Realm of Infinite Night (Goth Drow Unleashed Book 3)

by Martha Carr

  The pull on her senses—or the sixth sense, or whatever she wanted to call it—grew stronger the closer she got to the student center and the quad just beyond it. She passed only a few other people along the way, all of them taking their sweet time moving down the walkways because they had nowhere else to be on a Saturday at lunchtime. Weekends were cool like that.

  By the time she passed the student center and stepped onto the green grass in the quad, the tug coming through her chest was almost an ache—dull, throbbing, just strong enough that it was impossible to ignore but not alarming.

  “Hey, there!” A group of students wearing seventeenth-century costumes and loaded down with stage props veered around her on the walkway, laughing with each other. The one who’d called out extended a flyer toward Cheyenne. “Beautiful day, right? Come see our play in November.”

  Cheyenne ignored him and picked up the pace across the quad, trying to pay attention to where she was putting her feet and where that tug on her chest was leading her at the same time. Then she passed the student message board where the walkways intersected, and the incredibly strong pull on her body whipped through her shoulder blades and almost knocked her on her ass.

  “Woah!” Her Vans skidded on the sidewalk, and she spun to face the message board. The sharp pull moved back to her chest again, and it made her cough this time. “This is insane.”

  The halfling glanced around to make sure no one was watching her, but why would they be? She was just another student on campus, stepping toward the message board to check out all the flyers and posters for student bands, fundraisers, local parties, and open invitations to debates or shows or clubs. Maybe the next clue was tacked up under the call for new members of the chess club.

  Before she got three feet away from the message board, the tug on her body jerked sideways, almost through her black-magic-wounded shoulder. Cheyenne gritted her teeth and grunted, trying not to stumble around like a drunken idiot in the middle of campus. She noticed that the pull seemed to head right for the bench bolted into the ground just off the walkway.

  Just sit down and rethink all my choices that led me to this point, because I’m now playing tug-of-war with my own magic.

  Despite her sarcastic internal complaints, the halfling followed her magic—if that was what it was, and it kind of had to be at this point—toward the bench. The urgency of that pull let up a little when she reached the bench, and she sighed in relief before sitting on the cold metal seat. Her black-nailed fingers drummed on the overhanging edge of the bench on either side of her thighs, and she waited for something else to pop up out of nowhere and tell her where the heck to find the next clue. Then the cold metal beneath her, which she could already feel a little through her pants, started to warm up. In the next fifteen seconds, it got hot, until Cheyenne leapt sideways on the bench with a shout of surprise.

  “What?”

  There it was, beneath one of the metal slats where she’d just been sitting. A tiny corner of bright-blue paper peeked out from the underside of the bench, and the halfling pressed her lips together. I guess that’s one way to find it. Just sit on it ‘til it bites you in the ass.

  Rolling her eyes, she slid off the bench to kneel in the grass and reach under the bench. Her fingers quickly found the little flap of it, and then she was pulling it out from where it had been wedged. The halfling sat back on her heels and unfolded the third physical clue. On it was just an address and a much shorter message that wasn’t even a clue.

  Ask for Dianna. Tell her you’re there to pick up N-1075.

  Shaking her head, Cheyenne pulled out her phone and typed in the address written on the blue piece of paper. What the search pulled up was so ridiculous, she burst out laughing as she knelt in front of a bench in the middle of the university quad.

  The address belonged to a dry-cleaner’s. She shoved the newest clue into her pocket with the others and pushed to her feet. “I’m not a personal assistant.”

  Shaking her head, she looked out over the mostly empty quad and reoriented herself in the direction she wanted to go. Just walk back to the car and drive across town. Easy enough.

  The halfling stuck her hands into her pockets and walked back across campus, heading northeast toward where she’d parked her car in the lot beside Gnarly’s. Part of her expected that weird tug to return, to cart her off in some other direction because she’d missed something, but it didn’t. So now she got to do nothing more than enjoy her music, walk back to her car, and hope this package was the last thing she had to track down before she got what she needed to track that orc bastard Durg.

