Page 91 of Elven Prince

He signaled for Alpha Team to remain on the alert with possible enemy targets still in the area, then the formation moved on past the town car, following the trail Big Boss’s gang had left behind.

Halfway toward the bridge, though, the corpses didn’t just belong to orcs anymore.

Rebecca noticed a laughably thin troll first. Then two ogres. Then what she might have assumed was an entire coven of witches, if they’d been out here alone.

The farther Alpha Team moved, the more bodies stood out to snatch their attention. Magicals of nearly every race now lie in the road, some even having collapsed on top of each other.

“Check the dead,” Maxwell relayed through the comms. “Report any identifying markers.”

Movement up ahead from the other side of the bridge marked Beta Team moving down the dirt road in much the same way, stooping to search the bodies, finding nothing, then moving on to repeat the process with more of the dead.

Then Charlie and Delta Teams emerged from the wildly overgrown wooded areas alongside the road, also pausing to inspect the freshly deceased magicals where they’d dropped.

Not just orcs, then.

Which also meant not just Big Boss.

“Who did all this?” Murray asked.

Rebecca stooped toward the next body in front of her—a witch with tight blonde ringlets gleaming in the moonlight—and rolled her over onto her back. Dead eyes stared up at nothing, but in her hand, Rebecca found something that made her gut lurch.

A small, barrel-shaped object rested in the witch’s palm, strapped there with a strip of Velcro circling the backs of her fingers.

It was an incredibly miniature version, most likely with far less deadly capabilities, but the coils of intertangled wiring and the blinking blue and green lights—not to mention the low buzzing hum of magical energy radiating from the device—were unmistakable.

“Hannigan,” she muttered, then gestured for Maxwell to join her where she crouched over the dead witch. She lifted the witch’s wrist to give him a better view. “Look familiar?”

The perpetually squinting eyes of his illusion widened, then he straightened in an instant and scanned the rest of the road for movement. “All teams search for custom magitek devices among the dead. We may be looking at the same enemy force that made the bombs at the amusement park.”

“Ohfuck…” Titus groaned through the comms.

“Some of ’em might still be live,” Diego added. “Lights and a little energy’s one thing. But if it starts shaking, you donotwanna be around these things when they go off. Probably not even the little ones.”

Every team leader responded in the affirmative, then all Shade’s operatives got busy searching among the dead, turning over bodies, carefully prying the odd magitek devices out of strangers’ grips.

Rebecca left the witch and the bomb where she’d found them, then straightened and turned toward Maxwell again. “They haven’t been dead long at all.”

“Especially for still having a rendezvous in…” Maxwell checked his utility watch. “Thirty minutes.”

“Both of them. Big Bossandthe suit. They both showed up ahead of time and…what? Took each other out at the same time?”

He grunted, still staring at the bomb strapped to the witch’s hand. “Thatwouldbe particularly convenient…”

“Yeah, for us. But what are the odds that they both—”

“All team,” Tig called over the comms. “Has anyone found any wounds on the bodies? Bullet holes? Blood? Burns? Any signs of a battle?”

His question came from out of left field until Rebecca realized what he was getting at.

She instantly returned her attention to the witch with the bomb in her hand, dropping into a squat to pull the woman’s jacket lapels aside, searching for wounds, charred fabric, blood—anything pointing to an attack.

The rest of Alpha Team followed her lead, searching quickly among the bodies, careful not to step on hidden magitek devices or make too much noise in their investigation. Even when looking closely at the dirt road, the overgrown weeds lining it with the thicker woods beyond, and closer toward the bridge, everything but the corpses in the dirt still looked like it hadn’t even been touched.

“Negative from Charlie.”

“Negative from Delta.”

Rebecca and Maxwell met each other’s gazes again as he stood, dropping a dead Cruorcian back into the road with a thump.

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