Page 8
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A rare, mindless panic coursed through Rebecca from head to toe as she struggled to comprehend what she was looking at.
She’d been so preoccupied by the sensation of Maxwell’s approach, of how long it had taken him to reach her, and of the inexplicable difference in exactly how she felt him, that the first crazed thought blundering through her mind was that this was the shifter’s head.
The instant terror of it nearly brought her to her knees before she realized in the darkness that this was definitely not Maxwell staring up at her with wide-open eyes glazed over in death.
Her heart skittered painfully in her chest until she forced herself to breathe and make sense of the evidence instead of drawing stupid, baseless conclusions.
This head belonged to a grimbúl, the overlarge mouth gaping open, thick lips flecked with spittle and blood. The jagged strips of flesh at the uneven base of the neck—or what remained of it—proved this particular body part had been ripped viciously off a pair of shoulders by something that was definitely not a clean-cutting blade.
She’d only seen this face once before, right after first joining Shade, and she had no trouble recognizing it now.
Eduardo.
“What the…”
“Holy shit!”
“Is that a… Oh fuck.”
“Where the hell did that come from?”
“I swear, if it starts raining body parts now, I’m done. For real.”
Her operative’s useless comments pulled Rebecca out of her stunned staring. She whipped her head up toward the spot within the trees from which this severed head had been thrown her way.
More movement there within the woods, and when she recognized that too, her knees almost buckled.
Maxwell emerged from the thick darkness of the forest, moving slowly, barefoot in a pair of dark jeans, his gray-and-red flannel button-down shirt hanging open at the center. His silver eyes glowed fiercely as he stepped forward, and they seemed to brighten with every step.
He walked in a straight line, spine erect and shoulders rolled back, confident and sure. Though he didn’t appear to be injured, there was something about him Rebecca couldn’t quite place,
Something she could only describe in that first split-second assessment as completely wrong .
Her gut clenched.
When he drew closer to one of the two remaining streetlamps still functioning within the parking lot, she realized what it was.
Blood coated his face from the nose down, thickest around his mouth, chin, and neck, smeared down the front of his bare chest exposed beneath his open shirt. So much blood, it almost covered the unnaturally dark mark of the elven rune peeking out from beneath the fabric fluttering in the breeze as he moved.
Shock, understanding, relief, and a new level of approval impossible to ignore all swirled through Rebecca as she took in the gloriously deadly sight of him.
Now she knew exactly what the shifter had accomplished tonight.
Damn. He’d found his target, and he’d completed his own personal objective the way only a shifter could have.
Maxwell’s wolf had ripped off the conniving grimbúl’s head and brought it back here for everyone to see.
Rebecca hadn’t noticed Zida’s approach until the old healer let out a weakened cackle beside her.
Then the woman looked up from the severed head and leaned toward Rebecca to murmur, “I know some wild things like to hunt and bring back presents, but doesn’t this just feel like a little overkill?”
Somewhere close by, Bor snorted.
Rebecca couldn’t look away from the viciously bloody, exquisite sight of the shifter drawing ever closer. Her flesh rippled with a wave after wave of tingling warmth growing nearly as unbearably hot as the storm of Zida’s magic.
She’d never seen this side of him. Not quite like this.
In that moment, she didn’t want to ever look at anything else again.
Then he was only a few feet in front of her, as if she’d blacked out during the rest of his approach, leaving her stunned and breathless and monumentally impressed.
Captured all the while within the ferocity of those glowing silver eyes.
“No room for second chances,” Maxwell snarled without once looking at the grotesque proof of success he’d delivered at his Roth-Da’al’s feet. “Not after he brought this to our front door.”
More fiercely than the desire might have ever consumed her before, all Rebecca wanted was to run to him and throw her arms around him. To feel the physical heat and solidity of his burning flesh pressed against hers. To breathe him in and know in a physical way, beyond anything her eyes told her, that he was real .
That he was here. That everyone had made it out of this endless chaos alive and intact, Maxwell among them.
Feeling the same urge coursing through him as he drew closer, step by agonizingly slow step, only made Rebecca’s own compulsion that much harder to fight off. But she fought it, just as fiercely she felt the shifter fighting against it too.
“Found him just beyond the blast radius,” Maxwell growled before finally coming to a stop right in front of her.
So dangerously close, containing herself and keeping her hands off him felt impossible. Somehow, she managed it.
He dipped his head toward her, silver eyes flashing. This time, he spoke so softly, only Rebecca could have heard it. “You were right.”
While they stared at each other for what felt like an eternity—each of them painfully aware of the other’s longing and need, of the unparalleled hunger for the darkness that could only be reached when they both gave in to their connection—Rebecca didn’t think she could successfully hold back much longer.
But the murmured comments and odd speculation rising in a hushed background whisper from her operatives standing all around was enough to ground her to the present. And to everything else that existed beyond the shifter looming over her.
The battle was over, but Shade’s work certainly was not. Of all the terrible places and times to give into this endlessly ravenous thing between them, this was the absolute worst.
Rebecca saw the same conclusion reflected in the silver glow of Maxwell’s eyes and felt the same struggling decision solidify through their connection.
Later. Always later with him, wasn’t it?
“Holy shit, Hannigan,” Hank exclaimed. “You went fucking old - school on his ass.”
“Yep.” Murray straightened from leaning down to inspect the head and dusted off his hands with a sniff. “That’s Eduardo, all right.”
“And it’s really over,” Nyx breathed before glancing nervously around at those standing closest. “Right? I mean, Eduardo’s dead. We’re finally done.”