  Just as she’d expected, it only took her about fifteen minutes at a quick pace to get to her car. Then she plugged the dry-cleaner’s address into her GPS and took off to follow the trail, this time on wheels. She half-expected the dry-cleaner’s to have some kind of irritatingly inconvenient weekend hours so she’d have to wait until Monday to finish this thing, but they were open.

  She parked in the lot, got out, and felt like a total loon as she headed toward the front doors.

  The bell on the door jingled when she opened it and stepped inside, although it couldn’t possibly be heard by anyone in the back over the sound of all the mechanical racks moving around and the steam-cleaner or whatever they used hissing away behind all those clothes. Cheyenne stepped up to the front counter and pressed the red rubber button on a little stand with a strip of paper taped to the front that read, Please ring once. We can hear you.

  It took another minute for someone to come out of the back, and that was fine. The halfling wasn’t one of those people who thought her time was more important than everyone else’s, especially when she had no idea if this supposed package was going to be worth her time at all.

  A short, thin woman in her mid- to late forties with dark hair cut in a straight, shiny bob bustled up to the counter and smiled at Cheyenne. She folded her hands and settled them on the top. “How can I help you?”

  “Yeah, um, I’m looking for Dianna.”

  The woman spread her arms. “Well, good job. You found her.”

  “Awesome. So, I was sent in here to pick up a package, I think. N-1075.”

  Dianna blinked, her smile flickering on her lips like she couldn’t decide whether to be pissed or laugh. “N-1075?”

  “Yep. That’s what I was told.” The halfling attempted a smile but didn’t manage much more than a grimace.

  “Huh.” Dianna’s smile finally settled on something like disbelief and amusement wrapped into one as she eyed the half-drow. Then she tapped a finger on the counter and stuck it in the air. “I’ll be right back, okay? You just wait right there.”

  “Sure.” Sticking her hands in her pockets, Cheyenne had to make the conscious decision to breathe through her mouth right now instead of her nose. There were way too many smells in here from way too many people, all of them pumped up to maximum strength by whatever cleaning solution the woman used back there on so many different “dry-clean only” items. She chuckled.

  No wonder I always hated it when Eleanor brought home Mom’s dry-cleaning. I was smelling a whole bunch of strangers’ things all mashed into everybody else’s clothes.

  A little over a minute later, Dianna came walking briskly back up to the front with what was apparently N-1075. And it didn’t look anything like dry-cleaning. “Here you go.”

  The woman handed the long brown paper bag across the counter with both hands. Cheyenne got a glimpse of white paper rolled up inside it.

  “Okay. Thanks.” When the halfling took the unexpected package, she almost dropped it right there on the counter. Not that it was all that heavy, but she definitely hadn’t expected the weight.

  With another secretive smile, Dianna studied her unexpected customer and nodded. “Anything else?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t owe you anything for this, do I?”

  The woman chuckled and shook her head. “Already paid for. You’re just the messenger, right?”

  Wi
th an unsure smile, Cheyenne dipped her head toward the woman and muttered, “Something like that. Thanks.”

  “No problem. Maybe I’ll see you next time, then.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” the halfling called over her shoulder as she headed right back out of the steamy, noisy, smelly dry-cleaner’s. She didn’t even try to look into the weird package until she got back behind the wheel of her Focus, started the engine, and rolled down the window to let in more fresh air.

  Cheyenne peered into the top of the paper bag and frowned at the thin white butcher paper wrapped around whatever was inside. When she started to slide the thing out of the bag to take a closer look, a buzz rose from the passenger seat, accompanied by the flashing light on the FRoE burner phone. “Oh, come on. Can’t I finish something without getting interrupted?”

  As much as she wanted to chuck that burner phone right out the open window of her car and cut all ties with Sir and his demands on her abilities in action, she didn’t. She grabbed it, flipped it open, and put it to her ear. “Yeah.”

