Page 22 of Elven Shadow

“Leonard?” she squeaked. “Maybe we should talk about this somewhere more—”

“No, I’m done talking! I’m done trying to doanything. I kept thinking there was something I could’ve done to make shit better. After that last op went so fucking sideways with the bishta’al swarm, I swore I’d speak up the next time. That I’dsaysomething. And I did!” He pointed at the katari. “Youheard me. I know you heard me. We got to that fucking parking lot, and I asked him, ‘What about a Plan B?’ Right? Didn’t I?”

“You definitely asked him,” Nyx murmured, shooting her wary gaze around the room again as she stepped toward him. “I heard you. We all heard you. You’re not losing your mind, Leonard, I promise. Maybe you’re just…I don’t know. Are you hungry? Maybe Bor still has something in the—”

“I asked becausewhatifsomething went wrong, you know?” Leonard continued, oblivious to both her discomfort and her attempts to pull them away from the center of the room. “And he almost ripped my fucking head off for even bringing it up! LikeIwas the fucking idiot. Andnowlook at us! I’m all torn up. I don’t know what the hell kinda shape Diego’s in. Titus is out like a fucking light. Our biggest guy. And you?”

He tossed a hand toward Nyx this time, looking her up and down. “Hell, I have noideahow you’re doing, ‘cause I haven’t even asked! Jesus, I’ve just been standing here, bitching at you the whole time. What kinda assholedoesthat?”

“The kind who sounds like he still wants the boss to rip his head off, the way he keeps whining about shit.”

The low, grumbling voice came from the far side of the common room, opposite the hallway leading to Shade’s industrial-sized kitchen and closest to the side of the building housing both Zida’s makeshift infirmary and the ground-floor levels of Shade’s armory full of basic weaponry, kits, and various paraphernalia.

The irony of that placement certainly wasn’t lost on Rebecca.

Nyx, Leonard, and half the other Shade members in the common room turned to fix the new speaker with vacant gazes and gaping mouths.

“Hector,” Leonard breathed. “When did you—”

“Just got in.”

The nurúzhe sitting in a simple wooden chair pulled from an antique dining set wore baggy jeans over enormous sneakers and an even baggier hoodie that hid his full form. The hood pulled up over his head enshrouded his entire face in darkness. The guy even wore a pair of full-length black leather gloves at all times to complete his full-body cover-up ensemble.

The only features distinguishing him from an overstuffed scarecrow were his raspy, gravelly voice and the cold stare of all-black eyes glowing within the darkness of his hood—either no pupil or all pupil. Hard to tell.

How his eyes had become that way was anyone’s guess, though Rebecca figured it probably had something to do with all the death magic.

“And imagine my surprise when I came home,” he continued, “after all this time, only to hearthisshit bouncing around the walls. Sounds like y’all seriously fucked up this time.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leonard snapped back.

“I know what I’ve heard so far,” Hector rasped, the rest of his form perfectly still as he slowly folded his arms in the chair. “Sounds like the whole damn lot of you couldn’t figure out how to get your hands on one fucking target—”

“I thought I heard bullshit spewing from over here.” Diego rounded the corner from the hallway, presumably having come straight from Zida’s infirmary. He stopped right beside Hector sitting perfectly motionless and damn near invisible in his chair and glared at the guy. “Not really the right time to make those kinds of accusations, don’t you think?”

Hector looked the Cruorcian up and down—or at least that was the given impression as his head moved slightly and the weirdly inexplicable glow of his all-black eyes shifted positions. Then he lifted both gloved hands and wiggled his fingers encased in black leather. “Not really anaccusation, though, is it?”

Diego looked down at his own fingers, most of which had been wrapped in fresh bandages to protect whatever healing sludge Zida had drenched them in, then quickly folded his arms. “You can say whatever you want, dipshit. You weren’t there. Probably couldn’t’ve handled half the shit we managed tonight,but I guess we’ll never know. You keep disappearing whenever the fuck you feel like it, and I can’t remember the last time you pulled your own weight around here.”

A little chuckle escaped the thick black shadow filling the inside of Hector’s hood. “Right. Idoknow I wouldn’t have fucked it up so badly that I put the damn head of this rusty old machine in a fuckingcoma…”

Murmurs of surprise, doubt, and suspicion echoed around the common room after that one simple statement meant to incite a whole hell of a lot more.

Even Diego looked horrified by the fact that anyone would claim a Shade team had taken their leader out for the count, especially when the full details of their last mission debrief hadn’t officially been released to the rest of the task force.

Probably because Aldous hadn’t regained consciousness yet, but that part didn’t matter.

The fact that Hector openly discussed it now was bad enough.

Then the side conversations burst out among the other members standing or sitting together in pockets of three and fours.

“Wait, is that really where he is?”

“What the fuck happened out there, huh?”

“We’re screwed. Totally screwed. If word gets out about this…”

From her casual seat on the old couch, Rebecca watched and listened and didn’t say a word. It took a surprising amount of willpower not to open her mouth to deliver a few well-earned observations of her own.

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