36. Chapter 36

36

W ell, look at that.

Rebecca didn’t know whether to be flattered by his interest or offended by his complete lack of regard for her personal space. Why couldn’t it be both?

Maxwell Hannigan, Head of Security and her second in command, had a little alpha wolf in him after all.

And she liked it.

Rebecca stared him down as he loomed over her in her armchair, his silver eyes pulsing and his hands clamped down around the chair’s armrests, which creaked in protest beneath the added weight and pressure.

This guy had some real guts. She could give him that.

How much further was he willing to take this broach on her personal space, and his inference of wanting only one thing from her, and his certainty that he would get it one way or the other?

The air practically crackled with the tension between them, and Rebecca struggled between two equally intense urges.

To either shove him away or to jump him right there and call him on his bluff—to make him show her exactly what it was he wanted and meant to take from her.

And a third little voice in the back of her head set off a repeat warning alarm for several reasons, but only one of them blared louder than all the others.

She couldn’t be involved with anyone, no matter what kind of tense, electrifying chemistry flared between them at all the wrong moments.

Beyond that, Maxwell was a shifter, and that was just… Well, it was different.

To make it worse, she didn’t feel at all like herself right now, thanks to her unhealing homunculus wounds and Zida’s quick-fix treatment starting to wear off .

Hopefully, she wouldn’t pass out at any second and end up making Maxwell think it was because of him .

Though if the shifter was so intent on propositioning her like Aldous had, she didn’t think she’d be so closed-off to it this time.

Not from him.

“Only one thing you want from me?” she asked, tilting her head. “And what’s that?”

Maxwell stared her down a moment longer, then snorted as if he’d been trying to hold back a sneeze.

Had he been smelling her again?

“The truth,” he said.

Was that all? Great. Moment ruined, then.

If Rebecca thought there was some pull of attraction here between her and the shifter, she could probably blame it on her current physical state and nothing else.

“Careful what you wish for, Wolfie,” she told him, still loving the way his nostrils flared whenever she called him anything but Maxwell or Hannigan.

Finally, he shoved himself away from the armchair to put more space between them. Though whether he was convinced of her resolve or simply frustrated that she hadn’t given in yet, she couldn’t tell.

“I don’t trust you, elf,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t trust you when you showed up here, and nothing you’ve done since then has changed that. Not even getting this entire task force behind you to lift you all the way up to the top.”

“Huh.” Rebecca wrinkled her nose at him when he turned his back and headed toward the box of non-organic body parts he’d dropped on the floor. “Maybe you didn’t hear me last time, but I did say this isn’t what I wanted, either.”

“I heard you. But we both know how dangerous it is to believe everything you hear.” He picked up the box again and slung it under one arm like it was nothing before turning around to face her one last time. “You’ve been hiding something since the moment you stepped foot in this building, and you’re still hiding something.”

“You can’t convince me I’m the only one here this applies to,” she replied. “All of us with past lives we can’t go back to . So you’re telling me no one’s allowed to have secrets?”

“Not when they interfere with field missions or bring nurúzhe like Hector down on our heads and incite rebellion from the inside. Hey, maybe this was all part of your plan from the beginning to ensure your dirty little secrets stay hidden. Insulate yourself within the entire organization at your disposal, and there’s no one left to question you.”

“Whew.” Slumping back in the armchair again, Rebecca crossed one ankle over the opposite knee and grinned. “That’s quite the imagination you have, Max.”

“No more imaginative than you burning giant rats in an empty parking lot.”

Oh great. He was on to her about all that again too?

“The others believe you’re the best one to lead us after all this,” he continued. “For now. Maybe they’re right. Maybe not. But whatever it is you don’t want me or anyone else to know, I promise you I will find it. And when I do, I’ll be the one who decides where the real threat lies.”

Well, hot damn.

Mr. Hot and Heavy Hannigan really was this serious, wasn’t he?

Rebecca had had her suspicions about him over the last six months, just like he’d had his of her. She had no idea he’d been this intent on doing his job to the letter or even protecting Shade’s other members. He certainly hadn’t seemed as concerned for her welfare whenever they’d been assigned to the same mission team.

She still didn’t believe it. Not completely.

“Well then,” she said, settling her arms on the armrests again, “I guess I’ll just have to take extra precaution to cover up my really heinous crimes. Thanks for the warning.”

With a disgusted sneer, he turned his back on her to head for the door.

This whole time, Rebecca had simply assumed the shifter’s hardcore persona was mostly a show for Aldous’s sake—a role Maxwell had filled in order to keep their psychotic, narcissistic ex-commander happy because Maxwell had answered directly to Aldous.

