Chapter 24

24

C hloe’s now seen a demon without a dead body, separated from it, but Killian crouches, looming over her, eyes sunken.

The fluorescent light streams over him.

She freezes, staring up at him, the demon’s face half familiar, the hands more like claws, her heart jackhammering in her chest. He’s still, just as much as she is, as if frozen under the weight of her reaction.

“Killian?” she whispers to the fluorescent light and the slick tiles of the room. “Killian.” And he blinks at her, dazed. “Killian, are you okay?”

She’s not sure what she’d do if he wasn’t.

Slowly, he nods.

Black blood drips from the wound in his shoulder, somehow despite the physical form being on the ground, and Chloe reaches out to him, grazing his arm.

He reels back, and her fingertips come away wet.

Her eyes fall back down to the dead body, now so still, before she scrambles back, pushing it off her legs, before he reaches out a clawed hand, flicking it away like one would old clothes.

“Where—”

He holds a finger to his lips—he looks so, so different without a body—before he stands, pulling himself up to his full height.

It’s taller than the body.

Taller and practically thrumming with power.

He inhales, his chest rising and falling, his eyes wholly inhuman, and the power in the room flexes. Glass shatters from a camera in the corner, the tile denting, underneath him.

And one of the walls is just a glass observation wall.

Chloe cranes her neck, staring out at the glass, but it just reflects her back to herself.

Her black hair wisps around her face, her jacket is raggedy, and her Carhartts have seen better days. A splash of demon blood has soaked into one of the sleeves of her flannel, and grit from the rock dust colors the other.

And all she can see in the reflection is the dead body where Killian once was. Not him.

She snaps her attention back to him, to the somewhat incorporeal form, and even without the human body, he seems dazed, blinking rapidly, like he’s struggling to come to grips with something, struggling to understand.

The room is small, barely big enough to pace through, and it’s too similar to the stasis chamber they found Ambra in.

“Was this your cell?” Chloe whispers, and his face spasms, and at least that is familiar. “Killian, are we—”

Fluid, he snaps a shield around her, before jerking a fist up, and the glass wall shatters around them.

Chloe throws up her arms to protect her face, but the glass crashes harmlessly off the shield, warping and black, before Killian grabs her by the arm, hauling her upright.

“We’ll deal with that later,” he replies, grim, his voice just as deep as it was before, and relief surges through Chloe. It shouldn’t, she should be fine, but—

Gunshots snap out at them, sparking harmlessly off a shield, before Killian drags her through the broken glass of the wall, stepping confidently past the wreckage.

It’s the sort of hallway Chloe’s seen in a hundred bases, the sort of hallway she was dragged through, barely conscious, before they threw her in her own prison cell. It’s the sort of hallway they found Ambra in, the sort of hallway with Stella the Wight, the sort of hallway—

She cranes her head and stares at the dead body they left there, the dead body with brown eyes that, startlingly, she never knew.

That moment doesn’t last.

Killian releases her just long enough to sweep his arm down the line of cells, past the observation walls, and fling a snap of demon power into all of them.

And all of them, every single glass wall separating whatever monsters or spirits or prisoners, shatters.

Chloe’s ears pop, the tang of demon power so thick she bites her tongue, before Killian closes his hand around her arm again, pulling her forward.

His claws aren’t digging in, not like the other demon.

Another spat of gunfire, and he yanks Chloe behind him, the bullets striking him harmlessly, not even drawing blood.

And Chloe’s just letting herself be pulled through all of this, letting herself be carried like dead weight.

She jerks her arm away, grabbing at the handful of gravel in her pocket, and Killian spares her just once glance before he advances, her keeping pace with him.

They stride by the cells, and various beings, various creatures, all stir, like they’ve been woken by a deep sleep.

At the end of the tunnel, three guard stand, assault rifles pointed at them.

One of the guards' hands shakes around the trigger.

“Who are you?” one calls out, voice brash. Chloe can’t see his expression past the helmet, past the protective shield over his face, warping and flickering with wards.

Chloe’d bet money that one of those let them see demons.

Maybe not without a dead body.

Killian growls, a deep sound that sends the hair on the back of Chloe’s neck raising.

But the guard, with a brash voice, just flips up the shield, staring dumbly at Chloe. “Who the hell are you?”

“Shit,” the other says, and their voice is far higher than it should be. “That’s Chloe tombbreaker.”

