by Martha Carr
“If I stopped to clean up every little spill, Cheyenne, we’d never make it to where we’re going.” Corian turned around again and raised an eyebrow at her. “But at least now it doesn’t look like a rhino stampeded through the neighborhood.”
“Right. Just a bunch of vandals smashing taillights.”
“By the time anyone gets here to investigate,” L’zar added, moving casually behind Venga at a safe distance to avoid the huge bashing tail none of them could see, “we’ll have what we came for, and we’ll be long gone.”
“That’s the extent of your optimism, huh? Cut a path through a narrow street where people live, but as long as we’re gone by the time anybody figures out something’s wrong, it’s okay?”
“No one’s getting hurt if that’s what you’re worried about.” The drow thief nonchalantly studied a fire hydrant knocked halfway over by a car rocking against it as Venga passed. Water sprayed from the hydrant in an arc, splattering the car, the sidewalk, and half the street.
Cheyenne raised a shimmering black shield against the water before sloshing through the quickly growing puddle in the street. “We should keep it that way.” I’d bet most people can’t spring for a brand-new car when reckless magicals bash in their old ones.
“Quiet,” Venga hissed. He stopped almost at the end of the street, glanced up to sniff the air with his hooked human-illusion nose, and turned left down a wider street where the neighborhood ended and rows of run-down commercial buildings began. “We’re here.”
Persh’al gazed around. “Here’s hoping we don’t have more massive cover-ups after this.”
“Is that even something you guys do?” Cheyenne pulled the activator from her pocket and stuck it behind her ear, then she raised her eyebrows at the blue troll as everyone followed Venga down the next street.
“Sometimes. I guess.”
“We usually take enough precautions that we don’t have messes to clean up afterward,” Corian added, squinting at the commercial buildings with wary curiosity. “Your FRoE friends are the ones who handle that side of things, aren’t they?”
Cheyenne said, “When it’s their magical messes, sure. I don’t think anyone will be sent to help us out with this one.” That’s one phone call to Sir I can’t even pretend would go in my favor.
Venga stopped on the left side of the street and scanned the boarded-up windows of the storefront. “Felgar’s Horn.”
“Looks pretty abandoned to me.” Persh’al looked up and down the street, then returned his attention to the closed storefront with the faded marquee sign that marked the place as a record store. He pulled out his cell phone and tapped it. “All right. I’ll head around back and take a look inside. If those assholes have war machines up and running, I can at least pick up on their system, maybe throw in a few—”
“Weaver.” Venga clenched his fists at his sides as he glared at the glass front door, which was boarded up like the windows. “I would do this as myself.”
“By all means.” L’zar’s quickly cast spell unraveled Maleshi’s illusion.
Venga’s old-man figure fell away, his size ballooning again into the hulking mountain of scales and claws. Cheyenne moved aside when she realized she’d almost stepped on the scaly magical’s tail. With an ear-splitting bellow, Venga raised a fist and smashed through the boarded glass door. When he shouldered his way into the three-story building, he took another six feet above the doorway with him. Brick and plaster and splintered wood rained down over the hole in the wall, and L’zar darted inside after him.
Both nightstalkers disappeared through the crumbling doorway in streaks of silver light. Cheyenne slipped into drow speed and joined them, a sphere of crackling black energy at the ready in her palm. Ember floated through right after her.
“Oh, sure.” Persh’al stuck his phone in his pocket and rolled his eyes as Byrd and Lumil rushed past him into Felgar’s Horn. “Well-planned attacks are so last week.”
He flicked his wrist and summoned his magical whip, then darted into the not-so-abandoned building to join the fray.
Venga roared and swung all four arms violently, crashing against lights hanging from the ceiling and swatting down half a dozen hovering black orbs blinking blue and green light.
Cheyenne’s activator lit up another four dozen floating metal orbs in her vision. She ducked a spray of yellow energy spewing from the flying war machines and sent her energy sphere hurtling toward them. Her attack caught three orbs in one go and they crashed to the ground, shuddering and spitting yellow sparks.
