“Well, that’s great.” Persh’al staggered across the narrow side street as the rear tire of a Chevy Malibu on the left burst with a hiss, throwing shreds of rubber in their path. “Here we are, in broad daylight, following an old geezer who’d rather bash into every car than take a shower.”
“You saw how big he is,” Byrd muttered. “I’m amazed he can walk down this street at all.”
Corian turned around to walk backward with the group and raised his hands. Quick, precise movements and a few muttered O’gúleesh words brought a dimly strobing light to his fingers. The crushed, dented, and scraped cars flashed too, and the metal sides reworked themselves.
Cheyenne looked over her shoulder at the sideways-parked cars, many of them with their headlights and taillights broken out. The Malibu’s rear passenger tire was still nothing but a flap of rubber. “You missed a few.”
“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
