18. Chapter 18

18

T he mark was incredibly small, maybe a quarter of an inch wide at most, placed at the very base of the guy’s palm right above the wrist joint.

No wonder she hadn’t seen it until now.

Based on what she knew of marks like this, though, not to mention the kind of Xaharí old-worlders who generally used them, the mark might have also been applied with the sole purpose of remaining invisible until the magical it belonged to passed beyond the veil from this life.

Meant to show up only in death.

Meant to identify the bodies of the poor bastards who’d found themselves with a mark like that in the first place.

It wasn’t a randomly chosen tattoo or a bit of fun, subtle body art. The Cruorcian couldn’t have put it there himself, either. That wasn’t how this kind of thing worked, just like cattle didn’t sear themselves with the brand of their rancher.

The magical chattel belonging to the Azyyt Ra’al didn’t bond themselves to their masters.

That bond was forged by force, branded on the wrist to mark the master’s property.

Boyd hadn’t just been some low-level thug trying to boost his reputation or take a random human’s terror for a little joyride at night. This guy had been a slave, his life forfeited into the service of the Azyyt Ra’al. Most likely by force and entirely against his will.

And the Azyyt Ra’al just so happened to be a particularly fearsome enemy well known to Rebecca.

One of the bigger, badder enemies she’d hoped to avoid altogether by hiding on Earth.

What the hell were thralls of the Azyyt Ra’al doing all the way out here in Chicago, of all places ?

Shit.

She slowly stood from her crouch and moved as little as possible, realizing now how significantly quieter everything was now that the magical firefight had been won and Purse Lady had run off into the night.

Almost too quiet.

She scanned the darkness, waiting for some other sign to prove she still wasn’t alone here.

There had been no way of knowing these five idiots sprawled across the parking lot had belonged to a much more dangerous master. But she knew now .

She absolutely could not leave them here like this.

There was always a chance this small sign of the Azyyt Ra’al’s presence in Chicago was purely coincidental.

Rebecca had been so careful. She’d plotted out every step since leaving the old world, staying ahead of both herself and her past, thinking three, four, five moves ahead of both the enemies who claimed to be her enemies and the enemies who claimed to be her allies.

She always moved on from a place, a new identity, a new life before she could ever get too comfortable with it. Before anyone could ever figure out who she was and what she could do and what it all meant for hundreds of thousands of Xaharí on a broader scale.

And, of course, what it meant for Elves in particular.

Where had she gone wrong? Where had she screwed up?

There had to be something in the last few years, maybe, but she couldn’t think of a single instance that might have tipped off the wrong people wanting to get their hands on her. And that was a rather long list.

Hell, she’d even jumped ship and booked it across the country from Colorado the moment the Order of Laenmúr had returned to this world and whispers of the Gateway finally opening again had traveled on the wind like scattered seeds.

She’d wanted no part in that—in either the ancient passageway between her home world and this one, or the battles breaking out in its name.

No, bumping into thralls of the Azyyt Ra’al had to be a coincidence. This Cruorcian and his little gang hadn’t even known Rebecca was here. They hadn’t been expecting her, and they certainly hadn’t recognized her. They’d ganged up on a human walking through an alley alone at night, for crying out loud.

Was she being paranoid? Probably. But a high level of alert awareness and hyper-vigilance had kept her alive all this time.

It had kept her from being found .

After all, the Bloodshadow Heir never could be too careful.

With her mind made up, Rebecca backed away from the bodies heaped across the parking lot and prepared herself for slightly more damage control than she’d anticipated tonight.

Blazing silver flames struck through with angry crimson sparks erupted in both her hands, hissing furiously, leaping into the air, flickering toward her face like two tiny, flaming lapdogs.

It would be one hell of a mistake to leave any evidence behind now. She had to get rid of it all.

A quickly scuffling clack-clack-clack across the asphalt made her pause.

Rebecca looked over her shoulder, searching for the source of the sound.

No motion in the darkness. No shadows flickering in the weak puddles of dull lamplight.

Right now, the only movement came from the flickering unlight of the silver fire in her hands.

With a grimace, she returned her attention to the bodies.

She couldn’t let the paranoia of not quite being alone stop her from this next chore. It had to be done now.

Maybe what she’d heard was only an animal—a cat or raccoon or some giant rodent. Nothing too concerning.

And if it was something else? She could deal with that later.

With her mind made up, Rebecca tossed the first handful of Bloodshadow flames at Boyd’s corpse right in front of her.

The body caught instantly. Her deadly magic consumed it all from the outside in. All identifying physical features, all birthmarks and tattoos, and especially slave brands like those found on a thrall of the Azyyt Ra’al.

