by Martha Carr
“In the bathroom?” Cheyenne nodded and pressed her lips together, trying not to visibly flare her nostrils at the smell. Kid fell into the urinal. “You’ll be fine. Maybe go home and grab a change of clothes, huh? Or at the very least, just make sure you get out of the building and away from this area of campus just in case.”
“Yeah.” The shocked kid turned stiffly, arms spread by his sides as he waddled down the hall and left shallow wet footprints behind him.
She gave him a two-minute head start so as not to further humiliate him and hoped he was already out the front door by the time she reached it. He was. Cheyenne didn’t see him anywhere when she skirted around the front of the Computer Sciences building again.
She stared at the closed-up crack that probably still held a burgeoning portal ridge beneath it and the two mounds of ruptured earth around the diggers’ holes just in front of the fissure. Man, that looks really bad.
When she rounded the corner behind the building, Cheyenne slowed and tried not to trip over the invisible war machines on the thin grass. Maleshi stood beside her rolling briefcase with the metal handle in its perpetually upright position, her phone in hand. “With a minute to spare. Look at you.”
“That wasn’t a firm ten minutes anyway.”
“You don’t know. But I’m glad you didn’t try to take some kind of drow shortcut, thinking you could solve all our problems on your own.”
“What?” Cheyenne folded her arms.
“Just that you didn’t waste any time. That’s all.”
“Yeah, that’s not what you meant. Go ahead, General.” Maleshi snorted at her former student using the nightstalker’s former title, but Cheyenne only raised an eyebrow. “If you have something to say, better say it now and get it off your chest.”
Maleshi glanced quickly around them and stepped closer. “I get that tensions are high, and you don’t agree with every decision made by those of us fighting this fight for you.”
“With me.”
“Right. Yeah.” The nightstalker dipped her head and lifted both hands in surrender. “With you. That being said, kid, I’m not a big fan of you and the fae going off on your own to interrogate someone for ridiculously sensitive information you couldn’t even prove was legit first. Without telling the rest of us.”
“That’s what you’re pissed about?” Cheyenne laughed and shook her head. “I don’t need to ask permission to do something I know has to be done. And I’m not going to.”
“Not asking permission, Cheyenne.” The general returned her attention to her phone and pulled up the number she wanted. “Anyone who thinks they can control you by giving or withholding permission is a complete idiot.”
Like the FRoE.
“I’m just talking about you telling us what’s happening before it happens and not after. You don’t know if we might have some tool or tactic or information that could help you do whatever you’re trying to do. And no, I’m not talking about the tactics you’ve already made perfectly clear you don’t approve of.” Maleshi waited until Cheyenne finally turned her head and met the nightstalker’s human-looking green eyes. “We’re in this together—all of us. And I can tell you right now that L’zar’s already screwed up enough on his own by going wherever he wants, doing whatever he wants, and leaving the rest of us to pick up the pieces because he never bothered to lay out a plan first. Even if it was just to say, ‘Hey. This is happening. Gotta go.’”
The halfling chewed the inside of her bottom lip. “So he’s been leaving the warehouse and putting us all at risk, then.”
“No, kid. I’m talking about that drow’s entire existence, from birth to holing up in that warehouse. We want to help you. Kinda hard to do when we don’t know what’s going on.”
“Yeah, okay. I get it.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Seriously. I’ll call next time I end up going after corporate CEOs to intimidate them into giving up the names of their O’gúl loyalist clients. Message received.”
Maleshi scoffed, shaking her head and tossing her long, wavy black hair out of her face. “At least I know you’re familiar with the specific instance. Now’s the part where we call in everyone we know to clean up the mess none of us made.” The nightstalker kicked at nothing but air with her brown suede boot, except it clanged against the invisible hull of one of the war tanks. “I’ll get hold of Corian, and you call up your frenemy organization.”
“What?” Cheyenne paused with her cell phone pulled halfway out of her pocket. Her trench coat rustled away from her back and hips when she tightened her grip on her phone and turned to face the destroyed strip of VCU campus beyond the front of the building. “Why the hell would I call them in for this?”
“Same reason you called them in for the new portal at your mom’s. If anyone’s mastered the art of containing these Border portals and keeping them hidden from humans, it’s the FRoE.”
“Yeah, and all the other Border portals are way outside populated areas for no humans to see.”
“They won’t see this one either.” Maleshi gestured toward the scarred grass. “Thanks to you. And a little nightstalker magic, obviously.”
“Obviously.” Cheyenne pulled up Sir’s number on her phone and stared at it. No way am I pulling Rhynehart away from Mom’s to come out here. This is gonna suck so much worse than last time. Her finger hovered over the call button, then she looked at Maleshi with a grin. “Hey, good thing we both decided to show up and pretend to teach classes today.”
“Ha. But we do teach classes. We just happen to be more than that.” The general paused to shoot Cheyenne a sidelong glance. “You’re not just pretending to teach, are you?”
“What? No, of course not. Hyperbole.”
“Uh-huh.” Maleshi made the call to Corian, and Cheyenne begrudgingly sent her call through to Major Sir Carson.
I wasn’t gonna have time to grade assignments today anyway.
