Quote the Drow Nevermore

by Martha Carr

  With a final glance up and down the street, Cheyenne let her drow magic take over. It bloomed at the base of her spine and traveled up, filling her from head to toe as she made the transformation in a second. Then she stalked down the sidewalk past just one more house and moved quietly up the steps. This is it. Cover your bases.

  Cheyenne pressed her hand against the pale-blue siding beside the front door and closed her eyes. The image of Durg’s house shimmered in her mind’s eye—the hallway, kitchen, staircase in the back, three bedrooms upstairs. And there in the front living room was the glowing green outline of an orcish shape sitting on the damn couch with his feet propped up on a low table.

  Removing her hand, the halfling forced herself not to punch through the door when she knocked. A loud grunt rose from inside, followed by the lumbering footsteps of a magical who had no idea what was coming for him. The lock turned in the doorknob, then a deadbolt slid aside and the door opened.

  “What the—”

  She slammed her fist against the door, sending it swinging back against the wall with a bang. Purple sparks flared at her fingertips, and she tossed them at Durg’s shoulder to make it clear she meant business.

  The door’s frame splintered when she slammed it closed behind her. The orc staggered backward, clutching his fried shoulder, and snarled, “You!”

  “Well, at least you recognize me.” A black orb of crackling energy churned in the palm of her hand, and she stalked across the hallway toward him. “What about the girl you shot and left for dead? You remember her too?”

  “What are you, nuts?” Spit flew from Durg’s mouth as he stumbled sideways out of the hallway and into the living room. “This is my fucking house! You can’t just walk in and—”

  “Hey, you answered the door. Now you’re gonna answer my questions.” Cheyenne launched the energy ball over his shoulder, missing him on purpose. Her magic crashed against the far wall of the living room, taking down a shelf filled with metal knickknacks and books. I’m gonna make this good.

  Durg ducked anyway and whirled to see the damage before scrambling back into the living room. “What do you want?”

  “I already told you,” she spat. “I’m talking about Ember. In the group of halflings you and your lowlife friends met at the skatepark two weeks ago. You shot her and ran away the minute things got bumpy. Do you remember?”

  “Yeah, I fucking remember. The goddamn human running around with halflings. Blonde hair. I remember!” He tripped over the edge of the rug beneath his coffee table and managed not to fall on it. “Why do you care so much about that Earthside piece of—”

  “She’s not a human, Durg. And even if she was, you need to be stopped.”

  The orc’s glowing yellow eyes grew wide, then he lunged for the side table next to the couch. His fingers fumbled at the drawer before he pulled out a handgun and leveled it at her.

  With a roar, Cheyenne launched black tendrils of magic from her fingertips and slapped the gun out of his thick, meaty green hands. It clattered to the floor out of his reach, and Durg stepped back against the couch. “What the hell are you doing with a gun? Trying to make up for shooting magical blanks?”

  Durg snarled again and summoned a ball of green magic in his hand. “At least I can hit what I’m aiming for at close range.”

  “Oh, no, I was aiming for your bookshelf.” She conjured another black sphere as Durg launched his spell across the living room. The halfling stepped aside and the green spell slowed mid-air, sailing across the room inches at a time. She stormed across the living room until she stood right in front of the orc’s outstretched hand, his eyes wide above a snarling grimace and his tongue poking out from between two stained tusks. Batting his arm aside, she pulled her fist back and sent a killer right hook into his beefy jaw.

  The world sped up again as she dropped out of drow speed. Green fire hurtled through the house. Durg flew backward over the arm of the couch with a bellow. Beneath his cry of pain and surprise, Cheyenne heard the crunch of his shoulder, dislocated by her little nudge at hyperspeed.

  The orc collected himself enough to scramble back across the couch, his left arm dangling at his side before he cradled it against his stomach with another roar. “You weren’t even part of it,” he growled. “I don’t know who you are, and I wasn’t gonna try to find out after that night, but now I’m gonna hunt you down like a fucking animal.”

