Rue wiped her palms on her pants again, for probably the tenth time in the last three minutes. She approached the big pillar sticking out of the dirt dead center in the middle of the valley, Nemari to her left and Odric to her right. They were both about five feet behind her, meaning she was going to be the floor guardian’s main focus as soon as it appeared.

  Stupid idea. Stupid Sorin. Stupid Samael. Stupid Raf and Jorn and Eldart. And stupid me for agreeing to this.

  The wind picked up when they got within a hundred feet, which was probably a coincidence but sure as hell didn’t feel like one. It blew dust across the valley floor, blinding them and forcing her to rely on Aura Sense just to feel her two teammates still behind her. All three of them instinctively slowed down, waiting for the dust to pass, but if anything, the wind was getting stronger.

  Stupid tower, Rue added for good measure.

  She tugged the collar of her shirt up out of her armor in an attempt to cover her mouth, but it got pinched behind the leather. After a few moments of struggle, she gave up and let it fall. The wind would stop eventually, and then they’d proceed. The whole point was to be seen fighting the floor guardian, which was going to be hard to do if the whole valley was blinded by dust clouds.

  A human-shaped anima aura appeared at the edge of her range. It was strong, stronger than hers, but not as powerful as Sorin. That meant it probably wasn’t someone from the Black Hellions climber team, which narrowed the possibilities down to just one.

  “It’s here,” she called out.

  “Fucking where?” Nemari yelled. “I can’t see a damn thing, and I can barely hear you over the wind!”

  There was no time to direct the fire, not as fast as the anima was moving. Rue pulled her blades just in time to pick off the monster’s opening attack. Long claw-tipped fingers appeared out of the dust mere inches away as it tried to rake across her face, only to be repelled by a frantic parry. The rest of the monster was still hidden from sight, but Rue knew it was already following up.

  “Right in front of me!” she screamed at Nemari as she took a hurried step back. “Burn this thing!”

  Much as she hated to admit it, all that dodge training Sorin had put her through was paying for itself right now. The floor guardian came at her again and again, always from a different angle, and she got out of the way every single time.

  Twice, it tried to bypass her to go for Od, who was just as blind as Nemari but lacked an aura of scorching heat to drive the guardian back. Both times, Rue got in its way and forced it back. She could barely make out its outline with her eyes, which meant the other two were completely helpless. Without Aura Sense, they’d all be getting torn to shreds.

  The dust cleared, just for a moment, and showed them all what they were fighting. It was human-shaped, a bit over six feet tall, but probably weighed a hundred pounds tops. Rue could see each individual rib in its torso, and its stomach was so sunken it practically wrapped around the monster’s back bone. Skin like parchment rolled in dirt covered its face where it existed at all.

  Worst was its eyes—two empty black pits somehow filled with enough malice to send a shiver down Rue’s spine when she met them. It didn’t even have eyeballs. There was nothing there, nothing but a pulsating sense of hate that told her, right down to the depths of her soul, that the only thing this monster had ever desired was her complete and utter destruction, that it would never be satisfied with anything less.

  And then the dust kicked up again, and it disappeared behind that curtain. Fire bloomed a second later, right where it had been standing, but it was too late. The ghoul had already slipped away to find a new angle to strike at them.

  You’d better be right about this, Sorin. We were not ready to fight this thing without you, not even with the extra stamina this special food gave us, and we don’t have the supplies to try again.

  * * *

  “Raf! Someone’s taking on the portal guardian,” one of the loaners hissed.

  “Is it our guy?” Raf asked, opening his eyes. He moved over to where Eldart was standing up to peer over the loaner’s shoulder. There were three guys they’d borrowed from another team since the boss had insisted they needed more manpower, and they made the hideout feel extraordinarily cramped.

  Raf wasn’t sure how he felt about all that. On the one hand, he’d spoken with the Black fucking Hellion himself, which was an honor, supposedly. More like creepy as fuck. That guy would not give a shit if we all died in front of him. It was good to get facetime with the big boss—gave him a leg up climbing the ranks in the gang. He’d been given bruisers from other districts to make up the brute squad. That showed some trust in his ability to get the job done.

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  On the other hand, they’d gotten shoved into this miserable cave and had the hole sealed up behind them with a month’s worth of food and water and left to rot. He wasn’t supposed to let them out, but they’d all have gone crazy if they didn’t get a turn out in the open air at least once a day.

  Their sunlight was nothing but a slit from a six-inch-wide slice in the stone that looked down at the dust ghoul’s arena. That thing had been such a pain in the ass to deal with back when he was rank 2, he almost still didn’t want to go down there now that he was up to rank 6.

  “No,” Eldart said, but his lips curled up into a smirk. “Don’t see him, but you won’t believe who it is.”

  Raf’s breath caught. “No. It can’t be. Our runaway?”

