Page 36 of Fatality on the Field

I process that for a minute as everyone stays quiet. Exposing his darkest secret and putting himself in danger to help others is more selfless than I would have expected from him. That says a lot about how willing he is to prove that he’s all in with our family now. “That was very brave of you,” I say as I look down at him. “It could have hurt you or lead to you getting hurt. I appreciate it.”

Lucas holds his fist out, smiling down at the frowning mage. “Pound it out, bro. You did good. Don’t worry about your pops; you have us and all these friends. We’ll deal with it one day at a time and shit.”

“You don’t have to listen to me, but I also think it’s pretty damn cool,” Kat says as she looks at us. “My bad stuff from the past prevents me from doing some stuff, and I’m working on it. But you’re more normal than me, and you even have threats in the future hanging over your head. I think you don’t give yourself enough credit, which is probably why you use defense mechanisms to keep people at a distance. I do that, too.”

Oriel smirks as he bobs his brows. “KK is teaching everyone about therapy here. We don’t have it in Hell, but what’s your excuse, dude?”

The crow demon is spot-on, so much so that I’m wincing internally.

“There are… precautions in place,” Iggy says with a shrug. “The Briarton mage family tree is large as fuck, and they put things in motion so long ago that unwinding their spells and hexes would take more magic users than we have in the entire state back home. You have no idea how thoroughly they have covered up these abilities to keep them out of others’ hands.”

“I can imagine it,” Anton says matter-of-factly. “In three dimensions, even. But it seems like too much work when mages could hire or make demons with demons. Your family has money; it wouldn’t be hard.”

Slade grins a little. “You know how cheap people like that are, man. If any of our fucking comic book villain relatives can get what they want anytime, with no effort, they will. Axel and Azul often kept useful prisoners, so I bet the kings, the generals, the mobsters, and everyone else did as well. No need to question why they’d want to hog the powers without paying for the privilege.”

“That’s true,” I murmur as I blow out a long breath. “Okay, so Iggy can raise the dead. The book was a wash. What did you do afterward?”

“We put the fucking thing back,” Rogue says as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Carefully. If we’re lucky, no one will know that their false flag blew away.”

“Then we’re left with that cacodaemeroo and why the fuck it’s here,” Angelo says as he nods at Kat. “Is it hers?”

“Nope,” the demoness says as she beams. “It picked Annie! Isn’t that great? I’m helping him bond with the little guy.”

Slash frowns as he looks at Jasper, then the animal, and then back to Anton. “It… must live with you? It’s a familiar?”

I guess that’s tweaking the big guy as much as it did the prince.

“Yes,” the peacock demon says simply. “It will be an adjustment.”

Xerxes pops up to their feet, moving over to where Kat is so fast I expect them to blur. “It’s ours?! I thought you were all hiding that KK got another friend. Oh, I cannot wait to spoil this adorable baby so much that it rivals people on TV with tiny dogs!”

“X, it breathes fire,” Zavida says as he pushes his glasses up. “You have to be careful what⁠—”

Anton cuts in, “I have designed many flame-retardant fabrics for their projects. It will not be a problem.”

“Thank fuck for that,” Oriel says as he exchanges looks with his brothers. “Because if I’m woken up by that shit even once, I’m going to beat your ass. Got it?”

“As if you could⁠—”

Kaspar walks around the couch and growls, “Stop. We are getting off-topic. It is time for us to return to the surface and work on what we can. Morgana needs to be back before our break, and the others must find their missing mate before something bad happens. Focus.”

The other dragon gives mine a faint smile. “Yes. Someone run through what we are working on, and once we are agreed, we will escort our guests down to the portals. The bodyguard is correct.”

“I’m working on the tech to connect us to both teams reliably. What I’ve done to most of the phones insofar will hold for a bit, but I need to get back to work,” Zavida replies.

“We’re headed for the capital,” Rogue says firmly. “Finding Reb is the highest priority, but the twins can help us navigate it. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for anything that could help us with the baddies or even help with the other problems.”

“I will be swamped when we get back, but Kaspar and Li will work with both groups. Kat can communicate with me because of what your tech guy did to my phone, and we’re also going to see if our tech people would connect with yours.” Liam nods, and so do the others, making me sigh in relief. “We have enough lines to make sure we don’t have enormous cracks in our info flow like at first, I think.”

“Good,” Salem says as he slaps his palms on the chair. “That means we can focus on what’s coming—a series of shitty death matches that might get us all killed if we’re not careful. I think it’s time for us to say goodbye to our new friends and let our plans work.”

Fortunately for him, I couldn’t agree more—time for us to go home.

twenty-two

KASPAR

Iknow Morgana is conflicted about our trek to the portals. She’s grown very fond of her new friends, and though she knows there’s probably a mess back at State U, I think she’ll miss them. I understand that; when I took the post with Li so long ago, I left behind a lot as well, spending so much time guarding him versus having any semblance of a normal life. It was my duty and what I’d been trained for, but it’s still difficult. Of course, being the woman she is, she’s handled it well as they all say goodbye and the others reassure us that their tech gurus will make certain we can stay in communication.