by Martha Carr
The door at the back of the warehouse creaked as it swung open, and L’zar stood dressed head-to-toe in light gray in the opening. He spread his arms and gave everyone that deviously feral grin. “Let’s go fuck shit up, huh?”
“Wow.” Lumil cocked her head and tried to keep a straight face while Byrd snorted. “I did not see that coming.” Both goblins burst into hissing snorts of laughter. “Is that what you’ve been doing this whole time? Trying to come up with the perfect rallying speech?”
L’zar stepped out of the doorway, still grinning. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, yeah. I’d love even more proof that you’ve officially lost your mind. Got any other nuggets of enlightenment for us?”
“Only that I fully expect you to put your money where your mouth is, Lumil.”
“Ha!”
L’zar joined the rest of the magicals beside the broken war machines. He looked down at Ember and dipped his head. “Sorry for interrupting your packing this morning.”
“Well, I didn’t see you, so I guess it’s fine.” She looked at Cheyenne as the drow halfling and Persh’al left his table to join the others.
Corian folded his arms and watched L’zar intently. “You finished.”
“Yes, I finished.” The drow shot his Nós Aní a fleeting glance, then dismissed the whole thing when he looked away. “Which means the rest of us can officially start. I’m assuming everyone’s ready.”
“We’ve been ready,” Byrd muttered.
“Yes, I think we’re all aware of that.”
Corian cleared his throat, casting L’zar occasional wary glances. “We’re heading back to the portal ridge up north where we found the smuggled machine parts. Portaling this time, seeing as those machine parts and their former loyalist handlers are now in our custody.”
“The Bull’s Head can suck it.” Lumil pumped a fist in the air.
“And if they do, it’ll be in a cell.” Corian raised his eyebrow at the goblin woman, who nodded and stared at the floor. “After what happened the last time Cheyenne and Persh’al made the crossing, we realize there isn’t any way to predict what’s going to happen this time. We might be separated. Hopefully not. We might come across something we’ve never seen before while we’re passing through the in-between, so be on your guard, and don’t get complacent. There’s still a lot that could go wrong.”
“Quick question.” Ember raised her hand, then ran it through her hair. “So, I get that we have to stay together, be quick about it, on our toes, all that. Is nobody worried about me being in this chair? ‘Cause that’s gonna cause some problems with rocks, water, stairs, narrow spaces, and running. You know, the usual.”
Maleshi and Corian looked at each other, and the general chuckled. “We heard you’re fairly decent with spellcasting already.”
“Well, thanks. But unless you know a spell that can make my legs work again, I’m not so sure whatever I can do will be helpful.”
Byrd frowned at his fellow rebels. “Is she serious?”
“I didn’t bring the wheelchair as a gag if that’s what you mean.”
Cheyenne pressed her lips together and rocked back on her heels. This’ll be interesting.
“No, I didn’t mean that,” Byrd replied. “I meant, you don’t need your legs to walk.”
Ember’s eyelids fluttered closed and she leaned forward, straining to keep her composure. “Say that again.”
“We might have assumed you’d already realized this, Ember. What Byrd failed to explain is that there are spells that don’t require working legs in order to move as if you didn’t need that chair.” Corian motioned for her to follow him away from the group where there was more space.
L’zar stared at them and slowly shook his head. “Is this necessary right now?”
“It’ll only take a minute.”
“I stepped out here ready to move, Corian. This isn’t a fae magic class for beginners.”
“Hey.” Cheyenne frowned at L’zar when the drow turned to look at her. “Two minutes. She’s good.”
“I’m sure. That doesn’t mean I have to wait patiently.”
“All right, well, then just don’t say anything.” Cheyenne nodded at Ember as Corian taught her whatever spell she needed to learn. “I probably wouldn’t be here now without Ember. We all know I need her, which means you need her. And, I was ready to go two days ago, but you sent me over there with Persh’al instead.”
The troll rubbed his head. “No offense taken, kid. Don’t worry about it.”