  “Hey, rookie,” Rhynehart chirped. “Time for that one last favor before you start moving up the ranks and getting your answers. You ready?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not if you want an escort to Chateau D’rahl.”

  She sighed into the phone and wedged the brown bag onto the passenger seat. “Fine.”

  “Sweet. I’m gonna text you an address. It’s about a thirty-minute drive from the mall, and I’m guessing you’re not all that far away from there, yeah?”

  “Sure.”

  “As soon as you get it, start driving. We’ll get this last little piece of work wrapped up, and you’re good to pencil a trip with Sir into your schedule.”

  Cheyenne blinked dully. “Can’t wait.”

  Then she closed the phone because she had nothing else to say to the FRoE operative who’d called at the perfectly wrong time. She glanced at the brown paper bag on the seat and frowned. I’ll deal with you later.

  The burner phone buzzed in her hand, and she opened it again to find that text from Rhynehart, as promised. She plugged it into the GPS on her personal phone and frowned. Yeah, it was about a half-hour drive from the dry-cleaner’s, on the northwest end of Richmond. It looked like a well-populated residential area. Didn’t know the FRoE made house calls.

  Strapping on her seatbelt, the halfling pulled away from the dry-cleaner’s and followed her GPS directions toward this last mission with Rhynehart before Sir finally made good on his end of their deal. “He’d better.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Cheyenne pulled up in the expected residential neighborhood and found the house with the texted address easily enough. Rhynehart’s black Jeep was parked three houses down by the corner, but the halfling didn’t want her car associated with a FRoE vehicle in what looked like a relatively nice neighborhood just in case things went south. She parked across the street from the address and got out of the car.

  The front door of the Jeep opened as she crossed the street, and Rhynehart stepped out, wearing his black fatigues again. He nodded and waved her toward him, so she changed her path from walking toward the house to walking toward him. “Good timing, rookie. Get in.”

  “What?” Cheyenne glanced behind the Jeep at the designated house. “That’s the address you sent me.”

  “Yep. Just a rendezvous point. Sort of.” He shrugged and looked across the street at her car. “That your ride?”

  “No, I’m just really good at hot-wiring cars and thought I’d take the ugliest one I could find for a quick joyride to meet up with you. I thought you already knew that.”

  “Very funny. Let’s go.”

  Frowning, Cheyenne walked around the back of the Jeep and opened the passenger door. A smell like an old almost-flat basketball mixed with the abandoned failure of copycat Axe body spray assaulted her even before she noticed the huge magical sitting in the back seat of the Jeep. She stood out on the street and stared at the guy, who was so big he had to hunch his shoulders, and the top of his head was still smashed into the roof of the car.

  He brought an ogre. What’s going on?

  She’d only seen one of those before, and that first ogre had been one of the magicals at that event center when she’d inadvertently crashed a FRoE sting. Now that she thought about it, she was pretty sure the special ops team had brought a fell cannon specifically to blast the ogre unconscious. Even her drow magic had been ineffective on that one. And there was another ogre squashed into the back seat right behind her.

  Rhynehart got behind the wheel, closed the door, and snapped his fingers. “Hey. Less staring and more doing what I said. Get in.”

  Cheyenne blinked and turned her attention to Rhynehart, who just sat there and stared at her with wide eyes, his brows raised in impatience. “Yeah, okay.”

  She climbed into the passenger seat and noted that it had been slid farther toward the dash than the last time she’d sat in it.

  Rhynehart started the engine, buckled himself in, and pulled away from the apparent rendezvous point without another word. Then things started to get tense.

  She could hear the huge ogre in the back seat, breathing heavily through his nose. For the most part, it sounded like he was leaning forward and breathing right up against her ear. The halfling pulled down the sun visor in front of her, which thankfully had the little mirror she’d been hoping to find there. When she looked through the reflection into the back seat, the ogre was sitting all the way back, or at least as far as he could go with what little room he had. But he was staring right at her with those glowing yellow eyes, his gray-skinned face contorted in a frown. She couldn’t tell if his nostrils had just flared and wouldn’t go back down or if they were normally that massive.

