by Martha Carr
A high-pitched, squeaking giggle erupted from the bane-breaker’s mouth. “The Underman is coming, and he really wants to meet you.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure I wanna meet him.” Cheyenne stood from the bench and slipped her phone back into her pocket.
“Sit down and show some respect!” Inolu spat. Her green eyes widened and started pulsing with brightening light. Her glowing veins echoed the undulating rhythm.
“Shit. Okay.” Not daring to take her eyes off the woman, Cheyenne slowly lowered herself back down on the bench and waited. “Anything I need to know?”
“You will speak to him, Cheyenne.” Inolu hunched her shoulders in eager anticipation as she rocked back and forth. “You will hear his voice, and he will hear yours, and then you’ll have your answers. If you don’t already. Ha.”
“Okay.” The halfling gazed around the room again, searching for any sign of a door or a materializing window or anything out of the ordinary her activator might pick up on for her. Not that this Underman guy would necessarily need a door. This is magic.
A burst of bitingly cold air whipped through the room and snuffed out the fire—sparks, embers, glowing coals, and everything—in a split second. If there had been any lights on, they were off now. Even the green glow of Inolu’s eyes and veins was gone.
Fuck.
Cheyenne forced herself to breathe slowly and wondered if the activator had any way to pull up something like night vision. But I’m already thinking about it, and it’s not pulling up a command prompt. Yeah, this thing’s as dead as my phone.
A long, slow, rattling breath filled the darkness.
Cheyenne tilted her head, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound, which came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. “Inolu?”
A single orb of bright green light illuminated in front of her and was quickly joined by a second. Then both orbs narrowed, squishing in on themselves before the green light spread and grew to reveal an unnaturally wide grin that revealed shining black teeth. A low chuckle followed, and it wasn’t Inolu’s, nor was it her voice when the deep, growling tone reverberated through the room like a thunderstorm. “Not quite.”
“Right.” Cheyenne took a deep breath. “Am I talking to the Underman now?”
The glowing green grin spread unnaturally wider in the darkness. “You are. And I get to look upon Ambar’ogúl’s Black Flame with my very own eyes.” That dark, wheezing chuckle came again. “Well, they’re not technically mine. But no one ever said Inolu didn’t take care of herself. She really does. That might be the only reason we’ve been able to do this as long as we have.”
“How long is that, exactly?” What the hell else am I supposed to say to this thing? I don’t even know what’s happening.
The green eyes floating suspended in the darkness slowly blinked. “Longer than you can imagine. But you didn’t come here to talk about me and Inolu, did you?”
“No. I came here for help with my—”
“Bianca.” The name purred from the Underman’s disembodied throat. “Yes, we know.”
I haven’t said her name since I’ve been here, but this is already way past the point of making sense.
“That’s right. I need to know how to the break the rest of Ba’rael’s curse on her and get her as far away from all this messed-up shit as I possibly can. Preferably forever.”
The glowing green grin opened wide as the Underman let out a rumbling laugh that made Cheyenne’s brain feel like it was rattling around in her head. “Oh, no, no, no, you delightfully stubborn drow. You’ve got it all wrong.”
I don’t think I’ve been called that before.
“I’m sure I know what I need to do with my mom, okay? I need help with the how part.”
“How to remove Bianca from the equation and spirit her away to some fabled safe place?” The Underman laughed again and sucked in a long, noisy breath. “Trust me, Cheyenne. That’s the last thing you want to do.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
I don’t care how much this demon-thing thinks it knows. I’m not buying it.
Cheyenne Summerlin narrowed her eyes at the Underman’s bright green grin illuminating the pitch-black darkness of Inolu the bane-breaker’s doorless living room. “What are you trying to say?”
A whispering laugh like dry leaves blowing down a sidewalk spilled from the Underman’s open mouth, or Inolu’s mouth, or however this kind of magical possession worked. “You already know.”
“See, I’m done with people telling me that.” Cheyenne clenched her fists in her lap. “So lay it out for me. ‘Cause it sounded a lot like you said I can’t keep my mom safe.”
