Page 106 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

It’s too much chaos.

The two assistants slap their hands over their ears, as if that could do absolutely anything to block out the shriek.

And the other demon grins, wide, showing her teeth, at Killian.

“Here I thought you’d never come back here,” she says, and her voice is low and sweet, all the more vicious for it.

Killian doesn’t say anything, just his lips thin as he wraps his hands around the power of the room, twisting and choking all the air away.

With a bored flick of her eyes, the demon shrugs. “Fine.”

And the tile shatters around her, the entire room shakes, before everything…explodes.

Killian and the other demon exchange invisible blows, tile and debris flying through the room as if a hurricane, the male scientist scrambles for the door, and the body—it’s alive, it’s a person, it’s a demon, it’s all confusing—clenches his fists, arching his back out of pain, and the lab table dents from whatever power he’s grabbing.

And the cage is still in the corner of the room.

One of the young women screams, high pitched, before chucking the scalpel at Chloe. It bounces off Killian’s shield, snapping the other demon’s attention to Chloe.

“You brought a pet?” the demon says, her voice delighted, before flicking a strand of power at Chloe, easily repelled by Killian’s shield. “I didn’t know you kept pet humans, Killian.”

The body stops screaming, cut off suddenly, sagging to the table, though his eyes still blink up at the ceiling, wondering.

Killian doesn’t even look at Chloe, doesn’t look at the body on the table, just keeps his eyes on the other demon, his shoulders down.

“Well, this is just delightful,” the demon says, smiling, and smiling rests easy on the face of the dead body she’s in. Like the lips were made to smile, to bring joy to someone, and here they are stretched over the visage of a demon.

The air stills, sudden, all the power swirling around abruptly ceasing, and the scientist recoils back even more, throwing his hands up to shelter his face.

“What happened to that kid, though?” the demon asks, and the body on the table blinks, like he heard that, like he comprehended that. “The mad scientist's child. I heard you kidnapped her.”

Killian doesn’t respond, just staring up at the other demon, hands loose around his side, eyes tracking every micro movement of power that the other demon twitches around herself.

The body on the table turns his head, staring dully up at the other demon. Tear tracks of blood streak down his face, and globs of tissue trail down from his ears.

Chloe had seen that once from Terese, seen the picture they took when a demon was mid-process of possessing her again, back when she first seeked out help from Axel and Alette.

It’s even more gory in person, more wrong.

Killian had been right. There was another abomination, another attempt at the Terese project up here, and his eyes flicker down to Chloe, both staring through her soul and fully unseeing.

The other demon smiles again, like she’s already triumphed, and she had been helping. She had been betraying her own kind, hurting someone so deeply, helping the side who only aimed to control them.

Before all the air in the room goes tight.

Immediately, Chloe gags, hands coming up to scrabble at her throat, and the two young women in the back collapse to the floor, eyes rolling back, choking.

The scientist recoils further, stumbling into another lab table before clattering to the floor.

Only the body on the table takes even breaths, like whatever is being done has no effect.

“Stop.” Chloe wheezes out, and the demon doesn’t even look at her, just keeps smiling at Killian, who whips out another line of power at the demon. “Stop—”

And Chloe has her gun.

Her head going light, her hands falter as she tries to tug it out of the holster, fumbling with the straps. The scientist chokes, writhing on the ground, his face going purple.

And Chloe’s already died once, she doesn’t want to die again.

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