Page 2 of Elven Throne

And they never would have discovered the current attack on Headquarters until it was far too late.

Until everyone they’d left behind was dead and the compound reduced to rubble.

No matter how desperate the situation was now, at least they still had a chance. That was something, but Rebecca just couldn’t shake the feeling it still wouldn’t be nearly enough.

Maxwell operated the Honda like a stoically determined lunatic, pushing a hundred and ten down the highway as his death grip on the steering wheel tightened further. He hardly slowed when he pulled onto the upcoming exit ramp and almost sent the Honda tipping over sideways to roll down the embankment just a few miles from Headquarters.

Hissing, Rebecca braced herself against the passenger-side door.

Maxwell snarled and manipulated the steering wheel, jerking it back and forth, hand over hand, to steer them out of their squealing fishtail.

Then the vehicle crashed back to center and straightened again before Maxwell floored the gas for the final stretch to the compound.

Theo groaned in the back seat. Everyone else sighed heavily or adjusted their smooshed positions, focusing only on what had to be done once they finally reached their destination.

They still had another mile of road ahead of them when the first flashes of light reached them through the darkness. A brilliant blaze of launched battle magic streaming through the air in front of the compound.

Maxwell didn’t take his foot off the gas for another half-mile, when the anarchy surrounding Shade HQ came more clearly into view.

Then he slammed on the brakes.

Another blistering shriek of squealing tires cut through the night, filling the Honda with the acrid scent of burning rubber while plumes of smoke and dust rose behind them. The vehicle lurched to a sickening halt along the shoulder, bumbling and bumping almost into the woods lining the road.

Rebecca and their four backseat passengers pitched violently forward before slamming back in their seats.

“What the fuck?” Maxwell growled, staring straight ahead as he killed the engine with a merciless jerk of the keys in the ignition.

The other team vehicles skidded, swerved, and crunched to their own disorganized stops behind the Honda, each of them sending up another thick plume of dust and dirt in its wake.

For as urgently as they’d driven this far, there seemed a complete lack of motivation to leave the vehicles and join the battle for the compound as quickly as possible.

Rebecca couldn’t blame anyone for their hesitation.

She felt it too, while they all just sat there in their coughing vehicles, staring down half a mile of empty road in the darkness. Staring at the flashes of light in the distance battling with ominous shadows through the trees and across the asphalt.

Every face turned toward home, reflecting those same flashing lights in the night sky that joined the horror in over four dozen pairs of glinting eyes.

“What the hellisthat?”

“Holy shit…”

“How the hell did this happen?”

“There’s no way anyone’s still alive in there. I mean…right?”

The simultaneous exclamations in horrified murmurs and shocked whispers filled the teams’ synced comms. Only when Maxwell grunted did the side commentary fall silent.

That didn’t mean any of them had a clue as to what was happening up ahead.

The endless chaos cluttered every square inch of the Headquarters property, most of it centered in the parking lot and through the trees lining the premises but inching closer and closer to the building by the second. At first, it seemed impossible that what they saw was real.

But the longer the teams gaped at Eduardo’s staggering griybreki assault waiting for them, the clearer it became that this wasveryreal. And it was happening right here, right now.

Eduardo and his griybreki hadn’t simply staged an attack on the compound.

This was a hostile takeover.

Streams of surging griybreki swarmed across the landscape from multiple directions—countless grotesquely stunted, gray-skinned little cretins. Hundreds of enormous, buggy eyes glowing bright green or obnoxiously fluorescent yellow. Razor-sharp teeth gnashing in slobbering mouths as the frogmen ranted and babbled and screeched their guttural language, mixing it with a grotesquely adulterated version of English. Enormous, bare webbed feet slapping nonstop across the asphalt.

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