Chapter 29

29

S he gags, free hand coming up to claw at her throat, nails scratching at her skin—it’s the same skin Gurlien had kissed—and she recoils back, thumping into him.

He says something, his voice meeting her ears but not registering in her mind, his tone distressed, his tone panicked, and—

White blanks out her eyes, crackling over her vision, and Gurlien’s hand closes over her wrist, cool against the fever hot skin, as the leash twists its grip on her, pulling her…

With a snap so hard her ears pop, she teleports, feet sliding along new tile, Gurlien stumbling next to her. It’s a short teleport, barely twenty paces away from where they were, but still, her mind stops, the heart stuttering in the chest until she gasps, all color blooming around her.

Nalissa always kept her office colorful.

The wall behind the desk—just a converted surgery table—is medicinal pink, glaring and bright under the white lights, up until it meets a line of skulls in the crease to the roof. There’s a riot of a flower bouquet on the desk, held in an oversized glass beaker, and with every breath Ambra can smell them. Nalissa’s flowers were always cloying.

The tile is a dizzying design in teal and orange, and Misia had stared at it for too long to attempt to figure it out, and Ambra never wants to see something like it ever again.

In between one gulp of air and the next, Nalissa crosses into her field of vision, her face open and soft.

Behind her, Gurlien makes a noise Ambra can’t describe, before he throws his arms around her, keeping her back against him, rooting her in place.

Gurlien.

Ambra straightens, and Nalissa hasn’t compelled her to act, other than the teleportation.

Nalissa’s face creases into a smile, like she’s glad to see Ambra. Like she’s a friend, like she would soothe her with the conversation and discuss warmth and cozy things. Her hair is a little longer and a little grayer than the last time Ambra saw it, but it’s been a few months since she’s looked Nalissa face to face.

Usually, Nalissa faced her elsewhere. Usually, Nalissa faced her at a combat foe.

“Gurlien Banks, you’re definitely not who I expected,” Nalissa says, her voice extolling, like it’s some praise.

Gurlien stiffens behind her, his arm tight around her, and it’s a small protection.

Ambra cracks out a snap of power to Nalissa, but it crackles to the ground before it can reach her, bouncing off a shield.

No, not a shield, a trap.

Ambra forces herself to look down, and Nalissa had teleported them into a demon trap.

She couldn’t move out of it, she couldn’t use power out of it, just inside .

Nalissa smiles at her, gentle, like she’s a child that did something right.

Ambra hates that smile.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t place you somewhere where you could do actual harm,” Nalissa says casually, boosting herself up so she sits on the pink metal surgery table, next to the flowers and the ever-present picture of her collection of golden retriever dogs. “I wasn’t going to give you the chance before we could talk.”

Ambra stills herself, and Gurlien loosens his arms.

She misses the contact, immediately, throwing a look back up to him.

“I saw Johnsin’s body, I don’t blame you,” Nalissa continues, voice still friendly. “He never did get the concept that you had a sense of self.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Gurlien bursts out, obviously startling Nalissa, who blinks owlishly at him.

“He thought of her as a plaything,” Nalissa says, after a moment of silence, obviously calculating, and Ambra doesn’t like it one bit. Nalissa could twist her words, could get anyone to do her bidding, and the last thing she wants is for her to get her claws into Gurlien. “We all thought it was ghastly, but we couldn’t stop him, we all had equal power over her.”

Nalissa’s eyes drop to Gurlien’s wrist, where the leash is still tied and still obvious.

“And now you, too,” Nalissa continues softly. “Somehow in this demon’s mad quest to be free, she tied you into the mess.”

Gurlien shifts behind her, and to someone unused to his motions, it must read as discomfort. As being insecure.

But he’s reaching for the gun tucked into his waistband, using Ambra’s body to block the view .

“You must know that she’s not going to stop at us,” Nalissa says, as matter as factly as if she’s delivering a lesson to her apprentices. “Demons aren’t logical creatures, they don’t form attachments, she’ll absolutely end you the moment she gets rid of me and Boltiex.”

A laugh at the ridiculousness bubbles into Ambra’s throat, but she squashes it down. Instead, she shakes out her arms, stepping forward, still blocking Gurlien from view, and opens her mouth to speak.

And without even a gesture, Nalissa cuts off her voice, closing her mouth again.

