by Martha Carr
“Something like that. I’m not sure, but I think this world runs on closer to thirty-hour days.”
“You found a clock, huh?”
“Nope. Just looked through the system a little. Not everything translates very well from O’gúleesh.”
Cheyenne headed to the alleged kitchen. “Tell me about it.” It’d be great if activators translated speech too, but of course, that would make things too easy. Wait. What was I just thinking about?
Ember raised her eyebrows when the drow shook her head and paused four feet from the wall. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. I’m still feeling a little off, I guess.” Cheyenne focused on the coded menu scrolling across the wall and selected something that might or might not have been a breakfast sandwich. The kitchen went to work heating up her small breakfast, and she stood there to wait for the chiming alarm. I’d kill for eggs Benedict with real toast. When was the last time I even had breakfast?
“Maybe you need more sleep,” Ember offered. “You know, since being knocked out cold by a bane-breaker and potions and a Nimlothar doesn’t count as decent rest.”
“Yeah, trust me, Em, it doesn’t count. Heard from Corian or Maleshi while I was out?”
“Nope, but we can probably assume no news is good news.”
“It better be.” She stuck her hands in her pockets and watched the timer counting down on the wall. “If Venga hasn’t finished studying Bianca by now, I don’t know what else we can do.”
She froze and almost jerked her hand out of her pocket.
“Cheyenne?” Ember floated off the couch in a flash of purple light. “What’s going on?”
“No fucking way.” Slowly, the drow pulled her fist out of her pocket and opened it. The small bone rolled in her palm, revealing the runes etched into the side. “It wasn’t a dream.”
“Okay.” Ember let out a nervous chuckle and approached her friend. “I’d love to know what you’re talking about with this one.”
“Last night,” Cheyenne said, turning slowly to her and staring at the bone, “I had this crazy dream, Em.”
“You said it wasn’t.”
“No, it was. At least at first. I think, but then I was back in the darkseller bazaar, and R’leer woke me up.”
“Wait, the bone drow?” Ember stopped and glanced down at the darkseller’s talisman. “Holy shit. You sleepwalked all the way down there?”
“What? No. I don’t even know how to explain it. Neros was there with me, then he wasn’t, and R’leer summoned my body to meet up with the rest of me, and I…ah!”
The bone dropped out of her hand, which she brought instinctively up to her shoulder. That was where the intensely flaring pain started at least, but it quickly spread to the rest of her until she doubled over and gritted her teeth.
“Whoa.” Ember spread her arms, reaching out to the drow to try to support her but unsure if touching was an option. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“No idea.” Cheyenne grunted, feeling like her whole body was on fire again and trying to get a grip on herself. A ripple of pain coursed down her back when she straightened, wave after wave of searing heat racing across her skin like bursts of flame. “What the hell is this?”
“You tell me.” Ember shook her head and floated backward a foot or two. “I don’t see anything. Is it the poison or what?”
The chiming alarm of the O’gúleesh microwave sounded, and neither of them noticed.
Cheyenne stared at her friend with wide eyes, her vision blurring, then jerked down the collar of her shirt to take a look at the blight wound. The black streaks were spreading again, but that hardly seemed important at this point because faintly glowing echoes of the orange runes burned into Bianca’s flesh now covered her daughter’s. “What the fuck?”
“The healing potion’s in your room, right?” Ember headed that way. “I mean, it doesn’t look nearly as bad as before, but if it’s hurting you this much, you should take a little. Cheyenne.”
Hastily whipping up the hem of her shirt, Cheyenne stared at her stomach and the ghostly glow of even more runes. They spread along her ribcage as well, and when she turned her hand over, she found them on the back of it too and spreading up her forearm. “It’s not the poison, Em. Look at this.”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at.” Ember shook her head. “But you’re freaking me out.”
“You don’t see the runes?”
“Am I supposed to?”
“Shit. Something’s wrong.” Cheyenne darted past her friend and waved her bedroom door open to jam her feet into her shoes. With everything she needed already on her, she left her trenchcoat where it was and staggered back into the living room in her haste.
