Chapter 34

34

W ithout an accurate map of the building and with the traps built into the walls, Ambra can’t pinpoint the exact location of Gurlien.

There’s the awareness of him against the leash, faint, but neither of them are paying attention to it. It’s hanging slack against her neck, and the lack of Nalissa on the other side of it hits her like a brick.

But she can’t obsess over it.

Without the TV to give her information, without the visual of Gurlien and Boltiex, dread just pools in her stomach.

Gurlien is almost certainly hurt in some way, and her very bones vibrate with the need to get to him. To get to him, get him away, anything

Anything.

She creeps through a darkened room, the carpet crunchy against her bare feet, a sensation she didn’t know was possible and never wants to experience ever again. The dim outline of a normal suburban living room, the sort found in the houses on the outskirts of the cities in most Eastern European countries, surrounds her. The house is more narrow than the ones found in North America, but still functional, still has enough space to sit and turn around.

Pictures of a family without Boltiex lie in frames on the walls, each frame a different group of people, all too plasticky and perfect. It’s the decorations of someone who wants to appear like it’s a normal house, but can’t quite comprehend the personal connection needed for such a touch.

Wards, in Boltiex’s brutal script, line every windowsill and vent, forbidding entry and exit unless they come through with his permission. Anything that enters is trapped here, with no way out unless he allows.

Including, explicitly, written into the very protections of the house, his daughter, aged twelve. Couldn’t even open a window, wave her hand outside, without her father there to allow her to pass.

It’s another horror.

There’s anti-demon, anti-Wight, anti-ghosts and spirits, anti-spells, everything. More protections than Ambra would ever think to tie into one location, and the upkeep must be an insane drain of power on him.

And somewhere, in this narrow house, is Gurlien.

Ambra exhales, pushing the air through her abused lungs, and it’s not calming not quite yet. If the girl wasn’t still in the house, she could expand through the entire space, fill it up, know anything and everything, but as it is, doing so would put them at intense danger. She’d be able to concentrate on one person, not so many.

And the other demon would almost certainly fight back.

Another room, this carpet lush against her toes, and it’s the room he teleported them to before separating, the dusk light streaming in. Her throat catches at the site, at how different it is than the cold light of stasis and the dimness of the previous rooms.

It’s like it’s a different house entirely, momentarily disorienting her. More portraits, full of different families, line the walls.

She steps lightly onto some cold tile, in an unused kitchen. A thin layer of dust covers a kitchen mixer, and the stove has no stains of grease or food, the refrigerator unplugged and silent.

With each pace forward, her dread grows.

With each moment that he doesn’t realize she’s not in the stasis, with each option for him to discover that, the chance of getting caught increases.

But on the other side is another staircase, narrow and bare, with no pictures on the walls leading up.

Ambra palms her multi tool. It’s not a perfect weapon, far from it, but it won’t rely on her powers, which he could take away with a thought.

Not that he couldn’t control her hand, either, but it’s a little cool reassurance.

Her foot on the first step creaks, and she freezes, but there’s no other sound. No sound of another person, no sound of a discussion or a battle.

In the opposite of Nalissa, he had hated extra noise.

He probably even warded it so that no noise would reach him unless he allowed. No distractions, nothing.

So following the blind faith that the demon hadn’t lied, Ambra pushes herself up the stairs, clutching at the textured wallpaper to prevent herself from wobbling over. Her knees are still unsteady, protesting the motion, but still, she climbs.

The staircase narrows, the walls pressing closer to each other, until surely it must be difficult for someone with wider shoulders than her to comfortably pass. The skin on her elbows graze the textured paper, sending shivers across her body.

Still no other sound. Still no other evidence of Gurlien being here, other than the fact that it must be within 45 meters. Any of the doors on this floor could lead to him.

There’s a single hallway, and all the doors are closed.

“Okay,” she whispers, and her words deaden in front of her, completely falling away from her ears.

She didn’t realize she had such strong opinions about child rearing, but something firm inside her rebels at the idea of making a house so you couldn’t hear that your kid is in trouble.

Especially with some sort of demon in the basement.

