22. Chapter 22

22

T he second Rebecca thought she couldn't swallow any more—when she thought she would pass out from lack of oxygen and whatever the hell else was seeping through her body now, moving like deadly sludge through her veins because she’d consumed a fucking homunculus—the metal cup jerked away from her lips.

Her throat still burned as the last drop slid down, and her body convulsed with the taste of magic and death swirling in her veins like poison.

It took her a moment to realize the cup was gone because she’d finally opened her mouth for one long, endlessly searing gasp that actually drew breath into her lungs for the first time in what felt like years.

“There you go…” The scratchy voice had returned. “I knew that was all it took. Just keep breathing ‘til you can tell me what the fuck you just tried to do to yourself.”

A heavy hand came down against Rebecca’s back for a few coarse slaps in quick succession, like they needed to dislodge something physical from her throat as well.

Rebecca just kept gasping and coughing, sucking in breath after glorious, undying breath as her lungs blazed anew with fresh agony and even more tears spilled from her eyes.

Her vision returned more slowly than she would have liked, but it couldn’t have been more than another twenty seconds before she managed to blink around and finally focus her gaze on her unexpected rescuer who’d appeared seemingly from nowhere.

At first, she couldn’t place those bulging eyes behind remarkably thick spectacles, the white stringy hair, the pinched and wrinkled face fixing a perpetual scowl of disapproving scrutiny on everything around it.

Then it finally dawned on her.

“Holy shit,” she croaked. “Zida. ”

The old daraku flashed Rebecca a gummy grin that would have been entirely toothless but for the two upper canines that remained in her mouth. A wheezing chuckle escaped her, then Zida thumped Rebecca on the back again, this time with much more force, before pushing herself to her feet.

“Well, look at you. A little water works wonders, eh?”

An ogre with a long, orange-brown mohawk stood uncertainly in the hallway, shirtless and shoeless with someone else’s unconscious body in his arms. He looked back and forth from Rebecca, to Zida, then ahead of them down the hallway again before clearing his throat.

“Should we, like…get out of here?” The guy looked like he was about to point in that direction if it hadn’t been for the unconscious dwarf in his arms, who Rebecca recognized as Hank.

Apparently, she still hadn’t regained consciousness after her last failed mission with Aldous.

“You know,” the ogre added, “just in case shit goes sideways, or…”

“Despite your horrific use of improper grammar, Archie,” the daraku croaked in response as she pointed a gnarled, hooked finger at him, “I’m inclined to agree with you. We need to boogie.

“Look alive, people!” Zida shouted at the infirmary’s open door. “We’re gettin’ out of here!”

Only three other Shade members had been in the infirmary, and they all came shuffling out now with wide eyes, gazing around in baffled, awestruck silence as they joined Zida and Archie, in the hallway.

Then Rebecca finally remembered what she would have already done if she hadn’t been so caught up by fighting a homunculus on her way out and almost killing herself.

“We need to get to the garage,” she said. “Now.”

“Holy shit.” A bruised troll newly emerged from the infirmary stood directly over the pile of rubble, gaping and pointing at the limp, black-and-gray-mottled form of the fallen homunculus. “What the hell is that ?”

“Don’t fucking touch it!” Rebecca leapt toward him and stopped, startled by the sound of her own voice, still so raspy and devoid of its usual sarcastic—and at times expressionless—energy.

Her abrupt movement made the troll stagger backward anyway. He frowned at her, then quickly looked to all the other magicals in the hallway for possible explanations as to what the hell was wrong with the elf.

Rebecca pointed at him and slowly shook her head. “Just…don’t. We really need to move.”

Despite feeling four more pairs of eyes on her, Rebecca veered around the pile of caved-in ceiling debris, which fortunately didn’t move this time with hands bursting out to snatch at her ankles. Then she quickened her pace down the hall.

“What the hell’s the matter with you, huh?” Zida snapped. “You heard the elf. Move your asses!”

After what she’d just been through, Rebecca didn’t bother trying to hide the flickering smirk appearing on her lips. Six long months with Shade—too long, in her opinion—and this was the first time she’d required the services of the task force’s resident healer.

After today, though, she didn’t think the old daraku was as bad as everyone else generally made her out to be. As long as the old woman hadn’t been lying through her two teeth and forced something other than water down Rebecca’s throat to save her life.

There was only one way to really know for sure, and that way only required time and a little more patience.

