24. Chapter 24

24

R ebecca’s vision swam as she stumbled down the stairs, her feet barely keeping up beneath her as she bumped between walls. Smoke burned her throat raw with every breath and stung her already blistered lungs. How was she even still alive?

Her arms, shoulders, and chest pulsed with a deep ache she hadn’t felt for hundreds of years. Since she’d first learned what she was truly capable of achieving with her magic. But she couldn’t stop now.

That creature was here in the stairwell with her, hunting her down, trying to root her out. Chasing after something inside her she couldn’t name, just like all the others she’d already fought, each of them stronger, darker, deadlier than the last.

There were its pounding footsteps echoed down the stairwell behind her, louder and closer with each thud, and…

No. The thick, heavy thumps and toppling bumps sounded in the stairwell, but in front of her, not behind. They didn’t grow closer like a looming monster ready to rip her to shreds in her weakness, but farther away.

Had she already gotten rid of the homunculus here in the smoke with her? Why couldn’t she remember?

The second those thumps stopped, an immediate, stunned silence followed, making Rebecca wobble on her feet.

Where was all the conversation she’d just heard from the garage? Where was Shade?

What had she done ?

Rebecca muscled on, knowing only that she had to reach the bottom before she could even consider what to do next. Her throat now burned as if fileted open and set on fire. That could have been the smoke, but if it wasn’t?

Then she was worse off than she’d thought.

“Holy shit, did you see that? Tell me you’re seeing that. ”

“What the hell?”

“Hold up… That’s a fucking arm!”

“And a head, right? No way that’s not supposed to be a head…”

“What is this shit?”

“There’s no blood…”

“What kind of sick joke is this? Throwing body parts down the stairs?”

Somehow at the last second, Rebecca’s mind put two and two together.

She still grasped her Bloodshadow staff in one hand despite hardly being able to feel it there anymore. That had to go.

With another searing cough, she released her darkest weapon in a flash of dark silver light she could barely see in all the smoke.

The smoke she’d created? Or was this something else?

What was she even doing on these stairs?

But at least the rest of the task force had made it to the garage and were still there.

As long as she wasn’t hallucinating the outburst of confusion and disgust rising from below.

Only a few more steps, now…

It had to be only a few more.

“All right, this shit just got way too weird,” someone else shouted. “And I’m not waiting any longer for a fucking explanation.”

“We’re still waiting to make sure everybody made it down here.” That sounded like Nyx.

“Oh yeah? Who else was stupid enough not to follow orders and get their ass down here before everything went completely to shit? If we’re missing someone, that’s their own damn—”

Rebecca stumbled violently forward when her foot hit the flat concrete of the bottom landing before she’d expected it.

Staggering to catch herself, she emerged from the enclosed stairwell, wrapped up in another attack of hacking coughs as a belch of roiling black smoke barreled out with her—like some enormous, fire-breathing beast had realized only too late that it had gobbled up the wrong fucking elf.

Her next step down kicked against something hard and heavy with only a little give. At first, she couldn’t see what it was against the black smoke everywhere.

As she staggered blindly, her other foot came down something relatively cylindrical in her path that wobbled beneath her step. Her foot slipped, the rest of her weight slid out from under her, and she dropped.

This had to be the end. Right here, right now, about to eat cement in Shade’s underground parking garage before she could do a damn thing .

But she didn’t hit the ground.

She didn’t even crack her knees on the floor—unless she’d now lost feeling in her extremities, which was just as likely as all the other unexplained ailments turning her body against her right now.

But no, she definitely felt the firm, searing tightness clenched around her upper arm to keep her from smacking her face on the ground. Then that grip tightened, and she was being lifted upward again.

“On your feet, elf.”

The low growl was right in her ear. A voice she should have recognized, surely.

But her failing body made mental processing far too difficult, and she couldn’t see a damn thing with all the thick, acrid black smoke swirling around her where she’d tripped over those black lumps scattered across the floor.

What kind of asshole had left those there?

And hadn’t the smoke just been white, like, five seconds ago?

Somehow she got her feet under her again with the help of that heated grip on her arm, and the choking coughs finally let up long enough for Rebecca to slowly look up.

Her blurry vision settled on the large, strong hand clamped around her upper arm. Her gaze traveled up the attached forearm—revealed by crumpled shirt cuffs rolled up to the elbow—and then eventually the face staring down at her.

The first thing she registered was a pair of glowing silver eyes trained directly on her before another growl proceeded his next words.

“And you’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do.”

Maxwell. It was Maxwell. Of course it was.

The shifter stared down at her, his silver eyes pulsing with dark warning and his jaw muscles clenching over and over as his firm grip felt like he meant to break her arm in two just with a squeeze.