A much thinner version of the crawler Ember had borrowed from the raugs scuttled across the floor toward the magicals, each narrow leg clinking loudly. A black rod emerged from the body and blazed with crackling green light before launching an attack like a shower of automatic gunfire. The first burst of it peppered the back of Venga’s thick leg, shredding what was left of the stained gray rags passing as a prison uniform. The huge magical roared and spun toward the crawling war machine.
Lumil let out a screaming battle cry, her fists blazing with the spinning red runes, and charged the attacking war machine. Before she could get in a good hit, two of Venga’s arms swept the machine off its thin metal legs and sent it crashing against the far wall of the building. It thumped to the ground, legs twitching like a spider’s.
“Hey, asshole!” Lumil snarled. “Maybe leave something for the rest of us, huh?”
Thick black cables uncoiled from the ceiling and swung at Venga, sparking with charged bursts of magic as they lashed his scaled head and neck. The second he wrapped his giant hand around some of them and jerked them free of the ceiling, another swarm of tiny flying war machines fell from the rafters to join the fight.
Cheyenne ducked another spray of yellow attacks, then raised a translucent black shield on her other side against the second wave of incoming yellow pellets. They pinged off her shield and knocked several flying war machines out of the air.
Three metal wheels rolled toward them from a back room, stopped at the end of the hall, and unfolded before firing red and green bursts of magic in every direction.
“What the hell?” Ember shoved a wave of purple light at a hissing, magically-sparking cable snaking down from the ceiling toward her. Her magic caught the cable mid-swing and blocked its firing mechanism, and the thing lurched and exploded. She ducked beneath the flying fragments of metal cable and turned to the rolling war machines spewing lights in every direction.
Persh’al and Byrd fought off another spider-like crawler, dodging attacks from the flying metal orbs as the blue whip and bursts of green fire pummeled the rod on the top of the crawler and ripped it to pieces.
Corian and Maleshi darted around the building in streaks of silver light, their extended claws slicing through dangling cables and war-machine legs. Cheyenne raised a shield in front of her to ward off the bursts of green magic spewing from one of the rolling machines at the end of the hall that had apparently decided to focus on her. She pushed the shield, moving it forward step by step as the green bursts pinged off her magic and ricocheted around the room.
The back of her calf erupted in a sharp, burning sting, and it climbed up her leg. Snarling, she looked back and found two much smaller spider-machines moving up her legs, piercing her thick black pants and her flesh with every stab of their needle-like feet. She blasted them off with a crackling black energy sphere, then ducked under her shield and reached out to the rolling machine with her black tendrils. They coiled around its curved, segmented metal back and she stepped aside and pulled, flinging the thing through the air.
Venga roared and brought a fist down on top of the sailing war machine, which was still firing green bursts across the room. The roller slammed into the ground and jerked Cheyenne with it before she released her tendrils, stumbling to catch her balance. She snarled at Venga and blasted another trio of floating metal orbs out of the air. “Should we have let you come in here on your own instead?”
“Right?” Lumil dro
pped to one knee and brought a spinning red fist against the underside of a crawler scuttling toward her. It jerked when her fist pierced its undercarriage, then she pulled out a handful of gears and metal pieces and stood. “At least let the rest of us get in a few hits.” She kicked the shuddering, sparking hull of the crawler, and it sprawled on the floor.
L’zar stood to the side of the crumbling hole in the front wall and batted aside every flying orb darting his way, his hands moving in a blur of purple light.
Byrd shouted in surprise when the end of a dangling cable pierced the back of his jacket collar and lifted him off the floor. “What is it with picking me up by my fell-damn shirt?” Struggling and kicking his legs a foot off the floor, he reached up behind him, grabbed the cable with both hands, and sent a flare of green fire racing up it. The metal segments fell apart in a rain of hollow metal rings, and the rest of the tangled nest of cables dropped from the ceiling and buried the goblin man beneath their weight.
