Chapter 192 Die.

Chapter 192: 192 Die.

"I’ll figure something out. We’ve got time for a proper team meeting," I said.

"Mmm. Whatever you say, sweetie!" Lilith cheered, stretching lazily in the passenger seat, her firm crimson breasts straining dangerously against the scandalously low cut of her blazer.

I was still ruminating on potential contingency plans—some of them wildly desperate—when the armored Maybach finally wound its way up the mountain and pulled up to the chalet.

The heavy iron gates parted with a metallic groan, and we rolled into the courtyard.

Unsurprisingly, Glacia, Rhea, and Psyren were all waiting on the front steps.

I threw the car into park and popped the door, stepping out into the crisp mountain air.

"Hey, girls—oof!"

I grunted hard as Rhea and Psyren practically launched themselves off the porch, tackling me with enough combined force to nearly slam me backward over the hood of Edna’s car.

"Miles! Oh my gosh! Oh my fuck, I am so glad you’re okay!" Rhea cried, burying her face into my armored shoulder, her wolf ears pinned flat against her head.

"We were so worried, bossman!" Psyren added, clinging tightly to the lapels of my jacket. She beamed up at me, her pink eyes wide and glowing with relief. "We didn’t know what to do! But Glacia thought of calling Lilith and we... I..."

Glacia cleared her throat audibly. The ice manipulator stepped gracefully down off the porch with prim, aristocratic professionalism, but I could tell by how fiercely she was clasping her hands together that she desperately wanted to join the other two in squeezing me like a tube of almost-empty toothpaste.

"We are most immensely relieved to see you return, sir," Glacia said, her breath misting faintly in the air. "We had severe concerns when we learned what transpired at the mall..."

"But not for long!" Rhea interrupted fiercely, pulling back and baring her teeth. "Those feds were incredibly lucky they let you walk out of there! Otherwise, we were fully geared up to give them the absolute worst day of their goddamn lives!"

"Yeah!" Psyren agreed brightly, patting my chest. "You hurt anywhere, bossman?"

"I’m fine," I said, letting out a heavy breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. Unbelievable relief washed over me seeing that she was safe. I couldn’t keep the tired smile off my face. "Things just got... a little complicated downtown."

"Indeed, sir," Glacia said stiffly. A faint blue aura flared around her shoulders, the ambient temperature plummeting as her suppressed anger began to leak out into the courtyard.

Frost crawled over the gravel at her feet. "But it would have gotten considerably more complicated had they not released you."

"Yeah!" Rhea pumped a fist in the air. "Because if they fuck with you, they better be ready to deal with the absolute wrath of the Hot Girl Villains!"

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "That is absolutely not going to be our brand name."

"Aw, that’s a shame," Psyren said, leaning her weight affectionately against my side. "I kinda really liked that one."

I felt a sudden, thick lump form in my throat. It was... genuinely incredible to know that I had a loyal crew of villainesses willing to declare open war on a federal superpower just to get me back.

And they really had been gearing up for it. My passive magnetic sense swept over them, feeling the heavy, metallic density of the lethal ordinance Rhea had secreted away on her person.

I could feel the dense battery pack of a high-voltage shock stick strapped to her thigh. The hot, humming coils of twin plasma pistols holstered at her hips.

And Psyren’s...

Psyren’s...

My blood instantly ran ice-cold in my veins.

I slowly turned my head toward Psyren. She blinked up at me, offering a curious, lopsided smile.

"What’s up, bossman?"

My magnetic field didn’t feel anything. Nothing.

Psyren wore studded leather. She had metallic zippers. But most importantly, as I had learnt during our times together, she had heavy surgical-steel nipple piercings.

They were a constant, faint blip in my peripheral awareness whenever she was standing right next to me.

But right now? There was absolutely zero metal on her chest. Just dead, organic space.

"Oh. Not much," I said, forcing my smile to widen as I casually slipped my hand up and grabbed her breast right through her top.

I gave it a firm squeeze. Psyren gasped in surprise, her eyelashes fluttering as she arched playfully against my hand. I purposefully dragged my thumb across the fabric, feeling nothing but soft flesh where steel rings should have been.

"Mmmm. Oh, boss, getting naughty right in the driveway?" she cooed, biting her lip.

