42. Chapter 42

42

“ U p on the balconies!” Shell shouted.

As if that shout of alarm were the secret password, everything went to hell.

The attack rained down on Rebecca and her team from the second-floor balconies she’d been so sure couldn’t have held any extra weight, let alone what now looked like a dozen enemy combatants opening fire.

Brilliant bursts of organic magical light and augmented magitek rounds blasted down at them from those balconies in staccato bursts.

“Cover!” Maxwell roared as the team ducked or tried to pinpoint their attackers to return fire. “Take cover first! Then we’ll beat them back!”

In seconds, the team broke into pairs, half of them offering cover fire so the other could dive toward shelter before their roles reversed.

Rebecca couldn’t help but think how easily they’d walked right into this one. Or how easy the enemy must have found it now to open fire on them from above.

Like shooting fish in a barrel.

She moved for cover while augmented gunfire blistered through the air, filling it with the crackling static of conjured attacks and battle magic.

Despite their dilapidated state, the storefronts lining the main avenue still had plenty of substance left to add more noise and debris to the chaos.

Glass smashed and shattered, busting out of window frames or toppling off shelves inside. Chunks of stripped wood and splinters rained down everywhere. Fragments of the old buildings burst apart and fell away beneath both enemy targets on the second-story balconies and Shade operatives down below.

Rebecca dove through the closest storefront doorway and pressed her back against the wall beside it, exchanging intermittent weapons fire and snarling at herself.

All this could have been entirely avoidable. All this back and forth. The hiding. The wondering when another weapon would fire toward her face and from which direction.

Dammit, it would have been so much easier to respond to something like this if she’d been here alone, without an entire team of magicals for whom she was responsible.

If she’d been here on her own, she could have taken out every single enemy on the second floor of both buildings in five minutes. Ten, tops, if they moved from room to room.

But she wasn’t alone, which meant she could only rely on firing back across the fake main street outside, attempting to hit something that moved so it never got up again.

The shuffling clink of shattered glass distracted her from the firefight long enough to see Rowan picking himself out of a pile of broken liquor bottles and brown-glass growlers.

“This is so frustrating ,” he said with a grunt as he plucked individual shards of glass off his shirt to chuck them over his shoulder. “If I’m gonna throw myself into a bar for safety, the least they could do around here is make sure the bottles aren’t empty.”

A larger explosion wracked the main-street strip, drowning out all other noise and making the buildings shudder and tremble around them before everything finally calmed down again.

But only enough to differentiate between the booming explosion from someone’s weapon and the rapid-burst rapport of automatic magitek weapons fire.

Rebecca spun to fire three more quick shots at a dark shape she could barely see moving across a second-story balcony on the opposite side of the street. Then she pivoted back into the store before thumping her back against the wall.

Seconds later, a brilliant streak of strobing blue light hurtled toward the storefront out of the darkness and smashed into the building’s facade. More shredded wood chips and decades of gathered dust rained down around.

The rest of the Shade team shouted enemy positions to each other, trying to work together while trapped just beyond various doorways, and the fight continued.

Rebecca turned toward Rowan again, expecting to see him at least somewhat prepared to return fire at her side—or at the very least to stave off a much more close-quarters attack, should the enemy attempt to join them in this room either via the staircase in the back or through the open doorway facing the street.

He wasn’t.

Instead, he hung back by several feet. Having found at least one liquor bottle that hadn’t broken during his dive for cover, he now upended the bottle over his open mouth, scowling when it produced nothing.

“What are you doing ?” Rebecca hissed.

He shrugged and tossed the bottle over his shoulder. It shattered against the rear wall, but he hardly seemed to notice as he strode casually toward her, glancing through the open doorway like nothing more interesting than an annual neighborhood parade took place just outside.

“Please,” he said with a scoff. “This is child’s play compared to what you can actually do.”

Technically, he wasn’t wrong. But the middle of a deadly engagement before they were anywhere close to completing tonight’s mission was not the time for this sort of discussion.

“So you decided it was better to get comfy and look for leftover booze while the rest of us handle the threat?”

Another bottle shattered after Rowan chucked it over his shoulder. “What threat? Seriously, just take them out already, and this will all be over.”

Rebecca squeezed off several more shots into the dark main street lighting up with brilliant bursts of purple, green, pink, and yellow magical energy from augmented weapons and outstretched hands alike.

“Honestly,” Rowan continued blandly, “I really don’t know what you’re waiting for.”