The first one tightens his grip on his trigger, and a spat of gunfire ricochets down the hall, before Killian warps a shield around Chloe, all of the bullets falling back into place.

“Shit,” the one repeats. “Shit.”

“Tombbreaker?” Killian mutters, his voice low, with just a glint of a glance to Chloe.

She shrugs.

Killian just steps forward, the set of his shoulders the same as it was in the body, before he jerks his hand and a wall to their side cracks, splitting open.

Inside, Chloe catches a glimpse of a child, a boy barely older than four. He blinks up at her, eyes perfectly round and inhuman, something Chloe’s never seen before.

A building block set of toys hover in the air in front of him.

“How the hell did you do that,” the brash voice guard says, snapping his gun up and pointing it at the kid.

“You, you put it back,” the first guard says, pointing at Chloe. “Put it back, it can’t get out, don’t—”

The child tilts his head at them all, evaluating, before babbling like a toddler.

“Shit,” the first guard breathes, the one with the high-pitched voice, and the toys tumble in midair, never hitting the ground. “Shoot it, shoot it before—”

“Wait, no—” Chloe starts, but the guard aims the gun, snapping out fire.

The kid flinches.

Killian clenches his fist, and the same shield warps around the child, the bullets bouncing.

“Shoot it!” the first guard repeats, and the brash one fires again, and—

Killian makes a gesture, something, demon power flooding, and the brash guard flicks backwards, head snapping back with a sickening crack.

The first guard recoils away as the brash voiced one flops backwards, neck at the wrong angle, everything at the wrong angle, and—

Killian lets go of Chloe, steps forwards, and vanishes.

Chloe gasps, but the kid just blinks away from them, going back to playing with the toys, plopping back to sitting with all of the grace of a toddler.

The brash guard straightens back to standing, jerking his neck back into place, his hand loose on the gun. The bones crack again, coming back into contact, rippling through the room.

“Fuck,” the one with the trembling finger says, and her voice is high, far higher pitched than Chloe would ever imagine.

Chloe has a split second to wonder, to contemplate that they might actually think it’s her doing all of this, all of the insane actions, before the brash guard drops the gun, clenches his fist, and the first guard slams headfirst into the wall.

Leaving sudden silence.

Chloe stands there, her heart pounding, before the guard flips up his visor, and his eyes gleam red.

“This is easier to do in a body,” he says, and his voice, smoother than before, still holds Killian’s signature growl at the bottom of it.

The kid blinks back up to them again, before turning back to the toys.

And Chloe did basically nothing in all of it, and now the hallway is full of ruin, glass shattered everywhere, blood splashed on the slick tile, and there’s a child, an actual child, sitting in one of the cells and barely fazed by any of it.

“Killian?” Chloe asks, and her voice squeaks.

“Yes?” the brash guard—Killian now—responds, before he takes off the helmet, shaking out curly black-brown hair. He tosses the helmet aside, and underneath the new human face, with high cheekbones and a ridiculously defined jaw, is Killian, a wary expression on his face. “You’re not hurt, I would be able to tell.”

“No, I’m…” She doesn’t know what she is, and her mouth is foul. “You just killed him, and—”

“He shot at the kid,” Killian says, which is fair, but he unclasps the bullet proof vest with wards etched into the very ceramics, shaking himself out of it. “These clothes are the worst.” He flings the gloves off as if they’re offensive, and they fall to the tile without a sound.

He stalks towards her, every line of the motion familiar, before handing her the bulletproof vest.

It’s several sizes too large for Chloe, but that’s never stopped her.

Changing clothing with such magic already written in isn’t exactly the easiest, but Chloe flicks some power into it, shrinking it down to toddler size, and crouching to look at the kid.

The toddler blinks at her, eyes perfectly round, then babbles something. If the guards were so willing to shoot a kid, barely older than a baby, then…

“I meant that for you,” Killian replies, disgruntled, and the voice coming from the mouth is just different enough that it throws her off, but he takes it from her, clasping it around the toddler, before scooping him up in his arms. “Stay here,” he orders Chloe, like she had anywhere else to go, before he vanishes.

Leaving her with the broken glass, the other dead body of the guard, and a hallway full of cells that once held people in them.

Including Killian himself.

“Ooookay,” Chloe breathes, her heart hammering in her chest, even though she did practically nothing in that entire fight.

It’s like those first few hours with Ambra, when Chloe was suddenly massively overpowered, and all of her senses told her to run.