"Oh, Milesy, you delightfully wicked boy! Right in front of me?" Lilith squealed from the other side of the car, clapping her hands over her cheeks.

I chuckled softly, keeping my eyes locked on the pink-haired girl.

"Sure am." I casually reached my other hand out toward Rhea without looking away from Psyren’s face. "Hey, Rhea. You still got that shock stick on you?"

"Sure!" Rhea chirped, oblivious to the tension. She reached down to the strap on her thigh, unclipping the heavy baton and slapping it into my waiting palm. "But you know, Miles, that’s gonna be a bit strong for fun times! I got some customized clamps down in my lab though. Been dying to try them out on someone! They even work remotely, so you can give me a little spark at any time... and anywhere," she added with a thoroughly lewd smirk.

I gripped the heavy rubber handle of the baton.

"Nice," I said. My thumb found the activation switch.

CRACK-ZAP.

A blinding arc of blue electricity violently buzzed to life, crackling across the twin prongs at the tip of the weapon.

Still smiling, I turned entirely toward Psyren.

And I viciously drove the electrified prongs directly into her stomach.

Psyren unleashed a bloodcurdling, inhuman shriek, violently jerking backward as twelve hundred volts of raw current surged directly through her central nervous system.

The other girls jumped back in sheer, unadulterated shock.

"Holy fuck!" Rhea gasped, reflexively drawing her plasma pistol.

"Sir!" Glacia cried out, her entire body going rigid. Swirling vortexes of icy wind instantly whipped up around her, but her aristocratic face was torn with absolute, horrified confusion. "What are you—"

"Watch!" I barked, taking a step forward and driving the prod deeper into the screaming girl’s gut, holding the button down.

Psyren’s shrieks grew impossibly garbled, mutating into a wet, clicking hiss. Her body began to violently twist and writhe, her skeletal structure losing its consistency as if she were made of melting putty.

Both Rhea and Glacia gaped in stunned silence as the figure finally slumped back against the hood of the Maybach, twitching uncontrollably.

The pink hair melted away. The punk rock clothing dissolved into organic tissue.

Her skin rapidly rippled, shifting from pale peach to a slick, scaly, bruised bluish-purple. Huge, bulbous yellow eyes blinked erratically as her chest heaved, gasping for air.

She looked like a mutated, deep-sea amphibian stuffed into the rough shape of a Barbie doll.

I dropped the shock stick, grabbed the shapeshifter by her slick, scaly throat, and effortlessly swung her around, slamming her flat onto her back against the armored hood of the car.

"Where is she?" I snarled, leaning my entire armored weight onto her windpipe. "Where is Psyren?"

"H-how..." the shapeshifter wheezed, her yellow eyes dilating with horizontal, reptilian pupils.

"You can mimic her face, and you can mimic her clothes, but you can’t organically mimic the dense surgical steel she was wearing. Your nipple rings weren’t metal, you stupid fuck. Now talk!" I roared, picking the buzzing shock stick back up and holding the crackling blue lightning a single inch from her bulging eye. "Or am I going to have to get violently creative with where I stick this thing?"

Her scaly jaw clenched shut.

"I’ll n-never talk!" the creature hissed, spitting viscous saliva onto my visor.

"Oh, really?" I said smoothly.

I stretched my free hand out toward the chalet’s front stoop. With a violent, twisting exertion of my magnetic will, I ripped the thick wrought-iron railings entirely out of their concrete moorings.

The heavy iron bars flew across the driveway like javelins, wrapping themselves in tight, crushing coils around the shapeshifter’s limbs and torso, magnetically pinning her helplessly to the Maybach’s hood with a few quick, brutal motions.

"Well, we’re going to find out, aren’t we?" I said darkly.

"Miles," Rhea stammered shakily, lowering her plasma pistol as she stared at the bound alien in dawning horror. "I... I had no idea. We got separated during the chaos at the mall, and she just ran up to me in the crowd, and I just... I assumed..."

"You don’t have anything to be sorry for," I told her grimly, not taking my eyes off the scaly freak on the hood. "We got played by a master."

I turned my visor back down to the squirming infiltrator.

"And don’t worry," I added, my voice dropping to a terrifyingly calm register. "We will get Psyren back. And as for you," I growled, giving her throat one final, agonizingly tight squeeze before stepping back. "You are going to help us. Or you are going to die trying."