  Laughter bubbled up out of him. He’d been pissed when they’d lost track of the girl, especially after investing such an expensive soulprint into her. She’d had years of spying on that fucker Bradford left in her, and he’d meant to make back every danir from her a hundred times over.

  Then this shit had come along, and the boss had made it clear what the priority was. The rest of the team could die, so long as they captured the new guy alive. They’d been warned that he was tougher than he looked, that he could fight people three or four ranks higher than him, but Raf had gotten all the details.

  It had only been because of the ambush that he’d taken out that team the Black Hellion had sent out to find him on Floor 0. Similarly, it had been an ambush against the Sildfalls. The guy was obviously building himself into an assassin. It wouldn’t be like back in the Union building where they’d tried to corner him in. Back then, they’d been ordered to pressure him but not capture him. That was why the lugs had done the searching there instead of Eldart. Here, all they had to do was spot him before he could make his move.

  And Raf had complete faith in Eldart’s ability to do just that.

  Unless the guy was dead, he had to be somewhere nearby, too. If he was dead, then the next priority was to capture the rest of his team for questioning. Raf considered the best course of action for a second, then gave the order.

  “Break the wall open. Go down and get them. We’ll get what we want to know out of them, then drag their asses back to Floor 0 for the boss. If the target is here, we’ll do the same to him. The guy’s a sneaky son of a bitch, so watch yourselves. We don’t need him killing someone because you fucks couldn’t pay attention in that dust storm.”

  One of the loaners—Raf couldn’t remember his name—was an earth mage. He pulled the camouflaging wall away, splitting the rock right down the middle with a loud crack that probably alerted everyone in the valley, much to Raf’s displeasure. Then the three of them leaped out while Raf and Eldart followed at a more leisurely pace.

  “You want me to go help?” Eldart asked.

  “Nah, why bother? Three rank 10s is more than enough, even if it’s only because that earth mage can flatten that annoying dust storm.”

  Eldart snorted. “They’d be just as blind and bumbling as Rue’s team otherwise.”

  “Exactly. Let them do what they do best and be the muscle. We’ll wait here and enjoy some fresh air that’s not quite so dusty. Just keep an eye out for the real target.”

  “Got it.”

  At least one person here is reliable. If I’d had to spend another day with those three idiots, I’d have lost my damn mind.

  Raf took a deep breath and enjoyed that it didn’t smell like sweaty, unwashed bodies. As soon as his idiots captured the other idiots, they were going straight back home so he could enjoy a real bath and real food. God, and a good bottle of wine. I deserve a treat for putting up with that cave.

  “Found him,” Eldart said about thirty seconds later. “He’s sprinting right at us.”

  “What?” Raf’s eyes snapped open. “Out in the open?”

  “Weird assassin behavior. We might need to reevaluate our profile,” Eldart said.

  “He must not realize you’ve spotted him. Send the signal to our loaners to get back up here for the priority target. They can handle him. We’ll keep our earth mage and go handle Rue ourselves.”

  “Done.”

  Eldart was simply too handy. Raf didn’t know what he’d do without the man. Information was the man’s stock and trade, and that meant both acquiring and disseminating it. In large part, Raf’s small criminal enterprise inside the greater Black Hellions gang only functioned at the size it did because Eldart was so adept at feeding Raf everything he needed to know to make smart decisions.

  Two of the brute squad peeled off their descent and started rushing back up. Raf and Eldart met them halfway down, where the spymaster pointed them in the right direction. Truthfully, they didn’t really need the earth mage’s help either. Raf just didn’t want to deal with all the dust.

  But two rank 10s was more than enough to take care of a janky assassin who couldn’t even sneak close to his target without getting caught, who hadn’t even bothered to try. And if Eldart was right and he wasn’t an assassin, well, he was still only a rank 2 who’d already lost the element of surprise. The real concern was that the idiots might accidentally kill him, which would piss the boss off and almost certainly result in the death of whoever struck the killing blow.

  Yet another reason to leave that particular task to them, just to be safe. Then again… I don’t need to catch any heat for their screw ups.

  “Eldart, on second thought, go with them. Keep them from making a mess of things. The Black Hellion will come down on all of us if they accidentally kill the guy.”

  “Probably a good call,” Eldart agreed. “Plus I can help keep them going after the target just in case he does pull out some sort of stealth ability we don’t know about.”

  Eldart jogged off after the two loaners, not that it looked like they’d need him to keep track of their soon-to-be victim. The guy wasn’t even trying to hide as he raced across half a mile of empty dirt. Then again, it wasn’t like there was anywhere to hide, so it was hard to blame him. Either way, it made Raf’s work easier, so he wasn’t going to complain.

  Thank God this miserable job is finally over, he thought to himself as he strolled downhill with a smile, ready to retrieve his wayward property and kill her friends.