“Ew. I think we’re both about to learn a lot.”
Cheyenne drew her fist back, jerked up on the guy’s shirt, and let her punch fly. She landed a good one. The magical issued a low grunt and a groan of pain as he slumped sideways in the chair.
A new sound made its way through the hallway outside the breakroom. The drow halfling paused and cocked her head. There were a lot of footsteps out there—dozens, all of them moving silently toward the arena.
“Losin’ your nerve?” Redhead muttered, black blood on his lips.
“Shut up.”
“Aw, come on. You gotta finish what you—”
Cheyenne released his shirt, and with the strength of a drow, swung a hard right hook into his jaw. The guy toppled out of the chair and thumped on the floor, the chair making a metallic screech as it came out from under him.
It’s like nobody can stop talking before I have to get serious about it.
The footsteps continued outside the door, and she drifted toward the hallway to peer through the thin opening. She caught sight of black pants, black boots, and what looked like the butt of a rifle before it disappeared around the corner.
What the hell is going on?
She opened the door and slipped into the hall.
“There he is!” The loud, thunderous voice boomed in the arena. “Thought you’d play around and keep us on our toes, huh? Not a smart move, Mardok. Even for you.”
“I had to take care of some things.” The new voice was as low as the apparent big boss’ but with an impression of restrained power quivering below the surface rather than a bunch of bluster. “But now I’m here, so there’s nothing keeping us from getting right down to it, huh?”
“Looks like it.” There was a sneer in the thunderous voice, then everyone inside the arena moved toward the center.
Cheyenne frowned and pressed against the wall again, sidestepping toward the arena entrance. She saw them in her mind—maybe two dozen bodies bending over a large table with whatever plans they had laid out on it. She tried to listen to the much quieter conversation on the other side of the wall, but the whispering footsteps came from all around her, although she didn’t see anyone. From both sides of the hallway around her, and the second floor where the balcony overlooked the arena.
Somebody’s gonna get screwed over.
She sidled close to the entrance right before the big boss roared, “Gryus, where the hell’s my drink?”
Another magical came storming out of the arena as Cheyenne stepped away from the wall. She hadn’t thought to keep using her little body-count trick and never saw him coming. A troll with neon-green splotches all over his skin almost collided with her.
Two swirling bolts of purple and black magic blazed from the drow halfling’s hands and crashed into the troll’s chest. He launched back into the arena, narrowly missing two other criminals gathered around the table. The inert troll slid across the floor with a prolonged squeak and came to a stop, the front of his black jacket smoking.
Magical mobsters in every color of the rainbow turned toward the drow.
Cheyenne faced them, her dark magic hissing and crackling around her hands.
The seven-foot-tall boss with a boulder-shaped head of stone—a race she hadn’t seen before—yelled, “Who invited the drow?”
Cheyenne grinned. “I did.”
Two goblins and a short, fat creature with a protruding forehead shot blasts of green and gold light at her, and the arena erupted in gunfire. Lots of gunfire.
Chapter Thirty-Three
It was almost too fast for her to follow. Weapons fired from every entrance to the arena on the first and second floors except for the doorway where she stood. For the magical thugs caught by surprise, the shots fired were startling and disorienting. For the drow halfling, they were deafening.
Cheyenne crouched where she was for all of two seconds while the room exploded with bright-yellow staccato bursts from the newcomers and their guns, some of which flashed green from the erupting barrels. Those weren’t regular bullets; she could think enough to be sure of that much. The magicals in the center of the arena returned fire with blasts of magic—yellow, sickly green, electric blue, blazing orange—and scattered across the room to fight back to back or take cover behind the tables and chairs pushed against the walls. Guns and magic wreaked havoc on a scale Cheyenne couldn’t wrap her head around.
In the chaos of the fray, the short creature with the huge forehead barreled toward her, its mouth open in terror or rage or both. Bursts of dark sludge spurted from its outstretched hand.
Cheyenne raised her hands toward the oncoming creature, and although her throat vibrated and scratched itself raw, she couldn’t hear herself screaming over the constant gunshots and the shouts of other magicals and the hissing, crackling, clashing bursts of magic flying all over the place.
Two whirling disks of black fire spun away from her and hit the short creature square in the chest. Cheyenne didn’t stop to see what happened to him, but lurched from her place in the hallway and entered the fray. Her blood boiled with a battle rage even stronger than that night at the skatepark, which felt like it had been so much longer than seventy-two hours before.
Two trolls darted toward her, shouting something and pointing either at her or at something behind her. Cheyenne didn’t care. The black tendrils of her magic shot from both hands and whipped across the arena, lashing at the trolls and tossing them aside like empty boxes. A blast of red energy zipped past her head, and she ducked before seeing the orc who’d unleashed it at her.
Spit flew from his open mouth as he roared and fired more magical attacks at anything that moved toward him. Cheyenne’s own devastating attack spells were purple and black streaks through the air. One of