L’zar dipped his head and stared at Cheyenne beneath darkening brows. “And your point?”
“My point is you’re not the only one who’s been waiting. And besides Ember and me, everyone else in this room has been waiting for you for a couple hundred years. This is two more minutes. Get over it.”
The drow’s eyes narrowed in a quick flicker, then he drew a deep breath and gave his daughter a tight-lipped smile. “Off to a good start, aren’t we?”
Cheyenne shook her head and turned to watch Ember and Corian working against the far wall. Persh’al wasn’t kidding. L’zar Verdys’ number-one priority is L’zar Verdys. That better not get the rest of us killed.
A minute later, the purple light flashing around Ember’s hands slowly lifted her from the wheelchair. Corian stepped back with a nod of approval. Maleshi clapped four times and folded her arms again. “There it is. Cheyenne wasn’t exaggerating about her spellwork.”
“Holy shit.” Ember glanced down on either side of her to watch her feet stop an inch above the ground. “I did it. On purpose!”
Byrd snorted. “You shouldn’t be casting spells any other way, am I right?”
Lumil elbowed him in the ribs and smiled at the fae girl.
“Okay. Kinda like standing, I guess.” Ember looked at Cheyenne and opened her mouth wide in amazement. “This is real. What’s next?”
“Just like walking.” Corian nodded. “You just think about doing it.”
“Just think.” Ember floated forward and stopped, then burst out laughing. “Oh, my God. This is a thing. This works!”
“Excellent.” L’zar closed his eyes. “Let’s all celebrate by getting a move on, please and thank you.”
“Ha!” Ember moved around the room, spinning to look at Corian, then floating in a small circle until she stopped at Cheyenne’s side. “Damn. I almost forgot what it was like not to look up at everyone all the time. You’re like a completely different person from this angle.”
Cheyenne snorted. “You too.”
“Yes!” Ember grinned at Corian, tears shimmering in her luminous violet eyes before she quickly blinked them back. “Thank you. This is better than…well, this is the best thing I can think of now, so just thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Corian picked her backpack up from the seat of the wheelchair and rejoined the group. “Keep your focus on that for now, okay? We’ll see what happens if you have to use any of your other magic once we make the crossing. But Cheyenne will need you, so try not to get carried away.”
She took her bag from him and laughed as she slid the straps over her shoulders. “Not possible. Nobody has to carry me, and that wheelchair can kiss my ass.”
Lumil let out a startled guffaw as she doubled over, then straightened quickly and choked back more laughter with such force that her green face darkened.
L’zar rubbed his temples. “Someone open a portal so I can get out of this fell-damn warehouse.”
“Need some fresh air?” Cheyenne narrowed her eyes at him when his golden gaze met hers.
Her drow father blinked slowly and looked away. “Something like that.”
Corian eyed them both before summoning their portal.
L’zar looks like crap right now. I don’t know, maybe I would too if I hadn’t been home in a few hundred years.
The portal opened, and Corian gestured for the others to step through. L’zar stormed through first, anxious to finally leave the confines of
another building holding him inside. Byrd and Lumil went next, followed by a grinning, floating Ember. Maleshi nodded at Persh’al before she disappeared.
“Give’ em hell, kid.” Persh’al raised his hand toward Cheyenne in a gesture she didn’t recognize, middle finger curled into a loop with his thumb with his ring finger crossed over his pinky.
Despite the weird gesture, she nodded. “That’s the plan.”
Corian gave the blue troll a final nod as well before he followed the halfling through the portal and it disappeared behind them.
Persh’al spun to deliver a swift kick to the side of one of the broken war machines. Two blue sparks popped inside the mostly empty shell, and he leaped back, hissing. “Don’t even start. You think I wanna be here with a pile of old-school junk? Lucky for me, I still have something to focus on.”
Chapter Eighty-Six
“This looks a hell of a lot better than the last time.” Lumil cracked her knuckles as the group made their way across the clearing toward the towering portal ridge of black stone. “Who cleaned up?”
