by Martha Carr
The drow gave his friend a tired smile. “Never say never.”
“Relax. My boys got it covered. Hey, they’re still your boys too, don’t forget. And they’re gonna light the death flame torch when they hear you’re back.”
L’zar peered down at his blue-skinned friend and cocked his head. “No. This is all temporary, got it? I don’t want any of the guys to know anything until I’m long gone.” He turned and headed toward the torn, sunken couch against the far wall.
“Long gone?” Persh’al snatched up his fourth energy drink in the last five hours, took a pull, and lurched after his friend. “Where you goin’ after this?”
L’zar slumped onto the couch, shifting around to get a broken spring out from under him. He propped his legs up along the cushions, crossing one ankle over the other. “Right where I belong.”
“You think they’re gonna let you back across the Border? Do they brainwash the inmates at Chateau D’rahl before they seal them up behind the wards that you, uh, somehow just broke out of?”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
“An idiot? Me?” The troll approached the couch and drained the rest of his energy drink. “Okay, I might not have a drow’s superior intellect, but any dimwit with half a brain knows they’ll cut you in half the minute you step foot in Ambar’ogúl.”
“I’m not going back,” L’zar muttered. He folded his arms behind his head and leaned back against the couch’s armrest. “You know as well as I do I don’t belong there any more than the humans.”
Persh’al snorted. “That’s stretching the truth a lot farther than it can go, I think.”
“Think what you want.” The drow took a deep breath of dust and rusted metal and the slightly burned odor of plastic casings in Persh’al’s powered-up rigs. “Smells like you need some cleaner fans in your towers, by the way.”
The troll glanced toward the desks and the custom computers he and his men had built from scratch. He scratched the back of his head, ruffling the spikes of his orange mohawk. “Hey, how long you been away? Did they have computers in the Chateau or something?”
“Limited access, but yeah.”
“Nice.” The troll nodded and pursed his lips. “Yeah, I, uh, ordered parts for the servers and hoping they get here in the next couple days. It’s handled, don’t worry about it. Look, L’zar, whatever you’re—”
“Two days.”
“Huh?”
“Two days is all I need, Persh’al.” L’zar opened his eyes and slowly turned his head to look at his friend. “I’m just waiting for one more sign, and then I’ll be out of your house and your…hair.” He eyed the troll’s mohawk.
Persh’al sniffed and folded his arms. “Just two?”
“That’s what I said.”
“And you want me to keep everyone out of here for two days, so you don’t blow your cover as an escaped convict.”
The drow closed his eyes again. “That’s a good way to put it.”
Persh’al puffed out a sigh and shook his head. “You’re a piece of work, you know that? That was a rhetorical question, by the way. Don’t bother answering. I got your back for two days, brother. Least I can do to repay the last couple centuries.”
“Appreciate it.”
With a relenting chuckle, Persh’al went to his computers and sank into the ample executive desk chair. “Log some Zs. I’ll keep it down.” That said, he popped open another energy drink, stared at a monitor, and started tapping away on an oversized custom keyboard.
L’zar cracked an eye open to look at his friend, then closed it again and let himself fully relax. One last sign. This has to be it. I finally found her, and there’s no way I missed the timing. Just wait for it all to line up the way I was told it would.
The escaped drow thief fell asleep that night thinking of Bianca Summerlin and wondering if the child he wouldn’t get to see would have her mother’s curls.
* * *
Two days later, the final sign came.
“They’re crackin’ down,” Persh’al muttered, vigorously rubbing his blue forehead covered in orange spots. He leapt from his chair. “I gotta go. You good here?”
“Go do what you gotta do.” L’zar finished the last of the energy drink—Persh’al was overjoyed to share his addiction. L’zar tossed the can in the trash.
“Right. Yeah.” The troll snatched up his black messenger bag propped beside the desk and slung it over his head and shoulder. He headed for the warehouse exit.
“Hey, Persh’al.”
The troll stopped and peered over his shoulder. “What’s up?”
“Thanks. It was good to see you.”
