23. Chapter 23

23

R ebecca scrambled backward, tripping over new piles of debris and rubble, her breath shallow as the beast’s looming shadow swallowed the dim light around her. Each step felt like it only delayed the inevitable.

The creature’s relentless pursuit wasn’t just physical. She felt it in her bones—an unnatural chill tightening in her chest and squeezing around her own life force, as if the creature wasn’t just hunting her but something within her.

Of course she wanted to avoid the agony of its touch again; that was a given. More than that, though, she couldn’t let anything activate her magic again like the first homunculus had.

She’d survived it once; she did not intend to have to survive it a second time. Or to fail.

Especially not before she figured out why it had had that effect on her and who the sadistic son of a bitch was who’d created these things in the first place.

She quickly regained her balance as the homunculus barreled toward her, just as imposing and larger than life as the last—larger than most nightmares, honestly.

She thrust upward with her spear to drive it into the center of the thing’s chest, twisted the spear shaft in both hands, and growled as she ripped the impossibly sharp blade straight down through the creature’s chest cavity and belly.

Halfway through slicing the creature in two, her spear met unexpected resistance right where the homunculus’s navel would have been, were it a truly living thing. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to throw her momentarily off balance as she tugged against whatever had snagged on her blade.

The blackened beast let out the same kind of creaking groan as its predecessor and reached toward her with a swing of its arm .

Rebecca reeled back in time to avoid its touch, then yanked down on her spear and continued the act of gutting her enemy from breastbone to groin— if it had had anatomically correct features in the first place, or even guts. Without those, the end result was disappointingly anticlimactic.

The homunculus, now severed neatly in two, made no sound, offered no dying scream or spatter of hot blood across the floor. It merely paused for a moment, then fell in two different directions as its equally severed halves fully detached and toppled to the ground.

“Well that was surprisingly easy,” she muttered. “Could’ve gone with that move from the start.”

Rebecca waited another few seconds to see if the creature would revive itself, but there was no sign of movement. Scowling at the cleanly severed halves of one monstrous, mottled black and gray body, she stepped closer to stand over the motionless remains and spit on the closest half.

Then, after a quick twist of her wrist around the shaft of her Bloodshadow spear, the weapon disappeared, and she continued on her way down the hall.

It would have been more economical to keep her spear conjured and in her hand the whole way, but there was no telling who else she might come across in her mad dash toward the stairwell that would take her down to the garage.

The sight of Shade’s only elf walking around with a dark, glinting spear sharper than any forged blade of the physical realm—which also gobbled up all the light around it—was alarming in and of itself.

Not to mention that, with the current attack on Shade by as yet unidentified assailants, she’d likely just end up implicating herself in this whole thing before anyone else stopped to consider why someone like Rebecca would want to attack the compound in the first place.

If anyone saw her.

Before she ever made it to the staircase leading down to the sub-levels, Rebecca came upon three more of the same grotesque, animated constructions emerging seemingly from thin air in front of her.

The first came at her from behind a closed door on the ground level—or, more accurately, through it. Wood splintered and broke away from the door and its frame, spraying in all directions.

A quick, sharp sting caught Rebecca in the right shoulder, but she didn’t have time to investigate with another seven-and-a-half-foot-tall homunculus lumbering toward her, its arms freakishly long as it reached for her.

It wasn’t just the way this one had been built, either. No, this one’s long, sleek, pitch-black arms were literally elongating toward her as it tried to grab ahold of its newest target .

Snarling, Rebecca summoned her spear again and managed to take the third homunculus down with countless lightning-quick thrusts to any and all parts of its unliving body.

It didn’t stop moving until she’d practically shredded it to ribbons with her spear. After that, she didn’t stick around long enough to prove her theory that the creatures could only grow back a severed limb or two and not reconnect dozens of cubed pieces at whim.

The next one dropped from the ceiling and almost landed on top of her before she noticed its presence. The only reason she wasn’t squashed and pancaked to the floor was because she’d caught its reflection in the glass double doors of the building’s front entrance as she passed.

Rebecca darted forward at the last second and threw herself into a tumbling roll that couldn’t quite be called a somersault, but it got her out from beneath the homunculus’s surprise drop-attack all the same.

The floor rumbled violently beneath the creature’s every footstep; it had to be at least nine feet tall this time, with a hulking shoulder width that took up over half the building’s entryway.

After popping out of her roll to her feet, Rebecca spun around to watch the new homunculus rising to its full height where it had landed behind her, its shadow stretching impossibly long across the tiled floors.

“Holy shit,” she murmured, then glanced quickly at the ceiling—a portion of which now boasted a black, chalky outline of an enormous, relatively humanoid form.

As if the creature had plastered itself to the ceiling and stuck there, waiting for its next target and leaving a charred imprint of itself behind, burned into the ceiling panel.

