The Drow There and Nothing More (Goth Drow Book 3)

by Martha Carr

  Snorting, Cheyenne stepped through the portal and disappeared. The oval of dark light closed with a pop, and Corian let out a heavy sigh. Byrd and Lumil stared after him and turned away to handle their own business when they realized he was headed for L’zar’s makeshift bedroom.

  Corian knocked lightly on the door, and a flash of black light spilled through the crack above the floor before L’zar growled. “What?”

  Slowly, the nightstalker opened the door and slipped inside. “Any progress?”

  L’zar sat cross-legged on the floor facing the far wall, his hands resting in his lap. “It’s rather hard to tell when I have you breathing down my neck every time I try to work.”

  Corian clasped his hands behind his back. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  The drow dropped his shoulders, and his unbound white hair spilled around his face. “Progress, sure. But I have no idea if this will be ready tomorrow or a month from now.”

  “We don’t have a month.”

  L’zar hissed and spun to face his friend. “I know what we don’t have, Corian. We almost lost her at that damn ceremony.”

  “No one forced you to stand back while we fought.”

  “No.” The drow pushed himself across the floor until he pressed his back against the wall. His head followed with a thud. “Just my own shortcomings. I wasted too much time in that prison.”

  “Hmm. Maybe you should just tell her.”

  “Absolutely not.” L’zar shook his head, propping his forearms on his bent knees. “She’d never agree to do this if she knew.”

  “You think Cheyenne will agree to keep going when she finds out on her own instead of hearing it from you? Because she will find out, one way or another. When you two set foot in that chamber and she takes what’s hers to take, there’s no way to keep that secret anymore.”

  L’zar closed his eyes and let out another long, slow exhale. “She’ll be fine. She’s strong.”

  Corian tilted his head and studied the drow he’d called his friend for thousands of years. “She also knows when to admit she’s wrong and ask for help. She might not like it, but I wouldn’t expect her to.”

  “I’m not wrong.”

  “No. Not so far. Age and wisdom aren’t synonymous, brother. There’s a lot you could learn from her, probably even more because of who she is to you.”

  L’zar waved a dismissive hand and sagged in exhaustion against the wall where no one but Corian could see. “You know how it goes. Can’t teach an old drow new tricks and all that bullshit.”

  Folding his arms, Corian frowned above a small, barely discernible smile. “Are you sure about that?”

  The drow’s golden eyes flew open. He stared at the nightstalker and shook his head a fraction of an inch. “Not at all.”

  “Good.” Corian pulled the door open again.

  With a snort, L’zar watched his friend step out of the room. “That’s a shitty way of trying to make me feel better.”

  “No, that was for me. The day you tell me you know everything is the day I’ll know you’ve lost your mind for good.” Without waiting for a response, the nightstalker stepped back into the main room of the warehouse and pulled the door shut behind him.

  L’zar’s laughter followed him.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Cheyenne Summerlin sat in the black leather recliner in her living room with the thin silver coil of the O’gúl activator attached behind her ear and studied the broken piece of the old-school war machine straight from the other side of the portal. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say this thing is still active.”

  “But you know better, don’t you?” Ember Gaderow sat in her wheelchair between the coffee table and the couch, scanning the loose pieces of paper she’d laid out on every surface she could reach.

  “Well, yeah. Of course I do.” Cheyenne turned the dead-looking orb of O’gúl metal over and over in her hands. “I brought most of these down, plus the tank.”

  “While the rest of us were fighting off those scumbags who crashed our super-official ceremonial party,” Ember said and reached for the closest piece of paper, a page from the middle of the copied spellbook Maleshi Hi’et had given Cheyenne.

  The drow halfling looked at her fae roommate and raised an eyebrow. “Finally.”

  Ember laughed. “Finally, what?”

  “It’s been, what? Three hours. I wondered when you’d start talking about it like a badass fae Nós Aní.”

