by Martha Carr
Cheyenne hissed, her head rocking to the window as she let the wave of darktongue euphoria wash over her. “You guys are idiots.”
“Hey, I know what I saw.” Bhandi snorted and gestured at Ember and the canister. “And you had your friend do it for you.”
“Wait.” Ember flipped the canister to the troll woman. “What do you think this is?”
“Juice.”
The fae shook her head.
“Steroids,” Yurik clarified, shaking his head as he glanced one more time in the rearview mirror and kept a safe distance behind the other SUV. “Obviously, magical steroids. Did she even tell you what’s in that thing before gettin’ you to pump her up like that?”
“Oh, my God. Here.” Rolling her eyes, Ember handed the canister back to Cheyenne.
“Thanks.” The halfling took the long cylinder of metal. It felt like she was moving through syrup when she tried to find her coat pocket again.
“See, this is the way to be about everything.” Bhandi grinned and bobbed her head. “No shame. No fucking shame. She pulls it out in front of everyone like, ‘Bam. We’re goin’ in, and I’m gonna take advantage of drow magic and ‘roid rage. I don’t give a fuck who knows about it.’”
“Stop talking.” Cheyenne’s eyes fluttered open and she swallowed. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sure I do. We’ve seen that shit before. Little goblin punk named Rugen. Man, that guy lasted, what? Two months in our unit?”
“Three.” Tate chuckled. “He was decent, I guess. When he didn’t forget to bring his pumpers with him.”
“Totally useless otherwise.” Bhandi leaned forward to look past Ember at Cheyenne. “What the hell are you doing? You don’t need that shit.”
“Yeah, I know.” Taking a deep breath, Cheyenne blinked heavily as the rest of the buzz faded from her system. Feels so much better. Then she met Bhandi’s gaze and raised an eyebrow. “It’s medicine.”
“Ha. You know how many times we’ve heard that excuse? And everybody thinks they’re so goddamn smart, nobody’s gonna notice.”
Cheyenne looked at Ember, and her friend shook her head. “Guess they need proof.”
Yurik frowned at her in the rearview mirror. “Proof of what?”
Cheyenne hooked a finger through the collar of her shirt and pulled down to give the magical agents a nice view of the dart wound there and the black streaks snaking farther and farther away from it.
Bhandi sucked in a sharp breath and brought a fist to her mouth. “Oh, shit.”
Tate spun in the passenger seat and gripped the seatback to turn even farther.
“What the hell happened to you?” Bhandi tried to lean closer until Ember nudged her away with a shoulder.
“I’m sitting here, remember?”
“Yeah, sorry. Seriously, Cheyenne? That looks fucked up.”
“I’m not gonna lie. It feels the same way.” Cheyenne dropped her head back against the headrest again. “And I have two more like it.”
“So, that really was medicine?”
“Pretty much. And yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be fine. It’s not gonna jeopardize this thing. That’s what that fun dose of meds is for. We all on the same page now?”
“Yep.” Bhandi sat back in her seat and stared at Yurik’s headrest.
“You keep rollin’ out one surprise after another, halfling. I’ll give you that.” Yurik chuckled. “I knew you wouldn’t take steroids.”
“I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t work on me anyway.”
“How come?”
“Because nothing else does.” Cheyenne glanced out the window at the street signs streaking past them on the highway. “Only alcohol and really strong magical meds from the other side. This stuff would probably take out a horse, honestly.”
Ember laughed and clapped her hands over her mouth before muttering, “Yeah. It probably would.”
“As long as you’re good to go when we move on those assholes,” Tate said, giving her a final once-over before facing forward again, “I don’t care what you have to do.”
“Then we’re on the same page.”
Chapter Forty-Five
At 7:01, Cheyenne moved quickly and silently with the FRoE agents through the showroom building. All the lights were off from the east wing where they’d decided to enter to the larger reception hall at the north end. At least these guys have enough experience to guess the best door to break down.