“How is that even—”

She ducked beneath the thing’s powerfully swinging arm twice as thick around as a baseball bat.

The same creaking groan rose from this animated creation too. For some reason, it sounded like the thing was ordering her to stand still so it could mash her to a pulp.

Fat fucking chance.

After ducking another swing, she doubled over, charged her lifeless enemy, and summoned her spear one more time before she popped up into her full height directly in front of the thing.

It was a risky move, sure, but she’d slipped inside the creature’s reach, its arms outstretched toward her instead, and with both hands thrust the tip of her Bloodshadow spear straight up into the underside of the homunculus’s chin .

One more fluid thrust, and the spear tip went clean through before bursting through the top of the creature’s skull.

A keening, ear-splitting wail that couldn’t possibly have been confused for the constant screaming of the alarm siren rent the air.

At first, Rebecca thought it might be coming from the homunculus itself—a new type of nightmarish construction that lacked a mouth but could still mimic the most haunting tunes of war and death and agony.

But when she twisted her spear and flicked it aside, removing her weapon from the creature’s head before severing it clean off the monster’s thick, pitch-black neck, that head toppled, bounced once on the floor, and finally rolled to a stop.

The keening wail, however, continued.

It sounded like the age-old winds howling through the Endless Valley of her home world.

It sounded like the broken-hearted cry of mothers everywhere losing all the children they’d ever birthed in would ever yet create.

It sounded like life and death playing out their never-ending battle amidst the cosmos, and it clearly didn’t come from the homunculus lying motionless on the floor in front of her.

That blood-curling scream simply continued—the excruciating, agonized cry of a thousand souls scrambling for freedom, for release, for oblivion.

Tightening her grip on her spear, Rebecca gritted her teeth against the Blood-awful sound and diligently scanned the building’s entryway.

The noise was so powerful, so blindingly astringent in its intensity as it banged around inside her head that her eyes started to water.

Then her throat constricted, and another violent coughing fit made her double over right there in the front lobby of a building that no longer required a lobby’s purpose.

Open and exposed to literally anyone or anything that might have walked into that open entryway next, because she couldn’t breathe again. Her lungs seemed to be crushing themselves behind her ribs.

She gasped for breath over and over again, diverted from attempts to draw air only by hacking out more wheezing coughs that seemed to take more out of her by the second.

Then, without warning and for no logical reason, that terrifying, excruciated cry stopped. Just like that.

No more wailing. No more awful noise. The weight that had been closing in on Rebecca’s chest and necessary functions like breathing disappeared.

Her next inhale drew a massive, searing lungful of air. The dizzying power of relief and knowing she wasn’t dead—not yet—sent her crashing to her knees in the empty lobby. She slapped both hands against the floor to keep herself from eating tile, taking her conjured spear with her.

The dark silver shaft slammed into the floor with a hollow, metallic gonging sound, echoing with surprising force through the air.

Rebecca sucked in another breath, and another. Her eyes burned again with the stinging relief of oxygen where it was most needed, and she finally caught her breath.

By the Blood, what was wrong with her?

After a heavy sigh, she flicked her wrist over the spear before it disappeared inside her, returned to its place until the next moment of its summoning.

Always on the lookout, always thinking about who might see her and how careful she had to be at every goddamn waking moment—even when she’d thought she might be dying again, she’d been more concerned about who might find her here with a weapon of ancient power from the old world that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

But there was no one else here.

A wry chuckle escaped her, and she pushed herself back up to her knees, then to her feet, and took another deep breath.

A little paranoia never hurt anyone, right?

That had to be what this was. Pure paranoia. The pressure of always being on the run—and now being under an unexplained attack—finally getting to her.

When she forced an experimental cough, the rattling wheeze in her lungs was gone. For now.

What had that first homunculus done to her body? A mystery for another time, admittedly. If she wasn’t dead or dying, she still had other priorities right now. Most of which could only be tended to in the building’s sublevels and the underground parking garage where she was supposed to have made an appearance by now.

It couldn’t have been more than…what? Ten minutes? Fifteen, tops.

Her first step forward wobbled and sent her faltering in a staggering shuffle before she righted herself and seized control of her limbs again.

Something really fucking bad. That was what happened when a Bloodshadow Elf consumed the essence of whatever combination of magic and dark alchemy had created these homunculi in the first place.

That was all it took to convince her she’d have a hell of a personal problem to deal with sooner rather than later. But first, before anything else, she had to get down to the garage.

If the others were gearing up to fight back against…whoever was behind this attack, she had to be seen with them.

More importantly, she had to make sure Maxwell saw her with everyone else.

Or he’d be the first to point a finger at Shade’s only elf who hadn’t told anyone a single goddamn thing about herself in six months.

When all this was over, she could spend her spare time digging into the side effects of accidentally eating non-living magic.

Fighting off another round of hacking coughs, Rebecca pushed herself down the last bit of hallway and finally reached the staircase down to the garage.

