Page 4 of Alice Worth and the Elite Death Machine

“Oh, you know, the usual murder and mayhem.” I sighed. “I changed clothes and cleaned myself up with wet wipes, but that stink just clings to everything. Is it really bad?”

“Let’s just say I love you enough to make it bearable, but if you’re going to be talking to anyone else tonight, I’d suggest a hot shower.” Sean kissed my temple. “I wish I could help scrub you clean, but I’m stuck here for at least four more hours.”

“Mmm, that’s a shame. Youaregood at getting me clean. Andsothorough.”

“You know I take pride in my work.” He caressed my rump. “Anything worth doing is worth doing to the full satisfaction of everyone involved.”

Malcolm coughed rather ostentatiously.

“You said you had something for me to look at.” Sean grew serious. “What did you find?”

“Weird shifter trace at a murder scene.” I fished the crystal from my pocket and held it out. “It’s safely contained. If you can’t sense anything, I’ll pull some out.”

Warily, Sean took the crystal. I couldn’t blame him for feeling cautious. We had a documented history of getting crossways with strange magic.

He studied the crystal on his palm, then closed his fist around it and concentrated.

After a few beats, I asked, “Nothing yet?”

He shook his head. “It feels like shifter magic, but you knew that already.” He handed it back.

Carefully, I drew a single tendril of the magic from the crystal and wrapped it around my finger. “It won’t last long,” I warned as I raised my hand for Sean to see better. “Anything now?”

“The color’s certainly different.” Carefully, he touched the trace. It licked at his fingers like a flame, then slid from my hand to his. To my surprise, despite our past misadventures, he didn’t react with either alarm or anger at the magic’s sudden movement. In fact, he seemed to…relax? His reaction had the opposite effect on me, however. What the hell was that magic doing?

The trace dissipated after about ten seconds, which was about five seconds longer than I’d thought it would last. Maybe it had drawn on Sean’s own magic to sustain itself. When it faded, Sean blinked at his hand and rubbed his fingers together, as if surprised to find the trace gone.

“Babe?” I asked. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” He seemed bemused, which was not an emotion I was used to seeing. Nor was I used to watching him try to find words to describe how he felt. “That magic is incredibly powerful,” he said. “Even as a wisp of trace, it felt stronger than my own in some ways. I felt…guarded by it. And comforted.”

“In the way you give our pack members the feeling of protection and comfort?” I asked, puzzled.

“Yes.” His almost eerie calm swiftly gave way to concern that prickled on my skin and through our nascent bond. “Alice, I onlyknow of one type of shifter who might have that kind of magic: afaoladh. The great warrior guardians of shifter-kind.”

I frowned, trying to recall what if anything I knew about thefaoladh. I’d certainly never met one. I could look it up online, but I wanted Sean’s insights.

“Spill the beans,” I said. “What are thefaoladh?”

If I didn’t know better, I would have thought my werewolf was in a little bit of shock. “They’re rare,” he said. “As far as anyone knows, there are no more than several dozen around the world.”

“Why are they so rare?” I asked.

“No one knows for sure. We don’t even know how afaoladhcomes to be, because they don’t seem able to pass their abilities on either genetically or through infection.”

“Natural magic sometimes manifests like that,” Malcolm pointed out. “And rare abilities pop up unexpectedly all the time. Like half the stuff Alice can do, for example. It’s like all these wacky random factors have to come together to make a unicorn.”

That was definitely the first time I’d been compared to the fabled and very deadly one-horned messengers and advisors of the fae courts. A very famous vampire had once referred to me as a chimera—“a bit of this, a bit of that, a bit of something else,” he’d said during a surprise late-night visit to my home. Malcolm being Malcolm, he’d once called me “three badgers in a raincoat.” Of these analogies, I preferred being called a unicorn—beautiful but deadly.

“Okay, so thefaoladhare super rare,” I said. “What else?”

Sean’s expression turned grave. “Their entire existence has one purpose: protecting the weak and vulnerable among shifter-kind. That’s the feeling I recognized of a shield and comfort in their magic.”

“But—?” I prompted.

“But they are fanatical once they find someone in need of protection, and they’ll cut their way through anyone or anything they perceive as a threat. They are faster, stronger, bigger, and even deadlier than most alphas. That’s why they are just about the most dangerous shifters in existence.”

I thought about the demon in the tub and his shredded chainmail leathers. “That does explain some stuff.”

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