Chapter 25

25

H e grins, for a split second, then places his free hand against the wall and…blasts.

Instinctively, Chloe throws her arms up in front of her face, but a shield, fluid and fluent, already bounces the debris away from her, before she ducks her head and charges through the hole.

Four things are immediately obvious.

One, a human man holds down a screaming body onto a metal lab table, black and red blood smearing all over the bare skin.

Two, two young women, barely into adulthood, cringe away from the sudden explosion, scalpels in their gloved hands.

Three, the demon isn’t in a cage, isn’t in a stasis chamber, but holds down the shoulders of the body on the table, hands covered in viscera. She’s in a strikingly beautiful dead body, a lab coat over casual clothes, and her eyes flash off of Chloe and fix onto Killian instead.

Four, a fox sized cage sits unused in the corner, paw sized shackles and a metal muzzle chained to the bars.

There’s a moment, a breath, before the demon releases the screaming body and snaps out a flash of power at Killian, singeing Chloe’s cheek as it flies past her.

Killian shoves her out of the way, absorbing it into a shield, as the tile cracks and the floor dents.

Chloe scrambles away, blindly grabbing a chunk of the metal from the wall, before transforming it into a simple knife and flinging it at the scientist holding the screaming body.

It slashes across the scientist's arm, red blood spraying over the white of his lab coat, and he yelps, jerking away to slap a hand over the wound.

And the screaming body jolts upright, still screaming, blood pouring from his eyes and mouth.

It’s too much chaos.

The two assistants slap their hands over their ears, as if that could do absolutely anything to block out the shriek.

And the other demon grins, wide, showing her teeth, at Killian.

“Here I thought you’d never come back here,” she says, and her voice is low and sweet, all the more vicious for it.

Killian doesn’t say anything, just his lips thin as he wraps his hands around the power of the room, twisting and choking all the air away.

With a bored flick of her eyes, the demon shrugs. “Fine.”

And the tile shatters around her, the entire room shakes, before everything…explodes.

Killian and the other demon exchange invisible blows, tile and debris flying through the room as if a hurricane, the male scientist scrambles for the door, and the body—it’s alive, it’s a person, it’s a demon, it’s all confusing—clenches his fists, arching his back out of pain, and the lab table dents from whatever power he’s grabbing.

And the cage is still in the corner of the room.

One of the young women screams, high pitched, before chucking the scalpel at Chloe. It bounces off Killian’s shield, snapping the other demon’s attention to Chloe.

“You brought a pet?” the demon says, her voice delighted, before flicking a strand of power at Chloe, easily repelled by Killian’s shield. “I didn’t know you kept pet humans, Killian.”

The body stops screaming, cut off suddenly, sagging to the table, though his eyes still blink up at the ceiling, wondering.

Killian doesn’t even look at Chloe, doesn’t look at the body on the table, just keeps his eyes on the other demon, his shoulders down.

“Well, this is just delightful,” the demon says, smiling, and smiling rests easy on the face of the dead body she’s in. Like the lips were made to smile, to bring joy to someone, and here they are stretched over the visage of a demon.

The air stills, sudden, all the power swirling around abruptly ceasing, and the scientist recoils back even more, throwing his hands up to shelter his face.

“What happened to that kid, though?” the demon asks, and the body on the table blinks, like he heard that, like he comprehended that. “The mad scientist's child. I heard you kidnapped her.”

Killian doesn’t respond, just staring up at the other demon, hands loose around his side, eyes tracking every micro movement of power that the other demon twitches around herself.

The body on the table turns his head, staring dully up at the other demon. Tear tracks of blood streak down his face, and globs of tissue trail down from his ears.

Chloe had seen that once from Terese, seen the picture they took when a demon was mid-process of possessing her again, back when she first seeked out help from Axel and Alette.

It’s even more gory in person, more wrong.

Killian had been right. There was another abomination, another attempt at the Terese project up here, and his eyes flicker down to Chloe, both staring through her soul and fully unseeing.

The other demon smiles again, like she’s already triumphed, and she had been helping. She had been betraying her own kind, hurting someone so deeply, helping the side who only aimed to control them.

Before all the air in the room goes tight.

Immediately, Chloe gags, hands coming up to scrabble at her throat, and the two young women in the back collapse to the floor, eyes rolling back, choking.

The scientist recoils further, stumbling into another lab table before clattering to the floor.

Only the body on the table takes even breaths, like whatever is being done has no effect.

“Stop.” Chloe wheezes out, and the demon doesn’t even look at her, just keeps smiling at Killian, who whips out another line of power at the demon. “Stop—”

And Chloe has her gun.

Her head going light, her hands falter as she tries to tug it out of the holster, fumbling with the straps. The scientist chokes, writhing on the ground, his face going purple.

And Chloe’s already died once, she doesn’t want to die again.

