43. Chapter 43

43

T he shock, betrayal, and indignant fury rising inside Rebecca was instantaneous, filling her body with the stifling heat of rage at the thought that this all could have been one giant mistake from the very beginning.

Could Maxwell have known what they would be walking into tonight, before they ever left the compound?

Could he really have had a darker part to play in this entire mission from the start?

It only took her another second to realize how quickly and effortlessly she’d fallen into suspecting the shifter, just like the day she’d stumbled upon the secret rebellion meeting in the compound’s library, without knowing whose side Maxwell Hannigan was on or where his loyalties truly lay.

But this was the same game she’d been playing with him the whole time, wasn’t it?

A game they’d made a private agreement to stop playing, for the sake of Shade itself.

Rebecca had wanted Maxwell to trust her without undue suspicion, or at the very least to trust her dedication to the job she hadn’t wanted but couldn’t refuse. Since then, he’d actively tried to give her a chance. She owed him the same courtesy, didn’t she?

If Rebecca had already proven herself and her willingness to do what it took for the task force she now commanded, Maxwell Hannigan had certainly done the same.

This setup in the abandoned amusement park very well could have been a trap, but the shifter’s only involvement in it was his desire to get their captured operatives out in one piece. Nothing more.

She had to believe that.

Otherwise, she’d spend all her energy watching him, questioning his motives with growing suspicion at his every move and decision. If she let that happen, this mission was dead in the water.

If she knew anything about him for certain, it was that Maxwell’s dedication and loyalty to the success and well-being of this task force was unquestionable.

So stop trying to make new problems where there aren’t any , she told herself.

“Knox?” The sound of Maxwell calling her name, even her fake name, whipped her back into the present.

Every member of the team stared at her, waiting for her command.

Rebecca blinked and turned toward the shifter. “Sorry. What was that?”

His dubious frown deepened, but he looked more concerned by her brief escape from reality and less suspicious, which was for the best. Especially when she got the feeling now that he’d spent more time than necessary trying to recapture her attention.

“Your opinion?” he asked, failing to hide a quick glance at the rest of the team before prompting her further. “Diego, Titus, and Burke are definitely still here. If this is a trap like you said, and I agree with you, I say we still move in anyway. But the call is yours.”

She nodded. “As long as we keep our eyes open for more casting-circle minefields, yeah. I’d say that gives us a small advantage of extra preparation, at least.”

“Let’s just chase these amateurs down and take them all out for good,” Rowan blurted, swinging his rifle in one hand again toward where that awful, trembling bellow had originated.

Rebecca’s jaw dropped as she faced him.

Was that seriously his only solution for everything ?

She didn’t get the chance to tell him off for such a profoundly reckless suggestion.

“Listen, Blackmoon,” Whit began. “I get that you’re still the new guy and everything, but this is a rescue mission. Not search and destroy.”

Rowan’s hazel gaze settled on the warlock’s face before he grinned. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive, pal.”

“When we still don’t know exactly who or what we’re up against?” Shell asked as she gestured toward the rest of the park with a toss of her hand. “Yeah, I’d say they’re two totally different things.”

“We can’t just barge in there completely blind,” Jay added, adjusting his two-handed grip on his weapon before nodding up ahead. “If we don’t know what to expect, we’re risking their lives for nothing. Not to mention our own. And if we don’t get them out of there, Diego, Titus, and Burke aren’t exactly getting any second chances. This isn’t rescue tryouts.”

Rowan chuckled, the deviously amused glimmer returning to his eyes. “Well, it’s certainly better than standing around and talking about all the things that could go wrong. What we should be doing is acting before these pea brains have any more time to figure us out.”

“You are in no position to decide what this team needs or does,” Maxwell growled.

Rowan didn’t hide his next eye roll. “But we could just—”

“No. It’s not your call, elf. And the chances of you having anything of value to add to this discussion are zero.”

Rowan’s smile disappeared now, and Rebecca forced down a laugh.

At least they were using their words with each other instead of their fists.

“We don’t have time for a more advanced strategy,” she cut in. “Have these attackers pulled out more stops than we expected? Sure, but we handled it, and we’re here now. So are our operatives. And the only other thing I know for certain is that if we don’t get them out of here tonight, their chances drop drastically. I’m not willing to risk that for them. Bottom line.”

