by Martha Carr
“Right.” Cheyenne glanced around the dark room, not sure whether the Oracle would change his attitude toward her if she revealed she was a halfling who hadn’t stepped foot across the Border once in her life. “Here’s what I need to know.”
She slipped the backpack off her shoulder and hefted it into her arms to unzip the thing.
“Sit, hínya.” Gúrdu’s voice filled the room like a smoking fire, the sound rattling around in Cheyenne’s head until her ears were ringing.
The halfling gritted her teeth and lowered herself onto the pile of cushions in front of the Oracle’s self-important platform-throne. When she finished unzipping her backpack, she reached inside and pulled out the drow puzzle box. The copper glinted in the lanternlight, retaining its normal metallic coldness, without a hint of the quickening heat it had been giving off lately. The runes stayed where they were, too.
Gúrdu grunted when he saw what was in her hand, and Cheyenne looked up to meet his orange-brown gaze. “I need to know what this is.”
“You expect me to believe you have no idea what you’re holding?”
“No, I have an idea.” She fought back the double-dose of sarcasm and settled her voice into something a little less blatantly fed up. “I’m trying to figure out what it does. What it’s for, specifically, or how to make it work.”
“Huh. That depends on the drow who gave it to you. It was given, wasn’t it? That’s not a war trophy or a piece of blackmail for someone else?”
Who does this guy think I am? Cheyenne blinked. “No, it was given to me. More like left to me. Isn’t an Oracle supposed to know all about—”
“It’s not the knowing that gets you answers, hínya,” Gúrdu spat. His sharpened teeth flashed between his brown-gray lips. “The way such a question is asked carries just as much importance. Which you should know by now too. What kind of game are you playing?”
“What?” She frowned at him and glanced down at the puzzle box. “I’m not playing any kind of game. I just want to know what the hell I’m supposed to do with this thing, ‘cause it won’t leave me alone.”
“It’s a drow legacy artifact.” Gúrdu grabbed a bundle of what looked like dry twigs from the silver tray beside him, dipped them in the water, and took a huge, crunching bite off the top of the bundle. Splintered wood spewed from his mouth as he chewed, and for a moment, Cheyenne hoped he’d eventually spit it all out and use it in the same way he’d anointed himself with a claw in that water. He didn’t. Listening to him swallow a bunch of dry, chewed-up twigs made her throat hurt. Then Gúrdu sighed, laid the bundle gently back down beside the bowl of water, and sucked a splinter out from between his teeth. “Can’t tell you any more about it than that. Not my place.”
“Can’t you make it your place? One time. For me.”
Gúrdu eyed the puzzle box in her hands, and a light flashed behind his eyes. He sat a little straighter on his throne of pillows and turned his head away from her. “No. You came to the wrong Oracle, and I’d be surprised if any other on this side of the Border would be any more willing to cross the line into what you want to know.”
“That’s ridiculous.” The halfling palmed the box in one hand and shook it at him. “This thing’s been freaking out all over the place. I don’t know what it means, and it’s really starting to piss me off because it won’t leave me alone.”
“That’s its job. Maybe you should leave me alone and turn to your legacy instead.”
Scowling, Cheyenne stood from the pillows and took a step toward the Oracle on his cushioned platform. Gúrdu leaned away from her again, his orange gaze dropping from her face to the puzzle box. “You said you’d decide on payment. Name a price, Gúrdu. Whatever it is, I’m good for it.”
“Piss off.” The Raug said it in a low, level voice, but the halfling didn’t miss the way his eye twitched with her next step toward him.
“Screw you. I just want somebody to tell me what I’m supposed to do with it. I don’t know the drow who left it to me, so just take the damn thing and be an Oracle.”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because every pair of hands to touch that artifact belonged to a nameless face,” Gúrdu spat. “And they’re all dead!”
“What?” Cheyenne frowned down at the puzzle box. “You’re saying it’s gonna kill me?”
“I’m saying it has killed at least a dozen before you. I can smell it, and there’s nothing you can do to change my mind,” the giant Raug hissed at her, his nostrils flaring. “I won’t touch it.”
“Nothing I can do to change your mind, huh?” A sphere of crackling black energy erupted in the drow halfling’s other hand, spitting purple sparks and sending a new layer of shadows dancing around the dimly lit room.
A low, rumbling chuckle rose in Gúrdu’s throat, then he threw his massive head back and roared with laughter. Spit and soaked splinters flew from his mouth, sticking to his chin and his lips. When he settled those orange eyes on Cheyenne again, he looked completely insane. “You’re committed, drow. Make sure you’re willing to follow those commitments all the way to the end.”
“You don’t think I will?” The purple sparks flared even brighter from the center of the drow magic churning in her hands.
“I’m sure you will if you think it will get you what you seek. But you’ll be bloodying your hands for a lost cause, hínya.” Gúrdu squinted at the puzzle box and slowly lifted a hooked claw to point at Cheyenne’s legacy. “You will never scare me more than that ancient trinket scares me. Not in a thousand years.”
“This?” She lifted the box toward him one more time, and the Oracle hissed. “This scares you?”
