by Martha Carr
The Jeep pulled up to the curb, and Rhynehart pointed at what looked like an old brick church ahead of them. “It’s up there on the right. Guess the people who used this church before built themselves a new one outside of town, and nobody wanted the leftovers.”
“They just abandoned an old church?”
“Or these thugs pitched in together to buy the thing. Who gives a shit how they got it? They’re in there. Come on.”
Seatbelts unbuckled, doors opened and closed. Cheyenne didn’t realize she’d been trying to shut hers quietly until she opened it one more time and tried again.
Rhynehart opened the horizontal door at the back of the Jeep and rummaged around in the back. “What’s wrong with you, rookie?”
“That’s a loaded question.” Cheyenne eyed the stone church two buildings down, which still seemed abandoned to her, and stepped toward the operative. “Any of you think it’s a little weird to be rolling up in full FRoE SWAT gear at the start of Friday rush-hour traffic?”
The man slipped one of those thick, black dampening vests over his head, thumped the chest, then pulled on huge gloves of the same material. “Not our job to worry about what we look like.” He spared her a quick glance and shrugged. “Didn’t think that was high on your priority list, either.”
“Thanks, asshole. I’m not talking about me or your gung-ho outfit. I mean, what if people see us running into a church? Your guys brought a lot of guns, and that place is gonna light up with magic once you shoot first and ask questions later.”
“We, halfling. You’re coming too. And the idiots in that church didn’t choose the place for sentimental reasons. You see anybody else walking around out here?”
Cheyenne glanced down the street, which had some closed storefronts and what might have been an old house turned into a rental of three or four apartments. “I’ve seen regular humans in places they weren’t supposed to be. Like today. And I almost tore the poor sucker’s head off.”
“But you didn’t. So what? We have people to deal with that kind of thing if it happens. Not our department. Not our problem.” Rhynehart slipped on the weird black helmet that made him look like he was gearing up for a fencing match and closed the back of the Jeep. He stepped onto the sidewalk next to Cheyenne and stuck his fist out like he was about to punch her in the shoulder, then remembered how bad an idea that had been the last time he’d tried it. He smashed the gloved fist into his other hand and nodded. “Let’s go.”
With a quick signal toward the other FRoE operatives from the vans behind them—who all had their gear on and ready to go, including those huge fell rifles like the one Rhynehart had used to test their new half-drow asset—Rhynehart led the team down the sidewalk toward the church. Cheyenne kept pace beside him, glancing at the buildings around them just in case there was somebody watching.
If they are, they’re about to get the show of a lifetime.
Rhynehart signaled for the team to stop in front of the stone steps leading up to the church’s front door. Cheyenne smacked the back of her hand against his dampening vest and muttered, “Wait a second.”
“We already got all the intel we need on what’s going on in there, rookie.” His voice was muffled through the helmet. “You’re holding us up.”
“You have any idea how many of them are in there right now?”
“No. We don’t have an exact headcount.”
“Would you like one?”
Rhynehart jerked off his helmet and tucked it under his arm to stare at her without a mask between them. “You telling me that’s one more thing on your list of tricks?”
“Yeah.” The halfling folded her arms. “You brought a drow halfling with you, man. Might as well use her, right?”
He hissed out a sigh, closed his eyes, then shrugged and gestured toward the stone steps. “Make it quick. And make sure they don’t know you’re there.”
“You know what? If you hadn’t driven me here, you wouldn’t even know I was here.” Cheyenne spread her arms and walked backward toward the front of the church. Rhynehart tried not to smile, which made her turn around so he wouldn’t see her grin.
Her feet moved swiftly and soundlessly up the stone steps. Cheyenne could make herself nearly invisible and completely unheard when she wanted. A childhood spent in the middle of nowhere in Henry County had made her really good at it. When she reached the top step, she paused in front of the wooden double doors with thick iron rings instead of handles. A quick release of her drow magic sent the heat bursting up from the base of her spine and across her shoulders, then she pressed a purple-gray hand lightly against the stone wall and closed her eyes.
