Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
SPLITTING INTO THREE GROUPS was the right call, but Elliot didn’t have to enjoy the prospect.
When they parted, he held Warren’s eyes a moment longer than necessary as the sun rose, a silent reminder that when they’d woken, Elliot had extracted a promise from him to be cautious, not to let his guard down again.
He was being overbearing. Yet he couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that without him, Warren might do something rash if it meant saving someone.
Strike that, he knew in his heart Warren would absolutely sacrifice himself.
It wasn’t that Elliot didn’t care about saving innocents, he did, ardently. It was only that he cared about Warren so much more. Perhaps he truly was unforgivably selfish.
He wished he could kiss Warren, to remind him one more time what he needed to come back for, and hated that he couldn’t. Hated more that even if he could, it might not be enough.
Charbonneau and Remonet were off to Béyonnes, a community of roughly five thousand before the Germans had captured it.
Their intelligence indicated many of the residents had been driven off during the fighting, those that remained were turned to forced labor in factories or out in fields along with prisoners of war.
It was there the Germans would be testing chlorine gas laced with necromantic magic.
The outcome would be immediate gruesome death—choking on blood, gasping for air—and resurrection as a mindless tool of violent destruction.
Warren and Hoffman would be traveling to Toullanes, a smaller neighboring village where the magic was laced with phosgene.
A colorless gas which could take as much as forty-eight hours for symptoms to occur and had the potential for so much more destruction.
There would undoubtedly be those whose infection went undetected until it was too late.
Coughing and shortness of breath could be mistaken for illness, and when they inevitably expired, the rampant chaos of unexpected attacks would be disastrous.
Elliot had manipulated enough information out of Oberst Brandt to know the gases would be stored inside of a factory in each town until it was meant to release shortly after lunch on the twentieth. Today, in a few hours.
The other thing Elliot learned was the focus of the mission he and Bellona would carry out.
Hauptmann Eduard Richter was fusing Albrecht’s corrupt magic to the gases which caused the dead to rise.
Without her, not only would production of the weapon halt, her death might dissipate the magic animating any corpses.
That last bit was based on wishful thinking alone, though plenty of magic functioned as such.
It depended on how strongly grafted Richter’s fusion proved to be.
If it could sustain a lack of connection to her power, the stores the Germans had built would continue to be of use. If not, they were in the clear.
Their objective was to remove the necromancer from the equation and get their hands on more gas to analyze.
Grim determination to succeed motivated Elliot.
Over the last few days, a debate had raged over who it was best to send.
Hoffman and Bellona or she and Warren could have snuck in unobserved, but Elliot had the unshakable conviction it must be him.
He struggled to articulate why, and in the end decided it came down to Charbonneau and Remonet working best as a team.
It had been so for years and seemed unwise to break them up now.
Hoffman and Warren stood the best chance together of neutralizing the phosgene gas.
They could easily get in and use the sigils Remonet enchanted for them to uncouple and disperse the magic in the gas.
As long at the gas was still contained. Once it was loose, the sigil was useless.
With more time and access to more information, Remonet might be able to come up with something better.
For now it was all they had at their disposal.
Elliot loosened his strained grip on the handlebar of the motorcycle he was driving, once more clad in the gray uniform of German officers. If they crossed paths with anyone, hopefully they would pass muster.
The pistol at his waist weighed on him. Although he’d taken lives before, in the heat of battle during a mission, it never felt good. It wasn’t something to be proud of. Objectively, it was no worse than a guard in the wrong place performing his duty or a young German soldier following his orders.
But those were split second decisions, live or die, in the moment.
This was an execution. An assassination. Even if he was sure she deserved it, could he do it?
Steeling his resolve, he adjusted himself in the seat and felt Bellona glance curiously up at him from the sidecar.
Being a mind reader or empath was not necessary to understand that if he failed to take the shot, she would.
Like him, it wouldn’t be Bellona’s first kill.
