by Martha Carr
“Blakely.”
“There. That wasn’t so hard. I assume you have a last name, Blakely.”
And a first. This guy only gets the middle. “Probably.”
Sir blinked and nodded once in concession. “I get it. Tit for tat. Let’s move on, then.”
Exposed to the air, Cheyenne’s hip itched, and she wanted to tear off her hospital gown and take her spork to the raw wound. She clenched the bundled sheet in her lap instead. “I’m ready when you are.”
“Hmm. I’m ready to find out what the hell you were doing in the middle of my sting operation, on your own, with no backup, and no obvious training beyond raw magic and an ability to do serious damage.”
“I thought it was obvious.” Cheyenne wrinkled her nose and sniffed while trying to keep a level head.
“Enlighten me, Blakely.”
“I took down as many of those orcs and goblins as your guys did. And yes, that was on purpose.” Cheyenne pressed her lips together and held Sir’s beady-eyed gaze. They don’t know how much I don’t know. I have a chance to pull more information from the guy before he starts making threats.
“Okay. I can appreciate a tight-lipped policy. We run things the same way here.” Sir stepped to the foot of the bed and lifted his chin. “This is what I can give you. That group of blacklisted and black-market magicals was at that get-together to organize a raid on one of the reservations. It was to tear down the security measures there to bring more blacklisted and black-market magicals through to this side. That wasn’t something we could let slip under the radar. One of my best teams, who’d been tailing this meetup longer than I want to admit, went in to break it up and rip out the threat by the roots.”
Cheyenne cocked her head. “I’m guessing it worked.”
“Do you know who we are, Blakely? That team of my men whose operation you crashed like a Manson family bar mitzvah? Where you are right now?”
“I tried asking the friendly doctor, but she thought I was joking.”
Sir walked around the side of the bed and pushed the cart away. He stepped to Cheyenne until he was close enough for her to swing a fist into his gut. She didn’t. She didn’t glance up at him as he loomed over her, either. She studied the end of the bed and the thin, wrinkled sheet tent draping her feet.
“This organization is young by our standards. Seeing as you’re a halfling, it’s a safe bet you look a lot closer to your age than a full-blooded drow. And I’m not a betting man.” Sir didn’t move as he leaned over her, speaking in the same bored tone. “We’ve been around a pinch over two decades, and what started as a Washington-sanctioned Special Operations unit has grown into what certain circles call the FRoE. Anyone who doesn’t call us that has no idea we exist.”
Cheyenne blinked at her feet and tried not to give anything away. I heard someone say that when they first brought me in. Way to jog my memory, Sir.
She turned her head and offered him the deadpan expression she’d spent twenty-one years mastering. “Does that stand for something, or were Throw and Flow already taken?”
The man’s small, tight smile was more sinister than a frown. “There’s plenty of time for you to scratch out acronym options. I think we’ve got some scrap paper around here somewhere.”
“I’ll work on it when I get home.” Cheyenne stared at him until Sir took two long steps back and nodded at her.
“I’m sure you will. Wherever home happens to be for the drow halfling Blakely With-a-Last-Name. But you’re not ready to go home yet.”
He raised an eyebrow, then turned away from the bed and headed across the room toward the exit.
He can’t leave the conversation that way. Not without telling me what I’m doing here.
“Sir?”
The man paused in his straight line and looked at her over his shoulder.
“This hole in my side is already healed up after…what? Twenty-four hours? Thanks for that, by the way. The healing part. Not the chaining-me-up-to-the-bed part.”
Sir’s eyebrows rose, wrinkling his already-lined forehead. “It’s protocol.”
“Right. But I don’t need to be in here longer than a day. I’m fine. Trust me, as soon as those cuffs pop off my ankles, I’ll be walking around, good as new.”
The man snorted and shook his head, a tiny smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “If you can heal yourself from a bullet hole like that in twenty-four hours with an extra boost of healing from us, I’d like to see it. So far, your record is a hundred and fourteen hours. Keep trying, though.”