“Oh, not in the way you’re trying so hard to convince yourself is the only option.”
“Careful.”
“Of what, Cheyenne?” The glowing green Cheshire Cat grin of the magical being taking over Inolu Frosh’s body for this little chat widened. “Whatever you think you could do to me has already been done. Inolu and I have been bound together for quite some time. I will place my bets on her strength over yours.” The luminous eyes flickered over Cheyenne’s body. “Especially in your condition.”
My condition. Bullshit. I’m fine.
“So then tell me how to break this curse on my mom.” Cheyenne almost lurched off the bench, fighting back the urge to wrap her hands around the Underman’s neck she couldn’t see and squeeze. Inolu’s neck. This guy doesn’t have a body.
“Bianca Summerlin must fulfill her purpose in this grander design, drow.” The Underman cocked his head and studied her. The mad grin never wavered. “Like I said, you already know what that is.”
“Uh, no.” Cheyenne briskly shook her head, her jaw clenching as she forced out the rest of her words. “My mom has nothing to do with this ‘grand design’ or any of the crap I’m trying to clean up on both worlds. Tell me how to save her, or this consultation is over.”
The Underman let out a high, shrieking cackle. Inolu’s green-illuminated head rocked back with the force of the being’s amusement. Cheyenne could’ve sworn she felt the ground rumble beneath her. “You’re such a refreshing change, Cheyenne. We’ve been here for so long, watching these cowering, trembling magicals lose their way and come here begging for our help. And you? You walk right into our midst with anger and denial and a firm belief in your ability to rip open the threads of the Weave to suit whatever you think is best. You know who you remind us of, don’t you?”
Cheyenne turned her head away from the glowing face in the darkness but couldn’t stop staring at it. “Don’t.”
“You are very much L’zar’s daughter, aren’t you?”
She sighed bitterly. “I told you not to say it.”
“You can tell me whatever you want, Cheyenne. I see you. I’ve been observing you for quite some time, along with other select souls under my watchful gaze. Many of us have been watching you and your grinning Weaver of a father.” The Underman let out a small hum of consideration and cocked his head. “But of course, that doesn’t make a difference to you one way or the other, does it? It should.”
Cheyenne scoffed. “I didn’t come here to talk about a bunch of disembodied demons stalking me.” At least, I think they’re demons. Who the fuck knows? “And I’m so done with prophecies and vague riddles and beating around the fucking magical bush. Do you have a straight answer for me or not?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then tell me what I have to do.”
Faster than she expected, the Underman’s glowing face shot across the pitch-black living room until it hovered mere inches from hers. She sucked in a sharp breath and leaned backward, hoping the bench was as wide as she remembered so she wouldn’t fall off the back onto her ass.
A slow creaking sound emanated from the Underman’s open mouth as he studied her through the bane-breaker’s eyes. “It’s about time someone offered you the carrot and not just the stick.”
She frowned. “I’m gonna assume you’re talking figuratively here. Then I�
�m gonna tell you to back up out of my personal space.”
He let out another deep chuckle. “Here’s your straight answer, Cheyenne. The fate of Bianca Summerlin, her half-drow daughter, and both worlds is the same.”
The base of Cheyenne’s spine burned with a renewed flare of anger. “Nope. Try again, demon.”
“You’re so cute.” A green-glowing hand materialized out of the darkness and reached toward the halfling’s face. Cheyenne jerked her head away, squinting against the sudden drop in temperature when Inolu’s possessed fingers came close to her cheek. “There is no trying again. If she is to live and if you want to live, take the vessel with you across the Border.”
“No.” She swallowed thickly. “No, that’s not how this works.”
“Oh, really?” The Underman drew away from her, still grinning. “Didn’t you say you needed help with the how?”
