Once Upon A Midnight Drow
Goth Drow™ Book One
Martha CarrMichael Anderle
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2020 Martha Carr and Michael Anderle
Cover Art by Jake @ J Caleb Design
http://jcalebdesign.com / [email protected]
A Michael Anderle Production
LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
LMBPN Publishing
PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy
Las Vegas, NV 89109
First US Edition, February, 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-776-1
Print ISBN: 978-1-64202-777-8
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Free Books
Author Notes - Martha Carr
Author Notes - Michael Anderle
Connect with The Authors
Other Books By Martha Carr
Books By Michael Anderle
The Once Upon A Midnight Drow Team
Thanks to the Beta Readers
John Ashmore, Kelly O’Donnell, Mary Morris, Larry Omans, Rachel Beckford, Daniel Wiegert
Thanks to the JIT Readers
If I’ve missed anyone, please let us know!
Angel LaVey
Daniel Weigert
Deb Mader
Debi Sateren
Diane L. Smith
Jackey Hankard-Brodie
James Caplan
Jeff Eaton
Jeff Goode
John Ashmore
John Ashmore
Micky Cocker
Misty Roa
Paul Westman
Peter Manis
Veronica Stephan-Miller
Editor
The Skyhunter Editing Team
Dedications
From Martha
To everyone who still believes in magic
and all the possibilities that holds.
To all the readers who make this
entire ride so much fun.
And to my son, Louie and so many wonderful friends who remind me all the time of what
really matters and how wonderful
life can be in any given moment.
From Michael
To Family, Friends and
Those Who Love
To Read.
May We All Enjoy Grace
To Live The Life We Are
Called.
Chapter One
It was time to do the impossible.
L’zar Verdys felt it coursing through him—the rightness of the moment, the tug pulling at his core to rise to the call and put into motion everything the soothsayer had predicted. For two hundred years, he’d waited for this night.
“Lights out in five.” The night guard strolled down the walkway of cellblock Alpha, his boots clicking on the metal mesh.
L’zar’s neighbor, Relaude, let out a low whistle. “Not gonna give us a pass for the new year, huh?”
The guard’s rhythmic footsteps stopped at the cell on L’zar’s right, and the metallic ping of the man’s cattle prod for magicals echoed through the block, a light tap-tap-tap against the bars. “You don’t get a pass for another fifty years, Relaude.”
“Forty-nine.”
The weapon cracked against the cell bars, emitting a sizzling flash of purple sparks when it struck the cell’s magic-dampening wards. “We can double that if you want. Or you can keep your fat orc mouth shut.”
Relaude let out a low, rumbling chuckle but didn’t say another word.
L’zar Verdys stretched out on the thin mattress of his single bunk, slate-gray arms folded behind his head of white hair as the guard picked up his slow, rhythmic march down the cells lining Alpha block. It sounded like Richardson, and sure enough, there was Richardson’s bulbous nose lit up in perfect profile as the man passed L’zar’s cell. The guard didn’t pause as he swept his gaze over the drow prisoner’s tidy box of a room. He just lifted one eyebrow in contempt, then continued down the row.
It’s the last thing these idiots expect. L’zar Verdys doesn’t make a sound, and it’s almost like he doesn’t even exist. They’ll notice when I’m gone, all right. And by the time they find out which direction I went, I’ll already have everything in motion.
If the gateway between the borders of this world and the other couldn’t stop L’zar from crossing over a dozen times as he sought to fulfill the soothsayer’s prophecy, minor dampening wards and humans with low-tech tasers and fell darts didn’t stand a chance.
Let them think I’ve got my head down for the rest of it.
L’zar sniffed, shifted his head against his folded arms so his pointed ears could breathe a little, and crossed one booted foot over the other.
Tonight, I’m getting out.
Richardson’s echoing footsteps receded down the block. Silence settled over Alpha until the guard in the tower pulled a lever that looked like a breaker reset more than the light switch on a max-security prison. “Happy New Year, convicts. Way to break in the twenty-first century.”
The lights cracked off with an echoing boom. Darkness blanketed Alpha block, punctured only by the red lights flaring to life above the guard tower.
Red for ‘locked up tight.’ What a stupid human misconception.
The block echoed with the coughs, grunts, snores, and farts of Chateau D’rahl’s inmates as a stillness settled over them for the night in their single suites of concrete and metal frames and high-voltage dampening wards. L’zar waited patiently through all of it until the symphony of bodily functions came to a standstill, then he pushed up on his bed, glanced through the bars of his cell door at that dauntless red light, and stood.
“Hey, Verdys,” Relaude gurgled from the next cell over. “Stayin’ up to watch the ball drop?”
L’zar moved toward the steel toilet at the back of his cell.
“Man,” Relaude kept on, “what I wouldn’t give for some end-o’-the-year grog and a battle pit. Might be what