All her actions slow, like she’s struggling through a vat of jelly, she fumbles for the holster, black spots crowding around her vision.

She’s been choked before, but never like this. Never without someone’s hands willfully trying to stop her from breathing, but this, with just the air unwilling to work with her lungs, is far, far worse.

Popping the leather strap loose, Chloe pulls the gun out and aims.

Her fingers, slick with sweat, slip twice off the trigger, the metal biting rough into her palm, but she forces herself to still, to control her hands even though her vision goes dim and her head goes light, and pulls again.

“Oh, guns won’t hurt me,” the demon scoffs, “you should know that—”

This time, the gun fires.

Black blood blooms across the other demon’s chest, and she staggers back against the metal lab table, a stunned expression on her face.

She touches her hand to her chest, to the black blood flowing freely, her eyes wide, before her knees buckle. She catches herself on the metal table, clattering on the hard surface, and she’s still breathing, she’s still blinking, and—

Out of the corner of her dim vision, Chloe sees Killian step forward, clenching power in his hand, and the other demon jerks, before falling limp to the ground.

Immediately dead.

All at once, air floods through the room again, and Chloe gasps, immediately light-headed, and curls herself in to put her head through her knees.

Her heart pounds through her skull, blocking out all other noise, until the body on the table whimpers.

Jerking her gaze up, Chloe can only watch as Killian teleports the short distance to the table, the power still clenched in his hands.

“Wait,” she wheezes, as Killian lifts his hand to strike down.

His eyes flicker to her, holding his hand aloft, as she attempts to push herself up, but her arms give up, dumping her back onto the slick tile.

“This is more merciful,” Killian says, his voice eerily smooth. “You would doom him to a life of pain.”

The body doesn’t even register the words, just blinking, his eyelashes gunky with gore.

“Just no,” Chloe blurts out, and slowly, ever so slowly, Killian lowers his hand. “We can figure something out, something else, he could be like Ambra—”

The scientist in the corner lifts his head, eyes bleary and focusing on Chloe.

Without missing a beat, Killian flicks his hand at the three scientists, and his head thunks back down, his pulse still obvious in his throat.

The two women never even stirred.

“We might be able to help, we might be able to reverse it or something or…” Chloe trails off, as the body blinks over to her, and his eyes reflect red. “Ambra told me what they did to her to get her to that point, she didn’t deserve it, he doesn’t deserve—”

“You really don’t know that,” Killian immediately challenges. “You’re dooming them to pain and possible insanity.” Thankfully, he stalks closer to Chloe, away from the body laying listlessly against the metal. “Do you want to doom the world to another Terese?”

“We know how to deal with that now,” Chloe says, getting her feet underneath her and wobbling to standing.

Killian grabs her by her elbow, stabilizing her despite the scowl on his face.

“And we can help prevent that,” Chloe says, then forces herself to take a deep breath, to clear the black splotches from her eyes, before focusing back on the cage.

Unlike the last two, this one isn’t covered in rust. The metal still gleams with attention, freshly sterilized, and the muzzle is clean despite its obvious disuse of time.

Killian follows her glance. “Clear the anti-teleportation trap on this floor first,” he mutters, and Chloe gets the distinct feeling that she won some sort of argument. “I want to be able to leave the moment we get the data.”

Chloe nods in return, shoving her hair out of her face, though her eyes stray back to the body on the table, at the blood streaming from his mouth and ears.

“It’s an easy unravel,” she says, and her voice quivers out of her throat, like the air that had been stolen from her left its own indelible mark. “Give me…”

She exhales again, taking a deliberate step back across the grating floor, around the dead body left behind by the demon, to the edge of the room, feeling along the tasseled circle of the trap. It’s more complex as woven, more aspects to it that would’ve taken time and knowledge and preparation for emergencies such as this, then folded and stored for deployment when needed.

It takes a clever Magician to store wards like this, one who specializes in traps and wards. A spellweaver, the sort with a giant loom and no care what their creations were used for, just that they got to create. Chloe had a teacher like that, one who would spin up elaborate traps just for the sheer joy of the act, of the satisfaction that comes with the precision of their abilities. The teacher would stay up all night so they could make something so perfect, just to have Chloe undo it the next day.

Unraveling is far more simple.

Chloe palms the edge of the trap, and it almost feels like a rug in her hand, the different layers of magic so tangible they’re almost as soft as yarn. It’s been stored for years, just to be taken out and used for them.

Killian watches her, sharp behind the new eyes, and she swallows, before ripping it in two.

It unspools with a snap, the magic crackling in the air, flashing bright before vanishing, and Chloe tastes metal in her mouth.

Straightening the narrow shoulders of the body, Killian inhales, as if the weight of the trap had been holding him down, before he nods at Chloe.

