by Martha Carr
“Some stress test.” The half-drow glanced around the room, waiting for the next pseudo-attack from an opponent she couldn’t see. “I already know how to change my form.”
Now that she was on high alert and her keen hearing was heightened by the drow magic shooting through her, she heard the mechanism of the tiny hydraulic tube inside the wall behind her and to her right. A short, hissing burst got her attention, followed by a click and a louder pop before the next dart launched at her.
She stepped to the side and focused on the direction of the sound. There it was—the tiny green light coming at her as slowly as if someone had lobbed a paper airplane her way. It was the size of a pebble, pulsing with a green hue as it cut a path to its target. Cheyenne grasped the round projectile between her thumb and forefinger. The second she touched it, the rest of the world around her moved at normal speed.
“What is this?” The halfling extended the tiny green ball between her fingers toward Rhynehart and scowled. “We’re playing invisible paintball now?”
The beaded dart burst when she squeezed it between her fingers. Green veins of spreading static shimmered across the pad of her thumb, then the light disappeared and left nothing behind.
“Did you do that on purpose?” Rhynehart asked.
“Sorry. Did you want it back?”
“Enhanced speed, Blakely. Is that an ability you can execute on-demand, or did you let your irritation get the better of you?”
The drow halfling sighed and blinked her golden eyes. “If my irritation got the better of me, you’d be on your back.”
Rhynehart dipped his head in acknowledgment, yet he appeared neither disappointed nor impressed. “How about dropping the drow face?”
Cheyenne’s eyes widened. “Come again?”
“Back to human. Go ahead.”
She took a deep breath through her nose and closed her eyes. He’s a little more stoic than Mattie, but it’s the same thing all over. Think about the deer and the woods. Here we go.
She heard Rhynehart release his hands from behind his back to lift one of them. What she didn’t hear was that the man had raised three fingers toward the window this time. Mechanisms in the padded walls simultaneously unleashed several beaded darts.
Cheyenne was halfway through returning to human form. The first and second darts found a home dead-center in the back of her head, one after the other. The third came from up higher on her left, and she jerked sideways to avoid the green projectile that would have hit her shoulder. The drow halfling opened her eyes to glare at Rhynehart as the rest of her purple-gray skin faded into her pale human flesh. “See? I can handle my irritation—”
Five more tiny dart guns within the walls fired their next rounds from different angles in quick succession. Cheyenne ducked beneath the first two, but the rest were too swift for her to avoid without returning to drow form.
Which she did since the stupidity of this test pissed her off.
“Cut it out!” Purple and black sparks flickered and hissed at her fingertips, and her hands raised by her sides as she began breathing more heavily. “I’m not in the habit of being the target during target practice. If you want to see what I can do, it’s probably a good idea not to—”
Three more projectiles shot from the wall behind her next to each other, one after the other. Cheyenne whirled and sent purple sparks from one hand and a churning ball of black energy from the other. Both spells hurtled toward the small dart guns and charred the tiny mechanisms into crisps. Then the section of padded egg-carton wall caught fire with a muted roar. Something inside the wall—or maybe the wall itself—reacted to the damage and expelled a froth of white steam that wasn’t quite fire-extinguisher foam. The flames extinguished, and the charred foam wall repaired itself in under five seconds like nothing had happened.
“Look at that.” Cheyenne gave the wall a half-hearted shrug and glanced at Rhynehart. “Built-in damage control. Cool.”
“We have things pretty well covered here.”
This guy doesn’t flinch.
“Good to know.” The halfling pulled back on her magic until the sparks receded from her fingertips. “Can we move on to something else? I don’t have all day to get spit on by tiny pellets.”
“You do, actually.”
She released a humorless chuckle. “I don’t. And if you people couldn’t find anything about me in this system of yours, you have no idea what I do with my time or what my schedule looks like. I’m a busy halfling.”
