39. Chapter 39

39

R ebecca’s heart pounded in her chest, her insides squirming with a mix of apprehension and rage at the fact that anyone would dare capture her operatives and try to use them against her.

The team’s transport van came to a rolling stop in the gravel lot, which was as far as this rescue team could go in their vehicle. The entire area had been cordoned off with a ten-foot chain-link fence, which stretched into the distance on either side of the lot until disappearing into the thickly wooded area surrounding the site.

Centered on that fence, a large red sign glinted in the van’s headlights: ‘No Trespassing. Violators Will Be Prosecuted.’

This had to be it.

“Everybody out,” Maxwell ordered as he cut the engine. “We’ll go in on foot.”

The van’s rear door slid open, and the assembled rescue team filtered out, every expression set in grim determination to get the job done.

Shell cleared her throat as she studied the gravel lot, the beads threaded through her dark-purple hair surprisingly silent for how many of them she’d put in there. “Are we sure this is the right place?”

“Whit?” Maxwell asked the warlock from his specified security team.

Whit glanced at the device in his hand, a bulky, outdated thing that let out an occasional beep as it traced the signals from their kidnapped operatives’ phones. Then he nodded. “This is it, all, right. Signal’s coming from half a mile on the other side of this fence.”

“Then let’s go get them.” Maxwell approached the chain-link fence while the rest of the team finished pulling their gear and weapons from the rear of the van. His movement was hardly visible in the unlit gravel lot. Even if there had been better visibility, the shifter still moved too quickly for the naked eye to follow.

He swiped at the fence, his arm moving in a blur, and the air filled with the shriek of tearing metal a second before the entire fence wobbled with a metallic jingle. Then Maxwell stepped back and motioned for the team to enter through the hole he’d just ripped through the chain-link fence with his bare hands.

So he could pull out his wolf’s sharpened claws at whim without a full shift. Rebecca had only suspected as much until now.

Armed with a small but powerful magitek pistol, she fell in line with the rest of the team to head onto the private property toward their captured operatives.

Rowan climbed through the hole in the fence behind her, smirking the whole time, then whispered, “Did anyone think of finding the owner of this place and asking nicely for a look around?”

Rebecca shot him a quick frown and said flatly, “What a great idea. Seeing as we’ve got plenty of time for that.”

“ Someone’s in a mood…”

At first, while they moved silently across the property, with Whit and his tracking device leading the way and Maxwell bringing up the rear, Rebecca wondered if they’d come upon their captured operatives held in the middle of a forest. That would make visibility that much more difficult, not to mention getting a visual on the enemy holding Shade’s members captive.

The gravel path on this side of the fence had narrowed significantly after only a few yards, then petered out into the last remnants of what might have once been a road. Now, though, it had given way to overgrown weeds and thick underbrush with no sign of the road or even a footpath.

But a quarter-mile in, the rescue team came upon their first building in the area. The faded sign hanging over the small window frame, its glass having been smashed out long ago, was almost impossible to read until they came right up to it.

Rebecca tilted her head to match the angle of the sign hanging almost completely sideways and dangling from a single rusty nail: ‘Tickets Sold Here.’

Tickets to what?

She noticed the other operatives sparing confused glances toward the same small shed, but they kept moving, following Whit’s lead.

Shortly after that, a larger series of buildings came into view against the night sky. The largest was a long, narrow structure reminiscent of a lodge or giant industrial hallway disconnected from a main building. All the windows were busted out as well, only some of the open frames haphazardly boarded over, as if someone had tried to preserve the building, but had given up halfway.

Then they came upon the rides. Large, chunky machines meant to mimic the shapes of clowns or enormous mice or teacups. The metal frames had rusted over so badly, their red-brown coloring was almost brighter in the darkness than the scratched and faded paint of once vividly garish, cartoon-looking figures inviting children of all ages to climb aboard for the fun. Most of those figures were missing a head or an arm or both.

The abandoned theme park boasted no visible signs of its name or the former glory it might have once enjoyed, but it quickly became clear that this place had been shut down and abandoned for some time. Multiple decades, at least.

What an odd place for Shade’s unidentified enemy to hide and hold kidnapped operatives captive, but at least the chances of being interrupted or discovered by humans were incredibly small, if not non-existent.

Rebecca’s gut clenched even tighter at the thought that their captured operatives could be anywhere at this point. So could the enemy.

The farther the team moved across the abandoned park, the more outbuildings and dilapidated rides they encountered. Rebecca hoped Whit’s tracking system was detailed, or the team would have to breach and clear more buildings just to find the missing operatives, and that would take significantly more time.

Time their captured people couldn’t afford.

A concrete path reappeared halfway through the collection of rides, split and cracked over time where stubborn weeds had pushed through from the earth below. Every building looked ready to collapse at the slightest touch, many of them missing half their bricks and every door removed or bashed in, each window missing its glass and open to the elements.