Persh’al chewed on his bottom lip, his eyes narrowing as he gazed at the drow. Then, he nodded, and they both knew what this meant. “Yeah, you too. I’d tell you not to get into too much trouble, but…that would be pointless.” With a wry chuckle, the troll raised a hand in farewell and slipped out the side door.
L’zar waited forty-five minutes before he made his move. He took on the same human form in which he’d brought in the year 2000—in bed with Bianca Summerlin—and opted this time for a pair of jeans and a sweater. He phased through the warehouse and its security wards and made his way back through DC toward Chateau D’rahl, and he did so with inhuman speed.
They weren’t looking for this face, of course. The prison staff only knew him as Inmate 4872, six-foot-seven with slate-gray, purple-tinged skin and long white hair. The guards knew him as L’zar Verdys, a drow.
It came as no surprise when, as he stepped through the open chain-link gates outside Chateau D’rahl, the guards stationed there had no idea who he was or what to do with him.
“Sir, you’re gonna have to move along. This is a high-security facility, and it’s not open to civilians.”
L’zar spread his arms and raised them a few inches above his head, then sauntered forward.
“Sir, stop where you are. Go back! Did you hear me?”
The man in jeans and a sweater looked up at the security cameras lining the front of the magical prison. The guards’ radios crackled, and a muffled voice came through: “Yeah, we’ve got a guy out here, trying to walk onto the premises.” Crackle. “I have no idea what he wants. I’m not gonna invite him in and ask him for his whole life’s— What the hell?”
L’zar let go of his illusion spell, and the glamour faded. Their looks of disbelief, then terror, then rage pleased him. He grinned at the cameras.
Just a little something to remember me by. They’ll find this when it’s time.
“On your knees!”
The three guards trained their weapons on L’zar, two of them loaded with bullets, the third with fell darts. L’zar could smell the alchemical agent on the darts.
“I said, on your knees! Hands behind your head.”
L’zar did as he was told, smiling in amusement as the guards headed toward him, weapons at the ready. The closest one—his nametag read Thomas—holstered his firearm to remove a pair of magic-binding handcuffs from his belt.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the man hissed as he folded L’zar’s arms behind the drow’s back with no resistance whatsoever.
“Aw. Did you miss me?” L’zar sucked in a sharp breath when the dampening cuffs clamped around his wrists.
“You’re in deep now, convict. Stand up.” Thomas jerked the drow to his feet and jostled him toward the prison’s front gates, flanked by the two other guards with weapons at the ready.
L’zar glanced at the elevated surveillance booth outside the prison entrance and grinned at the watch guard. He caught the last piece of the radio conversation before the doors buzzed and Thomas pushed him inside.
“O’Brien, you’re not gonna believe what I’m looking at right now. It’s Verdys. No, sir, I’m not shitting you. Yeah, that’s right. He just showed up out of nowhere, and Christ, he turned himself in.”
Chapter Three
September 4th, 2021
“Are you kidding me?�
�� Cheyenne lowered her beer bottle to the table, and while she didn’t mean to slam it down, she sort of did.
“Nope.” Ember leaned back in her chair, smirking, and spun her gin and tonic on the table. “I think you can help. No, I know you can help.”
“Help with what? Em, I didn’t understand a word out of your mouth right now. Even if I did, I’m the last person you should be talking to about this.” She swallowed, wanting to chug the rest of her third beer and knowing it would just make her order another one sooner than she wanted.
“You’re the only person I can talk to. Listen. These guys have been pressing in on us for a couple months now, but they just took it to a whole different level. One of them showed up at my friend Trevor’s work, Cheyenne. His work. Right there in front of everyone.” Ember stopped twirling her glass and leaned closer over the table, lowering her voice. “Trevor didn’t do anything wrong, but this stupid orc threatened him with a body bag. And magic.”
Cheyenne blinked and hoped she looked clueless. Is she serious? “Orcs, huh?”
“Yeah. Big ones.”