She must’ve been getting better at using this ability on command. The colored silhouettes of about a dozen magicals appeared in her mind’s eye. Green for the orcs, purple for trolls, blue goblins, and a dark-orange outline that made her think of Gúrdu’s eyes.
After a moment, Cheyenne figured she’d seen enough and removed her hand. Then she leapt off the front landing and landed silently in front of Rhynehart, who stood there with his arms folded, tapping his combat boot on the cement.
“Show-off.”
She smirked. “Don’t act like you’re not impressed. There’s thirteen in there, I think. Four orcs, five goblins, two trolls, and some other type. You guys deal a lot with Raugs?”
“That’s real funny, rookie.”
“I’ll take that as a no. Then it’s probably two more Skaxen in there.”
“Yeah, that sounds more like it.”
Cheyenne frowned over her shoulder at the church. “They’re all just standing there in a weird circle. Like, not moving around or anything. I heard a bunch of whispering but couldn’t make it out.”
Rhynehart turned back toward his team standing patiently behind them—well, they might be patient since their faces were covered by the giant space helmets—but no one moved. “You telling me you saw them in there?”
“Just their shapes. And colors.” She shrugged.
“Uh-huh. Standing around in a circle.”
“Fine, don’t believe me. You’ll be shaking my hand when you storm in there and it’s set up exactly like I said.”
“You wouldn’t let me shake your hand if both our lives depended on it.”
She snorted. “Maybe.”
“Okay, rookie. Talent show’s over.” Rhynehart turned toward his team and flashed a series of quick signs with fists and fingers and flat palms that Cheyenne didn’t even try to reason out. Then he pointed toward the front door of the church, and his guys swarmed around him and the halfling to go get the job done. “You’re stickin’ with me.”
“We’re going in too, right?”
“Duh.” The man pulled a rather large pistol from the holster on his hip and clicked off the safety. A low whine rose from the weapon, followed by a green glow inside the mechanism that grew quickly brighter.
Cheyenne glanced at it, then smirked at him. “Couldn’t get a bigger one like your friends’ guns?”
“Didn’t have room to bring Lorena along for the ride.”
“Lorena’s dead.”
“Lorena 2, then.”
As the halfling and the FRoE team leader reached the bottom of the stairs, the two operatives closest to the doors threw them open and burst inside, weapons drawn. There were six guys in all, not counting Rhynehart, and they moved in unison as if they’d been practicing this one maneuver all week.
“Put it down, asshole!”
“Hands up. You’re done.”
“I said now, orc. Drop the—”
A snarl of rage and challenge erupted inside the church as Cheyenne and Rhynehart hurried in after his men. Sure enough, the church was already lighting up, with different-colored magic flying around the vestibule. The magicals currently getting busted still stood in a ring in the center of the room, where all the pews had been pushed against either wall. Around the circle of magicals were twelve tall iron candle holders, each with lit candles.
In the
center of the circle was a fourteenth body Cheyenne hadn’t counted when she’d used her drow sight to look through the walls of the church. A new burst of rage flared through her when she realized it was because the fourteenth body, lying on the floor in this messed-up circle, was dead.
“Drop it!” Rhynehart shouted, moving into the room with his men. “Hands in the air!”
A snickering goblin with a beaker of some dark-purple substance leered at the operative and tossed the whole thing at Rhynehart’s head. He ducked, and the beaker smashed against the pews behind him. The smell of rotting vegetation mixed with cheap perfume filled the church.
Rhynehart fired his fell pistol at the goblin, spinning the magical sideways until he tripped on his long black robes and nearly fell on top of the body. The two orange auras Cheyenne had seen belonged to two more Skaxen, only these stood as tall as the goblins and looked like bright-orange rats—what Q’orr must’ve looked like before he shriveled himself with black magic. They hopped and skittered all over the main room of the church, snatching up vials and beakers and glasses and throwing them in every direction. The substances exploded on the floor and the walls, sending up clouds of black and purple smoke on impact. One of them bounced off an operative’s thick dampening vest and dropped at his feet.