Careful, she twists one last bit of power into herself to heal her chest a bit more, give her whatever advantage she can, then steps on the hall.

Immediately, wards swirl around her feet, mild ones, barely biting into her bare skin. They wouldn’t hold back a demon, they wouldn’t hold back a moderately competent spell weaver.

They might hold back a child who didn’t understand it.

Lifting her head down the hall, she exhales, pushing her power out of herself, letting the tendrils creep along the floor, whisp along the wards, illuminating the path.

Footsteps glisten towards the last door of the hall, someone strongly powerful dragging another person, the afterimage of the magical trace vivid against her eyes for a split second before fading.

There.

Her heart jumps, her fingertips shaking, but before she can lose her will, she strides there, putting more confidence than she feels into her motions .

It doesn't matter that one of the faces of her nightmares is behind the door, so is Gurlien, and getting him to safety is more important.

Boltiex didn’t even place any anti demon traps or wards around his door, he’s that confident in his sloppily constructed stasis chamber. Just the anti-sound wards, a few trivial protections she could break, and the spells that prevent anyone from teleporting in or out.

Taking another deep breath that hurts, she grabs the magic trailing through the house and blasts the door open.

Her ears pop as it shreds through the anti-noise wards, crashing and clanging across the house. A glass breaks in the kitchen, a picture frame falls from the wall, a cheap stool splinters downstairs.

And in front of her…

Boltiex recoils back from the door, at the wood splinters flying in the room, and quick as she can, Ambra flashes a shield around Gurlien.

Gurlien, with blood viciously red dripping from his face and his arm, huddled against the ground. There’s a tie around his ankle, a quick magic spell keeping in place, and Ambra snaps that, too.

He has a cut along the top of his eyebrow, a bruise forming around his left eye, and a clean and precise line of blood around the leash tied around his wrist. There’s some sort of injury in his shoulder, he’s holding his ribs like they hurt, and his eyes are wide, his pupils uneven.

And he’s just as beautiful as he ever is.

His glasses lay broken next to him, the glass in them shattered, but Ambra can see the intellect racing across his face, the analysis, factoring her into his plans, his hand leaving the wound and going to the leash, and—

Boltiex recovers first, his hand flying to her leash, grabbing and pulling, cutting off all her powers and her abilities and everything.

There’s a trace of blood on his knuckles, and it’s not his.

Rage, white hot, floods through Ambra.

“How the hell—” Boltiex breathes, and it’s the first time hearing his voice in too long, grating along her ears.

Instead of answering, Ambra jerks at the leash, throwing him off balance, and Gurlien weaves his fingers through it.

His fingers are injured, shaky against the magic, but it’s just enough to break a fragment of Boltiex’s concentration, and Ambra uses it to shatter the wall next to Boltiex, shatter the sheetrock.

White dust blows outwards, choking them up, and Ambra ducks away, teleporting the small distance to Gurlien’s side, dropping the multi tool and clutching at Gurlien.

His hand curls around hers, and even that grip is weak.

But there’s a moment, a small breath, where his brown eyes meet hers and his lips part, as if to speak to her, before—

Boltiex grips her mind, grips her into his control, grabs Gurlien’s arm and jerks the leash off his wrist. The knot unfurls with a snap, his hand going up to his wrist and his mouth forming a perfect ‘o.’

And just like that, he’s gone. All awareness of him is gone, all sensitivity and sensation from his side of the leash, gone. All of her sense of him is just her eyes, just visual, reflecting a completely normal person with a scar of magic burned out of him.

He recoils back, and she can’t feel that. Can’t feel any ghost of movement through the leash, any terror or control or motion.

Her heart drops, and Boltiex steps her back. He’s coughing still from her explosion of dust and wallpaper shreds, but his control is absolute.

“There,” Boltiex rasps out, as Gurlien clutches at his wrist and Ambra’s forced to stand stock still and stare at him. “Finally.”

Gurlien pales, and this close she can make out the breaks of skin along his brow, the subtle crookedness of his nose. Boltiex had beat him, physically so, like nothing more than a schoolyard bully.

Ambra stiffens, just a little, and her brain tries to reach out and grasp at Gurlien, reach out to touch him, anything. Some sort of contact, some sort of recognition, something.