  With a final glance at the big guy scowling at her, Cheyenne flipped the sun visor back into place and folded her arms. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing a friend.”

  “Didn’t know I had to tell you anything, rookie.”

  She shot Rhynehart a quick glance, but he was staring straight ahead through the windshield as he drove them wherever the heck they were headed. The guy’s usual smirk hadn’t appeared since she’d stepped out of her car, and his good-natured joking, however much it annoyed her, didn’t exist. “Why’d you cram an ogre in the back seat?”

  “He’s coming along to make sure everything’s going the way it’s supposed to.”

  “Because you don’t trust me to handle it.”

  Rhynehart’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, which squeaked under the pressure. “Because I decided to cram an ogre in the back seat, and he went along with it. The rest is none of your business.”

  “Jeeze. Guess it’s your turn to have a bad day.” Cheyenne glanced out her window instead, and the huge ogre in the back growled.

  What’s going on? The whole Jeep smells like one big, steaming pile of pissed off. Is it because I wouldn’t let him buy me a sandwich?

  The tension in the Jeep thickened over the next ten minutes. Every time the halfling turned to look at Rhynehart, opening her mouth for another question or a quick-witted jab she figured might get him to loosen up, the ogre in the back seat growled again. He stopped when she took her eyes off the FRoE operative behind the wheel and shut her mouth.

  That feeling of wrongness didn’t lift even when Rhynehart drove them into a slightly less affluent neighborhood, but a neighborhood all the same. The houses were spaced farther apart, although they were smaller with bigger yards. He pulled up at the curb in front of a little bungalow painted olive-green with potted plants holding brightly colored flowers dotting the front porch. The house was set back a little farther than its neighbors, and the tall trees rising on either side of the yard to curve toward each other in an arc overhead made the flagstone pathway to the house seem that much longer. And a little ominous.

  Rhynehart turned the engine off and got out first, still without a word. When the door closed, Cheyenne turned around in her seat to loo
k at the scowling ogre in the back. “What crawled up his ass, huh?”

  The big guy sneered, puffed out a sharp hot meat-scented breath through his huge teeth, and growled again. “Get out, halfling.”

  “Yeah, okay. Good game face.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and got quickly out of the Jeep, feeling even more like she was missing something really important. The energy coming off both FRoE operatives was seriously dark and a little suffocating, and during the whole ride out here, it had felt like it was aimed in her direction.

  One last mission, huh? Especially if I’m the target.

  The back door to the Jeep opened, and the ogre squeezed through the much-too-small door. It didn’t look like he’d make it out, but then he got both feet on the sidewalk and straightened to his full height. The Jeep rocked after being relieved of so much weight, creaking. With her arms folded, Cheyenne looked up at the huge gray face and nodded. The ogre stared blankly at her and didn’t look away when he lifted one meaty gray hand toward Rhynehart, who’d already taken off down the flagstone walkway toward the bungalow.

  When she didn’t move, the ogre snarled at her, his bright-yellow eyes flashing.

  “Hey, if you bash my head in out here, you’ll be short a drow halfling to do more than half the work once we get inside.”

  “This isn’t a meet-and-greet, rookie,” Rhynehart called from up ahead, his voice oddly flat across the few yards between them. “Let’s go.”

  After another glare into the ogre’s yellow stare, Cheyenne rolled her eyes and headed after Rhynehart down the walkway. She kept her focus trained on the sound of the big guy’s lumbering footsteps behind her, just in case he made any sudden moves.

  The human FRoE agent made it to the bungalow’s front porch first and waited for Cheyenne and the ogre to catch up. Rhynehart’s hand rested on the fell pistol holstered at his hip, but he hadn’t drawn it, and it didn’t look like he was going to anytime soon.

  Cheyenne reached him on the porch and stepped aside when he nodded for her to move away from the door. “So, I don’t get a run-down of what we’re trying to do this time?”