Slow, Chloe swings her backpack back around, taking out another protein bar, her hands shaking.

A sound behind her, and she whirls around, her boots sliding on the slick tile, but she’s met with the stillness of another person, barely poking his head out of the cell.

Her senses tell her the person is human, but once more, eyes reflect back the light at her.

“Who are you?” Chloe asks, but the person—barely a young adult—shakes his head, before sliding out of the cell, backing up down the hall, away from the door and the dead guards.

He grips at magic the same way that Maison has his entire life.

“You’re a Half Demon?” Chloe asks, and he freezes, like she caught him doing something he shouldn’t. “It’s okay, one of my friends is a Half Demon, you’re safe.”

He stares at her, then mouths, ‘Tombbreaker.’

Behind her, without even needing to look, she’s suddenly aware of Killian teleporting back, his power filling the area.

The young man’s eyes flick behind her, and he pales, scrambling back.

“I took the hybrid to a friend, he’ll be safe,” Killian says, low, just to Chloe. “Don’t worry.”

The Half Demon scrambles at the door in the back of the hallway, flinging it open and fleeing.

Killian touches Chloe’s elbow, gentle, but the calluses on his hand are different now. “Let him go, he won’t harm us.”

“Jesus Christ,” Chloe says, after all of that, completely out of things to say, before giving Killian a hard look.

This body is less tall—still taller than Chloe of course, that’s not hard—and a bit more slender in the shoulders. The eyes, in the brief glimpses behind the reflecting of the light, are a completely normal hazel, and his face is prettier than the last.

The guard must’ve been an absolute asshole, if he looked like that while existing in the college.

And Killian searches through her face, as if attempting to find something as well.

“Did you know this body? Is this weird for you? I could take the other,” he says, gesturing at the other dead guard. “Both will work for a while, it’s no big deal.”

“No,” Chloe says, her voice a bit higher. “Just uh…startled?”

It’s a wholly inadequate way of describing things.

Killian shrugs, one shouldered, and that is at least familiar. “The dissection level is three stories up,” he says, serious, and Chloe needs to get her brain back on track, get her mind back where it needs to be. “The cage will be up there.”

Someone else pokes their head out of the cell but vanishes before Chloe can get a good look at them.

They were also young.

“And you were kept here?” Chloe blurts out, before she can stop herself.

Killian’s jaw tightens, a familiar action in an unfamiliar body, before he consciously relaxes. He pushes forward, waving the brash guard’s fist and peeling open the wall behind them.

“That floor has anti-teleportation again,” he says, frustration sanding down the unfamiliar timber of his voice. “Or else I’d just hop over there and hop back.”

“Makes sense,” Chloe says, shaking out her hands and craning a look behind herself.

Nobody else is poking their head out of their cages. She can only hope that it means there’s nobody else that needs to run.

“It’s new, too,” he says, with an undertone she can’t quite interpret yet. “They just put it up. Less than 10 minutes ago.”

Oh.

Which means they know they’re coming

They know someone’s coming.

Chloe swings the bag around again, then straps the gun to her hip, rolling the pebbles in her hand. They’re a good sort of pebble, just enough quartz to be easy to transform into something, just enough leftover carbon from some ancient fossil that she can make something truly horrendous.

Killian pokes his head into the wall, and she briefly, ever so briefly, wonders about if the height difference in this body bothers him. “I can get us to that beam,” he says, pointing, and Chloe cranes her neck up as well.

It’s barely a ledge.

“It’ll be a three meter climb up to that,” he says, pointing at the internal edging of a floor.

This entire building wouldn’t stand if it wasn't for the magic.

“I can do it,” Chloe says, staring hard into the threads of magic woven into each wooden beam, into each bit of metal scaffolding, and finds nothing in them that would prevent her from making them larger. Some absolutely preventing them from getting shrunk down or bent, but nothing going in the other direction. “How much partner work have you done with alchemists?”

He tilts his head at her. “Just you, in any depth.”

Figures.

“Then what I need you to do is make sure I don’t fall.”

“Don’t fall,” he repeats flatly.

“I can get us up the rest of the way, just make sure I don’t fall.”

After a beat, he nods curtly, then grabs her tight around her waist, a hand pressing in the small of her back, prompting her to choke back a squeak as they’re suddenly really, really close.

“I won’t drop you,” he says smugly, and the butt of her gun must be poking him in the side, before he teleports them to the barely-there metal ledge.

