Ch.20
Akeno had shown me the barrier anchors on a napkin sketch. Four points, evenly spaced, drawing energy from a ward stone she'd buried under the warehouse foundation. Adjusting the barrier meant stepping inside it and touching each anchor in sequence while feeding my own energy into the modification. It was like rewriting code while the program was running, except the code was violet light and the program contained three women who could throw spears made of divine hatred.
I touched the first anchor. The barrier hummed and expanded, pushing the walls outward by about three meters on each side. The space went from studio apartment to small living room. I'd also brought supplies. Blankets. Pillows. A small table and three chairs from a secondhand store that a first-year had been throwing out. Food that would last a few days.
Kalawarner watched me set up the table from the far wall. Her navy-blue hair covered her right eye and the uncovered one tracked every movement with the calm attention of a woman who'd been alive for centuries and had learned to assess threats by watching their hands.
Mittelt was sitting on her new blanket, testing it. She bunched it, unfolded it, folded it again. She didn't thank me. She also didn't complain, which for Mittelt was practically gratitude.
Raynare was in her corner. Wings folded, chin on her knees, the position she'd been in every time I visited. She'd eaten the bento I'd been bringing. Every time I came back, the box was empty, the chopsticks neatly placed, the lid closed. She never mentioned it.
I moved to the second anchor point. It was on the wall near Kalawarner's position, and adjusting it required me to step close to her, my hand flat against the concrete, feeding energy into the sigil.
She stood up. Didn't move away. She was taller than me by a few centimeters in her heels, and standing at the anchor point put me inside her space, close enough to see the gold necklace resting against her collarbone and the maroon jacket open at the chest, the shirt underneath doing minimal work. She looked down at me. Brown eyes, calm, assessing.
She didn't step back. Neither did I.
"Get a room," Mittelt said from across the barrier.
Kalawarner's eye didn't leave mine. "We're literally in a room."
I finished the adjustment and stepped to the third anchor. The barrier pulsed and settled into its new dimensions. More space. Better conditions. Still a cage, but a better cage.
The fourth anchor was near Raynare. I adjusted it without looking at her. She didn't move. The silence between us had its own weight now, and adding words to it would have broken whatever was happening underneath.
When I was done, I stood in the center of the expanded space. Three Fallen Angels. Kalawarner in a chair, Mittelt on her blanket, Raynare in the corner. The table looked absurd in the middle of a warehouse floor, four chairs around it, the fourth empty and waiting.
"So," Kalawarner said. She sat at the table. Crossed her legs. Folded her hands. She had long fingers and clean nails and she moved like a woman who was used to being the tallest person in the room. "What's the endgame, Hyoudou?"
"What do you mean?"
"You're feeding us. You're upgrading our cage. You're visiting the woman who tried to kill you and bringing her bento." Her voice was cool, deep, unhurried. "You're not doing this out of charity. You have a plan. I'd like to know what it is."
"Fair enough." I sat in the empty chair. The metal was cold. "Work for me."
The silence was immediate.
Mittelt sat up on her blanket. "Excuse me?"
"Work for me. You're alive. That's more than you expected. The Gremory clan wanted you dead. I'm the reason you're not. That buys me either your service or your transfer. Your choice."
"I'm not working for a human," Mittelt said. Her blue eyes were wide and her chin was jutting and she looked like a porcelain doll throwing a tantrum, Gothic Lolita frills and all. But her voice cracked on "human" and the crack told me everything the attitude was trying to hide.
"Then I hand you to the Gremory clan. Rias Gremory will be fair. She'll also be thorough. You'll be processed through Devil channels, which means interrogation, containment review, and eventual release to Azazel or permanent binding to Gremory territory as a supervised entity."
Mittelt's mouth opened. Closed.
Kalawarner was looking at me with her chin on her folded hands. "And if we work for you? What does that look like?"
"Intelligence. Reconnaissance. You know the Fallen Angel network. You know how they operate, who reports to whom, where the safe houses are, what Azazel is actually doing with his Sacred Gear research. That information is valuable to me."
"As an independent human with a Longinus." Her eyebrow rose. "You're building your own intelligence network."
"I'm building my own position."
"In a territory co-administered by two Devil heiresses. With a Fallen Angel intelligence wing." She was quiet for a second. "You're either very smart or very stupid."
"I get that a lot."
Her mouth twitched. The left corner, barely visible under her hair. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs and looked at the ceiling. She was running the calculus. She was a four-wing Fallen Angel who'd been following a two-wing's operation. She'd backed the wrong horse and she knew it and now she was deciding whether the new horse was worth backing.
"I'll consider it," she said.
"Kalawarner!" Mittelt's voice was sharp. "You can't seriously-"
"I said I'll consider it." Her voice was flat, the deep register settling the argument before it started. Mittelt went quiet. Kalawarner looked at me. "We'll need better food."
"Done."
"And books. Real ones."
"I'll see what I can do."
I turned to Raynare. She was in her corner, chin on her knees, violet eyes fixed on the wall above my head. She'd been listening to every word. Her jaw was set and her fingers were pressed white against her shins.
"You have the most to gain and the most to lose," I said. "Think about it."
She didn't answer. She didn't look at me. But her fingers loosened on her shins, just slightly, and one of her wings shifted behind her back.
I left the barrier. Outside, the warehouse was dark and cold and my breath showed in the air. December was settling into Kuoh. A vending machine across the street glowed blue and orange in the dark, its hum the only sound.
I walked.
Kuoh at night was a different town. The streets were empty, the shops closed, and the supernatural infrastructure that ran underneath the normal world was more visible in the dark. The leylines pulsed if you knew how to look. Ddraig had been teaching me to feel them, the currents of magical energy that crisscrossed the town like underground rivers, feeding the barriers and territory markers that the Gremory and Sitri clans had laid down over decades.
"Partner. Extend your senses. The large intersection ahead."
I closed my eyes and reached with the Boosted Gear's perception, like Ddraig had taught me. The world went flat and wide, like seeing with your whole body instead of your eyes, and the leylines lit up in my awareness as warm currents flowing beneath the pavement.
"Good. Now north. Toward the school. Tell me what you feel."
I reached north. The school's territory was dense with Gremory energy, crimson and warm, layered with Sitri water-magic underneath. The ORC building was a bright point. The Student Council room was another. And beyond the school, at the edge of the territory boundary...
A presence. Faint. Cold. The metallic tang of light magic, the same signature as a light spear but diffused, passive.
Fallen Angel.
And it wasn't any of the three in the warehouse. The signature was different. Sharper. More refined. Someone with more wings than Raynare or Mittelt, someone whose energy had the density of a serious operator.
"Ddraig."
"I feel it. Fallen Angel. Four wings minimum, possibly six. They're suppressing their presence but dragon-sense cuts through suppression fields. They've been there for hours. Possibly days."
"Azazel's people?"
"Possibly. Or an independent observer. The Grigori heard about their missing operatives. Someone came to look."
I stood on the sidewalk. The cold air bit at my face. The Fallen Angel presence pulsed faintly at the edge of my awareness, patient, unmoving.
I turned and walked home.
Asia had left the porch light on. She always did. The kitchen smelled like curry, her latest experiment, and there was a plate wrapped in cling film on the counter with a note in careful Japanese: "Issei-san, please eat. - Asia."
I ate the curry. It was good. I washed the plate. I went upstairs.
The Fallen Angel was still there, at the edge of my awareness, watching the school from the shadow of the territory boundary. They'd be there tomorrow too. And eventually we'd both run out of patience.