Oh, so she’s not gonna let Ambra speak.

A fission of anger winds its way up her back, and she shivers.

“Did she have you work on your distance?” Nalissa asks of Gurlien, and her warm brown eyes are on him. Ambra remembers that gaze, how until she knew better, she felt special underneath it. Misia felt special. “See how far you can control her?”

“Twenty feet,” Gurlien answers, and Ambra squashes another reaction at the lie.

He shifts, so the gun is tucked behind his back, easy to grab if he needs, but out of Nalissa’s sight, then nods, ever so minutely, to Ambra.

So he has some sort of plan, some sort of idea.

Ambra attempts to speak again, but nothing comes out, not even a twitch of her face, and Gurlien’s brow furrows at her.

“Makes sense, without any powers of your own, that controlling someone like her would be difficult,” Nalissa sympathizes, but Gurlien just narrows his eyes at Ambra, like he could tell something is off with her, even something as mild as Nalissa controlling her words. “Probably why she picked you, no offense, I heard the rest of your ‘crew,’” some real venom sneaks into Nalissa’s voice at that, a hint of her real emotions instead of this manipulation, “were very powerful, leaving you as the odd man out.”

Gurlien twitches his eyebrow at Ambra, then shrugs, facing Nalissa. “She said as much.”

This time, Ambra’s not nearly as worried that he’s buying her words. Not like she was with Johnsin. Not after how easily he read Bianci.

The fact that the College disposed of him, even with all this knowledge and all this fluency and skills, is laughable.

Nalissa nods, full of sympathy, before she turns her gaze to Ambra. “And is he telling the truth?”

Whip fast, compulsion wraps its way around her throat, and Ambra physically recoils back for a split second before Nalissa controls that, too.

“I picked him because he had no power,” Ambra blurts out, beyond her control, and the side of Gurlien’s mouth tilts up.

But Nalissa just tightens the compulsion, choking her, leaving her sputtering. “Where have you been hiding?”

“The Paris house you found,” Ambra says, digging in her feet and struggling against it. “Minnesota. Bellingham. Maine.” Nalissa relaxes the compulsion long enough that Ambra can pull in a breath, ragged, before she tightens it again.

This time, the words aren’t Ambra’s own.

“Leave,” she spits out at Gurlien, and Nalissa has just enough control of her to make the words sound real, make the sentiment echo.

To her equal parts horror and amusement, Gurlien just raises an eyebrow at her. “Uh huh,” he says, visibly skeptical, then, to Nalissa, “do you think I can’t tell when someone’s controlling her?”

“How?” Nalissa breathes, and Ambra tries to recoil back, tries to move, but Nalissa holds her in place despite her distraction. “You shouldn’t be able to, none of us can feel when another controls.”

Ambra tries to twitch over to Gurlien, the hair on the back of her neck rising, because even if Nalissa doesn’t have plans at the moment, this curiosity is absolutely how she would disarm him, absolutely how she would distract him.

Gurlien’s gaze flickers to hers then, deliberately, takes a step towards the edge of the circle.

“You’re massively overestimating my ability if you think I can sense something like that,” Gurlien says, and Ambra wishes, ever so briefly, that she could read his mind. Could see what he’s planning. “It’s more subtle than that.”

Nalissa’s eyes skate over to Ambra, almost uneasy. “How well can he control you?”

Again, the compulsion.

“He can’t,” Ambra says, and it’s technically true, but she blinks at herself anyways. “He can just disrupt, pull on the leash.”

“Interesting ramifications,” Nalissa murmurs, her fingers twitching, like she’s reaching for a pen but her desk is too clean. “Pity we can’t study that more.”

Nalissa loosens her grip on the leash just enough that Ambra strikes out, her magic snapping useless to the ground at the edge of the shield. But all Nalissa does is smile softly at her, like she’s merely a misbehaving child.

“Well, Gurlien, thank you for keeping her somewhat controlled, in a manner of speaking,” Nalissa says, and Gurlien’s face twists something awful for a split second before he gets it under control. “I’ll write a report that you helped, get you reinstated in some research or another.”

“No thanks,” Gurlien replies, backing up another step, and as much as Ambra wishes she knew what that was about, wishes she knew how to interpret it, she misses the contact more.