“You gotta tell me what’s going on, Cheyenne.” Ember blinked, her violet eyes wide with concern.
“I don’t know if it’s an echo or some kinda spell or what.” Cheyenne stooped to snatch up R’leer’s small bone gift and stuck it in her pocket. “It’s Bianca.”
“What’s Bianca?”
“I don’t know.”
“We didn’t get any messages. I know. I’ve been checking.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Cheyenne waved the front door open and darted into the hall.
Ember hurried after her. “Then how do you know there’s something wrong?”
“I just know, Em!” The drow booked it to the end of the hall and cursed having to wait for the damn circular lift to rise all the way up to their floor. All this tech, and no one could make a better way to get up and down a building?
The apartment door closed behind Ember when she swiped the sequence on the wall, and she hurried to Cheyenne. “So, what? Do you think Venga already started? Maleshi said she’d keep an eye on him.”
“I don’t know.” Cheyenne gritted her teeth and stared down the dark hole where the platform lift should’ve appeared by now. She sucked in a sharp breath when the flaring heat returned to her body and fought not to scratch her own skin and the runes that obviously didn’t exist. “I swear, if he did anything without waiting for me, I’ll rip his head off all four of his scaly fucking shoulders.”
Ember eyed her friend and shrugged. “Well, I totally agree with you, so I’m not gonna slap you out of it this time.”
Cheyenne shook out her hands and hissed impatiently. “Fuck this. Step back.”
“What?” The fae did as she was told, grimacing when Cheyenne raised both hands in front of her to cast a spell with gestures neither of them recognized. “Just please tell me you’re not trying to blow a hole through fourteen stories of…whoa.”
The metal floor responded to Cheyenne’s spell in an instant, segmenting and folded back in on itself to reveal a brand-new lift platform where they’d been standing. Cheyenne stepped onto it with a scowl, and Ember barely made it on before the whole circle of metal dropped through one floor after another. The halls opened to let them through and rippled back together with echoing clangs of metal slamming against metal.
Ember gasped and grabbed Cheyenne’s arm in surprise, eliciting a snarl of pain from the drow. She quickly released her grip and forced out a mumbled apology through the sharp drop in her stomach at their descent.
When the platform hit the ground floor with a sharp clang, Cheyenne stumbled forward and took off running down the hall.
Ember gazed up at the disappearing hole in the ceiling, then turned in a slow, surprised circle to study the walls around them before floating after the drow. “Cheyenne!”
The apartment building’s front door burst open. Cheyenne barreled through it, then another wave of burning ripples pulsed across her flesh. She cried out and staggered sideways. Hold on, Mom.
A second after the drow slipped into enhanced speed with a crack and a burst of wind, the side door to the fortress all the way across the inner circle’s main avenue flew off its hinges and clattered to the ground. Ember slowed down. “First it’s moving the whole city around her, and now she’s tearing it apart at the speed of light. I swear,
if she starts teleporting after this, we’re gonna have a serious talk.”
She pushed herself to hurry across the avenue, ignoring the strange looks aimed her way as Hangivol’s drow watched the fae float with perfect balance and not nearly as much speed as she wanted toward the fortress. When the hell are my goddamn legs gonna work again?
Chapter Eighty-Two
Cheyenne didn’t drop out of enhanced speed until she reached the huge iron doors of Venga’s lab. When she did stop, the shockwave hit the doors with a bang, followed by another bang when she shoved them open with both hands. “Mom!”
Bianca writhed soundlessly on the chaise, her body jerking and bucking as her eyes rolled back in her head. Cheyenne raced to her and spun around when a glass beaker shattered on the floor. Venga stared at the mess on the ground, then glared at the drow with an angry hiss.
“What did you do?” she shouted, crouching beside her mom.
“I did nothing.” Venga returned to his hasty work on the bench, growling. “We had an agreement.”
“So then, what’s wrong with her?”