“And you think I’m gonna sit here and play along with whatever fantasy world you’re living in?” Cheyenne was acutely aware of her grip tightening around the beer, her black-painted fingernails against the glass, and she might have felt the bottle give just a little beneath the pressure—at least a tiny crack.
Keep it together, Cheyenne. This is not the right place.
Ember squinted at her and shook her head. “What do you mean, ‘fantasy world’?”
“You just…” Cheyenne glanced around Gnarly’s Pub on East Clay Street and lowered her voice. “You’re talking about orcs and magic, Em. I’m not stupid. If you’re trying to shock me into believing this crap, you’re wasting your time. It sounds like your friend Trevor’s dealing with some kinda gang issue, and I’m not gonna touch that, no way.”
“Seriously?” With a snort, Ember took a long drink and set the glass down. “I know there’s a lot of hush-hush going around, especially with the Borders ‘unofficially’ officially open now. But I’m not buying it for a second you have no idea what I’m talking about.”
“Oh, I get it. This is about money.” Cheyenne jerked her hand away from her beer and folded her arms. The thin chains dangling from her wrists clinked against each other, cold against her sides through the lightweight fabric of her black tank top. “I thought we were adults, Ember. If you need to borrow some cash, it’s okay.”
“Money? You think this is about—” Ember threw her head back and laughed much louder than the conversation warranted. “I don’t want—or need—your money. I need what you are. And so do my friends. People like us have to stick together, and I haven’t seen you with any other magicals since…well, since I met you. I can’t be your only friend.”
People like us?
Cheyenne took a breath, stifling the rage boiling up inside her. That would only make things worse, and it would prove her friend’s point better than anything Ember could say. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you,” she muttered through clenched teeth, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, come on, Cheyenne.” Ember thumped her fists on the table. “Drinking at dive bars and living in a dumpy apartment does a pretty good job of hiding who your mom is, sure. And yeah, it’s a good mask to conceal you’re the only person I know who’s not worried about supporting themselves through grad school. But this…” She gestured toward Cheyenne with one sweep of a hand.
“This what?” Cheyenne’s nails dug into her palms.
“This whole Goth thing, girl. I mean, sure, most of the world’s not even gonna look past the face paint and the piercings, so good job fooling everybody. But you can’t hide who you are. If I saw it freshman year, you can bet other magicals around Richmond with a lot more experience can pick you out of a crowd no matter what you’re wearing.”
Cheyenne snorted. “Me being Goth doesn’t mean I believe in magic or orcs or whatever other bull you’re trying to convince me of right now.”
“True. But you’re a bad actor and an even worse liar.” Ember smirked as she lifted her glass in a one-sided toast and took another long drink. “So, are you gonna help your only friend in the world or what?”
“I can’t give you what you want.” Cheyenne shifted in her seat, then realized she couldn’t keep still and snatched her beer bottle off the table. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Seriously, Cheyenne, I have no idea what’s stopping you or why you’re so set on playing this game. Until I met you, I thought halflings were just legends. But the drow’s already out of the bag, so to speak—”
“The what?”
“Oh, please.” Ember snorted. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard that word either.”
The bottle in Cheyenne’s hand burst, sending shattered glass and foamy ale all over her hand and the table and the already-sticky, grungy floor. Cheyenne stared at her shaking, sopping hand, and felt the heat rush up her spine and curve across her shoulders.
Just this once. Please, just one time, don’t let it come out.
“Cheyenne.”
“What?” Why do I keep breaking things but never cut myself?
The amusement had drained from Ember’s face, replaced by a sympathetic frown as she pointed to the side of her own head. “Your, uh, your ears?”
The chair screeched behind Cheyenne as she jerked to her feet. Before the chair tumbled backward and clattered to the floor, she was already rubbing her black hair vigorously with both hands to cover the changes she knew most people wouldn’t believe—changes Ember had apparently picked up on four years ago.
One of the bartenders stopped beside their table with a rag in hand, ready to clean up the mess. “Everybody okay over here?”
Cheyenne’s hip bumped against the table corner as she stormed away from him toward the front door. Ember had almost caught her own drink before it also hit the floor, although hers wasn’t in shards.
