Page 111 of Elven Shadow

Rebecca could have sworn she’d heard vital body parts snapping in the nurúzhe’s grip.

Then again, it could’ve just been wishful thinking.

With a frenzied growl, Hector shoved Aldous backward across the garage, nearly lifting the changeling off his scrabbling, shuffling feet as they both barreled toward the wall beside the staircase landing.

“Sevenyears, Aldous!” he roared. “Seven years doing your bidding. Reporting to this shitheap of an organization.Dirtyingmyself with the constant stench of it. Day in and day out! And I gavedecadesof serving you before that. A lifetime, some might even say.”

Another choke burst from Aldous’s gaping mouth when his back rammed up against the wall. But even if he’d had the presence of mind to speak, that was now impossible.

Still growling, Hector crushed the changeling’s throat between his hand and the wall and lifted upward. That one heave lifted Aldous completely off his feet before Hector pinned him there. The air filled with Aldous’s strangling croaks and the squeaking scuff of his cheap knockoff leather loafers bashing and scraping uselessly against the concrete behind him.

“I dideverythingfor you!” Hector bellowed. “More than you can possibly imagine. And you toss me aside for afucking elf?”

What the fuck?

This was aboutjealousy? About Aldous personally summoning Rebecca to his office the other night to proposition her for a grotesque little one-on-one trade in certain unmentionable favors before assigning her to a suicide mission that would most likely ensure her death, whether she succeeded or failed?

She almost laughed at the realization, but then more movement from several other locations across the garage at once distracted her.

First, Zida lurched away from Rebecca’s side with a rasping, creaking cry before stumbling forward.

Three of Maxwell’s five-man security team moved in, converging around Hector and Aldous with their weapons drawn and lips curled back into snarls, ready for action.

No way… Weretheyin on this too?

Had the security team been in cahoots with the freakish nurúzhe this whole time?

Next came the hollow click of firearms readying to engage.

Hector shot his free hand toward the closest security guy. A ball of roiling, noxious black smoke burst from his gloved fingers and pummeled the first guy in the throat before coiling around his entire neck.

The guy dropped his weapon to claw at his throat with both hands, fighting to tear off the strangling hold where there was nothing but shadow and air and the nurúzhe’s special brand of death magic crushing his airway.

A second later, the guy dropped to his knees, choking and gasping.

Another security guy got off a single fired shot before he too was captured in another strangling chokehold of coiling black shadow and anti-light. Then a third dropped the same way.

Through it all, Hector’s focus remained deviously on Aldous, as if he’d merely lifted his hand to scratch an annoying itch as he squeezed the life out of the master he’d felt had betrayed him.

“You don’t deserveanyof it!” he snarled. “You never have! You don’t even deservethis. But I want to make sure you hear me, Aldous… Everything you built, everything you stood onmyback to achieve for yourself, will be ash by the timeI’m—”

A streaking blur raced across the garage.

Hector sucked in a searing gasp, then arched backward, his head whipping away from Aldous and the wall until his hood started to slip from over his forehead.

Behind him stood Maxwell, pressed so close against the nurúzhe from behind that the back of Hector’s head knocked against the shifter’s right shoulder while Maxwell loomed over him to snarl something in the guy’s ear.

What Rebecca wouldn’t have given in that moment to hear exactly what he’d said.

Then the shifter stepped back, pivoting as he jerked his hand away from Hector’s lower back.

A wet, slicing pop and splatter filled the air as flesh and shards of bone and shredded guts spilled from the enormous hole through Hector’s black hoodie.

A whispering sigh that sounded oddly like relief seeped from Hector’s open mouth before he dropped.

Aldous dropped with him, the soles of his shoes slapping against the ground before his knees buckled and he collapsed against the wall, hacking and wheezing.

The security guys on their knees and clawing at their throats did the same, falling forward under the life-affirming release as Hector’s black smoking chokeholds disappeared in a swarm of gray specks.

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