Sneak Peek: Once Upon a Midnight Drow Chapter 3

Goth-Drow-Snippet

September 4th, 2021

“Are you kidding me right now?” Cheyenne lowered her beer bottle to the table, and while she didn’t mean to slam it down, exactly, it sounded a lot like she did.

“Nope.” Ember leaned back in her chair, smirking, and slowly spun her gin and tonic on the table. “I think you can help. No, I know you can help.”

“Help with what? Em, I didn’t understand a single word out of your mouth just now. And even if I did, I’m the last person you should be talking to about this.” She swallowed, wanting to chug the rest of her third beer and knowing that would just make her order another one sooner than she wanted.

“You’re the only person I can talk to. Listen. These guys have been pressing in on us for a couple months now, but they just took it to a whole different level. One of them showed up at my friend Trevor’s work, Cheyenne. His work. Right there in front of everyone.” Ember stopped twirling her glass and leaned closer over the table, lowering her voice. “Trevor didn’t do anything wrong, but this stupid Orc threatened him with a body bag. And magic.”

Cheyenne blinked and hoped she looked clueless. Is she serious? “Orcs, huh?”

“Yeah. Big ones.”

“And you think I’m gonna sit here and play along with whatever fantasy world you’re living in?” Cheyenne was acutely aware of her grip tightening around the beer, her black-painted fingernails nearly scraping against the glass, and she might have felt the bottle crack just a little beneath the pressure. Or at least a tiny fracture. Keep it together, Cheyenne. This is not the right place.

Ember squinted at her and shook her head. “What do you mean, ‘fantasy world’?”

“You just…” Cheyenne glanced around Gnarly’s Pub on East Clay Street and lowered her voice. “You’re talking about Orcs and magic, Em. I’m not stupid. If you’re trying to shock me into believing this crap, you’re wasting your time. It sounds like your friend Trevor’s dealing with some kinda gang issue, and I’m not gonna touch that, either.”

“Seriously?” With a snort, Ember took a long drink of her gin and tonic and set the glass gently back down. “I know there’s a lot of hush-hush going around, especially with the borders unofficially officially open now. But I’m not buying it for a second that you have no idea what I’m talking about.”

“Oh, I get it. This is about money.” Cheyenne jerked her hand away from her beer and folded her arms. The chains dangling from her wrists clinked against each other, cold against her sides through the thin fabric of her black tank top. “I thought we were both adults, Ember. If you need to borrow some cash, all you have to do is ask.”

“Money? You think this is about—” Ember threw her head back and laughed a lot louder than the conversation warranted. “I don’t want or need your money. I need what you are. And so do my friends. People like us have to stick together, and I haven’t seen you with any other magicals since… well, since I met you, actually. I can’t be your only friend.”

People like us? Cheyenne ground her teeth and took a deep breath, trying to force down the rage boiling up inside her. That would just make things worse, and it would prove her friend’s point better than anything Ember could say out loud. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you,” she muttered through clench teeth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come on, Cheyenne.” Ember thumped her fists on the table. “Drinking at dive bars and living in a dumpy apartment does a pretty good job of hiding who your mom is, sure. And yeah, it’s a good mask to cover up the fact that you’re the only person I know who’s not actually worried about trying to support themselves through grad school. But this…” She gestured toward Cheyenne with one sweep of a hand.

“This what?” Cheyenne’s nails dug into the palms of her clenched fists.

“This whole Goth thing, girl. I mean, sure, most of the world’s not even gonna try to look past the face paint and the piercings through it, so good job fooling everybody else. But you can’t hide who you are. If I saw it freshman year, you can bet other magicals around Richmond with a lot more experience are gonna pick you out of a crowd no matter what you’re wearing.”

Cheyenne snorted. “Me being Goth doesn’t automatically mean I believe in magic and Orcs and whatever other bull you’re trying to convince me of right now.”

“True. But you’re a bad actor and an even worse liar.” Ember smirked, lifted her glass in a toast she didn’t expect her friend to join, and took another long drink. “So, are you gonna come help out your only friend, or what?”

“I can’t give you what you want.” Cheyenne shifted her folded arms, then finally couldn’t keep still any longer and reached out to swipe her beer off the table again. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Seriously, Cheyenne, I have no idea what’s stopping you or why you’re so set on playing this game. Still. Honestly, until I met you, I really thought halflings were just a legend. But the Drow’s already out of the bag, so to speak—”

“The what?”

“Oh, please.” Ember snorted. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard that word before, either.”

That did it. The bottle in Cheyenne’s hand burst, sending shattered glass and foamy ale all over her hand and the table and the already sticky, grungy floor of the bar. She stared at her shaking, sopping hand, feeling the heat rush up her spine and curve across her shoulders without being able to do a thing to stop it. Just this once. Please, just one time, don’t let it come out…

“Cheyenne.”

“What?” Why do I keep breaking things but never cut myself?

The amusement had drained from Ember’s face now, replaced by a sympathetic frown as she pointed to the side of her own head. “Your, uh… your ears—”

The chair screeched behind Cheyenne as she launched herself away from the table and to her feet. Before the chair tumbled over backward and clattered to the floor, she was already rubbing her black hair vigorously with both hands, trying to cover up the changes she knew most people wouldn’t believe but that her only friend had apparently picked up on four years ago.

