The action inside continued as Ava proceeded to address the woman with the ability to manipulate her hair. She had now erected a wall of thick hair between them in the back of the room, shielding Kevin, the cat girl, and another woman with red hair from the action.
And Ava may have burned through the hair, which had already started to fill the place with a cloud of thick smog, had it not been for the man who could morph into a beast twice his size, bone spikes pressed out of his skin.
Even as she turned her fiery hands toward him, the beast-man ignored her attack, tackling Ava.
They rolled around for a moment, the man overpowering Ava and driving her shoulders to the ground. She tried to send a fireball through his stomach and he merely roared out, slamming her again. Ava’s flaming hair suddenly flickered out.
“I have to get in there,” Roman said suddenly, Miranda’s hand coming to his wrist.
“No, we’re supposed to stay here.”
“I can’t let Ava get hurt,” Roman told her.
The telepath tried to stop him, but by this point, Roman was already crossing the street, the pavement starting to form a thick armor around his arms.
The walls of the restaurant parted ways. The duplicates, Ava, Coma, the beast morpher and Jess all turned to Roman, a smile on his combat doll’s face.
The beast man threw his head back, crying out in pain as he brought his hands to his chest and fell to the side. Roman then turned his focus on all the duplicates, pinpointing the one with an actual heartbeat and rupturing a vein in his brain.
From there he went to the woman with the powerful hair, strangling her with her own ability. The woman reached out, tendrils of her hair twisting in the air toward Roman and ultimately failing.
She hit the ground as her wall of hair returned to her body.
Roman saw that Kevin was gone.
“You weren’t supposed to…” Ava started to tell him as the unnecessary armor he had created started to fall off his arms.
“We need to get back to Kevin’s pleasure house,” Roman said. “We have the location.”
After giving him a look that told Roman she would deal with his insubordination later, Ava quickly surveyed the carnage, the fire user still catching her breath.
“I tried to stop him,” Miranda said after she made it across the street.
“And now Kevin got away,” Ava said, clearly agitated.
“Not necessarily,” Roman told her.
“What do you mean?”
“Casper,” Roman called aloud. “Casper…” He waited for her to respond, and when she didn’t, Roman turned to Ava and smiled. “Just as I suspected.”
“You didn’t,” she said, her face going from shock to disgruntled admiration.
“Casper is with him now, or at least she should be. That should help some. How else can we track them down? Miranda?”
“According to the information we got from Chap, Kevin had a telepath with him. Maybe I’ll be able to get some more information about her back at the pleasure house. I don’t know if his other cat girl will have information I can pick up on, but that’s worth a shot as well. Either way, the longer we’re here, the more daylight we’re burning.”
“It’s really too bad you can’t communicate with your doll,” Jess said. The morpher was back to her normal form now, her dirty-blonde hair a mess. Out of the three that had been in the battle, only Jess looked like she had gotten by without a scratch. “Then you could just get a location from her.”
Roman closed his eyes, focusing for a moment and failing to see what Casper was seeing. “No. It’s… it’s not like my bond with Coma. Perhaps if it were Coma that was with Kevin, I’d be able to tap in. I mean, I could try again in a quieter place. Maybe that’s a better idea.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Ava said.
“Right,” Roman said. He shook his head at some of the damage in the room.
It was strange being in the space after having witnessed it all through Coma’s eyes.
Now it was suddenly more visceral, the smells, the colors, even the sounds of fire crackling in the corner and a few of the exemplars wheezing as their last breaths left them.
“Let’s go there now,” Ava said. “Our Western Province counterparts are already on their way here. I don’t know if Kevin is stupid enough to go back to the brothel, but if he is, we can get him there.”
Jess and Miranda nodded.
“I’ll arrange transport,” the telepath said.
“Good job,” Roman said as Coma approached him. He placed a hand on her shoulder, looking at all the blood that was splattered across her face and dress. “We’re going to need to get you new clothing.”
She smirked at him. “It looks like it.”
Roman resisted the urge to bring her into his arms to make sure she was okay.
She wasn’t human; of course she was okay.
Nor did she need any type of reassurance that there was someone there for her. Roman had no idea what Coma truly wanted, but he did know when she was in her element.
And the scattered bodies across the ground, the destruction, the severed head, all of it—that was her element.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Pleasure House
Their forms dropped from about a foot above the ground before Roman, Coma, Ava, Jess, and Miranda quickly fanned out. The teleporter jumped back into the air and hovered for a moment, energy oscillating around his ankles before he blasted off.
Jess and Ava headed to the back of the pleasure house; Roman, Miranda, and Coma moved to the front.
The pleasure house was several stories tall, and unlike the buildings around it, it wasn’t built into the block, almost as if the locals had wanted the building to be separate from the rest of their homes and establishments.
While the block was poorly lit in some corners, the place didn’t seem that dangerous, not like some of the areas Roman had been to in southern Centralia. Then again, Roman was in a different country, so dangerous could very well look different here. Maybe the man watching them from the safety of his window was reporting to Kevin what he was seeing. Or maybe the woman walking out of the bodega a couple doors down from the pleasure house was the mole.