A massive bolt of roiling purple flame barreled in her direction. Rebecca pivoted back inside the store before shouting at him, “I can’t !”

“And I don’t believe you.” When something crashed and thumped around above them on the second story, Rowan paused his casual perusal of their current location and gazed up at the trembling ceiling.

His first true acknowledgement that anything was actually happening right now.

“Unless you performed some kinda Shattering on yourself without me picking up on it, don’t tell me you can’t , Rebecca.”

She’d almost aimed her weapon through the doorway again to return fire, but his words made her stop. Then she faced Rowan with a deepening scowl.

“Don’t joke about something like that,” she snapped. “It’s not funny.”

“No, you’re right.” He nodded. “It’s hilarious. Ripping out your own magic just to fit in? That’s one of the more entertaining premises I’ve picked up on in this world, I’ll tell you what.”

“I used to know someone who did that.”

Another explosion crashed against the building and sounded like it threw several large heavy somethings across the rooms above them.

Rowan leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. “Someone who did what now?”

“Cast a Shattering on themselves,” she said. “That’s the furthest thing from a joke you can possibly imagine.”

When he looked up at her, an unexpected seriousness had returned to Rowan’s eyes. He studied her a moment longer, then raised his eyebrows. “Someone important?”

That was a weird question.

At first she didn’t know how to answer it and finally had to go with the generic response of, “It doesn’t matter.”

Then she was free to blast more magitek rounds at the unidentified enemy blasting the same back at her in intermittent bursts.

“Any specific reason?” Rowan asked.

Rebecca shook her head. “Just that it was from an entire lifetime ago.”

An entire lifetime, it seemed, and yet in reality, it had only been six months.

Rebecca had had so much practice over the centuries with picking up new identities and new communities and new roles, then putting them down again just as quickly when it was time to move on.

She’d thought she’d done the same easily enough when she’d left Golden, Colorado six months ago to head across the country, leaving behind a much smaller little private team of expert magical burglars. As well as the people who had formed that team during the several years she’d been a part of it.

And the vestrohím witch who’d cast a Shattering on herself in secret, far before any of them could have ever suspected that witch would become the next Guardian of the Gateway portal between worlds.

Thinking about Jessica Northwood now filled Rebecca with a startlingly unanticipated sense of nostalgia. And something else…

Something she might have named as missing that part of her life and the magicals who’d shared it with her, if she’d had the time to process the sensation.

Also difficult to do in a magical firefight.

She shook herself out of the memories before spinning toward the doorway to open fire once again, wondering just how long these unidentified magicals attacking from above could hold.

When the augmented rounds of explosive attack magic she’d been firing from her pistol ran out and she had to drop back against the inside wall again to reload, Rebecca returned to the present and the current pain in her ass.

After confirming the lack of alcoholic beverages inside the abandoned park shop, Rowan had now given up investigating their current hiding place.

He’d dropped to the floor across the doorway from her and now sat cross-legged, facing her, holding his knees and heaving exasperated sighs every twenty seconds while the weapons fire continued non-stop. “Okay. I’m just gonna say it.”

“Or you could not ,” Rebecca quipped before ramming her new, fully loaded clip back into her pistol and firing through the doorway again.

At least he waited for her to stop shooting before he continued his unsolicited thought. “This is getting ridiculous. I mean it. If you’re not gonna go solve this issue yourself, I’ll do it. It’ll take me a little longer, but hey. It’s better than being shot at and wasting even more time.”

She rolled her eyes. Just more of his constant bullshit chatter.

Until, when she next glanced his way during the firefight, Rowan had finished pushing himself back to his feet.

“Wait, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Someone’s gotta do it,” he said, gesturing calmly and casually toward the open doorway that lacked a door or any additional cover while spells, curses, battle magic, and magitek rounds crashed and sizzled and fired outside. “If it can’t be you, I get it. You’ve got your own angle. That’s fine.”

At first, she wouldn’t let herself believe this was anything but more posturing from the Blackmoon Elf. But when he didn’t stop or slow down on his way to the door, Rebecca’s insides churned with apprehension and disbelief.

“Don’t you dare!” she called after him.

“No, no. It’s all right,” he said, waving her off. “I can take one for the team. It’s nothing new.”

“Hey! We don’t know who these assholes are or what else they want besides our heads,” she argued. “We only know a sliver of what they’re capable of. If you walk through that door, you’re jeopardizing the entire mission!”