“The battle’s over,” Leonard replied as he settled a gentle hand on the katari’s shoulder, staring in awe at Eduardo’s last expression frozen forever now on the grimbúl’s face. “No more Eduardo. No more griybreki. Don’t get me wrong, that’s good fucking news.”
The mage slowly turned his head to look Nyx in the eye. “But I don’t think we can say it’s all over.”
A hushed silence descended over the decimated parking lot. The entire task force shared the wordless revelation of what this now meant for them in the bigger scheme of things—beyond breaking up the siege, rescuing all personnel from the collapsing compound, and merely surviving the rest of the night.
Because no, this absolutely wasn’t over for Shade. This was just a hard-won pause within the chaos. A brief moment in which to catch their collective breath.
The crunch of shattered glass beneath shifting weight and a metallic groan rose from the compound’s front entrance, instantly drawing everyone’s attention.
Archie emerged from the building, his bright-orange mohawk coated in dust and ash and debris. A thick plume of it filtered down onto his shoulders and trailed behind him in a billowing line as he squeezed through the twisted remains of the doorframes with a small plastic storage tote gripped between his hands.
“Too small.” Zida hobbled toward him and scoffed.
Another shower of dust, bits of drywall, and flecks of ash rained from Archie’s mohawk again when he shook his head and finally met the healer’s gaze. “Grabbed what I could. This is all that’s left.”
The muscles of Zida’s face twitched so quickly and in so many different directions, it was impossible to nail down a single expression or even guess what she might have felt. For a moment, it looked like she might attack the ogre in violent denial.
But then she huffed out a sigh and reached for the disappointingly small box of her infirmary supplies. She rifled through it with a clawed hand and clicked her tongue. “No bandages, huh? Well, I’m sure we can still scrounge up a few more things inside.”
Archie scratched the back of his head, loosing even more debris from the back of his mohawk that shouldn’t have been able to stand even partially upright with all the gunk still in it. “No. There’s nothing inside. I mean this is all that’s left…”
“Right.” Zida looked up at him and froze when she realized he wasn’t joking, one hand still buried within what little he’d salvaged.
Then Archie turned toward Rebecca, pain glinting in his orange-brown eyes as he spread his arms. “Building suffered way more damage than I thought. We held off the breach attempts well enough, but short of keeping these griybreki bastards out, it just didn’t hold.”
Rebecca swallowed the tight knot rising in her throat.
She’d expected this caliber of bad news, but that didn’t make it any less painful to hear.
“How bad?” she asked.
“The whole residential wing’s shot to shit. Barely hanging on by a few support beams. From the back of the compound all the way up past the common room, whatever isn’t still on fire is buried under rubble.”
Yep. Exactly as bad as she’d thought.
Eduardo’s main goal had been to inflict major damages upon Shade. To hit them where it would hurt the most, and hit them hard. That much was abundantly clear. Even if the asshole hadn’t survived to celebrate his victory, he’d certainly been successful.
Rebecca nodded. “Thanks, Archie.”
The ogre might have intended to smile but delivered an uncomfortable grimace before looking like he had no idea what to do with himself next. So he scratched another startling shower of dust and wood chips and bits of stripped wiring out of his mohawk. Again.
When Rebecca looked out across the parking lot one more time, she certainly hadn’t expected to find every single member of her task force staring at her now. All of them devastated by the news sinking in and of how great their loss truly was.
All of them waiting for their Roth-Da’al to deliver her decision for what came next, whatever that happened to be.
Rebecca didn’t have a plan. After the kind of night they’d had, both out in the field and right here at home, rarely did anything come next.
They had all defied the enormous odds stacked against them, one battle right after the other. They’d pulled through to still be here in the end. To survive.
But now it seemed the more they survived, the more they lost and the higher those odds against them continued to grow.
The silence broke when Zida grumbled something unintelligible before hobbling away to do what she could for the wounded, rifling through her tiny box of remaining supplies as she went.
For the first time since the end-of-battle explosion, Bor didn’t move to go after her. He stayed right where he was, staring at nothing in mute stupefaction.
Probably because he’d just heard through Archie’s report that his entire industrial kitchen plus all his inventory and supplies were gone now too.
“So what now?” Nyx asked, her usually soft voice sounding disproportionately loud within the silent stillness.
“That’s what we need to figure out,” Rebecca replied, turning toward the Katari. “Sooner rather than later.”
Then she looked across those gathered closest, who’d seen Eduardo’s severed head with their own eyes and had heard Archie’s report, while the rest of the task force did what they could to help Zida with the wounded or sifted through the rubble as best they could, trying not to bring what remained of their home crumbling down on top of them.
Rebecca raised her voice enough to be heard by this smaller group around her. “Go help where it’s needed. Let the others know the compound’s a lost cause now and we’re looking for somewhere new. See if anyone has any ideas. The most important thing now is finding a safe place to rest up. Where we won’t be found.”
Those around her nodded, shared knowing looks with each other, or averted their gazes altogether before dispersing to carry out their everyone dispersed to carry out their Roth-Da’al’s not-so-invigorating order.
They could talk all they wanted about needing a new place to hunker down and build up as much of an operation space as possible. They could sit here for the next forty-eight hours discussion it all, but the gravity of the situation wouldn’t change.
Everyone Shade knew, had been in contact with, or dealt with on a regular basis, to any degree, was already dead.
Rowan Blackmoon had made sure of that.
Now, the task force didn’t even have their own home to fall back on.
Everything was gone, and Rebecca was all out of ideas.
If she didn’t come up with something soon, they’d be sitting ducks for any of their enemies still unaccounted for.
And if that happened, everything they’d just fought so hard both to protect and to survive would all be for nothing.