28. Chapter 28

28

A nother wave of dizziness hit her like a wrecking ball, and Rebecca swayed on her feet again before blinking hazily against the garage’s low lighting.

She was screwed. Completely, utterly screwed.

The one moment it might have benefited her to step up and take charge, and she could barely even stand. She couldn’t even take charge of her own body.

How the hell was she supposed to be any good for the rebellion now?

Someone coughed, which only made the silence of the garage that much more drastic.

Aldous blubbered some more while Zida tended to him, but most of that was clearly just for show. Especially when his gaze settled on Hector’s remains in front of him with a hole punched through them and grimaced.

“Somebody get this piece of scum out of my sight. He’s probably infected with something.”

The operatives didn’t move, and Aldous swatted Zida’s hands aside before sitting up straighter against the wall. “Are you all deaf? Hector’s the one who did all this, so now you need to clean it up!”

“Yeah, sure,” Diego called from the other side of the garage as he stepped forward. “You’re right, Aldous. This place needs a serious overhaul.”

Rebecca steadied herself with a hand against the wall and found Leonard’s face in the crowd. The mage gave her a look that said he wasn’t responsible for what Diego did now.

Neither was Rebecca, though.

“Speaking of cleanup, though…” Diego stopped in the center of the garage and planted his feet, squaring his shoulders directly toward Aldous. “I think it’s time to start with the biggest mess first.”

Then he lowered the muzzle of his rifle directly at the changeling’s head.

Aldous blinked at him, then barked out a laugh. “You’re fucking kidding me. ”

The longest stretch of silence yet was his only response. Then the air filled with the echoing clicks and clacks of weapons being lifted and aimed, of magnetic rounds powering up within their operators’ hands, of safeties disengaging, plus the low hum of several different magical frequencies coming online until they were fully ready to engage with maximum effectiveness.

Rebecca could have laughed at the sight of nearly fifty Shade members all drawing and aiming their weapons at their defunct changeling commander.

The sound was almost music to her ears.

And here she was, thinking this whole time that the rebels had wanted her to get this party started.

How convenient that Diego had decided to finally do something for himself.

Aldous’s giddy laugh broke through the silence, marking his change of awareness. He was an idiot, sure, but he wasn’t so much of an idiot that he didn’t notice something was happening.

“Oh, how cute ,” he said through a sneer, then nodded toward Hector’s corpse. “You think you can finish what he started? Well I’ve got news for you fucktwats. He failed. And I can tell you right now, you’re about to follow in his footsteps.”

“Yeah, but then you’d be wrong,” Diego replied.

All the other rebellious operatives closed in to effectively surround Aldous.

While he was still outrageously outnumbered, Aldous also still had Shade’s Head of Security and his five-man team, all of whom reacted in kind.

Maxwell and his security guys leveled their own weapons at their fellow operatives, spreading out to form a half-circle around Aldous, like they’d been ordered to protect their commander from anything, even if they went down with him in the process.

Knowing Aldous, that probably had been their orders.

And now everyone on the task force faced not only a hostile takeover from within but the surprise of having pitted themselves against Maxwell Hannigan and his men.

Rebecca would have loved to join them, but she could hardly stand.

At least now they all knew whose side Maxwell was really on. She just wished she could have walked up to him and clocked him a good one for being such a rigid moron.

The changeling burst out laughing, though it was tight and stilted and just made him look even more insane. “Then you’re all dead. I can’t believe we’re actually having this conversation. Every single one of you would be nothing without me. You know that, don’t you? ”

He gaped at all of them, and the next time Zida reached toward him for some other form of poking and prodding, he slapped her hands away before finally succeeding in pushing himself to his feet this time.

Another bitter laugh burst from his mouth. “You’re all fucking traitors! Ungrateful little shits. You have no idea what I’ve done to keep this place running. To keep all of you alive!”

“Last I checked,” Nyx shouted, aiming a relatively small device reminiscent of an RPG launcher at the changeling’s head—though in Nyx’s grip it looked three sizes too big for her—“you haven’t done shit.”

Someone laughed, others chimed in, then a few magicals shouted their agreement in wordless cries of encouragement.

“This is bullshit,” Aldous snapped. “And if this is the way you useless piles of shit wanna thank me for all I’ve done for you, fine! You’ve obviously forgotten who you’re up against. Hannigan! Time for you to eliminate the threat.”

