Chapter 28

28

N erves fill her stomach more than the food does, but before she has time to get a grip on herself, before she can firm up her personality to actually be ready for the night in front of her, they find themselves in a crowded staircase in line to get into the catacombs, the silly little multi-tool pressed into her pocket

The stairs are rough-hewn from the same white stone as the stone beneath the bones, and the air is muggy from the crush of humanity all around them.

Ambra stands embarrassingly close to Gurlien, as if she isn’t the most powerful person among them and could flatten everyone within a wide mile.

He holds himself straight, sticking out in the crowd, and throws his arm casually around her shoulders like that could protect her.

Several other people in the line stand similarly close to those next to them, so it’s not the worst camouflage. Before these last three weeks, Ambra couldn’t imagine letting anyone touch the body like that willingly, so it’s probably not what the College is looking for .

If they’re looking for her at all there. If they’re expecting her to show up.

Music thumps up, even up the stairs, and Gurlien flashes the two false tickets at the guard, who barely glances at the artwork before waving them through, his eyes too focused on the scar on Ambra’s chest to check carefully.

“And that is why I bought you that shirt,” Gurlien mutters to her, as they descend down another set of sweaty stairs and the thumping music grows louder.

“So they can stare at my scars?” Ambra shoots back, and it’s so dim she might remove the sunglasses.

“He was absolutely not staring at your scar,” Gurlien informs her, before his face twists, like he’s trying to judge if something is amusing or not. “You have no idea what humans find attractive, do you?”

It’s an odd question, so she shrugs.

Again, he makes the distinct expression of trying to squash a smile, before his hand tangles in hers, pulling her forward, into the main antechamber.

Skulls line the crease between the wall and the ceiling, and rib cages adorn the sconces of the lights, grim and dirty, and Misia had stared at them the first time they were walked through. Ambra had felt a stirring of dread, all those months ago, some sort of bleeding over from Misia before she even knew what it was.

Ambra opens her mouth to tell Gurlien, before a guitar strums through the speakers, echoing on the low ceiling and in among the cracks in the bones.

Sound slams into her, so loud it takes her breath away and she recoils back, and Gurlien hands her the bright orange earplugs from his pocket.

“Thought you might need these,” he says, and she hastily fits them on her ears, and they only cut through a bit of the sound.

It’s a familiar thump of noise, one she vaguely remembers hearing through the floor of the lab here, as she bled and suffered.

Nalissa must’ve held her events even while cutting into her brain.

Gurlien surveys around, his eyes sharp even through the mask of eyeliner, before he nods towards the low roof.

There, amongst the femurs and phalanges, is the barest hint of a rune, painted, and there’s no way Gurlien had spotted that on his own.

“Did you memorize the protection placing?” she whispers, and she can’t even hear herself speak. He cranes down to her, before he nods. “Insane.”

It’s an easy rune to bypass, one that discourages fighting and destruction, pointing all the safety to those on the stage.

If Ambra wants, she could unravel it in a second, but it would almost certainly send alarms through the entire complex.

The complex they’re now in.

Noise, rough noise and more noise, crams into the small space, denser than the human bodies surrounding them, and a cold sweat breaks out over Ambra’s brow.

Even when they flew them, even when they marched her through the airport, it wasn’t this crowded.

“Here,” Gurlien shouts, barely audible through the din and the earplugs, and grips her by the elbow. “We’re in, now let's go deep.”

Deep.

The labs are deep underneath them, a few levels of music and noise and bone dust between her and the pristine white lights of Nalissa’s experiment table .

And she has to get there.

She straightens, lifting her chin, and pulls Gurlien through the crowd.

Lights flash, striking out at them before skating through the crowd as someone screams something raw into a microphone, the racket chasing Ambra’s thoughts down like a fox to a rabbit.

“The faster we’re out of here, the better,” she tells Gurlien, and has to repeat it twice before he can hear her.

He nods, his lips thinning, and they push their way through the crowd (and around a demon trap) to the next set of stairs.

There’s a brief touch of cool air on the winding staircase between the two levels, and she gulps at it greedily. The noise, still ever present, dulls in the background.

Gurlien’s hand on her elbow is tight, and his jaw twitches as well. “Three traps next level, two layers of guards, and a sensor scanner.”

It’s information she already knew, but it’s more for him than for her.

There’s sweat on the back of his neck, and another couple clatter into the staircase, breaking the small snap of peace.

