by Martha Carr
“Oh, man.” Cheyenne ran a hand through her hair. “We’re cutting it off at the source, then?”
“Yeah. And we need what you can do to get this asshole. ‘Cause nothing else works.”
The half-drow glanced over her shoulder at the darkened gloom in this area of Rez 38’s residential Q4. “You try one of those fell cannons?”
Rhynehart grimaced. “Goes against the Accord, believe it or not. Can’t bring any human-made weapons against magicals onto the rez. Safe place for displaced magicals and all that.”
“Humans made those giant bazookas?”
The corners of the man’s mouth turned down in false humility, and he spread his arms. “Twenty-first century, right?”
Cheyenne released her hold on the heat simmering at the base of her spine. It flared up her back, over her shoulders, and into every fiber of her being. In the next second, the Goth chick with the eerily pale skin stood in front of the operative in full drow mode, her purple-gray flesh dark under the veil of Q’orr’s black magic seeping out of the guy’s own house. “Let’s take the bastard.”
Rhynehart nodded with a grim determination that matched her own. “That’s it, Blakely. Knew you had it in ya.”
Cheyenne headed toward the northeast corner of Q4, and Rhynehart came alongside her. He brought his gloved hand down on her back. “Thanks for hearing me out—”
Purple sparks flared at the drow halfling’s fingertips.
Rhynehart leaped away in surprise.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Got it.” He raised both hands in concession and walked beside her keeping three feet between them. “Any other rules you wanna lay down before we bag this asshole?”
“Yeah. Don’t expect any special treatment. If you get your arm melted off, I’m still gonna take this dick to Q1 and put him behind bars before I come back for you. Screaming for help is just gonna make you look like an idiot.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh, yeah, and don’t get in my way.”
Rhynehart readied his gloves and nodded. “Hearing you loud and clear, halfling.”
“Good.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Cheyenne didn’t think the air around them could get any darker. She was wrong. When they reached the very last house at the northeast corner of Q4, the air around them became as thick and dark as smoke. The once-healthy green grass beneath their feet was withered and black, brittle enough that it crumbled to dust beneath the weight of each step.
A ring of grass around the house had been charred into black ruin, like it was the site of an explosion. In the center of that ring, a house stood somehow, covered in the same filthy soot-like substance, crooked and slanted and looking as if it might crumble into a puff of ash at any moment.
There was no sound besides Cheyenne’s and Rhynehart’s steady breathing as they closed on the house. The thick dark air stung the drow halfling’s nose and made it impossible to smell anything but the stench of decay.
This was what I smelled the time I found that cougar den up by Mom’s. All the half-eaten carcasses and the flies. This is what death smells like—the violent kind.
“Hey,” Rhynehart whispered and reached toward her. He was far enough away that he didn’t touch her, but it got her attention. “Tripwires.”
Cheyenne studied the first few feet in front of them and didn’t see anything. Taking one more step, she studied the next few feet and noticed a thin piece of twine, either painted black or covered by the soot that was everywhere, stretched in front of her. Cheyenne followed it in one direction to see it tied to the ruins of a house beside them. The other end led to a poor attempt at camouflaging something as a boulder, a rock in the middle of all the dead grass. She spied the outline of a trap door cut into the fake boulder.
Sloppy. These are supposed to be the dangerous parts, according to Vanx. All the stuff everyone’s so scared about is this guy’s version of scaring off stray dogs with a bunch of fireworks.
Cheyenne caught Rhynehart’s gaze and pointed to the stone, then the tripwire.
He nodded.
She took a moment to study the house, making sure they wouldn’t be walking into anything else before reaching it. “Look there,” she whispered and pointed to five gray stones in a random pattern within the ring of charred earth around the house.
Rhynehart frowned. “Where does he get this stuff?”
“Any reports on that?”
He shook his head.
“Looks like somebody’s smuggling stuff into the rez too. Might wanna look into that.”
“Yeah, thanks, rookie. I’ll handle the paperwork on this one. You get rid of all this weird crap so we can bring him in.”
She turned her head his way. “Are you gonna at least try the part where you ask him to come out quietly first?”
“What’s the point?”
“I don’t know. Makes it more fun when he refuses, and I get to take out all his stupid traps before I blow his house down.”
“Huh.” Rhynehart chuckled. “I like the way you think, halfling. There’s always a chance he’d be willing to step out if he knows he’s caught.”
“Do most people you go after do that?”
“No.”
Cheyenne rolled her eyes but offered a small smile. “Your call, FRoE man.”
Rhynehart rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath. “Q’orr! You in there?”
Something clattered to the floor inside the house, and flashes of dark light streamed across the closed curtains over the windows.
“Yeah, you are, you slimy sonofabitch,” Rhynehart muttered, then raised his voice again. “You get one chance with us, Q’orr. The FRoE’s been called in to handle you. You can come out now with your hands up and cooperate. Or you can make this harder than it has to be.”
The voice that called back was muffled but still audible in the silence. “Nice try, moron.” A wheezing cackle followed, and then something else flashed and crackled behind the curtains. “Do you know how many O’gúl traitors have tried to get past where you’re standing? None of them have reached my door, so good luck!”
