Page 75 of Elven Shadow

Maybe what she’d heard was only an animal—a cat or raccoon or some giant rodent. Nothing too concerning.

And if it was something else? She could deal with that later.

With her mind made up, Rebecca tossed the first handful of Bloodshadow flames at Boyd’s corpse right in front of her.

The body caught instantly. Her deadly magic consumed it all from the outside in. All identifying physical features, all birthmarks and tattoos, and especially slave brands like those found on a thrall of the Azyyt Ra’al.

The silver fire ate at the all-consuming blackness of his eyes and the streaks of Rebecca’s remnant magic spidering through his flesh. Whatever pieces of himself still remained in this body, whatever bits of residual magic or sliver of soul echo still hung on a little longer after death, all of it was consumed and repurposed by this silver blaze.

She left it to do its work and moved on to her other victims.

As each corpse gave up the last of its essence—the core of what had made these magicals who and what they had been—Rebecca reached for the silver fire, drew it back across the parking lot into her hand, and tossed it at the next body.

More than witnessing the evidence deteriorating in front of her, shefeltthe Bloodshadow flames finishing what she’d sent them out to do. A sensation not unlike finishing a large meal just before becoming too full or chugging down intensely carbonated drinks right before all the bubbles became too much.

When it was time, Rebecca reached toward the silver flames with both hands, and each orb of swirling mercurial fire leapt from the corpses’ remains to shoot straight through the air toward her.

Simply because she found it easier and faster and more satisfying than other methods, she directed both condensing balls of silver fire not toward her hands but into her open mouth.

Their heat mixed with the life-defying frigidity of the magic that had formed them swirled back into her. Filling her breath. Burning her nose. Lighting a different kind of fire inside her as she swallowed it all down.

Then, finally, she returned to herself, full and complete and with zero loose ends.

In under five minutes, she had all five corpses charred and mutilated post-mortem, beyond recognition. Some of them didn’t even look like magicals. One guy looked like nothing more than a pile of blackened, fossilized wood, the thickest of which only vaguely resembled the shape of bones.

That was the whole point.

And now it was time to get the hell out of here.

Eyeing her unfortunate handiwork one final time, Rebecca started to back away from the remains, then finally turned back toward the alley to be on her way.

Then she spun on her dangerously high heels back toward the mouth of the alley and froze.

The tall, dark silhouette of a man standing right there at the alley’s opening, leaning slightly against one corner of the wall with his arms folded, shouldn’t have been there at all.

Not without her seeing it.

Rebecca conjured her more common burst of crackling red battle magic in one hand before growling at the newcomer. The instant flare of crimson light illuminated the stranger at the mouth of the alley.

A stranger who had somehow snuck up on her without Rebecca hearing the damn thing, and that just didn’t happen.

Her light served as more than a warning when it revealed a few more of the man’s features. Most notably those glowing silver eyes he’d chosen to hide from her in the darkness until just now.

Not a stranger at all.

What the hell was Maxwell Hannigan doing here?

“Easy now,” he muttered blandly.

Despite being met with a potential round of battle magic to the face and the fury of one aggravated elf walking a tight line between self-control and obliterating every obstacle in her path, Maxwell sounded remarkably calm.

Helookedcalm too, eyeing her slowly up and down without so much as blinking in the crackling flash of her magic’s light.

The shifter certainly took his time to apprise the whole image—Rebecca covered nearly head to toe in blood and dirt and char marks, all without a single rip to her skirt or tank top and those three-inch stilettos still holding strong beneath her.

“Someone’s been busy…”

Rebecca glared at him. “Someone’s been nosy. Why are you following me?”

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