Sir continued walking toward the door.
“What?” Cheyenne almost choked. “A hundred and fourteen hours? That’s…five days.”
“It’s Tuesday. About…” Sir lifted his forearm to study his tactical watch. “Almost ten-hundred hours. Some of our guys had bets you wouldn’t wake up until seventeen hundred. You’re making friends without trying.”
“Wait, you can’t keep me here any longer.” Cheyenne jerked the thin sheet off her legs and pushed toward the edge of the bed. Her ankle chains clinked against the metal rail, and she hissed in annoyance. “I have a life and things to do. If you’re not arresting me or charging me with anything, you can’t detain me longer than twenty-four hours.”
Sir grabbed the vertical bar serving as the door handle and pulled the door open. “You know your stuff, kid. At least when it comes to detainment. Have a lot of experience with that?”
Cheyenne clamped her mouth shut and clenched her jaw.
“Well, we don’t give two shits about any of that. This isn’t a federal detention center or a state facility, halfling. This is the FRoE. You’ll be cleared to get back to whatever it is you’re doing with your life as soon as we run some more tests and get a better view of the big picture. That might be helpful for you too.” With a final nod, Sir stepped through the door and let it swing silently shut behind him.
Cheyenne slammed the side of her fist on the rail next to her. The chains and empty manacles jingled, but without the freedom of her feet, she couldn’t do anything but smooth her hair away from her forehead with both hands and glare at the door.
This is the FRoE. And Mattie said they don’t give a damn about what happens to halflings on or off their watch. So why do they want me?
She jerked her legs against the cuffs and rocked the hospital bed forward on its wheels with a warning squeak. Her hands were free, and the restraints Sir had called dampening cuffs were gone. Maybe those were only on my wrists.
Cheyenne tossed the rest of the sheets off her legs and focused on the much thinner, flimsier-looking cuffs. Two options for drawing out my magic: uncontrolled rage and thinking about guns. Such as the one that put a bullet in my hip.
The heat of her drow blood flared at the base of her spine. The halfling slipped into the dark skin and white hair of her dark-elf form, then opened her hand and produced the purple sparks she’d been trying to conjure.
There we go.
With a deep breath, she focused on the cuffs around her ankles and pointed at the one on the right. Her magic burst across the room, missing the manacle, and struck the opposite wall with a sputtering hiss. It left a small dent and charred the drywall, some of which crumbled to the linoleum floor.
Cheyenne sighed and gritted her teeth. Try it again. With feeling, this time.
She snorted and pulled the sparks into a much more concentrated form. Like dodging bullets. Like knocking guns out of hands.
The sparks arced from her finger and hit the broad side of the manacle. It crackled with purple energy, emitted sparks, and burst open. She’d been aiming for the lock.
“That’ll do.”
The other manacle broke apart the same way and dropped beneath her left ankle, then Cheyenne spun toward the side of the bed and dangled her feet over the floor. She felt ready to go until her full weight left the bed. Her legs buckled, and she dropped with a thump and a sharp squeak of skin onto the linoleum.
“This is new.” With a grunt, Cheyenne
brought her wobbly legs beneath her and tried pushing to her feet. She noticed the bottom shelf of the stainless-steel cart in front of her. Beside the upside-down steam pan, was a pile of black fabric and glistening links of silver chains that looked familiar. “Of course, they wouldn’t tell me where my clothes are.”
The halfling scooted toward the cart, grimacing at the sharp pain in her hip, and whipped her arms out of the stupid hospital-gown sleeves before pulling first her black tank top and then the fishnet shirt over her head. Man, that feels so much better.
Without anything causing her rage or excitement, neither of which existed at the moment, Cheyenne’s drow-dark skin shifted, so she clothed her pale-skinned, vampiric-looking human self.