“If you cannot see the woven threads, you will not understand the cycle.” Gúrdu finally licked all the spit and splinters off his lips, and his orange-brown eyes flashed again. “Only the scion never pursued will rise to their destiny.”
Cheyenne’s gut went instantly cold. “What did you say?”
“It’s written in the very lifeblood of your legacy, drow. It is not my place to get involved. I may be only slightly less miserable on this side of the Border, but I still value my life.”
How the hell did he just pull out the same line from my crazy-ass dream last night?
The drow halfling and the Raug stared at each other. Then Cheyenne snuffed out the black sphere of her magic and dropped the puzzle box into her backpack. She jerked up the zipper and slung the thing over her good shoulder. “Fine. Then I’ve wasted my time here.”
“Mine too, don’t forget.” Gúrdu ran a thick dark-gray tongue over his sharpened teeth and pointed at her with a gnarled claw. “Come back with a question truly meant to be answered, and we’ll settle on a price then.”
“Probably not.” She eyed him on his throne of pillows, then turned away and tossed her arm up. “I’ll show myself out.”
“I’d get rid of that cursed thing before it wipes your face from living memory too,” Gúrdu called after her. “The others had no warning. Don’t be an idiot by ignoring this one.”
Without a word, the halfling stormed across the wobbly piles of pillows, ripping aside the curtain of beaded strands on her way to the front door. She thought she heard some of them scatter across the floor, but she didn’t give a crap at this point. If this box was supposed to kill me, twenty-one years is a long time to wait. And I’m swearing off Oracles.
The front door jerked open with a squeak, and she stepped quickly out into the hallway of the apartment building’s ground floor. A harsh squawk erupted in front of her, and she tripped in an attempt not to crush a panicking chicken’s head beneath her foot. Feathers flew up everywhere as the other fowl caught onto the chaos and scrambled around in idiotic circles, flapping and clucking and pecking at each other.
“Oh, what the—” Cheyenne accidentally kicked one that ran right into her foot as she tried to avoid the others. “Who the hell keeps chickens inside?”
Finally, she picked her way carefully and quickly
away from the idiot birds, glancing over her shoulder once to see two of the chickens had cornered a third and were now trying to smash it against the wall with buffeting wings. Shaking her head, she stepped back through the open door of the apartment building and froze.
A cold prickle climbed up the back of her neck—the feeling of being closely watched that had followed her for a week now. The halfling scanned the narrow side street in the industrial area and quickly found the one other person walking around out here just before 4:00 p.m. on a Friday. The guy was heading away from her down the street, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his tan coat. And he was wearing a VCU baseball cap.
I got you now, you goddamn creeper.
Chapter Seventy-Nine
She didn’t even know what she’d do when she got to him. The only thing flaring through Cheyenne’s mind now—and racing through her half-drow veins—was that she’d finally found the asshole who’d been following her everywhere.
An earsplitting crack echoed through the industrial buildings around her as she took off at full speed toward the man in the VCU hat. He jumped and spun around to search the street. At the same second, another crack blasted toward him, followed by the shockwave of Cheyenne’s appearance. The man would have fallen on his ass if she didn’t have a fistful of his shirt in one hand. She threw him against the closest building and brought a shower of purple sparks spitting from her fingertips by her side.
“Why the hell have you been following me, you—” Cheyenne stopped. The man’s face had gone so white, he looked like he was about to pass out right there against the brick wall. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly as he stared at the raging golden eyes in the purple-gray face surrounded by wild, stark-white hair. She could smell the terror oozing off him and hear his heart racing in his chest as he struggled to breathe, and she couldn’t understand why he’d react like this. Then she glanced up at the baseball hat on his head and growled.
Not the right hat. Same dark maroon color as VCU’s mascot, but this guy’s hat had a South Carolina Gamecocks bird embroidered on the front instead. Not the right guy, either.
“Shit. Sorry.” The halfling snuffed out her purple sparks, which the guy hadn’t seemed to notice because he’d been too terrified of her face. She quickly released his shirt, tugged on it to smooth it out, and shrugged. “My bad. Thought you were my brother.”
“Y-y-your…” The man wheezed and sagged back against the brick wall.
The halfling took a deep breath, grimaced in apology, and stepped away. “Just forget what you saw. It’s not real.”
She’d pulled back her drow rage and returned to her human form by the time she spun away from the wrong guy to head back toward her car. Halfway there, she heard the guy whimper and take in a sniveling breath.
She unlocked her car with a quick jerk of the keys, slid behind the wheel, and quickly shut the door. Her backpack went right back into the passenger seat, and the halfling gripped the steering wheel with both hands to give herself another few seconds for complete cool-down. No berserkers behind the wheel.
With her next deep breath, she realized that prickling sensation on the back of her neck was gone. The watchful eyes were gone.
The engine turned over in her Focus, and she headed down the side street toward the edge of this mostly abandoned industrial area of Richmond. Apparently, magicals had figured out how to take over some of the places nobody else wanted. As long as that kept working out for everyone, she didn’t have a preference one way or the other.
Right when she turned back on the freeway to head toward downtown Richmond and her apartment complex, a loud buzz came from the passenger seat. With a sigh, she unzipped the front pocket and whipped out the vibrating burner phone. “Here we go.”