“What are these supposed to be, snakes?” Lumil grabbed fistfuls of cables and ripped them apart as bursts of green flames exploded from the mass on top of Byrd.
Persh’al’s blue whip cracked into the legs of a second roller that was spewing red magic across the room. The machine wobbled and tilted sideways but kept firing. Corian appeared behind it and sliced his claws through the segmented back. The roller shuddered and burst apart, sending shrapnel flying.
Cheyenne raised another shield in front of Ember, ducked beneath a flying metal back segment, and sent a black energy sphere at the third roller. The machine dodged her attack, curled in on itself, and rolled toward her. Four more flying orbs swooped at her head, and she swept them aside with a telekinetic burst. The roller stopped two feet in front of her, uncurled, and exploded in a burst of green light and metal shards when Venga stomped it into the ground with a clawed, scaly foot.
He snarled at the mess of war-machine parts beneath him, then turned glistening black eyes on Cheyenne.
She looked up at him and shrugged. “Okay. Thanks for that one.”
“Whoa, whoa! Easy!” Lumil reeled back as Byrd shouted and snarled, blasting green fire in every direction and twisting back and forth to free himself from the writhing mass of metal cables tightening around him. “If you blow my head off, you idiot, I can’t help you!”
“You’re not helping.” Byrd kicked the cables and extended both hands to shoot columns of green fire at the tangled nest around him.
A high-pitched squeal rose from the cables as they heated quickly under his magical attack.
Cheyenne frowned. “I think you got ‘em, Byrd.”
The goblin roared and spun, spewing green flames from his hands. The nest of cables shuddered and jerked, the high-pitched squeal grew even louder, and Lumil stepped away with wide eyes. “You’re gonna—”
A silver streak darted over to the nest of cables, and Byrd grunted as Maleshi snatched him up and deposited him on the other side of the room.
“Whoa, shit.” Cheyenne cast a shield around the nest of flaming cables a split-second before they erupted in flaming, sparking rings of black metal. The sound of so much shrapnel pinging against the inner wall of her domed shield was deafening. She gritted her teeth against the sound rattling her skull and focused on holding up the shield until it was over.
When she dropped it, the only sounds left were the hollow clinks of metal pieces settling, the sparks and hisses of the last few war machines to die, and the heavy breathing of every magical in the room.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Byrd pushed away from the wall and straightened his denim jacket with a snort. “Way to be fast on that one.”
Maleshi raised an eyebrow at him. “To whom are you referring?”
“I mean both of you, I guess.”
Clenching her eyes shut against the ringing in her ears, Cheyenne straightened and took a deep breath. “That’s all of them, right?”
“It fucking better be.” Lumil turned slowly and eyed the destroyed front room of Felgar’s Horn with a scowl, red runes still spinning around her fists.
“Looks like they’ve beefed up their security,” Persh’al grumbled. “Without even having to be here.”
“Just security, huh?” Cheyenne took stock of the scattered war-machine parts. “There’s no way this is everything they smuggled Earthside in those crates.”
“Of course not.” L’zar smoothed his hair back with both hands and stepped over a fractured pile of useless metal orbs. “This is their vault, not their headquarters.”
“So, you weren’t expecting to fight any Bull’s Head loyalists.”
“I wasn’t expecting anything in particular, Cheyenne.” He shot his daughter a brief glance. “Though I will say I’m a little disappointed not to see any bodies.”
She snorted and shook her head. “Yeah, me too. Now we have to track down the rest of the Bull’s Head to rip out whatever they’ve been using to control these machines from somewhere else.”
“Not yet.” L’zar stepped past her, his attention focused on Venga. The former prisoner was stomping across the room toward the hallway leading to the back.
Ember bent over one of the crushed rollers with a frown. “Okay, I know there’s no TV on the other side. I mean, science fiction isn’t fiction over there, but somebody please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks these things were pulled right out of Star Wars.”
Cheyenne stifled a laugh. “That’s what bothers you the most right now?”
