L’zar glanced at the clock on the bedside table—3:27 a.m. Beside him in the king-sized bed with one-thousand-thread-count sheets, Bianca Summerlin lay motionless in sleep, her dark curls spilling in a tangled, careless array on her pillow. The Drow turned toward her and brushed a lock of hair away from her cheek; the sight of his human-colored skin against hers brought only a momentary twinge of discomfort, but then it was gone. She sighed in her sleep when he leaned over her and pressed a soft kiss against the corner of her mouth.
“I found you for a reason, Bianca,” he whispered. “I hope you remember that. And I’m sorry for how long you’ll have to wait before you discover what that reason is. I’ll be waiting too.”
The corner of her mouth flickered in a dream-induced smile. The Drow thief passed a hand lightly over her curls one more time, then slid from beneath the sheets and got dressed. He was quick and silent, still full of energy despite having lain awake in that bed beside her for the last hour after she finally drifted off to sleep.
He stopped at the minibar and muttered a summons under his breath. A pale, shimmering light flared at his fingertips, and when it faded, the copper-coated puzzle box covered in Drow runes rested snugly in his palm. This L’zar set with an uncharacteristic tenderness beside Bianca’s small black purse on the minibar. When he gently tapped the top of the box, a wave of light spread from his fingertip around the trinket, then disappeared. He nodded and muttered, “When it’s time, you’ll know what to do with this. Both of you will know.”
With a final glance at the beginning of his destiny lying in the hotel suite, L’zar placed a hand on door and closed his eyes. No one in the hallway on this floor, which was just as well. He muttered the spell and phased through the door, just so he wouldn’t chance waking her. Then he straightened the lapel of his illusioned suit and moved toward the elevator.
—
Now that he’d done his part, that tingling, pulsing tug on his being was completely gone. The Drow moved through the streets of D.C. to a much less frequented part of the city right outside Capitol Heights. A cab might have given him a chance to relax and let someone else take the wheel for twenty minutes, but he wasn’t finished. And I can’t let anyone else see me until I’m ready to go back. Even like this.
The abandoned warehouse on Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue was completely unchanged after twenty-six years. He just hoped the inside hadn’t changed, either.
When he reached the unmarked side door, L’zar’s fingers moved in another complicated pattern until his spell illuminated the faint green glow of the security wards. “Just the way I left them.” He chuckled and pressed his finger against the shimmering shape of a long, thin star with only four points. The wards flashed then disappeared, and he pushed open the door.
The blue-skinned troll sitting with his back to the door whirled away from the long desk of computer monitors and keyboards when the door’s rusty hinges squealed. “Who the hell are you?”
“Oh, come on, Persh’al. Is that how you treat an old friend?”
“Look…” The troll chewed on his bottom lip and raised both hands in part surrender, part wary caution. “I don’t know how the hell you got in, but whatever you think you’re gonna find, you better—”
Smirking, L’zar snapped his fingers with both hands, and his human glamour melted away. He gained another foot in height, his short brown hair lost all its color and dropped into the white knot tied loosely at the back of his neck, and the pinstriped suit was once more a white t-shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants with CDR stamped down the left leg.
Persh’al leapt to his feet with a shout of surprise and slapped his hands together. “L’zar! You dirty thief.”
The Drow spread his arms and grinned. “That’s what they tell me.”
“Well, ‘O’gúl Crown be damned.” A bark of a laugh escaped the blue troll before Persh’al stalked across the warehouse’s main room toward L’zar. “You’re full of surprises, ain’tcha?”
“Comes with the territory.”
The magicals clapped one another in a quick embrace before Persh’al stepped back and stared his old friend up and down. “What’s with the getup?”
“I’m serving a hundred-year sentence, Persh’al. Chateau D’rahl ran out of ceremonial robes before they booked me.”
“No…” The troll’s golden eyes widened, and he clapped a hand to his head shaved bald on either side of the neon-orange mohawk sprouting from the center. “You broke out of high-security prison for O’gúleesh, and you decided to come here.”
“Well, it wasn’t my first stop. But yeah.”
Persh’al sniffed, looked the Drow over one more time, then nodded and turned back toward the three long desks spread out in rows in the center of the warehouse. “I wouldn’t be my first stop, either. You sure nobody followed you?” When L’zar just raised an eyebrow, Persh’al snorted. “‘Course you’re sure. Who am I kidding?”