The dangling loops of chains that clinked around her wrists day and night—the kind not attached to dampening cuffs—felt like she’d slipped back into an old piece of fitted armor. The hospital gown pooled around her as she struggled to her feet and stepped out of it. She hobbled toward the bed and used it to support herself while she got her legs into her baggy black pants. Fortunately, her car keys were still at the bottom of one of those deep pockets. As soon as she had the top button done and the zipper up, the door to her room opened.
Cheyenne froze, half-leaning against the bed as she clutched the waistband of her pants. The man stared at her with a mix of surprise and amusement.
I remember him. Rhino something.
They stared at each other so long, the drow halfling had to say something to keep from feeling like an exotic animal in a cage. “Seen my shoes?”
The man smirked and nodded behind her.
Cheyenne whirled and had to catch herself on the bed. There were her Vans, sitting neatly between the wheels under the head of the bed and the stand of the closest monitor. “Helpful. Thanks.”
She shoved her feet into her black Vans and hiked her baggy pants up. When she turned around, Rhino slipped a set of keys into a side pocket of his fatigues and folded his arms, letting the door shut behind him.
“Oh.” The drow halfling glanced at the busted manacles at the foot of the bed and couldn’t hide her smile. “Were you coming to take those things off me? Sorry. Didn’t mean to take your job out from under you.”
“Saves me from having to wait for you to get dressed. Let’s go.”
On shaky legs, although she was finding her groove with the whole walking thing, Cheyenne crossed the room and paused for Rhino to open the door. He gestured into the hall beyond, and the half-drow gave him a brief nod before stepping out of her prison and into whatever the FRoE had in store.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Nope. This way.” The man, decked out in military fatigues from the waist down and a black t-shirt, waved Cheyenne after him as he turned in the opposite direction.
“Oh, right.” She felt grateful he didn’t seem to be in a rush to take her anywhere. “Sorry. I forgot the part where anyone bothered to show me around.”
“Well, welcome to the tour, then.” The man strolled with loose ease down the narrow white-walled hallway, arms swinging by his sides. They passed doors resembling the one to her recovery room. “I’ve been told to call you ‘Blakely.’”
Cheyenne glanced at his tight black t-shirt. If he was wearing the whole uniform, I’d know his name by now. She stuck her hands into the deep pockets of her baggy pants and tried to turn her wobble into a casual stroll. “That works. Nobody told me what to call you.”
“Rhynehart.”
Rhino. Rhynehart. Close enough.
They reached the T-shaped end of the corridor, and Rhynehart gestured right. They continued down the next hallway, this one much shorter, and it opened into a massive common room. Cheyenne blinked and forgot where she was—or where she might have been, with all the information she didn’t have—as she stared at all the other people.
Round tables with six chairs each were situated in two neat rows across the center of the room. Nearby couches and armchairs arranged in a semi-circle around two coffee tables faced a sixty-inch TV mounted on the narrow wall rising from an empty fireplace. A guy at a vending machine made his selection at the other end of the room, where she also noticed a ping-pong table, although it was missing its net, paddles, and balls. Some seats here and there were taken by groups of two or three, while others milled around, talking in low voices.
They were all magicals—humans, orcs, trolls, and goblins. She spied a woman with purple hair, purple eyes, and skin with a tinge of yellow that would have been categorized as advanced jaundice in a human. Some of them wore full fatigues in dull colors like Sir’s, and some had taken off their BDU shirts. Others wore loose-fitting black sparring uniforms. All of them, though, looked like they belonged here.
The guy at the vending machine gave the thing a rough thump with his fist,
“Keep up, halfling,” Rhynehart called. “Holding hands through the hallway isn’t in my job description.”
Cheyenne turned away from the surprising scene and hurried after the man as fast as she could without stumbling. I thought the FRoE rounded up magicals and sent them back to wherever back is. These aren’t prisoners.
A huge orc with a tuft of greenish-black hair sprouting from his otherwise bald head chuckled as he approached the guy in front of the vending machine. “Hammond, I thought you’d learned your lesson with this piece of crap.”