“Ah, shit!” The guy leapt aside to avoid what was probably the same kind of acid burn Cheyenne had gotten full in the shoulder. The closest troll took the opportunity to rush at him head-on.
The halfling threw her hand out and flung the writhing black tendrils from her fingers. They coiled around the troll’s purple neck and jerked him backward. He let out a surprised choke before she tossed him into two other trolls trying to round up what remained of their black-magic stores.
A flash of green light came from Cheyenne’s left, and she ducked beneath an orc’s column of fiery magic. It blasted into the wall behind her, tearing out chunks of stone, and she rushed him.
The entire church slowed down to a crawl, blue, orange, purple, and green spells from the criminal magicals floating through the air toward their FRoE targets. Bursts of green light flared at the tips of the fell weapons in the operatives’ hands. One of the Skaxens was suspended midair as he leapt for the closest agent, long claws glinting at the ends of his fingers.
The drow halfling went for the closest orc first, firing a black orb of crackling energy at his face. She didn’t wait for the impact but ran past him toward the troll firing a spell that looked like hundreds of tiny needles at an unsuspecting operative’s back. Cheyenne’s black tendrils whipped at the shards of magic and batted them from the air, then she shoved both hands into the troll’s chest and launched him into the air. When she made it to the Skaxen leaping toward another FRoE agent, she jerked on his ridiculous black robes and he crashed to the wooden floor of the church.
A wave of searing pain burst through her head, and she screamed. Her enhanced speed dropped just like that, and she staggered away from the fight. The orc with a face full of black drow energy roared and spun in a circle, clawing at his skin. The troll crashed into the far wall and landed in a heap across some discarded pews. The Skaxen had the wind knocked out of him and coughed, spraying blood from his orange mouth, which gaped in surprise and pain around razor-sharp teeth.
A communal shout of surprise and admiration rose from the FRoE operatives when they saw three of their targets taken out in the blink of an eye.
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”
“Grab the rest.”
“I swear, if you throw another goddamn thing at me, you Skaxen dirtbag, I’ll empty every fell shot I have into your weaselly face!”
Cheyenne staggered back against one of the pews. For the first time in her life, she couldn’t see straight. The church spun madly around her, flashing with different colors and filled with shouts, snarls, roars, and the crash of spells missing their marks.
Chapter Eighty-One
“Hey!” one of the operatives shouted and raced toward her as she slithered against the side of the pew toward the floor. “What the hell happened?”
That was Rhynehart, or all three of him, when she tried to focus on the giant, shiny black helmet. A wave of dizziness washed over her, and Cheyenne might have tried to say she was about to puke all over his boots. Fortunately, she didn’t do that.
“Okay, rookie. Come on. Back on your feet.” A gloved hand reached down toward her, and a blue flash lit up Rhynehart’s silhouette.
With a shrieking roar, Cheyenne thrust her hand out and flung the lashing black tendrils just past Rhynehart’s legs. He jumped back and cursed, and the troll who was just about to fry him with another attack at close range let out a warbling scream when the half-drow tossed him across the church. Rhynehart’s helmet moved slowly as he watched the arc of the flying troll, then he slapped his vest and offered her his hand again.
“Thought you were going to take me out for a second there, rookie.”
Cheyenne blinked heavily, trying to see only one of him again, but she did take his hand.
He laughed as he pulled her to feet. “Looks like I got you to shake my hand after all.”
She shoved him back and swayed on her feet. “That’s not a handshake. That’s a-a desp…desp…”
“Woah, woah. Jesus. What got into you?”
Cheyenne’s head wobbled as she found her balance and glanced around the church. The spell-throwing had stopped, as had the bursts of green fell-fire from the FRoE weapons. The magicals they’d come to round up still snarled and shrieked and hissed, bucking against the dampening cuffs the operatives were clamping around the wrists of those with the most fight left in them. A few of the criminals moaned and tried to stand, but Rhynehart’s men quickly got on them to cuff them all too.