They giggle, like they caught them doing something they shouldn’t have, before the man slams the woman into the wall, kissing her with such a ferocity that Ambra flinches.

The woman kisses back, yanking on his hair, and it’s wholly unpleasant. Bone dust settles down in their clothing at the impact.

Gurlien pulls her along, and his brows are raised, before the man stops, breaking the kiss like he’s breaking through the surface of water .

“Wait, Gurlien?” the man asks, and his voice is raw, like he had screamed into the woman’s mouth. His pupils are wide, blown out unevenly, and his sweat smells sour.

The woman giggles, befuddled, staring at Gurlien and Ambra. “Do you know them?”

The man’s brow furrows, and the smallest of scans snakes out of him, not strong enough to come close to the scar inside of Gurlien’s soul. It’s a pitiful attempt.

“You must’ve got me mixed up,” Gurlien says smoothly, his fingers tightening only briefly on Ambra’s arm. “Sorry, mate.”

“No…” the man trails off, but Gurlien tugs Ambra forward, into the next main space.

It’s a long, low hall, a stage crammed far on one end, and the thrum of bodies dance as one mass, and Ambra has to swallow down her fear at it.

And Nalissa chooses to do this. Chooses to spend her time setting these up, listening to the noise, letting it invade her space.

And she’s down here somewhere.

Ambra pushes past the sweaty malaise of humanity, Gurlien right behind her, skirting along the edge of the bone encrusted wall. “I didn’t think you’d be the one people would recognize,” she calls to him, and his mouth is in a grim line. “Should have done more eyeliner.”

“Should’ve gone full face paint,” he gripes, and the band hits a high note, a long wail through the dusty speakers, and Ambra flinches.

Before her feet cross an invisible line, and all the noise falls away, all her attention on the single narrowing focus of magic.

If she goes any further, she can’t teleport out to run away, not without breaking the runes down and sending all the alarms ricocheting through the tunnels.

Which they knew would happen. They knew they would reach a point where they would have to unravel everything to get out.

She just didn’t think it was this close.

She twists to look at Gurlien, and his face is lit by the neon lights strung by wire across the ceiling.

“Is this the teleport line?” he asks, because of course he memorized that.

She nods, mute, and he stares down at her, face serious.

If she crosses this line and things go south, she can’t get them out easily.

Or, rather, if she crosses this line, getting out will be noisy, disruptive, and everyone will know she’s here.

Gurlien shifts closer to her, shielding her from someone streaking by, so most of the light that hits her is shadowed by the bones.

She wants to warn him. Tell him to stay here. Tell him to get out, go save himself, in case this doesn’t work. In case she can’t pull this off. In case Nalissa is prepared for her, in case they’re walking into a trap.

But the leash is still around his wrist, and the chance of her success without him is next to nothing.

“You ready?” he asks, barely audible over the thumping bass, the yells of people, the scream of the singers.

She’s not, but she grabs him by the collar, pulling him down to her and pressing her lips against his.

And with the pound of the music, he cradles her chin, like this kiss is the most precious thing in the world, like he’s holding onto the most delicate of treasure that will shatter if he makes one wrong move. Like in the proximity of her, all he can do is protect .

Which is manifestly hilarious, she’s the overpowered one in this scenario.

She breaks the kiss, staring at him, then steps backwards over the teleportation line.

Immediately, the magic washes over her, sending goosebumps up her arms, and she shivers.

“You should do that if we’re concerned someone spots us,” Gurlien says, low, crossing to be side by side with her. “I think you distracted the guards with that, so I don’t have to punch them.”

“Why would you…” she shakes her head, clearing her thoughts.

He gives her a half sidelong smile and her heart jumps a bit. “It’ll be more effective than punching them.”

“Why are the two options kissing me or punching them?” Ambra asks, and despite the noise and the din and the strobing lights, there’s a small moment of comfort with him. A small moment of security.

“Well,” he drawls, “I figure if they’re staring at your tits so much, one of those actions are appropriate and I like kissing you more than I like punching anything.”

“It’s because of your wrists,” she says.

He laughs, as she takes a moment, adjusting herself to the magic of the room.

“You can’t feel the line?” Ambra murmurs, and he shakes his head. “Be glad.”

The line itself is a few stories underground, written in copper ink into the very grout of the tile, but it’s strong enough to impact even up here.

