20. Chapter 20

20

T ime seemed to slow as Rebecca’s pulse fired through her veins. Her breath quickened. Everything around her slowed into a cold, dead certainty.

And even then, she couldn’t move fast enough.

Still, she had to try.

She leapt past a wide-eyed Nyx, who turned and stared dumbly after her. Then Rebecca was at Maxwell’s side, leaning toward his ear to murmur, “Be ready to move.”

“What?” He did a double-take in her direction. “We didn’t get our visual yet.”

“Yeah, well, that fucking elf is about to get it for us. On my word.”

Whether Maxwell relayed the message to the rest of the team or used Nyx to do it, Rebecca tuned out everything else in her awareness as she slinked behind the shipping containers, hoping for a better view of the enemy and what they were transporting in those semis.

She didn’t go far before another pack of griybreki came into view. Her new location offered more sound projection from the echoes pinging off the metal shipping containers, making it infinitely easier to pick out the griybreki’s conversations as they moved around on the docks.

They still hadn’t opened any of the trucks’ trailers.

“Flinkin’ waste of my darksies…”

“You think I care? You think Boss Man cares?”

“Some guy should.”

“Pull your head out, boyo. Boss Man wants all goodies off ship and sittin’ tight, ready for takeoff.”

“But this go-go? All of a sudden?”

“Shove it, Skinner. You wanna be Boss Man’s bag when he hears these goodies ain’t gettin’ where the need’s on time?”

“Naw. ’Course I don’t.”

“Then frackin’ burn it and quit yipin’!”

It was a pointless conversation to overhear, but at least she knew where not to look for that damn Blackmoon Elf before he ruined all their chances.

The second two vehicles,’ rear doors were finally unlocked and pulled up to reveal unmarked metal crates stacked three and four high. Definitely big enough to carry magitek weaponry, but also big enough to carry anything else.

Rebecca and her team had to make sure these were the weapons they’d come for if they were going to risk their lives to get their hands on them.

One especially squat griybreki climbed up the loading ramp of the third vehicle, his webbed feet slapping on the wobbling metal with a tinny echo. Then he flashed a light inside the trailer and let out a comically high-pitched squeak of surprise.

Rebecca’s attention narrowed in on it.

“What the fucker we got ridin’ back here ?” the griybreki exclaimed.

A second frog-like creature rounded the back of the same vehicle to peer into the open trailer. His glowing green eyes widened.

“Oh, hey there, fellas.” Rowan’s voice rose from inside the rear of the vehicle, loud and crystal-clear. “Got some real nice toys in here. Tell me, what’s the plan with all these babies?”

Shit. Rebecca was too late.

The griybreki inspecting their vehicle’s contents hissed and warbled at the unexpected stowaway among their cargo, who hadn’t technically been a stowaway at all.

But they didn’t know that.

Rebecca spun back toward Maxwell still hidden behind the line of stacked shipping crates and signaled for him to be ready.

For once, it seemed to benefit her that Maxwell was always already looking her way.

Still, she didn’t think he’d figured out where Rowan was. That would change pretty damn quick.

The two griybreki who had found him started yammering, hopping up and down, their webbed feet slapping again and again onto the concrete as they pointed clawed fingers and babbled away in their guttural language.

Rowan’s laughter echoed out of the semi-trailer. “It’d be such a shame for these to go to waste, don’t you think?”

After that came a heavy squeal of metallic hinges and the clunk of something falling open, followed by more metallic thunks and clatters.

“And just look at all these . Shiny mama right here. Ooh, what’s this one? This is how you catch your new friends I bet, huh? Magical Crossbow 3000?”

Another loud thump and the clink of chains dropping to the floor.

“Well, I’ll be…” Rowan just wouldn’t shut up. “One blast from this puppy, and you’re ridin’ the one-way train, am I right?”

Rebecca wanted to strangle him for his idiocy, but she couldn’t deny what he’d just given them, either. He didn’t have any working knowledge of what Earthside weapons were even called—magically augmented or otherwise—but he’d delivered a verbal list of what was inside those crates.

Meaning this was what her team had been hoping to find.

Despite the utter frustration of Rowan’s methods, she couldn’t help recognizing just how much she’d missed his constant antics. Though she could have done without them currently.

A low snarl rose behind her, joined by that overwhelming tingling warmth intensifying by the second. She knew it was Maxwell even before he growled in her ear.

“What the fuck is he doing?”

“Giving us a confirmation.”

“I don’t see shit.”

“Yeah, well, it’s audio-only this time.” Rebecca knew without a doubt that Rowan had just named the cargo, so it didn’t matter that the idiot griybreki behind the wheel of this third and closest semi had parked like a total moron.

