by Martha Carr
A new sound made its way through the hallway outside the breakroom. The drow halfling paused and cocked her head. There were a lot of footsteps out there—dozens, all of them moving silently toward the arena.
“Losin’ your nerve?” Redhead muttered, black blood on his lips.
“Shut up.”
“Aw, come on. You gotta finish what you—”
Cheyenne released his shirt, and with the strength of a drow, swung a hard right hook into his jaw. The guy toppled out of the chair and thumped on the floor, the chair making a metallic screech as it came out from under him.
It’s like nobody can stop talking before I have to get serious about it.
The footsteps continued outside the door, and she drifted toward the hallway to peer through the thin opening. She caught sight of black pants, black boots, and what looked like the butt of a rifle before it disappeared around the corner.
What the hell is going on?
She opened the door and slipped into the hall.
“There he is!” The loud, thunderous voice boomed in the arena. “Thought you’d play around and keep us on our toes, huh? Not a smart move, Mardok. Even for you.”
“I had to take care of some things.” The new voice was as low as the apparent big boss’ but with an impression of restrained power quivering below the surface rather than a bunch of bluster. “But now I’m here, so there’s nothing keeping us from getting right down to it, huh?”
“Looks like it.” There was a sneer in the thunderous voice, then everyone inside the arena moved toward the center.
Cheyenne frowned and pressed against the wall again, sidestepping toward the arena entrance. She saw them in her mind—maybe two dozen bodies bending over a large table with whatever plans they had laid out on it. She tried to listen to the much quieter conversation on the other side of the wall, but the whispering footsteps came from all around her, although she didn’t see anyone. From both sides of the hallway around her, and the second floor where the balcony overlooked the arena.
Somebody’s gonna get screwed over.
She sidled close to the entrance right before the big boss roared, “Gryus, where the hell’s my drink?”
Another magical came storming out of the arena as Cheyenne stepped away from the wall. She hadn’t thought to keep using her little body-count trick and never saw him coming. A troll with neon-green splotches all over his skin almost collided with her.
Two swirling bolts of purple and black magic blazed from the drow halfling’s hands and crashed into the troll’s chest. He launched back into the arena, narrowly missing two other criminals gathered around the table. The inert troll slid across the floor with a prolonged squeak and came to a stop, the front of his black jacket smoking.
Magical mobsters in every color of the rainbow turned toward the drow.
Cheyenne faced them, her dark magic hissing and crackling around her hands.
The seven-foot-tall boss with a boulder-shaped head of stone—a race she hadn’t seen before—yelled, “Who invited the drow?”
Cheyenne grinned. “I did.”
Two goblins and a short, fat creature with a protruding forehead shot blasts of green and gold light at her, and the arena erupted in gunfire. Lots of gunfire.
Chapter Thirty-Three
It was almost too fast for her to follow. Weapons fired from every entrance to the arena on the first and second floors except for the doorway where she stood. For the magical thugs caught by surprise, the shots fired were startling and disorienting. For the drow halfling, they were deafening.
Cheyenne crouched where she was for all of two seconds while the room exploded with bright-yellow staccato bursts from the newcomers and their guns, some of which flashed green from the erupting barrels. Those weren’t regular bullets; she could think enough to be sure of that much. The magicals in the center of the arena returned fire with blasts of magic—yellow, sickly green, electric blue, blazing orange—and scattered across the room to fight back to back or take cover behind the tables and chairs pushed against the walls. Guns and magic wreaked havoc on a scale Cheyenne couldn’t wrap her head around.
In the chaos of the fray, the short creature with the huge forehead barreled toward her, its mouth open in terror or rage or both. Bursts of dark sludge spurted from its outstretched hand.
Cheyenne raised her hands toward the oncoming creature, and although her throat vibrated and scratched itself raw, she couldn’t hear herself screaming over the constant gunshots and the shouts of other magicals and the hissing, crackling, clashing bursts of magic flying all over the place.
Two whirling disks of black fire spun away from her and hit the short creature square in the chest. Cheyenne didn’t stop to see what happened to him, but lurched from her place in the hallway and entered the fray. Her blood boiled with a battle rage even stronger than that night at the skatepark, which felt like it had been so much longer than seventy-two hours before.
Two trolls darted toward her, shouting something and pointing either at her or at something behind her. Cheyenne didn’t care. The black tendrils of her magic shot from both hands and whipped across the arena, lashing at the trolls and tossing them aside like empty boxes. A blast of red energy zipped past her head, and she ducked before seeing the orc who’d unleashed it at her.
Spit flew from his open mouth as he roared and fired more magical attacks at anything that moved toward him. Cheyenne’s own devastating attack spells were purple and black streaks through the air. One of them hit a different orc in the shoulder and spun him aside as he darted in front of the big one throwing red blasts. Her other spell hit the bigger orc in the center of his gut and sent him stumbling backward into the table.
The ground shook beneath the enraged stomping of the seven-foot-tall creature Cheyenne had seen in her mind’s eye, that thing with a head like a boulder who considered himself the big boss among these thugs. The guy was built like a tree and bellowed in rage. Everywhere he turned, thick columns of smaller stones burst from his hands and laid waste to everything in their path.