Nalissa’s always been the strong one. Not as combat forward as Korhonen, but strong.

Gurlien snags her hand as they walk, yanking her back into a bruising kiss, searing into her, before he releases her, just as quickly, leaving her winded.

She gapes at him from behind the glasses, and he has the temerity to look smug.

“Distracted that guard,” he says, pointing with his chin at a heavily muscled man turning away from them, an earpiece curving around his ear. “He noticed you.”

“I don’t think you can kiss me each time a guard looks at me funny,” Ambra informs him, but despite it all, she finds herself smiling.

“It’s worth a try,” he says, self-satisfied, and some of it is bravado over a layer of trepidation. “I’ll have to try it elsewhere.”

It’s a manifestly ridiculous conversation, but it carries her down another hall, through a cramped corridor where an impromptu bartender pours a toxic green drink for a mob of drunk women.

One of them’s even wearing the same mesh shirt as Ambra.

There’s a demon mark on the far end of the wall, traced over the ridges of skulls, to prevent her from getting into the room behind it.

Once, when getting the tour and Misia was still alive, they told her that there were protected books beyond that mark, and the curiosity had distracted Ambra a lot more than they thought it would.

But that’s not their goal this night, even though the same burn of curiosity rushes through Ambra once more.

If they can do this subtly, if they can kill Nalissa and get out without anyone knowing, she’ll send Gurlien into there. Grab whatever books catch his fancy and get out.

There’s a bright ward at the top of the other staircase, an ugly shining gold thing, almost neon underneath the artificial lights, and a guard stands underneath it. A clear ‘nobody allowed past here’ sign.

The ward wouldn’t stop her. It’d hurt, she’d have to shield Gurlien, but it wouldn’t stop her.

The guard, with her large biceps and brownish hair scraped tightly back into a bun, scowls at a set of drunken idiots, who promptly turn away from trying to stumble down the stairs into privacy.

And there’s something about her face that’s familiar.

Ambra can’t tell where, she wasn’t one of the research assistants, she wasn’t one of the guards assigned to the room when they cut into her, but she must’ve passed this guard somewhere. Seen her before, just enough to recognize but not enough to memorize.

Which means she must’ve seen Ambra, possibly before they even cut Misia out.

Deliberately turning her back on the guard, Ambra hooks her fingers in Gurlien’s belt loops, pulling him closer. “Are you sure not a little bit of murder?”

His lips part and his eyes go down to her scar. “Please, only Nalissa,” he manages after a long second, and his hand curves along the rise of her hip, the mesh shirt the only thing between his touch and her skin.

The touch feels right.

“Then this might go loud,” Ambra murmurs, leaning in close to him like they’re more drunken idiots.

For at the floor of the guard, magic swirls, subtle, a captivating curl that begs to pull Ambra’s attention from everything in the room.

His lips part once more.

“I’ll shield you,” she says, and he huffs out a laugh. “There’s a pain deterrent ward, you won’t feel anything.”

“That’s less than reassuring, but sure.” Despite the sarcastic words, he cradles her face, his thumb swiping over the still sensitive edge of the necromancer wound. “Will you feel it?”

Unbidden, tears spring to her eyes at how gentle the touch, at the care he’s giving her at this very moment. At how she’s dragging him into danger and he’s still taking his small motions to soothe her.

He might not even know he’s soothing her, but he is.

She owes it to him to get them out of this alive. Alive and with one less handler, with one less obstacle in their lives.

“Okay,” she murmurs, letting herself lean back against his hand for one briefest of seconds, before she steps back, facing the guard with the widest smile she has.

The guard startles.

“Hi!” Ambra says, as bright and as cheery as she can, and the guard squints warily. “Can we go by there?”

She keeps Gurlien’s other hand in hers, and it’s nice. She doesn’t need both hands to defend him.

“No,” the guard says, her brow furrowing, glancing between the two of them. “No entry.”

Ambra doesn’t want to break the moment to check Gurlien’s expression, so she attempts a sunny smile up to the guard, who’s about a foot taller than Ambra, and pulls Gurlien forward.

“I said no—”

Ambra strides across the ward, snapping the shield around Gurlien, and magic rips at her, stabbing into her chest and side and throat and—

Black sparking behind her eyes, she grabs the guard by the collar, slamming her into the door, opening it with a twist of magic and yanking the three of them into the staircase beyond it.