“It’s more than a little weird. Whoa.” Ember straightened when Venga’s shadow fell over her, and she looked slowly up at the scaly magical glaring down at her with all-black eyes. “Uh, hello.”
“Move.”
She raised an eyebrow and floated slowly back across the floor before folding her arms. “A please goes a long way, you know.”
Lumil snorted. “You moved without it, didn’t you?”
Venga ignored them both and bent over a large, rusting metal crate bolted to the wall beside the hallway. He grabbed the heavy iron lock at the front of the crate and ripped it off in one jerk before tossing it aside. Persh’al ducked the flying lock and scowled.
The crate buckled when Venga slammed a huge fist into it, then it opened easily, and he rummaged inside with two hands while his other two propped him against the wall.
Cheyenne glanced at Maleshi and gestured at the trunk. “His endowments, I’m guessing.”
“Your guess is as good as mine, kid. Right now, we’re here for backup.”
“Obviously.”
A low chuckle escaped the gigantic magical, and he straightened. The glinting object in his hand caught the harsh light as he turned it back and forth. His black eyes widened, and cracked, dry lips peeled back to reveal his stained teeth in a crazed grin. “There you are.”
“More tech?” Ember asked.
“Not quite,” L’zar said, also grinning, his golden eyes fixed intently, not on the round object that looked like a twenty-sided ball of glass, but on Venga’s grotesque smile. “Are you satisfied?”
Venga chuckled again, his black eyes flicking to the drow thief. “Almost.” He opened his mouth, tossed the orb of black glass into it, and crunched down with powerful jaws.
Lumil and Byrd grimaced and leaned away. The goblin man passed a hand over his mouth. “That can’t be good for dental hygiene.”
“Man, the dude was locked in a tank. You think those fuckers tossed him a toothbrush?”
“He’s eating glass!”
“Yeah, but not to clean his mouth.” Too far away from the goblin across the room to punch him, Lumil waved him off instead and rolled her eyes. “Just don’t talk.”
The noisy crunching of glass and Venga’s grunts of satisfaction almost made Cheyenne look away. But she noticed the small, shattered fragments of glass spilling from the ex-prisoner’s mouth and disintegrating in the air before they reached the ground. Not just glass, then.
With a violent swallow, Venga closed his e
yes. When he opened them again, the glistening black was replaced by a flash of blazing green light, and he opened all four clawed hands. Green and black smoke wafted from his palms, and he let out another dark chuckle. “Much better.”
He flicked the scaly fingers of one hand, and his massive form shrank until he stood only three inches taller than L’zar instead of three times the drow thief’s height.
L’zar dipped his head. “Magic restored, my friend. Now for—”
“The Darkglass.” Venga looked sharply at the drow. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten how to fulfill my end of a bargain, Weaver. I deal with much darker forces than yours.”
Kicking his heel up, L’zar spread his arms and bowed once more. “I’m well aware.”
Venga’s tail thumped the floor, scattering broken war-machine bits, then he stalked over to the far side of the room and raised all four hands. A low, guttural chant rose from his scaly throat, and green and black sparks wafted from his fingers and palms, stretching to a metal panel set high on the wall. The sparks flickered across the panel, and it flashed white and pushed itself away from the wall.
Metal panels and sliding gears unfolded all the way to the floor, forming a cabinet wider at the base than the top. Venga flicked his hand at a central panel, which opened under his command like a drawer. Then he reached in with two hands and gingerly pulled out an object composed of black metal and glass panes.
“As promised.” He turned and offered the rectangular object to L’zar.
“You always keep your promises, Venga.” The drow gingerly took the box of metal and glass and grinned at the scaly magical. “You have my thanks.”
“It’s not your thanks I want, Weaver.” The ex-prisoner tilted his head, and his eyes flashed green again.
“Of course.” Nestling the Darkglass delicately beneath one arm, L’zar pulled the faintly pulsing Nimlothar leaf from his pocket and set it in Venga’s outstretched hand. “I don’t have to tell you to use it wisely, do I?”