The human thumped the machine and stepped back. “The one place I can pay for an O’Henry bar and still not get it.”
The orc paused in his path to give the side of the vending machine a loving pat. For an orc. It rocked the vending machine to the side with a jingle of falling coins, and the O’Henry bar Hammond wanted so badly dropped from the row into the slot at the bottom.
“I knew we kept you around for a reason, Ma’abru.”
With another low, rumbling chuckle, the orc kept walking. “Still trying to figure out why you’re here.”
Cheyenne caught up to Rhynehart and followed him around the fireplace beneath the huge TV toward what looked a lot like the lobby at VCU Medical Center. People behind intake desks glanced up and nodded at Rhynehart, although no one acknowledged Cheyenne.
Her guide turned into a corridor on the other side of the lobby, then pushed open some double doors and waited for Cheyenne to catch up. It was a huge room with a padded black floor and black walls, most of which were lined with some kind of bumpy foam with the appearance of the bottom of an egg carton. There were dark windows every few yards, although the halfling couldn’t see anything on the other side. Aside from exercise machines and some contraption wrapped in cords and wires, the immense space was empty.
“Looks like my high school gym.”
The man shot her a sidelong glance, then raised his eyebrows. “Doubt it.” He stepped across the padded floor, stopped in the middle of the room, and turned around with his arms outspread. “Let’s start with the basics, huh?”
“Of what, exactly?”
“Think of this as your first physical evaluation. We’ll do some stress tests to gauge how much you can control versus what you stumble upon at the right time. You know, the difference between intentional magic use and not blowing yourself up through sheer luck.”
The drow halfling swallowed and folded her arms. “That’s what he meant by tests?”
“Sure. Let’s see it.”
“Right. You want a drow halfling as a performing circus monkey.” She shot him a tight-lipped smile and blinked. “No.”
“Look, I have my orders.” Rhynehart dropped his arms and gestured at the empty black mat between them. “To test what you can do so we can get a better read of the situation. Crashing my operation the other night, tossing around a bunch of our targets, and saving my men from being splattered all over the event center floor in the process is one thing—if you meant to do any of it. Intentional fighting and spellcasting is something different, right? If you prefer the old-fashioned stress tests, I’m happy to get the cattle prod.”
Cheyenne snor
ted. “That’s a bit over the top, don’t you think?”
He shrugged. “Your choice.”
“All right. I have one question.” She stepped toward the center of the padded floor, and Rhynehart dipped his head. “The mustache walking around and calling himself Sir. What’s his real name?”
“Sir.”
“Seriously?”
Rhynehart moved one foot forward and clasped his hands behind his back. “As far as we’re concerned, yeah.”
“That’s disappointing.”
“Get used to it.” The man cleared his throat. “Are you gonna start, or should I?”
Cheyenne spread her arms, her chains jingling on her wrists. “I have no idea what you want me to do.”
“First, change your form.”
“Okay, for clarification purposes, are you talking about my physical appearance? You know, human to drow and back?”
Rhynehart glanced at one of the dark windows in the room and held up his index finger, then returned his attention to the halfling.
“Or are you talking about fighting stance and martial arts form?” Cheyenne cocked her head and pointed at the floor. “Because this place could almost be a souped-up dojo. I’m already over the part where everybody answers my questions with vague one-liners, so—”
A green light burst from the black padded wall on her left. Cheyenne saw it from the corner of her eye a fraction of a second before a piercing sting pricked her in the back of the neck.
“Hey!” She slapped a hand over her neck and felt something wet and sticky, but nothing came away on her fingers. “You can’t shoot people with random—”
A second tiny beaded dart shot from behind her with a muted pop and struck her below the first. Heat burst to life at the base of Cheyenne’s spine, and her drow form emerged like a bundle of matches lit all at once.
She snarled at Rhynehart and clenched her fists. “Happy now?”
“That’s round one.” The man glanced at a different window on the black wall, and this time raised two fingers before clasping his hands behind his back.