She flipped it open with one hand and put it to her ear. “What?”
“Very nice, rookie. You’re already answering the phone like a pissed-off pro.” It was Rhynehart this time.
“I’m a quick study. What do you want?”
“Sir told me he gave you a heads up about another little operation tonight. We’re ready to head out, so where do you want me to pick you up?”
She rolled her eyes and glanced at the signs coming up on the freeway. “Just meet me at the mall again.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously. That’s where I’m heading, so if you wanna pick me up, get your ass to the mall.”
Rhynehart barked a laugh, making her jerk the phone away from her ear. “You really are starting to sound just like one of us, rookie. Same place I dropped you off the other day, then. Twenty minutes.”
“Great.” It came out flat and uninterested—exactly the way she meant it. She closed the phone and dropped it onto the passenger seat.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Cheyenne stood at the curb in front of the strip mall, right where Rhynehart had dropped her off the last time she hadn’t wanted to meet him anywhere that wasn’t completely public. With her hands shoved down in her pockets, she didn’t move until the black FRoE Jeep had pulled up beside her. Then she waited even longer for Rhynehart to get the hint. He rolled his eyes and leaned over to open the passenger-side door and push it open for her.
Cheyenne stepped into the Jeep and shut the door without looking at the FRoE operative, who might at one point have become her trainer for like a day. Before he told a troll healer on Rez 38 to jam a tracking device into her shoulder wound and call it healing.
Rhynehart smirked at her. “You want me to buckle your seatbelt for you too?”
“Shut up.” She snatched the buckle behind her shoulder, grimacing at her aching upper arm, and slammed it into place across her lap.
“You’re in a good mood.” The operative pulled the Jeep slowly out of the parking lot, headed who knew where. “Seeing me again get your drow side all hot and bothered?”
The halfling let her irritation and anger completely take over as she slipped quickly into her drow form. Rhynehart didn’t flinch, even when she opened her hand and brought up a thicker spray of purple sparks than was strictly necessary. She finally tilted her head toward him and gave him a blank stare. “This kinda hot. That’s what you meant, right?”
“I’m just busting your balls, rookie. Put that away and keep it together, huh?”
The sparks went out, Cheyenne slipped out of the dark skin, white hair, pointy ears, and glowing golden eyes, and the Jeep fell silent. Unfortunately for her, that only lasted for about five minutes.
“Okay. Brief on what we’re up against tonight. Remember that Skaxen asshole whipping up all the black-magic potions spreading through the state and killing a bunch of magical kids?”
Cheyenne snorted. “Good ol’ Q’orr.”
He glanced at her just long enough for another smirk, then returned his attention to his driving. “We found one of his distribution sites. Seeing how his handiwork melted his brain, I don’t think the Skaxen was smart enough to be concerned about the bigger picture. He just got his rocks off making the shit. We still haven’t caught the dirtbags who were smuggling all those potions and charms off Rez 38, but a warehouse with a stockpile is the next best thing, right?”
With raised eyebrows, the halfling turned more to study the operative’s face. “Distribution center for the black magic potions?”
Rhynehart whistled. “I’m hearing a goddamn echo in here. What gives?”
She rolled her eyes and dropped her head back against the headrest. Kind of a cheap trick for the FRoE to go into the Borderlands forum to scour through the topics looking for their next mission. They were supposed to have a handle on things.
After a few seconds of silence, she shot him a sideways glance. “This distribution center doesn’t happen to be in Carytown, does it?”
Rhynehart did a double-take, then huffed out a laugh. “Where’d you get that information?”
“I thought you people already figured out that I’m just that good at finding information I want.”
�
�Ha. Was that supposed to include high-security information? Wait, don’t answer that. Just tell me how you found out.”
She cocked her head. “Oh, I don’t know. Just something a guardian shared with me.”
“What?”
“You know, Third Quarter Projections and everything. Real dark stuff.” The halfling watched his reaction, waiting for him to give something away.
Rhynehart just snorted and shook his head. “You get your head bashed in one too many times in the last two days?”
“Like you’d care if I did.”
“You are talking batshit crazy, rookie. Forget I asked.” He puffed out a laugh again, still shaking his head, and smirked at the road.
He’s either a better liar than I thought, or he has no idea what I’m talking about.
The next time she slipped onto the dark web to do a little window shopping on the Borderlands forum, she’d keep an eye out for any avatar names only a FRoE imagination could come up with. Judging by the way these guys ran their secret operations, it’d be something too stupid to miss, like EpicFRoEDown or RezRUs2000. The thought made her snicker, and Rhynehart shot her an amused glance.
“Great. We brought in a half-drow with only half her sanity in check.”
“That’s the only kind you want, human.”
“As long as you keep your head in the game on this one, I don’t care how crazy or sane you are.”
“Sure, you don’t.”
Chapter Eighty
Ten minutes later, Rhynehart’s black Jeep was at the front of a line of other black FRoE vehicles moving silently through Manchester. Cheyenne counted two large black vans behind them in the side mirror, but who knew how many more were gearing up to take this place down?