The doors had been unlocked, which made her warier, but this time, she knew she was part of an operation from the very beginning. I won’t screw it up for everyone else who’s on the same team.
Cheyenne scanned the walls and the dark corners as Rhynehart directed his agents with silent signals behind her. They moved down the hall, pausing to clear the next section of it before making their way closer to the north end. Cheyenne only found two security cameras in the east wing and shut them off with the activator’s help. These don’t belong to the Bull’s Head, but at least we’re covered. Now I gotta find the war-machine cameras.
As they closed in on the north end of the building and the corridor that led into the open reception hall with enough room for a whole gathering of O’gúl loyalists and FRoE traitors, her activator didn’t find a single piece of working O’gúl tech. Rhynehart kept shooting her questioning glances, and her only reply was to shake her head and keep moving.
Then she heard the voices. It didn’t matter if the rest of her team heard them too. Cheyenne squinted at the closed doors into the reception hall, and without having to place her hand against them, without even closing her eyes or accepting the activator’s help, the image of the door changed. Holy shit. Drow vision’s gotten superpowered, apparently.
The shimmering outlines of Bull’s Head magicals on the other side of the doors came into view, surrounded by different glowing colors according to race. No humans. Not yet, anyway.
Turning silently back to Rhynehart, she opened and closed both hands three times, then pointed at the doors. Yeah, I’d say thirty’s a pretty good count.
When the agent pointed at himself to ask if there were any humans, she shook her head. Whatever other signals he gave to the rest of his team were quick and efficient and sent the other agents out in different directions along the corridors. Guess they planned this part too, and I missed it. If we all had activators, it’d be almost as good as telepathy.
The thought almost made her snort, but she kept quiet and focused instead on the conversations inside the reception hall.
“I said not yet, Pendra.”
“So, you’re telling me you want that human to come barging in here without any defenses set up?”
“Why the hell do we need defenses, huh? We got the bastard working for us. Eating right out of our fell-damn hands.”
The creak of metal hinges opening on the other side of the doors momentarily drowned out the low background noise of at least two dozen Bull’s Head loyalists inside getting ready for this meeting. Then came the rustling clinks of small metal parts shifting around.
“You trust these humans too much, brother.”
“Nah. I only trust ‘em as far as I can spray their blood across the wall.” Both magicals chuckled. “Look, he’s the one who set this up. We have what he wants, and if this turns into anything other than a demonstration, we’ll give him way more than he can handle.”
Metal war-machine parts clanked together, and Cheyenne’s enhanced drow vision brought up the shapes of multiple stacked crates and large, amorphous shapes that didn’t belong to magicals and didn’t move or glow.
War machines. If this is supposed to be a demonstration, it explains why we didn’t have to fight off any spy bugs on the way in.
A gentle tap on her shoulder made her whirl. Rhynehart stepped back, pointed at his eyes, then gestured around the corner at the other side of the reception hall. He headed that way, moving silently and looking back only once to make sure she was following.
This is worse than Ch
arades.
They turned down a narrow hall at the end of the corridor, and Rhynehart led her up a dark flight of stairs at the west end of the reception hall. When they reached the top, Tate briefly glanced their way. He knelt in front of a low ledge supporting a huge pane of glass running down the length of the reception room below. His fell rifle was propped on his thigh, held in both hands, and he lowered his head again to watch the movements below them through the scope.
Look at that. We get our own private show with a bird’s-eye view.
Farther along the upstairs hall, she saw Yurik standing in front of the window with his weapon trained on the meeting room. Ember hovered next to him and nodded at Cheyenne when they looked at each other. Cheyenne nodded back, then searched for the other magicals on their team. When Rhynehart caught her attention again and pointed down through the window to the opposite side of the reception hall. The lights inside the room below were too bright to make out much at first, but she pulled up a magnified view through her activator and found the darkened outlines of Bhandi, Jamal, and Todd through the set of smaller windows. Everyone’s in their places. They’re a hell of a lot better at this than when we broke the necromancer out of Chateau D’rahl, that’s for damn sure. Probably ‘cause there’s no nightstalker or drow-thief convict breathing down their necks.