  “Oh, you mean the badass who stood on two legs that don’t work and blasted that creepy whatever-it-was back through the portal before it could kill you?”

  Cheyenne glanced back down at the O’gúl tech in her hands and wiped a tiny smile off her lips. “Yeah. That one.”

  “You’re welcome.” Ember returned her attention to the pages of Maleshi’s handwritten and printer-copied spellbook. “How have you not gone through all these spells yet? I mean, seriously. Anything I can think of, she wrote down in more detail than I thought was possible.”

  Cheyenne cleared her throat. “I have gone through them.”

  “For real?” The fae looked at her best friend with a playful frown. “Okay, I meant trying to cast any of these spells. Charms. Wards.”

  “For the record, Em, I’ve tried a ridiculous number of those spells and screwed up every single one.”

  “Oh, come on.” Ember grinned and swiped her light-brown hair, which was now streaked with fae-violet, away from her forehead. “What about the low-level ones, huh? Those are all in the front. Easy stuff.”

  “Not for me.” Cheyenne pulled her legs up onto the recliner and crossed them beneath her, hunching over her lap and studying the dark orb of O’gúl metal. “I’m not kidding. I spent a few hours with those ‘low-level’ spells and almost blew up my old apartment.”

  Ember snorted. “To match your old car, huh?”

  “Ha-ha.”

  The fae lifted a piece of the laid-out spellbook and fluttered it in the air. “The easy ones are really easy, Cheyenne. I mean, look at this. Maleshi wrote down everything from start to finish, including the different hand gestures, and there are only, like, three for this one.”

  “Hey, if you think they’re super easy, awesome. You’re one up on me, ‘cause apparently, I just can’t nail down how to work a spell that isn’t, you know, part of the whole drow-halfling thing.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You just need some extra practice.”

  “Ember.” Cheyenne met her friend’s shimmering violet gaze. Ember’s eyes were now larger and much more luminous than before the fae’s magic had fully manifested just a few hours before. “Ask Corian.”

  “I’m not gonna ask Corian!”

  “He told L’zar my spellwork’s shit.” The halfling cracked a smile, and the young magicals cracked up. “It took me hours to make that illusion ring for you, which you don’t need anymore.”

  “Nope. I got an upgrade.” Ember tossed her hand toward the thin silver bracelet Corian had charmed to provide a human-looking illusion now that she was running around in full fae mode all the time. “Really, though? You couldn’t even nail the beginner spells?”

  “What part of ‘almost blew up my old apartment’ is confusing you?” Cheyenne laughed. “Everybody has their skillset, Em. As far as I’m concerned, mine doesn’t even include beginner spells. I’m more of a ‘run in with drow magic blazing and fight my way through the issue’ kind of chick.”

  “Well, thank God.”

  Bent over her crossed legs, Cheyenne propped her elbow on her knee to swing the cold metal orb out to the side and shot her friend a wide-eyed look of mock insult. “I’d love to hear your explanation for that one.”

  Ember shrugged and pursed her lips, trying not to smile as she pretended to be focused on absorbing Maleshi’s low-level spell instructions. “All I’m saying is, if you added these seriously powerful spells to your ‘drow magic blazing,’ we’d all be in deep shit.”

  “Ha. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Em.”


  “Think about it. If you could do everything, you’d be just like…” Ember’s luminous eyes widened as she glanced at her friend. “Oh.”

  Cheyenne’s nostrils flared. “Just like L’zar?”

  “Hey, you said it, not me.” Ember replaced the loose page and got back to studying the spellbook.

  “I’m nothing like him, Em.”

  “Not where it counts.” The fae girl tapped her lips, then leaned forward in her chair to rearrange some of the pages on the coffee table and the couch. “That’s the only part that matters, and for the rest of it, you can blame genetics.”

  “Fuck genetics. I blame L’zar for all of it.”

  “Well, he did lead us through that ceremony, so maybe give him one exception, huh?” Ember glanced at her pink-tinged forearm and the now-visible glow of her fae aura. Then she looked at Cheyenne and gestured to her new permanent appearance. “I wouldn’t trade this for anything.”