Maxwell didn’t move, already frozen in a ready stance of his own as he slowly swept his gaze from one hardened, dedicated rebel’s expression to the next. “Which one?”

Aldous hissed and tossed a hand in the general direction of the entire garage before slumping backward against the wall for support. “How stupid can you get? All of them!”

The shifter’s frown darkened as he assessed his team’s chances of surviving a standoff like this. He did lift a hand to gesture for his five other guys to wait, to hold their fire and not make a move until he told them otherwise.

Rebecca wasn’t entirely convinced he wouldn’t tell them otherwise, but she hadn’t expected him to hesitate, either. That could still mean anything.

“You have your orders, wolf. Take them down! What the fuck is wrong with you?” Aldous screeched, his head whipping wildly in every direction like he expected to see fireworks any second. “Open fire! Don’t forget I own your asses too, morons. And I’m telling you to do as you’re fucking told!”

Maxwell’s glowing silver eyes settled on Rebecca next, that darkness inside him calling to her just like every time he stared at her like this.

If she’d been more herself, she would have fought harder to push it away. To not think about what might be waiting for her if she gave in to that alluring pull emanating from the callous, stony, stuck-up shifter the way it had never emanated from anyone else.

He looked like he was about to attack.

She prepared herself to fight back, if it came to that. The shifter was fast as hell, yes. But very few people, humans or magicals, got to see a Bloodshadow Elf in action, so she couldn’t blame anyone for not already knowing she could match him in speed, strength, and ferocity, should it come to that .

Or, at least, she could when she was at one hundred percent. The way she felt now, Rebecca was operating at more like thirty percent, and that number was steadily dropping. But she’d still give it her damnedest, either way.

All while hoping Maxwell wouldn’t bring it to that, because now that they stood on the verge of an all-out battle in Shade’s underground parking garage, she realized she really had no desire to hurt him. Not the way she’d have to if she and the rest of the task force were to make it out of this alive and without Aldous calling the shots from here on out.

“Hannigan!” Aldous screeched.

“Understood,” the shifter barked, still holding Rebecca’s gaze with those silver-glowing eyes. “I’ll do what I have to do. What I should have done a long time ago.”

Shit. That didn’t sound good.

He really was going to turn against the rest of Shade, wasn’t he? To keep them away from Aldous ? To protect the already decimated status quo?

If she’d ever taken the time to consider giving the shifter a shot, what chances he might have had were gone now.

Despite her failing strength, Rebecca summoned a crackling red orb of battle magic in one hand, her other still pressed against the wall so she wouldn’t fall flat on her face.

Going down here, fighting for something that actually made sense, was better than going down in darkness and obscurity, at least. It wasn’t her first option, but there didn’t seem to be many of those available to her these days.

The task force aiming weapons on Aldous and his security detail held a collective breath, waiting for their Head of Security to make the first move.

With a final nod, Maxwell leapt into action.

Rebecca almost tossed a handful of searing battle magic at the shifter’s face, which she really would have hated to ruin. But her homunculus-induced weakness made her slow, which gave her an extra second to stop herself just in time.

Because at that moment, Maxwell spun around to hover over Aldous, so completely expressionless but for another glint of silver in his glowing eyes as leveled his assault rifle at the sniveling changeling instead.

“Aldous Corriger, you are hereby relieved of your duties as Commander of Shade.”

Before he’d finished that shocking statement, his security team had already pivoted and swung their weapons toward the changeling instead.

Well look at that. A double-double cross.

Aldous was still too busy sneering at the rebels to recognize the last-minute change of plans .

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said with a groan, then tried to shove Maxwell aside with a sweep of his arm. “Then I’ll just have to do it myself—”

Maxwell caught the changeling’s outstretched arm in one hand and pivoted, coming up behind Aldous to yank the guy’s entire arm behind his back. Then he jerked it up at a dangerous angle, snarling.

Aldous screeched and struggled in the shifter’s grasp. He was either too exhausted or too beat up or just too much of a coward to keep it up much longer.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me! I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll kill every last one of you for this! You can’t do this to me! I made you. I fucking own you!”

Rebecca managed a small smile at this rather fortunate turn of events and let the ready battle magic in her hand snuff out. “Obviously not.”

