The Drow Hath Sent Thee

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The Drow Hath Sent Thee Page 47

by Martha Carr


  Staggering under her full weight, she snarled at the door and lunged at it. “Inolu! Hey! Open this fucking door!”

  Cheyenne pounded on the navy-blue wood with her fist, the potion vials clinking together in her other hand. Her drow magic threatened to flare out of her control for the first time in months. Get it together, Cheyenne. You can’t go full-drow apeshit out here in the middle of the street. Get back in there first.

  “Inolu!” The next time her fist came down on the door, an orange jolt of energy zapped through her hand and up her arm. The magical burst knocked her sideways as if someone had punched her in the shoulder, and Cheyenne snarled. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  The whir of the swiveling camera lens made her stop. She looked at the opening and closing shutter and hissed.

  Inolu’s voice came from an intercom hidden somewhere on the front stoop, tinny and robotic-sounding. “Do what you have to do, Cheyenne, but if you’re too much of an imbecile to take the Underman’s advice, don’t even think about showing up at my door again.”

  The camera lens jerked quickly away from Cheyenne to center on the street, then whirred closed again and retracted into the small black box on the side wall.

  Fuck.

  Cheyenne glared at the door, fuming, and shoved the glass vials into her coat pocket. “Bitch.”

  Clenching her jaw, she spun away from the landing and headed down the few steps to the sidewalk. Then she realized what she’d been missing before she was tossed out onto the street like a sack of drow garbage. It’s light outside. Either they’re both liars, or I was in there way longer than I thought.

  Snatching her phone out of her back pocket, Cheyenne stalked across the street to the parking garage. She had to turn her phone back on after whatever interference from the demon-possessed bane-breaker had turned it off. The lock screen lit up under the crisp early-November morning light.

  Ten o’clock in the morning? Are you shitting me?

  The notifications banner on her lock screen had filled up so much, they’d all smooshed into a single line. She had seven missed calls, three new voicemails, and four unread text messages.

  Cheyenne stomped back to her car, unlocked her phone, and went for the texts first. They were all from Ember.

  So I guess you’re not gonna make it home for dinner, right?

  Okay, not that I care, but it’s weird that you’re not back. All good?

  I called you. It’s almost midnight. Maybe toss a fae something, huh?

  Where the fuck are you?

  Cheyenne closed the text app and pulled up the missed calls. Only two of them were Ember; the other four were from numbers she didn’t recognize. The fae had left a voicemail both times she’d called, and the third message was from an unknown number too.

  Normally, she wouldn’t have bothered to listen. But she’d told L’zar to figure out how to use cell phones if he insisted on being Bianca’s fucked-up drow keeper. Please don’t let this be a call from him.

  She played the voicemail and stuck the phone to her ear as she reached into her coat pocket and thumbed the automatic unlock on her key fob by feel. The Panamera chirped at her from two rows up and one to the left.

  “This is a confidential voicemail for Miss Cheyenne Summerlin,” a woman’s voice droned in the recording. “My name is Helen Holder, personal secretary for Major General Van Lurig with the organization you’ve had unofficial dealings with for the last few months. Your presence is requested on base tomorrow afternoon at one-thirty for a debriefing on the events of last night at the showroom in Westphalia, specifically regarding further punitive action to be taken against Colonel Les Thomas, Major Guy Carson, and Captain Brian Rhynehart. Major General Van Lurig and the remaining members of the board believe you can shed further light on the situation and will not be moving forward with future injunctions until this debriefing takes place.” The woman cleared her throat. “I was told to include in this summons that although your presence is requested, Miss Summerlin, do be aware that failing to appear at one-thirty tomorrow afternoon will result in our organization enacting certain disciplinary protocols to ensure you present yourself on base. And we both know you don’t want that.”

  The message ended with a click.

  Cheyenne rolled her eyes and lowered the phone from her ear as she approached her newly Gothed-out Porsche. Even the sight of the purple lights on the dashboard and interior doors when she opened the driver’s side door wasn’t enough to pull her out of her funk.