  “Fair point, but don’t give him all the credit for that one, Em. L’zar Verdys didn’t make you fae, and he sure as hell didn’t make you my Nós Aní. We chose that.”

  Ember looked at her friend for half a second, then returned to the pages with a small smile. “More like I chose it and you couldn’t stop me, but okay.”

  “Yeah, don’t let it go to your head.”

  “You too, halfling.”

  With another snort, Cheyenne returned her attention to the seemingly lifeless orb of O’gúl metal in her hand. Lifeless except for the never-ending data stream. I seriously hope it’s just the activator and not this thing relaying some kind of message to the asshole loyalist in charge of it.

  The activator behind her ear fed her line after line of O’gúleesh code, translating it instantly into English now that it had fully synced to Cheyenne’s halfling brain. Her vision filled with the scrolling blue commands, then she found something she recognized. “Wait a minute.”

  Responding instantly to her voiced thought, the activator paused the data stream on the bit of code that had caught her attention.

  “What’s up?” Ember kept staring at the closest page of Maleshi’s spellbook, only half paying attention.

  “I’ve seen this encryption before.” Cheyenne blinked, and the section of code flashed in her vision before zipping into the top right corner with an alert that it had been saved. “Whoa. This thing comes with screenshot capabilities.”

  “Cool,” Ember muttered.

  The halfling looked at her and frowned. She didn’t even hear me.

  Unfolding her legs from the recliner, Cheyenne stood and tossed the metal sphere a few times in her hand before palming it and heading for the iron stairs up to the mini-loft.

  Ember leaned forward in her wheelchair, muttered the incantation laid out on the page, and twisted her right hand in the same patterns diagrammed in Maleshi’s precise drawing. The leather recliner rocked on its legs before lifting a foot in the air.

  Cheyenne stopped halfway up the short staircase. “Whoa.”

  The recliner thumped back down, ruffling the pages at the edge of the coffee table.

  Ember looked at the halfling and grinned. “See? Easy. Good thing you’ve got a best friend who can pick up the slack for you, huh?”

  Cheyenne narrowed her eyes. “Were you just waiting for me to get up so you could try that?”

  “I was going for levitating you and the chair at the same time. Didn’t notice that you got up.” Ember spread her arms, her face lit up with excitement, and started studying the next spell. “This is awesome. I’ll be done with these spells in three days.”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re only useful if you can remember how to cast them after the fact,” Cheyenne said, laughing as she dropped into the hard office chair in front of the wobbly desk. I need new furniture up here.

  “That’s the thing, though.” Ember pulled another printed sheet of paper toward her, replacing the previous spell. “First time for a levitating spell, and I feel like I could do it again in my sleep.”

  “I’m just gonna chalk that up to intrinsic fae skills and remind you to keep your door closed if that’s your plan.”

  The fae let out a short laugh but was already submerged in studying the next spell in the book.

  Cheyenne set the metal sphere on her desk and stared at it. The activator resumed with the next layer of scrolling data winding around the O’gúl machine part, and she leaned down to power up her computer rig before punching the power button on the monitor. Glen whirred to life, and the halfling shifted around in the chair with a grimace. Or at least bring a pillow up here or something.

  She drummed her fingers on the plastic armrests, and when her rig was ready to go, she pulled up her VPN access and set up to do some more dark-web diving. The activator fed her mashups of data lines everywhere she looked. Even a glance at her computer tower on the floor beside the desk brought up scrolling lines in flashing blue light. Still gotta sift through all the useless stuff, huh?

  Cheyenne flicked her fingers away from her and the activator responded, shutting down the data stream showing her the inner workings of the hard drive and half the system she’d built herself. Then she pulled up access to the dark web and got to work.

  I know I’ve seen that encryption before. Would’ve been nice to have this activator’s screenshots back then.