The team worked to sweep every section they approached, clearing the areas behind the rundown rides before moving on. Even with the location of Diego and Titus’s cell phones signaling back to them and leading the way, this place felt just as abandoned as it looked.

There was no sign of movement in the darkness. No noise beyond the whispering crunch of operative boots across gravel, or cracked concrete, or the dried brown husks of overgrown weeds that had perished beneath the summer heat.

Rebecca had almost forgotten Rowan had joined this mission until he appeared at her side again and snorted.

“Now this looks more like home than anything else I’ve seen in this world.”

The ruins of someone else’s golden age reclaimed by natural forces to become nothing more than a ghost of what it had once been? Yes, that was a fitting description of most areas of Xahar’áhsh as it had been when Rebecca had stolen away from her home world so long ago.

She had no idea what things looked like back home now, but this was hardly the time for reminiscing.

She kept her gaze trained on the darkest patches of shadow around the run-down buildings and the broken, forgotten rides, and kept moving.

“This is a rescue mission,” she hissed at Rowan. “Not a sightseeing tour.”

He chuckled, and she fought back the urge to club him over the head for being so recklessly loud here.

“I don’t see why it can’t be both,” he said.

Clearly, he also didn’t see why conversation was more likely to jeopardize this rescue op.

Ignoring him was the best way to avoid encouraging him further. But if he kept this up much longer, she might have to do something about it, and that would only be another distraction they couldn’t afford. Not to mention the fact that she’d vouched for Rowan’s presence here to Maxwell, hoping Rowan would behave himself far more than he had at the docks.

She hoped she hadn’t misjudged him that much.

Then, amid so much darkness and emptiness lending an eerie silence to the abandoned park, a new sound reached them.

It started as a grinding screech that crackled and popped through the air until a tinny, high-pitched tune in warbling notes followed.

Whatever mechanism now cranked out the dying carnival music achingly picking up speed had been as untouched and neglected as the rest of the park. The tune kept scratching and sticking, dropping into even creepier, lower tones until it picked back up again.

It made Rebecca think of old, dying, broken things, beasts and beings alike.

Whit stopped at the head of their formation and signaled for the team to halt. Everyone complied without question.

After a minute of standing in the darkness and listening to the warbling tune lending an even more haunted air to the park, with no other sound or visible movement, Maxwell whistled softly from the rear.

Whit signaled to keep moving, indicating the way straight ahead after double-checking the location on his tracker. The team moved in.

They had to be close to recovering their missing operatives. An abandoned park didn’t randomly turn on its attractions on its own.

Humans tried to rationalize phenomena like this with stories of ghosts and hauntings by disgruntled spirits with unfinished business, but if they’d known the true explanation behind such inexplicable singularities, they’d have a harder time accepting that both beings and magic from an entirely different world had made their way across an invisible border to Earth millennia ago.

The creepy carnival music grew louder as the team followed Whit toward another tracked destination. Within minutes, they left the narrowing walkway between rundown outbuildings and spilled into the widening space beyond.

The place was still overrun by weeds and creeping vines taking over the manmade structures around them, but at the very center of the opening, they finally found the source of the music.

The silhouette of an enormous carousel in the center of the open space rose against the black sky, its once-domed roof now badly chipped at sharp angles, as if a giant mouth had descended from the sky to bite out huge chunks.

From this distance, it was hard to tell what type of animals had been represented among the broken ride’s themed seats. Several of them were also missing heads or entire limbs, the internal color of their broken molds standing out in darker shades than the faded and chipped paint. Most of the carousel’s light bulbs shattered long ago.

While the music wavered, another low shriek of scraping metal emanated from the antique ride before the carousel ground in a shuddering, jolting lurch on its base and began to turn.

The abuse of decades of neglect and misuse had gunked up the gears to a significant degree. The carousel’s rotation was far from smooth, halting and grinding before some rusted part in the mechanism gave way and the ride turned another quarter of an inch with a stuttering jerk.

This happened every twenty seconds or so while the carousel moved with agonizing slowness in the dark, and still, there was no other sign of movement around Rebecca and her team. The amusement park was just as dark and empty as when they’d entered, the shadows just as still but for the occasional wan flicker across the ground when a shape within the carousel momentarily blocked the moonlight.

The team waited in tense readiness.

This entire setup felt like the perfect place for their unknown enemy to stage an attack. The tinny carnival music was loud enough to drown out the sound of approaching footsteps, but after another minute of waiting and watching with no sign of life from any direction, Whit finally stepped forward again to approach the ride.

No one stopped him. Rebecca didn’t sense any other presence here, and at the very least, if there had been someone else, Maxwell’s shifter senses would have picked up on something.

The soft back light of Whit’s GPS tracking device cast an especially eerie glow when he turned on the screen in front of the carousel to double-check their position.