  First this bane-breaker and her psychotic demon puppeteer, and now the fucking FRoE. I didn’t know it was today until ten minutes ago, and it’s already started off like shit.

  Slumping into the driver’s seat, she pulled the door closed and took a steadying breath. Another glance at her phone showed her Helen Holder’s voicemail had been left yesterday at 5:23 p.m.

  “Great. Three hours ‘til I have to show up for ‘save Sir’s ass’ duty. I need to hit something.” She strapped herself in, turned on the car, and called Ember before putting the call on speaker.

  The line rang once.

  “What the hell, Cheyenne?”

  “I know.”

  “Seriously. This is, like, the one time I ever call or text you, and absolutely nothing.”

  The Panamera peeled out of the parking garage with a squeal of tires. “I know, Em.”

  “I don’t get it. You get sucked into some kinda time warp or something? ‘Cause that’s the only thing I can think of that would make sense.”

  Gripping the steering wheel so tightly her hands squeaked on the leather, Cheyenne pulled to a jerky stop at the next stop sign before taking the left turn way too fast. “I mean, I guess it was kinda like that, yeah.”

  Ember paused. “What?”

  “Look, I’m on the way home right now. I’ll tell you then.”

  “Yeah. Fine.” The fae cleared her throat. “And just to be clear, I don’t need you to always tell me where you are or what you’re doing. Honestly, I’d probably rather not know half the time, except for when you have poisoned blight holes in your body and no more darktongue serum.”

  Gritting her teeth, Cheyenne tried not to let herself drive angry all the way back to their apartment on the north end of Richmond. “I’m sorry, Em.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “For the record, the last twenty or whatever hours for you have only felt like maybe three hours for me.”

  Ember sniffed on the other end. “Yeah, you can tell me how the hell that’s even possible when you get here.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The line went dead, and Cheyenne glanced quickly at her phone in the center console to be sure the call was over. “Shit.”

  So that’s what Ember Gaderow sounds like when she’s pissed off. Maybe she’ll buck up when she hears she was right. I can’t believe I’m thinking that.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  The second she stepped out of the elevators on the top floor of their building at Pellerville Gables, Cheyenne heard voices. Both of them came from behind the door to the apartment she shared with her best friend—Ember’s voice and Matthew Thomas’.

  Fuck this.

  Rolling her eyes, she jerked on the doorknob, knowing it wouldn’t be locked with their who-knew-how-friendly neighbor walking in and out of their place again, apparently whenever he wanted. As soon as the door opened, Ember and Matthew stopped talking.

  Cheyenne folded her arms and didn’t bother to close the door behind her when she stepped inside. “So I disappear for a night, and you make yourself right at home again, huh?”

  “Hey, Cheyenne.” He sat on the couch with Ember, though they each took up opposite sides with the whole center cushion between them.

  At least I didn’t walk in on them cuddling. Ugh.

  She stared him down without a word.

  Ember cleared her throat. “Hungry?”

  “No.”

  Matthew nodded and leaned over his lap, running his hands down his long
thighs. “I had some more questions this morning, okay? I had the chance to sleep on everything Ember told me yesterday before you popped out of here with the cat lady.”

  “Nightstalker.” Ember and Cheyenne said it at the same time.

  “Right.” Their neighbor frowned. “I guess I owe you one, huh?”

  “I didn’t do anything, Matthew. To you or for you.” The halfling shrugged out of her trenchcoat with a grimace and didn’t sling it over the armrest of the couch like usual because he was sitting there. She headed for her regular seat in the closest black leather recliner, draped her coat over the armrest of the other recliner, and lowered herself to the cushion, trying to keep her face from showing the pain. Looks like passing out twice and sleeping through most of the last day doesn’t have any effect on blight wounds. Whoever said the body heals most during sleep can go fuck themselves.

  She settled both arms gingerly on the armrests and cocked her head at their neighbor. “So, what do you owe me?”