“You tell me, Cheyenne! You two are the only living things in this world with human blood running through your veins.” The scaleback hissed again and mumbled unintelligibly as he worked.
“Mom. Mom, can you hear me?” The second Cheyenne reached out to steady Bianca’s flailing body, the blazing runes on the woman’s skin flared to life again. This time, they did the same on Cheyenne’s flesh too, and both women cried out in pain.
Another glass vessel shattered on the ground, followed by a series of metal parts clanging and bouncing around beneath the workbench.
“Endaru’s balls, drow!” Venga whirled and chucked a round metal ball at Cheyenne’s head, missing her by less than an inch. “Hold her down!”
“I’ll hurt her even more!”
“Do it, dae’bruj!”
Cheyenne’s chest heaved as she fought the pain that wasn’t really hers, her hands hovering over her mom. “I’m sorry. I have to. I’m sorry.”
When she pressed her hands down on her mom’s shoulders, Bianca screamed and bucked even harder. Cheyenne’s hands burned furiously, and thin lines of smoke rose from beneath them. Snarling, she pulled her hands away and stared at the fresh burns on her palms. Fuck.
Corian ported into the lab, his silver eyes blazing as he took in the sight of the Summerlin women on and beside the chaise. Then he snarled at Venga and stormed to the scaleback. “You were not to touch her, necromancer.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Then what is this?”
“An unexpected variable. Now shut up and let me work!”
“Corian, I can’t hold her down.” Cheyenne stared up at him, her seared palms upturned as her mom thrashed around on the chaise.
“She needs to be held down.” If the nightstalker noticed her burned hands, he didn’t put two and two together. He hurried over to them and reached out to Bianca. “She’ll hurt herself even more if we can’t get her to stop.”
A bright-orange light flashed around Bianca’s body and sent the nightstalker flying across the lab. He crashed into the shelves on the wall beside the doors and roared. “This again?”
Maleshi ported into the lab as the doors flew open and nearly bashed Corian against the shelf again. Ember floated through and froze when she saw the chaos. “Oh, shit.”
The general raced to the chaise. “Cheyenne, we need to hold her down.”
“No, don’t!” Cheyenne pointed at Corian, who was steady on his feet again and brushing off bits of broken glass and a coil of blue thread that had toppled onto his light-brown hair.
“We can’t touch her,” he growled.
Maleshi snarled at Venga. “What did you do?”
The necromancer roared and chucked a large metal box at the general.
Bianca’s hand whipped out and slapped Cheyenne’s face, and the woman started to slide off the side of the chaise. Grimacing against the pain of touching her mother, Cheyenne lifted her off the furniture to put her gently on the floor, where at least she couldn’t fall. More smoke rose from the drow’s singeing flesh, and she backed away from her mom. “Somebody do something. This has to stop.”
“If that’s the result of touching her, kid, we might have to let this run its course.”
“Run its course?” Cheyenne whirled on the general. “She’s having a magical seizure!”
“It would seem so.”
“Does anybody in this world know what the fuck they’re doing?”
With a final gasping choke, Bianca fell still on the floor. Her head rolled to one side, her arms and legs splayed, and she didn’t move.
“Mom?” Cheyenne knelt beside her, relieved to see her still breathing. Fortunately, Bianca was now unconscious. “Venga, what were you doing before this happened?”
“Running tests. I told you it was the case, though it took longer than I expected it to.”
“What tests?”
“Nothing even remotely harmful! I drew blood to test its interaction with various artifacts. She was perfectly fine when I extracted a sample, and when I administered it to the items, she started doing that.” The necromancer tossed a hand at Bianca without turning around from his workbench. His other three arms moved ceaselessly, mixing and pouring and crushing.
“What artifacts?” Cheyenne pressed the backs of her hands into the floor to push to her feet and staggered across the lab to him.
“Do you want me to talk about it, or do you want me to find a solution?”
“Venga!” Maleshi barked.
“Fine. Fine. These, right here. They’re harmless artifacts meant to trace magical afflictions to the source. I was trying to find a possible remedy for the curse so I could remove it before we did anything useful, but that seems like a particularly stubborn obstacle at this point.”
