by Martha Carr
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 Fourteen
“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!”
The halfling whirled around to glare at the orc, laughing and coughing through sprays of his own blood. Rhynehart nudged her toward the door. They passed other magicals cuffed and pinned down beneath the FRoE team’s fell weapons. The last thing Cheyenne expected to see were so many faces—orc, troll, goblin, and Skaxen—staring up at her as best they could from the ground, all of them sneering up at her like a bunch of hungry hyenas. The halfling glared back at all of them, hissing at a Skaxen licking his bright-orange lips. Then she saw the thick silver chain spilling out of his robes and the crudely crafted shape of a bull at the end.
Just like that asshole in my neighbors’ apartment.
The Skaxen tittered at her as she passed and tried to draw himself up onto his knees.
“I don’t think so.” The FRoE agent behind the magical stuck a black boot into the center of the Skaxen’s back and pushed him back down to the floor.
Rhynehart shot her a sideways glance, frowning despite the joking tone in his voice. “Those friends of yours?”
Cheyenne found enough energy to storm out of that church as fast as she could. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes as she fought to get that goblin kid’s face out of her head. Or maybe she was trying to keep it there because then she’d have a good reason to still be this pissed off. That energy had faded completely by the time she hit the bottom step, and she quickly sat down before she ended up on her face, just like all the thugs inside who’d used black magic to take a kid’s life.
“All right. I guess this works.” Rhynehart shifted his helmet under one arm and turned to face her. He glanced at the open church doors, then muttered, “You have about a minute before the new-prisoner parade gets marched out here. Wanna tell me what the hell made you break like that back there?”
Cheyenne grunted.
“That kinda response only works for ogres, rookie. Maybe some of the dumber orcs. Not an acceptable answer from you.”
The halfling fought as hard as she could not to blast the FRoE operative back into the street and out of her personal space. She swiped quickly at her burning eyes with the back of a hand, surprised to find it dry. “You can’t seriously tell me I need to explain why I did what I did.”
“No, kid. I get that part. Hey, if I didn’t have to answer to the higher-ups, I woulda let you cave his goddamn skull in. It’s more than any of them deserve.”
“He couldn’t have been older than, what? Twelve?”
Rhynehart sighed, pulling off his thick dampening gloves around the giant helmet under his arm. “Something like that, yeah. Those magicals are into some seriously sick shit.”
“It has to stop.”
“I know. That’s why we’re here. I hate to say it, rookie, but this isn’t even the worst of it. You’ll see things that’ll make you swear you’ll never get a good night’s sleep. Maybe you won’t for a while, but you just keep movin’. Hell, I won’t even say it gets easier the more it happens. Just gets easier to focus on how to keep it from happening again.”
Cheyenne blew a thick strand of white hair out of her face. “Don’t talk to me like I signed onto this bullshit as part of the team.”
Rhynehart glanced at the church doors again, where the first two operatives were jostling their first two cuffed prisoners outside onto the landing. “I know that’s not why you’re here, but you’re part of this world whether you like it or not. The FRoE just sees one side of the equation, but that doesn’t mean the other magicals on this are blind to the rest of it. Let’s take this to the Jeep, huh?”
He stuck out an ungloved hand again, but Cheyenne pushed herself to her feet and brushed him off, making a quick retreat to the black Jeep at the curb. She reached it just in time to slam a hand on the hood and keep herself from buckling to the concrete right there.
“Yeah, see, that’s what I was asking about.” He’d already gotten the message that she didn’t want help, so Rhynehart just leaned back against the Jeep’s front bumper and folded his arms. “That whole collapsing thing. I thought it was the bullet in your hip that did it the last time—”
“It was,” she hissed. “I don’t know what happened.”
The first two prisoners were hustled quickly out to the first waiting van. The troll thug with a raw gash that looked like a fresh burn across his face eyed Cheyenne and ran a tongue over his crooked upper teeth. “You’re next, mór úcare.”
She flipped him the finger and turned her back on that side of the street and the church, stabilizing herself with both hands on the hood of the Jeep. The van’s doors opened and shut again after a little snarling and muttered curses from the cuffed magicals. Cheyenne tilted her head at the sound of some kind of electric current kicking on in the back of the van, then the two agents came back around to head into the church again. They’d pulled their helmets off along the way, and an intensely muscular goblin—his head shaved clean except for a single braid of faded yellow stretching across his head from front to back like a racing stripe—paused beside the Jeep.
“Halfling.”
Cheyenne turned just enough to catch sight of the thick bullring through the goblin’s blue nose before he tossed something at her. Her hand darted through the air to snatch the unmarked silver cellophane wrapper of what could only be one of those nasty magical energy bars.
The goblin nodded. “Never seen anyone move so fast in the field. Those were some pro moves. Try breaking it up with a little cool down in between, and maybe you won’t lose your footing again.”
He nodded at her, then followed the other agent back into the church to take over while the next three agents brought out three more prisoners.
Rhynehart chuckled. “No kidding.”
“What?” Cheyenne ripped at the silver wrapper and didn’t wait to move it completely out of the way before she tore off a huge chunk of the green-black bar of who knew what between her teeth. She spat out the wrapper and eyed the bar. Tastes like rotting asparagus.
“You just pushed yourself a little too hard, looks like.”
She scowled at him. “Oh, I’m sorry. Should I have pushed a little less and let that troll blast the vest right off your back?”
“I’m glad you didn’t. That was good work. And it’s good to know your limits for next time, yeah?” He slapped the hood of the Jeep. “I tell you what, though. My guys have seen some seriously powerful magicals in the field. Long time be
fore I came around. If they’re taking their hats off to you, rookie, you must be doing something right.”
Cheyenne forced the energy bar down her throat and took another bite. Didn’t really matter when that kid was still lying in that church without a pulse.
A low, warbling croak came from the open doors of the first van behind them. It changed in pitch, rising up and down, and Rhynehart rolled his eyes.
“Hey!” He walked back beside the van and pounded on it. “Don’t make me come back there and crank up the voltage. Actually, you know what? Keep singing. I’d like to really hear you belt it out with all that juice running through you.”
The broken crowing stopped, followed by raspy chuckles. But the magicals in the back of the van kept their mouths shut. For now.
Cheyenne munched on the magical energy bar, feeling most of her strength returning. Or maybe it was just the hard-to-control rage flaring up inside her with each new magical the FRoE operatives shoved down the church steps toward one of the waiting vans. When the last one had made it out and was hooked or cuffed to whatever electrically charged parts keeping them neatly locked up in the vans, she crumpled the empty wrapper and shoved it in her pocket.
The crackle of a radio caught the halfling’s attention.
“…unforeseen casualty. Yeah, it wasn’t pretty. We’re bringing him in too. Try to contact his people as soon as possible.”
Two agents went back into the church, one of them carrying a large, empty black bag folded over his arm. Rhynehart cleared his throat. “My guys’ll handle the rest of it. We’re good to go if you wanna get outta here.”
Cheyenne asked herself if she wanted to stay to see those FRoE agents carrying a child out of the church in one of those black bags. She quickly decided she didn’t. “Yeah, let’s go.”
“Yep.” Rhynehart hopped into the Jeep behind the wheel. Cheyenne was already feeling like her regular drow self again—high energy, high rage, heightened senses, and everything.