And Rebecca had explaining to do? She couldn’t even account for the last several minutes before reaching the bottom of the stairs, apparently. Maybe even more.

Trying harder than she ever had in her life to keep her eyes open and focus on Maxwell’s face, she blurted the first thing that popped into her mind.

“You have the worst timing,” she croaked.

Maxwell’s eyes widened, then he stooped to support her with his other hand as well just so she could stand.

If he let her go now, Rebecca was certain she’d drop to the concrete and never move again .

If she hadn’t known better, she also would have said she’d just caught a hint of concern in the shifter’s silver eyes when he seemed to realize how not okay she was.

Then again, she could have simply been seeing things. That was what happened on the verge of death, wasn’t it?

“Shit, Knox,” Maxwell murmured over the rising shouts and confused conversation bursting to life again from the rest of Shade’s members. “What happened to you?”

“If you figure that one out,” she replied, still panting and gasping for breath as her legs wobbled, “I’d really love to know.”

Rebecca’s eyelids fluttered shut, and she only realized she’d swung toward Maxwell’s chest when her cheek hit something soft and the scent of musk and sandalwood overwhelmed her.

His heart was racing. Suddenly, it was the loudest sound in her awareness.

Joined by an instant blaze of warm, tingling energy flaring between his chest and her face—racing through her core, calling her closer, tugging her toward him even when there was nowhere else to go.

A rightness that felt like everything Rebecca had ever been searching for, every other shape of darkness that fit her own so perfectly, right here in this…shifter?

That wasn’t right. She was losing her mind.

At least his body wasn’t as stone-cold as the rest of him. And how nice it would be to just lean against him like this, just a little longer. Just until she came back to herself…

“All right, everybody move!” Zida’s rasping bark cut through the noise, making her every word sound like condescending judgment. “Out of the way. I said move it! Let me through! Hey, if you want someone else’s death on your hands, then by all means, step aside even fucking slower!”

Then the old daraku was there, hovering in front of Rebecca’s face and fussing, clicking her tongue as her gnarled, clawed hands fluttered about.

“Something’s wrong,” Maxwell said. “I don’t see any injuries, but this isn’t right.”

“What a fucking observationist you are,” Zida snapped before she smacked his hands away.

That had to be what she’d smacked, because the next second, the warmth of his strong grip clamped around Rebecca’s arm disappeared.

Great. Now there was nothing left to keep her warm and nothing left to keep her from falling even deeper into the dark, cold, searing oblivion just waiting to swallow her up.

Had she really just preferred Maxwell’s touch to anything ?

She must have taken more hits than she’d thought before practically falling down those stairs.

The world spun around her, then Rebecca was sitting down—she assumed—the cold of the concrete beneath her and at her back while her fingers brushed across the dusty floor littered with bits of plaster and whatever else had fallen through the ceiling during the compound’s attack.

“Now let me have a look at you,” Zida grouched.

The feeling of her wizened old claws poking and prodding and grasping at Rebecca’s body in various vital places felt like she was being picked apart by hundreds of irritated birds.

Rebecca tried to swat them away, but the old healer slapped her hands next.

“Hold still!” Then those claws clamped down onto either side of Rebecca’s head to pull it down toward the healer’s toothless, gummy grimace. Zida looked her over from head to toe, then almost grabbed Rebecca’s wrist but seemed to rethink her decision at the last second.

Instead, she pulled back to fiddle with what looked like an enormous, overstuffed fanny pack clasped about her squat midsection.

“I don’t know what you think you’re up to,” Zida grumbled under her breath, opening flaps and rummaging around in her bag’s contents. “But whatever it is, maybe consider the possibility that now is not the fucking time.”

Rebecca could hardly keep her eyes open, but at least she wasn’t still coughing up her lungs. At least she could breathe. For now.

“What happened to you, anyway?” Zida asked.

“What?” Rebecca rasped.

“Up there.” The old woman grunted, shook her head, and clawed through yet another open pouch of her fanny pack. “With that…thing. You said you’d take care of it, and hey, that’s your business. I don’t do the fighting. I’m just here to clean up after everyone afterwards.”

What was she talking about?

“You sure did take your sweet damn time about it, though, didn’t you?”

Blinking dangerously heavy eyelids, Rebecca tried to put the pieces together of what the old woman was trying to ask, but they simply wouldn’t fit. “I did take care of it. And I kept taking care of it. How…how did you get down here so fast?”

With a snort, Zida finally pulled what she’d been looking for from her pouch and viciously spun the fanny pack around her hip to get it out of the way. “We walked. Much like everyone else, I imagine. Except for the katari, probably.”

