She burst out laughing, grabbed a handful of underwear from the drawer, and tossed that on the bed too. A quick search through the closet netted her another tote bag, and Cheyenne stuffed everything into it. Without bothering to look at the titles, she grabbed the top three books stacked on the desk beside the bed, then headed into the bathroom. Damn, she keeps things clean in here.
There wasn’t even a toothbrush on the counter by the sink, and she had to search through the medicine cabinet up top and the one below before she found the toiletries bag. She opened it to make sure it had what Ember needed, then shrugged and tossed the small zipped bag into the tote with everything else. As she slung the bag over her shoulder and stepped into the hall to leave, her drow hearing picked up heavy footsteps from the open hallway outside.
She didn’t think anything of it until the footsteps came all the way down the row of apartments and stopped outside the last door on the left. Ember’s.
Cheyenne slowly lowered the bag off her shoulder. The doorknob turned. She dropped the tote.
By the time the front door to Ember’s apartment burst open, the halfling had already let the heat of her drow magic race up her spine and take over—just in time for a tall, gangly troll to storm inside. There was a disturbingly yellow tint around the edges of his purple eyes and lips, which he licked nervously. A bright-orange skaxen with long, greasy red hair falling over his shoulders stepped in behind the troll.
Now, that looks like a rat.
The door slammed behind them, and it took the intruders a moment to see the drow halfling standing in the hallway to the bedroom. Cheyenne summoned a crackling black orb of energy with bright purple churning at the core and cocked her head. “Bet you were expecting someone else, huh?”
The troll let out a high-pitched giggle. “Just you, mór úcare.”
Chapter Four
A spark of neon-yellow light burst from his fingertips and streaked across the living room. Cheyenne’s enhanced speed kicked in, and she stepped sideways to avoid the attack of sickly electric magic. When time sped up again, she stood two feet from where the troll’s spell cracked against the back of the hallway. A burst of drywall puffed out into the living room. The halfling shrugged. “Your aim sucks.”
Then she launched her black sphere at the troll’s chest. He dove out of the way just before her magic blasted the edge of a cabinet above the stove, splintering the wood and ripping the door off the hinges.
“You think sneaking Earthside is gonna hide you from us?” The skaxen leered at her, his words whistling through the many gaps between his razor-sharp teeth. “The O’gúl Eye searches across more than one world, mór úcare. And the head follows.”
With surprising speed, the skaxen leaped onto the kitchen counter, knocking down a jar of loose change and hissing like a rat. The thick silver chain lurched out from beneath his shirt, another bull’s-head pendant dangling off it.
“Lemme guess, you’re talking about cattle.” Purple sparks flared at the tips of Cheyenne’s fingers, but she waited a little longer. Whatever the hell he just said, he thinks I know what it means.
The skaxen whipped something that looked like an AA battery out of his jacket pocket and raised it like he meant to throw the thing. A dark shimmer erupted from his hand and trembled there before slowly growing. He shrieked in excitement, spit flying from his bright-orange lips.
“Looks like your spells are stalling on you, asshole.” The halfling went to toss sparks at the idiot, just to see what he’d do after his totally unnecessary jump onto the counter, but the troll had pushed himself back to his feet and summoned another piss-yellow bolt of energy. The light it gave off was the same color as the yellowing skin around his mouth.
Cheyenne let him get closer before she whipped her hand out toward him. Black tendrils of magic shot from her fingertips and writhed across the living room. The first one coiled around his wrist and jerked it aside. His spell hurtled into the beige couch, sending orange throw pillows and puffs of feathers in every direction. Then she balled her fist and yanked the troll off his feet, the black tendrils coiled around both his ankles and the other shoulder.
He screamed as she hurled him across the living room toward the wall beside the TV stand. First he crashed into the wall, then he dropped and almost knocked the flat-screen TV to the floor. She thought about trying to save her friend’s furniture, but then the skaxen leaped from the counter and screeched. More spit flew from his mouth.
Mostly to avoid the stench and whatever messed-up diseases the ratlike skaxen carried in his mouth, Cheyenne slipped into her enhanced speed mode again and stepped aside. The slavering orange magical sailed through the air, his beady eyes focused on where she’d just been standing. He still clenched that weird battery in his clawed hand, and the growing circle of black light expanded faster than it should have with its caster suspended. What is that?
Cheyenne shot her black tendrils toward the flying skaxen and coiled them around his middle. The rest of the world sped back up as she jerked him down out of the air and smashed him into the carpeted floor. The skaxen screamed when she launched him back up and maybe broke his back against the apartment’s ceiling. More drywall and plaster came down with him as she bashed the magical one more time into the floor. The battery-thing sailed from his hand toward the window and vanished, drawing the black