“You’re far too good at that,” he says, and it almost sounds like an olive branch.

“They trained me well,” Chloe replies, and the bitterness on her tongue doesn’t fade. They trained her well, then turned around and imprisoned her exactly like they imprisoned everyone else in the base, like they imprisoned the poor person slash maybe demon on the metal table, like they imprisoned the spirit fox.

Swinging her backpack around, she fumbles for the zipper, unrolling her tracking scroll. The paper crackles against her fingertips, and small traces of blood smear on the outside.

Easy to remove once they’re out, but Killian’s attention lays heavy on the marks.

“You can’t argue that you’re not injured this time,” Killian says, his voice low.

“I’ve had worse,” Chloe replies, then approaches the cage, skirting wide around the metal table, where the body listlessly shifts, back to staring up at the ceiling.

At least he’s not screaming anymore.

Her legs shake as she crouches next to the cage on the floor, and Killian smoothly sits next to her, a hand on her back, like he’s able to provide moral support for this.

Chloe spreads the scroll down on the grating floor—it must be grating so they could wash it off from the gore and the blood that would remain after their dissections—and grabs the perfectly cleaned metal muzzle.

Immediately, the grains of sand on the scroll tremble, attuning to the residue left on the steel, impossible to clean off by normal human means.

If they kept the cage here, too, did they try to dissect her friend? To cut her open while still alive?

“Whatever you’re thinking, stop,” Killian murmurs, low, the hand hot through the fabric of her jacket. “Focus on this.”

Like she could do anything else.

Of course, someone else had scanned the muzzle, and it sparks against her fingertips. Someone else had gotten there—or already had access—and slipped into the room to do the same tracking work they’re doing.

Killian inhales, like he’s seeing it too.

“Recent?” he asks, like he’s confirming it.

Chloe nods, still leaning against him.

She can’t quite confirm that it’s the same as the first set of cuffs, but it feels like it. Feels like the same energy symbol, the same person as before.

She pulls out the compass and her blood slicks on that, too, before she holds it against the gleaming muzzle, tying it together.

The compass whirs in her hand, the needle spinning dizzying around the room, before pointing almost due west.

Killian rubs against the small of her back, almost soothing, and even though Chloe is cuddly with her friends, even though she’s the sort to try to lean against them on the couch and hug them whenever possible, it’s been a while since someone gave her the same little bit of comfort back.

It’s almost nice, in the room stained with so much blood, where the very air had been stolen from her and the body of the demon still lay.

She smoothes out the scroll again, the sands of magic vibrating as they absorb the trails from the metal, creasing in the tiny folds of the thin paper, before settling into place.

There. Tied.

Chloe’s eyes blur together, and she sits back on her heels, letting her head lean against Killian’s new shoulder.

She should eat, consume some more of the food in her bag, get the energy back. They did something monumental, with too much power spent by her, too much energy, and now…

Now her friend was next held in the west.

The base would maybe never be functional again, with the protections ripped apart, with the prison cells so broken. With a demon they were actively working with in a Terese project killed.

There’s a shift from the metal bed, a creak of polished hinges, and both their heads snap up over to it.

The body, the person slash maybe demon, sits up, his arms visibly shaking at the effort, and he stares at them, his shoulders hunched in on himself, like he expects to be struck.

Next to her, Killian tenses, the hand against her back clenching into a fist.

The body opens his mouth to talk, despite the blood trailing from each side of his lips, then closes it. Tilts his head.

Then vanishes.

Killian exhales, explosive, before gentling the hand on Chloe’s back.

“That’ll be a problem,” he says, a growl deep beneath his voice.

“But not for right now,” Chloe says, and even she can hear the lethargy in her voice as she rolls up the scrolls. Rolls up their evidence, fits it back in her backpack—there’s demon blood on the backpack again, she’ll have to clean it—and zips it closed in only two tries.

Killian’s lips thin as he watches her actions, before he settles his arm around her, halfway between a hug and gathering her up.

Keeping her tightly against him, he lifts his head. Stares out at the room with the metal grating and the dented table and the dead body of the demon.

Before he swings his glance back to her. “Hold on to me,” he warns, like she could do anything else, but she loops her arm around her backpack, then grips his shirt.

It’s the basic uniform shirt of the college, rough and basic and Cotton.

He hauls her up, and she wobbles. “You did too much today,” he murmurs, before he stiffens, craning his neck.

A whisper of power to Chloe’s dulled senses drifts around them, and deeper within the building, someone screams.

“Someone else is here,” he murmurs, and gently, ever so gently, rests his cheek against the top of her head, a demon bubble almost kindly popping up around them, before…

The room around them shatters.

Chloe flinches, even with such little energy she has left, but nothing reaches her as the very building creaks, foundation crackling, metal warping, and then—

And before Chloe can even blink, they’re back in the small house in the snow.