Her fingertips tremble, standing there, as Boltiex takes a few deep breathes, straightening himself.

“That was a lot easier than I thought, thank you, Ambra,” Boltiex says, as if she had intentionally helped him, as if the sudden pain of the leash being gone from Gurlien’s hand wasn’t wracking through her spine, even with Gurlien standing right there. “Why didn’t Nalissa just make you do that?”

He doesn’t give her the opportunity to speak, doesn’t release his control, just bends over double, still coughing from the dust.

Gurlien meets her eyes, and behind all the pain, behind all the confusion and weakness, he nods at her, something between a comfort and a command. He claws up to standing, still tied in place around his ankle, but something set in his jaw.

“How did you manage to control her?” Boltiex asks, honest curiosity in his voice. “You shouldn’t be able to, not after…” he waves his hand at Gurlien, still out of breath from the dust slowly settling in the air. “It should’ve been beyond you. ”

Gurlien’s jaw tightens, such a subtle motion of anger that Ambra almost misses it.

“She should’ve been able to escape your grasp in a second,” he continues, and there’s dust in Gurlien’s hair, powdering it gray, and dust across the cuts on his eyebrow. “Ambra, kill him.”

The words hang dark in the air, before the compulsion wraps itself wire tight around Ambra’s throat, cutting into the skin on her neck, and she chokes on it, scrabbling her hand up to the leash and tearing at it.

And in that moment where she struggles, in that moment where she digs her feet in and fights, Gurlien stands there, his face open.

His brows raise, his lips part, and he looks at her as if he’d never dream of going anywhere else. In the face of almost certain death, in the face of her, he just gazes at her as if she’s just as beautiful as she was on that night in Paris, as she was under the lights of the wine bar.

Ambra jerks back, the snap of anger tight against the leash, and Boltiex spins to her, watches her struggle with the order. Blood wells up in her throat as the leash constricts, as it pulls taut, choking her, coating her lungs.

Before Boltiex tilts his head, sliding his control into her stronger, smoothing down her actions, drifting her arms down to her side.

“Interesting,” Boltiex murmurs, like it’s something to be studied instead of horror and terror and Gurlien being right there, his heart beating. “So you have—”

In between one blink and the next, Gurlien surges forward and punches Boltiex straight in the jaw.

Ambra reels back, the control slipping from her mind in one blessed moment of peace, and she grabs at power, grabs at all the magic she can sense, twisting it up and around herself, something to insulate herself away from Gurlien, away from the danger, away from hurting him.

The house shudders on its foundation, cracking from the magic, and all the wards on the house snap apart. The weak stasis chamber three floors below, cracked. The cage around the other demon, shattered. The wards around silence, around stopping people from trespassing, from teleporting out, all gone in one crash.

Boltiex staggers back outside of Gurlien’s range, his ears ringing so strong Ambra can taste it.

Ambra surges up with the magic, snapping it out at him. Boltiex manages to shield his neck, counteract her, but she twists her fist into another strip, slamming it into him, battering.

He grasps at her mind, his control filtering her enough that she falters, enough that she jerks backwards, the power flinging uselessly against the wall, showering her with more Sheetrock dust.

She snaps out more power, the house shuddering around her, before—

There’s a gasp, a choked off sound of fear at the door, drawing her up short.

Right outside the door, her face pale, is the pre-teen. The child in the basement.

Her face is pale, and everyone stills, from Gurlien where he’s scrabbling for the multi tool, popping out the knife as if it could do something, from Boltiex and his face streaked with blood, all turn to stare.

“Dad?” the child asks, her voice lilting up, and behind her, the demon in the cage rises.

Boltiex’s eyes snap to the demon, to the nebulous state of a demon without a body to inhabit, and he jerks forward, clutching his daughter to him .

No, not clutching, hiding behind. Like the girl is another shield, just like the one he had to defend himself moments ago. Like the demon won’t strike him if he uses his child as a buffer.

“Don’t—” Boltiex starts, but the other demon surges up, surges past them, snapping Boltiex’s neck where he stands.