Immediately, Chloe almost flails, instead pressing her hand into the metal sheet, warping it outward into hand grips she can cling to, and Killian presses her back firmly closer to the wall.

The metal creaks underneath their sudden weight.

He’s not having any balance issues, of course, standing lightly on his tiptoes on the metal beam.

“Show off,” Chloe mutters, then drops her mind into her feet, stretching the ledge longer, until she can comfortably set her heels down, no longer teetering on the edge.

“Who’s showing off now?” he taunts back, still holding her in place.

“Some of us would die if they fell,” she replies, though her heart pounds as she cranes her neck upwards.

Three meters. A little less than ten feet. A sheet of metal, steel girders, and an odd pipe leading through the shaft.

And Killian’s hand is still at the small of her back.

“How tall is that body?” Chloe murmurs, because she’s a horrible judge of that, being all of five foot two. “Will following my handholds be a detriment.”

Still on the small ledge, he rolls his shoulders back, almost distractedly evaluating. “We can see,” he says neutrally, blinking upwards. “They’re reinforcing their demon wards, they don’t want someone getting up there.”

“Or someone escaping,” Chloe murmurs, and she’s watching his face just close enough to see the fast spasm of fear cross his eyes before he controls it.

But she’s not going to bring that up.

Taking a deep breath, she reaches up, palming the metal, twisting the interior structure of it to mold to her hand, crafting a divot and hauling herself up.

Similarly, she digs the toe of her boot into the side, quickly using alchemy to make the metal shift and protrude into a stable foothold.

And then, not daring to look down, she heaves herself up. Then again, her fingertips dripping with sweat, both at the effort of holding herself up and the real time effort of creation.

The metal warps, wobbling underneath her, as Killian begins his climb after her.

In the locking pits, the wall was made of wood, with wooden scaffolding and framing, and she barely had to do any work besides support her own body through the frames. It basically created its own ladder, for anyone as naturally able to fit there.

Her grip slips, and she instinctively pulls the metal further out, scrabbling to keep herself stable.

And, sudden as a gale in the storm, Killian’s power surges around her, forcing her against the wall, as solid as his hand had just been.

Chloe swallows, her breath caught in her throat.

“I said I wasn’t going to let you fall,” Killian says, disgruntled below her, and when she glances down, he’s also using his power, warping and red, to hold himself up, pressed against the metal wall. “You create the footholds, I’ll stop you from slipping. Trust me.”

Trust him.

Chloe nods, and though her heart pounds, before she hauls herself up, her arms shaking with the effort, until she can pull herself up onto the thin ledge of the next floor.

Even from the hollow of the metal wall, the tang of the demon ward fouls her mouth, but she can’t quite reach it.

So instead, she just backs up so that Killian can shift onto the edge of the floor, the guards’ boots hitting it lightly.

There’s still the same fear underneath the natural smugness of the guard’s face.

“How does the girl deal with you showing up with a different face all the time?” Chloe whispers, running her fingers along the seam of the wall. It’s metal with sheet rock on the other side, reinforced with concrete in between.

Definitely made to withstand some blasts.

He shoots her a look.

“Just asking,” Chloe whispers again, and they did a better job of protecting this wall than the last. Anti alchemy spells are poured into the concrete, keeping it static, and even a few spellweaver catches are on the other side of the Sheetrock. “This is gonna be a problem.”

His hand comes down to the small of her back again, right underneath her research backpack, keeping her steady, as he too evaluates it.

“This won’t be quiet,” he says, and they haven’t been quiet for a while. “And I can’t teleport us out until you break the ward, but I can get us in.”

“How many people are there?” Chloe murmurs, because she has to keep her voice down even if he doesn’t. “So I know how many to neutralize, obviously.”

His eyes flash red, reflecting the dim light back to her. “Five. Three humans, one abomination, one demon.”

The demon would absolutely know they were there. Absolutely know that right on the other side of the wall are two people, just waiting to burst in.

“Not if they have it in stasis,” Killian says, as if he read her mind. “You can’t sense a thing in stasis.”

“How…” Chloe starts, then shakes her head as he shoots her a smug look.

She’ll deal with the ramifications of weird demon things once they’re out with the clue.

And there, his hand pressing her against the wall, he stares down at her in that new body, with new skin and new hair and new lips.

Quick as a flash, he grips her chin and kisses her, a brief shock of contact and possession and fierceness, leaving her breathless

“Okay,” she whispers. “Let’s go loud.”