Divine Milking System

Chapter 429: 429 | Bonding. Absolutely Not.

There it is.

"Where are we going?"

"North. Then west. Then wherever." He shrugged. "Consider it a trip. Two men, one car, open road, no supervision. Bonding."

"Bonding."

"That’s the word, yes."

"Absolutely not."

"You wound me."

"You sent us into a Void Gate." The words came out flatter than I intended, which is how I knew they were the real ones. "Charles is dead. Dante’s family has him behind private security and won’t answer the academy’s calls. Jordan’s bleeding out of his ears. And now you want to take me on a road trip like we’re going to fish and talk about our fathers."

The morning kept going around us. The valet kid had picked his phone back up and was pretending very hard to be somewhere else. A gurney rattled through the automatic doors behind me.

Vale reached up and took the sunglasses off.

I’d only seen him do that twice. One eye ice blue, one storm grey, and neither of them had any of the lazy amusement he wore like cologne. What was in there was flat and old and looked at me the way you look at a piece of equipment you’re deciding whether to trust with your life.

"Charles Leone died because he broke formation to prove a point," Vale said. "Third time this semester. I have footage of the first two. So do his squad, and his captain, and the faculty review board that flagged him in week two and did nothing because his family funds the east wing." He turned the sunglasses over in his fingers. "I’m not going to tell you he deserved it. Nobody deserves that. But he was killed by the same thing that was going to kill him eventually, and the only variable I got wrong was the timeline."

"You knew it was a Void Gate."

"No." He said it without heat. "If I had known, ten students would not have walked through that threshold, and you can believe that or not, but I’d like you to notice that I’m answering the question."

I noticed.

"Somebody knew," I said.

Vale’s expression didn’t shift, and that told me plenty.

"Get in the car, Monroe."

"Give me a reason."

He looked at me. No movement, no tells, just that flat attention people only give you when the next sixty seconds are going to matter. Then his hand disappeared into his jacket and every reflex I’d built since landing in this body screamed at me to move. The shape that came out wasn’t a weapon or a folded sheet with my name and the word "fraud" printed across the top in bold red letters.

It was car keys. Plain steel ring, three pounds of chrome and rubber.

He tossed them underhand like he was throwing out trash. I caught them because my hands worked faster than my brain. Then I just stood there, fingers wrapped around cold metal, mind gone completely sideways. The weight sat in my palm and I forgot how to process basic fucking information. Keys. A car. Me driving. The equation refused to solve itself and I felt something dangerously close to panic starting to build in my chest because this wasn’t part of the plan and nothing about Vale had ever been part of any plan I could predict.

"You’re driving," Vale said.

Here’s a thing about me that I have not disclosed to anyone in this world, including the four women who have seen me naked and the one who currently owns twenty-seven percent of my devotion tracker under a status marked with three question marks.

In my last life, I loved cars.

Not in the way a guy loves cars when he wants to seem interesting at a party. I mean I spent an ugly amount of money on a used coupe that I could not afford, and I drove it up the coast at two in the morning with the windows down because it was the only forty minutes of the week that didn’t feel like drowning in a slow, well-lit room. I knew what a heel-toe downshift felt like. I knew the specific weight of a mechanical steering rack loading up in a corner.

Then I died, or transferred, or got selected by a bearded lunatic in a library, and I woke up in a two-hundred-forty-pound body with a death clock and a power that makes women lactate.

I have not touched a steering wheel in six weeks.

"You’re driving," Vale said again, "unless you’d rather stand on that curb and interrogate me. Both are options."

"I don’t have a license."

"You have a hunter registration card, which supersedes state licensure for academy-affiliated transport under the IHL Accord." He opened the passenger door and dropped into the seat like a man boarding a hammock. "Or it doesn’t, and you get a ticket, and I pay it. Are we doing this or are we going to keep having feelings on a hospital sidewalk?"

I looked at the keys.

I looked at the car, matte black and stupid-long, sitting there at idle with that big rebuilt heart turning over under the hood.

"I’m still mad at you," I said.

"Noted. Passenger seat’s got a cup holder and I have no notes about your emotional state."

I walked around to the driver’s side.

The door had weight to it, real weight, the kind you have to commit to. The interior was black leather that had been redone by somebody who charged by the hour, and it smelled like conditioner and hot metal. The wheel was thin-rimmed and slightly too large, exactly the way old wheels are, and when I sat down and put both hands on it, something in my chest unclenched for the first time since a dimensional guardian picked me up and squeezed until my ribs cracked.

The valet kid was staring at us. I could see him in the mirror.

"Seat’s not adjusted," Vale observed. "You’re going to want it forward. You’re shorter than me."

"I’m six one."

"Yes." He put the sunglasses back on. "Congratulations."

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