Unable to believe her ears, Kary exploded at Alex.

"You promised him what now?!"

Alex winced at her scream.

"It’s not that bad," he tried reassuring her.

"What do you mean, ’It’s not that bad?!’ Do you even realize what that entails?!" she shouted as they ran.

"No need to shout at me, Kary. It’s not like they’ll imprison me for it. We just smuggled ourselves into the country to deal with a problem. At worst, they’ll slap me with a fine," he said, trying to play it off.

Kary was half-tempted to bury his face into the ground with a slap to the back of his head, but she reigned in her murderous intent.

"I swear to God, for all of your combat smarts, you are the dumbest person that I know, at times," she swore.

"Hey!" Alex whined.

In their ears, Kujaku interrupted their quarrel.

"We don’t have time for this. The SUVs are being surrounded in the parking lot. The men checking them out earlier left, but now there are cops here. We’ll need to break through a blockade at this pace," she grumbled.

Alex chuckled.

"Can’t you just dance them into a trance or something?" he mocked, alluding to her in-game skills.

He heard her click her tongue and repressed a chuckle-snort.

"Don’t you think if I had access to that skill, I would have done so already? That requires advanced magic control, and I am not there yet on this side, you moron. Not all of us can focus on casting magic as if it were second nature."

Alex almost told her to just try it again, but Kary’s glare at his side shut his mouth up.

Instead, she replied to Kujaku.

"Is there a way to break out of their encirclement without killing or gravely wounding anyone?"

"Without killing, sure..." Kujaku replied with a pause.

"Or gravely injured," Kary added pointedly, hearing the pause and frowning.

Kujaku sighed.

"I don’t have enough men here for this. You’ll have to settle for one. I can either kill them quickly, or leave them a mess for the future."

Kary didn’t like the neutral tone the woman used to describe killings or maiming innocents so easily, but then again, she did work as an assassin.

The problem lay in the fact that she was being serious.

That’s when Alex’s chuckle made her realize something. They had another option.

Looking at him intently, Kary grinned.

"How confident are you in using your demons’ powers to break us out without casualties?"

Alex grinned back at her.

"Without casualties? A hundred percent sure. Without maiming anyone? Also a hundred percent sure," he mocked.

Kujaku punched him in the ribs.

"If you had that option, why did you let her chew me out, asshole?" she growled.

Alex chuckled again.

"Because it’s way more fun when it’s not me," he replied, a shit-eating grin on his lips.

Without leaving her the time to reply or grumble at him some more, Alex turned toward the parking lot where cops were snooping around their vehicles.

"I guess it’s time to see what their dark little secrets are, huh?" he muttered.

He didn’t like using this demon, as she kept talking dirty inside his mind. He felt like he was being brain-raped last time he melded with her, and now he had to do it again.

But if it meant keeping innocent people alive, it was better that way.

’Alright, Paimon. You’re up,’ he sighed mentally.

He felt her slither into his mind like a snake coiling around its prey.

’Mmmmm’ she moaned. ’Finally back in here, alone, with you, master,’ she whispered, salacious intent in every word.

Alexander felt his body change as his traits became feminine, and his skin changed colour.

’Shut up. We are not doing this again. Do your job and stop trying to slip images of us fucking inside my mind. You know damn well it’s never going to happen.’

He heard her giggling inside his mind, an attempt at what she thought was a cute giggle, he assumed. But her intent only made his skin crawl.

’One day, surely. You wouldn’t keep a maiden running after you forever, would you?’

Alex felt his stomach churning.

’Hah! You, a maiden? Don’t make me laugh,’ he replied, his words cutting like a knife.

’You are the definition of the words cheap whore. I’m sure you’ve driven more men insane through bedding them than with your actual curses.’

He heard her click his tongue inside his mind and knew he had struck her deeply.

’Now stop talking. We have work to get done,’ he said, cutting this egregious conversation there.

Even though Alex disliked melding with her, Paimon was still a powerful King of Hell. Her strength carried over to him through their fusion, and time seemed to slow as he moved about the parking lot.

He was like a ghost, moving from one shadow to another, creeping up behind the cops and lightly touching them on the shoulder.

With a single touch, he was able to see their deepest desires and placed curses upon them, inflicting them with sinful thoughts and taking their minds away from their current objectives.

The cops only ever felt a slight brush against them before their minds devolved into one form or another of sinful messes.

Be it sudden lustful thoughts, forcing them into seeking carnal release; or greed pushing them to look for valuable stuff to ’requisition’ from nearby vehicles, none were spared.

Alex had to correct the curses on two officers, who were yearning for things that would go against his directives.

’Huh... Only two of them were craving extreme violence. If this had been America, the ratio would have been terrible. I guess the mentality really is better in China, after all,’ he mused.

Faster than they could blink, Kujaku and Kary watched the cops start breaking into cars or violently rip their clothes off , and sighed.

"Of all the things I expected to see, this was not one of them," Kujaku said, her face a clear mask of disgust.

"Hey, I’m not the one with those thought sin mind," Alex replied, reappearing beside her, still in his demon-melded form.

"I just made the thoughts into a curse to trap their minds temporarily. You asked for no casualties and no maiming. There won’t be either. Take the win."

Even Kary’s skin crawled at the sight. But Alex was right.

They needed to take the win and get out while they still could.

"We’re moving out now," she ordered.