled both of them, no sweat. They could barely fight back. Can’t hurt what they can’t see.”

“That’s because we’re not in the habit of just killing everything we run into,” I said. “I could have let Vanitas loose. We might not have seen you, but Vanitas is like a heatseeking missile. He has his ways.”

Donovan’s face went still. “Vanitas?”

Bastion tutted. “The next time you think about stalking some rando – ”

“Hey.”

“Shush, Dust, let me handle this. The next time you think about stalking a rando, you might consider looking into his entire dossier first. It’s like you didn’t bother remembering any of your training. Dustin here has a sentient flying sword. He wasn’t kidding. If the Fuck-Tons hadn’t shown up when they did, you might have been chopped into pieces.”

Not to mention the dog, I thought. Damn. Donovan must have lucked out when Sterling tied Banjo to that lamppost. Maybe his bork of explosive death only worked within a certain range, or maybe he needed to actually see his victim. I tried not to shudder. Victim. Yeesh.

Donovan glared at me, his eyes black and piercing, but he pressed his lips into a tight line and said nothing more.

“Why are you after them, anyway?” Bastion said. “That’s another problem with all this. Nobody told me we were keeping an eye on Graves and his little friends. Not since the incident.”