24. Chapter 24
24
T he video ended on the final frame—Big Boss the orc smirking over the rim of his tankard.
For two seconds, Rebecca stared
at the frozen image burning itself in her memory, then Whit’s computer screen
went black.
The footage was over. Back to
reality.
Rebecca’s blood ran cold as her
awareness sank into the pit of her stomach.
Holy shit.
She’d just watched an actual video of Big Boss—the orc crime lord she’d heard nothing about before his guys attacked her and Rowan at Nexus. Now she had a face to put with the name.
On top of that, she also had the identity—or at least the human illusion—of the asshole responsible for all the insanity that night at the amusement park.
And they were working together…
Against Shade.
Now that news of Aldous’s death was finally making its own way through the magical underground of Chicago, all the top dogs Rebecca’s task force existed to keep in line were making their moves. Two of them had already allied together as a result, but not just because they thought Shade incapable of bouncing back from a dead commander.
The guy in the suit had convinced himself some new and still-unknown crime lord was running around the city, unidentified and unannounced, ruining all their plans.
He was right in one way. There was a new player, the same homicidal bastards killing off Shade’s civilian contractors and suppliers.
But Suit also thought those people were the same as the Shade team who’d staged the rescue of Diego, Titus, and Burke at the amusement park.
Though the conversation caught on Underdark’s footage hadn’t explicitly revealed the connection, Rebecca knew without a doubt that now, all her efforts to stay under the radar, all her secrets and shadows, everything she’d done to keep the true name of the Bloodshadow Heir off the streets of Chicago—or of any other city in this world—were about to come to an immediate and violent end.
She had made waves. Without knowing it, she’d made a name for herself in all the wrong ways, even if a literal name hadn’t been applied yet.
Big Boss and the magical in the suit thought this “new player” in town was Rebecca .
And they’d be spreading the word about it all over the city, to all their other criminal contacts and enterprises, and what happened when the misunderstanding eventually came to light?
Everyone would know who she was.
Who she really was…
Even when Whit clicked out of the file to return to his desktop screen and swiveled back in his chair to face her, Rebecca shock still hadn’t worked its way through her system.
Everything felt frozen. Ice-cold. The whole world closing in on her as implication after deadly implication bloomed through her mind in spiderwebbing connections, all of them screaming the same blood-curdling warning.
This was the worst thing she’d faced—in Chicago, as Rebecca Knox, as the Roth-Da’al.
The biggest threat to her freedom and survival since she’d snuck through the Gateway to enter this world.
All because of the mess one incompetent changeling commander had left behind, Shade’s freshly improved efficacy as a privatized magical task force, and the hubris of a few Chicago crime lords blinding them to the complicated nuances of the truth.
They thought they had a new competitor to either keep fighting or ally with before gunning straight for Shade at the end.
They had no idea who they would really find behind the curtain once it was finally drawn aside to reveal the Bloodshadow Elf running the show.
Rebecca would never let them figure it out.
“Well, that’s it,” Whit said with a shrug, then turned back toward his monitor for a quick check, as if he thought he’d failed to close the video file that still captured Rebecca’s attention. “That’s what we got.”
The Security office remained unbearably silent.
“Uh…boss?” Rick asked, leaning forward in his own chair. “You good?”
Rebecca blinked, swallowed the cold lump in her throat, and still couldn’t pull her gaze away from the computer screen. But as the fluttering pressure of curiosity and concern pulsed across the side of her body, coming straight from Maxwell, she knew he was right there with her.
They were on the same page.
“You heard all that too,” she murmured.
“They think they’ve figured it all out.” The shifter wasn’t growling anymore, but his voice had dropped in volume and tone to match hers, as if the Roth-Da’al and her Head of Security had convened alone in this room for a private conversation.
It didn’t matter that the guys in the Security office could still hear them.
Rebecca and Maxwell had their own way of communicating, anyway.
“Half of our current enemies at a table together,” he added. “The other half mentioned by name. At least now we know they’re all different.”
“Except whoever’s already murdered dozens of civilians and put two of ours in infirmary beds.”
And except Azyyt Ra’al.
Rebecca hadn’t expected the old-world Xaharí faction to come into the picture anyway. Not this picture. The only evidence of their presence in Chicago still revolved around a gang of thugs she’d left in piles of ash in the lot behind Underdark—and the thrall brand on the [hectorrace] Hector’s head, revealed only in death.
The Azyyt Ra’al were still here, but so far, they hadn’t caused Rebecca any more trouble than she could handle, and they hadn’t purposefully made themselves known.
All things considered, it was a small blessing Shade didn’t have to contend with them as well as everyone else on their enemy list.