As she spoke, Rowan let out a heavy, aggravated sigh and rolled his eyes again. When she finished and settled her gaze on Maxwell, however, the shifter’s face lit up—for as much as it ever did—with what looked a lot more like pride and admiration and agreement than she ever expected to see on him.

Apparently, she’d said the right thing.

“So we keep moving,” Maxwell said with another careful glance around the old Western main street, half-destroyed after their recent battle. “Anyone have a problem with that?”

The others looked just as determined to get this done, which was answer enough.

Rowan opened his mouth and sucked in a sharp breath to respond.

“Good,” Maxwell said and turned away from the elf as if he didn’t exist. “Then we keep moving.”

He narrowed his eyes and sniffed the air again to get them back on the trail. Something toppled and bounced across one of the second-story balconies behind them, followed by a much closer heavy crash.

The team spun toward the sound, their magitek weapons powering up again in the darkness, the varying colors of magical light casting instant shadows across the poorly laid cobblestones and against shattered, crooked doorways.

Pounding footsteps and a sharp hiss rose from Rebecca’s right a second before she caught a flash of movement in the darkness—the heel of a thick black boot disappearing around the corner of the closest building.

“ Or we could just follow one of the survivors,” Whit whispered. “Lead us right to them.”

Maxwell signaled to move after the enemy target before gripping his own weapon tightly in both hands.

Before anyone could head after that newest target, however, the air blistered again with the same harrowing, bellowing roar that had shaken what remained of the abandoned park to its foundations twice already.

Coming from the opposite end of the thoroughfare and nowhere close to the direction in which the remaining attacker had fled.

The long rows of buildings on either side of them shook again beneath the growling roar splitting through the night. More floorboards cracked. Wooden frames shuddered and splintered. Whatever remained indoors to be broken did so now, surrendering to the violence of such a sound.

Rebecca had never encountered nor heard tell of any kind of beast or creature that could make a noise like that . Not even the magical monsters of Xahar’áhsh.

More frightening than the sound itself was the unknown of what could have possibly created something that powerful and destructive.

But it got even worse.

Once the trembling roar died down, a scream followed in its wake.

A curdling wail of consuming agony, all too familiar to those who had heard such tortured screams before.

Rebecca certainly had.

It was the sound of some poor soul being broken beyond their limits to withstand much more, if any at all.

That scream lasted no longer than two seconds, piercing the night with horror and excruciating pain and defeat before it cut off abruptly.

While the scream’s final echoes bounced between the rows of buildings around them, it was immediately clear that whatever had ended such a cry was likely just as terrible, if not worse, than the source of the debilitating growl.

Then the eerie silence of the abandoned park rushed back in around them, making it feel once more as if time stood still, waiting for the team’s next decision.

Someone swallowed audibly before Shell cleared her throat. “Does anyone else think that sounded way too much like Burke?”

“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Whit muttered.

Maxwell’s jaw muscles worked furiously as he eyed each operative in turn. “Would it be great to take all these fuckers out as soon as possible? Absolutely. But Knox is right. This is a rescue op, not an offensive assault.

“Our priority is getting our guys out of there before whatever made Burke scream like that does anything worse to any of them. Now we know where they are. That’s where we’re going. Let’s move.”

The shifter had already taken off in that direction before he’d finished his directive, and the rest of the team fell in line behind him, boots crunching softly across broken cobblestones and unkempt weeds and the scattered debris from their firefight on Main Street.

Rebecca had no problem with him taking the lead. It let her center her focus on searching the darkness for signs of another attack.

They emerged from the far side of the stylized thoroughfare to pass through another open, overgrown area consumed by weeds and thick patches of ivy and wild grasses—not quite another parking lot and not quite another field. Every few yards, they passed the forgotten remains of a small kiddie ride been pulled aside for maintenance and repairs it never received.

Following Maxwell also meant Rebecca had more awareness to allocate toward keeping an eye on Rowan, who meandered aimlessly behind the team’s tight formation like this was a casual nature trek instead.

If he wanted to fall behind and stay out of the team’s way, that was on him.

Until the team passed another outbuilding that had once been a storage shed and a heavy metallic clang rose from that direction. The single remaining door squealed on its hinges before sagging sideways in the crooked door frame with a crunch of splintering wood.

Another humanoid shadow darted out of the shed and around the side of the small outbuilding, footsteps pounding noisily across the wild grasses and kicking another pile of abandoned metal parts.

Rebecca felt Rowan’s reaction, and when she spun around to face him, she found exactly what she’d expected.

“ Múrg dah’lás ,” Rowan snarled as he spun toward the fleeing enemy, slapped the side of his augmented rifle to up the setting to its fullest deadly power, and took aim.

The growing whine of his firearm flaring to full firing capacity split through the air, joined by the stuttering flash of yellow light from the augmented munitions. The next second, he opened fire.

The sizzle and crack of magitek munitions firing across the open space echoed all around them. Half a dozen bolts of deadly yellow magical energy seared through the darkness, providing just enough light to catch the tail end of the fleeing enemy mid-sprint, his shadow shrinking across the ground toward him before Rowan’s shots whizzed right over his head and disappeared.

Rebecca moved to leap after Rowan and stop him, but once again, she was beaten to it.

A dark blur streaked past her at impossible speed. Then Maxwell appeared beside the Blackmoon Elf with a flash of silver light and a warning snarl.

“Blackmoon, you fucking idiot,” he hissed. His hand came down on the barrel of Rowan’s rifle and smacked it away to capture the elf’s attention and keep him from shooting again.

Rowan widened his eyes at the shifter’s sudden appearance but jerked his weapon out of Maxwell’s hand. And, like a moron, he took aim again. “I saw one of them. I can take him down.”

“You can hold your fucking fire,” Maxwell spat. Then he moved again in the blink of an eye, and when Rowan stumbled away from him, the shifter now had complete possession of both their augmented weapons. “That’s the only thing you’ll be doing right now.”

Rowan glowered at him and gestured sharply into the darkness toward where the lone enemy had disappeared. “So we’re just letting them get away from us for fun? If that’s your master plan—”

“The decision’s already been made, elf! You’re here to follow orders, not to do whatever you want now that you finally have a weapon in your hands.” Maxwell took one lunging step toward Rowan again, who stiffened in response, though he neither backed away nor removed his scathing glare from the shifter’s face.

He did little when Maxwell shoved the magitek rifle roughly against the elf’s chest with another vicious snarl that would have subdued anyone else. Rowan merely lifted his hands to accept the weapon unexpectedly returned to him.

Then Maxwell spun away and trudged back toward the team. “Keep moving.”

Rowan stared after him, then easily found Rebecca’s gaze in the darkness.

As soon as he did, he widened his eyes at her, pursed his lips, and mimed blowing his own head off with his very real, fully engaged firearm.

Rebecca signaled to him with a quick series of hand gestures only he could see: “Just do what he says.”

Then she turned to fall in line with the team’s resumed formation behind Maxwell.

Rowan’s dark, dangerously carefree laughter rose behind her, but she didn’t have to check to know he’d also stepped in to bring up the rear.

If he kept this up any longer, their captured operatives would be dead.

Soon after, they found themselves walking along the cracked, mostly overgrown lanes of a narrow road leading toward the next grouping of buildings up ahead. For the first time since they’d entered the park, the high chain-link fence was visible again, emerging from the surrounding wooded area before narrowing in to enclose the long strip of old road the way they traveled.

That had probably been to reassure visitors they were heading in the right direction toward the opposite side of the park. Still, Rebecca couldn’t help but compare it to the narrow run of a livestock enclosure funneling terrified animals straight into the slaughterhouse.

With no other sign of pursuit or surveillance and no other noises ricocheting across the park from either the source of that awful, trembling roar or continued shrieks from their captured operatives, this narrow road almost felt like a break. The onslaught of dangerous threats and unavoidable combat might have paused, but the team kept a quick and consistent pace toward their next destination.

Up ahead, Maxwell signaled everyone to keep moving before he fell back and waited for Rebecca.

She didn’t slow down either when he fell into step beside her, both of them still searching the darkness and maintaining a ready grip on their weapons.

As if they’d known it would happen again, the team didn’t stop the next time the growing bellow shot through the air for a fourth time, now much louder and significantly closer.