Plus, if people noticed I disappeared, I’m gonna be an exposed halfling.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Rhynehart turned around and walked toward the opposite side of the gymnasium. “I’m sure you think you knew what you were doing,” he said over his shoulder, “when you showed up to a meeting my undercover guy spent months setting up.”
He stopped at the wall and snapped his fingers, and a portion of the padded black foam slid out like a giant freezer drawer. The man dug into it and pulled out a helmet, a bulletproof vest covered in the same foam as the walls, and thick gloves. He dropped everything but the vest, and the drawer shut on its own. “I saw a lot of power coming out of you Thursday night. Unrefined. Unrestrained. Fueled by what I’m guessing is rage. Maybe a little fear. Who knows?”
Cheyenne snorted. Thanks for the psych eval.
Rhynehart dropped the vest over his shoulders, pulled the gloves on, and picked up the helmet. Tucking that under his arm, he came to stand a few yards from the halfling. “That was all spontaneous, though. Erratic. Reactionary. This room offers more stability. This is a safe space.”
Is this guy for real?
With a snort of disbelief, Cheyenne shook her head. “I prefer my safe spaces without tiny blowguns shooting spit wads from the walls.”
Rhynehart pulled on the helmet, which had some sort of grated mesh across the face. Cheyenne expected him to pull out a fencing foil next and challenge her to a duel. He clapped his thick gloves and spread his arms. “I’ll be fine. Go for it.”
“No.” The halfling spun on her heels and headed toward the sparring gym’s double doors.
“You can’t leave yet, Blakely.”
“Watch me.” She reached the double doors and wrapped her purple-gray fingers around one of the vertical bars. The door didn’t budge.
Come on!
She grabbed the other bar and gave both doors a sturdier pull. Nothing.
First manacles, now a locked door. Not the best way to win someone’s trust.
She dropped her hands and turned around. “Okay, I get what you’re trying to do. Bring in the halfling nobody can find in the system. Test her, train her, hope you can teach her something new so she’ll be grateful and wanna give back to the organization that taught her so much. It’s a good plan. Except you’re trying to do it with me.”
“You think a lot of yourself,” said Rhynehart in a tinny voice from within the mesh mask. He clasped his gloved hands behind his back.
“No. I’m simply not interested in being jerked around. While I’d enjoy blasting you across the room, I’d feel bad about it later, and I don’t like carrying around that kind of guilt.” Cheyenne gestured toward the man in his magical protective sparring gear. “Can you use magic?”
“You know, I’m not sure.” Rhynehart lifted a gloved hand to his head and scratched the top of the helmet. “I haven’t tried.”
The halfling sighed and cocked her head. “That’s a no.”
“If you want to get back to your full and demanding life as an unknown halfling living off the grid, you have to go through me first.” He shrugged. “So hit me.”
Cheyenne stalked away from the double doors and stopped farther away from Rhynehart than last time. “This is ridiculous.”
“This is how we roll. Come on.” He waved her forward with both hands and widened his stance.
I’m considering blasting magic at a human on purpose. For fun. Cheyenne shook her head, and Mattie Bergmann’s words floated through
her head.
“They’ll haul you back across and dump you in the middle of a world that wants nothing to do with humans and has no problem destroying a halfling because that halfling happens to look like one.”
If I give this guy everything, they’ll know what I can do. If I don’t, they’ll write me off as useless for anything but getting in their way. I’m not getting tossed across a border for anyone.
Cheyenne conjured crackling purple and black sparks to her fingertips and tossed a half-hearted shot at the FRoE operative. The sparks hit Rhynehart square in the chest and sent purple energy across the front of his special vest. The man straightened from his ready stance and dropped his hands to his thighs. “That’s some weak shit, Blakely.”
She blasted off two more arcing sprays of her least intense magic. The first hit his vest, and the second cracked against the side of his helmet. The second blow knocked Rhynehart’s head sideways a little. He thumped a fist on his chest. “Come on. You’re half drow, for Christ’s sake!”