Even from the top landing, she picked up the low susurrus of muttering voices echoing up toward her, made all the louder by bouncing off all the concrete and up a tightly enclosed stairwell. None of the echoing conversations carried intelligible words, but it sure did sound like a whole lot of magicals had made it down there safely enough.

So far so good.

As she hobbled her way down, growing clouds of smoke and dust filtered up from the bottom of the staircase. Rebecca paused to scan her body for injuries she might not have noticed in all the excitement.

No, she wasn’t on fire, at least.

Why the hell was it so hard to just keep putting one foot in front of the other?

It shouldn’t have been.

There was no blood. No unfelt slashes or cuts. Nothing remotely broken or grotesquely twisted.

Just the outline of a handprint on her left wrist where the first homunculus had grabbed her.

Not a red handprint, either, like a burn or a rash or marks occasionally left behind by a good slap.

No, this one only stood out against her pale skin because of the grayish-blue tint slowly seeping into the shape of that handprint, like the darkening underbelly of a dead fish.

It was pretty fucking hard not to notice.

A quick, experimental roll and stretch of her wrist, however, confirmed she was still in control of her movement. For now. Who knew what that creature’s touch would do to her own flesh the longer she waited to address it?

It would have to keep waiting, though. Biggest emergencies first. That had been her experience with Shade too, especially when life here had been one emergency after the other with Aldous calling the shots.

Rebecca sure as shit wouldn’t let the changeling drive them into another damn hole tonight. Not during an attack like this. Not ever again, if the rest of the task force ever pulled their shit together and figured out a way to get rid of him that didn’t involve putting Rebecca in the spotlight.

Two more violent explosions in quick succession burst somewhere behind her on the ground floor. The shockwave didn’t quite make it down the staircase she’d already entered, but the telltale shatter and tinkling of broken glass and flying shards was unmistakable.

Inhaling deeply, Rebecca rolled her shoulders back and continued her descent down the stairs, wanting to rush but forcing herself to carefully pick each step. Mostly because every step was nothing more than a wobbling, unbalanced shuffle, and it wasn’t improving any time soon.

She could only move as quickly as her trembling legs and choked lungs could handle.

Another thick cloud of white plaster dust, flecks of drywall, and bitter white smoke ballooned up toward her from the bottom of the stairwell this time, and Rebecca’s gut lurched.

Smoke billowing up an enclosed staircase wasn’t a particularly good sign under any circumstances. When the entire task force had already fled down these stairs to regroup in the garage, that was even worse.

Gritting her teeth, Rebecca pushed herself harder and faster down the stairs. No matter what she did, her failing body refused to pick up the pace. She kept coughing and wobbling, bumping a shoulder or hip against either wall of the staircase.

Her equilibrium was completely shot, and she had no fucking clue how to combat the effects of sucking down the bits of soul a homunculus just didn’t have.

An unbidden wave of vertigo washed over her, and she had to pause with a hand on the wall to steady herself.

How many stairs did this fucking thing have anyway? Where was the bottom?

The voices from the garage grew slightly louder, but she still couldn’t make out any of their words. At least they weren’t all dead down there beneath another explosion before she’d had the chance to join them.

Then something dark moved through the cloying white smoke sifting all around her, above and below, breaking around her body before slinking up the stairs behind her toward freedom.

Not just something dark. A shadow.

Not a normal-looking shadow.

Not a particularly normal shape, either, as the darkness loomed over her by several feet through the smoke and the stink .

But after her previous battles in the last twenty minutes, the shape of that shadow was undoubtedly familiar.

This close to rejoining the entire task force at the bottom of these stairs, Rebecca probably shouldn’t have considered what she was considering right now.

There were too many potential witnesses. Too many variables she couldn’t control. Too many different ways for this whole thing to get fucked sideways and kill them all. Or worse.

But she couldn’t see shit. Everyone else was down below in the garage. Smoke billowed everywhere. She couldn’t breathe.

Plus, it wasn’t like the next homunculus literally coming up the stairs at her was going to just stop and let her pass to give her a break.

Priorities.

Stifling another cough, Rebecca flicked out her clenched fist and slammed it toward the step beneath her feet.

The butt of her materialized Bloodshadow spear cracked against the step and sent a destructive ripple of warning energy down the rest of the staircase.

Then she lifted her chin, gripped the spear with both hands, and summoned the rest of her quickly seeping strength just as the creature’s all-black hand—its palm the size of her head—plunged through the thick veil of acrid white smoke and swirling debris to swipe at Rebecca’s face.

Only at the last second did she realize she’d stopped too far down the stairs and was now too close to leap out of the way.

A shot of icy impotence and immediate dread shot through her body as she struggled to summon more of her magic, but the world around her dimmed, the edges of her vision blurring.

And this time, it might cost her everything.