  Cheyenne grimaced and headed after him as he pushed himself off the couch, spit flying from between his giant tusks. “You just don’t have your head on straight, Durg. I beat you to it.”

  With a last-ditch effort to fight her off, the orc raised his other hand and lit the living room with crackling shards of dark-orange light. The halfling lashed out with her black tendrils from both hands. Half of them pinned Durg’s arms to his sides, making him howl in pain when the tendrils jerked his dislocated shoulder. The other half whipped across his face before coiling around his thick neck and tightening. It took everything she had not to clench her fist, draw the whips of her magic even tighter, and break his neck.

  Durg let out a strangled croak, his dark-gray tongue darting out from between his huge lips and those nasty-looking tusks.

  “See, from what I hear, you’re just another thug running around trying to scare the shit out of innocent magicals who made the trip out here. Rough ‘em up for ‘protection money.’ Isn’t that what you called it?”

  The orc’s mouth opened and closed, but only choking gurgles came out.

  “Because the ones who want to make a life for themselves Earthside are traitors. Right? They gave up on Ambar’ogúl, and you figured you’d follow them out here and make them pay for it. Not too bad if you line your pockets a little or put some halflings in the hospital, huh?”

  His eyes bulged, and he managed to croak out one word. “Stop…”

  “I’m just getting started.” She took a step toward him, taking in every bit of his terrified face as her tendrils tightened around his neck. “You almost killed her, asshole, but you didn’t. Right now would be a really good time to pray to whatever O’gúl gods you want that you’re half as lucky.”

  “I…I can’t…” The croak that came out of Durg’s gaping mouth this time sounded a lot quieter and weaker.

  Cheyenne stepped toward him and drew back her fist again, ready for another swing. Before she could follow through, the orc crumpled at her feet, jerking her toward him by the black tendrils connecting her other hand to his neck. The halfling stumbled forward with a grunt and released him from her magic. The tendrils withdrew, and she stepped away from the pile of knocked-out orc lying between the coffee table and the couch. A hiss of disappointment escaped her, and she shook out her hand, her fingers aching from the tight fist she’d made and hadn’t gotten the chance to use. The clink of the chains knocking against her wrists was the only sound in the living room above the low hum of Cops playing on the TV.

  “Shouldn’t have squeezed so hard,” she muttered, then nudged the orc with the toe of her shoe. “Shit.”

  Turning away from Durg, the halfling tried to calm her breathing and decide what she was going to do next. That was too easy. And not enough.

  She scanned the living room, her drow magic humming through her with every heartbeat. The back of the orc’s brown leather couch was covered in woven blankets that looked a lot like what she’d seen being sold at the magical market in Rez 38’s Q3. Instead of framed pictures on the wall, the guy had hung long, draping tapestries in dark reds and blues and black. When she caught sight of the tapestry on the wall just above the TV, she froze.

  On a blood-red background striped with dirty white was the shape of a bull’s head in black. The eyes were red, all the other lines marking the features of the animal’s face done in shimmering silver thread. But the shape was unmistakable, even with the three jagged daggers stuck through the center of the bull’s head and the slashes at the corners of the tapestry.

  Looks like somebody else has a problem wit
h whatever the bull represents. At least he didn’t put it on a damn chain around his neck.

  She stepped toward the opposite wall and the tapestry over the TV to get a better look at those daggers. The blades were curved in undulating lines, all the more painful when they were ripped out of whatever poor sucker found one buried in his flesh. Cheyenne leaned closer to be sure it was real blood dried like a smear of dirt on one of the blades. Not just decorative.

  “Huh.” Turning around again, she eyed the unconscious Durg and felt a little better when she saw his chest rising and falling slowly. Okay, I kicked his ass. Now I have something even better.

  Chapter Ten

  The first thing Durg Br’athol saw when he came to were those glowing golden eyes looming over him. He couldn’t see the face they belonged to, because the hissing, sparking ball of black and purple magic drowned it out, but he knew.