  Without typing a site address or a command in her system, the halfling found herself led down the rabbit hole she wanted almost faster than she could follow.

  Her activator responded to her thoughts, pulling up the saved bit of encryption she’d inadvertently filed away and searching for the routes to the same data on the dark web. The piece of tech nestled behind her ear didn’t do any of the actual work for her, which she figured out pretty damn quickly.

  Enter command.

  The words flashed in her vision, and Cheyenne opened the command program she’d rewritten five years ago to make life as a teenager half-drow hacker a hell of a lot easier. She copied the code the activator had sent her and pressed Enter.

  “Holy shit.”

  Without the activator, she wouldn’t have been able to see the pages’ worth of addresses, user history, encryption banks, and fairly useless firewalls that one simple command had taken her through in an instant. Then she got a prompt to input a new command she didn’t recognize. I can’t go wrong by following step-by-step instructions, right?

  Four more times, Cheyenne input what the O’gúl tech behind her ear prompted her to type, and the results took her through the dark web without stopping. This is like warp speed through space. This is like… Okay, I already used The Matrix, but still.

  When she added the final command, which was only a third the size of the others, her screen pulled up the back end of a seriously enhanced firewall and dozens of securely encrypted files. Each of them would take her a few days to parse out in the Bunker, but Cheyenne wasn’t trying to decrypt access files. She scanned the information on her monitor, every line bringing up a new burst of code from the activator until that line of encryption she’d filed in the headpiece’s database lit up in bright yellow at the center of the screen.

  “There you are.”

  She highlighted the line enmeshed in jumbled data on her monitor, then typed in the new command the activator prompted. The second she activated the command, she knew what she’d found even before she had the chance to read through all of it.

  File updated: 09-30-2021

  Next update: 10-30-2021

  Registered Source: Combined Reality, Inc.

  Source Owner: ThomasSafe

  Below that were three different IP addresses, most likely for the physical server banks owned and operated by ThomasSafe, but Cheyenne didn’t need a physical location anymore.

  “That sneaky sonofabitch.”

  A bright flash of purple light came from the living room below the mini-loft. A muted thunderclap filled the apartment, followed by the patter of water on leather upholstery, the area rug, and the hardwood
floors.

  “Yes!” Ember pumped a fist in the air and stared at the tiny thunderstorm she’d conjured above the second leather recliner. “Wait, what sonofabitch are you talking about? Seems like you know a few.”

  Cheyenne leaned sideways in the office chair and swiveled toward the metal rail around the mini-loft. Ember’s fingers twisted in a quick gesture before she tossed her hand aside like batting away a fly, and the two-foot storm cloud disappeared, leaving behind a pool of magical rainwater in the recliner and a sopping mess on the corner of the area rug.

  The fae grinned up at her best friend, but her smile died when she saw the fury growing in Cheyenne’s eyes. “Whoa, okay. Sorry about the chair.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the chair, Em. You’ll never guess what I just found.”

  “Well, you’re usually right about that, so I’m not even gonna try.” Ember folded her arms and sat back in the wheelchair. “Go ahead. Spit it out.”

  “I traced a piece of that war machine’s data back to one of its programming sources.”

  “Okay. Why are you wearing your seriously pissed face?”

  “Because that source is registered under ThomasSafe.”

  Ember laughed and dusted off her hands. “Good one. Try again.”

  “I’m dead serious.” Cheyenne pointed slowly toward the far wall of the mini-loft and the hallway of the apartment building’s top floor on the other side of it. “Our dabbling neighbor is powering O’gúl tech for the Crown’s goddamn loyalists.”

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  “What?” Ember whipped her head toward their front door and blinked. “No. Uh-uh. No way.”

  “I’m sitting here staring at the information.” Cheyenne lurched from her chair and thrust her hand toward the monitor. “I knew it. I knew there was one thing that asshole was missing in his little private conglomerate. When I checked, he had everything covered except for weapons. He’s obviously got that one under his belt too.”

  “That’s insane.”