Page 151 of Elven Crown

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 hadmade 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 wanflicker 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 therehadbeen 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. Justwithout 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 shecouldshake 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 closelyhadhe been watching her lately if he could now tell when she was holding something back?

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