Cheyenne scanned the items on the workbench, which was half-covered with glass pieces or random bits of metal and crystals tossed around by the necromancer’s anger. Then she caught sight of a purple pulse of light from beneath a toppled clay jar and moved the jar aside. “Jesus. You forgot to mention the Nimlothar leaf.”
“The what?” Venga turned his glistening black eyes on the jar in Cheyenne’s hand and snatched it away. “You’re mad if you think I’d—”
He nearly smashed the jar when he slammed it on the bench and stared at the purple-glowing Nimlothar leaf. A smeared trail of blood covered the edge, and he gingerly lifted the thing between two claws to sniff it. “Well.”
Cheyenne glared at him. “That wasn’t part of your tests, was it?”
“Of course not.” He waved the leaf in her face. “Does this look like the necessary precision required to formulate any sort of hypothesis?”
The drow summoned a churning sphere of black energy in her hand and raised it as a warning between them. The fresh burn in her palm blazed in protest, but she ignored it. “No. It looks like you were being sloppy and fucked up.”
“Hold on.” Corian glanced at the unconscious Bianca, then stormed across the room, hissing when he stepped on a fallen metal canister. “Her blood on a Nimlothar leaf.”
“I can verify one-hundred-percent that’s what this is, yes.”
Corian shot the scaleback a warning glance, then looked down at the blood-smeared leaf. “This is the one L’zar gave you.”
“I certainly didn’t climb that ancient relic in the Heart and pluck a new one.”
The nightstalker thrust his hand at Venga’s throat, the air ringing with the sound of his four-inch silver claws extending. Their deadly tips made three small divots in the thin, scaly skin below the necromancer’s chin. “My patience has run its course with you, scaleback. Understand?”
Venga slowly raised all four arms in surrender, his black eyes twitching as they held the nightstalker’s silver gaze. “This was an accident.”
“Accidents get magicals killed,” Corian hissed. “And humans.”
“Accidents are res
ponsible for some of the greatest alchemical discoveries.” The necromancer grunted and rolled his eyes when Corian’s claws pressed deeper into his flesh.
“Try again.”
“We now know of one reaction, at the very least.” Venga lifted the Nimlothar leaf in front of Corian’s bared teeth and twirled it between his claws by the stem. “What is the significance of this particular specimen?”
“If you don’t know the answer to that one, your usefulness has run its course.”
“I mean to us, you imbecile.” Venga leaned away from the glinting points of Corian’s claws when the nightstalker hissed and slipped a sharp tip beneath one of the necromancer’s scales. “To L’zar! Why did L’zar have this on him? He traded it to me, but we didn’t go over the specifics of how and why it was in his possession. There must be some other significance.”
“There is.” Cheyenne swallowed and stared at the purple leaf. Venga and Corian turned slowly to look at her, though the nightstalker’s claws still pressed threateningly against the scaleback’s throat. “It came through the portal Ba’rael destroyed.”
“She destroyed a portal.” Venga raised a scaly, hairless eyebrow. “That’s hardly significant.”
“Yeah, well, Earthside, that portal led right to my mom’s backyard. The same one that leaked out all the extra curse meant for L’zar.”
Venga turned away from Corian’s claws and lifted the Nimlothar leaf closer to the elongated nostrils of his reptilian face for another sniff. “That information would have been useful beforehand.”
“There’s no way to know what’s useful to you,” Cheyenne muttered. She glanced at Corian, who retracted his claws with a grimace but eyed the necromancer warily all the same. “It’s not like any of us had a clue what would happen if you accidentally spilled her blood on a leaf.”
“As I said, accidents are responsible for some of the greatest alchemical discoveries.”
“Oh, enough with the excuses,” Maleshi snarled. “You had no idea what you were doing with that human’s blood, and this only happened because you’re too careless to pay attention to—”
“Uh, guys?” Ember’s voice squeaked, and she cleared her throat.