“No, returning a valuable asset is enough, despite what happened in Toronto.” Then, Nalissa smiles, and it reaches her eyes, warm and friendly. “Just untie it and I’ll write a letter of recommendation.”

“I can’t,” Gurlien says easily, though his jaw is tight and the line of his shoulders underneath the black shirt is tense. “I can’t even see it.”

“Is he telling the truth?” Nalissa murmurs, snaking out her compulsion again.

“Yes,” Ambra spits out, struggling against it as if it’s as physical of a gag.

With a nod, Nalissa paces Ambra over to Gurlien, an easy, casual motion, and Gurlien’s eyes widen.

“Here,” Nalissa says through Ambra’s voice, even imitating the murmur, “give me your hand.”

Gurlien recoils back even further, even as Ambra reaches for him, each little muscle controlled by Nalissa.

“You’ve done enough, you’ll be free of this mess, go back to your friends,” Ambra’s voice continues, pouring out in such a good mimicry of her emotions, as Nalissa picks through her vocal cords and her small unconscious motions like an artist picking her paint. “We’ll pay for your plane ticket.”

It dawns on Gurlien's face, slowly, and his eyes snap up to Nalissa. “You need me to do this, don’t you? Give this up willingly? ”

Nalissa shrugs, easy and nonchalant. “It’s a lot easier if you do, the death of the others has given…instabilities.”

Ambra doesn’t know how, but it gives her a little thrill, a little bit of fresh air, standing in front of him and glancing up at him. She can’t look away, not with Nalissa controlling her like that, but…

They’re unlikely to just kill him to take away the leash. Unlikely to just end him and snap her up.

Relief almost makes her knees weak.

“No,” Gurlien says, then, and the relief is mirrored on his face. “I’m not gonna do that.”

He had been scared, too.

“There are other things I can do to make you,” Nalissa continues, as if he didn’t say a thing. “Other things to convince.” Her control winds its way back through Ambra’s spine, straightening it with a pang of pain.

And Nalissa’s awareness floods through Ambra, floods through her, picking apart every ache and pain, the flinch that runs through her with every thump of the music, the glare in her eyes, every small soreness in her back, where her feet are pinched in her boots, to the warmth of her shoulders at Gurlien’s lingering touch, and…

“You slept with her?” Nalissa asks through Ambra’s voice, and Gurlien blanches before getting himself under control. “That’s…astoundingly stupid.”

Nalissa steps Ambra forward again, and Gurlien takes another step back, towards the edge of the circle.

“This demon can’t even form a bond, so any security you’d get from such a trade is gone,” Nalissa says, leaving Ambra standing, mute, struggling for words and struggling to move. “She won’t protect you if she succeeds in killing the rest of us. ”

Nalissa stares at her, though, her eyes pitying, and Ambra hates it.

“Oh Ambra,” Nalissa says, soft as a lover, “you really should be dead. There was no reason for you to survive.”

Gurlien opens his mouth, then closes it, taking another step back. He’s planning something, he’s planning something and she doesn’t know what.

As if sensing his fear, Nalissa pours her control through Ambra, twisting the magic inside the circle around her, crackling through the air. It’s a pretty trick, relatively harmless and useless, but visual chaos, making her seem far more powerful than she actually is inside the demon circle.

It succeeds, and Gurlien flinches back, his feet crossing the line of the demon trap, leaving her alone.

She can’t reach him now. She can’t lift her hand to touch him, not unless Nalissa compels her past the trap, and her ears pop with the fission of magic closing again around her.

“I could always have her torture you,” Nalissa murmurs, but her eyes are deceptively sharp. “It’d probably distress her, too, she doesn’t have the stomach for that sort of thing. We had her do that with Misia.” Nalissa pauses, as if for dramatic effect. “Did she tell you about Misia?”

Rage, so strong it almost knocks her off her feet, floods through Ambra, and she twitches towards Nalissa, her hands coming up, before Nalissa smoothes the motion away.

Holding her still, holding her looking away from Gurlien.

Nalissa stares at her, hard, her warm brown eyes flinty in the overhead light, as the music up above thumps.

“Yeah, I heard about Misia,” Gurlien says, and there’s anger in his voice too, anger that she can barely pick up, even knowing him like she does, and Nalissa almost certainly misses it .

