Page 121 of Elven Crown

This was a fucking disaster. She should have come down harder on him.

“Hey, Blackmoon!” she shouted over the weapon’s rising whine, now sounding like a warning siren. “Blackmoon!”

Grinning like a lunatic, Rowan took another step toward the target.

Rebecca’s stomach clenched, and she leapt toward him. “Hold on! Wait a second—Rowan!”

He fired.

An enormous burst of magical energy billowed from the barrel of the machine gun in a stuttering stream, moving at first like a growing bubble before it erupted and careened across the dangerously short distance between its operator and his intended target.

That entire far side of the gym exploded in blazing yellow-green light bright enough to momentarily blind anyone who looked directly at it. The blast didn’t so much crash into the wooden target as it enveloped the thing, swarming around it like a blanket of searing heat and magical energy.

Then the full-powered shot warped back in on itself around the target like an imploding star. The gym filled with an electrifying scream of overpowered energy.

Rebecca skidded to a halt just before the burst erupted with an explosion of nauseating yellow-green light and a deafening boom.

Both the weapon’s recoil and the force of the blast knocked Rowan off his feet and sent him hurtling backward across the gym like a complete idiot. He hadn’t even landed before the rest of the explosion obliterated the target.

It looked more like it had detonated from the inside out before the thick wooden board shattered into thousands of splintery fragments flying like shrapnel across the gym.

Huge, jagged wooden splinters caromed off the walls and against the ceiling. The overhead lights flickered beneath the onslaught when several pieces clanged against the bulbs. Two lights shattered to add the sound of tinkling glass raining down on the wooden floor while operatives everywhere shouted in surprise, or ducked, or dove behind the stack of half-emptied weapons crates around the room.

Thick gray-brown smoke clouded Rebecca’s vision when she finally opened her eyes again. She blinked furiously against the acrid sting of it in her eyes and nose and throat, vaguely aware even before the smoke cleared that something was different. Something was wrong.

Nothing looked the same as it had before Rowan’s first blast had detonated.

Her ears were ringing, which made it even harder in all the ensuing chaos to pinpoint what that wrongness was while smoke still billowed through the room, and wayward shards of wood toppled to the floor all around her, and the overhead lights continued to flicker.

Then she heard startled shouts and pounding footsteps amidst the chaos, but she couldn’t see clearly enough to find out who was running or where they were headed or why.

She tried to turn her head for a better look but couldn’t.

Then she felt the cold smoothness of the wooden floor against her cheek and realized she was lying on the ground.

Dammit, why was she on theground?

More muffled shouts through the ringing in her ears, like the owners of those voices were very far away, muted through water or thick cement walls.

Why couldn’t she move? What the hell?

“Oh shit, it’s Knox!”

“The Thon-Da’al! She’s hit!”

“Someone get the healer!”

“Oh fuck, look at that!”

Then the pounding footsteps grew louder, heading toward her.

Rebecca tried to move again, but the pounding in her head made the whole world spin.

She should have been able to move. She’d taken plenty of knockouts like this in her day. Being thrown across the room was hardly a viable means of immobilizing her. What the hell was going on?

“Knox! Dammit, Knox, can you hear me?”

It took a second to recognize Maxwell’s voice. Then a heavy weight dropped to the floor beside her where she lay on her side.

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