“And you’re all idiot.” Cheyenne took a step forward and let off more sparks—one, two, three, chest, helmet, left thigh. That last one was her version of testing this guy. Her sparks crackled above his kneecap and took his leg out from under him.
That knee dropped to the padded floor. Rhynehart slapped his leg with a gloved hand, and the crackling purple energy disappeared. “Whoo! That’s something, at least.”
He leaped to his feet, shook his foot like it had fallen asleep, and clapped his gloves before spreading his arms. “You only get points if both boots leave the floor.”
“How many do I get for taking your leg off?”
Rhynehart chuckled. “You done that before?”
“Not yet.” Cheyenne lifted her hands.
“Don’t hold back, halfling. I can take it.”
Yeah, that’s what all the gear’s for, isn’t it? Magic-dampening shackles for me, and an extra boost of healing for the moron trying to get himself killed. He’s enjoying himself way too much.
The half-drow’s fingertips flared with another round of sparks.
Rhynehart waved them off. “Pull out the big guns already. I didn’t bring you here so you can tickle me.”
“You won’t be laughing when I kill you.” Cheyenne paused for a second. She had no idea if she’d gone that far on Thursday night at the event center. She remembered the fight and the rage and the chaos, but she couldn’t bring up a single image of a dead body.
I can’t tell if not knowing is better or worse.
“Let’s go!”
She sent a barrage toward the man. It rocked him back in quick succession—chest, helmet, shoulder, hip. Rhynehart staggered but ignored the last attack and reached for his helmet with both hands. The sparks caught his thick glove instead, and he didn’t seem to feel it before he jerked the helmet off his head and tossed it aside. It fell to the mat with a thump and rolled away.
“I fought right beside you Thursday night, halfling. I saw what you can do. Granted, there wasn’t a lot of control, which was more than obvious.”
Cheyenne snorted. “Glad I’m so easy to read.”
“But you were there with a purpose, and you followed through. That was real power. That’s what I wanna see.” Rhynehart lifted both gloved hands and wiggled his fingers. “Not those cute little sparks.”
“Why does everyone keep calling them ‘cute?’”
“Comparatively, Blakely, you might as well be aiming a bubble gun at me. So turn up the power and fucking hit me!”
“I can’t!” Cheyenne’s voice cracked across the training arena and left a startled silence behind as the padded floor and walls sucked up the sound that would have echoed anywhere else. “I showed up there for answers, and the assholes at that meeting could have given them to me. At the very least, they were into a whole bunch of nasty stuff. If they had the information I wanted, I could’ve proven at least some of them were responsible for hurting people I know. That’s why I fought. I don’t have anything against you, Rhynehart.”
He puffed out a breath and rubbed a thick glove over his short brown hair. “I locked you in a padded room and won’t let you out until you show me what you can do. That’s not enough to get you geared up?”
“Well, it’s close. But you’re human. What’s the worst you can do? Tackle me?”
“Okay. You want a reason to attack me? Sure.” Rhynehart lunged toward his helmet and snatched it off the black pad. He jammed it on his head, thrust a finger at the halfling, and stormed across the room toward the wall opposite the entrance. “I’ll give you a reason.”
The FRoE’s enlisting lunatics.
Cheyenne shook her head and folded her arms. “I’m not gonna fight a human.”
“That’s some heavy-handed racism coming from a half-human.”
The drow halfling frowned. Is he serious? “I’m not racist, okay? I’m being realistic.”
“None of the other magicals I take down—on a regular basis, by the way—hold the same kinda bias.” Rhynehart stopped at the far wall and thumped the side of his fist in three separate places forming three corners of a square. Another section of the black-foam-padded wall slid out with a hydraulic hiss. The man bent to reach inside.
“I thought you were running tests?” Cheyenne muttered. “Not trying to take me down.”
Rhynehart withdrew his fun surprise from the drawer and the section receded into the wall, then he turned around with a massive black rifle in his arms. “Change of plans.”
“Nice bazooka.”
“Thanks. Everyone loves Lorena. You two will be close pals in no time.” He shrugged. “Or not.”
