Page 105 of Elven Lies

Rebecca found herself momentarily frozen in awe as she watched the pole and all its lashing, sparking power lines like giant electric snakes fall sideways off its base. She looked up toward the assault cannon on the roof and couldn’t have looked away from the ensuing destruction even if she tried.

The pole and power lines picked up speed as they fell until the pole crashed down toward the roof too fast for anyone to escape. Including the soldier operating the artillery cannon up top.

He saw the threat bearing down on him at the last second, scrambled to get away, and disappeared beneath the heavy wood and metal crashing down on top of him with a deafening clatter.

The magitek cannon erupted beneath the crushing weight and all the live wires sparking down on top of it. The immediate explosion washed the entire battlefield in an inescapable blast of heat and concussive force.

Rebecca, all her operatives, and Harkennr’s forces on the ground were all thrown off their feet in the blast and scattered across the dirt. Even Rowan’s getaway car and the two utility vehicles bearing down on him wobbled off course beneath the blast, each of them tilting dangerously forward on two wheels before crashing back to the ground and skidding dangerously across the dirt.

For a moment, the entire battle came to a temporary standstill while everyone on the ground recovered and fought off the disorientation of such a concussive force.

Rebecca scrambled to her feet with the rest of them and couldn’t help one final amazed glance at the roof, which still propped the electrical pole halfway up despite the front southwestern corner still crumbling to pieces from the explosion.

By the Blood, she never would have expected Rowan’s insanity to give her teams the upper hand again. Even on accident.

A quick cheer from the Shade teams erupted in all directions before the firefight and sputtering clap of weapons fire returned.

The sound jerked Rebecca back to the present. She pivoted to open fire on more Harkennr soldiers careening toward her. They fell in quick succession, then she spun again to pinpoint the next part of the battle where she might be needed most.

The first thing she saw made her freeze, her gut clenching in horror.

Rowan cranked on the wheel again to veer sharply to the right. His vehicle drifted again across the dirt to switch directions as the top gunner of the closest enemy vehicle behind him opened fire with a wild spray of augmented rounds.

The shots would have found their mark in Rowan’s vehicle if he hadn’t veered off at the last second to reveal what had previously been in his path.

Maxwell fired his weapon at the enemy, covered in dirt from head to toe, terrifying with his furious snarl and the speed with which he took down the enemy.

Maxwell, standing directly in the enemy vehicle’s line of fire now that Rowan had swerved away.

A strobing silver round caught the shifter in the back of his shoulder and sent him stumbling sideways with a roar of pain. The first enemy vehicle continued after Rowan driving like a lunatic, but the third hadn’t stopped swerving out of control. The driver still desperately tried to course-correct in a panic.

Just not quickly enough.

“Hannigan!” Rebecca bellowed, but even that was too late.

As her shout burst through the air, the final enemy vehicle fishtailed out of control, heading straight toward Maxwell.

The shifter just stood there, more stunned than anything after having just been shot through the shoulder with an augmented round. He never saw the utility vehicle coming for him.

The sickening crunch and thump of the front bumper hitting him from behind and the sight of the shifter tumbling through the air like a lifeless stunt dummy that merelylookedlike him stopped Rebecca’s heart completely.

She couldn’t breathe.

Even when Maxwell’s body hit the warehouse’s exterior metal wall with deadly force and crumpled to the ground, she couldn’t breathe.

She hardly registered the battle around her anymore but took off toward Maxwell as fast as she could physically move her own body.

She didn’t hear the furious scream ripping from her throat as she surged forward, gunning down anything in her path that so much as moved.

She hardly noticed the growing whine and ensuing roar of a new powerful augmented weapon showering the battlefield with sparking purple rounds as one of the freed civilians who’d commandeered the weapon emerged from the warehouse to unleash holy magitek hell on his captors.

The only thing Rebecca saw was Maxwell lying in an awkward pile at the base of the warehouse’s western wall amidst the fractured remains of the heavy vehicle-mounted artillery machine.

All she felt was the searing burn in her lungs as she raced toward him, the aching pain in her legs that just wouldn’t move quickly enough, and the hot sting of tears welling in her eyes and blurring her vision while she just kept racing forward.

Then she was there, dropping to her knees in the dirt beside Maxwell’s motionless body.

How could this have happened? None of this was supposed to happen!

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