Nodding at Rhynehart to show she understood, Cheyenne stepped slowly to the window and peered down into the reception hall. Sure enough, the odd shapes she’d seen through the doors were fully built but not-yet-activated war machines. One tunneler, two heavy tank-looking things, a machine that looked like a grenade launcher on legs, and a narrow flattened contraption with two metal sheets that looked like wings extending from a central base. Well, if people didn’t freak out about war machines digging up out of the ground, they’ll definitely have an issue with giant flying weapons. Freaked-out humans are a no-go.
The dozens of Bull’s Head loyalists down below moved quickly back and forth, calibrating the assembled machines, checking whatever other inventory they’d brought with them, and patrolling lazily with automatic weapons at the ready. None of them that she could see carried fell weapons, so her team had an advantage that way.
We’ll keep it as long as those war machines stay dead. I doubt they will.
The doors on the north end of the reception hall opened with a bang, and in walked Colonel Les Thomas. Despite the thick window separating the second story from the room below, Cheyenne could hear the man’s shiny black shoes clicking on the floor as he entered. The man paused, looked around at the assembled machines and the supply crates and the loyalists who’d stopped moving to stare at him, and clasped his hands behind his back. “Where’s Welyk?”
“You’re late.” A tall, gangly magical with what looked like spikes where his shoulders should have been beneath the oversized hoodie stepped casually forward from behind a stack of crates.
Bingo. They already know each other. This is almost too easy. Cheyenne selected the prompted command on her activator to zero in on the scene below and marked the place where whatever her O’gúl tech recorded would start when she turned this into evidence later. And leverage.
For good measure, she had her activator turn up the volume, then it was almost like she stood down there with the Bull’s Head people, every word coming in crisp and clear.
Colonel Thomas jerked his chin at Welyk and met the guy in the center of the reception hall. “I had a few of my guys surveil the premises. Just a standard precaution. You know.”
Welyk wrinkled his squashed, mottled brown nose and revealed sharp upper fangs on either side of short, stubby yellow teeth. “Everything we’ve got is right here in this room. Colonel.”
“I believe you. I just don’t think either of us would be pleased to find ourselves joined by a third party.”
“No. We wouldn’t be.” The loyalist stuck out his hand to the colonel, a dry, spindly brown appendage with knobby knuckles and skin that looked more like tree bark than flesh. Colonel Thomas shook Welyk’s hand, then clasped his hands behind his back again and turned to look at one of the tanks. “That’s impressive.”
Welyk’s grin looked more like a snarl, and he gestured at the machine. “That one’ll do about everything but take prisoners.”
The loyalists around him laughed.
“An acceptable lack for something that size.” Colonel Thomas tilted his head. “But does it work?”
The laughter died abruptly, and a pale-yellow tongue flickered out between Welyk’s sharpened front fangs. “It works. They all work.”
“I’m very much looking forward to seeing them in action, then. One moment.” The colonel turned halfway around to look back through the open door he’d entered. “Well?”
“All clear, Colonel.”
Cheyenne recognized the voice before its owner stepped through the open doors on the north end. Seeing him in the flesh two seconds later made her rage flare up that much more intensely. What the actual fuck?
“Excellent. Thank you, Major.” Colonel Thomas nodded and gestured with an open arm. “Welyk, this is Major Carson. When you and I approve all the finer details, he’ll be taking over the transfer from here.”
Yurik jerked his head away from his rifle scope to look up at Rhynehart with wide eyes. Rhynehart grimaced, his fists clenching at his sides. Cheyenne clearly heard the man’s teeth grinding together, but no one made a sound behind the second-story window.
Sir’s been in on this from the beginning. The whole fucking time. Or maybe the colonel asked him last-second to tag along, but it doesn’t fucking matter either way. They’re both going down. She made sure to spend plenty of time recording Major Guy Carson so no one could argue later that it hadn’t been him standing right next to Colonel Les Thomas. Fuckers.