“Friends, huh? Lorena’s a bigger version of those little pea-shooters you got hidden in the walls?”
Rhynehart slammed his palm on the side of the giant, bulky black rifle, and the empty spaces between the weapon’s attached parts flared to life with the same eerie-green light as the wall mechanisms. A low hum and whine grew in pitch as the firearm powered up.
“Oh, come on.” Cheyenne tilted her head. “You’re not gonna shoot me with—”
A bolt of neon-green light burst from the rifle.
Cheyenne leaped in time it to hurtle past her head and bury itself in the foam-padded walls. The walls did their job and absorbed the damage, leaving no trace of the destructive blast. The half-drow stared at the wall behind her, then whirled toward Rhynehart. “Seriously?”
The rifle powered up with another whine. Rhynehart fired.
Dodging the next shot was easier. Cheyenne’s enhanced speed allowed her to step aside and avoid it. It crashed into the wall and sent green energy crackling across the foam padding.
This dude’s lost it.
“You know I can dodge bullets, right? Those are a lot smaller.”
Rhynehart crouched and circled her across the floor, removed something from the rifle’s clip, and slammed it against his thigh. The, hand-sized black device beeped and flashed green.
“Grenades?” Cheyenne sighed.
He chucked the pulsing device at the half-drow and fired a wide shot that missed her. She ducked anyway, focused on the grenade. It detonated halfway toward her and unleashed a spray of tiny green beads. Thousands of them whizzed through the air, and they packed a punch. The first round peppered her chest and neck and sent her staggering backward. The device hit the padded wall and stuck there, still blinking.
“This is ridicu—”
Rhynehart fired another shot, moving efficiently around the training room with the rifle raised. Cheyenne dodged it before the device clinging to the padded wall detonated. Another wave of neon-green pellets sprayed her as if the thing had taken aim. They hit her in the back and shoulders, knocking her forward and to her knees.
With a growl, Cheyenne regained her feet and whirled to launch a crackling sphere of black energy with a bright-purple core toward the device. Before it hit, Rhynehart fired and caught the half-drow in her hip, the same one that had taken a bullet.
She screamed and went to one knee. The device on the wall exploded under her return attack. Rhynehart fired again.
The next spell from the half-drow’s hand sent another hissing, churning black sphere at the glowing-green energy ball. The explosion on impact sent waves of black, purple, and green light pulsing through the entire room, then Cheyenne aimed both hands toward the FRoE operative and his stupid gun.
Thick black tendrils of magic burst from the halfling’s fingertips and lashed across the room. Two of them curled around the rifle and ripped it from Rhynehart’s grip. The man stumbled into the other flailing, whipping vines of black drow magic. Cheyenne clenched one fist and the rifle snapped in half, throwing green sparks and a choking hum into the air. She wrenched her other hand aside, and the tendrils around Rhynehart swept him off his feet.
The man’s back hit the padded floor with a thud, and the tendrils withdrew.
Down on one knee, Cheyenne dropped forward and caught herself with both hands. Her hip screamed at her. She jerked up the hem of her black tank top and the fishnet overshirt and pulled down the waistband of her pants to examine it. The puckered scar over the bullet hole looked the same. Breathing heavily, she lowered her other knee and sat back on her heels.
Rhynehart pushed up onto his elbows and glanced at the decimated rifle. He sat up all the way, pulled off his helmet, and dropped it. The drow halfling and the FRoE operative stared at each other while catching their breath.
“Halfling, one,” Cheyenne muttered. “Lorena, zero.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Rhynehart pushed himself to his feet. “Rage and pain. Got it.”
He picked his helmet up and headed for the side wall. The first drawer ejected, and he stripped off his protective gear and tossed everything inside. The drawer closed and he turned, rubbing the back of his head. “What’s the deal with the shield, then?”
“What shield?”
The man walked toward Cheyenne, then stopped and faced her. “The shield responsible for the fact that I’m still here to shoot you in the hip.”