She stayed in her seat and called after her friend. “Cheyenne. Hey, come on. You don’t have to leave. I’m not—”
The door burst open with a little jingle from that stupid bell some idiot thought would be fun to tie to the handle, then Cheyenne was in the fresh September air. The door bounced shut, and she stalked down the sidewalk in front of the bar, taking deep breaths.
How does she know?
“That’s a stupid question,” she hissed at herself, shaking her hands out as she stalked toward the alley on the other side of Gnarly’s. She slipped between the buildings, pressed against the alley’s brick wall, and closed her eyes. “She knows because you have serious anger issues. That’s how.”
The chains she wore every day, rain or shine, sleeves or not, clinked as Cheyenne lifted her hands toward her face and peered at them in the half-light of the alley’s shadows. The blotches of grayish-purple skin dotting her forearms were already fading, leaving nothing but her pale, vampirically white skin. “I have no problem with the vampire jokes. But she wasn’t joking, was she?”
She brought both hands up to her head and poked around in her mess of black hair, which now looked like she’d just rolled out of bed and rubbed a balloon all over it. Not that she spent a lot of time on her hair, anyway. But what Cheyenne was trying to gauge with her fingers had in fact been hidden by her mess of hair she’d been dying High Voltage Raven Black for the last six years. Her fingers ran up the sides of her ears, brushing over the industrial piercings and the half-dozen rings passing through each piece of cartilage until she reached the top.
Perfectly round human-shaped ears. No pointed tips. Hopefully, they weren’t slate-gray anymore. Even if they were, that would disappear soon enough. Cheyenne puffed a sigh and ruffled her thick hair until it covered her ears and all the silver rings again, then she rested her head against the brick wall and stared at the escape ladder and the catwalk on the other side of the alley.
“She could’ve just been me
ssing with me.” The heat of her rage had toned down. “No, she brought up the ears. Out of all the other things, why does it always have to be the ears?”
A few yards down the alley, a dumpster lid clanged against the brick wall. A skinny man in a kitchen apron with a severe case of adult acne lugged a giant trash bag and then another onto the almost overflowing pile. “I can’t say anything about your ears, kid, but it sounds like you have some serious issues.”
Cheyenne peered at the cook who’d been firing up jalapeño burgers every Tuesday night since last year. She pointed her chin at him, smiling. “Bite me, trash boy.”
“Hey, that’s more like it.” Grinning, the cook—she thought his name was Sam—slammed a hand against the side of the dumpster and pointed at her. “Don’t lose that winning attitude, Wyoming.”
“Yeah, you think it’s cute. I was born here, by the way.” She stared at him until he slipped back inside Gnarly’s side door, stopping just long enough to shoot her a wink.
Alone in the alley again, her rage gone, Cheyenne was ready to talk to the one person besides her mom who seemingly knew what she was. Shaking her hands out, her chains clinking around her wrists, Cheyenne headed toward the bar’s front door. The cold had helped calm her, and she was ready to start over. If Ember knew about Cheyenne’s little secret—which wasn’t so little but had been easy to keep under wraps, or so she’d thought—it didn’t change anything about their friendship.
Except she’s apparently a better liar than I am.
If Ember was coming to her with whatever this orc problem was, after four years of never crossing this line into humans-versus-magicals territory, maybe she did need Cheyenne’s help. Perhaps this half-drow Goth chick could offer something no one else could.
When she was only a few yards from the bar’s entrance, the door burst open with that stupid jingle, and Ember stepped outside. Cheyenne opened her mouth to start the slippery slope into heartfelt apologies, but her friend turned in the opposite direction and hurried down the sidewalk. Ember hunched over, one finger stuck in her ear while the other hand pressed her cell phone against her cheek. “Are you serious? Why would he—” Ember groaned and glanced at the night sky. “Yeah. No, Jackie, listen to me. I’m on my way, okay? Just keep him from doing anything stupid. Please. Hey, if anybody can do that, it’s you. I’ll be there soon.”