Chapter 34

34

A fter a brief stop at the safe house to set the trap, Killian whirls her away out west, stopping underneath a snowy spruce tree and a scent so familiar Chloe gets homesick.

But he tugs them into a cave—barely an alcove—and her ears pop with the now usual surge of passing through demon wards.

They’re older than his usual, and he immediately futzes with them, but the air is starkly warmer than outside of it.

“Where are we?” Chloe asks, staring out at the rather unpleasant sleet pelting the trees.

It’s so close to the beginning of winter weather..

“Mountains above Auburn,” he mutters, spreading his hand across the shield, and glimmers of power swirls at his touch, beautiful, imbedding into the barrier and bubbling up to reinforce it.

“Did every demon have a place up here?” Chloe asks, shuffling back and sitting on the cold rock that’s roughly cut to resemble a bench. “Isn’t this entire mountain range full of Wights?”

He sighs and shakes his head, but the beginning of a smile is on his lips. “There’s the main line of the coast about thirty miles north. It draws us, just as it draws Wights and spirits and ghosts.”

And humans, to a lesser degree, with most of the ley lines leading near ports or cities or wherever people come together.

“Plus, good camouflage,” he continues. “This close, one small fluctuation of power goes unnoticed. There’s so much energy in the very air it masks everything.” Another brief smile, and she gets to see it. “I think this is how the first Necromancer stayed so safe.”

“Oh, I know the answer to that,” Chloe immediately says, tucking her hands underneath her legs to possibly warm them from the chill.

“We all knew she existed,” he continues, raising an eyebrow. “We could see everything across the world, whenever she flexed. Nobody could pinpoint her down.”

“Fascinating,” Chloe says, and he wrinkles his nose at her. “I’m sure Lyra would love to know that.”

This time, he rolls his eyes at her, before he flicks a hand towards the ceiling of the little alcove and light glows, some sort of invisible, flickering fire, filling the stones with warmth.

Chloe must’ve sighed, for he offers her a slightly apologetic smile.

She cranes her neck up, just like she used to do when sitting outside the cabin when they first got to it, when they were first determining how to live there and the trees seemed forbiddingly huge to Chloe.

If they’re so close to the line, then they’re within an hour of the cabin. At least. Maybe less, depending on where they are in the mountains. Less than an hour away from the place she called home, the place she settled for among the longest of her time outside of the college. The place she existed, where she sharpened skills, learned how to tromp around in the woods and live with another person.

He glances back at her, giving her a funny little smile. “Close to home?”

“Apparently,” Chloe says, and the longing creeping into her voice surprises even her. “It’s…it was a place where I could just be.”

Just existing is a luxury for people like her.

He tilts his head, the almost universal demon body language for considering. “When we’re all done, I’ll get it for you.”

“Get it?” Chloe asks, before her commonsense kicks back in. “Oh, it’s super compromised, they know where it is now, it’s on their maps, there’s no going back from that.”

He shrugs one shoulder. “Sure there is.”

“No, if they know of it, then…” she trails off as he grins smugly at her. “Demon bullshit?”

“Demon bullshit,” he confirms mildly. “It’ll take some finagling, but it’s possible.”

Delina would rejoice. The cabin is the first thing she ever got from her mother, the first tangible thing that her mother ever gave her, besides the will and the book with it. The first proof that she wasn’t just a normal person, the first idea that she had a mother who loved her, not just one who abandoned her.

And Chloe…

Chloe would have her home back.

Killian glances back at her again, checking in, the handsome demon face more prominent than the human.

“If you can figure out how, then yeah,” Chloe says numbly. “Yeah, that’d be good.”

“I don’t stay here, not often,” he admits, “but it’s nice when I have to do something particularly…intense.”

Chloe shifts back on the rock, quirking an eyebrow. With the warmth, they’re far less hostile to lean against, almost comfortable. “Intense?”

