I'm woken from my sleep by someone vigorously shaking my shoulder. They're saying something, too, but I'm not quite up to parsing it out just yet. I blink the sleep from my eyes, groaning as the vague shape in front of me resolves into the gaunt, tired face of Tim, my handler.

"Huh? Wazzat?" I squint against the harsh orange light filtering in through the blinds and landing on my face.

"You're gonna wanna see this, Kara. It's about your mark."

"My mark? Wait, you've finally got a lead? It's been over a month!" I quickly sit up, my head still throbbing but the excitement of finally having real work again pushing me to fight through it.

"You could say that. Come take a look." He waves me over to his computer, which he's taken a seat at, and pulls up what looks like factory security camera footage.

"A factory? What are they doing in a factory?"

"Just watch," Tim replies as the video continues playing. After a few minutes of the facility seeming to run as usual, there's a flash and some materials are scattered across the floor from offscreen. A moment later and I see who's responsible: Victoria, fully activated in all her combat angel glory, comes rocketing in from the left side and collides with some guards who were sprinting in from the right. Literally, she smashes right into them and, predictably, flame-propelled steel wings win out over kevlar and a light jog. She goes to work, taking apart anyone who comes close to her, and while she does so I see Alice and an unfamiliar figure follow her in from the left. The new guy is wearing some kind of bronze combat armor, the yellow glow around his fists suggesting to me that he's doing something with cosma to give those gauntlets some extra punch. Also… is that a new halo above Alice's head? No, not just a halo, a halo with thorns protruding from it. I'd wonder where she got that but honestly it seems a little obvious, she arrived with Victoria after all.

Halo or no, she's clearly still not on Victoria's level. She doesn't even seem to have wings, and she carries her short sword with an uncertainty that doesn't seem fitting of the soft yellow glow emanating from it. As I watch, one of the guards moves to intercept her, and she immediately starts floundering. Her swings are clearly much stronger than a normal human of her build could manage, but they're nothing to bring to bear against a combat demon, and she struggles to even defend herself from his onslaught, let alone turn the tables on him. She doesn't look to be fast enough, skilled enough, or knowledgeable enough to use that thing properly, but I suspect that she'd be in an even worse position without it.

Once she's spent a few moments struggling to hold off her attacker, the guy in combat armor, who spent that time making short work of his own opponent, runs up and gives the guard a good solid deck across the face. It looks like it hurts, too, guy's out like a light. He turns toward Alice and nods, then steps forward. By this point Victoria has taken out most of the guards, and she's got the last few occupied, so Alice and her accomplice instead focus on destroying as much of the factory's equipment as they can manage. This seems to be a lot more within her means, considering the machines don't fight back. The video cuts off right after they leave, and Tim turns to look at me.

"Where was this recorded?"

"In the manufacturing district," he replies unhelpfully.

I roll my eyes. "I figured that, Tim, I mean what factory? What were they making there? It's clear that the goal was to sabotage production, what exactly were they trying to keep from being made?"

"That, I'm afraid, is a little above your pay grade, as is the precise location of the facility. What I can tell you is that the facility's production orders were heavily related to that data Victoria and Alice stole during their break-in."

I probably could've guessed that myself, honestly. Why else would they have chosen that particular factory? Stands to reason that they used the information they have access to to inform their decisions about where to strike. "Alright, what other facilities do you think might get hit based on that? Where should I start keeping an eye on?"

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"Like I said, above your pay grade. Mine too, if it makes you feel any better."

"Tim, c'mon. You told me you had a lead, but if I'm not allowed to know where to keep an eye out, how is this anything? It leaves me right where I fucking was, I know they're out there somewhere and they're moving against us but I don't have any real information to go on."

Tim shrugs. "It's the best I can do, Kara, I can't give you info I don't have. We can at least assume that they'll be attacking somewhere else in the manufacturing district, and increase our presence there in general."

"Yeah, fat lot of good that'll do when they clearly have ways to get around unnoticed! I don't know if you were aware, Tim, but we've already got shitloads of guards all over our facilities manufacturing district and it didn't do anything!"

"Like I said, best I can do." He starts to turn his chair back toward the computer, but I grab the backrest and hold it in place.

"Hold on, hold on, when we found them before it was because their witch cast a spell she shouldn't have been able to, right? That spell must have been for something, maybe there's some way we can use whatever she was making to find her again."

"Maybe, but that spell's just as much of a secret as those facilities they're attacking. So we're pretty much right back where we started."

"Well someone is high enough up the chain to know what it is, right? Send my idea up the ladder, see if it lands with someone who can actually do something with it. Isn't that what you're supposed to be here for? To connect us street-level thugs up to the high and mighty, the movers and shakers?"

Tim sighs and reaches back to lift my hand off of his chair. "I'll see what I can do, but you've gotta understand I can't make any promises about this. You literally just asked me to send an idea you had about something you know nothing about up the ladder and see if it happens to land with anyone."

"Yeah, I get that, but it's better than nothing, isn't it? Would you rather I stay here on the couch until someone happens to catch our marks for us?"

"Well that's not really any of my concern. If you don't catch 'em, that's your failure, not mine. I've done my job." He turns back toward his computer, silently indicating that the conversation is over.

I grit my teeth and glare holes into the side of his head. For a moment I consider saying something else, but instead I just storm out. I know exactly where I'm going this time. I need to blow off some steam, so I make a beeline for the same old bar as before, knowing with absolute certainty who'll be waiting for me. Sure enough, I've barely started my drink before Jean finds me, and I quickly down the rest of it and take her back to her place.

The instant the door slams shut behind us, I have her pinned to the wall, one hand gripping her exposed waist tightly as the other entangles itself in her hair. I press my entire body into hers and greedily sink my teeth into her neck. In an instant I'm completely lost in the moans of pleasure and pain she lets out. I pick her up, nails digging into her thigh, and carry her into the bedroom.

She lets out a giggle as she lands on the bed. "Rough day at work, huh?"

Of course she can tell, I'm nothing if not predictable. It doesn't matter, the frustration is already evaporating out of me as I grip her by the neck and yank her shorts off. My thumb presses against the mark I left on the side of her neck and elicits a soft gasp. As I slip my other hand between her thighs, the gasp quickly melts into a deep moan. I tighten my grip just enough for her breath to catch against the pressure of my hand, and lean forward to kiss her, quickly undoing my belt and slipping off my cargo pants.

My cock is, of course, already hard, and I eagerly grind it against her. As soon as she feels it pressing against her through my undergarments, she moans needily around my long, forked tongue. Not many humans get to see my more demonic traits, let alone experience them directly like this, but she seems quite fond of them. She runs the tip of her rounded, human tongue along the underside of mine, and reaches under my tank top, running her fingertips over the patches of dark red chitin along the edge of my breast.

It's several hours before I leave her apartment, and when I do I find myself in a much better mood.