Page 181 of Elven Shadow

The monster newly materialized out of the hex doll swarmed through the already smoke-thickened air toward the guy. His sword dropped uselessly into the grass with a muted clang, and he stood there, frozen in terror as the black creature made of light and smoke with glistening pincers the size of a bicycle clacked and snapped soundlessly in his face.

Only when the guy screamed and threw his arms up in front of his himself did the nightmare smoke converge on him to take him to the ground.

Rebecca didn’t stick around long enough to figure out what would happen to him. She really didn’t care.

With the hex doll gripped firmly in one hand, she scrambled to her feet, searched the chaos for Maxwell, and almost instantly found him in a physical struggle with some other enemy soldier swinging a club wrapped in barbed wire at the gray wolf’s snapping jaws.

Gritting her teeth, Rebecca stormed toward their battle and thrust the doll at Maxwell’s opponent and any other enemy stupid enough to get in her way.

The idiot fighting a shifter with a club noticed her arrival and spun toward her with a sneer. The second he caught sight of the hex doll, however, another burst of green light and the old-world casting circle covered in runes erupted in the air right before the doll. The same plume of noxious black cloud emerged and the next second morphed into an enormous, glinting butcher knife hovering midair in front of Mr. Battle Club.

His mouth dropped open, his eyes widened in terror, and his club thumped into the grass while he trembled and stuttered. It took him a second to finally back away from the giant kitchen implement so obviously made of nothing more than light and smoke.

Obvious to Rebecca, at least.

To the soldier, it was clearly very real.

The floating blade jerked toward him as if it meant to stab down from the sky and into his face. Without his weapon, Battle Club went stiff and rigid in terror, like someone had pumped him with an instant paralytic.

A vicious snarl cut through the air before the shaggy gray wolf leapt at his would-be attacker. When his enormous weight and power hit the soldier next, Maxwell took the guy to the ground and gutted him right there with two vicious snaps of his powerful jaws and a wrenching twist of that enormous wolf’s head.

Rebecca shot a bemused glance at the hex doll in her hand, the floating old-world casting circle now gone from the air in front of it.

Apparently, she was the proud new owner of a handy fear-generator. Or something. She’d have to figure out the specifics later.

With a disruptive snarl, Maxwell ripped his head away from his victim’s remains, his muzzle and the front of his thick gray pelt already matted with blood. His next low growl was aimed at Rebecca this time before the wolf turned back toward the open front doors of the prison.

Like he meant to pick up where he’d left off and head inside anyway for a suicidal rescue attempt.

Fuck that.

Before he could take off for the building, Rebecca leapt in front of him and brandished the hex doll at the giant wolf preparing to leap.

“Don’t even think about it,” she hissed, not wanting to catch anyone else’s attention in the yard if it wasn’t necessary.

She waited for some newly conjured fear to emerge from the hex doll for Maxwell, but even with the swirling green casting circle in the air and all those powerful old-world runes doing their magical thing in front of him, nothing seeped out of the trinket to prey on the shifter’s fears.

Absolutely nothing at all.

Huh, maybe she just had to be a wolf to see his fear.

“We have to go,” she snapped, her patience with him nearly gone. “I swear, if you step inside that building, I’m not coming in after you.”

The wolf backed away from her by several steps, growling and snarling, his fangs bared at Rebecca while a row of thick, bristling hackles rose along his spine and his silver eyes pulsed.

Was he about to attackhernow?

If that had been Maxwell Hannigan’s plan all along, now would have been the perfect time for it. The rest of Shade would never know, and whowouldn’tbelieve their Head of Security when he brought back some made-up story about their new commander’s demise?

But then the wolf’s demeanor changed. He crouched even lower, let out a low whine before his silver eyes flickered up to meet Rebecca’s gaze, then he turned and bounded away from her toward the eastern side of the prison where Rebecca had cut her way through the fence.

She had to assume that was the same entrance through which Maxwell had followed her here.

With a frustrated hiss, she took off after him, heading around the side of the prison sheltered in almost complete darkness now while the rest of the yard flailed in perpetual chaos, the alarm wailed, and Harkennr’s forces couldn’t figure out what the hell had just happened.

A brilliant, blinding flash erupted in the corner of her vision.

The searchlight.

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