As Maxwell wrenched Aldous’s other hand behind his back to secure them together, everyone else kept their weapons trained on the seething changeling.

Though the tension in the garage was just as thick, Shade’s members were starting to realize how quickly and easily they’d managed to pull this off. Flickering smiles and determined smirks appeared on nearly every face.

It looked like Hector’s jealous frenzy had made this whole thing possible without so much as a drop of blood spilled. Except Hector’s, of course.

Rebecca would have liked to see something a little harder and more metallic secured around Aldous’s wrists than the damn zip ties Maxwell had put on him, but with the entire task force turned against the changeling, he didn’t have a whole lot of options if he did escape.

Then Maxwell spun around with Aldous firmly in his grasp. The changeling missed his footing and dangled by his bound hands behind his back for a moment before the shifter hauled him back up to his feet. “Walk.”

“Where are you going?” Diego asked.

“Locking him up,” Maxwell replied tersely without looking at anyone.

“Wait, wait. No.” Leonard jogged toward the shifter, then paused when he received a warning glare from silver eyes before trailing behind at a slower pace. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“We can take this to a tribunal,” Maxwell said. “Or find someone else who wants to get rid of him just as badly. Then we can wash our hands clean.”

“Hannigan, you don’t get to wash your hands clean if you don’t get ‘em a little dirty first.” Diego power-walked to keep up with the shifter, glanced quickly at Maxwell’s hand and forearm covered in dried blood, and shrugged. “Okay, well maybe you already did, but you know what I mean. We want a permanent solution.”

It was the absolute wrong time for another wave of dizziness to hit Rebecca, but she bore through it to stay on her feet. She wanted to see how the rest of this played out. Plus, it was a distraction from looking down at her own trembling legs.

That wouldn’t exactly have sent the right message to everyone else diligently watching her. She was fine for a little longer. She had to be until they finished with this particular problem and moved on.

Then she could find Zida again in private and ask for some other helpful little magic trick before figuring out how the hell she was supposed to undo what the homunculus had done to her.

A bitter laugh escaped Aldous as he leaned toward her again, his arms still held firmly in Maxwell’s grip behind him.

While their former leader tried to look intimidating and fearsome in zip ties, Rebecca couldn’t help but notice the widening of the shifter’s silver eyes before they narrowed even more into a curious frown that also settled on Rebecca’s face.

At the very least, the shifter wasn’t trying to fight her on this.

With a hiss over his shoulder at the shifter, Aldous moved slowly, glaring at anyone and everyone who looked his way—which was every single one of his former subordinates now as they converged behind him.

If they had to, they would force him into stricter confinement, but they were giving him a chance to live by taking him to the compound’s stockade while they decided what to do with him.

Hopefully not what Maxwell decided to do with him. Hopefully, the rest of the task force would have an opportunity to weigh in on that decision as well, but now clearly wasn’t the time to try it.

It was far more than he deserved, and Aldous clearly did not fully appreciate the opportunity they’d presented him for the final time. His last chance.

Because as he slowly moved across the garage, scowling in every direction, he paused when he reached Rebecca.

She sidestepped to allow him ample room to continue past her, but he leaned toward her anyway, his furious green eyes boring into hers before he hissed, “I told you I would slit your throat, didn’t I?”

She wanted to laugh, maybe even to say something witty and equally spiteful in response.

But then the changeling surprised them all.

If Zida’s fun little sniffing gas hadn’t given Rebecca an extra boost as it climbed another upswing in its effects to sharpen Rebecca’s mind, the next second would have been the end of Rebecca’s Bloodshadow, just like that.

When Aldous tensed his muscles in preparation for his next idiotic move, she saw it with time enough to react.

Barely .

He moved faster than she knew he could. In the blink of an eye, Aldous was free of the zip ties. Considering what he was, someone should have expected it.

Without anyone seeing the slightest movement toward his weapon, it seemed he had a dagger in his hand the second those zip ties popped free to plummet toward the floor.

By then, Rebecca was already moving too.

She leapt away from the changeling snarling at her with a blade in his hand.

Fast enough to keep her throat from being slit the way he clearly wanted but not quite fast enough to avoid the stinging bite of that blade altogether.

A flash of steel and a sharp slice across her left forearm as Aldous followed through with his killing blow that had met almost nothing but air.

