Mia had the audacity to smile at Stephen. “I will do my best. If we land somewhere unforgivably Christian, should I send backup?”
“You should loosen the spell so he can stay farther back,” Stephen said.
“Not going to happen.” Mia waved her arm, and with a hard jolt, they were all back in the concrete room where Kilian had first landed when Mia had kidnapped him from his base. This time Kilian braced for the pain, so he controlled his reaction. Given the number of armed soldiers, a bared fang might have ended badly. The four werewolf guards still had their Tasers pointed at Stephen, but a new guard stepped into the room and held out a hand toward Kilian. It took a second for him to realize that the guard was requesting the weapon.
“I’ve fired it. I should clear and clean the weapon.”
“I will,” the guard said, a rumble of werewolf warning in his voice.
“Juarez.” Mia’s voice was soft, but it carried the sharp notes of command. The wolf remained silent, but his whole body grew tense. Rather than add to the growing tensions, Kilian surrendered his weapon. “Dismissed.” Mia walked toward the exit.
“What about mission debrief?” Kilian called after her, confused at the lack of post-mission protocols.
Mia stopped at the door. “Number of dead, number of souls eaten and the length of time required for Stephen to reassert control are the only details I have any interest in, and I already have those.” She left, and Kilian stared after her. He had been braced to make the most painful confession of his career, one that would have cost him his commission and that would likely land him in prison. Instead, he was abandoned with a smirking Stephen.
“Return to quarters,” the oldest werewolf ordered. She gestured toward the exit with the butt of her gun.
Stephen turned that way. Within two steps, he started whistling a jaunty tune, and with the binding spell in place, Kilian had to follow.
Chapter Seven
“What the hell was that? Why wouldn’t Mia debrief you?” Kilian demanded when they were in the apartment again. Kilian had fallen down a rabbit hole into a universe that made no sense. This was not how Army bases ran.
Stephen dropped onto the couch. “Do you want to talk about why you are irrationally afraid of telling anyone that you acted logically to make sure you didn’t bleed out?”
Kilian stared at Stephen in horror. The only thing worse than feeding in the field was failing to report a feeding. Mia was going to torpedo his career when the soldier monitoring the apartment made that report. He closed his eyes and groaned.
“What?”
“Are you so naive as to assume they haven't bugged your living quarters? I should report to Mia and explain.” It was probably too late to save his career, but he could avoid legal charges for failing to report. Vampires did worse in the brig than werewolves did, and they pretty much sucked at confinement.
Stephen huffed. “Of course they tried, but amazingly enough, no one has as much magic as I do, so her spells kept failing. She tried switching to technology, but I made the entire base pay for a month. They gave up after that.”
“You made them pay?” After what Kilian had seen Stephen’s demon do, that had a particularly ominous sound. Kilian moved closer. He was often accused of looming when he stood over people, either because of his large physique or the aura of power he had gained as a vampire, or some combination of the two. However, Stephen rolled his eyes. He fucking rolled his eyes as if Kilian were the one being unreasonable.
“I projected the sounds of various base members orgasming, and repeated it on a loop throughout the base at a volume that made it difficult to hear anything else. I was somewhat unpopular around here for a while. Apparently the others didn’t realize I could hear everything on base.”
