Chapter 40

40

C hloe’s heart stutters, the pain so immediate and acute that it takes her breath away.

The wall is lined with cages, all with some animal in them, three cages tall and stretching on far longer than it should by all logic. It’s impossible for a room this long to exist under the water processing plant, defying all physics, stretching at her belief.

But the back wall is so far away it wavers, like a mirage.

There’s flickers of motion in the cages; the occasional tail flick and the rising and falling of breath, all creating the image of something much larger, much more than just animals in cages. Like the entire room is one morass of a life form, all broken in little pieces.

Killian inhales, before stepping out in front of her, blocking her body, hands at the ready, but…

Nothing happens.

No fire spells adorn these walls, the only visible security a slashed over demon trap, a spell to help with sanitation, and a quieting ward meant to suppress noise to a reasonable level, not fully squash it out.

An animal in a cage shifts at their movement, opening beady eyes towards them. It’s some form of dog, its fur scarred with sickly patches of visible skin, before it closes its eyes once more.

Like they’re not remarkable.

“Are these…normal dogs? Cats?” Chloe asks, and her voice breaks.

Somewhere in the back of the room, a cat meows, the sound squashed down to flatness by the quieting ward.

Killian exhales, then flexes his power out, expanding towards the first row of cages.

The animals don’t pay him any attention, and most can sense demon activity, even if it’s only on a very basic level. Most animals run, most animals hiss in fear, but none of these even react.

“Yes,” he says remotely, then, “some are magic, mixed in. All have traces of spells written upon them.”

“Jesus Christ,” Chloe breathes, and her compass still points forward, down the length of the room.

She steps forward, but Killian catches her by the wrist, startling her.

For a moment, his eyes are a remarkable, normal brown, before they reflect red back at her, a trick of the light. “I don’t trust this.”

“No shit,” Chloe says, and tries to pull her arm out, but he holds tight.

“No, there is something wrong with this,” he repeats. “This is too easy, this is too predictable. Something is wrong.”

He’s right, of course, but Chloe’s eyes still fall towards the compass.

“Let me…” he starts, then releases her wrist, hovering a hand over the compass, a clear question.

So, with her heart pounding, she places it gently in his palm.

His fingers curl around it, and for a moment her heart lurches, at relinquishing control over something so critical, before he turns and…

Flickers.

But stays in place.

His lips part.

He can’t teleport.

She can tell in the jerk in his head, the twitch in his jaw, the way his shoulders tighten.

“Did you tell when they put that up?” he asks, and Chloe shakes her head. “It wasn’t in the hallway. I should’ve felt it when we walked into it.”

They didn’t trip a trap, that would’ve tickled at the back of Chloe’s mind.

“So when we want to leave,” Chloe starts, low, “when we find my friend and let all of these ones out, we need to get back there.”

“I didn’t try when we were in the wall,” he replies, with an equally low tone.

“Then back to the fire hallway.”

He cranes his head to look at the ceiling, eyes sharp, like he’s evaluating how much effort it would take to bring it all down on them, before gently placing the compass back in Chloe’s hand.

He was going to teleport down the hall to get closer, see what he can find, and the crystal clear nature of it is obvious.

Chloe turns back to the room of animals, and more than one pair of eyes reflect back at her, and if she hadn’t spent so much time with Killian it’d be truly creepy.

“At least the fire spells should’ve been burned out,” Chloe says, then strides towards the cages.

The first row is just dogs, all eyeing her with disinterest in cages far too small for her, but she flicks open the first metal gate, and ears perk up at her.

“This will cause chaos,” Killian warns, before he unhooks the lever on the next one. The dog inside—some curly haired white poodle type, cringes against the back wall of the cage, as far away as it can get.

“Don’t care,” Chloe says churlishly, opening the next one. None of the cages are locked, of course, and all the animals pull back from their motions.

Still, she walks down, cranking open cage after cage, and the quiet only increases.

Until she comes upon a padlocked cage.

She crouches down next to it, and inside a cat curls up in the furthest corner, it’s fur an odd shade of light blue.

So obviously something magical.

Chloe doesn’t have the time to pick the lock, not really, but it’s just one of those cheap Master Locks that can be broken with enough kinetic force, so she takes one of the rocks from her pocket and slams it down on the shackle.

It immediately pops open.