Either way, they needed to move quickly.
With a flick of Roman’s wrist, the front door opened, making a creaking sound as it did so.
“Have you ever figured out a way you can’t use your power?” Miranda asked as they closed the door behind them, Roman re-locking it.
“That’s a weird way to phrase it. But yes. I can’t control the air.”
Roman threw some of the doors open, and Coma went forward to investigate. He didn’t like the vibe of the pleasure house with its dimly lit hallways, walls painted black, and a floral scent to the air.
It wasn’t messy or anything, but he knew what went on here. He knew what the waiting room was for, and he could only imagine what went on in some of the rooms.
Then again, Roman had animated sex dolls to be his companions, so maybe it was best that he avoid throwing rocks in glass houses.
Coma came out of one of the rooms with an emaciated brunette whose hair was in pigtails, a bladed hand at the woman’s throat.
“Don’t kill her,” Miranda said, instantly checking the woman’s mind. “She’s just one of his employees.”
“Why weren’t you at the party?” Coma asked, still not letting the woman go.
“I just wanted to rest. I’ve been working so much that I figured it would be a good time to catch a little sleep. Who are you guys anyway? Where’s Kevin and the others?”
It was the last thing she said.
A glazed look rolled over the brunette’s eyes as she pulled away from Coma. The prostitute immediately turned to the exit, shutting the door behind her after she left.
“And she won’t remember anything?” Roman asked.
“Nope,” Miranda said, tapping on her temple. “That’s why I’m useful; I get to the core of most problems.”
&
nbsp; “I’ll keep that in mind,” Roman said as he heard some activity upstairs.
“Second floor is clear,” Jess called down from above.
Roman, Miranda, and Coma joined her on the second floor, Ava already up at the top.
“I think this may be his office,” Roman’s former teacher said, noticing there was only one room on the third floor.
“I will go in,” Coma said before anyone could stop her.
Roman’s combat doll opened the only door on the third floor and stepped inside, coming into a rather large room with bookshelves on one side, a couch, and a wooden desk, along with additional rooms at the back. The carpet before the couch was brand new, a price tag still affixed to one of the far corners.
Jess was the last to step in, and as she did she moved toward the bookshelf on the left, making room for the others.
Ava took a quick look at Kevin’s desk. “We have to find it…”
Jess was slammed to the floor by a cat girl with turquoise ears.
The cat girl flipped her over and drove her teeth into Jess’s neck.
A vein pulsed on the side of Miranda’s head; the cat girl stopped dead in her tracks and fell to the side, a dazed look painting across her face as the telepath took over her mind.
“Fuck!” Jess said, her hand at the wound on her neck. “She fucking bit me!”
“Just relax,” Roman said, coming to her.
“Why am I starting to feel funny?” Jess asked as her pupils started to twitch.
“Get over to that couch,” Ava said, the tone of her voice indicating she didn’t want to be distracted at the moment
Roman helped Jess over to the couch as Coma went to check the other rooms. Ava continued to look through Kevin’s desk, not at all concerned with Jess’s well-being.
“It has to be around here somewhere…” she mumbled.
“What do I do with her?” Miranda asked, nodding toward the cat girl.
Ava took a quick look around the room, pointing to a chair in front of Kevin’s desk. “Make her sit there. It will make this a lot easier.”
The cat girl stood and obediently walked over to the chair in front of Kevin’s desk. She plopped down, still with a blank expression on her face.
“Okay,” Miranda said, already going to work on her mind. “Got it. There’s a switch inside the bottom drawer. You have to pull the drawer out, and the switch is behind that.”
“What are you looking for?” Roman asked Ava as Coma came out of the bedroom in the back, indicating that it was clear.
“Just make sure Jess is okay,” Ava ordered.
Roman looked over to the morpher and noticed there was now drool coming out of the side of her mouth.
“What am I supposed to do with her exactly?”
“She’ll get better over time,” Ava explained. “Remember the narcotic Kevin had? The one he was dosing people with?”
Roman nodded.
“It comes from her, and her counterpart,” she said, nodding at the cat girl. “Who is now dead. Coma killed her rather quickly.”
Roman remembered the cat girl with black ears charging at Coma only to be completely skewered, and how Kevin had freaked out when she’d died.
“I have to get out of her mind for a moment,” Miranda said, shaking her head all of a sudden. “It’s too much…”
Ava found the button she was looking for and pressed it.
A large built-in panel on the wall popped open. “That’s convenient,” she said as she came to a safe that was easily the size of the door.
“Does she know the combination?”
“Let me check…” Miranda started to say.
“I’ve got it,” said Roman as the lock pressed out of the safe and clinked against the wooden floor. The door of the safe swung open, Ava smiling as she took a look at what was inside.
“Jackpot. Let’s secure everything and then get out of here,” she said.
“What about Kevin? Is this what we actually…” The realization struck Roman. “But why?”