One of the bartenders stopped beside their table with a rag in hand, ready to clean up the mess. “Everybody okay over here?”

Cheyenne’s hip bumped against the corner of the table as she stormed away from him toward the Gnarly’s front door. Ember just barely managed to catch her own drink before it joined her friend’s beer on the floor, but she stayed in her seat. “Cheyenne. Hey, come on. You don’t have to leave. I’m not—”

The door burst open with a little jingle from that stupid bell some idiot thought would be fun to tie to the handle, and then Cheyenne was outside in the fresh September air. The door bounced shut, and she stalked down the sidewalk in front of the bar, taking deep breaths. How does she know?

“That’s a stupid question,” she hissed at herself, shaking out her hands as she stalked toward the alley on the other side of Gnarly’s. She slipped between the buildings, pressed her back against the brick wall of the alley, and closed her eyes. “She knows because you have serious anger issues. That’s how.”

The chains she wore every day, rain or shine, sleeves or not clanged against each other as Cheyenne lifted her hands toward her face and peered at them in the half light mostly blocked by the alley’s shadow. The dark blotches of grayish-purple skin dotting her forearms were already starting to fade, leaving nothing but her pale, vampirically white skin instead. “I have no problem with the vampire jokes. But she wasn’t joking, was she?”

She brought both hands up to her head and poked around in her mess of black hair, which now looked like she’d just rolled out of bed and rubbed a balloon all over it. Not that she spent a lot of time on her hair, anyway. But what Cheyenne was trying to gauge with her fingers had in fact been successfully hidden by that mess of hair she’d been dying High Voltage Raven Black for the last six years. Her fingers ran up the sides of her ears, brushing over the industrial piercings and the half-dozen rings passing through each piece of cartilage until she reached the very top.

Perfectly round, human-shaped ears. No pointed tips. Hopefully they weren’t that slate-gray color anymore, but even if they were, that would disappear soon too, anyway. Cheyenne puffed out a sigh and ruffled her thick hair until it covered her ears and all the silver rings again completely. Then she dropped her head back against the brick wall and stared up at the escape ladder and the catwalk on the other side of the alley.

“She could’ve just been messing with me.” The heat of her rage had almost completely faded from her body now. “No, she actually brought up the ears. Out of all the other things, why does it always have to be the ears?”

The lid of a dumpster a few yards down the alley clanged against the brick wall, and a skinny man in a kitchen apron with a serious case of adult acne lugged first one giant trash bag and then another onto the almost overflowing pile. “I can’t say anything about your ears, kid, but it sounds like you have some serious issues.”

Cheyenne turned to look at the cook who’d been firing up jalapeño burgers for her every Tuesday night since last year and jerked her chin up at him, smiling. “Bite me, trash boy.”

“Hey, that’s more like it.” Grinning, the cook—she thought his name was Sam—slammed a hand against the side of the dumpster and pointed at her. “Don’t lose that winning attitude, Wyoming.”

“Yeah, you think it’s cute. I was born here, by the way.” She stared at him until he slipped back into Gnarly’s side door, stopping just long enough to shoot her a wink. Then she was alone in the alley again, the rage was gone, and Cheyenne was ready to go talk to the one person besides her mom who apparently knew what she was. Shaking out her hands again and calmed by the cold, heavy clinking of the chains around her wrists, she stepped out of the alley and headed back toward the bar’s front door. “Okay, let’s start over.”

If Ember knew about Cheyenne’s little secret—which really wasn’t so little but had been easy enough to keep under wraps, or so she’d thought—it didn’t change anything about their friendship over the last four years. Except for the fact that she’s apparently a better liar than I am.

And if Ember was coming to her now for help with whatever this Orc problem was, after four years of never crossing this line into humans-versus-magicals territory, maybe she really did need Cheyenne’s help. Maybe there was actually something the half-Drow Goth chick could offer that no one else could.

When she was only a few yards from the bar’s entrance, the door burst open with that stupid jingle, and Ember stepped outside. Cheyenne opened her mouth to start the slippery slope into heartfelt apologies, but her friend turned in the complete opposite direction and moved quickly down the sidewalk. Ember hunched over, one finger stuck in her ear while the other hand pressed her cell phone against her cheek. “Are you serious? Why would he—” Ember groaned and briefly glanced up at the night sky. “Yeah. No, Jackie, listen to me. I’m on my way, okay? Just… keep him from doing anything stupid. Please. Hey, if anybody can do that, it’s you. I’ll be there soon.”

Shutting her mouth, Cheyenne frowned and followed her friend down the sidewalk. She paused beside Gnarly’s front door for a quick glance inside, but nobody seemed to care about the two regulars in a dumpy bar full of regulars, all of whom had their own problems to deal with without chasing down someone else’s.

Maybe I should’ve listened to her. Cheyenne glared at her wane reflection in the door, backlit by all the lights on East Clay Street. The ring through her septum glinted in the light, and in the warped glass, it almost made her look like she was smiling.

“Sometimes.” She glanced back down the sidewalk to see Ember turn the corner around the building, cutting across the parking lot. Maybe there was something Cheyenne could do to help.

Time to find out what she meant by ‘people like us’.

 

Once Upon a Midnight Drow releases February 28 on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited!

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