Page 117 of Elven Shadow

Because as he slowly moved across the garage, scowling in every direction, he paused when he reached Rebecca.

She sidestepped to allow him ample room to continue past her, but he leaned toward her anyway, his furious green eyes boring into hers before he hissed, “I told you I would slit your throat, didn’t I?”

She wanted to laugh, maybe even to say something witty and equally spiteful in response.

But then the changeling surprised them all.

If Zida’s fun little sniffing gas hadn’t given Rebecca an extra boost as it climbed another upswing in its effects to sharpen Rebecca’s mind, the next second would have been the end of Rebecca’s Bloodshadow, just like that.

When Aldous tensed his muscles in preparation for his next idiotic move, she saw it with time enough to react.

Barely.

He moved faster than she knew he could. In the blink of an eye, Aldous was free of the zip ties. Considering what he was, someone should have expected it.

Without anyone seeing the slightest movement toward his weapon, it seemed he had a dagger in his hand the second those zip ties popped free to plummet toward the floor.

By then, Rebecca was already moving too.

She leapt away from the changeling snarling at her with a blade in his hand.

Fast enough to keep her throat from being slit the way he clearly wanted but not quite fast enough to avoid the stinging bite of that blade altogether.

A flash of steel and a sharp slice across her left forearm as Aldous followed through with his killing blow that had met almost nothing but air.

That was when the entirety of Shade’s active task force in the garage exploded into a chaotic frenzy—shouting voices, snarling faces, furious outcries, pounding footsteps of someone heading Rebecca’s way, but she didn’t have time to figure out who it was.

She hardly had time to defend herself.

Hissing through clenched teeth, she fired off a shot of crackling red battle magic as more of a reflex to the knife slash along her arm.

The bolt of her magic—which would have punched through Aldous’s chest if she’d been at full capacity—only caught him in the shoulder as he ducked to the side.

Rebecca looked down at her slashed forearm, her other hand automatically clamping down around the wound in response. Even as she did so, it vaguely occurred to her that this wound probably should have hurt more than it did, with or without shock.

And there should have been a hell of a lot more blood than this, right?

Aldous’s vengeful scream shattered her confusion with perfect timing before he leapt at her again, swinging his blade high above his head to bring it down toward her.

Dammit. If she hadn’t had an entire underground organization watching her right now, she could have ended him in the next two seconds.

Instead, she raced forward to meet his next attack in an oncoming rush.

Aldous’s blade swiped through the air toward her. She ducked to avoid such a sloppy move and barreled right into the changeling’s gut instead.

As they both went down, the warbling bursts of echoing voices around her was impossible to tune out.

It was also impossible to interpret as both their bodies thumped against the concrete. Rebecca could have sworn she heard the back of Aldous’s headcracking against the floor, but apparently not hard enough. He was still fighting.

Even if she were capable of picking up on the commands and shouted advice in so many different screaming voices, rolling around on the floor with her would-be murderer and trying not to pass out from the pain in her forearm or anywhere else, she couldn't have put any of those shouted suggestions into play.

It was the perfectly wrong moment for another powerful wave of dizzying weakness and exhaustion to consume her, but it happened anyway. And it left even less room for paying attention to much else.

The silver glint of Aldous’s blade flashed toward her face over and over. She barely managed to avoid it by jerking around in the right direction to save herself from repeated stab wounds.

The next time he brought the blade down, Rebecca raised her twice-injured forearm to block.

Pain exploded through her left arm when Aldous’s knife arm crashed against hers, but it kept him from slitting her throat.

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