“Bring that ogre down!” The shout came from behind her and to the left.
Cheyenne didn’t dare turn her back to the fight when a crazed goblin with spit flying from his snarling jaws ran full speed at her. A gun went off from the same place as that shout, and the goblin jerked beneath the pelting of automatic rounds in his chest.
That was when Cheyenne lost all sense of control and reason. The metallic sting of gunpowder and hot steel barrels and so much blood was the only thing she acknowledged. She heard herself scream, and somewhere in the back of her mind, she terrified herself.
Black tendrils whipped through the air and struck any moving thing in her path. Her hands shot in every direction, sending magical thugs flying and crashing into each other and sliding into walls. She didn’t remember when she switched between blazing bolts of black energy sparking with purple and snaking black tendrils that moved like part of her body.
The seven-foot-tall stone ogre bellowed and stormed toward her, his glare burning with red flame in his gray-streaked face. A man garbed in black, wearing body armor and a helmet and firing an automatic rifle, stepped up beside her and took aim at the ogre.
The bullets pinged off the magical’s stone-hard skin like spit wads shot from a straw. More weapons from the team in black fired at the ogre, and nothing made a dent.
“Goddamnit, O’Malley! If there was ever a time to use the fell launcher, that would be right goddamn now!”
“Can anyone cover me on the west end of the first floor?”
“On your nine!”
Cheyenne heard the entire conversation through the crackle of radio static and the double echo of the chaos their headsets broadcast. She tried to focus on separating the magicals from the large team in black with automatic weapons who’d stormed the event center right behind her, but everyone appeared the same.
“A-1, I’m about to—” A scream erupted from the operative, wherever he was.
Another man beside her cursed and stepped forward as a snarling troll flung a burst of electric blue energy toward them. Cheyenne raised her arm reflexively, as if she were raising a shield, and a black wall of magic burst to life in front of her in time to keep the searing blue attack from hitting home. The guy in black who’d rushed past her staggered back beneath the dark shadow of her shield, training his weapon straight ahead.
The shield dropped, and Cheyenne blasted the troll through the opposite wall of the arena, which then boasted a troll-shaped hole.
“Shit.” The man turned to look Cheyenne up and down.
She stormed forward, consumed by her battle rage, the heat searing through her skin, and the chaos of screams and spells and gunfire.
Two figures rushed toward her with blazing trails of orange and red churning through the air seconds behind their hands. She ducked beneath one of their attacks and slid forward on her knees. When she raised her hand, it wasn’t to unleash an attacking sphere of crackling sparks or the black tendrils from her fingertips. Instead, a spell of some unseen force she hadn’t known she could cast—hadn’t even considered—sent the green-skinned magical straight up into the ceiling. Gunfire rattled from his flailing hand before he crashed into the plaster and brought a rain of it down around them.
Someone dropped from the second-floor balcony. Cheyenne whirled and shot out her snaking tendrils before the falling operative in black gear hit the floor. She wasn’t trying to save him, but she slowed his descent enough to preserve his life before she released the coiled black vines from his arms and whipped them toward a tall, thin magical with pale-violet skin.
“Any day with that launcher!” someone shouted.
“Shut up and cover me.”
“You cannot stop F’rulz Asharig!” the ogre bellowed. “That regime is already a pile of rotting corpses.” The giant magical mobster stormed toward Cheyenne, his fiery eyes blazing bright. “You have betrayed the call of—”
A burst of searing heat flared in Cheyenne’s hip, and she staggered sideways in shock and rage. She turned to blast the troll still training his pistol on her and saw the gun flying away from his flopping body with his finger still on the trigger, and his hand and half an arm attached.
The ogre raged across the arena. “Drow! You will perish in flames like the rest of us!”
He talking to me? The pain seemed to have brought her mind back to itself, or at least her ability to reason. Her damaged hip wouldn’t hold the weight of her body. She fired a few more shots at the ogre, who kept coming. Cheyenne fell to her knees with a shout of frustration and pain. Get up!
An operative in black stepped in front of her and fired one automatic burst after the other, tearing the ogre down as he tried to dodge his attackers to get to the fallen drow.
Cheyenne tried pushing to her feet.
“Stay there,” the man in black shouted. “We’ll call it even.”
“What?”
As soon as she asked the question, a thunderous explosion ripped through the arena, followed by a thick, muted crack. Green light whizzed across the room, heading down from a launch point on the second-story balcony. It wobbled a little, then straightened with a trail of green-gray smoke before it hit its target in the space where the ogre’s head connected with his shoulder. The floor beneath them shook, a blinding green light encompassed everything, and the screams and raging bellows and gunfire picked up again.
Cheyenne blinked against the glare of that green burst, the ringing in her ears drowning out all sound. She let off another burst of crackling black energy at the goblin scrambling toward her, and it swept the magical’s feet out from under him as someone else’s automatic fire peppered the creature from chest to head.
The operative who’d told her to stay down stepped in front of her and bent toward her to say something she couldn’t catch. His voice was a muffled garble within all the chaos, impossible to make out.
She tried to shake her head, and the room spun.
