Elven Lies (Court of Rebellion #3)

20. Chapter 20

20

A nother tremble raced through the floor beneath them. Rebecca stilled her breath, all her senses on high alert now for whatever might be waiting for them when they arrived at the level-five vaults.

If someone else knew they were coming, this key might prove a lot more trouble than she’d anticipated. If someone was waiting for her, how the hell did they even know she’d be here in the first place?

A low buzz rose through the darkness all around them. Then, one by one in quick succession, the lights flickered back on.

“Whoa,” Rowan said through an airy chuckle. “That’s some system, all right.”

“At least we’re on the right level,” Rebecca muttered, staring at the large metallic number five mounted on the wall in front of them in the same silver lettering as the Nexus sign over the building.

“Definitely a plus,” he said. “Wait, you’ve broken into one of these things before without a key?”

“Yep.” Rebecca scanned the next much smaller lobby they’d entered but found no sign of company.

“How is that even possible?”

She shot Rowan a sidelong glance. “I told you. Trade secret.”

“Some trade you were in. Múrg dah’lás .”

“We’re almost there.” Rebecca stepped out of the golden circle painted on the marble floor, which remained the same while everything else around them had changed. “Don’t go wandering off. If you get lost, I’m not stopping to look for you.”

“I would expect nothing less.”

The level-five lobby was quite a bit smaller, though it boasted the same decor as the entrance. The biggest difference, however, was that level five, just like every other level of a Nexus facility, had plenty more than one set of doors. None of them could be used to enter or exit the building.

Once fully out of the circle, Rebecca approached the closest door—a scratched-up slab of dark, well-oiled wood with a silver handle that matched all the others on level five. She stopped two feet away from it for a moment, then moved on to the next.

She did the same with four more doors around the circular room while Rowan trailed along after her, blessedly silent, until he couldn’t help himself any longer.

“How do you know which one you’re looking for?” he asked. “They’re all exactly the same.”

“Like I said, it’s easy if you have a key. Finding your way around Nexus vault without one is just a little more complicated. Naturally.”

“Naturally,” he said with a chuckle. “But don’t worry, I won’t infringe on trade secrets. Unless you wanna share some stories about how you—”

“Nope.”

“No. Right. Of course not.”

When Rebecca approached the sixth door around the room’s perimeter, a faint blue light flickered around the silver handle first. With every step closer, the blue light intensified and spread across the door until she stood directly in front of it, the entire thing had lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Oh, okay .” Rowan nodded and wagged a finger at the glowing door. “Very clever.”

“It’s supposed to deter theft and unlawful entry,” Rebecca muttered.

“But not if you stole somebody’s key.”

She frowned at him. “I didn’t. This one fell out of the desk that used to belong to someone else and now belongs to me. So does the key. Technically.”

“I guess you just better hope that Aldo guy didn’t write up a will that hands it all off to someone else before he kicked the bucket.”

“Since when do you know anything about Earthside laws and wills?”

Rowan shrugged. “Picked up a bit of light reading during my travels too. Humans really care about their stuff in this world. If you ask me, Xahar’áhsh could learn a thing or two about the—”

“Stop,” she muttered, taking a small step backward away from the door.

“No, I’m serious,” Rowan continued. “When it comes to inheritance on any real large scale—”

“Rowan, shut up,” Rebecca hissed and turned to scan the rest of level five.

“Aw, don’t get all old-school on me now . After all you’ve done to buck tradition and turn everything we know and love on its head, you’re the last person to care about changing the old laws for—”

Rebecca lunged toward him and clapped a hand over his mouth before whispering, “Just shut up for two seconds.”

His hazel eyes widened at her, and she felt a smile blooming on his lips beneath her hand.

The seconds passed in tense awareness as she scrutinized the level-five lobby. It wasn’t big enough to hide anyone else in here with them, but she could have sworn she’d felt something…

No one revealed themselves. She didn’t hear a thing.

So she slowly removed her hand from Rowan’s mouth and absently wiped her palm on the leg of her jeans.

He grinned at her. “I would love to know what that was about.”

“I thought I heard something.”

“Oh, yeah?” He turned casually around to survey the luxuriously furnished lobby, his grin unchanged. “Well did you, or didn’t you?”

“I guess not.” Rebecca’s gaze flickered back and forth between every piece of tastefully matching furniture and toward every other door on level five. “Could just be something in the building.”

“ Or you’re just so tightly wound, even an empty room feels like a threat. Seriously, Kilda’ari , when was the last time you took a vacation?”

Rebecca’s frown darkened. “What?”

“A vacation . You know… A day off? A chance to chill out and leave all your worries and responsibilities behind? I mean a real one too. Not just literally running away and never coming back. I’m talking room service, a day at the spa, elite-status treatment…”

With a wry chuckle, she approached the door again. Once more, the blue glow around it intensified with every step closer. “That hasn’t been on my priority list for a while.”

“That’s exactly my point. Here you are, following leads and questioning key-makers and hunting down private storage vaults in the middle of human cities. Now you’re hearing things when there’s nothing there. Hell, don’t tell me the Roth-Da’al doesn’t deserve a little me-time now and then. I know I haven’t been around that long, but even I can see you’ve earned it.”