It’s loud, in the silence, before Boltiex slumps back, his arms falling away from his daughter as he clatters to the ground.

Ambra reels back, the sudden shock snapping through her mind. There’s nobody, there’s nobody on the other end of the leash, it’s gone within one moment and the next. All bonds, all pressure, all control, gone.

Her neck, completely free. No tight constraint, no irritation, nothing.

The demon breathes out, and for a split second, Ambra can feel their eyes on her, feel their inspection and their appraisal, before they rest a clawed hand on the girl’s shoulder, teleporting her away.

Ambra staggers, listing to the side, and Gurlien catches her by the shoulder.

Her ears ring, sharp, drowning out her gasping and the pounding of her heart, but she clings to him.

“Oh, hey, I got you,” he’s saying, and she can barely hear him behind the struggle for air. “You’re okay, you’re alive, you’re okay.”

As if in one final bit of resistance, her legs crumble underneath her, pulling them both to the ground in front of Boltiex’s body, and she scrambles her hands to her neck.

There’s no leash. There’s no bond. There’s nothing.

Just her own skin and her blood from the cuts.

She gasps, loud in the silence, before she twists her hand on Gurlien’s collar, holding him against her, holding him in place.

He flinches, before his arms go up around her, clutching her to his chest.

She still can’t feel him, can’t feel the awareness of him, nothing, but she buries her face into his chest so she can hear his heartbeat.

His arms tighten around her, like he’s about to lose his grip. “Ambra,” he whispers, her name a vow upon his lips. “Ambra, talk to me. Are you okay?”

She’s not, there’s something wild and terrible and terrifying without anything around her neck, but she presses her cheek against him.

Slow, his hand swipes the dust out of the shaved side of her head, gentle, and with a shock, she realizes there are tears on her face.

“I’m…” she chokes out, but her words escape her.

She’s free. She’s out of their control, she’s out of everyone’s control. She can run away, she can flee, she can do whatever she likes for the rest of her days for however long she exists. For however long it takes for the body to age around her.

Tender, oh so tender, Gurlien pulls away, cupping her chin his hands. His glasses still lay broke to the side, but his brown eyes flicker across her face like he could still read her like a book.

And they sit like that, limbs a crumpled heap on the floor, staring at each other, for a long moment.

“You’re okay?” he says, the question an undercurrent in his tone. “Please, say something.”

Swallowing, she nods, though it’s fully incomplete, and tightens her hand on his collar. “You’re hurt,” she ventures, and her voice wobbles. “He hurt you. ”

“And something invisible killed him and then kidnapped his daughter, yes,” Gurlien says, and just enough of his normal words filter in, settling something inside of her. “Do we need to go after them? Do we need to go save a child now?”

Ambra pulls in another breath, letting her mind wander out to that brief encounter, as far away as it seems. “They said,” she starts, then has to gasp for more air, “that they would take her to her mother.”

It all seems so remote, now that there’s no leash around her neck, no control in her future, and she can do anything.

Her hand flutters to her neck again, and Gurlien sits back on his heels. He’s still bleeding sluggishly from the cut on his brow, and they’ll have to clean the dust out of it.

“Is the leash still there?” he asks, serious.

“No,” she says, and the single word somehow makes it real. “No, I can…I can go anywhere. I can…I can do anything. There’s no one on the leash, nothing…”

There’s something on Gurlien’s face, some sudden vulnerability that she can’t quite parse.

“Anywhere,” he echoes, and his voice is foreign a bit. “Anything you want.”

Like he’s worried she’s going to leave him behind.

In a split second, she gapes at him, before she throws the pain, the grossness, the shock aside, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him.

He shifts, pulling her onto his lap, his lips on her like she’s the very air in the world.

“I can do anything,” she says, between kisses, punctuating her words with touches to him. “I can go anywhere. Do anything.”

Everything still hurts, but she twines her fingers into his hair, keeping him there with her .

And he kisses her back like she’s the only water in the world and he’s been left bereft. Like he’s a starving man and she’s the only thing he can consume.

“I can stay with you,” she says, pulling away, and his lips are shining, relief in his eyes. “I can do anything.”