  “An apology, for one.” Matthew ran a hand through his hair. “A real one where I say I know I was a dick, I should’ve believed you from the beginning, and I’m sorry I didn’t take you seriously.”

  “I guess that’s a good start.” Cheyenne shifted to the left to remove some of the weight from her screaming right hip, which was full of poison that was spreading farther through her body by the hour. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah.” Matthew glanced at Ember, then braced his forearms against his thighs and dipped his head between his shoulders as he studied the halfling warily. “A thank you.”

  She snorted. “You know, if I wasn’t this close to chopping my own arms off just to feel better, I might know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “For going in last night to stop him. Les.” Their neighbor frowned at her, chewing the inside of his cheek. “What Ember told me and what I know about him match up enough that I can say I don’t think he would’ve stopped. Not on his own, at least.”

  “Yeah, probably not.” Cheyenne grunted out the rest of her words. “Asshole bigots in positions of power usually don’t step away from their genocidal tendencies out of the blue and start reevaluating their life choices.”

  Matthew’s gaze fell to the floor, and he seemed to have an awfully hard time looking up at her again to meet her gaze. “I meant, you know, if anyone was gonna stop him, I guess I’m glad it was you. Both of you.”

  “Cool.” Cheyenne thumped her head back against the cushion and closed her eyes. “We’ll let you throw us a party later.”

  Matthew and Ember exchanged quick glances, then their cyber-security millionaire neighbor slapped his thighs and pushed himself to his feet. “Pretty sure this is my cue to go home. Thanks for explaining things, Ember.”

  She gave him a tight smile but didn’t bother standing. “Well, we told you we would.”

  “Yeah, and I appreciate that. Sticking to your word and everything.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and frowned at the long wall of windows on the north side of their apartment. “Not a lot of that goin’ around right now.”

  With a brief nod to no one and nothing in particular, Matthew hurried to the open front door. His hand came out of his pocket to pull the shut door behind him, and thirty seconds later, the sound of his apartment door opening and shutting came from across the hall.

  Ember stared at her friend, waiting for Cheyenne to start the conversation they both knew they needed to have. The drow sat motionlessly in the recliner, her legs splayed out in front of her and her hands dangling limply over the ends of the armrests. Like she sat down in her Goth-girl throne just to kick the bucket. Jesus, Ember. You’re full of morbid shit today.

  “So.” With a flash of purple light, the fae lifted both legs onto the couch and leaned back against the armrest in her favorite position. “You gonna tell me what happened?”

  “Yep.” The word whispered out of Cheyenne, and she swallowed thickly before clearing her throat. “I’m thinking about the good old days, Em. Back when I could stick myself with a metal canister and not feel anything for hours.”

  “The good old days as in less than forty-eight hours ago?”

  “Yeah. I miss ‘em.”

  “Want some water or something?”

  “Nope.”

  Ember folded her arms. “How bad is it?”

  “Bad enough. Not as bad as it could be. And please don’t ask to see right now. I just need to sit here and not be touched by anyone or moved around by magic or whatever.”

  “Just by looking at you, Cheyenne, I know I don’t wanna see. My imagination’s in a lot better shape than you are right now.”

  With a snort, Cheyenne finally opened her eyes and looked at her friend. “That might be taking it a little too far.”

  “I don’t think so.” Ember didn’t look like she was joking. “Was that why you pulled a disappearing act?”

  “Because of the blight-poisoned dart holes in my body? Not really.”

  The fae blinked. “You gotta give me something here.”

  “Yeah, I know. Okay.” Cheyenne took a deep breath and nodded. “I went to pick up my car yesterday.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Which, by the way, didn’t have anything wrong with it. Lee tricked it out as a surprise. It’s insane, Em. Not huge changes, but he did this thing with—”

  “You’re stalling.”

  “I mean, it’s all true.”

  When Ember raised an unamused eyebrow, Cheyenne cleared her throat.

  “Okay, fine. I was on my way home. Finally decided to call the bane-breaker, Inolu Roth, and she told me to come by for a consultation. Like she’s some kind of doctor.”

  “The kind that deals in curses.”

