Page 66 of Elven Lies

The scurrying patter of more than one pair of feet clicking across the marble floor. The whisper of swiftly moving air shoved aside before the telltale click of a door latching shut in its frame. The static crackle and hiss of conjured magic behind her from across the room.

The blazing blue glow of both the key and its matching door filling her vision morphed and darkened into a muddy flicker of yellow-brown while Rebecca’s shadow across the door shrank with astounding speed.

All of these things Rebecca noticed in the space between seconds. Then the bolts of muddy-brown light hurtling acrossthe lobby crashed into the blue-glowing vault door with an explosion of sparks and a blistering crackle.

Right where her head would have been if she hadn’t bent over to retrieve the hex doll.

Then time picked up into full speed again.

Rebecca whirled around to see two leering orcs lumbering toward her, each with a new volley of yellow-brown battle magic crackling at their fingertips.

The next attack careened straight for her head again, but she stepped aside and cleanly avoided the energetic strike. It too crashed into the door behind her, sparked, hissed, and fizzled out.

Rowan cocked his head, looking entirely unconcerned. “Friends of yours?”

She shot him a deadpan look. “Very funny.”

The orcs were halfway across the room, racing over the golden circle in the center of the marble floors and preparing to sling more attacks without even bothering to ask questions first.

Why the hell were she and Rowan being attackedhere,at a private Nexus facility, just the two of them? They hadn’t even done anything yet.

But she did have Aldous’s key…

Oh, shit. There was the problem, right there.

“Dammit,” Rebecca hissed and slipped the key back into her pocket to keep from losing it.

Rowan tossed a volley of golden-yellow light back at the orcs, who scattered away from the blast before reconverging toward them. Then he turned his frown onto Rebecca. “I’d hardly call these lumbering buffoons opponents worthy of that sort of reaction.”

“I don’t disagree with you!” she shouted over the next attack, which went absurdly far to her left before bashing into the wall.

“Then why do you sound soupset?”

“Because Iknewsomething like this was bound to happen!” She dodged the next blast from the larger orc before summoning a churning orb of crimson battle magic in her palm.

But she’d miscalculated how much distance the smaller orc had already covered in his mad charge and saw his admittedly impressive fireball careening toward her at the last second.

Rebecca pivoted to the side, lost her balance on a pile of wall plaster that had crumbled to the marble floor in the attack, and her weight-bearing foot slid out from under her.

With a shout of surprise, she threw both arms out to the side to balance herself and staggered backward against the glowing door with a thump. At least she didn’t hit the marble. That was a plus.

The relief of realizing she’d caught herself in time made her puff out a sigh before she realized how suspiciously silent the level-five lobby had suddenly become. She paused, hoping the cause of the instant ceasefire wasn’t also an immediate threat to her and Rowan at the same time.

But when she looked back across level five to prepare herself, what she saw didn’t even make sense.

Both orcs had frozen in their pursuit across the circular room. The first stood stock-still, his body rigid and trembling as his orange eyes bulged from his head. The other cowered in a rounded crouch beside his associate, both arms thrown up over his head for protection while he blubbered unintelligibly, gasping and twitching at sounds and shadows only he could see.

Then Rebecca saw the smoke.

A mass of silver-gray mist hovering over both attackers. The first took the shape of a particularly fearsome-looking orc woman, her smokey mouth moving rapidly as she screamed at her target with soundless words. The second looked like a giant bird’s nest until one of what at first looked like eggs leaped away from the larger mass toward the orc cowering beside his buddy.

A single silver-gray rabbit made of smoke, terrifying the crouching orc even further as it hopped away from its den and through the air toward him.

Well damn.

The doll.

Rebecca glanced at her hand, thrown out against the glowing door to stabilize herself, and realized what she’d done.

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