Chapter Seventy-Six
“What do you want?” Sir snarled into the phone.
“A regular greeting over the phone would be a hell of a start.” He paused for so long on the other end of the line that Cheyenne had to pull her phone away to make sure they were still connected. “You’re not gonna like what I have to say.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, halfling.”
She rolled her eyes. “Found another new entrance.”
“Another?”
Cheyenne braced herself for the fiery explosion of cursing and items thrown across the FRoE officer’s office, but this time, it didn’t happen.
“I swear to every goddamn Dorito flavor, whenever shit starts splattering the walls, there you are, covered in it.”
“All right, is that your way of saying you think this is my fault?”
“That’s exactly what I think! So far, you haven’t done anything to convince me otherwise, and that includes your infuriating proficiency at lying through your teeth.”
“So you want me to just hand this whole thing over to someone else who’d like to use it? You know, I know a nice T-class family who could benefit from it.”
“Goddammit, Cheyenne, you know that’s not what I meant. Where is this fucking thing?”
“On the VCU campus, right outside the building I teach in.”
“Oh, the Halfling Bullshit building. Yeah, I’ve heard of it.” Something heavy slammed down, and Sir grunted. “Did you have to fight little kiddie monsters coming outta this one too?”
“No.” She glanced at Maleshi, who paced six feet away as she spoke softly to Corian, the phone pressed to one ear and her pointer finger stuck into the other. Cheyenne smirked. “I closed it. Shouldn’t be spilling out any monsters for a while.”
“You closed it.” Sir choked out a bitter laugh. “What does that even mean? These things come with a goddamn zipper now?”
“All just part of me being what I am. It’s contained for now.” Cheyenne swiped her hair out of her eyes and gazed at the lawn in the front of the building. “Look,
what this new thing needs is someone to show up and reassure people that this was just an earthquake. Maybe keep an eye on it and do a little damage control. Your people are capable of that, right?”
“You have no idea what we’re capable of.”
This isn’t going anywhere. “Will you send someone to VCU or not?”
“Already did. See? I can multitask and waste your time too.”
Cheyenne hung up and slipped her phone into the side pocket of her new coat. At least he took the information seriously.
“How did that go?” Maleshi asked, bending to put her phone back in her briefcase.
“Exactly the way I thought it would.” The halfling turned to face her. “But someone’s on their way.”
“How fun.” The general took a short, discerning sniff of the air, then pointed at the ground beside her. “Come stand over here.”
“What?” Cheyenne glanced around, looking for a reason to move, then slowly walked toward the nightstalker. “Is there a reason for needing to stand by you?”
The air behind her shimmered, and a portal opened right where she’d been standing. Corian stepped through a second later, frowning in his average-human-man illusion.
Cheyenne blinked. “Oh.”
Corian glanced at her briefly with a quick nod, then turned to Maleshi. “Let’s get to work, then.”
“Oh, yes, let’s.” The general raised an eyebrow and stepped away from the back of the building, raising her hands to begin another spell.
When he approached Cheyenne’s side, Corian leaned toward her and waited for Maleshi to work her spell. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. Got attacked, ripped some war machines to pieces, and closed a new portal before it turned VCU into another reservation.” The halfling folded her arms. “Just another day in the life, right?”
He hummed in consideration. “Maleshi said the ridge and the tunnelers showed up at the same time.”
“Yeah. That’s not supposed to happen, is it?”
“None of this is supposed to happen.” Corian stroked his hairless chin. “It raises some serious questions. Most importantly, whether this portal was intentional or just another massive coincidence.”
“Doesn’t feel like a coincidence anymore.” Cheyenne looked at the dome of silver light flashing into existence around them as Maleshi finished her spell. Through the shimmering magic, she could make out the outline of buildings around them, cars parked in the back lot, and a handful of people moving quickly around campus to either investigate the strange new damage to the lawn or search for anyone who needed help and guidance getting out of the area. “I’m assuming this is just one more illusion.”
Maleshi pointed at the seemingly empty air right behind the building’s back wall, and the war-machine scrapheap reappeared. “One of the better forms, if I do say so myself. As long as nobody gets it into their head that where we’re standing would be the perfect place for them to hang out for a while, we’ll be fine.”
“What about you?” Cheyenne asked her. “You think the portal and these machines showed up together on purpose?”
“No.” Maleshi headed toward the junk pile as Corian opened another portal within the illusioned dome that was making them invisible. “That would imply both of them came from the same source, and that’s not possible. Which we’ve already covered.”
Corian’s portal opened beside the pile of dead O’gúl metal. “Not to mention that these machines have to go through the hands of someone Earthside before they’re activated. It feels like a coincidence when you look at it like that, and at the same time, it doesn’t feel like a coincidence at all.”
Maleshi snorted as she picked up the side panel of a digger tank. “When that happens, there tends to be another hidden power in play.”
Cheyenne frowned. “You mean, like someone else manipulating the timing? Not the loyalists controlling the machines or the Crown on the other side?”
The general tossed the metal panel through the portal, where it hit the cement with a clang. “Someone else, sure. Maybe. It’s not always a person stepping in where the interference isn’t welcome.”