But if things keep going the awful way they were headed, Azyyt Ra’al would inevitably come into the picture. They would get involved, and then they would eventually show themselves. They’d already had Hector as a spy embedded in Shade, and getting rid of him hadn’t been part of the plan.
These underdogs in Chicago—Big Boss, Suit, Eduardo, Kordus Harkennr—were enough of a threat on their own, let alone combined. But with Azyyt Ra’al in the picture, Rebecca stood little to no chance of maintaining her anonymity in this world.
They were the ones who knew her, even more than Harkennr thought he did.
They were the ones who could not only unravel every thread she’d woven for herself in this world, but they also had the means to face and apprehend the Bloodshadow Heir wherever and whenever they wanted. Then they would use her for their own ends. Then the wars and the prophecies she’d left behind on Xahar-áhsh would become something entirely different.
If they found her.
If Fate, or Fortune, or any old-world god or power on Earth ever smiled down on her, Azyyt Ra’al would never find her.
Before she let herself go too far down that never-ending rabbit hole, though, the most immediate issue had to be addressed first.
Finally, the feeling and warmth seeped back into Rebecca’s body, spreading through her limbs, and she managed to turn away from Whit’s computer to look up at Maxwell standing beside her. “This changes a lot .”
“With little time to improvise if we pivot accordingly,” he replied.
Rick looked back and forth between them, then scoffed. “ I still can’t get over what those douchebags said about us. They think we’re a blubbering pile of useless shit without Aldous. Can you believe that?”
“They also think we’re the ones who took out all our own contacts,” Whit added with a shrug.
“But we didn’t.”
“Obviously.”
Rick swiveled in his desk chair. “Knox?”
It broke her away from the intensity of Maxwell’s gaze—the feeling that neither of them had to say much out loud anymore to understand the knowledge passing between them in other ways.
Maybe this was as close to reading each other’s minds as it would ever get.
“I couldn’t care less what they think about us,” she replied.
“Right…” Whit leaned toward his workstation to prop an elbow on the desk before dipping his head to scratch the side of his face. “So how do we handle this?”
Her gaze drew right back toward Maxwell’s, twin pairs of magnets finding each other despite the chaos. “It has to happen sooner or later.”
He dipped his head toward her with a grunt of agreement. “Sooner would be better.”
“We have a window.”
“And very little room to pivot.”
The awkward tension in the office rose to new heights when Rick and Whit exchanged a clueless glance, still waiting for either of their superiors to make sense.
Then Rebecca turned toward them. “We can’t defend against two gangs coming for us at the same time, can we? Not when we still have this other threat picking off our operatives and murdering everyone we come into contact with.”
Rick’s eyes widened. “Well, yeah…”
“We can’t defend against Big Boss and this other guy if we stay where we are, either,” she added. “But we literally just heard the foundation of their plans against us. Plus the date and time of their meetup.”
Maxwell folded his arms. “There may still be a chance to gain the advantage. But we need a new tactic. Driving in on them at the last second is no longer sufficient. We need more.”
Whit and Rick stared blankly at both of them before the warlock stroked his hairless chin. “What are we talking, here?”
The shifter’s scowl returned. “What else do we have?”
A crucially relevant question. What did Shade have beyond their operatives and their recent streak of good luck that might have been coming to an end? What did they have that Big Boss and Suit didn’t?
The answer came to her in an instant, lighting up Rebecca’s mind as she processed first the potential and then the strategic elements that might just give them the edge they needed. “I have an idea.”
This time, Rick, Whit, and Maxwell turned toward her, without a word, waiting for her to speak.
Rebecca puffed out a sigh. “Today’s Tuesday.”
Whit snorted. “Please tell me that matters somehow.”
“Just that we have two days to make this happen in time. It’ll take non-stop work and hustle from all of us, but it might actually give us a shot.”
Rick clapped his hands together and grinned. “Nothing we haven’t heard before. Whatever you need, boss, just say the word, and we’re on it.”
No matter how she looked at it, this new plan of hers still came with significantly more risk than their previous operations. But it was better than nothing, and Shade still hadn’t fallen so low that nothing was all they had.
If it worked, it gave them an invaluable advantage of multiple enemies. Maybe even an opportunity to deal with one or two of them for good before all the other gangs and criminal organizations of Chicago could band together against them.
Shade had to try, or they would find themselves penned in on all sides, unable to either defend against an entire city’s criminal underground or effectively fight back.
And now Rick wanted to know what they needed to get started.
She scanned the room and almost let herself get excited about the possibilities. “Has anyone seen Bruce?”