  He coughed and tried to claw his neck with his left hand, but moving it made him grunt in pain. And that made him cough all over again.

  Cheyenne sat back on the couch and lowered her magic toward the cushion so he could see her face. “Have a nice nap?”

  “You’re fucking crazy.” Spit flew from his mouth as he hacked and wheezed and drew in raw, gasping breaths. “Why are you still here?”

  “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

  The orc’s eyes widened, and he tried to scramble away from her across the floor. The halfling sent a burst of purple sparks into the floor beside his hand as a warning and Durg froze.

  “On purpose, okay? Relax.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Durg. The thought ran through my head and hung out for a while. I don’t like you.” Cheyenne snuffed out the black energy sizzling in her palm, and the air went still around them. “But I think you might be a lot more useful to me if you’re not zipped up in a body bag. Trust me. I know people who do that for a living. They’re very good.”

  “Yeah? I have friends too, drow.”

  She sucked a breath through her teeth. “Not like mine. My friends have a record of putting your friends in cages, which is where you belong right now.” I just called the FRoE my friends. Ignore the semantics.

  “Then where’s my damn cage?” Durg growled.

  “We’re not there yet. If you tell me what I wanna know, you might be able to stay home a little longer. Nice place, by the way.” The halfling took a quick glance around the room. “Minus the spell-burns.”

  “Fine. I’ll tell you whatever you want as long as you keep those damn whips away from my neck.”

  “We’ll see. Tell me about the bull’s head.”

  “What the hell do you—”

  Cheyenne’s hand darted toward the other side of the living room. Purple sparks burst from her fingertips and struck all three of the daggers buried in the tapestry and the wall behind it. Her magic crackled along the steel handles and the blades before fizzling out. “That bull’s head. And don’t tell me it’s nothing. Nobody uses an O’gúl symbol for a dartboard unless there’s a lot of bottled-up hostility behind it.”

  The wounded orc stared up at her from the floor, his eyes wide as he caught his breath and sized up the dark-skinned drow with the wild bone-white hair making herself comfortable on his couch. “For someone who doesn’t know what it is, you sure use a lot of phrases from back home.”

  “I’m a quick learner. Talk.”

  The orc sneered at her and pushed himself up enough to sit on the floor and snarl at the pain in his dislocated shoulder. “You know how much shit I could bring down on my head just by talking about this?”

  “You’re already swimming in shit, Durg.”

  “You couldn’t stand up to those assholes even if you knew who they were. I swore I was done with it when I—”

  Cheyenne blasted him with another few purple sparks, this time in his good shoulder just to even it out. Then she pulled up another sphere of black magic and shoved it toward his face. “Quit stalling! I’ll use this if you don’t spit it out already.”

  “Okay, okay. You’re crazy!” The orc leaned away from her crackling magic, his yellow eyes wide again as he let out a nervous hiss. “That fell-damned bull is the insignia for the O’gúl head.”

  “The what?”

  “Guardians of the Crown. Shit, will you take that thing out of my face?”

  The halfling withdrew her hand, but she kept the black energy churning in her palm, just in case. “You’re gonna have to break it down even further.”

  He glanced up at her and let out a snorting laugh of surprise. “You been living under a damn rock, drow? The royal guards. That insignia was branded into every shield and weapon and sewn into every patch on their fell-damn—” Durg tried to lift his arm and grunted, freshly reminded of his dislocated shoulder. He lifted his other hand to the same shoulder and tapped it again. “They wore it here. Took their orders directly from the Crown.”

  Cheyenne frowned. “What are a bunch of royal guards doing Earthside?”

  “That’s not—” The orc rolled his eyes. “That was me dumbing it down for you, drow. They’re not guards, not these days. But their loyalty to the Crown’s made them even crazier than they were when the Rís needed real guards. Now they’re just screwed-up henchmen. Again, dumbing it down.”

  When the halfling moved her sphere of black energy slowly closer to his face, Durg hissed. “So, what are they doing Earthside?”

