Page 17 of Elven Lies

The small, cramped room had enough space for two horrible contraptions—a bulky metal chair with rows of buttons and levers that would have belonged more in a dentist’s office, and a slate-gray metallic box nearly as tall as the chair situated just inside the open door.

Beside that box, with all its ominously blinking lights as it pumped and buzzed and trembled with augmented power, stood an erratically tall orc, incredibly thin for his race, with comically large safety goggles tinted to an almost opaque black already pulled down over his eyes. He wore all white, like a hospital orderly from the early decades of the twentieth century.

The guy might have pulled off this official-looking ensemble if it weren’t for his dark, burnt-pumpkin-colored skin and thick, four-inch tusks protruding from his lower jaw, his bottom lip fattening around them.

As the orc scribbled diligently away on some paper on a goddamn clipboard, Rebecca’s gaze unwittingly followed the ordered chaos of cabled wires, cords, and IV tubes filled with glowing green and blue substances. They trailed across the floor toward the nightmarish dentist’s chair and stopped. Some of them plugged directly into the chair, but the rest ended exactly where Rebecca had feared they would.

A deathly, thin, haggard man lay strapped to the chair, his dark hair plastered to his sweat-slickened face pale enough to make him look dead. The IV tubes disappeared beneath strips of tape attached to the undersides of his forearms, while others had been inserted directly into his abdomen.

Rebecca would have thought this man—probably a mage, maybe even a Cruorcian, if he’d opened his eyes—was already dead if the orc hadn’t chosen that moment to flip another switch on the magitek box to start another round of “treatment.”

The cords and tubes and wires hissed and chugged and pumped. The metal box strobed that eerie red and blue light while the very same crackled across the victim’s face and bare chest.

The mage convulsed in the chair, his arms, legs and torso bound to the device by both worn leather straps and iron clamps.

But there was nothing to keep his screams at bay.

And scream he did.

Thick bluish steam rose from both the chair and the orc’s control box while whatever awful experiment played out in this room. Rebecca wanted nothing more than to leap inside, break the orc’s neck, and rip the mage free from his imprisonment, regardless of whether it had already killed him.

Even then, she couldn’t move. She couldn’t even take her eyes off the horrendous demonstration, no matter how violently the flashing lights burned her eyes or the acrid steam filled her nostrils and instantly brought on the urge to vomit.

The magic crackling around the mage’s body intensified again, then dimmed, the colors and mass sucked away by yet another tube only to be replaced by more glowing fluids pumped through the IVs in an endless cycle of stealing and replacing what could never truly be replaced.

By the Blood, he’d done it.

Harkennr had finally found his methods of drawing the literal magic straight out of his victims’ bodies to harness it for other purposes. Thathadto be the function of the sparking, vibrating metal box beside the orc.

Of all the other potential explanations for such horrors, Rebecca still knew this was what she witnessed now—thatHarkennr’s theories and first few decades of failed attempts had finally culminated in something as ruthless and obviously effective as this, despite the harrowing consequences.

No doubt the mad genius already had several viable applications for both his devices and the use of this stolen magic once it was collected and refurbished.

Applications beyond using it for his own personal gain, of course.

If Rebecca had seen this with her own eyes under any other circumstances, she would have put a stop to it right then and there. Then she would have hunted Harkennr down herself, no matter how long it took her or how much it cost her. It would be worth it, just to watch the horrifying realization on his face when hers was the last he ever saw.

But her hands were tied.

She’d walked herself right into this dark, infuriating corner, filled with outrage and disbelief, and there was nothing she could do about it.

6

Beside her, Maxwell tensed more than ever. Even under the deafening buzz and whine of Harkennr’s experimental technology and the mage’s constant screams ripping from his throat as his own magic crackled out of his body before being so cruelly sucked away, Rebecca could have sworn she heard Maxwell’s furious growl deepening and growing stronger.

Ifshewas on the edge of throwing all their plans out the window and acting on her natural responses to this horrid display, her Head of Security might have already succumbed to them.

She glanced at him from the corner of her eye to find Maxwell’s silver eyes strobing almost in time with the pulsing, chugging rhythm of the machines, his mouth open in a vengeful snarl.

It could have been all the flashing lights, but it looked a hell of a lot like his teeth had elongated and sharpened in that second-long glance.

A pulsing blast of urgency and need and full-body rage burned all the way through her bones to overwhelm her the next second.

That had to come from Maxwell too. It certainly wasn’tRebecca’smagic.

Then she realized—without proof or any explanation for how the knowledge hit her beyond the unimpeded truth—that she’d been right. He reallywasabout to shift.

And that would ruin everything.

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