Page 61 of Elven Shadow

The hard part was finding a dark, quiet place in the middle of Chicago where the real Rebecca Bloodshadow couldbealone long enough to keep from losing her mind.

Where everything she’d buried deep inside could break free, unseen, unobstructed.

Otherwise, there would be no hiding the monster lurking beneath the surface.

15

Onceshe snuck out through the compound’s underground parking garage, with no echo of footsteps pounding after her and no security alarm sounding at her exit, everything changed.

Like some switch inside her she hadn’t known existed just…flipped on.

Time and space ceased to exist. Everything else in her awareness boiled down to herneed—the palpable urge to get out, to start the hunt, to make things right within herself so she could be the elf everyone else saw.

The elf everyone else needed her to be right now, without abandoning who she truly was in service to it.

Rebecca couldn’t even have said she remembered what she did or saw or where she went between leaving the compound and stopping where she ended up.

As if all the years of pretending—of running, of hiding, of stuffing her true self down into a little black box in the corner of her existence, welded shut and sealed over again with the strongest wards just for good measure—had finally taken their toll.

Where Rebecca Bloodshadow’s reality overpowered all others, and the rest of the world moved past and throughherinstead of the other way around.

She slipped through shadows as if they sustained her, feeding her power without satiating her hunger on her way out.

She crossed streets as if they were empty, not stopping or slowing for anyone.

She didn’t notice the few cars zipping down the city streets even at this time of night.

One or two of them barely caught sight of her in the semi-darkness before she stepped into a puddle of lamplight or the clouds parted just enough for a brighter sliver of moonlight to illuminate the young-looking blonde woman dressed in all black walking through the streets of Chicago.

The same woman who didn’t even blink at the prospect of turning down some of the darker, more reputedly dangerous side streets and alleys.

The kind of woman who, if anyone had bothered to watch her from beginning to end throughout the night, would have instantly looked far less scared, undoubtedly less intimidated, and a whole hell of a lot more eager to move down those dangerous side streets and alleys than one normally would have expected.

To put it bluntly, Rebecca went out looking for trouble without truly knowing she was looking for trouble.

Because right now, unexpected trouble she found on her own was the only kind she could successfully handle.

It wouldn’t jeopardize her anonymity. It wouldn’t obliterate the inherent safety she’d built for herself in hiding who and what she really was—from Shade, from Corpus before them, from the Eastern Hold before that, and a long line of other magical groups, teams, and organizations over many decades.

In a city like Chicago, there was plenty of trouble to go around. More than enough for everyone to get a little piece.

The first bit came upon her unexpectedly and without warning, and it wasn’t even technicallyhers.

Just a simple mugging. One human woman cornered in an alley. One asshole hiding his face behind a full-coverage ski mask.

And one fully loaded handgun lifted and outstretched toward the blubbering woman’s terrified face.

“P-p-please,” she stammered, shrieking as her attacker stepped toward her. “Take whatever you want. E-everything I have on me is yours. Just…p-please don’t…”

“Shut up!” Snarling, Ski Mask thrust his weapon closer to his victim’s face, though his foot-to-foot shuffling made him momentarily back away from her instead.

Swimming in a glassy haze, his wide eyes flickered back and forth between the woman’s petrified expression and the ridiculously large handbag hanging from her shoulder by matching leather straps. “Take out your wallet.”

“S-sure. Fine. H-here…” The straps fell off her shoulder, and she practically shoved her purse into the man’s arms. “Just take all of it. Please. I don’t even care. I j-just—”

“I told you to take out your wallet, bitch! You gotta make this harder for both of us? Pull out your fucking wallet!”

With a terrified squeak, the woman jumped under his hasty shout, gasping the whole time as her trembling fingers struggled to undo the very simple clasp holding together both edges of her purse.

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