“I’m gonna draw in some threats,” he remarks simply. “Figure out who’s targeting me and then force their hands.”

He shakes out the extra roll of butcher's paper, her trap still glistening on it.

“The one back at the house was the failsafe, wasn’t it?” Chloe says, sitting forward despite herself. “Just in case they came back.”

He smiles at her and it’s a little bloodthirsty.

She smiles back.

Chloe transforms a plastic sheet from her back into a camping pad, lounging on the bench-like rock, as Killian does…something…with the trap. Something complicated, changing it and twisting it around his shields, until it is barely recognizable from the original spray paint.

While he does so, she unrolls her scrolls, now far more stable, layering her maps with the magic traces, settling on the location. Her compass shows the area pointing roughly north east, closer to where the actual ley line would start pooling around the mountain range.

Her maps, however, have their issues. The sands of magic vibrate around, skittering across the page, no matter how specific she gets with the location.

“I’m not sure if my scan was bad or if something else is wrong here,” she muses, as the compass swings wildly around.

“I’d put money on the line obscuring issues,” Killian says, in that deep remote voice of his when he’s concentrating. “She’ll be around here, somewhere in this state.”

Of course she is.

Of course, after so long and everything, it would all come down to Washington state. The place she hid for the last year, the place with the Wights, with Dr. Frisse’s compound, all of it.

It’s a puzzle, a nice little distraction from all the leftover emotions still fizzing around in her blood, before her phone beeps.

GURLIEN (5:24 PM): You’re in Washington, are you coming home?

DELINA (5:26 PM): Give us the nearest city, you’re close enough we could drive to you!

Chloe cradles her phone, the pang strong in her heart at that.

Killian sighs, just a whisper of air between them, and trails a hand on her wrist, gentle. As if reassuring himself she’s there.

“Do you need me to take you there?” he asks, his voice deep, like it’s pulling out of him against his will. “I will take you home. Someplace…safe. If you need me to.”

And it’s tempting. Sorely tempting, to just run back home. Give up on the quest, hide away in the compound with the runes that track everything and the too prominent surveillance until all the fears inside of her quelled. Until whatever unrest the college has spilled out, whatever war is being waged, finishes.

Leaving the spirit fox to suffer in the midst.

Leaving Killian alone. Alone to all his fear, to all his weaknesses against traps. Leave him to see if he will succeed or fail, to see if he can make it back to his adopted daughter at the end of the day.

“No,” Chloe says, thumbing a quick response back. “I’m staying with you.”

CHLOE (5:31 PM): No, I’ll let you know when we’re done here. I’m safe.

His face does a complicated thing, the demon visage twisting on some emotion while the human remains blank, before he tightens his grip on her wrist.

And pulls her into a bruising kiss.

She gasps against him, and he opens his mouth against hers, something halfway between a prayer and an invitation.

One hand snakes against the small of her back, holding her tighter than anyone ever has.

“Don’t think,” he whispers to her between kisses, his lips moving against hers, “that I don’t recognize what you just did.”

She would never assume he wouldn’t, as his other hand cradles her chin, as if she’s a precious treasure he can’t help but consume.

Sure, her ribs still twinge and her body’s still exhausted, but all her mind can do is keep up with the pressure on her lips and the gentleness of his hands.

He’s always gentle. Always so gentle, always tender, even before they knew each other. Even back in the cave, he ever so gently picked up her hand.

The magic of the shield sparkles and he flinches, breaking the precious contact, dropping his hands.

But he stares at her, his eyes alight.

“I have to finish the shield,” he whispers, voice husky and low. “But I know…”

Chloe nods, unable to speak, and instead smiles up at him.

It’s one of those smiles that grow tremulously. With all the scares and the drama and the horror seen by them in just the last few days, there’s no way she can make it sunny. There’s no way she can make it as if she’s perfectly okay, as if she’s completely unassuming.

But it doesn’t mean it’s not honest.