Rhynehart shouted back, “My partner out here won’t have any problem taking you out. I’d surrender if I were you.”
“Oh, yeah? Your partner dabble in the black arts too? An amateur is still an amateur, no matter the discipline.”
“No black arts.” Rhynehart gestured toward the house and widened his eyes at Cheyenne in disbelief. “A drow.”
Wow. Not bothering with the halfling part this time. Okay.
“I smell the lie on you from here, human. Shut the hell up and get off my lawn before somebody has to scoop you into a body ba—ow!” More dark flashes rose from behind the curtains, followed by another clatter and the crash of shattering glass. “Now look what you made me do.”
“Okay.” Rhynehart spread his arms and looked at the drow halfling beside him. “Tried the easy way. I guess he’s all yours now.”
“Guess so.” Cheyenne summoned a crackling sphere of black energy in her dark-skinned hand. Purple sparks flashed from its center and reflected in the FRoE operative’s eyes.
Rhynehart stepped back.
She sent the first blast at the fake boulder on their right. The thing splintered and fractured, and a dozen shards of oozing green something sprayed across the dead grass in front of her. It sizzled and let off thick columns of reeking black smoke where it landed, but Cheyenne and Rhynehart were well out of the line of fire at this point. Still, she was careful not to step on any of the smoking remains as she moved toward the house.
Her next black energy spheres were right on the mark with the first two conspicuously positioned gray stones. The stones exploded on impact and sent sickly green smoke into the air. Cheyenne waited for the smoke to clear before she moved forward again, but it didn’t. The green aura hung there, churning, like it was waiting for some unsuspecting idiot to walk through it.
I’m not an unsuspecting idiot, but I can’t see
where I’m going anymore.
Rather than walk around, she sent several spheres crackling through the pillars of smoke. One of them hit another stone and exploded in a spray of shimmering green. The more she fired, the faster the green, billowing columns cleared out of the way. Chunks of dead earth erupted where her spells hit, and at one point, she couldn’t see anything but a green wall.
Cheyenne blasted away, clearing the air between them and Q’orr’s front door while adding more damage to the guy’s already-destroyed yard. With her last blast, the smoke cleared, affording a glimpse of the door. Loose earth rained down in front of her, and then all the green fizzled away, revealing a massive crater in the black ground where the five stones had been.
Rhynehart snorted. “Think you got it all?”
“Shut up.” Cheyenne summoned crackling black orbs of energy in both palms this time and walked toward Q’orr’s dilapidated front door, scanning the ground and the outer wall and the roof in case the guy had planted anything else.
Another wheezing cackle came from the other side of the door, and it made her pause. “That was a lot more explosions than I expected. Missed the best part, though. They normally scream. Probably got ‘em on the first round.”
The door squealed on its hinges when it opened, and what looked like a tiny, hunched-over old man peered at them. His face was shriveled like a rotting apple around two bright-orange eyes, and two rows of yellow-stained but razor-sharp teeth jutted from his narrow face in an eager grin. The guy’s skin was the color of a rotting apple too, with a little more orange beneath all the gunk. Either he hadn’t bothered to wash himself in a very long time, or all the work with black magic had the decaying effect on his body as much as the area around his home. Cheyenne figured the latter.
Q’orr’s chuckle cut off when his gaze fell upon the drow halfling and the crackling orbs of energy spitting purple sparks from both hands.
Cheyenne nodded. “It’s time for round two.”
“You! No!” Q’orr slammed the door shut, and a harsh scrabbling sound rose from within the house.
The half-drow launched a powerful energy sphere at the front door, and it splintered into a thousand pieces. Q’orr shrieked from inside, followed by crashes and the clatter of him scurrying. Cheyenne surged toward the house and dodged aside to avoid something long and black hurtling end over end through the doorless doorway. It struck the ground behind her and erupted in a strobing flash of yellow light and more thick smoke.
“Get out here,” Cheyenne shouted. “Before I come in after you.”
“Bite me!”
With a snort, the halfling walked up to the doorway and sent another orb of black energy into the house. It crashed into something against the back wall, and Q’orr screamed a long and surprisingly varied string of obscenities.
“I’m serious, Q’orr. You’re done. It’s over. We’re taking you—”
The inside of the house erupted in a bright orange-green flash, and something crashed through one of the windows. Whatever was inside the house caused enough reactive force to make the tattered curtains billow through the broken window, and they flapped violently.
Cheyenne leaped onto the concrete porch and hit the open entryway with another orb. At the same time, Q’orr chucked a leaking bottle of something glistening and black at her. The drow halfling ducked to avoid a faceful of the black sludge. Drops of it sprayed her, and when they struck her scraped shoulder, she screamed. The black drops ate through her flesh, filling her nose with the scent of cooked meat and making her entire arm feel like it had caught on fire.
“Ha! Not so scary now, are you?”
Cheyenne whipped her head toward the orange-brown thing standing there in tattered rags, and he crashed back against one of the cluttered tables near the wall. He fumbled for another large vial.
The drow halfling didn’t give him time.