The silver fire ate at the all-consuming blackness of his eyes and the streaks of Rebecca’s remnant magic spidering through his flesh. Whatever pieces of himself still remained in this body, whatever bits of residual magic or sliver of soul echo still hung on a little longer after death, all of it was consumed and repurposed by this silver blaze.

She left it to do its work and moved on to her other victims.

As each corpse gave up the last of its essence—the core of what had made these magicals who and what they had been—Rebecca reached for the silver fire, drew it back across the parking lot into her hand, and tossed it at the next body.

More than witnessing the evidence deteriorating in front of her, she felt the Bloodshadow flames finishing what she’d sent them out to do. A sensation not unlike finishing a large meal just before becoming too full or chugging down intensely carbonated drinks right before all the bubbles became too much .

When it was time, Rebecca reached toward the silver flames with both hands, and each orb of swirling mercurial fire leapt from the corpses’ remains to shoot straight through the air toward her.

Simply because she found it easier and faster and more satisfying than other methods, she directed both condensing balls of silver fire not toward her hands but into her open mouth.

Their heat mixed with the life-defying frigidity of the magic that had formed them swirled back into her. Filling her breath. Burning her nose. Lighting a different kind of fire inside her as she swallowed it all down.

Then, finally, she returned to herself, full and complete and with zero loose ends.

In under five minutes, she had all five corpses charred and mutilated post-mortem, beyond recognition. Some of them didn’t even look like magicals. One guy looked like nothing more than a pile of blackened, fossilized wood, the thickest of which only vaguely resembled the shape of bones.

That was the whole point.

And now it was time to get the hell out of here.

Eyeing her unfortunate handiwork one final time, Rebecca started to back away from the remains, then finally turned back toward the alley to be on her way.

Then she spun on her dangerously high heels back toward the mouth of the alley and froze.

The tall, dark silhouette of a man standing right there at the alley’s opening, leaning slightly against one corner of the wall with his arms folded, shouldn’t have been there at all.

Not without her seeing it.

Rebecca conjured her more common burst of crackling red battle magic in one hand before growling at the newcomer. The instant flare of crimson light illuminated the stranger at the mouth of the alley.

A stranger who had somehow snuck up on her without Rebecca hearing the damn thing, and that just didn’t happen.

Her light served as more than a warning when it revealed a few more of the man’s features. Most notably those glowing silver eyes he’d chosen to hide from her in the darkness until just now.

Not a stranger at all.

What the hell was Maxwell Hannigan doing here?

“Easy now,” he muttered blandly.

Despite being met with a potential round of battle magic to the face and the fury of one aggravated elf walking a tight line between self-control and obliterating every obstacle in her path, Maxwell sounded remarkably calm .

He looked calm too, eyeing her slowly up and down without so much as blinking in the crackling flash of her magic’s light.

The shifter certainly took his time to apprise the whole image—Rebecca covered nearly head to toe in blood and dirt and char marks, all without a single rip to her skirt or tank top and those three-inch stilettos still holding strong beneath her.

“Someone’s been busy…”

Rebecca glared at him. “Someone’s been nosy. Why are you following me?”

One side of his nose wrinkled, making the same corner of his mouth twitch.

That was probably as much of a smile as she was going to get from the guy, especially now.

“What makes you think I followed you?” Maxwell asked.

She swung her arm to the side, gesturing toward the empty lot behind her peppered with dank, filmy potholes and five piles of unrecognizably charred debris.

The crackling hiss of attack magic in her open palm cast red-tinted shadows across the asphalt and reflected in the scattered puddles of grime. “This doesn’t exactly scream Wolfie’s Favorite Hideout.”

Maxwell leaned slightly away from the wall to look down the left side of the parking lot and nodded toward the end of the block. “But that bar down there on the corner? That place has a little something for everybody. Even for someone like me. Maybe someone like you too, if you didn’t look like you just walked out of an active war zone.”

Rebecca darted a glance down the row of buildings toward the far corner in question. Almost a complete city block existed between them and that bar on the corner. Now that he’d mentioned it, though, she recognized the flicker of blue and yellow neon lights washing across the intersection barely visible from back here.

She should have recognized it sooner, but she hadn’t exactly been thinking about directions or stopping by a few magical-friendly haunts along the way tonight.

The Xaharí patrons of Underdark wouldn’t have appreciated Rebecca’s version of blowing off steam. Nor would she only have had to take on five low-level idiots before eradicating all visible traces of their existence.

“Wasn’t really in a drinking mood when I left the compound,” she said.

Maxwell raised an eyebrow. “You look like you could use a strong one now, though.”

She thrust a hand on her hip, feeling the slackness of deadpan boredom on her own expression. Because she couldn’t let anything else show.