“What now?” the thickly tattooed troll named Corey asked, his voice barely loud enough to be heard over the eerie music.

Whit tilted his head, then turned to face the team with a frown. “They should be here. Right here. We’re practically standing on the signal source.”

“Eyes open,” Maxwell growled before he worked his way closer from the rear of their formation.

The other operatives swept the open area, adding the low whine of augmented weapons powering up as soft lights in blue, purple, or orange glowed within the magitek systems to add slightly more light to the scene.

While they fanned out to keep watch, Maxwell stopped at Rebecca’s side. He moved without a sound, and even in the darkness with zero visibility, Rebecca would never have noticed his approach if it wasn’t for that damn tingling warmth flaring to life across the left side of her face and her left shoulder.

It rippled through her body with startling intensity, almost like she’d fallen sideways into a high-voltage electric fence. Just without the pain. And with far more alluring pleasure than getting fried by electricity ever offered anyone.

She almost sucked in a sharp breath at the sensation but forced herself to breathe normally, gritting her teeth. Apparently, that unexplained energetic pull between her and the shifter didn’t take breaks for high-priority, high-risk field ops. Definitely not a plus.

It only got worse when Maxwell leaned slightly toward her and lowered his voice to ask her privately, “Feel anything?”

The first thought through her mind was that he was taunting her, but it didn’t make sense. Especially when every time the sensation became too strong to ignore, the shifter’s visible reaction to it carried as much surprise and confusion as Rebecca’s.

Then she realized he was talking about the mission. This operation. As in: did she sense anything around them?

Rebecca couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Not when he stood this close. But she could shake her head and respond.

“We’re definitely alone here,” she said. “For now.”

“But?”

Was she that easy to read? He’d certainly been getting better at speaking like he could hear her thoughts.

Just how closely had he been watching her lately if he could now tell when she was holding something back?

With that tingling energy swirling between them at close proximity, and the creepy carnival music forming the worst background ever, Rebecca could no longer keep herself from looking up into his silver eyes glowing like twin moons in the darkness.

“But something still doesn’t feel right,” she added. “I’d even go so far as to say this whole thing feels completely wrong.”

He studied her face with his usual silent intensity, though his regular aggravated disapproval didn’t exist this time. Blinking slowly, he nodded. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

Oh great. They were sharing thoughts now without even trying.

From here on out, Rebecca had to be a lot more careful, a lot more consistently, about where she let her mind wander, especially when her Head of Security was around.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow, for reasons she couldn’t have explained, Maxwell’s ability to read her like this would only strengthen and improve. That wouldn’t always be a good thing.

Their gazes were simultaneously ripped away from each other when the agonizingly slow rotation of the carousel jolted again, and the entire ride came to a grinding halt, shuddering and clanking.

The ancient speakers crackled more than ever and elicited a snapping burst before the entire carousel ground to a lurching stop. It wobbled on its base, the mechanisms clinking and clanking somewhere deep inside. Then the hauntingly off-key melody died with a burst of static and the last few fading notes dropping into an impossibly low warble that cut out abruptly.

The Shade team froze, everyone on high alert for the cause of such an abrupt change in their current environment.

The only sound was the low, moaning whistle of the breeze as it kicked up and hurtled through the narrow spaces between the dilapidated buildings all around them.

There was no other sign of movement and still no sign of their captured operatives.

What the hell was going on here?

Before either Maxwell or Rebecca could voice a new command, before anyone had any idea what to do next as they scanned the darkness and waited for the looming danger to finally show itself, Whit took one more step toward the dark, silent, perfectly still carousel, the back light of his tracking device casting a faint bluish glow in front of him to contrast even more starkly against his dark silhouette.

“Hold on,” he said, his voice low. “I think I see something.”

Maxwell signaled for the rest of the team to hold their positions and keep watch. Rebecca headed toward Whit and the carousel, because now she thought she saw something as well.

A faint but very real metallic glint reflecting off the floor of the carousel right at the very edge of its rounded perimeter. Metal, maybe, or glass. Whatever it was, it was more modern and in far better shape than every other dull and rusty piece of the carousel’s metal.

Something that didn’t belong here.

Whit slowed in his approach and visibly stiffened.

Rebecca was close enough now to see in the low light glowing from Whit’s tracking device.

Two cell phones lay side by side at the edge of the carousel’s floor, each of them strapped down to the rusted metal with thick strips of duct tape.

“Oh shit…” Whit muttered and stepped forward again, reaching out with his free hand toward the phones.

The second he took his first step closer, a new light bloomed into existence right there in the dry dirt at the base of the carousel—faint at first but growing in brilliance and intensity with every vital centimeter of Whit’s approach.

A dark red light, illuminating the casting circle drawn in the dirt, and which was now activated by the footsteps crossing the threshold of the defensive ward the enemy had left in place.

“Whit!” Rebecca screamed. “Get down!”