She flings it off the cage, skittering the metal across the tile floor, and somewhere deep inside the room, an animal cries out.

At this point, she can’t tell what type of animal.

The cat cringes away, then the moment Chloe steps back, it shoulders the cage door open the rest of the way and sprints down the hall towards the door.

For a split second, Killian and Chloe watch it disappear into the hole in the wall they created.

“The fire spells might’ve been left for them,” Killian says, which is worse.

“I hate this place,” Chloe says, and the words are torn from her strangely, like a puppet string from her throat. “I hate this place, I hate everything this college does, I hate everything.”

“Good,” Killian answers, his words like a vow. “Good.”

Full of the sort of fury that wants to wreck things, the fury that wants things to crumble, to burn, to destroy, Chloe whirls towards the next cage, snaps it open and stalks on.

One after another, the animals either cringe back, nose their way through the metal, or burst out and sprint away. A dog—she thinks it’s a dog—snaps at her, a vicious slash already across its muzzle, but she’s already back and out of reach by the time the door swings open.

On the other side of the room, she’s dimly aware of Killian opening cages with a flick of his power, three at a time.

He doesn’t like cages either.

“Seanna would be crying,” Killian murmurs, almost too quiet for her to hear over the slowly increasing volume of animals running, of animals shaking deeper into cages. “She loves cats.”

It’s a small, beautiful detail about his adopted daughter, a sort of offering that can’t quite lesson the ugliness of the room.

“Then Chance will love her,” Chloe says, and he shoots a glance back at her. “He loves everyone that will love him back.”

The pounding in her head grows the further she strides inside the room, the closer they might be getting to the spirit fox, the more animals they release. The more animals that have been scarred by magic—and a few by knives—the stronger her dread.

She doesn’t know if the spirit fox could be scarred, and her stomach turns at even the thought.

Until they walk in front of the last row of cages, and the very last one is…empty.

And the compass points directly at it.

Chloe’s breath punches out of her, shakes the compass, but it quickly resettles back to pointing at it, the needle barely wobbling.

“We’re too late,” she says, the words wrenched from her. “We’re too late, she’s gone.”

Killian reaches for her, and she almost lets him touch her, but she flinches forward, grasping at the bars of the cage.

They spark out at her, flickering with energy, nestling against her skin, as her fingertips close on the cage.

They don’t have her research. They don’t have her years of careful building. They don’t have any way of tying back to her friend, of tracking.

All they have is the compass, and her skin is cold as she numbly lifts a spark of the magic onto the metal casing.

“Chloe,” Killian’s saying behind her, barely audible over the ringing in her ears. “Chloe.”

The spark flickers wildly in the compass, like she took it directly from the spirit fox herself.

It’s never been this vibrant, and the compass spins, bobbing, unable to settle on one direction. Instead, it whirls, almost as crazed as Chloe feels, as the terror welling up and the horror that she got this close and still—

“Chloe,” Killian repeats, and she stares up wildly at him, the edges of her vision blurring in. “Chloe, wait—”

Before she can comprehend, before she can unclench her fingers from the cage fully, he yanks her away, ripping it out of her grip.

She gasps, the air torn from her, but he swings her around and back, skidding her behind him.

She can barely understand, barely see, as he sticks an arm out towards the back wall, the line of his shoulder strong and…

Blasts.

Chloe reels back, but he keeps a hand on her wrist behind him as brick shards rain around them, shielding her from the worst of the debris.

A touch, a breath, his overwhelming power flooding out in the room, Chloe’s ears popping, and the wall between them and the next is gone.

Gone.

Shattered like ice, light streaming in, scattering the animals behind them into a rush of motion, the silencing spell broke to a riot of barks and growls, of hisses and screeches, of scrabbling paws and sprinting claws against the tile.

And in front of them…

Seated comfortably in a lab chair is the man with blue eyes, one hand scruffing the spirit fox and the other lazily holding a leash.

Chloe jerks forward, held back only by Killian’s grip.

Immediately, Killian slams up a shield. His power’s so thick Chloe can barely breathe, barely think, it spirals up her lungs and her throat and—

The spirit fox blinks up at her, its eyes beady, and it jerks, too.

“You’re about an hour behind what I thought you’d be,” the man says, almost idle, and he has his nails digging into the skin on the spirit fox’s neck like some goddamn supervillain. “I could have sworn you’d be here earlier.”