But no. This was real. He took his job seriously, and his role, and this surprisingly militant protection of the entire organization was clearly a top priority for this guy.

Fine. She could play this game too, if necessary.

As long as it kept Maxwell from digging too deeply into her, she figured she could throw him a bone here and there. Make him feel like he was doing a good job for the organization as a whole and in his quest to discover her secrets without actually letting him get anywhere close.

Despite her rapidly weakening state, Rebecca forced herself up out of the armchair, her legs wobbling beneath her until she commanded them to cut it out and do their job. Then she took a few casual steps across the office and called out to Maxwell one last time before he reached the door.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said .

The shifter paused, his back and shoulders growing rigid at the sound of her voice, but he didn’t turn around to look at her.

“You go ahead and get rid of Hector and his undead constructions however you see fit. Since I don’t have any suggestions for you, whatever you decide is fine by me. I’m sure you’ll do us all proud by keeping your side of the street clean and running smoothly, sticking to protocol while everyone else gets used to this new situation you didn’t even want in the first place.”

That new situation being Rebecca as Shade’s new commander, of course. If she could believe him, they had that much in common, at least. Neither one of them had wanted her to fill Aldous’s old shoes, but that was beyond them both at this point.

The dizziness returned a second later like a physical blow, and she reeled to catch herself just as Maxwell started to turn back toward her. Somehow, she managed to straighten and stand upright when he did, and even the tight smile she flashed him felt real enough to fool him. Hopefully.

Whatever he saw in her expression then, the shifter clearly didn’t like it. With a hissing sigh through clenched teeth, Maxwell whirled away and reached for the door handle.

Rebecca steadied herself on the edge of the desk, fighting not to collapse before he got far enough down the hall that he wouldn’t notice.

She wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep up this “well enough to sit casually on top of a desk” ruse and really hoped Maxwell had filled his daily quota of delivering vague threats to her when it suited him.

Even with her limbs trembling beneath a sudden onslaught of overwhelming fatigue and a heaviness of pressure on her chest, making it hard to breathe, she couldn’t help but appreciate the sight of Maxwell stalking away from her, looking all hot and bothered like that. She wouldn’t mind watching him a little longer, either.

He struggled to open the office door as effectively as he wanted with a box of homunculus parts and Hector stuffed under his arm. When he finally got it open wide enough, the box tilted a little in his arm, shifting its contents, and Rebecca got one final clear view of the top of Hector’s bald, lifeless gray head and the Azyyt Ra’al thrall brand that remained after his lifeforce had long since disappeared.

Not the best reminder of other potential threats she faced in Chicago now, but the information was definitely valuable.

“Leave the door open on your way out,” she called after him just as Maxwell finished slipping into the hall and was about to pull the door shut behind him .

The closing door paused with a grunt from the other side, then Maxwell shoved it back open again, his face already hidden behind the other side of the door.

She wished she could see his face right now, but she also enjoyed imagining his expression when she heard his final aggravated grunt before he did as his commander ordered.

Because now he had to.

If Maxwell really did take his job as Head of Security as seriously as he made it seem, he would do anything Rebecca commanded him to do, because those were the rules he valued above all others.

The simple thought of having that kind of control over any shifter and Maxwell in particular sent a thrilling rush through her. Only now did it fully occur to Rebecca how much he must have despised this new shift in the power dynamic.

He’d disliked her and suspected her from the very beginning, and now there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it, because she’d just become his boss.

Maybe this whole Shade-commander thing wasn’t as bad as she’d originally thought.

And thanks to this latest reminder of Hector Faad’s apparent connection with the Azyyt Ra’al, a few other ideas had already begun to percolate in her mind.

Before the office door finished swinging all the way open, she called out, “Zida.”

Her voice cracked a little at the end, and she swallowed before shaking her head to try clearing it of the dizziness seeping back in like an obnoxious adversary she just couldn’t get rid of.

Kind of like Maxwell, now that she thought about it.

Shuffling footsteps echoed in the hall before Zida appeared in the open doorway, her arms folded over her round midsection.

“You called?” she asked blandly.

“Shut the door.” Rebecca slowly pushed herself off the edge of the desk supporting her.

The second she heard the office door click shut, her wobbly arms gave out, and she staggered forward, her balance completely obliterated by another wave of dizziness and the pounding headache returning.

Now it felt a hell of a lot like she might collapse to her knees and start puking up an empty stomach any second.