In minutes, it became clear the collapse of the ceiling in the infirmary hallway was not an isolated event within the compound. Rebecca and the other recovering magicals passed another half-dozen similar debris piles, though not all of them came with busted pipes or giant killer homunculi waiting beneath the cave-in to pop out at passing survivors.

Whoever had orchestrated this attack was clearly capable of pulling it off on a very large scale.

Rebecca just hoped she hadn’t spent so much time screwing around with mindless, lifeless magical automatons that she’d completely missed the real action in the garage. Assuming, of course, Shade’s current assailant—or assailants—had found the bulk of the task force gathered there in the first place.

She could just see Maxwell’s face in her mind now—the dark suspicion behind his silver eyes, the hint of a sneer curling his full upper lip—when he finally found her after all this was over. The shifter would jump at the opportunity to blame Rebecca for this too. To question her. To use this as one more weapon in his arsenal of idiotic reasons to keep a close eye on her.

To follow her too closely for her liking.

Not close enough for any real satisfaction, though…

What the hell was she doing ? Any thoughts of Maxwell now were an even bigger waste of her time than ever. She had to stop. Focus on the present.

On not almost dying again.

As the seconds ticked by and the explosions burst again and again throughout the building, she felt fairly confident now that the one homunculus popping up out of the collapsed ceiling pile had been the only one .

Perhaps it was a fluke. Perhaps the creature had been summoned for the sole purpose of aiding in this attack, serving as an effective diversion while its master did ancestors only knew what elsewhere.

The second she and the infirmary magicals rounded the corner out of the second-to-last hallway, the next explosion sounded like it was right on top of them.

Because it was.

The ground trembled. The walls on either side of them buckled. Then an enormous hole opened in the wall on Rebecca’s left as great hunks of plaster and drywall exploded outward.

The operatives behind her shouted in surprise. Rebecca almost beckoned them to hurry past her toward the next hallway, but then an all-black hand emerged from the still-crumbling hole in the wall and shot straight toward her.

She reeled backward, leaping aside just in time to avoid one more clawing grasp of yet another homunculus coming out of nowhere.

“Seriously?” she growled. “They’re in the fucking walls now?”

She knew it wasn’t the same one; it couldn’t have been. Whatever magic and darker nefarious substance had animated the first homunculus was inside Rebecca now, wreaking who knew what kind of damage on her insides and her magic.

There were more than one.

“Don’t touch it!” she shouted, gesturing for the others to move around her and continue ahead. “Whatever you do, just don’t—”

“Yeah, yeah, or we’ll end up choking on our own tongues or some shit,” the troll grumbled as he hurried past her first, leading the others. “We got it.”

Then came Archie, his un-gelled orange mohawk fluttering behind him down the center of his back as he lumbered along with the still unconscious Hank in his arms. Zida’s final two patients came next.

The old healer took up the rear, slowing as she approached Rebecca and the seemingly disembodied black arm breaking through the wall to claw at anything that moved on the other side.

“I do hope you’re not about to try something even more idiotic than whatever you did the last time,” Zida grumbled.

Rebecca shot her a deadpan glare and coughed. “You’re welcome for getting it out of the way for you. Get down to the garage.”

“And you?” Zida called over her shoulder as she shuffled down the hallway after the others.

Rebecca held back a groan. “I’m gonna make sure it can’t follow us. ”

The old woman tossed a clawed hand in the air, as if to say, “Suit yourself, but I’m not helping you a second time.” Then she disappeared down the hallway.

No, Rebecca most certainly would not be duplicating her mistakes with the first homunculus. But she couldn’t let this next one just roam free through the compound, bashing through walls and sneaking up on any other Shade member unfortunate enough to not have heard about getting to the garage.

It would slow her down, sure, but she had to wait until she was sure no one was there to see her.

Because the second Zida was out of sight, Rebecca summoned her Bloodshadow spear with another quick flick of her wrist and spun it in her hands until the spear tip faced her new lifeless opponent.

Before she could lunge with her weapon, the homunculus tore through the rest of the wall with a tremendous, clawing effort, its former prison crumbling away.

It advanced on her like a nightmare brought to life, the ground trembling beneath its weight with every step.

Rebecca’s throat and chest burned with uncommon fatigue and uncertainty. There was no time to think, only to react.

But her body hesitated. Her magic faltered as the monster lunged at her.

A cold dread coiled in her chest. She’d already faced one of these things, and she’d barely survived. This time, something felt different. Darker. More powerful. More…ravenous.

And if she couldn’t stop it this time, she wouldn’t survive again.

“Shit.”