Page 105 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

So instead, she just backs up so that Killian can shift onto the edge of the floor, the guards’ boots hitting it lightly.

There’s still the same fear underneath the natural smugness of the guard’s face.

“How does the girl deal with you showing up with a different face all the time?” Chloe whispers, running her fingers along the seam of the wall. It’s metal with sheet rock on the other side, reinforced with concrete in between.

Definitely made to withstand some blasts.

He shoots her a look.

“Just asking,” Chloe whispers again, and they did a better job of protecting this wall than the last. Anti alchemy spells are poured into the concrete, keeping it static, and even a few spellweaver catches are on the other side of the Sheetrock. “This is gonna be a problem.”

His hand comes down to the small of her back again, right underneath her research backpack, keeping her steady, as he too evaluates it.

“This won’t be quiet,” he says, and they haven’t been quiet for a while. “And I can’t teleport us out until you break the ward, but I can get us in.”

“How many people are there?” Chloe murmurs, because she has to keep her voice down even if he doesn’t. “So I know how many to neutralize, obviously.”

His eyes flash red, reflecting the dim light back to her. “Five. Three humans, one abomination, one demon.”

The demon would absolutely know they were there. Absolutely know that right on the other side of the wall are two people, just waiting to burst in.

“Not if they have it in stasis,” Killian says, as if he read her mind. “You can’t sense a thing in stasis.”

“How…” Chloe starts, then shakes her head as he shoots her a smug look.

She’ll deal with the ramifications of weird demon things once they’re out with the clue.

And there, his hand pressing her against the wall, he stares down at her in that new body, with new skin and new hair and new lips.

Quick as a flash, he grips her chin and kisses her, a brief shock of contact and possession and fierceness, leaving her breathless

“Okay,” she whispers. “Let’s go loud.”

25

He grins, for a split second, then places his free hand against the wall and…blasts.

Instinctively, Chloe throws her arms up in front of her face, but a shield, fluid and fluent, already bounces the debris away from her, before she ducks her head and charges through the hole.

Four things are immediately obvious.

One, a human man holds down a screaming body onto a metal lab table, black and red blood smearing all over the bare skin.

Two, two young women, barely into adulthood, cringe away from the sudden explosion, scalpels in their gloved hands.

Three, the demon isn’t in a cage, isn’t in a stasis chamber, but holds down the shoulders of the body on the table, hands covered in viscera. She’s in a strikingly beautiful dead body, a lab coat over casual clothes, and her eyes flash off of Chloe and fix onto Killian instead.

Four, a fox sized cage sits unused in the corner, paw sized shackles and a metal muzzle chained to the bars.

There’s a moment, a breath, before the demon releases the screaming body and snaps out a flash of power at Killian, singeing Chloe’s cheek as it flies past her.

Killian shoves her out of the way, absorbing it into a shield, as the tile cracks and the floor dents.

Chloe scrambles away, blindly grabbing a chunk of the metal from the wall, before transforming it into a simple knife and flinging it at the scientist holding the screaming body.

It slashes across the scientist's arm, red blood spraying over the white of his lab coat, and he yelps, jerking away to slap a hand over the wound.

And the screaming body jolts upright, still screaming, blood pouring from his eyes and mouth.

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