That made him stop in front of the doorway, as if Rebecca had said something he’d never considered before. Then he turned around to face her and shot her a highly exaggerated wink.

“As you wish, Thon-Da’al,” he said without a hint of genuine seriousness.

Then he stepped through the doorway and into the raging battle.

Was he that intent on compromising this entire operation and Rebecca’s part in it, all because the Blackmoon Elf was feeling a little bored?

“Stop!” she shouted after him. “Rowan!”

He ignored her and emerged from their cover to take position between the half-collapsed porch outside and the perilous wooden balcony above.

Rowan squared his feet, lifted his augmented rifle in both hands for the first time, and spun away from the building to level the barrel of his weapon up and to the side toward the balconies.

But he never fired a shot.

Because the moment Rowan stepped out and joined the party, all the heavy gunfire came to an immediate and eerily silent standstill.

Everyone froze.

The enemy, whoever that happened to be, threw no more attacks at the Shade team. No more weapons fired. No more shots or explosions rang out. No more magitek grenades were lobbed over the crooked balconies from above to rain chaos and confusion down on this small unit.

Nothing but sudden and complete, pervasive silence.

Sweeping in on the heels of such a dizzyingly loud firefight, however brief, that silence brought with it an even more intense eeriness than before.

Mostly because such an abrupt end to an assault like that usually meant nothing good.

The Shade operatives held their ground, though, waiting for the other shoe to drop, catching their breath in the silence or double-checking their remaining rounds in both clip and chamber.

Then Maxwell shouted from across the street, “Check in!”

“Whit!”

“Shell!”

One by one, the others did the same until finally, Rebecca added to it.

“Knox and Blackmoon in here!” she called out.

Rowan turned around to face her, adopting a skeptical frown as he lowered his weapon. Then he rolled his eyes with a snort.

Again, she had to ignore him. “Any ideas what the hell just happened?”

“If you figure it out,” Jay shouted, “feel free to fill us in at any time!”

“Looks clear out here,” Maxwell added. “Regroup.”

Slowly and cautiously, with weapons still drawn and at the ready, the operatives emerged from their cover positions. Everyone looked equally baffled by the sudden appearance and then disappearance of their attackers, but there was no more sign of the enemy anywhere.

Not so much as a single floorboard from the second story creaked or groaned. The dust had already settled. There was no sign of movement, no evidence of shifting weight, no proof of anyone here but the Shade team themselves.

On one hand, it was great not to be under attack anymore, which had its value.

On the other hand, the team now had absolute proof the enemy was here in the abandoned park with them, though again, they now had no idea as to the enemy’s location.

More harrowing than that thought, however, was the final remaining mystery Rebecca had yet to solve. Now she worried if it would even be possible.

If the unidentified enemy had been so intent on drawing this out, luring the team into a trap as they attempted to save three of their own, it meant the bastards wanted this badly enough to work for it.

Which only begged the question: What the hell would make the enemy pull back like that when the Shade team hadn’t once hit them with anything remotely powerful enough to warrant a retreat?

After shaking a combined layer of sawdust, shattered glass, and wood chips off the top of her boot, Rebecca moved cautiously down the steps off the front porch. She scanned the surrounding darkness, gripping her pistol tightly enough to feel marginally reassured by the weight of its presence in her hand.

If the circumstances called for it, though, she might have to pull out a few tricks slightly more powerful and effective than anything a simple magitek firearm could achieve.

Just not now, if she could help it. Not quite yet.

Maybe if she shared her thoughts, someone else might hop on board and tell her she wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

“I can’t shake the feeling we’re being herded into something,” she mused aloud. “Not just directed but specifically drawn into something. Going where they want us to go and at a specific time. Like whoever’s behind this has wanted us right here, right now, this whole time.

“Like they want us to make it all the way to the end, still hopeful and feeling proud of ourselves, before they strip it all away right in front of us.”

“And there’s nothing we can do to stop it,” Whit murmured. The entire team stared at the warlock, who realized it seconds later and shrugged. “I mean, if we’re just throwing our feelings out there…”

“It feels too much like a trap,” Rebecca added.

Maxwell’s silver eyes flashed in the darkness when he met her gaze for half a second. “Of course it’s a trap. Why else would we be here?”

The way he said it made Rebecca’s stomach curdle and sink toward the center of the Earth.

However unlikely, it sounded like Maxwell Hannigan knew exactly what they’d just walked into, exactly what would be required of them, and exactly how they would fail.

It sounded like he’d known all along.