Out in the destroyed yard in front of Q’orr’s house, Rhynehart had darted forward when he heard the half-drow’s scream. He stopped, reconsidering charging inside behind Cheyenne.
The small dwelling erupted in flashes of purple and black light again and again. Q’orr’s shrieks rose above the crackling hiss of Cheyenne’s magic crashing into walls and furniture. One of the sizzling orbs of black energy hurtled through the smashed window and arced into the sky before disappearing over the cliffs.
Rhynehart caught a brief glance of lashing black tendrils flipping in every direction through the doorway. Q’orr shrieked and launched himself across the house, making the rotten siding shiver on impact. Cheyenne stormed after him with a terrifying sneer, and flashes of purple and black lit the place.
Q’orr blubbered something incomprehensible and there was a loud thud, then everything fell silent. The FRoE operative waited for signs of life from the dilapidated house. After a moment, he came forward, and stopped when a shadow passed the empty doorway.
There she was, her bone-white hair scattered in a wild array around her face. Blakely, as he’d come to think of her, had a small limp as she staggered out of their target’s house. Her left arm stretched behind her, and Rhynehart caught a glimpse of those flaring black tendrils stretched taut between her fingers and something else that thumped against the wall.
The drow halfling gave a sharp tug on the black tendrils. The house creaked, then a section of the wall beside the door burst outward, crumbling before the thing on the other end of the halfling’s magical leash emerged.
It was Q’orr, unconscious and trussed up like a wild hog in the half-drow’s magic. The wrinkled orange-brown magical thumped across the small concrete square of his front porch and didn’t slow the halfling down one bit as she stalked across the charred, cratered earth. Pieces of the wall fell from the hole his body had made.
Cheyenne dragged Q’orr to Rhynehart’s feet, then released her spell. The unconscious magical’s head rolled to the side across the brittle black grass. Rhynehart stared at their target, then blinked at the half-drow with wide eyes.
“Yeah, he’s still breathing,” Cheyenne muttered. “Unfortunately.”
It took a moment for the FRoE operative to find his voice again, and the halfling used that time to bring all her focus and her exhausted rage back to center.
Like I said, I’ve never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it. Now…think of the deer.
It was incredibly easy to slip out of her drow form and into her regular human-Goth-chick mask. She released a heavy sigh and opened her eyes
“Huh.” Rhynehart glanced at Q’orr. “Have anything to tie him up with?”
“You didn’t bring anything?”
“This was all you, halfling. I’m here for moral support.”
Cheyenne waved absently at Q’orr’s house behind her. “There’s probably something in there that’ll work. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“Yeah, I bet you will.”
Fighting a smile, Rhynehart headed for the house to look for some string or rope or a bedsheet he could use to secure the unconscious magical. The operative didn’t get two yards toward the house before the whole thing shifted sideways. The wall beside the ruined doorway buckled, then the entire roof crashed down at an angle. Everything that had held up this long under the harsh conditions gave way, and the demolished house sent up a puff of thick black dust.
Rhynehart turned and clapped his gloved hands. “Guess I’ll call it in, and they can pick him up here.”
“Brilliant plan,” Cheyenne muttered, glaring at Q’orr’s limp form at her feet. “You do that. I’ll stand guard over this asshole.”
Pulling his phone out of his back pocket, Rhynehart smirked at Cheyenne. He thumbed one key and pressed the phone to his ear. Before they answered, he muttered, “Nice work, rookie.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The back of one of those military utility vehicles covered in the tan tarp wasn’t nearly as interesting as Cheyenne had hoped. It was basically a truck bed with high walls and a roof that fluttered as it drove them across the s
ame stretch of land three times until they returned to Q1.
The vehicle bumped and jostled its passengers in the back. Cheyenne sat against the wall with her feet flat on the bed and her knees pulled up to her chest. Rhynehart leaned against the opposite side. Q’orr sprawled between them, his hands bound behind his back by a pair of dampening handcuffs from one of Rez 38’s guards. The wrinkled orange-brown magical still hadn’t regained consciousness and probably wouldn’t for some time.
Rhynehart studied the drow halfling across from him as they wobbled from side to side in the back of the vehicle. “We’ll get someone to take a look at your shoulder once we book this scumbag.”
Cheyenne glanced at the open sores on her bare shoulder where Q’orr’s oozing black sludge had burned holes into her flesh. “It’s still attached, so I think I’ll be fine.”
“You don’t know what the hell that stuff was, Blakely. Someone’s gonna take a look at it, and it’s better if we do that here where there’s a hospital specifically for magicals.”
“Fine.” Cheyenne set her head back against the wall of the utility vehicle and closed her eyes. The lurch in her gut as the vehicle crossed from Q3 to Q2 was unmistakable.
Rhynehart chuckled. “You’re not nearly as raw as I thought.”
When the half-drow opened her eyes, she saw him smirking at her. “You’re not the first person who’s never trained a drow halfling to take a shot with me.”
“Oh, yeah?” The man cocked his head. “You’ve had a trainer before me?”
“I’m not calling you my trainer, Rhynehart, so keep your pants on. But yeah. I’ve had someone else show me stuff.”
“Not another drow, was it?” The man draped his forearms over his raised knees and leaned forward.