Not when she had no idea how much the shifter had seen .

Better to go about finding that information through an entirely different route.

“Is this your way of asking me out for a drink, Max?”

His non-expression remained unchanged. “Not really. Just making an observation.”

“Great. Next time I give a shit about what you think, I’ll make sure to ask for more opinions.” With a quick flick of her wrist, she snuffed out the crackling battle magic, plunging the mouth of the alley and this side of the parking lot into deeper darkness once more.

The shifter’s silver eyes flashed at her just as brightly even without the extra light.

Like he wanted her to see them.

What was wrong with this guy? She’d gone out of her way to give him the slip so she could finally get out from under his constant stalking at the compound, and he’d figured out how to track her down anyway.

That had to mean he wanted something, right?

“So. You were just out for a drink on a Thursday night?” she asked, tossing a hand casually toward the back of Underdark at the end of the block.

“Contrary to popular belief at the compound, I’m not on duty twenty-four-seven.”

“Uh-huh. But something tells me they don’t serve drinks all the way out to this back lot a whole block away. Unless you have a better excuse for showing up here and interrupting my night out.”

His silver eyes flickered away from her before his gaze settled on the piles of charred remains behind her.

Thank the Shadowed Seat the piles had all stopped smoking by now. Good thing Rebecca had thought to tamp down her Bloodshadow magic again too, and just in time.

Or Maxwell Hannigan would be staring at an elf he didn’t recognize instead of the elf he only thought he knew.

But now he’d seen the bodies—or what was left of them.

She raised her eyebrows and waited for him to say something.

“I smelled smoke,” he said, frowning as he eyed each charred pile in turn. “Not a scent I generally pick up in this part of town, so I thought I’d check it out.”

“Always diligently at work to keep these streets safe, huh?” Rebecca folded her arms and stared back at him. This guy didn’t get thrown by much of anything, did he? “I thought you said you were off duty.”

“Yeah, well, curiosity never sleeps.”

Oh, so now he was trying to analyze her ? Fat fucking chance.

Maxwell leaned slightly toward her. “And now I’m especially curious to know what you were doing out here.”

“I stepped out to clear my head,” she replied with a quick shrug. “Work out a few things. Think over some life choices. And I ran into a little trouble. Nothing I can’t handle, obviously. So if you don’t mind—”

“What kind of trouble, exactly?” Maxwell’s unreadable expression made his questions that much more infuriating.

Dammit.

Of course he wouldn’t back down and just accept whatever answer she wanted to give him. This guy had been suspicious of her from the start.

Until tonight, he hadn’t taken that suspicion any further than staring at her from across a room at the compound, or through the rearview mirror of their getaway van, or even in the middle of a mission.

And now he wanted to know what kind of trouble she’d found for herself tonight? Like she’d actually tell him?

“Rats,” Rebecca said plainly.

“Rats,” he echoed.

“Yeah. I came through this alley and stumbled into some kinda…nest, I guess.”

“And you did that to ’em?”

It took everything she had not to snarl at him. To back the hell off and right on out of her business. Technically, he was still her team leader. Technically, she still had to answer to Shade’s chain of command, even if they were off duty.

So she gritted her teeth, slapped a deliriously tight smile on her lips, and replied, “I’m not a big fan of rodents.”

The corner of Maxwell’s mouth twitched again. “That’s what you’re going with? Rats.”

“Really big rats.” Rebecca lifted her chin. “This city has more than a few big problems. That’s just one of ‘em.”

He snorted. “You should check for bites, then. That’s a nasty thing to carry around. Especially when you’re trying to hide it from everyone.”

Okay, what exactly was this smartass trying to insinuate now?

It couldn’t possibly have been what it sounded like.

And it sounded like Maxwell Hannigan might have seen a lot more of Rebecca’s little adventure tonight than she could afford.

She had to get out of here.

“I’m fine,” she told him with a quick nod. “Not a scratch on me, but thanks for asking.”

“That’s a whole lot of blood for not a scratch. ”

“Rats get aggressive,” Rebecca snapped. “I did what I had to do. And I can promise you, every other annoying question you’re gonna ask me right now will be answered the same way. So let’s skip the interrogation and the part where you pretend like you care, and we can forget about the whole thing.”

She started to step around him, but at the same moment, Maxwell sidestepped to block her from slipping back down the alley.

Rebecca stopped short, clenching her jaw and lifting her chin again to glare at him as the shifter loomed over her, silver eyes flashing.

What was he going to do? Fight her right here behind this alley?

He could try.

If he was supposed to be the shadow Aldous had assigned to her, the shifter had just blown his cover. If he wasn’t the shadow, he still didn’t have much left to stand on.