The moment her feet carry her outside of the shining ward, the pain crackles away, leaving her breathless. Uninjured, but her chest heaving and her hands shaking.

The guard’s lifting her hands, a strip of magic already in a needle, ready, and Ambra rips it right out of her hand, tossing the gold needle down the stairs.

“No,” Ambra says, matter of factly, then flexes her magic, flooding the air pressure around the guard.

To her credit, the guard struggles against it, stronger than Ambra would’ve thought, before her eyes roll back and she slumps against the wall.

Ambra releases her collar, and she crumbles to the ground, limp.

Gurlien gasps, an aborted small sound, and when she turns to him, his eyes are wide.

“I didn’t kill her,” Ambra preempts. “She’ll wake up with a bad headache in a few hours, and they’ll know a demon did it.”

He swallows, before nodding. “Thank you.” He’s unharmed, not even a streak of his eyeliner, and when she snaps a scan at him, the only thing hurting is the bones in one of his wrists.

Good. Her shields work.

With a nod at him, she starts down the stairs, and there’s only the far-off thumping of the music now, some sort of sound softening spell, and she’s definitely not going to break that one.

Pain still arches through her spine, almost as an afterthought, but she ignores it. She’ll have time later, when Gurlien’s not at risk and Nalissa’s dead, to experience it and curl up on the bed, but not now.

Here, instead of the rough-hewn stone and bone, Nalissa fastened metal to the walls, as if this is a normal laboratory setting .

“It would’ve been easier if I killed her,” Ambra mumbles. “All it will take is someone spotting the empty doorway and this entire place will lock down.”

Gurlien inhales and, carefully, pulls the gun out of the hidden holster underneath his shirt.

“They’ll have protections,” Ambra warns.

“And all it’ll take is you distracting one of them long enough to break those,” he snips back, before the lights over them snap on.

Ambra recoils back, despite the tinted glasses, as the fluorescents hum, high pitched.

He catches her with a hand between her shoulder blades. “We got this,” he murmurs, and there are whites visible around his eyes.

But now, Ambra can feel everything.

There’s another demon trap, three hallways down and out of the way, and in the middle of it is a demon, half twisted half dead, the body they’re forced into breathing through a machine. They respond to the touch of Ambra’s mind, flexing outwards into a silent plea.

There’s a complicated series of runes, the sort to keep out nosy Wights, and inside is a human, trapped inside a tube, unconscious.

Another demon, this one older and fiercer, snapping like an animal inside of a trap, snarling at the brush of her mind and promising death to her if she ventures close. They’re in pain, so much pain it’s twisted their mind.

Ambra recognizes that. Recognizes the panic of the pain and the desperation to do something, anything, to end it.

Also recognizes that the demon would almost certainly kill her if they think she could help the pain.

There’s a human with them, half dead, unconscious.

“Bianci was right,” Ambra murmurs, as she shakes herself loose and resumes the cautious steps down the hallway. “Nalissa did try again.”

Gurlien eyes her.

“How much of this place can I destroy?” she asks, and her throat is tight. Tight as if the sympathy tied the leash itself.

“Not much,” he murmurs, pointing out a security camera, which Ambra breaks the glass with a flick of her fingers. “Not without destabilizing the city of Paris.”

“I don’t care about the city of Paris,” she informs him, something akin to fury prickling hot underneath her skin.

He gapes at her.

“What, I don’t,” she says, surly.

“Well…I do?” he says, obviously fumbling for the answer. “Don’t…please don’t blow up Paris.”

The other demon sends a trill of a scrape down her consciousness, a demand for attention, but she can’t do anything about that. Can’t do anything while they’re inside the demon trap, can’t do anything without alerting Nalissa.

But it means Nalissa is still trying, and that has to be stopped. Beyond just Ambra’s revenge, beyond just ensuring her safety, it has to be for this person. For this demon held so insane with pain that they can’t think, just act out.

Ambra understands that.

Gurlien’s hand settles in her lower back, and she twitches in surprise.

“I’m okay,” she preempts, the words falling from her lips automatically, and he gives her a fully unamused look. “This place is full of people like me.”

He tilts his head, the question silent.

“Other demons being experimented on,” she clarifies, as another claw reaches out to her. “I’m not sure if they’re just not as far along…or if they didn’t succeed. ”

“You are only the second success that is known,” he says, and she wouldn’t call herself a success on a good day, before he huffs out a breath.

