Page 60 of Elven Prince

Everyone Shade worked with in a business capacity of any kind was gone, just like that. Taken out in a single day. And the only team who’d had any success at all, no matter how small, was hers.

Bruce was still alive. Her team had seen to that.

Beyond that, though, they had nothing else to go on. Not a single lead to help them track down the sadistic bastards trying to cut Shade off from the rest of their world in Chicago.

They were all alone, with no idea who their biggest enemy truly was and no way to fight back.

The pain of hopelessness and guilt crushing in on her chest made it hard to breathe.

Maxwell approached her in the yard, his scowl deepening. “Did I hear that right?”

Of course the shifter’s hearing picked up their conversation over the phone.

His question didn’t need an answer. They both already knew how bad this was.

“We need to regroup,” she said. “Get back to Headquarters and think this through more carefully than we’ve thought through anything else before now. This couldendus.”

He sighed through his nose, his silver eyes lighting up the darkness. “I know.”

For tonight, at least, their immediate work could come to an end.

But now Shade had a nearly impossible fight ahead of them, with no idea who was responsible for wiping out hundreds of magical civilians’ lives in a single day and no way to accurately prepare an efficient defense. Because they had zero intel on these fuckers.

Time was not on their side.

Rebecca and Maxwell stepped back through the shattered sliding glass door to find Bruce curled up on the one armchair that had escaped the destruction in his living room.

The gnome stared vacantly at the bodies in front of his couch, his eyes glazed over even when he looked up at Rebecca and Maxwell’s approach. “Let me guess. More bad news.”

Neither of them replied. They didn’t have to.

Tig’s footsteps crunching over debris filled the front of the house before he appeared in the living room, looking as crestfallen and discouraged as Rebecca felt.

“Went all the way down to the other end of the street,” he said. “Nothing.”

Rebecca nodded grimly. “We need to wrap this up and get out of here. Debrief the other teams who went out tonight.”

“Any luck for them?” Tig asked.

Rebecca pressed her lips together, still battling with the crushing weight of such an immense failure.

“None of them achieved their objectives,” Maxwell replied instead. “No one but us.”

“Aw, shit…” Tig clenched his eyes shut and grimaced. “That’s… Aw, hell.”

For a moment, the living room stewed in the heavy silence of misfortune and the implications of what every Shade team but one had failed to avert.

Rebecca gazed around the destroyed living room and kicked herself for not having pinpointed the wrongness sooner. “Where’s Lerrick?”

Tig blinked, scanned the room as well, as if the issue hadn’t occurred to him, then looked over his shoulder toward the front of the house. “He was right behind me. When I headed back here to regroup, he was crossing the street right behind me.”

“Dammit,” Maxwell growled.

“He’s gotta be right here,” Tig said, then spun around to hurry toward the front of the house. “Lerrick! What are you doing? We don’t have time to fuck around!”

Rebecca already knew there would be no response.

Another member of her task force had been isolated and picked off, just like Archie.

---