Her hip screamed in agony.
Bright white flashes of light sprayed across the arena and grew until she made out figures moving in front of her.
The next thing she knew, her cheek became acquainted with the linoleum floor and the plaster fragments scattered all around her. The pulsing green lights and ringing in her ears were the only things in the entire world…
Before there was nothing at all.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The torment of her body returned before she knew anything else. With far too much effort, Cheyenne opened her eyes.
The bright white lights were still there, but the glare was coming from two blinding orbs. Voices floated down a long tunnel, but they weren’t as loud as the harsh, grating breath she drew into her lungs. Her hearing returned.
“…have to run it again.”
“I can’t run her through anything until she stops that reactionary shifting. It’s the shock to her system, most likely. She won’t pick one and stick with it long enough to run any more diagnostics than that.”
“Then wait until she picks one. Anyone know where this changeling came from?”
“Sir, I wouldn’t call that an accurate assessment of what she is.”
“Oh, yeah? Fine. Halfling. Whatever. Any ideas?”
“Never seen her before, sir. We didn’t have any intel on a drow halfling. She came out of nowhere.”
“She’s obstructing FRoE operations and needs to be taken care of. Get her out of the way.”
“Sir? If I may?”
“What is it, Rhynehart?”
“I was next to her for half the raid, sir. I can’t say why or what she was trying to get out of it, but she fought with us, not against us. Kept two of my men from hitting the deck, and she kept the ogre occupied long enough for O’Malley to grow a pair with the fell launcher.”
“Huh. Didn’t go after a single one of our guys?”
“No, sir. If we can figure out what she wants and how we can give it to her, we might have a drow ally. If she can pull herself together enough to understand what’s on the table.”
“That’s a big ‘if.’ And it’d make asses of all of us if she turns out to be anything other than what you’re saying, Rhynehart.”
“Yes, sir. Templeton and Payone are writing up their reports now.”
Cheyenne blinked. It was as if a bolt of lightning had struck her right between the eyes. A groan escaped her lips.
“Somebody please tell me what’s going on?”
Those were the words she formed in her brain. The sound that came out of her mouth was best compared to a braying donkey.
“Well, shit. Sounds like someone’s awake.”
Footsteps resounded across the floor toward her. The first face she saw was a woman’s blonde hair tied back in a severe bun and delicate silver-framed glasses placed down a little on the bridge of her nose. The woman gave the drow a perfunctory glance over the top of her glasses and a flicker of acknowledgment, then reached past Cheyenne’s head to grab something.
“Just kill it halfway, Doc.” A man in military fatigues loomed in the halfling’s vision. Graying hair at the temples. A mustache that couldn’t decide if it was light or dark brown. Dark, squinty eyes.
Cheyenne tried to sit up. She moved an inch and dropped her head back onto the pillow. She was about to hurl.
Military Mustache gave her a strained, almost mocking smile. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”
“Who are you?” This time, her mouth produced actual words.
“I’ll ask you the same question. Wanna go first?”
Cheyenne closed her eyes and swallowed, her throat dry.
Not giving my name today. Not here.
“Yeah, I thought so. For now, you can call me ‘Sir.’”
The halfling tried to snort, but it backed up in her throat and made her choke before she coughed enough to bring another round of blind agony stabbing through her head.
“What you’re experiencing right now is your bo
dy’s innate ability to heal itself, aided by our magical-healing formula.” Mustache looked her over, his mustache twitching as his lips twisted sideways. “But you don’t get the full dose yet. Consider this your first lesson. No pain, no gain. I’m sure you get the point.”
“I didn’t sign up for lessons or any of your other bullsh—” Cheyenne’s sentence morphed into a groan. All she wanted to do was curl up on her side and vomit all over the guy’s shoes, but she couldn’t move.
“Well, you gave up that choice when you crashed my guys’ sting operation. We don’t know if that was your intention or if my team of top guys are just lucky bastards, but you need us. We’re still figuring out whether we need you.”
Cheyenne swallowed her nausea, which made her throat rawer. “I don’t know what you—”
“Save it for when you have your head screwed on straight, halfling.” Mustache sniffed and nodded at the doctor, who was still checking the monitors and fiddling with IV fluid bags. “We can use skills like yours, however crude they are. We’ll talk more when you don’t look like a chameleon with a bad case of chronic indecision. When you can conceive what the right answers are, you’ll give us those answers.”
“This should stabilize her for the next twenty-four hours,” the blonde woman said with a curt nod.
“Good.”
Cheyenne groaned, tried not to heave. She gagged instead.
“All right, Doc. Better make sure that puke pan’s close by.”
“Sir.”
Without another word, Mustache turned on his heel and disappeared from Cheyenne’s view. She blinked against the floodlights in the ceiling that seemed like they were shining inches from her face. “Can you turn off those lights?” she croaked.
“You’ll get used to it,” said a male voice.
The doctor looked up at the new arrival, nodded, and left Cheyenne alone with another stranger. This guy wore black combat pants and a black undershirt, and his hands were clasped behind his back. Something about his eyes seemed familiar, but Cheyenne didn’t trust anything her body or mind was telling her right now.