A low whistle rang from the rear of that third vehicle’s trailer before Rowan’s voice seeped out again. “Man, what does one of these babies normally run you? Cost-wise, I mean. I’m sure it takes up a shit-ton of energy too.”

The two griybreki gawking at him on the vehicle’s loading ramp hissed again. One of them snarled and babbled something else in his guttural language.

A second later, the low-pitched whine of magitek weapon system coming online filled the docks. In seconds, several other armed griybreki had appeared around the rear of the vehicle, which Rebecca still couldn’t see.

But she could hear their feet slapping against the concrete right before the telltale clicks and whirs of several firearms being lifted and aimed while several other griybreki voices added to the cacophony of shouting.

“Oh…” Rowan’s low chuckle rose into the air with a slow clap of his hands. “Is this a demonstration?”

That was as good a signal as they were ever going to get.

She conjured a crackling orb of crimson battle magic in one hand, thrust that hand into the air, and launched the orb like a discharged flare straight up into the night sky.

All the griybreki froze where they were, and even their incomprehensible jabbering stopped so each frog-like creature could crane its neck to stare at the crackling orb of crimson light streaking high above them.

“Now!” Rebecca shouted. “Move, move, move!”

Everything after that was complete chaos, but this Shade team was already expecting it.

The griybreki weren’t.

Rebecca knew her team would move in from their various positions just as she did, even though she only saw Maxwell darting out from behind the same shipping container.

Then the weapons fire started.

It came from one of the startled griybreki who’d found a smirking Blackmoon Elf in the back of his transport vehicle. The creature fired off a single round into the back of the trailer with shaking webbed hands.

Rebecca didn’t think after that. She just reacted.

While the other griybreki who’d drawn weapons on Rowan now abandoned the rear of the third vehicle to engage the rest of her team, Rebecca headed straight for the miserable creature who’d fired on the elf man.

The griybreki didn’t even know she was coming before she put an augmented bullet through the back of its squashed bald head.

The round carried far more power than necessary to take one of these things down. So much power that it didn’t simply drop the griybreki. The back of the creature’s head exploded, spraying brain matter and slick, glowing griybreki blood all over the rear of the semi-trailer, as well as its contents.

But Rebecca didn’t stop moving.

She leapt onto the loading ramp and launched herself into the back of the trailer, swinging her weapon to prepare for an attack.

The first thing she saw was all the open crates toward the entrance, resting in front of the stacks of even more similar crates filling the trailer all the way to the front.

Someone had opened these crates, but there was no sign of anyone in here now.

She glanced at her hands wrapped around her automatic magitek rifle to be sure they weren’t shaking with the fear of what she might find.

If Rowan had been such a fucking idiot, if he’d gotten himself shot and killed because the cursed elf just couldn’t take anything seriously…

Something stirred among the shadows toward the front of the trailer. Rebecca heightened her focus, swinging the barrel of her weapon in that direction.

Something toppled off the top of a stack of crates, then the movement returned slowly and cautiously.

Rowan’s face fully emerged from the other side of another crate pile behind which he’d thrown himself for protection.

The second he popped up above those crates, Rebecca knew he was unhurt.

He was also covered in the glowing, bluish-gray blood of the griybreki she’d shot through the head, his hair and clothing sticky with blood spatter and bits of brain and bone still clinging to him.

His hazel eyes glinted at her in the low light as he blinked through the gore sliding down his face and hair. Then his grin returned.

“Aww,” he crooned. “You really do care.”

She would have loved to snap back with something equally witty and chastising, but several griybreki voices grew louder from behind, accompanied by their slapping footsteps as they all burbled in their incoherent language.

It wasn’t any tongue Rebecca knew, even an adulterated one.

She slammed a hand down on her augmented rifle’s power system to rev it up again, and as her weapon glowed from the inside with its own low whine steadily rising in pitch, she spun around to face half a dozen griybreki, all with their weapons aimed at her now.

The deafening crack of her magitek rounds spewing from weapon’s muzzle as she squeezed off shot after shot disappeared within the chaotic din of so many other weapons firing all over the docks. Of griybreki shouting at each other. Of her other operatives barking out a warning or the location of new enemy targets.

The Port of Chicago docks strobed with magical light of every color, griybreki screams warbling in the air as the battle continued.

Rebecca had fired several more rounds than necessary before realizing she’d taken down the six griybreki who would have taken her down first if she hadn’t been so quick to react.

But Rowan was just fine. That was what she’d hopped into the semi’s trailer to ensure, and now that she knew, she didn’t want to stay here any longer than she had to.