Rebecca paused with her hand in her jacket pocket and smirked at him over her shoulder. “That was a rather selfless suggestion.”

Rowan shrugged. “Just a thought. One that clearly hasn’t occurred to you.”

“And I suppose next you’re gonna tell me the perfect me-time vacation would be a glorious getaway to Agn’a Tha’ros?”

“Ha. No way. You and I both know how brutal things are there. Not relaxing-vacation material.”

With her smiles coming a little easier now and her tension releasing enough for her to appreciate his recommendation, Rebecca began to pull the key from her jacket pocket. “Does this mean you’ve given up on convincing me to go back?”

“Nope. I’ve just switched to convincing you you need a vacation.” He spread his arms. “Those are two totally different things. One has nothing to do with the other.”

“Silly me.” Rebecca almost let herself laugh, but she stopped when the key snagged on something in her pocket. Frowning, she gave it a gentle tug, but it wouldn’t come out.

Rowan leaned toward her, peering at her jacket pocket. “You forget why we’re here?”

“No. It’s just caught on…” She tugged harder, the snag broke free, then she had the key in her hand, its intense blue glow matching the door and filling her entire line of vision. Something else toppled to the floor beside her—a soft weight dropping against the side of her boot before it hit the marble.

“What’s that?” Rowan pointed toward the ground at her feet, then Rebecca huffed out a laugh when she found what he was talking about.

“Whoops. I forgot I still had this with me.”

Only then did it occur to her that she didn’t remember feeling the magical burlap-sack doll filled with old-world magic in her jacket pocket for some time. As it now lay on the floor at her feet, though, she’d obviously been walking around with it in her pocket for days.

After using it the night she and Maxwell had infiltrated the prison yard at Harkennr’s compound before the whole thing went belly-up in a chaotic firefight.

Had it really been that long?

“That’s not an answer, though,” Rowan said, his gaze glued to the doll. “What is it?”

“I honestly don’t know yet. But I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually.” She bent forward, reaching for the hex doll with her free hand while the key in her other hand glowed even brighter beside the door to which it belonged.

She couldn’t have known that hex doll sticking in her pocket and falling to the floor would end up saving her ass seconds later.

As soon as Rebecca’s fingers closed around the rough, scratchy weight of the hex doll, she once again heard the sound that had previously made her pause in the level-five lobby.

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 across the 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 attacked here, 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 so upset ?”

“Because I knew something 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.

She’d only picked the artifact off the floor after dropping it from her pocket, but somehow, it had responded to the chaos and now focused its old-world wrath on the two orcs who’d ambushed her.

A screeching laugh burst from Rowan’s mouth as he stared at the doll made of burlap sack and stuffed with straw and sand, plus an incredibly powerful concentration of old-world magic that shouldn’t have existed in an Earthside object. “What in the Blue Hells is that ?”

Rebecca shook her head. “It’s nothing. Forget about it.”

“That’s a little hard to do when you single-handedly neutralized the enemy with it. Let me see that.”

“Absolutely not.” As soon as Rebecca shoved the doll back into her pocket, both smokey apparitions looming over the orcs dissipated with swirls of blue-gray smoke and what sounded like a scream from way off in the distance.

Both orcs heaved enormous sighs before the crouching one sat back, hugged his knees to his chest, and buried his head between them. The other’s orange eyes rolled back in his head, his body gripped by one more shudder wracking him literally from head to toe. Then he collapsed to the polished marble floor with a ruffling thump and the squeak of flesh across stone.

“Doesn’t get much more convenient than this,” Rowan said, smirking at their incapacitated opponents. “What now?”

Rebecca couldn’t help but notice his gaze repeatedly returning to her jacket pocket, but she commanded herself not to indulge him further. “Now we take advantage of it.”

T he thick rope creaked as Rowan gave it a final jerk and Shorty snarled at the pressure. “There. Is that tight enough for you?”

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Tusks hissed, straining against the ropes binding him from head to toe.

“Actually,” Rowan replied calmly, “I’m quite sure I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“Including just the right amount of rope to keep you two nice and snug,” Rebecca added before shooting Rowan a knowing look. “Which you just happened to have on you in your collection of conjurable items on command?”

“‘Always be prepared.’ That’s my motto.” Smirking, he returned his full attention to the trussed-up orcs on the floor. “Plus, ‘No prisoners, no mercy.’ That’s the other one.”

Both orcs glowered up at him, but their bravado shattered the second Rebecca stepped closer.

“Did Harkennr send you?” she asked.

“Harky-what?” Tusks gaped at her like she’d just said he would make a delicious dinner.

“Whoever that i-is,” Shorty stammered.

Well, that was one item that she could cross off the list.

When Rebecca took another step toward them, both orcs flinched, trembling in their bonds and looking everywhere but directly at her. She hadn’t even done anything to them yet, but apparently, inadvertently using the old-world hex doll had been more than enough.

“Next question.” She folded her arms. “Two nights ago, a transport convoy was ambushed, the cargo taken, and three of my people hauled off to an abandoned amusement park. Did either of you happen to have anything to do with that?”