The gangly magical sneered at the human FRoE officials. “Whatever you say.”
Sir grunted and gave Welyk a stiff nod, his hand resting on the butt of his pistol holstered at his hip.
Even without the activator’s help, Cheyenne could see the man’s mustache twitching as he slowly scanned the room, where almost three dozen magical assholes were staring him down.
“Now.” Colonel Thomas lifted his chin at the tank machine again. “Let’s talk about our next steps.”
“We’ve got command cases behind me with Haltigar.” A hulking orc with both tusks tilted to the left side of his face folded his arms and sneered at the colonel. “Those take a little trial and error at the beginning. More error recently, now that I think about it.”
Thomas glanced quickly at the orc and shook his head. “What do you mean?”
“The system your nephew got up and running for us isn’t sailing along the way we’d hoped at this point.”
“Really? The last time you and I spoke, you said the program did everything you wanted without a hitch.”
“Yeah, and now it’s not.” Welyk hocked up a huge ball of phlegm and spat it across the room. “Something happened. I’m not a fan of someone promising me one thing and falling short. You get what I’m saying.”
“Of course. I’ll have a chat with my nephew about it. If you can tell me what specifically isn’t working out the way you’d hoped, I will ensure he addresses the issue as quickly as possible.”
“Systems aren’t updating. Syncing with the new data used to be automatic, and that dropped first.” Welyk drew his forearm under his squashed nose and sniffed. “Now it won’t even make the connection when we go in manually, and that’s a real pain in the ass.”
Cheyenne thought, Sounds like Matthew took our strong advice and shut down the account updates after all. Points for our neighbor.
“No doubt.” The colonel nodded. “I’m sure you already know there are always bugs and new patches rolling out that take a little more time than others to filter through. Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, I’m not worried, Colonel. I’m annoyed.”
“Well, if you don’t get a visit from my nephew or by someone on his team
by the end of the day tomorrow, you won’t be the only one. I’ll take care of it.”
Welyk shook a spindly finger at the man. “Yeah, make sure you do. I guess that gives you a day to play with your new machines, doesn’t it?”
“At the very least.” Colonel Thomas headed after the slow-moving, stooped Welyk as they made their way through the stacks of crates and the deactivated war machines.
Cheyenne felt Rhynehart studying her, but she didn’t want to look away from the scene playing out below them. That’s what the asshole’s getting out of all this. Thomas brought them his top programmer, fed the Bull’s Head intel to keep them happy, and waited for the perfect moment to buy his own fucking war machines. What the hell for?
Chapter Forty-Six
Beside Cheyenne, Tate shifted his rifle’s position on his thigh and let out a slow breath.
Right there with you, man. This is fucked up.
“I was hoping for a demonstration,” Colonel Thomas said casually as he stopped to appreciate the grenade launcher on legs.
“Yeah, we deliver, Colonel. You’re getting exactly what you asked for today, as long as you hold up your end of things.”
“Five years, Welyk. I’m not going to start disappointing you now.”
At the other end of the reception hall, Sir stood rigidly with his hand resting on his weapon. Five more FRoE agents had trickled in behind him while the colonel and today’s Bull’s Head leader took their tour around the merchandise. Cheyenne quickly scanned each of their faces. Of course, they’re not anyone I’d recognize. And they’re human. This whole thing’s been covered up from the start.
“What’s this one?” Colonel Thomas gestured at the launcher.
“Oh, yeah. This one’s fun.” Welyk nodded brusquely at a sniggering skaxen, who turned around and rifled through an open crate behind him. “These are blood-trackers.”
“Hmm.” The colonel’s eyebrows lifted.
“We’ve got a specific one for every known race of magical this side of the Border. That’s how they find their targets, Colonel. They lock onto the blood.” Welyk stepped aside to let the skaxen load a large metal canister into the launcher at the top of the war machine. “Back home, we can customize these things to a specific individual, but the technology’s a little delayed Earthside. Nothing against your nephew; it’s not possible over here, but that doesn’t make it any less effective.”