Cheyenne couldn’t look at the grotesquely wide smile stretching across Inolu’s face. A knot in her gut clenched tighter with each second, and she shut her eyes. This isn’t happening. Ember brought it up, and I shut that idea down as fast I could because it’s not true. Mom can’t be a part of this, not like I am. She didn’t do anything. This asshole’s fucking with my head.
Taking a long, slow breath through her nose, Cheyenne forced herself to look at the Underman’s glowing face again. “What’s the vessel?”
“Not what, Cheyenne. Who.”
No, no, no. This is wrong.
Another low chuckle rose from his grinning mouth. “L’zar Verdys has done his part in this world, but he has yet to finish what he started Earthside. Now that you’ve reached this pivotal moment, it falls to you to mend the break in the Weave.”
“I told you I was done with riddles,” Cheyenne growled. “Just tell me!”
The Underman retreated again to the pallet where Inolu had been sitting before her possession began. “Bianca Summerlin must present herself in Ambar’ogúl as the vessel. The final part of the whole. The final part of your whole.”
“You’re insane.” She stood, wanting more than anything to storm out of the room and take her questions somewhere else. I can’t see shit in here. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to breathe evenly and do the only thing she could—stand there and try to weasel something out of this demonic douchebag that made sense. “There’s no way she’s the vessel. I’m not buying it.”
“You would not exist to break the Spider’s chains around both worlds without your dear human mother.” The Underman swayed from side to side, leaving a trailing glow of green behind. “And neither world will exist the way we’ve always known them if you do not finish what L’zar started when he sought not to reap what the drow have sown but to burn it. And it will burn, Cheyenne, either beneath the lifeforce of the deathflame purging Ambar’ogúl with the vessel’s strength or beneath the fires of the Undoing created to consume us. One way or the other, nothing as you know it will remain the same. The choice you must make is whether you are willing to do whatever it takes to guide the rewriting of your worlds. If not, that rewriting will end you and everything you hold dear—and everyone. Including Bianca Summerlin.”
A cold shiver raced up Cheyenne’s spine. No. Just no. “Are you fucking serious?”
“It’s very simple, drow.”
“It’s not simple. It’s a fucking joke.”
“Yes.” A rumbling laugh filled the black room. “Right now, maybe it is a joke. Very soon, there will be no laughter if you do not fulfill your purpose.”
Goddammit! Cheyenne’s nails bit into her palms as her mind raced with everything this meant. This demon’s full of shit. He has to be.
“I’m not taking her across the Border, asshole,” she snarled as the heat of her fury egging on her drow magic pulsed from the base of her spine. She could even feel it in her head this time, like a constant ache throbbing behind her eyes with each heartbeat. “There has to be another way.”
“Oh, of course there is. Two choices.” The eerie glow lighting up nothing but Inolu’s face and the Underman’s unfailing smile flickered. “You can take the vessel to Ambar’ogúl and do what must be done. Or you can refuse. That way lies death and destruction and agony, blah, blah, blah.”
“You’re lying.”
The demon cackled again.
Cheyenne lost it.
Her skin rippled to life with black flames, which only gave off a miniscule amount of light. Without thinking, she lashed out at the Underman using the bane-breaker as a conduit and shot a stream of black fire at the center of that insufferably grinning face.
Still laughing, the Underman lifted two glowing hands and stopped Cheyenne’s drow fire without any effort. The flames crackled and churned between those outstretched hands. “This has been an entertaining encounter, I will give you that. I already told you how cute you are, didn’t I?”
“Fuck you!” Cheyenne lunged at the face in the darkness with a snarl.
The Underman flicked his wrists, and her captured black fire snuffed out. A howling gale whipped through the dark room, and an unbearable weight settled on Cheyenne’s chest.
She choked, gasping for breath, but there was no air left in the room. Lurching toward that goddamn grin, she forced herself to keep moving through the agonizing burning in her lungs. One leg gave out, then the other, and she dropped to her knees halfway to Inolu’s pallet.
I’ll fucking kill him. I don’t care what that thing is. Dead or alive…or… I’ll rip his…
The green grin and glowing eyes squinted in amusement blurred in her vision. The rest of the Underman’s rolling laughter faded from her ears as if retreating down a long tunnel. Then Cheyenne had nothing left inside her to keep fighting.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Cheyenne gasped and jolted awake. Immediately, she pushed off the cold, hard stone floor until she was sitting up and looked around, blinking furiously. Too bright.
When her eyes finally adjusted, she realized she was in an entirely different room. Sunlight streamed through the sliding glass doors in front of her. Outside, a crow swooped down to land on the nearly bare branch of a tree in the back courtyard. Cheyenne glared at the bird, then looked quickly over her shoulder.
I’m in a kitchen. What the hell?
A soft pop and thump came from behind her on the left, and she looked over the other shoulder.
Inolu sat in one of the two chairs at her round kitchen table, popping hard, deep-purple berries off a sprig of some plant before chucking them into the lime-green ceramic bowl on the table in front of her. The whole time, she stared at Cheyenne, looking as bored as she had the first time they’d met.
Cheyenne cleared her throat. “Are you serious? You can’t just knock me out and move me into a different room again while I’m unconscious.”
The bane-breaker shrugged. “I didn’t. Your consultation is concluded, though.”
“Yeah, no shit.” Grimacing, Cheyenne pushed to her feet, dusting off her hands on her black pants as she looked around the normal, clean, brightly lit kitchen. I’m missing something here.
“These are for you.” Inolu produced two large, corked vials, one of a dark-purple glass, the other light brown, and slid them across the table to her client.
“I don’t want anything from you.” Cheyenne swallowed and glanced around the kitchen, trying to find the best way out of there.
“The Underman says the purple one will help with the poison eating you from the inside out,” Inolu continued, unfazed by the halfling’s rejection.
“Oh, yeah?” Cheyenne looked sharply at the bane-breaker, who’d gone back to plucking berries and dropping them into the bowl as she stared at the halfling. “Your demon buddy told you to hand it over, huh? Nice try. I’m not falling for it.”
“Whatever. The brown one is for the human vessel. To make her strong before the crossing. You know, so she doesn’t spontaneously combust or something.”
Cheyenne narrowed her eyes at the bane-breaker, who no longer tried to hide
her green-glowing veins or the constant light behind her eyes. “Do you want me to hurt you?”
Inolu snorted. “Right. Because you were so successful with that the last time you tried.”
“I don’t care what just happened. I’m not taking my human mom across the Border because the demon living inside you told me to.”
The bane-breaker’s rhythmic plucking paused as she studied the drow looming over her in the center of her kitchen. With a click of her tongue, Inolu shrugged and lowered her gaze to the small branch in her hand. “Then we’ll all burn. Now get the fuck out of my house.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“I didn’t.”
With flaring nostrils, Cheyenne stormed past the table to the other side of the kitchen. She stopped, spun around, and leaned over the bane-breaker to snatch the two vials off the table. Just because this isn’t happening, it doesn’t mean these won’t be useful.
The second the glass vials clinked together in her hand, Inolu spun around in her chair and shoved Cheyenne squarely in the chest. “That wasn’t an invitation to loiter!”
The force of the magic behind the shove propelled Cheyenne across the kitchen. The soles of her black Vans squeaked on the stone floors. “What the hell are you doing? Hey!”
Before the spell zapped her sideways down the hall, she caught a final glimpse of the bane-breaker returning her attention to the berries.
Cheyenne bashed into the corner of the hallway, sending a flare of searing pain through her poisoned shoulder. She snarled and reached out, trying to grab a passing doorframe or bookshelf, but she was moving too fast. “Make this thing stop!”
The spell bashed her against another corner before sweeping her into the narrow entrance hall inside the front door. Cheyenne tried to brace herself against the floor scraping by beneath her, but she couldn’t get traction. The red circle painted on the floor rushed by her, then the front door flew open. Sunlight spilled into the entryway, Cheyenne was tossed onto the front stoop, and the door slammed shut in her face.