She hopped off the loading ramp, spun around the rear corner of the truck, and came face to face with even more slobbering, snarling griybreki babbling incoherencies as they launched themselves at her with blubbering battle cries, their webbed feet slapping furiously beneath them.

She skidded into a lunging pivot to avoid the first fired attack, then ducked two more before opening fire on any griybreki that caught her eye. After the next three she took to the ground, she let her rifle power up again with renewed magical energy and tossed a few orbs of crackling red battle magic at the next wave of attackers, just for fun.

In seconds, every griybreki around her lay sprawled out on the concrete, their mouths gaping wide, their final screams now gone silent, and their eyes wide and staring at nothing. The moment their eyes stopped glowing, they were gone.

“Holy shit!”

Rebecca spun toward the voice and almost fired her weapon. But it was Rowan standing in front of her.

“When did you learn to do that ?” he asked with a laugh.

More shouts rose across the docks before another two griybreki came slap-slapping toward her, their razor-sharp bared as they jabbered their battle cries.

“I’ve learned a lot of things in the last few centuries,” Rebecca growled, then took aim and fired off two more quick shots. Both griybreki dropped without a sound. “If you ever got off your ass and made yourself useful, I bet you could learn a thing or two yourself.”

Grimacing, Rowan swiped another handful of griybreki brain-goo off the front of his shirt and flung it with a quick flick back up into the open trailer. Then he gazed at his hands in disgust. “You know what? You guys got this. I think I’ll just sit back and watch from here on out.”

By the Blood, she wanted to slap some sense into him. She would have, if the rest of her team wasn’t currently engaged in a firefight with the enemy.

Better not to have anything to do with him instead.

So she left Rowan there beside the open trailer and hurled herself into the bulk of the battle at the edge of the docks.

The second she rounded the front of the third vehicle and caught a glimpse of the chaos surrounding the rest of her team, she wished she’d joined them sooner.

Magical weapons fired in all directions, whining and buzzing as they left glowing trails of colored light through the air. Hissing and crackling joined the shouts of both her team and the griybreki. The scent of hot metal and the worst body odor she’d ever smelled mingled on the breeze to mostly overpower the underlying notes of exhaust fumes.

Not a single griybreki driver had cut his vehicle’s engine.

Stray rounds cracked against concrete and shattered lampposts. Some even found their way through the sides of the semi-trailers with Eduardo’s precious weapons cargo inside.

Some idiot somewhere was apparently trying to open up the shipping containers, round after fired round pelting the metallic walls before the sharp crack of one bullet actually making it through filled the air.

Rebecca fired two more shots at a griybreki trying to scurry past her, dropping him instantly. When she looked up next, the first thing she saw was Leonard standing amidst the chaos, the hem of his brown leather trench coat swaying in the breeze as he struggled with a jammed weapon.

“Leonard!” she shouted. “Behind you!”

A whizzing yellow bolt of energy zipped toward Rebecca’s head.

She ducked.

Leonard spun around.

The griybreki coming at him opened its mouth to expose several rows of disgustingly sharp teeth as it raised a wickedly curved dagger in one webbed hand and prepared to strike.

Rebecca regained her bearings, dropped to a pivot on one knee, and sent a magical round straight through the griybreki’s chest. The thing toppled forward to land on its face with a muted gurgle at Leonard’s feet.

He blinked down at the dead creature, then scanned the dock until he found Rebecca with her weapon still raised.

He met her gaze, nodded once in thanks, then returned his attention to slamming a fist against the side of his augmented rifle until whatever had jammed it dislodged and the low whine of its re-powering mechanism rose with the rest of the battle noise.

Dammit. If they were going to depend on weapons, Shade needed new gear they could actually count on.

Then she was off again, ducking and dodging her way toward the end of the docks, blasting at screaming griybreki either with her magitek rifle or with hissing, sparking orbs of crimson battle magic and dropping bodies in her wake.

Scanning the docks between quick and efficient neutralizing of any griybreki who entered her path, she found the rest of the team. And she couldn’t have been prouder of what she saw.

Shade operatives working together for a common goal, communicating effectively and efficiently like they always had. But this time, there was no asshat of a leader sabotaging their efforts. No moron calling all the shots only to toss the plan and go off script just because he felt like it.

This team was doing what they’d trained and prepared to do, and it was working.

Rebecca even allowed herself a moment of pre-emptive celebration as she made her way across the docks, firing her rifle and lobbing orbs of crimson battle magic.

For once, it finally looked like Shade was going to bring in a major win. Like they could pull off this operation the way they were meant to and succeed without heinous consequences or avoidable casualties.