  “Yeah, Em. And not just her. She’s sharing her body with this thing—a demon-spirit-magical something. I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t supposed to be there as late as I was.”

  “What time did you get there?” Ember’s eyebrows furrowed.

  “I don’t know. Mid-afternoon. That chick’s crazy, Em. She’s got this whole security system. Knocked me flat on my ass, and the next thing I know, I wake up, like, in this study pulled right out of the eighteen hundreds. Then she—”

  “Whoa, whoa. Hold on a second.” Ember held up a hand to stop her friend and blinked quickly. “Her security system knocked you out?”

  “Kinda. Apparently, her algorithm didn’t pick up that the poison I’m carrying around isn’t a bomb or something.”

  “Seriously?”

  “What?”

  Ember’s eyes widened, and she took a deep breath. “I’ve heard a lot of crazy stories from you, but I could at least follow those ones through from beginning to end. I have no idea what the hell you said.”

  “Oh.” Cheyenne cleared her throat and tried to push herself up a little straighter in the recliner. Her shoulders burned with even the smallest movement of her arms, and the pain in her hip might only have been lessening because that side of her seemed to be going numb. Pull it together. Doesn’t matter how much this shit hurts right now. The last thing I need is to go all raving-drow lunatic because of it. Yeah, that sounds like someone I know too.

  She shook her head. “Okay, let’s forget about the details right now.”

  “With everything we’re still trying to do, don’t you think the details are kind of important?”

  “Not all of them.” Cheyenne had to look away from her friend’s confused frown and settled for staring at the ceiling instead. “I had a little chat with this demon-thing, I guess, and he told me… Jesus, I can’t believe I’m about to say this right now, Em, but maybe you were right.”

  Ember shifted toward her and slung her elbow over the armrest behind her. “About what?”

  Cheyenne grimaced and slowly looked down to meet the fae’s gaze. “That Bianca has more to do with all this than any of us thought.”

  Her friend’s eyebrows rose. “What did the demon-thing tell you?”

  “It doesn’t even
make sense.” Shaking her head, Cheyenne tried to steady her breathing as the heat of her anger made a surprisingly strong comeback. “It can’t make sense. I mean, she’s human. And none of this was supposed to happen. The curse was a side effect. An accident.”

  “Cheyenne.” Ember leaned forward, getting ready to push herself off the couch if she had to. This is what people with fevers and head injuries sound like. “Just say it.”

  The drow gritted her teeth and clenched her eyes shut. “The bane-breaker and the thing inside her both said that Bianca’s the vessel, Em. That if I don’t take my human mom across the Border to do whatever the vessel’s supposed to do, everything will burn. Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.”

  “To Ambar’ogúl?”

  Swallowing thickly, Cheyenne opened her eyes again and slowly nodded.

  “Okay, well, how much can we trust a demon?” Ember ran a hand through her violet-streaked hair she hadn’t bothered to cover with an illusion charm now that Matthew knew who and what she was. “I mean, did the thing sound like it knew what it was talking about?”

  “Does anyone these days?” Cheyenne stared at the coffee table. “I have no idea, but I can’t let myself believe that this is a thing, Em. That she’s involved in this and has to be there to do whatever. I mean, humans don’t make the crossing. That’s a pretty known fucking fact.”

  “So was O’gúl tech malfunctioning when anyone tried to bring it across Earthside. Until you did it.”

  Cheyenne grunted. “That’s not the same thing.”

  “I mean, if you’re talking about known facts,” Ember spread her arms, “it’s looking more and more like those don’t even exist.”

  “That doesn’t mean a glowing asshole using the bane-breaker as a puppet is right.” When she lifted a hand to her head, meaning to run it through her hair, the pain in Cheyenne’s shoulder flared, and she gingerly lowered her arm to the armrest again. “There has to be another way. Some other loophole out of this. ‘Cause I am not ferrying Bianca Summerlin through the in-between so she can be poked and prodded by a bunch of magicals who think humans are dull, slow, powerless idiots.”

 

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