They stopped together at the first desk, where the lines of code blinked and scrolled in white, blue, and green across four different monitors. “I’m assuming you guys have been keeping an eye on things in here while I’ve been gone,” L’zar said, quickly scanning the information in front of him.
“Well, you’d be right.” Persh’al nodded and folded his arms. “None of us wanted to see you chained and locked up, but we’re not abandoning the cause just because you weren’t here breathing down our necks.”
“And here I was, thinking the whole operation would fall apart without me.”
Persh’al blinked quickly and stared at his friend before huffing out a laugh. “I see prison hasn’t humbled you a bit.”
“I was born with an indestructible immunity against humility.” L’zar fought back a smile.
“Yeah, sure. If that’s what you wanna call it.”
“So tell me what’s happening with the Res at Border 4.” The Drow nodded at the center monitor and folded his arms. It made him feel a lot better now to see his own purple-gray skin in front of him.
“Everything’s running as smooth as ever, man. Fifteen came through in the last two weeks. Half a dozen Orcs who wanted to start some kind of supply train. Four more trolls. Represent.” Persh’al pumped a fist in front of his chest. “Only two Nightstalkers this time, which is a lot better for everyone, if you ask me. They keep to themselves. And three Goblins. But they don’t really count.”
L’zar snorted. “They never do. Until they do.”
“Yeah, well, we’re watching everyone closely. As far as I know, none of the human organizations have noticed a thing, and they won’t.”
“You sound so sure of that, Persh’al.”
“Hey.” The troll turned toward L’zar and spread his arms. “I see everything from right here in this executive freakin’ desk chair, okay? Genuine Italian leather and everything. The humans on this side are never gonna crack this code, and they’re never gonna know we’ve got our hands in these proverbial cookie jars.”
The Drow gave his friend a tired smile. “Never say never.”
“Relax. My boys got it covered. Hey, they’re still your boys too, don’t forget. And they’re gonna light the deathflame torch when they hear you’re out.”
“No, they won’t.” L’zar looked down at his blue-skinned friend and cocked his head. “This is all temporary, got it? I don’t want any of the guys to know until I’m long gone.” He turned and headed toward the torn, sunken couch against the far wall.
“Long gone?” Persh’al snatched up one of the energy drinks he’d been pounding for the last five hours, took a long pull, and lurched after his friend. “Where you goin’ after this?”
L’zar slumped back onto the couch, shifting around to get the broken spring out from under him, and propped his legs up along the cushions, crossing one ankle over the other. “Right where I belong.”
“You think they’re gonna let you back across the border? Do they brainwash the inmates at Chateau D’rahl before they seal you up behind the wards that you somehow just… broke out of?”
“Don’t be an idiot, Persh’al.”
“An idiot? Me?” The troll slowly approached the couch and drained the rest of his energy drink. “Okay, I might not have a Drow’s superior intellect, but any dimwit with half a brain knows that they’ll cut in you half the minute you step foot back in—”
“I’m not going back to Ambar’ogúl,” L’zar muttered. He folded his arms behind his head again and leaned back against the couch’s armrest. “You know as well as I do that I don’t belong there any more than the humans.”
Persh’al snorted. “That’s stretching the truth a lot farther than it can go, I think.”
“Well, you can think what you want.” The Drow took a deep breath of dust and rusted metal and the slightly burned odor of plastic casings in Persh’al’s powered-up rigs. “Smells like you need some new fans in your towers, by the way.”
The troll glanced back at the desks and the custom computers he and his men had built from scratch. Then he scratched the back of his head, ruffling the spikes of his orange mohawk. “Hey, I already ordered new parts for the server. My guys’ll handle it. Look, L’zar, whatever you’re—”
“Two days.”
“Huh?”
“Two days is all I need, Persh’al.” L’zar opened his eyes and slowly turned his head to look at his friend. “I’m just waiting for one more sign, and then I’ll be out of your house and your… hair.” He eyed the troll’s mohawk and smirked.
Persh’al sniffed and folded his arms. “Just two?”
“That’s what I said.”
“And you want me to keep everyone out of here for two days so you don’t blow your cover of an escaped convict.”
The Drow closed his eyes again. “That’s a good way to put it.”
