Page 11 of Elven Shadow

Rebecca had used a kind of magic no one else in Shade had seen and couldn’t verify, all to keep the team from killing themselves over a new, last-minute plan almost as terrible as Aldous’s. The team would just have to get over it and deal.

The time for debating the reality of it came to an end when a low, multi-toned hum echoed across the parking lot, punctuated by Aldous’s reverberating footsteps coming to a slow halt.

“What’s that?” Leonard asked.

The rest of the team seemed to notice the new sound all at once. Everyone turned away from their haphazard huddle to face the front of the apartment building.

Which now glowed with a solid neon-yellow light, fuzzy around the edges but quickly clarifying and building in intensity as it also grew in size, moving its perimeter slowly away from the building’s edges to encompass more space.

“Looks like they’re planning something,” the mage added, tilting his head.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Diego snapped. “What the hell kinda—”

Aldous’s next bellow cut him off, reverberating through the parking lot.

The low hum of the griybreki gang’s wards rose in pitch as the energy of their magical shield just kept growing.

No breach point, no, but it looked like Aldous was about to make one for them.

Based on what Rebecca knew of similar technically advanced wards, anything that came at that field of energy from the outside wouldn’t last longer than a second before being repurposed into a steaming pile of blood and guts. Maybe ash, if they were lucky.

Judging by the astounding speed with which Aldous the hulking, brainless beast now took off straight for the front of the building—with none of his team in position to stop him—Rebecca realized they had just run out of time.

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She couldn’t turn back the clock, and nobody else could possibly move fast enough to avert the oncoming disaster.

But Rebecca tried anyway, throwing a finger in Aldous’s direction as the last second ticked. “Stop him!”

Only once the last-minute cry had left her lips did she realize she probably should’ve been more specific.

Several things happened all at once, every action executed in a perfect synchronicity of chaotic self-preservation.

Aldous let out another deafening bellow, thick strings of spittle spewing from his open mouth as he swung back a fist the size of an oven.

Nyx leapt toward Titus and slapped her tiny purple hands down onto his bulky shoulder before they both disappeared with a pop and a crackle of static electricity colored purple.

Leonard turned away from the group and sprinted in the opposite direction, briefly looking back over his shoulder every few steps.

Diego looked up from beneath the wide, dark brim of his hat, his eyes flashing with crimson light just a few shades darker than their normal blood-red glow. He reached out with both hands toward the front of the building, sending violently lashing whips of dark-red magic spewing from his outstretched fingers as he raced forward.

All Rebecca noticed of Maxwell’s reaction was a low snarl, but then the shifter had disappeared almost in the blink of an eye.

Towing an otherwise impossibly heavy bit of cargo like Titus, Nyx burst back into existence directly in front of the apartment building’s glass double doors.

Titus stumbled to catch his balance after being desperately teleported across the parking lot and had no more time than that to prepare for the blow swinging straight for his head.

Aldous’s hulking green fist connected with the side of Titus’s shaved dome with an almighty crack.

Nyx shrieked and darted out of the way to avoid the physical blowback.

The vuulbor didn’t move beneath Aldous’s brainless fury while the changeling’s fist came down into Titus’s face instead of the front doors of the apartment building.

But that was no longer the team’s only concern.

Aldous bellowed in range at having been thwarted by one of his own.

At the same moment, the double doors of the apartment building’s front entrance swung open on their own with a burst of neon-yellow light strobing across the parking lot and a bellow of multi-toned, reverberating battle cries coming from inside the building.

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