“Whoa.” Zida hurried toward her at a snail’s pace, her crooked, stunted legs moving as fast as they could but not quite fast enough .

Rebecca did crash down to one knee before reaching out to slap a hand down on the corner of the desk and hold herself upright. That gave the healer enough time to finish waddling toward her, then Zida’s clawed hands were all over Rebecca, lifting her, tugging her back up to her feet.

“I thought we had you set up in the damn chair.”

Rebecca grunted. “We did.”

“What the hell are you doing climbing around on top of a desk, then?”

“I got bored.”

Zida snickered. “You got cocky. How many times do I have to remind you that no matter how you feel, you’re not actually better?”

Once Zida had helped Rebecca back into the nauseatingly green armchair, Rebecca let her body weight sink against the chair’s frame and closed her eyes with a sigh. “I need another one of those vials.”

“Very funny. I think Hannigan was the last of your new supplicants for the day, so lucky you, I can take you right back to the infirmary now, if you—”

“It wasn’t a joke.” After another long, deep inhale to try to steady her body and her mind, Rebecca opened her eyes, blinked until her vision cleared, and stared at the old healer already scowling at her. “I need another one of those vials.”

“I don’t know about that…” Zida looked her over from head to toe, then tsked. “It’s really not a good idea, kiddo. I’ve probably given you one too many as it is.”

“Are you serious? Just a few hours ago, you were advocating for one more and one more, just to keep me on my toes.”

“I know. But it’s different when you’re practically begging for it.” The next second, Zida’s clawed hands were on Rebecca’s face, tilting her head from side to side. She even pried one eyelid open, presumably for a better look at the elf’s pupils, but Rebecca jerked away from the woman’s grip and her inspection.

“You can’t take it back,” she said. “I get it. These things help. And I need another one, so hand it over.”

“I still don’t think that’s such a great idea,” Zida warned. “Honestly, the things aren’t supposed to be used the way we’ve been using them.”

“What the hell does that even mean?” Rebecca croaked.

“They’re not intended for a stacked effect!” the healer blurted. “Keep using them like this, one right on top of the other, and… Let me just say there’s some serious danger continuing that way, all right?”

Rebecca swallowed a groan. “Like what ?”

“Like dependence, for one. Addiction. Abuse. Like possible body-magic deterioration. Like insanity, for all I fucking know. That’s not what it’s meant for, anyway.”

“No,” Rebecca said, using what little of her strength remained to force as much calm into her voice as she possibly could. “It’s meant to help me do the shit I have to do now . Your words, Healer. Not mine.”

“Yeah, but—”

“So unless you have some other genius plan up your sleeve,” Rebecca continued, “I need you to do your job as Shade’s healer, and right now, the vials are just gonna have to cut it.”

Zida pulled away from her and backed up before squinting at Rebecca with almost as much suspicion Rebecca got from Maxwell every time they looked at each other. “And what happens if I refuse?”

“Well I haven’t given you a direct order yet.” Rebecca sagged against the chair, her eyelids heavier than bricks when she swung her head back up toward the old woman. “Is that really something I need to start doing?”

“Well shit.” Zida spun her fanny pack around her waist again to root around through her supplies on the go.

Good. That was all the answer Rebecca needed.

“And don’t tell anyone, Zida. Okay?”

“Pretty hard to ignore there’s something wrong with you if someone’s looking close enough anyway,” the healer grumbled. “’Cause you look like shit. But you’re the boss now. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Warning taken under consideration. Thanks.” Rebecca flipped her hand over and extended it toward the old daraku, who paused in her urgent rooting around in the fanny pack to shoot her patient an unamused scowl.

“Do you try this hard to be cute all the time?” Zida asked.

Rebecca raised her eyebrows.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” The healer’s crooked hand emerged from her fanny pack before she slapped another clear glass vial that looked just as empty as the previous two down into Rebecca’s open, waiting palm.

Oh, so she’d hand over the meds but couldn’t be bothered to open the damn thing for her patient this time.

Rebecca struggled with the vial’s stopper, had to clasp it between her teeth just to wiggle it out with a sharp squeak and a pop, and even before she fully began to inhale, the healer’s emergency pick-me-up forced its way into her nose and mouth, down her trachea, and into her lungs.

All the color in her vision brightened. The lights flared in intensity while every color and mundane detail of the room around her took on an abnormally pleasant clarity—the kind of vividness threatening on sensory overload.

Even for someone like Rebecca, who’d spent decades purposefully overloading all her senses so she could handle it in a pinch .