“There are two types of serums in here,” Ava said as she started taking crates out of the safe and placing them on Kevin’s desk. “A little help, Coma?”
Roman’s combat doll joined her, also helping gather the crates.
“To answer your question,” Ava said as she carried out another crate, “the whole point in getting Kevin was to get these two different serums. One allows a person to heal; the other is a replica of the toxin running through these cat girls. The thing is, we know the man who created the stuff, Dr. Hamza Grumio, but he hasn’t been very forthcoming with his information. This gives us another option, especially if we can reverse engineer the chemicals.”
“So this was our actual mission then?” Roman asked.
Ava shook her head. “No, we need to kill Kevin as well and any of his associates, but this was a big part of our mission.”
“I understand why we would want the healing serum, but why the toxin?”
Miranda smirked. “It seems to me like the cat girls’ venom would make a good chemical weapon, or something useful for interrogations when telepaths can’t break through. Ask Jess anything right now, see what she says.”
“What?” Jess asked, looking over to Miranda and Roman. “What are you guys talking about?”
Her voice was slurred now; it was clear she wasn’t in her right mind.
“Can we heal her?” Roman asked. “We could at least do that, right?”
Ava considered this is she dropped another crate on Kevin’s desk. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Miranda, find out from the cat girl how to administer this stuff. We’ll do so after we make it back to the apartment.”
“Will do.”
“We still have to go after Kevin,” Roman said, not sure of the line of reasoning he was going with at the moment.
There was a part of him that was angry about what they were doing, especially using the chemical as a weapon, but it also made sense, and he hadn’t forgotten there was a stipulation to all this, even if he didn’t agree with it.
Roman had been tasked with killing Kevin, and now that Rafner knew what Roman had done in the Eastern Province, it was best for him to make sure everything had been handled correctly, especially if he didn’t want to be convicted of treason.
“Just hold on a second,” Roman said when Ava ignored him. “Hear me out: the cat girl probably knows where Kevin is. So let’s get that information first,” he suggested. “My guess is she came back here to get the serums and she’s planning to return to him. I could be wrong, but why else would she be alone?”
“I can confirm that this is why she came back here,” Miranda said quickly. “It was supposed to be a quick mission, which is why there are those bags over there,” she said, nodding at a couple bags in the corner of the room. “But then we came, and she thought someone was breaking in, which is sort of true…”
“All right, then here’s what we should do…” Roman explained his plan, Ava more interested in getting the serum at the moment than hearing him out.
Once he’d finished, his former teacher nodded. Ava told Miranda to go ahead and get the information on the hotel Kevin was staying at, that they were going to do what Roman had suggested.
“I feel so good,” Jess said. “Seriously, you guys should try some of the stuff.”
“Make sure you get the directions on how they’ve used the healing serum in the past too,” Ava reminded Miranda again.
“What are we going to do with her?”
Roman glanced at the cat girl again.
He’d never seen her so still before, never had the chance to actually take a moment to look her over. The woman was petite, currently in a black dress with matching flats. Her arms had been morphed into claws earlier, but now they were back to normal, her turquoise tail limp at her side and both of her ears folded over.
Roman got the appeal.
There was something mysterious about her, forbidden. But even if he understood the appeal, he
didn’t quite know how or why Kevin had ended up with her or the other one.
It was just hard to imagine the man that had sat next to him for so long farting his life away in his cubicle would be capable of something like this. Not only had Kevin broken into a high-security facility, he had also escaped to another country and become a mobster.
Roman could only sigh, briefly imagining what Kevin would have been like had they come a month later.
It might have been a lot harder to bring down his operation at that point.
“Where are we?” Jess coughed, a bit of spittle running down her chin.
Roman took a seat next to her and used the blanket on the couch to wipe her face. Jess’s eyes rolled to the back of her head.
“I really don’t know how strong that stuff is,” he said, “but she’s looking pretty bad over here…”
“That’s all of it,” Ava said, her hands on her hips, just as a pair of Centralian teleporters appeared.
“Take all the crates and bring the cat female as well. I will have to talk to Rafner first about her,” Ava instructed the first teleporter, a man with a muscular neck. “Perhaps we can just get the information we need from her here in Ravja and dispose of her.” She shrugged. “Either way, bring her too.”
Roman swallowed hard, turning away from Ava.
Their night wasn’t over yet; they still had one more target.
That didn’t make him feel any better, though; it didn’t make him feel like he was actually doing the right thing. There was a lot of ambiguity in the room at the moment, and Roman would be glad to be done with it soon.
Hopefully, retrieving Kevin would be a relatively straightforward process.
If he was lucky, Casper had already given them the upper hand.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Room Service
Kevin Blackbook took a deep breath in.
Before she left, Turquoise had given him a large enough dose of her poison to calm him down, and Sandy too.
They were in a not-so-swanky hotel room not far from the restaurant, and since there was only one large bed, Kevin assumed the three of them would be sleeping in it together.
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