One of the closest agents shoved an orc’s cheek back to the hardwood floor, then trained his firearm on the magical and stepped back. “Looks like we got ‘em all.”
Rhynehart studied Cheyenne a little longer in concern, then nodded and glanced around the room. “What about that one?”
Nobody had touched the fourteenth body Cheyenne hadn’t seen with her drow sight, because that body hadn’t moved. “Dead,” she muttered.
“Are you serious?” Rhynehart turned on his men. “Okay, which asshole opted to bring in a body bag against orders?”
None of his agents answered, their focus split between waiting for a confession and keeping their rifles trained on their targets restrained in cuffs all over the church.
“No, dead already.” Cheyenne huffed out a sigh and shook her head. At least she was only seeing two of everything now, and that was just half the time. “When we got here. That’s why I didn’t see him when I looked.”
“Shit.” Rhynehart pulled off his helmet and glanced around at his men. “Anybody check to see who it is?”
“No.”
“Wasn’t paying attention.”
“I’ll do it.” Cheyenne stumbled forward and brushed Rhynehart’s hand aside when he tried to grab her and help steady her. Her footsteps felt way too heavy as she crossed the wooden floor, but she managed to keep from falling flat on her face before she reached the body in the center of the church. She dropped to one knee and slowly pulled the black-robed body by the shoulders to turn the magical over onto its back.
The black hood fell away from the magical’s face, revealing the light-blue face of a goblin with a shock of floppy yellow hair spilling into his open, glassy eyes. She swallowed thickly when the small size of the body and the youth in that face came together.
“Shit, that’s a kid,” one of the agents muttered.
“Dammit.” Rhynehart chucked his helmet on the ground and slapped a gloved hand against his head. “We were too late for this one.”
Cheyenne’s fists clenched so tightly, she stopped feeling her nails biting into her purple-gray flesh. They were killing kids with those potions, and then they killed a kid for whatever fucked-up ritual they were doing in here. The black robes. Candles.
All the whispering.
“All right.” Rhynehart sighed again and nodded toward the open church doors. “Let’s get these assholes outta here and—”
The drow halfling’s fists slammed on the wooden floor with a huge thud and a splintering crack. Without thinking, she launched herself at the closest orc, his wrists in dampening cuffs behind his back and his cheek still smashed against the floor. In a second, she was on him, jerking him up by the scruff of his stupid black robes before she slammed his face back down onto the wood.
“Did you do this?” she screamed and smashed his face into the floor one more time.
“Woah, rookie!”
“Brought a kid in here for a sacrifice!” Slam.
“Hey, halfling. Take it down a notch.”
“A fucking kid!”
“Cheyenne!”
Hearing her name here jolted her back into herself, and she dropped the orc’s face before snarling at him. Thick red-black blood pooled at the corners of his mouth around his tusks and ran freely from his squashed nose. He gasped for breath, licked his huge lower lip, lifted his yellow eyes toward the drow halfling, and laughed.
“Oh, yeah? Keep laughing.” Cheyenne brought up a churning, hissing sphere of black energy in each hand and held them over the orc’s head. “This’ll be real fun for you. It tickles.”
“That’s enough.” Rhynehart’s gloved hand clamped around her upper arm, and she let off one of the crackling orbs right at his feet. The agent stepped back and released her arm, but he’d gotten her attention again. “They’ll get what’s comin’ to ‘em, rookie. We did our job. Come on.”
“I should break his neck,” she spat, glaring at the orc but giving in just enough to step away from him. The asshole just kept laughing.
“Yeah, you probably should. But that’s a helluva lot more paperwork than I wanna have to do. And you’ll be looking at a lot more trouble than that asshole’s worth, okay? Come on. Outside.”
“You’ll get what’s coming to you too, mór úcare,” the orc shouted after them as Cheyenne followed Rhynehart on still-unsteady feet toward the church doors. “We have everything we need now to come after you. The line of the Cu’ón will rot in the ash of the death torch, just like he will!”