Page 99 of Elven Shadow

Two more violent explosions in quick succession burst somewhere behind her on the ground floor. The shockwave didn’t quite make it down the staircase she’d already entered, but the telltale shatter and tinkling of broken glass and flying shards was unmistakable.

Inhaling deeply, Rebecca rolled her shoulders back and continued her descent down the stairs, wanting to rush but forcing herself to carefully pick each step. Mostly because every step was nothing more than a wobbling, unbalanced shuffle, and it wasn’t improving any time soon.

She could only move as quickly as her trembling legs and choked lungs could handle.

Another thick cloud of white plaster dust, flecks of drywall, and bitter white smoke ballooned up toward her from the bottom of the stairwell this time, and Rebecca’s gut lurched.

Smoke billowingupan enclosed staircase wasn’t a particularly good sign under any circumstances. When the entire task force had already fleddownthese stairs to regroup in the garage, that was even worse.

Gritting her teeth, Rebecca pushed herself harder and faster down the stairs. No matter what she did, her failing body refused to pick up the pace. She kept coughing and wobbling, bumping a shoulder or hip against either wall of the staircase.

Her equilibrium was completely shot, and she had no fucking clue how to combat the effects of sucking down the bits of soul a homunculus just didn’t have.

An unbidden wave of vertigo washed over her, and she had to pause with a hand on the wall to steady herself.

How many stairs did this fucking thing have anyway? Where was the bottom?

The voices from the garage grew slightly louder, but she still couldn’t make out any of their words. At least they weren’t all dead down there beneath another explosion before she’d had the chance to join them.

Then something dark moved through the cloying white smoke sifting all around her, above and below, breaking around her body before slinking up the stairs behind her toward freedom.

Not just something dark. A shadow.

Not a normal-looking shadow.

Not a particularly normal shape, either, as the darkness loomed over her by several feet through the smoke and the stink.

But after her previous battles in the last twenty minutes, the shape of that shadow was undoubtedly familiar.

This close to rejoining the entire task force at the bottom of these stairs, Rebecca probably shouldn’t have considered what she was considering right now.

There were too many potential witnesses. Too many variables she couldn’t control. Too many different ways for this whole thing to get fucked sideways and kill them all. Or worse.

But she couldn’t see shit. Everyone else was down below in the garage. Smoke billowed everywhere. She couldn’t breathe.

Plus, it wasn’t like the next homunculus literally coming up the stairs at her was going to just stop and let her pass to give her a break.

Priorities.

Stifling another cough, Rebecca flicked out her clenched fist and slammed it toward the step beneath her feet.

The butt of her materialized Bloodshadow spear cracked against the step and sent a destructive ripple of warning energy down the rest of the staircase.

Then she lifted her chin, gripped the spear with both hands, and summoned the rest of her quickly seeping strength just as the creature’s all-black hand—its palm the size of her head—plunged through the thick veil of acrid white smoke and swirling debris to swipe at Rebecca’s face.

Only at the last second did she realize she’d stopped too far down the stairs and was now too close to leap out of the way.

A shot of icy impotence and immediate dread shot through her body as she struggled to summon more of her magic, but the world around her dimmed, the edges of her vision blurring.

And this time, it might cost her everything.

24

Rebecca’s vision swam as she stumbled down the stairs, her feet barely keeping up beneath her as she bumped between walls. Smoke burned her throat raw with every breath and stung her already blistered lungs. How was she even still alive?

Her arms, shoulders, and chest pulsed with a deep ache she hadn’t felt for hundreds of years. Since she’d first learned what she was truly capable of achieving with her magic. But she couldn’t stop now.

That creature was here in the stairwell with her, hunting her down, trying to root her out. Chasing after something inside her she couldn’t name, just like all the others she’d already fought, each of them stronger, darker, deadlier than the last.

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