That was when the entirety of Shade’s active task force in the garage exploded into a chaotic frenzy—shouting voices, snarling faces, furious outcries, pounding footsteps of someone heading Rebecca’s way, but she didn’t have time to figure out who it was.

She hardly had time to defend herself.

Hissing through clenched teeth, she fired off a shot of crackling red battle magic as more of a reflex to the knife slash along her arm.

The bolt of her magic—which would have punched through Aldous’s chest if she’d been at full capacity—only caught him in the shoulder as he ducked to the side.

Rebecca looked down at her slashed forearm, her other hand automatically clamping down around the wound in response. Even as she did so, it vaguely occurred to her that this wound probably should have hurt more than it did, with or without shock.

And there should have been a hell of a lot more blood than this, right?

Aldous’s vengeful scream shattered her confusion with perfect timing before he leapt at her again, swinging his blade high above his head to bring it down toward her.

Dammit. If she hadn’t had an entire underground organization watching her right now, she could have ended him in the next two seconds.

Instead, she raced forward to meet his next attack in an oncoming rush.

Aldous’s blade swiped through the air toward her. She ducked to avoid such a sloppy move and barreled right into the changeling’s gut instead.

As they both went down, the warbling bursts of echoing voices around her was impossible to tune out.

It was also impossible to interpret as both their bodies thumped against the concrete. Rebecca could have sworn she heard the back of Aldous’s head cracking against the floor, but apparently not hard enough. He was still fighting.

Even if she were capable of picking up on the commands and shouted advice in so many different screaming voices, rolling around on the floor with her would-be murderer and trying not to pass out from the pain in her forearm or anywhere else, she couldn't have put any of those shouted suggestions into play.

It was the perfectly wrong moment for another powerful wave of dizzying weakness and exhaustion to consume her, but it happened anyway. And it left even less room for paying attention to much else.

The silver glint of Aldous’s blade flashed toward her face over and over. She barely managed to avoid it by jerking around in the right direction to save herself from repeated stab wounds.

The next time he brought the blade down, Rebecca raised her twice-injured forearm to block.

Pain exploded through her left arm when Aldous’s knife arm crashed against hers, but it kept him from slitting her throat.

How the son of a bitch managed to overpower her and gain the upper hand, now practically sitting on top of her with the tip of that blade pointed at her face, was anyone’s guess.

The fact that Rebecca was only operating at half her usual strength and combat awareness, if that, made for a convincing reason.

More roars of fury and agitation and bloodthirsty encouragement came from all areas of the garage.

Rebecca found herself staring up into Aldous’s fully green face as he loomed over her, pressing his full weight down on top of her and against her arm trying to block him. Spittle sprayed from his dark-green lips with every exhale. The simple act of bearing down on her with all he had clearly took a lot out of him.

She didn’t think she had much left in her, either.

She was right.

While she struggled to keep Aldous’s glinting dagger from her face, the last of Zida’s energy potion faded before Rebecca could even figure out what was happening.

Darkness overwhelmed her senses—a thick, warm weight of dark oblivion and deep non-existence. It sank down on top of her like a heavy blanket freshly pulled away from drying and warming beside a roaring fire.

Her vision went first. Aldous’s slobbering face grew blurrier and dimmer.

Then came her hearing. Someone else’s voice rose above the rest of the chaos—commanding, powerful, ordering something she couldn’t understand because now everything sounded like she was underwater .

Rebecca thought she might have started to cough, which would most likely be the last thing she ever did now with the tip of Aldous’s blade mere inches from her throat.

Worst timing of her life. There was nothing she could do about it now.

She didn’t even have the energy to fully think this through—that these were her last few struggling moments in this life, and no one was coming to help her.

Of course no one was coming. No one knew her well enough to want to help her.

That was her own damn fault for not letting herself get close to anyone.

Then the entire world around her disappeared. Even the weight of Aldous’s body bearing down on her was gone, and Rebecca faded away beneath it all.

A final image wormed its way into her mind—Zida’s wrinkled, puckered lips forming slow-motion words, followed by a flash of that invisible medicine within the clear glass vial.

“It comes in waves, elf. Just suck it up.”

What an odd memory for her last moment before death…

But the healer’s mystery emergency medicine had better timing than Rebecca’s untimely demise.

Because just then, the next wave hit.