Demonic Pornstar System novel Chapter 941

Chapter 941: Enemy Play

"By order of the Federal Bureau of Awakened Affairs, the guild Eclipse is scheduled for a comprehensive compliance inspection. Premises, personnel, contracts, and all registered assets." He paused, the first pause he’d taken. "Effective immediately. I will be conducting the preliminary walkthrough now."

The page carried a federal seal, and under the seal, a name buried somewhere in the guild’s very first inbox.

Doug read the document twice, and by the second pass his face had folded into deep professional revulsion, like he’d found a cockroach pressed between the pages of otherwise good paperwork. Effective immediately, on the guild’s first day of intake, with the cameras still overhead.

Not to mention that this was Eclipse, the guild led by the Anomaly the government had been making deals with for months now. Instead of throwing the book at him on day one, they should be looking the other way - as they so often did when it came to the Ashborn family.

Doug set the page down on top of the master roster and squared its corners with the table edge, which bought him three seconds to decide how this was going to go.

"This is a restricted intake area on an active construction site," he said, polite and immovable. "You’ll wait for management to arrive, and then you’ll be allowed to conduct your inspection."

"That’s the correct procedure." The inspector sounded quietly pleased about it, which was the first thing he’d sounded since stepping out of the sedan. He took one step back from the table and stood there, in no hurry at all.

Ms. Rook rose from her own table, crossed to him, and held out a laminated visitor badge until he took it. "Wear it visibly. You’re seventh in the queue."

He looked down the drive at the six recruits ahead of him, then back at Rook, and clipped the badge to his breast pocket. "Seventh."

Rook’s expression thawed a fraction of a degree, roughly her version of an embrace.

News traveled up the lot the way news travels through hundreds of nervous people, fast, wrong, and improving with every retelling, so that by the time it reached the far scaffolding, the government had come to shut down the guild, arrest the dog, and draft the survivors.

Luna had been narrating the squad postings to her stream from a lawn chair, and the moment the word federal crossed the lot she ended the feed mid-sentence, no sign-off, no explanation, which told her regulars more about the situation than any commentary could have.

Under the scaffolding, six amber eyes that had been sweeping the crowd all morning stopped, one after another, on the gray sedan and its prior occupant, and stayed there.

...

Kaiden crossed from the north end of the lot before Doug’s runner was halfway to him, because hundreds of people staring at one folding table has its own gravity. He read the order standing in the gravel, twice, and the second read only made it worse.

"Where is he now?" he asked.

"The refreshment tables. Ms. Rook moved her station next to his seat, so he is currently the most supervised man in the area." Doug tapped the seal with one finger. "Sir, nobody inspects a guild that is a week old, let alone one that just fought a nation-ending calamity two days ago."

"Hmm..." Kaiden remained silent, pondering, which prompted Doug to add, "There’s nothing to inspect yet. It’s weighing a cake that’s still batter. This is far out of standard protocol."

"Then someone wanted us weighed." Kaiden read the scope line one more time, and the anger arrived, low and quiet, the kind he’d learned to bank rather than spend. Hundreds of hopeful new recruits out there had polished their armor for this morning, and somebody in a federal office had signed a piece of paper to smear it, timed to the hour.

"Keep the line moving, Doug. The newcomers don’t need to deal with this. I’ll take care of it."

He did just that, namely, calling for a family meeting.

The command tent gathered them inside two minutes.

Vespera read the order once, which for her was thorough.

"Comprehensive scope. No named complainant. Signed by a deputy director, countersigned by no one, dated one hour ago." She laid the page flat on the table and turned it with one finger to face Kaiden. "The Bureau’s compliance office takes six weeks to approve its own stationery. This cleared in an hour. Somebody walked it through by hand."

"It’s aimed," Kaiden sighed.

"Yes."

"Twenty bucks says it’s that sorry excuse of a father," Luna said.

"He couldn’t afford the stamp," Vespera said.

"I do not see the difficulty here." Calypso had claimed a corner of the map table, tail swaying behind her in slow, honest puzzlement. "We are far stronger than that pest. If the little man is a bother, I will carry him to the property line, gently, and we can go back to our nice first day."

"And that is why you are not allowed to answer the official mail." Bastet was draped across the only decent chair in the tent, but her tail had gone still, which meant she was working.

"Human packs do not settle things the way dungeons do. The little man is a claw. Swat the claw, and the beast behind it limps in front of the whole herd and wails that we are exactly the monsters it always warned them about. Then the herd writes new laws for us. Paper, unlike claws, does not bleed."

"Hm." Calypso weighed that with genuine interest. "Devious. So we let the claw scratch around until it gets bored?"

"We let it scratch exactly where the law says it may." Nyx was at the tent flap, watching the man in the shade fill out his own forms against his knee, patient as furniture. "Nothing more, nothing warmer. And someone stays on his hands the entire visit. A man alone in a corridor can find all sorts of things in his own pockets, and I’d hate for him to discover any of them on our property."

"Let’s have the twins record everything," Nyx added. "They’ve been recording the whole day for the archive anyway, cameras on every corner of the lot. If his hand wanders anywhere interesting, we’ll have it from three angles."

"Can we at least confirm the thing is real before he starts?" Kaiden asked. "It doesn’t have all the forms filled out properly. What happens if we just tell him to come back next month with better paperwork?"

"Obstruction," Vespera said.

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