“What about all the others?” Rebecca asked, fighting back a groan against the throbbing pain wreaking havoc inside her head. “How’d you…get…past them? ”

“Others?” Zida looked sharply up at Rebecca, her beady little eyes dark and narrow, scrutinizing every bit of movement and emotive twitch in Rebecca’s face.

Not that there was a whole lot going on there. Rebecca was starting to wonder if any of this was real. If she might wake up at any second. Being in a dream right now might have been preferable, but it was still a remarkably dangerous position in which to find herself.

“You hit your head up there or something?” the healer rasped as her clawed fingers dug into the stopper of a small, clear vial clutched in her other hand. “Hmm? I can’t say I know you that well, elf, but I’ve seen enough of you to understand this isn’t it. Whatever got into you doesn’t make any damn sense.”

“You didn’t…” Unable to stop staring at the vial—which from this angle and in the garage’s dim lighting looked entirely empty—and tried to clear the hoarseness out of her voice. “You didn’t see any more of them?”

“You mean those creepy tar-lookin’ fellas with no face and nothing between the legs?” Zida barked out a creaking laugh. “Just the one you said you’d take care of, elf. Plus the pieces of that other one that all tumbled down the stairs before you did. I’m assuming that was you.”

Finally, Rebecca managed to focus her gaze beyond her immediate surroundings—which consisted only of Zida hovering in her face. Almost instantly, she found the pile of lumpy black obstacles piled up at the base of the stairs. The ones that had tripped her.

Now that she thought about it, those glinting pieces did look quite a bit like severed limbs. And a head. And sure, put together four different ways, the rest of it might have been a torso.

Had she really done that to the last homunculus?

“Me too,” she replied absently.

“Oh, yeah? You assume? Normally, I’d call bullshit on that, but right now, you look like you could sneeze without even noticing it.” Zida snorted and finally removed the vial’s stopper with a light pop before thrusting the open glass container under Rebecca’s nose. “You know what? Don’t hurt yourself trying to explain. Just take this.”

Rebecca’s eyes felt like marbles rolling around in her head before she stared at the viable again. “It’s empty—”

“Mouth shut, lungs open, elf,” the healer snapped. “Breathe.”

That was what Rebecca had been trying to do this whole time, and it never should have been this hard. She was about to try explaining this to the old healer jamming an empty vial under her nose, and of course she had to breathe before speaking.

The second she did, a blinding white light blasted through her vision .

It cracked through her skull, searing her brain and her eyes, then surged through her to touch everything between her gaping mouth and her toes.

With a wheeze, she tried to pull away from the vial, though she wasn’t entirely sure she could move her body while the white light remained. Being blinded by a quick sniff didn’t seem much better than being blinded by smoke, either.

The high-pitched ringing in her ears topped it all off as the final accent, and her head felt crushed in and stretched out at the same time.

Rebecca finally drew in a long, gasping breath unobscured by pressure or heaviness or whatever had been trying to kill her. Her eyes flew open, wide and alert.

It felt like she’d just been pumped full of the powerful blue hinwi drink the old-world soldiers of the Hezhkabohr Sentinel had made themselves infamous for ingesting before battle.

Just like them, she was ready as shit now.

A second later, Zida’s crooked yet surprisingly strong hand pressed down on her shoulder a few times.

“That’ll do ya. For now. Because you need your strength, and you’re no use to any of us down here if you’re a damn puddle on the floor. But it’ll wear off, so don’t do anything stupid until I can take another look at you later.”

Taking another brilliantly vibrant, energizing breath, feeling like she’d finally been ripped out of the worst dream ever, Rebecca gazed up at the hunched old healer and cleared her throat. “That’s…really something. Thanks—”

“Don’t thank me yet, elf. That was just a band-aid, and you’ll have to rip it off soon enough. But for now? It’ll probably do.”

Probably?

Despite the healer’s warning, Rebecca felt incredible. She slid her feet beneath her and pushed herself up off the floor, stepping away from the concrete wall at her back with her balance and strength fully restored. “Damn. What was that stuff?”

“Exactly what you needed, apparently.” Zida’s beady black eyes traveled up and down her patient’s body, and she almost smirked. “Better hop to it, then.”

“To what, exactly?”

“I’m guessing that’s what we’re all down here to find out.” Zida backed away, settling her crooked hands on her hips.

Rebecca had only enough time to scan the underground parking garage and take note of what did look like Shade’s entire roster of active operatives and support staff all gathered down here while residual explosions still rocked the compound above .

“Hannigan!” Aldous’s roaring cry blasted across the garage, punctuated by the changeling’s loud, heavy footsteps like those preceding a toddler’s imminent tantrum. “What the hell is going on, and why haven’t you told me yet?”