Would it haunt her the way he was sure it would haunt him?
There was no time for softer feelings in war.
You stuffed away most of your morality to examine at some later date when it was a luxury you could afford.
Humanity and dignity were liabilities when you were fighting for your life.
Elliot kept his in the sheaf of hastily scrawled poems in his breast pocket.
Even here, he needed ways to safely let out the horror of the situation, the things he thought, and longed for, and loved.
Sometimes he wrote of home, sometimes what he saw. How glad he was none of this touched the people he missed. In the last few days, he had written an undue amount of shameless frippery concerning changeable hazel eyes and sweet wicked smiles.
Those thoughts would be a hindrance now and would only tear down his nerve when he needed to steam up his courage.
Bending his will to the mission at hand, Elliot went over the task in his mind. The task that had taken them, armed to the teeth, to the same compound they’d stolen the information from on Warren’s first mission.
After the prior breach, it was bound to be more carefully guarded, but inside they would find the necromancer.
Waiting for an easier opportunity hadn’t been an option.
The hazard of Brandt recognizing Elliot’s dream manipulations for what they were would increase exponentially with every attempt.
And they didn’t want him to know Elliot could access his mind.
Not while it could prove useful in the future.
Striking now was the correct choice. He reminded himself of that as they hid the motorcycle in the same thicket they’d hidden the cars.
Bellona climbed out of the sidecar and straightened the black brimmed hat she was wearing with her hair tucked up inside.
Her features were still feminine, but at a quick glance she could be mistaken for a pretty young man.
Elliot peered down at his own uniform, smoothing it. They might need the advantage of blending in without Warren or Hoffman to aid them. If they were spotted in this ruse, appearing the part might purchase enough time to complete their objective.
“Ready, Captain?” Bellona asked, reaching a gloved palm out for him to take. Apprehension wriggled in Elliot’s gut and tingled up his spine. The last time they’d faced Albrecht, a member of his team hadn’t made it home. They both knew it.
Elliot clasped her hand. “As I can be. Do be careful, yes?”
“Always. And you. We’ve got to get you back in one piece or I suspect I’ll never hear the end of it,” she teased, a playful sparkle in her eyes.
Elliot gave her a lopsided smile as her hand squeezed his in brief warning.
Woods, road, road, field, field, woods, road.
The scenery changed each time he blinked.
If he hadn’t long been used to the sensation, it might have been jarring or disorienting.
As it was, when they came to a stop in the woods before the towering, barbed wire fence that surrounded the compound, Elliot was perfectly steady.
He observed the grounds, and they waited as two patrols passed by.
It was early morning and broad daylight.
They’d be expecting an attack in the dead of night if they expected their adversaries were imbecilic enough to attempt it again at all.
Elliot suspected they would encounter more resistance inside than out.
Timing and the element of surprise were crucial to their success.
After the third patrol strolled by, the soldiers conversing amicably, Elliot nodded to Bellona.
A seamless transport took them all the way to the brick wall next to the laboratory window.
The very same one he’d almost seen Warren die in.
Bellona peered inside while Elliot watched for the patrol.
She tapped his shoulder once, indicating she saw an opening to enter, and then gripped tight before the scene changed one last time, and they stood inside.
Something uneasy crept into his chest, cold and unpleasant, coiling around his ribcage.
Why? It was going perfectly. They infiltrated the building unseen.
Now all that remained was to approach the office at the back of the lab where they expected to discover Albrecht ensconced with lists of the missing files she was tasked with replacing through memory.
Elliot retrieved his pistol. The sound would bring soldiers running, but he trusted Bellona to transport them quickly out of harm’s way. With a little luck, they were nearly finished.
A nagging sense of unease multiplied as they crept toward the office. It was too straightforward. There were always complications on missions. Unexpected situations that required them to think on their feet.
He glanced to Bellona, and they shared a grim look that let him know she felt it too.
Fucking shitting hell-bent bootlicking shit.