“Impressive,” Nalissa says, still locked eyes with Ambra. “I thought she made herself forget that name.”

Nalissa raises an eyebrow at Ambra, evaluating, and Ambra hates it. Doesn’t want to give any sort of information to her, any sort of ammunition, nothing.

“Did you?” Nalissa murmurs.

“I tried,” the words pour from her. “I tried.”

There’s a hot pit of anger inside her stomach, of shame and terror at the memories. Of when Nalissa made Ambra twist her own power against the body they were both in, of the agony they both felt.

And that Nalissa might make her do something like that again. To Gurlien, none the less. Gurlien who held her when they tried to take her back. Gurlien, who called his enemies who didn’t like him for help, to help her.

Gurlien who kissed her, who held her against him in bed, who took her out to wine and food. And now Nalissa’s facing Ambra in the other direction, she can’t even look at him, can’t even see his eyes or his hair or the flush of his skin.

“Twenty feet?” Nalissa muses. “Ambra, is that correct?”

Ambra digs her feet in, physically anchors herself away from answering, but the words are dragged out of her. “No.”

And Nalissa smiles, showing all of her teeth. “Good girl.”

Behind her, there’s a whisper of fabric, a subtle motion, before the telltale click of a gun safety flipping off, a creak of metal, a hiss of breath.

The bang shatters all concentration, the bullet crashing into the wall behind Nalissa, sending plaster and bone dust into the air.

Nalissa flinches back, eyes wide, winding both hands around Ambra’s leash, and between one breath and the next, with the same creak of metal and scrape of springs internally in the barrel—

Nalissa pulls, jerking Ambra to her up, past the demon circle, past the protections, close, too close, so close she can see the lines in her eyes and each gray hair in her curls and —

Another bang before Ambra can breathe, and pain sears through her, brighter than any lights.

She staggers, black blood spraying all over Nalissa, and there’s red blood in a hole in Nalissa’s shoulder, brilliant against the white lab coat.

Nalissa gasps, and Ambra can’t tell if it’s from pain or shock, but Ambra reaches up, twisting her magic up and around, and, despite the agony searing through her and the edges of her vision caving in, Ambra snaps Nalissa’s neck.

There’s a moment, there’s a breath, where Nalissa’s fingertips twitch, before she collapses against the medical table, lifeless.

Ambra staggers back, and Nalissa’s body slumps down.

There’s pain everywhere: in her chest, her lungs, her bones. Her knees feel weak, as if the very tendons keeping her upright are giving out.

Gurlien yells something, rushing across the demon circle to her, but there’s a roaring in Ambra’s ears, drowning out everything else, and she turns towards him.

Blood falls from a hole in her chest, just above her collarbone, viscous and terrible, and she stares down at it for a second.

Even as she does, she can feel the protections of the place unravel. The wards, the magic twisted into the walls and the bones, all unfurling with a snap outwards from Nalissa’s death, rendering them useless.

“I can teleport out now,” Ambra manages out, but fire draws in with each breath and her own words are distant, off beyond the rushing roar, as Gurlien surges to her, bracing her.

She stumbles, her knees wobbling, her hands slipping as she tries to grasp Gurlien’s arm, slipping on her blood.

Ambra’s been shot before, even in this body, but it hadn’t hurt like this. Hadn’t echoed through the body, hadn’t struggled the lungs, hadn’t blacked out her vision.

Gurlien grips her, keeping her upright as her knees give out, pitching her into his chest.

It’s bad. It’s very bad, and she sends a tendril of power to the wound, but her grip on it is weak, ephemeral. Like it could escape her with just a thought.

Gurlien says something again, she can feel the rumble in his chest, but nothing reaches her ears, nothing beyond the vague panic of the body flooding itself with adrenaline, of the gaping lack of Nalissa dead in front of her, on the brilliant heat of Gurlien’s hands on hers.

“I have to get you out,” she mumbles, and the words are tinny to her hearing. Guards must be coming, guards will bang down the door and she can’t defend him and—

She grips the collar of his black shirt, and does the simple most instinctive action a demon has.

She teleports.

Her knees crumple the moment she does, into snow and howling wind, and the last thing she sees is the burnt-out remnants of the motor home, before the black crowds her vision and takes her over.