“No. I’m simply not interested in being jerked around. While I’d enjoy blasting you across the room, I’d feel bad about it later, and I don’t like carrying around that kind of guilt.” Cheyenne gestured toward the man in his magical protective sparring gear. “Can you use magic?”
“You know, I’m not sure.” Rhynehart lifted a gloved hand to his head and scratched the top of the helmet. “I haven’t tried.”
The halfling sighed and cocked her head. “That’s a no.”
“If you want to get back to your full and demanding life as an unknown halfling living off the grid, you have to go through me first.” He shrugged. “So hit me.”
Cheyenne stalked away from the double doors and stopped farther away from Rhynehart than last time. “This is ridiculous.”
“This is how we roll. Come on.” He waved her forward with both hands and widened his stance.
I’m considering blasting magic at a human on purpose. For fun. Cheyenne shook her head, and Mattie Bergmann’s words floated through her head.
“They’ll haul you back across and dump you in the middle of a world that wants nothing to do with humans and has no problem destroying a halfling because that halfling happens to look like one.”
If I give this guy everything, they’ll know what I can do. If I don’t, they’ll write me off as useless for anything but getting in their way. I’m not getting tossed across a border for anyone.
Cheyenne conjured crackling purple and black sparks to her fingertips and tossed a half-hearted shot at the FRoE operative. The sparks hit Rhynehart square in the chest and sent purple energy across the front of his special vest. The man straightened from his ready stance and dropped his hands to his thighs. “That’s some weak shit, Blakely.”
She blasted off two more arcing sprays of her least intense magic. The first hit his vest, and the second cracked against the side of his helmet. The second blow knocked Rhynehart’s head sideways a little. He thumped a fist on his chest. “Come on. You’re half drow, for Christ’s sake!”
“And you’re all idiot.” Cheyenne took a step forward and let off more sparks—one, two, three, chest, helmet, left thigh. That last one was her version of testing this guy. Her sparks crackled above his kneecap and took his leg out from under him.
That knee dropped to the padded floor. Rhynehart slapped his leg with a gloved hand, and the crackling purple energy disappeared. “Whoo! That’s something, at least.”
He leaped to his feet, shook his foot like it had fallen asleep, and clapped his gloves before spreading his arms. “You only get points if both boots leave the floor.”
“How many do I get for taking your leg off?”
Rhynehart chuckled. “You done that before?”
“Not yet.” Cheyenne lifted her hands.
“Don’t hold back, halfling. I can take it.”
Yeah, that’s what all the gear’s for, isn’t it? Magic-dampening shackles for me, and an extra boost of healing for the moron trying to get himself killed. He’s enjoying himself way too much.
The half-drow’s fingertips flared with another round of sparks.
Rhynehart waved them off. “Pull out the big guns already. I didn’t bring you here so you can tickle me.”
“You won’t be laughing when I kill you.” Cheyenne paused for a second. She had no idea if she’d gone that far on Thursday night at the event center. She remembered the fight and the rage and the chaos, but she couldn’t bring up a single image of a dead body.
I can’t tell if not knowing is better or worse.
“Let’s go!”
She sent a barrage toward the man. It rocked him back in quick succession—chest, helmet, shoulder, hip. Rhynehart staggered but ignored the last attack and reached for his helmet with both hands. The sparks caught his thick glove instead, and he didn’t seem to feel it before he jerked the helmet off his head and tossed it aside. It fell to the mat with a thump and rolled away.
“I fought right beside you Thursday night, halfling. I saw what you can do. Granted, there wasn’t a lot of control, which was more than obvious.”
Cheyenne snorted. “Glad I’m so easy to read.”
“But you were there with a purpose, and you followed through. That was real power. That’s what I wanna see.” Rhynehart lifted both gloved hands and wiggled his fingers. “Not those cute little sparks.”
“Why does everyone keep calling them ‘cute?’”
“Comparatively, Blakely, you might as well be aiming a bubble gun at me. So turn up the power and fucking hit me!”
“I can’t!” Cheyenne’s voice cracked across the training arena and left a startled silence behind as the padded floor and walls sucked up the sound that would have echoed anywhere else. “I showed up there for answers, and the assholes at that meeting could have given them to me. At the very least, they were into a whole bunch of nasty stuff. If they had the information I wanted, I could’ve proven at least some of them were responsible for hurting people I know. That’s why I fought. I don’t have anything against you, Rhynehart.”
He puffed out a breath and rubbed a thick glove over his short brown hair. “I locked you in a padded room and won’t let you out until you show me what you can do. That’s not enough to get you geared up?”
“Well, it’s close. But you’re human. What’s the worst you can do? Tackle me?”
“Okay. You want a reason to attack me? Sure.” Rhynehart lunged toward his helmet and snatched it off the black pad. He jammed it on his head, thrust a finger at the halfling, and stormed across the room toward the wall opposite the entrance. “I’ll give you a reason.”
The FRoE’s enlisting lunatics.
Cheyenne shook her head and folded her arms. “I’m not gonna fight a human.”
“That’s some heavy-handed racism coming from a half-human.”
The drow halfling frowned. Is he serious? “I’m not racist, okay? I’m being realistic.”
“None of the other magicals I take down—on a regular basis, by the way—hold the same kinda bias.” Rhynehart stopped