The ensuing screams rose much sooner than last time to join the off-putting roar. Two of them now in a series of increasingly pained wails before everything cut off all at once.

As if someone had opened a soundproof door to let out a five-second preview of the horrible things taking place on the other side.

When it finally stopped, Rebecca felt the tingling brush of Maxwell’s gaze on her face, like an exploratory tickle this time, even before he decided to speak.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

What a conversation-starter.

Rebecca bit her tongue and focused instead on answering the question. “I’m fine. I just wanna find them and get them out of here so we can all put this to bed.”

He nodded, the glow from his silver eyes flickering in the dark as he continuously scanned their surroundings. But he hadn’t joined her for a chat just to ask how she was doing. She knew that much.

Something else was coming.

“I want to order the elf to fall back and wait for us with the vehicle,” he said.

And there it was, offered as tersely and matter-of-factly as if she’d asked about it.

“He’s come this far,” she said. “We can’t afford the distraction of trying to call him off at this point. Plus, I think he’ll come in handy when it counts.”

“I don’t trust him,” Maxwell added, lowering his voice. “You need to be careful with that one.”

“Duly noted, Hannigan. Thanks.”

Then, apparently, the conversation was over. Though Maxwell said nothing else about it, his breathing pattern had changed, dropping into a slower, heavier rhythm, like he was actively forcing himself not to react.

This was not the time for conversations based solely on opinions. They had a job to do.

Rebecca expected that kind of distracting nonsense from Rowan, but coming from Maxwell, it was even more exasperating. The mission had already taxed her to the point where being short with him had been all she could manage.

She wished she’d tried harder not to, but she couldn’t just stop herself and apologize for it either. Not now. Not when they couldn’t afford more distractions.

And especially not when she was certain Rowan hung back by just enough distance that he could overhear everything they said.

If either of them convinced himself Rebecca had “picked sides”, that would only make them go at each other that much harder.

Now that there was nothing else for them to discuss, Maxwell sped up to take his place at the head of their team again, and that was that.

They could discuss it further later, after the successful completion of this mission, if necessary.

So Rebecca returned her full attention to approaching their destination, and not a moment too soon, it seemed.

Because now they were close enough to the next collection of buildings to make out the various shapes of individual structures.

As well as the highly suspicious and unexpected activity kicking up around those buildings, as if perfectly timed to their approach.

It started with an occasional flash of colored light—purple, then a hazy and muddled brown-green, then streaks of bright orange interspersed among the others. It seemed there was no rhyme or reason to the intermittent flashes, which came from half a dozen different buildings up ahead that Rebecca could count.

When the team reached the end of the overgrown road to continue across hard-packed soil rendered uneven by the wild overgrowth and the scattered chunks of the rundown buildings choked and covered by thick weeds, the music started.

It was different from the eerily scratchy and off-tune melody played by the antique relic of the carousel’s spotty sound system. The first notes blaring through the night were reminiscent of a trumpeting fanfare, coming from the opposite end of this next themed attraction.

Then, as they finally reached the buildings at a slower, more cautious pace, still clearing the doorless entrances of abandoned structures—some with marginally readable signs—the second blast of music began. The tinkling of tuned chimes carried a haunting melody, which built in two seconds into a bursting, crackling drum line.

Rebecca felt the beat reverberating through her chest and up into her teeth like a physical blow.

And it came from behind them, inside the building they’d already passed.

Shell spun around with her weapon raised to search the area Rebecca had already just cleared.

The troll woman fought the urge to open fire into the darkness, but when Rebecca gave her the silent signal that no physical threat accompanied the music and that the team had only to continue after Maxwell, Shell pulled herself back together, nodded, and continued after the others.

After that, the strobing bursts of magical light and random bits of old, warbling music blasted at deafening volumes grew in frequency and intensity. Rebecca and her team ignored it as best they could, though it understandably made them more skittish.

Maxwell stood fast to his assertion that their captured operatives were still here, still close. Every time Rebecca looked toward him taking the lead, it seemed he was still on the scent, trudging ever onward in determination and with an unwavering confidence in his own tracking abilities. She didn’t once consider questioning them.

If he didn’t know what he was doing, he would have told her by now.

She hoped that particular assumption of hers hadn’t been misplaced.

The worst of it, though, was when the screams started up again.