Although Rowan had jumped the gun on their original plan of getting a confirmed visual, he hadn’t ruined the team’s chances tonight after all. So maybe it wouldn’t turn out as badly as Rebecca had first feared.

She moved through the battle, dodged flying griybreki leaping at her face, dived beneath magical volleys and bright yellow lights fired toward her from all directions. She emptied her rifle’s clip into the oncoming enemy targets until her weapon stuck with a hollow click and the firearm’s high-pitched whine sputtered and died in her hands.

Damn.

She ejected the empty clip and reached into her back pocket for a replacement before remembering she’d left additional ammo in her hiding spot behind the shipping containers.

Rowan’s impatience had distracted her from basic common sense.

There was always something.

Another griybreki sprinted toward her, babbling in his throaty, gargling language with both webbed hands outstretched toward her, gnashing his razor-sharp teeth.

Rebecca abandoned her rifle on the ground and kept moving, spewing another volley of crimson battle magic from her hands, one after the other.

The oncoming griybreki hit the ground before she’d advanced more than a step, then she turned to the next target.

The constant chaos of battle like this was so familiar, she felt like she could see everything at once. She dodged a dart of glowing orange griybreki magic zipping past her head, then blasted the offending creature with more hissing red battle magic before two more griybreki emerged from the convoy vehicle in front of her.

They stopped when they saw her, crouched and looking for targets, then one of them let out a warbling battle cry and hefted a miniature trident in one hand before he charged.

She took him down in seconds with her next spell and sent him flying backward across the docks. Then she spun around to meet the next one.

Only when the second griybreki in her line of sight exploded in a burst of flame, setting fire to his clothing before he ran off in a blaze, screaming and flailing, did Rebecca realize she’d summoned a fireball for this fight too.

Why not? It had been a while.

She kept moving, filling the darkness with the glow of churning flames or sizzling red battle magic, and finally made it closer to her team.

A griybreki went down in a magical net of woven blue light from someone else’s attack, and Leonard spun around in the fray, looking for more.

Rebecca saw the griybreki inching up on him from behind before anyone else did. She summoned two enormous balls of flame, their raging light sending her shadow long and thick across the docks behind her, and launched both at the enemy behind Leonard.

The mage took note of the enormous flaming orbs hurtling toward him and ducked at the last second.

Her fireballs pummeled the creature, instantly setting it ablaze. The griybreki didn’t even have enough time to scream before the flames charred him to a crisp. Then the blackened husk of a corpse dropped in a pillar of sour black smoke, and Leonard popped up out of his crouch, his eyes wide.

He spun around to eye his would-be attacker, then whirled back to gape at Rebecca. “Hot damn, Knox! You’ve been holding out on us, haven’t you?”

He had no idea.

But if her operators wanted to think the strength of Rebecca’s power extended only as far as lethal fireballs, she wouldn’t correct the misconception.

“You’re welcome!” she shouted back before pivoting to send another volley of flames at the next griybreki running full-tilt toward her, its feet slapping across the concrete.

When Leonard’s full-bodied laughter echoed behind her as he re-entered the battle, she couldn’t help a small smile.

It felt damn good to do her job, do it well, and share the small wins with her team. That much she could admit.

After that, the number of griybreki throwing themselves at her dwindled. The battle still continued, but her team had dispatched most of the convoy, and the chaotic din of weapons fire and summoned attack spells and bodies dropping had lessened.

By the Blood, it looked like they were going to pull this off, and the ancestors only knew Shade sure as hell could have used a successful-mission win right about now.

Within the lull of battle, Rebecca turned toward a burst of violet light flickering with sparks as Nyx popped into existence behind another griybreki.

The katari clamped her arms around the creature, which let out a shrieking scream in surprise.

Then they both disappeared with a soft pop and another burst of violet light, leaving behind that familiar scent of ozone and vinegar.

A second later, Nyx reappeared on top of a shipping container, the griybreki still in her arms but now lying on its back and wailing endlessly. Nyx showed no reaction to the sound as she bound him with dampening rope and tied the creature securely to the roof of the shipping container—beside a line of others she’d similarly taken out.

Now, only a few volleys of battle magic rippled through the darkness, filling the air with the static electricity of magic flying in all directions. It seemed the fight was dying down, that Rebecca’s team had finally reached the end of their surprisingly effective ambush.

But before Rebecca could let herself celebrate such an accomplishment, a low rumble caught her attention.

It was a new sound, dark and low. The kind of sound that belonged to something big and heavy and abnormally dangerous.

Rebecca’s pulse pounded through her head.

What had they missed?