She wouldn’t tell him a damn thing.

“That was me saying we’re done here,” she told him instead.

When Maxwell dipped his head farther toward her, his gaze settled on the hollow of her throat before moving across her collarbones, then one bare shoulder exposed beneath the strap of her tank top. His nostrils flared once.

“Maybe you don’t already know this,” he said slowly, his silver eyes pulsing with internal light as his intense gaze roamed all over her. “But a lot of information can be drawn out of someone without them ever having to tell me a thing.”

She scoffed. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

“Like whether or not they’re lying,” he continued, as if she hadn’t said a thing. “Or if they’re hiding something. If they’re scared or nervous or mistakenly overconfident. I can smell all of it. Try lying to a shifter. It doesn’t go over very well.”

She wanted to shove him away. She wanted to offer some biting quip about how very scary big Mr. Head of Security was, sneaking around behind her after dark. She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself because this was none of his business.

She didn’t.

Because the way he looked at her now, standing so close like this and looming over her with the light of those silver shifter eyes tingling across her skin…

Well, all that made her want to stay.

That was the dumbest possible decision right now, especially after what she’d done here tonight. Whether or not Maxwell had witnessed any of it didn’t change a thing.

Only an idiot would stand here any longer than she had to, letting the shifter make her toes all tingly just by staring at her with those silver eyes .

She almost expected him to lick his lips at any second now, like he was about to bury his teeth into a giant steak.

And doing anything with Shades’ Head of Security—shifter or not, present at their secret little rebellion meeting or not—was the worst idea of all.

That didn’t mean she could stop herself from egging him on now that he’d brought it up. It didn’t mean she wouldn’t accept the challenge and toss the ball right back into his court.

“And what, exactly,” she asked, lifting her face even farther toward him, “do you smell on me right now?”

Of course it was a loaded question. That was the point.

She wanted to make him back the hell off—and, at the same time, she didn’t quite want him to. In fact, part of her was particularly interested in seeing exactly how far he would take this little ruse behind a dark alley next to his favorite magical-friendly bar.

Maxwell’s silver eyes took an eternity to move away from her throat and rise to meet her gaze. He dipped his head even lower until the heat of his face washed over hers, then he slowly inhaled through his nose.

It should have been creepy.

Somehow, it wasn’t.

Rebecca stood perfectly still, silently daring the shifter to just fucking try something—and still insanely curious as to what that might possibly be.

After Maxwell exhaled again slowly through his nose—playing up the act of “smelling all of it” on her, whatever the hell that meant—his flatly muttered response put an end to the whole thing. “I smell rats.”

And just like that, the tension of their little standoff melted away.

He could have been insinuating he thought she was some kind of rat, but she chose not to entertain that train of thought at the moment. Too many complications.

Instead, she had to let this go.

“See?” Rebecca spread her arms. “You’ve figured it out. Now that you’ve gotten all that out of your system, I’m only gonna ask you once to move out of my way so I can get on with the rest of my night. And if you decide not to, I promise you won’t like what happens after that.”

At first, he didn’t move, and Rebecca started to think he really would force her to make good on that promise.

But then Maxwell finally stepped aside enough to let her slip past him by turning sideways and gestured down the alley behind him—like it had been his idea for her to get out of here. “Your off-duty time is to do with as you like. As is your decision not to tell me what you’ve been up to. ”

With a curt nod, Rebecca slipped quickly past him, lifting her chin again and turning slightly so she could at least watch his reaction. “I know exactly what my business is, Max. Thanks. Feel free to stay out of it from here on out.”

She got two more steps down the alley, the click of her heels echoing between the walls, before he called after her.

“As long as you don’t give me a reason to think someone needs to stop you. Don’t give me a reason, elf.”

Ooh, so scary… She was shivering in her stilettos.

He’d smelled smoke ?

Please.

If that were true, Rebecca would’ve had a much bigger audience than just the shifter inserting himself into her business. Maybe he had smelled something. Fine.

She might have believed him if the guy hadn’t spent the last twenty-four hours now shooting her dirty looks and following her literally everywhere.

He only thought she was up to something, but Maxwell Hannigan couldn’t prove a thing. He also couldn’t let himself trust her because of it.

The feeling was mutual.

As long as he didn’t give her a reason to clean up a mess that included one infuriatingly nosey shifter, they’d be fine.

As long as he hadn’t seen any of her Bloodshadow magic tonight or the way it transformed her.

As long he kept his mouth shut about all of this and didn’t get in her way.

Those were a lot of conditions, but Rebecca couldn’t just ask the guy what he thought he knew. That would only make him double down on his efforts to figure her out.

If he ever succeeded, they’d both have way bigger problems than a few oversized rats.