“No idea.” Maleshi brushed invisible specks of dirt off the sleeve of her uniform. “Whoever it was stopped by before Cheyenne and Persh’al went through last time.”
“And it wasn’t us?” Byrd asked.
“Yeah, idiot.” Lumil punched him in the shoulder. “We cleaned up all the cargo crates and all the bodies and took ‘em back to the warehouse.”
“Well, where are they?”
She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Not at the warehouse.”
“General.” L’zar turned toward Maleshi and gestured at the spires of black stone. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
“Apparently, this is my new specialty.” Maleshi stepped forward and extended her hands toward the veil of shimmering pink light reaching into the sky from the center of the portal ridge.
Ember floated toward Cheyenne, staring at the tall columns in front of them. “This thing is huge.”
“Yeah.”
“Makes the one at your mom’s place look like a baby.”
Cheyenne snorted. “Maybe it is. This one’s definitely been around a little longer.”
“And you fought the crazy-ass monsters coming out of this thing?”
“I had help.”
Lumil smashed a fist into her other hand, throwing up a shower of bright-red sparks. “And man, wasn’t that a wild ride!”
Ember smiled. “Looks like you enjoyed it.”
The goblin woman shook out her hand and chuckled. “More than you know, fae. I’m getting pumped for this one.”
The pink wall of light flickered, then disappeared. Maleshi lowered her arms and turned around. “Well, there you go. The shield is gone. The portal’s open. Time to get the hell off Earth, huh?”
Corian stepped past L’zar, thumping the drow on the back before he headed toward the portal ridge. “We walk through, and we keep walking until we’re through the doorway on the other side. Don’t stop. Don’t change direction. And stay close together. Let’s go.” He waved them forward, and the group followed.
Ember exhaled quickly and shook out her wrists. “I’m actually doing this.”
Cheyenne cast her a sidelong glance and smiled. “You’ll be fine. Whatever’s on the other side of those rocks is a hell of a lot easier to take down than last week. The rest of us can fight. You just keep floating.”
“Ha-ha. I can fight too. I think.”
“Well, if that’s what’s in your heart in the moment, go for it, Em.”
They laughed softly before stepping up behind the magicals in front of them. Corian moved through the columns of shiny black stone first, and the rest of the group stayed close on his heels. Brushing her fingers against the thick silver band on her wrist, Cheyenne let her magic burn through her and slipped into drow form.
Cheyenne braced herself for the feeling of an elephant sitting on her lungs, but it didn’t come. She kept walking, her gaze focused on the back of Lumil’s yellow-haired head, and waited for the shift.
“Shit.” Corian stepped through the other side of the stone columns where the woods started at the other end of the clearing and turned.
“Oh, come on!” Byrd thumped his fist against the last pillar as he passed it and stomped across the grass on the other side. “You get all hyped up, and this bastard portal rips all the fun right out of it.”
Ember and Cheyenne passed through the ridge after the others. The fae girl looked at the rising black stone. “Let me guess: this isn’t supposed to happen.”
“No. It’s not.” L’zar stroked his chin and looked at the spires.
“Maleshi?”
“I had nothing to do with this one.” The general folded her arms. “Just a shield. On and off. The portal was working just fine two days ago.”
“And now it’s not.” Corian stepped back through the stone columns, but he came out on the other side just the same. “All right, first roadblock.”
“Dammit!” Byrd stomped around the edge of the portal ridge to join Corian on the other side. “Giant stone towers shooting up out of the ground. Roadblock. That would’ve been hilarious if I wasn’t so pissed off right now.”
“Hmm.” Corian’s nose twitched as he scowled at the portal. “Doesn’t do us any good to be pissed about it now. We need an alternative.”
“Yeah, to a lack of a climax.”
Lumil snorted. “Don’t pretend like you have plenty of the opposite on a regular basis.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Can it, you two.” Maleshi walked back through the portal ridge, and Cheyenne and Ember followed her. Only L’zar remained on the other side. “Our alternative is another portal. Which ones do we know?”