Dragging the end of one machine toward the portal, Corian paused, looked at the halfling, and chuckled. “Don’t look so confused, kid. You understand the concept.”
The halfling cocked her head and raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re seriously trying to write this whole thing off as fate? Or just some other universal power doing whatever it wants without any explanation?”
“Fate’s one way to look at it.” Maleshi tossed two more handfuls of broken machinery through the portal. “And yes, there are other universal powers doing what they want, as you so succinctly put it.”
Corian chuckled again and resumed dragging the mangled war machine toward the shimmering oval of dark light.
“I don’t see how that’s funny.”
“It’s just an interesting take, kid. You ever think about what those universal powers might be?”
“Not really, no.” Cheyenne stepped out of the way as Maleshi levitated the larger fragments of black metal and threw them toward their next destination. “Seeing as this is the first time I’ve ever had to ask the question.”
“You could call it fate,” the general continued. “Or magic. Or whatever force selected the location for each individual Border portal around the world that has stood in the same place for centuries.”
“Come on. Magic isn’t sentient.” Cheyenne snorted. “The portals aren’t, either.”
“Maybe. Or maybe they are in a way we simply don’t understand.” Maleshi shrugged and fixed the halfling with her green eyes. “But if we weren’t convinced before that you’re sitting at the center of a lot of sentient attention, whether or not we understand it, we sure as hell should be by now.”
Cheyenne blinked at the nightstalker woman and ignored the rhythmic drag of the huge, battered war machine as Corian pulled it through the portal. “I get enough shit from the FRoE about all this being my fault. I don’t need to hear it from you too.”
“I’m not blaming you for anything, kid.” Maleshi leaned back against the second tank and folded her arms. “This isn’t a matter of blame or whose fault it is. I mean, other than the bitch on the O’gúl throne. That one’s got a lot to answer for. I’m just talking about the grander design. Not fate necessarily. L’zar’s proven pretty unequivocally that the impossible can be made possible, or at least that there are loopholes within what everyone else wants to believe is a fixed course. An inescapable eventuality, right?”
The halfling wrinkled her nose. “L’zar only broke through that prophecy of his because he didn’t do anything.”
“Ah, but it was still his choice.” Maleshi stood from against the war machine as Corian reappeared from the other side of the portal and headed toward her. “We’ve all made our own choices, whether or not they achieved what we wanted.”
“I didn’t choose to be part of this,” Cheyenne muttered.
Corian bent and grabbed the underside of the second tank. “You choose every day to keep being part of it.”
“Well, yeah. But you guys are trying to tell me fate or magic or whatever has some grand design in all this. How can me choosing to do anything fall under fate?”
The general snorted. “Well, then what would you call it?”
“Free will.” Cheyenne spread her arms and leaned toward the nightstalkers. “After other people made their mistakes and forced me into being part of them.”
Corian’s lips twitched, and he released the war machine again before straightening and fixing Cheyenne with an intense gaze, even from behind his human-illusion charm. “You think you’re responding to mistakes, huh? Do you know why your parents are who they are?”
“My mom doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Oh, yes, she does.” Maleshi pulled her loose black hair away from her face and tied it back. “She was the one who birthed you, after all.”
“Go ahead.” Corian clas
ped his hands behind his back and eyed the halfling. “I’ll wait for your answer.”
“My answer?” Cheyenne looked from one human-appearing rebel nightstalker to the other and scowled. They’ve lost it. “My parents are who they are because L’zar couldn’t keep it in his pants and wanted to keep playing god over humans and prophecies. His mistake, and Bianca fell for it. Her mistake. Forced me into being here, and I’m doing what I can with what I’ve got.”
“Well, that’s an accurate assessment of yourself, at the very least.” Corian lifted his chin and raised his eyebrows. “But neither of them made a mistake the night they met.”
“Why, because I’m some prophecy child of L’zar’s?” Cheyenne scoffed. “No. I’m just the one he didn’t go after before I passed the trials. It could’ve been anyone else.”
“L’zar Verdys didn’t choose Bianca Summerlin at random, kid,” Maleshi added. “I’d go so far as to say he didn’t choose her at all.”
“That’s exactly my point.” Cheyenne sighed. “I have no idea where either of you is trying to go with this.”
“Sure. Must be pretty frustrating when you can’t see it all laid out in front of you like a line of code or an elegant program.”
The halfling shot Corian a sharp glare.
“I don’t mean that as an insult, kid.” He shrugged. “That’s just the way you are. That’s the way L’zar is too, except he does see it all laid out like that. Don’t get me wrong; that drow can’t do much more than point and click behind a computer, but when it comes to magic and the threads tying it all together, he’s rewriting the entire program. When you live as long as we have, you start to see the patterns, Cheyenne. L’zar found a new one with your mother, but he didn’t choose her.”
Maleshi took a deep breath. “The choice was already made for both of them. He found her simply by following the trail left for him by some universal power. Just like you’ve been following the trail of figuring out what the hell you’re doing and how to keep making your choices.”
“All right.” Cheyenne waved them both off. “I’m not gonna keep picking this apart. Whatever L’zar did, it’s done. We’re looking forward, right?”