Energy and strength and vitality surged through her with the blast of blinding white light illuminating in her vision.

By the Blood, this invisible stuff was like a full-body battery pack.

Sitting up straighter in her chair, Rebecca exhaled, her breath ending in a sigh of relief. “That’s so much better…”

“Yeah, for now ,” Zida quipped. “But you gotta know you can’t keep this up forever. Not like this.”

“You’ve made that perfectly clear already. I’m especially not likely to forget it now.”

“Uh-huh.” Pursing her puckered lips again into a different kind of scowl that could have either been growing annoyance or thinly veiled amusement, Zida spun her bulging fanny pack around her waist again so the bag settled against her lower back.

Then she folded her arms. “Anything else, O’ Roth-Da’al?”

“That’s it for now.” Rebecca didn’t have the energy to respond to the old woman’s biting sarcasm as Zida shuffled toward the door. “Oh, but let me know when security leaves the building with that box.”

Zida turned to look at her over one hunched shoulder and raised a barely-there eyebrow. “You want me to watch a box?”

“The one with all the body parts that refuse to decompose,” Rebecca explained as she clenched and flexed her hands over and over, marveling at the power and strength flowing through them now with another dose of mystery medicine. She knew it was short-lived, but it sure did feel fantastic while it lasted. “The one with all the homunculi parts. And Hector’s.”

“Yeah I figured out which box.” Zida scratched the side of her lumpy head above one enormous pointed ear. “What I’m asking now is why .”

Directing her attention from her hands—both of which held as steady and sure as they had before Rebecca’s injuries—to the old healer’s face, Rebecca tilted her head and didn’t bother trying to hide her sarcasm this time.

She didn’t anticipate a hint of aggression to slide in there along with it just for fun, but that was what happened. “Because I told you to.”

Zida’s eyebrow-barely more than a few thin, scraggly hairs in her advanced age—lifted with a twitch before she pointed at Rebecca. “I’ll give you this one because you’re obviously not at your best. But don’t think that’s gonna work on me after you sort out…whatever this is.”

Rebecca couldn’t help but smirk back at the old woman. “Deal.”

Then the healer waddled back through the office door, muttering to herself and tossing up a crooked hand as if she could just brush away all the elf’s ridiculous quirks with a single wave.

As soon as the door clicked shut again, Rebecca let herself relax .

No need to stay so uptight when there wasn’t anyone here to see it.

Letting loose after a giant shot of magical adrenaline and being on the verge of melting into a puddle of homunculus-induced weakness were two very different things. She definitely preferred the former.

A s Zida had suspected, Maxwell had apparently waited in line for a private audience with the new Roth-Da’al to ensure he was the last one who saw her for the day after the flood of members coming to swear their oaths and smile and shake Rebecca’s hand.

Which meant that now she was up here in what had become her new office practically overnight, with no healer hovering over her and no Head of Security threatening to unearth all her secrets and nothing else to do.

Nothing else but form a plan for her next steps. Given her current state and how badly she needed a remedy for it, those next steps now revolved around exactly what Rebecca had to do next.

More than anything, what she wanted was to get some breathing room and solitude. To slip out of the compound and do what an incredibly strong hunch was telling her needed to be done in order to heal herself.

Unfortunately, it was one of those things that had to be done in secret, with no one else around and absolutely no witnesses, because she needed her Bloodshadow magic to solve the problem of her mystifying new ailment.

Before Hector’s attack on the compound, sneaking out hadn’t been a problem. No one had kept close enough tabs on her for that. No one had really cared.

Of course, after the last time she’d gone out on her own and Maxwell had followed her, trying to catch her in the act of…whatever he thought she was up to, it already would have been more difficult to leave the safety of the compound’s walls on her own.

But now that she’d taken on this new commander gig—now that Maxwell had literally just admitted to harboring multiple suspicions about her, not to mention his recent promise to unearth all her secrets no matter what—slipping out of headquarters unnoticed would be a hell of a lot harder.

Rebecca had to wait until he left to dispose of the Hector-homunculus box. Then she could make her move .

After that, assuming everything went according to plan—and it did where her Bloodshadow magic was concerned—Rebecca wouldn’t need any more of the healer’s fun little sniffy vials ever again.

She just had to get out of here first.

If she didn’t manage to pull this off tonight, she doubted she would ever find the time again.

Then healing herself with Bloodshadow magic where no one in Shade could see it would end up being one of those things that actually was impossible.

Now, she’d been forced into pulling off the impossible, and she intended to see it through.

But at what cost?