  “Spreading the Crown’s fucking crusade. They’ve been trying to bring the same shit to this world that’s been rotting the heart of Ambar’ogúl for centuries.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Exactly what I said.” Durg licked his spit-covered lips and glanced quickly from her to her threatening black spell and back. “I came over here to get away from all that, just like everyone else. Don’t bring me into it.”

  I’m not gonna get anything else outta this scumbag. Snuffing out her black orb one more time, Cheyenne leaned away from him and pressed her hands into her thighs. “No. I won’t bring you into it. But I’ll be watching you from here on out, Durg Br’athol. I know you made your crossing in March. That you came off Rez 7. That you apparently didn’t start making trouble until you thought all eyes were finally off you and focused somewhere else.”

  The orc just stared at her, breathing heavily.

  She pushed to her feet and loomed over him. “If I want any more information out of you, you’d be even more of an idiot not to give it to me when I ask. ‘Cause I know where you live now, too.”

  Durg just growled at her as she turned away from him, fully intending to step right back through his front door and leave him there to deal with the mess. Then the doorknob turned with a squeak, and the front door swung open.

  Before the halfling could turn around and ask if the asshole was expecting friends tonight, a girl stepped through the door. She couldn’t have been older than seventeen and was dressed in all black, with more than one ring on each of her fingers. Half of her head was shaved, the hair on the other half falling just below her chin, and if Cheyenne didn’t know better, she would’ve said she was staring at a fifteen-year-old version of herself. The girl closed the door behind her, her pale face with too much makeup lit up by the glow of her cell phone screen. “Uncle Durg. I’m home.”

  She shoved her phone into the back pocket of her skintight black leather pants, then pulled a ring off her thumb. The air shimmered around her, and the Goth teenager standing in the front hallway was now a green-skinned orc teenager, and the Goth part was extra. “Uncle Durg?”

  Cheyenne cocked her head when the girl finally looked into the living room, pocketing the ring as well. The young orc froze, taking in the smashed bookshelf, her rattled uncle on the floor, and the scowling drow standing in her living room. “Uh, what’s going on?”

  “Hey.” The halfling smiled and spread her arms. “Your uncle and I were just having a little chat. Trying to clear up a misunderstanding from a couple of weeks ago.”


  Durg huffed behind her but didn’t argue.

  Cheyenne turned again and pointed at him. “You better start behaving, my friend. No more shakedowns, got it?”

  He glared at her, his yellow eyes burning.

  “Trust me, Durg, I’ll know if you try to slide anything by without me noticing. See ya soon.” With that, the drow halfling stalked across the living room and raised her eyebrows at the Goth orc who was shooting back the same deadpan stare. The girl stepped aside to give Cheyenne plenty of room to get to the door. Cheyenne swept her gaze over the teenager and nodded. “Looks good on you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The halfling’s gaze landed on the massive metal skull painted black and silver; it dangled at the end of a black satin ribbon tied around the orc’s neck. “Nice skull.”

  “Nice jacket.”

  Cheyenne jerked her chin at the girl, then opened the door and stepped back out into the crisp September night. The door closed behind her as she reached the bottom of the stairs leading up to the porch. She couldn’t help but smirk as she headed back down the dark street with an extra bounce in her step.

  “Everything comes with a price.” Bianca Summerlin had drilled it into her daughter from the very beginning, and the saying kept popping up in Cheyenne’s mind.

  Guess the price this time was an epic fight with revenge at the end. Worth it.

  She hadn’t expected to feel this good about letting Durg off as easily as she had. Maybe that was part of what Bianca had meant. Even revenge had a price, and if she’d paid it, she never would’ve figured out what those damn bull’s-head pendants meant.

  Chapter Eleven

  Cheyenne checked her phone as she walked down the hall toward her apartment. Only ten-thirty. Productive night. She pulled her keyring from the pocket of her black canvas jacket and stuck the key in the lock. When she opened the door, she almost leaped back out into the hall again.