Page 171 of Elven Shadow

But the flashes of deep, sickly green, ominous purple, and crimson-red light strobing through the windows at various points along the building’s facade soothed her immediate concern that she’d already been seen.

Harkennr and his gang were here, all right, and they had their hands full, interrogating prisoners for intel first and then just for fun. They had no reason to suspect anyone would sneak in, and certainly not a single intruder all alone.

Which still gave Rebecca the element of surprise and a slight advantage.

Summoning the dark smoke of her deepest power around herself was the closest thing she could get in her current state to wearing tonight’s shadows, but it was enough. She slinked along the wall, ignoring the screams of terror and excruciating agony seeping in one endless stream through the prison’s hundreds of windows.

Those living magical prisoners definitely made for an unexpected complication, but she would get to them if she could.

They just weren’t her top priority. Not yet.

Reaching the end of the east wall, Rebecca pulled the coils of dark smoke tighter around herself and peeked out from behind the corner.

Harkennr’s posse had an average level of security for someone of his status and reputation. She imagined that was part of his attempts to fit in here in Chicago, flying under the radar to assess the temperature of the city before fully exposing his true self and the lasting intentions that had fueled him over the last several centuries.

Torturing magical prisoners in an abandoned human prison was just the start for this guy.

The property’s southern entrance gates within the thick barbed-wire fence clinked and clanked open, casting flickering lights across the dead brown grass of what had once been the prison yard. The rumbling roar of an idling engine ricocheted off so much surrounding stone and concrete and brick.

But the snarls and grunts and barked orders from the armed guards stationed outside the prison’s entrance still reached Rebecca’s ears while she assessed her odds.

Two guard towers, one on either side of the open gates through which that waiting utility vehicle now rolled, swaying side-to-side beneath its heavy load concealed in the rear.

Half a dozen armed guards on foot patrolling the prison yard.

Three more utility vehicles parked in a triangle, its point facing the front gates to create a secure chokepoint around the entrance, should the base fall under attack.

Two high-powered machine guns on swiveling mounts stationed farther toward the perimeter fence, one at the southeast corner and the other at the northeast.

Rebecca pressed herself too closely against the outer wall to accurately gain a visual on sharpshooters nested on the prison’s roof or possibly the other side of a higher-story window. With a defensive setup like this, manned and patrolled through all hours of the night as standard procedure, there would be sharpshooters stationed somewhere. She’d have to keep that in mind.

Harkennr was smart. She knew that much. He wouldn’t leave the security of his facility up to chance. Hopefully, he also still hadn’t discovered the true identity of Shade’s new commander, which kept Fate on Rebecca’s side just a little longer.

Long enough to tackle one urgent high-priority problem at a time.

The utility vehicle bumping and rocking across the prison yard finally stopped a dozen yards east of the other vehicles’ defensive formation. The driver left the engine idling on the dead grass before he hopped out of the vehicle and marched around it toward a canvas flap hanging over the vehicle’s rear.

Before Rebecca finished plotting out her course across no more than a fifth of the prison yard to get what she needed first, the newest vehicle’s driver jerked aside that canvas flap and instantly readied a high-powered semi-automatic rifle with both hands to aim it inside the vehicle.

A pulse of violet-infused light glowed brighter within the assault rifle’s mechanisms adding their own high-pitched whine to the grumbling roar of the idling engine, the screech of mechanized gates rolling shut again, and the ever-present screams of tortured magicals forced to endure excruciating torment in the name of Harkennr’s goals.

The timbre and pitch of that rifle’s whine powering up with the brightening glow within it was a new one Rebecca hadn’t heard before.

New weapons made things interesting. Harkennr specialized exclusively in capturing, imprisoning, and trafficking magicals—both between worlds and across each of them. If he’d decided to expand into trafficking new and improved iterations and prototypes of advanced magitek weaponry as well, that could make him a lot more dangerous for the magical world in Chicago.

Rebecca would have to get her hands on one of those new assault rifles eventually. Even from where she crouched around the corner of the building, it looked like a whole lot of power packed inside for a whole lot of fun.

But the new weapon wasn’t even the biggest surprise of the night.

The closest, loudest shrieks and wails of terror and blubbering pleas reached her, growing in volume and intensity. Rebecca squinted through the darkness at the driver’s glowing magitek rifle, which he jerked aside to motion for someone she couldn’t see to start moving.

One by one, a trail of bodies emerged from the rear of the vehicle.

Living bodies.

Beaten, bloodied, broken bodies, bound in chains reinforced by magical bindings and complex wards to ensure no one escaped, even by accident.

A new shipment of wrongly seized magicals brought in to reinvigorate Harkennr’s current inventory of subjects for his experiments and victims of his violent predilections.

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