Persh’al puffed out a sigh and shook his head. “You’re a piece of work, you know that? That was a rhetorical question, by the way. Don’t bother answering. I got your back for two days, brother. Least I can do to repay the last couple centuries.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
With a relenting chuckle, Persh’al turned back toward his computers and sank back into the executive desk chair he was so proud of.
L’zar cracked open one eye to look at his friend, then closed it again and let himself fully relax into the couch. One last sign. This has to be it, now. I finally found her, and there’s no way I missed the timing. Just have to wait for it all to line up the way I was told it would.
The escaped Drow thief fell asleep that night thinking of Bianca Summerlin and wondering if the child he wouldn’t get to see would have her mother’s curls.
—
Two days later, the final sign came just like he knew it would.
“They’re crackin’ down,” Persh’al muttered, rubbing his hand vigorously over his blue forehead covered in orange spots. Then he leapt from his chair. “I gotta go. You good here?”
“Go do what you gotta do.” L’zar finished the last of the energy drink his troll friend had gifted him and tossed the can in the trash.
“Right. Yeah.” The troll snatched up his black messenger bag propped beside the desk and slung it over his head and shoulder. Then he headed for the warehouse door.
“Hey, Persh’al.”
The troll stopped and turned over his shoulder. “What’s up?”
“Thanks for holing me up in here. It was good to see you.”
Persh’al chewed on his bottom lip, his eyes narrowing as he gazed at the Drow convict. Then he nodded, because now they both knew what this meant. “Yeah, you too. I’d tell you not to get into too much trouble, but… that’s pretty pointless.” With a wry chuckle, the troll raised a hand in farewell and slipped out through the side door.
L’zar waited forty-five minutes before he made his move. He took on the same human form in which he’d brought in the year 2000—in bed with Bianca Summerlin—and opted this time for a pair of jeans and a sweater. Then he phased through the warehouse and its security wards and made his way back through D.C. toward Chateau D’rahl at undoubtedly inhuman speed.
The weren’t looking for this face, of course. They only knew him as Inmate 4872, six-foot-seven, slate-gray skin tinged with purple, long white hair. They knew him as L’zar Verdys the Drow.
So it came as no surprise when, as he stepped through the open chain-link gates outside of Chateau D’rahl, the guards stationed there had no idea who he was or what to do with a human.
“Sir, you’re gonna have to move along. This is a high-security facility, and it’s not open to civilians.”
L’zar spread his arms and raised them just a few inches above his head, then walked slowly forward.
“Sir, stop where you are and turn around. Did you hear me?”
The man in jeans and a sweater looked up at the security cameras lining the front of the magical prison. The guards’ radios crackled, and a muffled voice came through.
“Yeah, we’ve got a man out here trying to walk right onto the premises.” Crackle. “I have no idea what he wants. I’m not gonna invite him in and ask him for his whole life’s—what the hell?”
L’zar let go of his illusion spell and felt the glamour fade away. Even more satisfying than that were the looks of disbelief, then terror, then rage passing over the guards’ faces. He grinned at the cameras. Just a little something to remember me by. They’ll find this when it’s time.
“On your knees!” Three weapons all trained on the returned prisoner, two of them loaded only with bullets, the third with fell darts that might or might not be discharged at the Drow any second now. L’zar could smell it. “I said on your knees, inmate. Hands behind your head.”
L’zar did as he was told, staring up in amusement as the guards headed toward him, weapons at the ready. The closest one—his nametag read Thomas—holstered his firearm to remove a pair of magic-binding handcuffs from his belt.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the man hissed as he folded L’zar’s arms behind the Drow’s back, met with no resistance whatsoever.
“Aw. Did you miss me?” L’zar sucked in a sharp breath when the dampening cuffs clamped down around his wrists.
“You’re in deep now, inmate. Stand up.” Thomas jerked the Drow to his feet and jostled L’zar toward the prison’s front doors, flanked by the two other guards who would not yet lower their weapons.
The Drow thief glanced up at the slightly elevated surveillance booth outside the prison entrance and grinned at the guard gaping down at him. He caught just the last piece of the radio conversation before the doors buzzed open and Thomas pushed him inside.
“O’Brien, you’re not gonna believe what I’m looking at right now. It’s Verdys. Just showed up out of nowhere and… Christ, he just turned himself in.”
Sneak Peek: Once Upon A Midnight Drow Chapter 3
Once Upon a Midnight Drow releases February 28 on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited!