Page 67 of Elven Shadow

Their leader Boyd had approached the silently terrified woman dangling mid-air, and now he held the unknown object away from his face and toward his apparent victim. “Quit dicking around. I said get rid of her.”

When all the other weirdly dressed criminal buffoons turned to look at her again, Rebecca let a quick smirk flicker across her lips as she jerked her head up at the group in a silent challenge.

Five hyped-up hotheads fighting in an alley over the same human caught in their trap. This was more like it.

Somuch better than a terrified guy in a ski mask who couldn’t hold still long enough to aim correctly.

“Well?”

The troll stepped toward her first, clearly determined to get it this time with the same attack launched at the same target.

Rebecca sidestepped his second launched blast of crackling blue light, then pivoted and spun away from the bolts of crackling bright-green light striking toward her from the warlock. The blast snapped at her three-inch stilettos, then another, and another.

Each magical bolt cracked again and again into the asphalt at her feet, all of them a second too late because Rebecca was already way ahead of them.

“What are you doing? Fuckingdancingwith her?” Boyd roared, simultaneously focusing on the hovering woman as he began some spell requiring an impressive number of complicated gestures with his free hand. “We got shit to do! Move it!”

The Cruorcian’s third crony stepped forward to join the other too, most of his face hidden beneath the shadows of a dark-gray fedora that looked way too big for his head and proportionately his entire body.

Rebecca noticed him moving toward her as she sent her own flares of bursting red battle magic toward the others, not really trying to hit them. More than anything, she was grateful for the opportunity to get in a little exercise while she could.

That distracted her just enough from checking out the details of any of these other guys following Boyd’s orders before the dude in the fedora stepped up to the firing line and tilted his head slightly back.

The devious glow of crimson light in his two blazing red eyes illuminated the rest of his face a split second before he launched his blood magic into the fray and directly at her.

Rebecca shot off her last blast of bright-red battle magic a split second too late and only managed to block the first crack of the Cruorcian’s blood-magic coils lashing against her forearm.

The instant crack of his power against her bare flesh echoed across the parking lot with another burst of red light. Then the Cruorcian pulled his arm back, and his coiling tendrils retracted into his hand again.

Rebecca staggered off balance, more surprised by the packed punch of his attack than hurt by it. With a hiss of her own through clenched teeth, she grabbed her left wrist below where the Cruorcian had hit her and briefly studied the raw, red ring of seared flesh forming a damn near complete circle.

“That was just a warning,” the troll in the nasty corduroy suit shouted before sniggering with his buddies. “Now’s your chance to turn around and walk away, toots! Maybe you’ll use that pretty head of yours next time and think about what you’re doing before you jump into somebody else’s game without an invitation.”

She couldn’t help it. Rebecca barked out a laugh and hovered her other hand over the circle of seared flesh around her wrist.

Ruddy golden-orange light bloomed in her open palm. She swiped it slowly up her wrist and forearm, her magic darkening and deepening into a blood-red thicker than the Cruorcian’s most powerful abilities.

Gritting her teeth, she looked up at the four stunned criminals and one Cruorcian currently ignoring her in lieu of casting some other spell on the human.

All four of these dipshits stared at Rebecca’s arm as she finished passing her hand over it. Their eyes widened when the seared ring of flesh on her wrist blackened completely, shriveling under her own magic like so much charred meat burnt to a crisp over a spit.

The pain of her healing magic was all part of her birthright. It was nothing new.

After where she’d come from and what she’d done just to get to this point, the pain didn’t mean a thing.

But the surprise and confusion on these idiots’ faces, followed by realization as the facts clicked into place and then terror as they realized what a massive shitstorm they’d just walked into, was satisfying enough. Rebecca probably wouldn’t have felt her whole arm getting hacked off at the elbow at that point, if it had been necessary.

It wasn’t.

The blackened ring of her skin burst apart, huge flakes of charred, dead flesh peeling away from the rest of her to float off across the parking lot in the next breeze.

Then she raised her eyebrows and grinned. “Touché.”

“What the fuck?”

“Uh…Boyd?” the troll asked. “We, uh…we might have—”

“I don’t give a shit,” Boyd snarled. Sweat gleamed on his forehead as he continued the complicated hand gestures of his fancy spell. A round seal of sickly green-yellow light grew darker in a summoned casting circle between him and the floating human woman. “Just take care of it!”

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