Tusks released a lunatic’s cackle before he snapped his mouth shut and cut off the sound.

Shorty said nothing.

“I asked you boys a question,” she said. “Were you involved?”

“No!” Shorty screeched. “I-I don’t even know of any parks!”

“Not like we would , anyway,” Tusks muttered. “The rollercoasters make me sick.”

There hadn’t been any rollercoasters at that specific amusement park. Plus, Rebecca didn’t think either of her and Rowan’s newly captured prisoners even could lie to her now. They were too terrified.

One more point for the hex doll, at least.

“Do you know who did stage the assault on and capture of my team?”

“Lady, I’ve never even seen you before,” Shorty spat, spit flying from his fattened lip where his enormous lower tusks protruded. “Why would I—”

A streaking flash of gold light shot past the first orc’s face, glancing across the crooked bridge of his nose before cracking into the marble floor with a burst of gold sparks.

Tusks roared, spewing even more flying spittle as the last wisp of charred black smoke rose from the raw and bloody bridge of his nose. The ropes binding his wrists to his ankles behind him while he lie on the marble on his belly made it impossible for him to move.

“Or maybe your friend has more to say…” Rowan pointed at Shorty, who blubbered and scrunched his eyes tightly shut.

“I don’t know a thing about it, I swear!” Shorty wailed. “H-honest! I d-d-didn’t do it!”

“So you had nothing to do with the kidnapping in the amusement park, either,” Rebecca clarified.

“Yeah, lady, yeah! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“Then who the hell did send you?” Rowan asked, flicking a finger toward them in warning while golden sparks flickered to life at his fingertip. “I’m only gonna ask that once.”

“Who s-sent us?” Tusks asked, looked quickly back and forth between his elven interrogators, then glanced at his buddy tied up on the floor beside him. “I mean, we… It’s… We work for someone…”

“This is the part where you tell us who,” Rebecca prompted.

“We can’t!” Shorty shrieked, his eyes clenched shut as he furiously shook his head. “We can’t tell you. We can’t!”

“It’s really quite easy,” Rowan added. “You just open your mouth and say the name.”

“Easy for you, maybe,” Tusks spat. “Not us. We’re bound.”

“What does that mean?”

Rebecca sighed and rolled her eyes. “Bound as in they literally can’t say the name. The ability’s blocked.”

“Huh.” Rowan folded his arms. “How perfectly convenient for them.”

“Forget the name, then,” she continued. “Why are you here? Why did you attack us?”

The orcs shared another look, then Tusks struggled to readjust his position and failed. “I-it weren’t supposed to be you .”

“Excuse me?”

“ You weren’t supposed to be here. We were l-looking for someone else to show up with the k-key to that d-d-door.”

Rebecca took another step closer. “Who?”

“L-listen! The job was simple, okay? Look, the changeling was supposed to show up for a meeting with our boss.”

“The boss you oh-so-conveniently can’t name for us?” Rowan asked.

Tusks nodded fervently. “But s-see…the thing is, Aldous ain’t never showed up to the meeting. Blew our boss right off like he don’t give a shit. And the boss don’t take no disrespect like that.”

“He s-s-sent us here to wait for him when he came back for his stash,” Shorty added. “It’s the right door, on the r-right level. Just…the wrong changeling.”

“Or no changeling at all,” Rowan murmured.

Rebecca sighed again, then dipped her head to pinch the bridge of her nose against an oncoming headache fueled by yet another figurative pain in her ass.

“No shit he never showed up,” she said. “Aldous is dead.”

Both orcs gaped at her, their mouths dropping open simultaneously.

“Come on, lady,” Tusks said with a nervous laugh. “Don’t jerk us around like that.”

“It’s true. Aldous Corriger is dead. Has been for a few weeks. You wouldn’t have gotten anything out of him here anyway, and you’re not going to.”

Both trussed-up magicals revealed matching expressions of dawning realization and subsequent horror. Then Shorty started to hyperventilate.

Rowan wrinkled his nose at the pitiful creature. “Oh, come on… What’s he doing?”

“We c-came here to get a job done,” Tusks grumbled. He seemed unable to decide on glowering at his interrogators or joining his buddy in freaking out. “Gotta come up with something for the boss, so we came here for Aldous. Now you’re…you’re telling us we can’t even do that .”

Rebecca didn’t have a chance to reply. The smaller orc howled in terror, the sound made all the more pitiful by his fitful struggling against his bonds as he rocked on the floor.

This wasn’t good at all.

If someone Rebecca didn’t know and hadn’t even heard of before was this terrified and upset about the death of Aldous Corriger, they must have been more involved with the guy than anyone should ever have been.

Either that, or whoever they worked for was such a cruel and vicious master, their failure would mean a whole lot worse for them than lying on the marble floor of Chicago’s Nexus building to be questioned by Rebecca and Rowan.

Whatever terrified these orcs so much now that they knew the truth, it couldn’t possibly mean anything good for Shade.

And Rebecca and Rowan had just inserted themselves right into the middle of it.