“Rez 19, to start.” Corian folded his arms. “They’ve had a huge influx recently, so we’d be walking into a swarm of agents itching to see one of us screw something up.”
“Rez 22 leads right into Ki’uali,” Lumil offered. “Not where we wanted to end up, but it’s something.”
L’zar reached out and slowly tapped the closest column of black stone. A hollow, metallic ring came from it, and he frowned. “We’re not going through a reservation portal.”
“What?” Byrd whirled around to stare at him between the columns. “This is the only other one we know of.”
“There’s one more.”
Cheyenne clenched her fists and stared at her drow father, who was suddenly and weirdly much more interested in studying the dead portal than in solving their problem. Don’t even think about it.
The second she had the thought, L’zar’s golden gaze flickered toward her. “In Henry County.”
“No.” Cheyenne shook her head. “No, we’re not taking a field trip to the Summerlin estate. No fucking way.”
“We don’t even know where that one leads.” Corian stared at L’zar as the drow moved slowly through the shiny black columns, brushing his fingers over each one he passed.
“It leads to Ambar’ogúl.” L’zar stepped out of the stone columns and dusted off his hands. “Cheyenne proved that much.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t come out in the same place as everyone else. Maybe something weird happened in the in-between, or maybe that portal at my mom’s house is a fluke. That’s where I came out after Persh’al and I got separated.” She shook her head. “I don’t even know why I’m talking about that. That’s not the point. We are not going out there.”
L’zar turned his gaze on his daughter again. “If we don’t go to that portal, Cheyenne, we don’t get to Ambar’ogúl. Are you ready to throw it all away so soon?”
“There are hundreds of other Border portals all over the world. Pick one!”
“Ah, yes. Which reservation seems the most suitable for walking through the gates and saying, ‘Hello. We’ve brought the fugitive your superiors are tracking down, plus seven magicals you don’t have in your fell-damn system. Please let us through the portal you think you own.’”
Byrd snorted.
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br /> Cheyenne cocked her head, clenching her jaw as she tried not to lose it on the drow. “You walked out of Chateau D’rahl all on your own, L’zar. Twice. Don’t tell me you can’t figure out how to get past a few dozen rez guards who aren’t looking for you there.”
His cheeks twitched in distaste when he gave her a tight, unamused smile. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“Are you serious? A reservation full of FRoE guards is too much for L’zar Verdys to handle?”
Corian stepped toward her. “Cheyenne.”
“Seriously? You guys show up at my mom’s house and use the portal in her back yard? How the hell do you think that’s gonna go over?”
“Well, we’d start by asking nicely.” L’zar grinned, though the usual mischief didn’t quite show through this one.
“Yeah, good luck with that.” Cheyenne folded her arms. “Besides, there’s a team of FRoE agents at that portal ridge too. Not reservation guards, but if they see L’zar Verdys strolling across the lawn, they’re not gonna stop to ask questions.”
L’zar spread his arms. “Then they won’t see me.”
“You don’t take anything seriously, do you?”
“Hey.” Maleshi nudged Cheyenne’s arm and nodded at the other end of the clearing. “Can I have a minute?”
Cheyenne shot Ember an exasperated glance, then followed the general across the clearing for a private conversation. Except L’zar will be able to hear all of it. Corian too, probably. No such thing as privacy.
Maleshi stopped and faced the halfling. “I get what you’re trying to do, kid.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Protect your mom. And I don’t mean from in-between monsters or magical earthquakes or war machines. From him.” The general nodded at the group of magicals. L’zar had sat on the grass with his legs crossed beneath him.
“He’s meditating. Great.” Cheyenne rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m trying to protect my mom. She loses it any time magic or magicals are mentioned. And she drank almost an entire bottle of scotch on her own the day she showed me the Chateau D’rahl video of L’zar turning himself back in after their private New Year’s Eve party. She’s been dragged into this enough.”