In the fluorescent lights, the eyeliner is ridiculous, her shirt is ridiculous, the headache is ridiculous, but she still faces down the hallway.

This deep, it’s familiar.

“Let’s go,” she murmurs, then takes off down the hallway.

It’s only forty steps before the first turn, then another twenty before the first locked door, the ones that only some of the assistants had badges that could go through it.

And alarms aren’t ringing. Yet. The lack of them itches under her skin, needling at her awareness. There should be alarms, someone has to have seen her by now, the cameras tracking their movements.

“This is too easy,” he murmurs, echoing her thoughts.

“Far too easy,” Ambra says, then lets her eyes flutter shut, snaking out a tendril of power towards the door.

It’s double locked, with a chain on the inside and an electronic badge lock on this side. She easily severs the chain—that’s almost comical—and after a few moments of finessing, cracks the badge reader off the wall, where it clatters to the tile.

Gurlien jumps at the noise, but the door hisses open.

“See, this would be a good place for Chloe,” he says, waiting for her to scan the room before she ventures forward.

“Why?” Ambra asks, only half paying attention, nestling her magic into the nooks and crannies, testing for traps.

“Her specialty is actually traps and locks,” Gurlien replies easily, like that’s not insanely impressive by itself. “What, that’s how we made it past the locking traps. ”

She pulls up short, crossing her arms at him. “What?”

“That’s how we did that…what, did you think we had more help?”

Ambra hadn’t actually thought much about how her rescue came to be, just that they were there and the alchemist had been damn impressive and exhausted.

“I am absolutely going to ask her questions later,” Ambra informs him, before a tendril of her magic smarts, snapping back to herself.

There’s a trap.

It’s a small trap, designed to stop the unaware, one of Nalissa’s favorites. One wrong step and it’d close around anyone, sticking their feet to the ground and stopping all sense of time passing.

It’s also, of course, right in front of the door they have to get through, deeper into the laboratories.

The easy answer is to snap it, to unravel it, push onwards. It’s not terribly far to where Nalissa stays, to her office where she sits for all of her events, they might be able to get through to there before they can muster up a response.

“Shit,” Ambra mumbles, keeping an arm across Gurlien’s chest, stopping him from moving forward.

She skirts her magic around it, testing the tiles, the grout, leaving little puffs of powder where the tiles give way, and Gurlien hisses in a breath.

“That you?” he murmurs, and she nods.

“Trap, trying to find a way around. If I wasn’t…” if she wasn’t stuck in a human body, it’d be simple, but that still gives no way for Gurlien to get over, and she’s not leaving him. “I can destroy it, but there'll be alarms, so I’m trying to get around it, find a weakness. ”

“Which type of trap?” he asks, and she forgets that he’s also intelligent, also just as learned as she is.

“Sticker type, just a nasty one, she would keep them in front of private things to keep people out…”

Almost at the edge of her hearing, there’s a clatter of footsteps behind them, down the staircase with the unconscious guard.

They both straighten, staring at each other.

A startled yell, someone calling for help.

“Destroy it?” Gurlien asks.

“Yep,” Ambra says, and before she can even do so, before she can even grip it in her hands, a low, lolling alarm tolls through the hallway, setting Ambra’s teeth on edge.

“There it is,” Gurlien mutters, and more footsteps echo their way.

So Ambra grips her power in both hands, digging it underneath the tile, and slamming the tile upwards until it crashes into the roof, sending dust flying through the room.

And thoroughly destroying the trap.

Gurlien jumps back, but Ambra grabs his wrist and hauls him forward, right as two more guards round the corner into the room.

Before she can think, she clenches her hand into a fist, dragging down the ceiling on top of the guards with a thundering crash.

Buying them a little more time. Not nearly enough.

She pulls him along, even as the dust tries to settle in their hair, and his eyes are wide, starkly wide beyond the eyeliner.

“Are you okay?” she asks, then coughs in the dust.

Destroying the walls in the Toronto base had significantly less dust .

He gapes at her. “I thought you said you weren’t killing anyone?”

Still, they half walk-half run, now through the tolling alarm custom made to never disrupt any music above.

“We have to get to her office, we have to—”

Before she can finish the words, in between one breath and the next, with her lips forming the shapes of the letters and her hand still gripped in his, everything stops.

Everything stops, and the leash around her neck snaps tight.

Tight.