Leave The World Behind Read online

  Leave The World Behind

  Goth Drow Unleashed™ Book Two

  Martha Carr

  Michael Anderle

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2020-2021 Martha Carr and Michael Anderle

  Cover by Mihaela Voicu

  http://www.mihaelavoicu.com/

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US Edition, February, 2021

  (Previously published as a part of the megabook Once Upon A Midnight Drow)

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64971-575-3

  Print ISBN: 978-1-64971-576-0

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Free Books

  Assistant Notes - Grace Snoke

  Connect with The Authors

  Other Books By Martha Carr

  Books By Michael Anderle

  The Leave The World Behind Team

  Thanks to the Beta Readers

  John Ashmore, Kelly O’Donnell, Mary Morris, Larry Omans, Rachel Beckford, Daniel Wiegert

  Thanks to the JIT Readers

  If I’ve missed anyone, please let us know!

  Angel LaVey

  Daniel Weigert

  Deb Mader

  Debi Sateren

  Diane L. Smith

  Jackey Hankard-Brodie

  James Caplan

  Jeff Eaton

  Jeff Goode

  John Ashmore

  John Ashmore

  Micky Cocker

  Misty Roa

  Paul Westman

  Peter Manis

  Veronica Stephan-Miller

  Editor

  The Skyhunter Editing Team

  Dedications

  From Martha

  To everyone who still believes in magic

  and all the possibilities that holds.

  To all the readers who make this

  entire ride so much fun.

  And to my son, Louie and so many wonderful friends who remind me all the time of what

  really matters and how wonderful

  life can be in any given moment.

  From Michael

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  To Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  To Live The Life We Are

  Called.

  Chapter One

  The first thing Cheyenne Summerlin saw upon waking was white—nothing but white. That wasn’t her general ambiance.

  Her vision focused beneath the blinding overhead lights, and she remembered she was in a bed in a place pretending to be a hospital. Besides one stoic doctor, the other people she’d seen weren’t nurses, but some kind of special ops agents more concerned with her secrets than her health.

  The drow halfling swallowed, her throat dry and raw. “Hello?”

  It hurt to speak, but she’d said it loud enough. She didn’t receive an answer.

  “Okay, is someone gonna tell me where I am, or do I have to—” Something metallic clinked when she lifted her hand to rub her forehead. Her hand didn’t make it more than four inches off the thin mattress of the hospital bed.

  “What the…” Cheyenne jerked one arm away from the mattress, then tried the other. Neither moved far from the metal rails surrounding the bed. She jerked her head up and glared at the thick silver manacles around her wrists. “Seriously? What’s the point of helping me heal if you’re gonna chain me up?”

  She jerked on the chains, filling the room with the frantic jingle of the bonds against the rails. “Get these things off me. Hey!”

  The heat of Cheyenne’s half-drow blood flared at the base of her spine as she rocked against the mattress. In under two seconds, the twenty-one-year-old’s pale skin and High Voltage Raven Black hair disappeared, replaced by the dark purple-gray flesh of her drow heritage, bone-white hair, and pointy-tipped ears that betrayed her race, or at least half of it.

  Cheyenne’s eyes flashed golden, and she shouted through gritted teeth, “I swear, if somebody doesn’t get in here and take these off me in the next ten seconds, I’m gonna blow this place off the map!”

  Not that a place such as this is on a map.

  She summoned the smallest bit of her drow magic she could control to her fingertips, except no hot rush pulsed within her. Cheyenne raised her head to check her hand.

  No sparks. No magic.

  What the hell is this?

  “Hey! Hey! What did you do to me?” She tugged at the manacles on her wrists, bucking and writhing on the mattress. Her ankles were chained too, and the restraints made sitting up all but impossible. “Get me out of—”

  The door at the other end of the sterile room opened, and a woman entered briskly. Her blonde hair was tied back in a neat bun, the no-nonsense lines of her face accentuated by the thin frames of her glasses. She cradled a tablet in one hand and was scrolling through it with the other, not bothering to acknowledge the panicked drow halfling chained to the bed.

  “You’re the doctor, right?” Cheyenne’s chest heaved. “Don’t you have some kind of oath about doing no harm?”

  The woman approached the monitors near the halfling’s bed and studied the information.

  “What did you do to my magic?” Cheyenne tugged the manacle one more time and tried to summon those purple and black sparks. Still nothing. “Hey, I’m talking to you. You have no right to chain me up like—”

  “If you want out of that bed, I suggest you put that rage where it belongs until it’s necessary.” The doctor continued scrolling through the tablet. “Now.”

  “Or what?” Cheyenne jerked on the chains, which clanked. “You’ll chain me to the bed and leave me here? Nice try, but we already covered that.”

  The doctor turned from her tablet to the drow halfling, although her eyes never quite made it to Cheyenne’s face. They flickered over the rest of her body instead with cold, precise detachment.

  Like I am some dead butterfly pinned to a damn board.

  “What did you do to my magic?”

  The doctor took a deep breath through her nose, lifted her gaze to meet the drow halfling’s glowing golden eyes, and raised an eyebrow.

>   To be sure she made her point, Cheyenne snarled at the woman and jerked on the chains, then she dropped her head back onto the thin pillow with a sigh and closed her eyes. I’m not very intimidating without firepower. Breathe. Think of the deer.

  After the few days she’d spent working on slipping in and out of her drow form, Cheyenne figured she had a pretty good handle on it. The memory she’d been using to calm herself and resettle into what made her look human worked like a charm. The heat withered out of her shoulders, neck, and back, and her purple-gray skin and white hair faded. Now she was all pale skin and loose pitch-black curls.

  “So.” Cheyenne turned her head on the pillow to gaze at the doctor’s stoic, unchanging expression. “Do I at least get my one phone call?”

  Someone knocked on the door, and the doctor turned halfway around. “Enter.”

  An orderly in white scrubs stepped into the room pushing a stainless-steel cart. The halfling stared at the man. Looks like someone who works in a mental institution.

  Without a word, the man left the tray behind the doctor and turned around to leave. He didn’t acknowledge Cheyenne’s presence in any way, and she snorted. “Yeah, nice talking to you too.”

  The door closed behind him, and she eyed the cart. “So, Doc. I put it away. I believe this is the part where you hold up your end of the deal?”

  The halfling wiggled the chains for effect. She’d given up fighting until she found out what was happening. And as long as that tray doesn’t have a bunch of torture implements or some kinda drug that’s gonna turn me into a zombie.

  With a sigh of either irritation or business-as-usual—Cheyenne couldn’t tell with this one—the doctor pushed buttons on the monitors, read something on the IV bag dripping into the tube taped to the back of the halfling’s hand, and put the tablet on top of the closest monitor. She fished into the pocket on her white lab coat and pulled out two keys attached to a metal ring.

  She unlocked the manacles around Cheyenne’s right wrist, performing the action with as much empathy and consideration as she’d give a locked cabinet full of controlled substances. The first manacle popped off the halfling’s wrist with a dull click, and a ribbon of cold, tingling energy flared up Cheyenne’s arm before fading.

  What kind of cuffs are those?

  Cheyenne watched the doctor step around the hospital bed to unlock the other manacle, and the minute that cold tingle faded, the halfling pushed away from the mattress. The act of sitting up made her head spin, but she fought it and kept her gaze on the doctor’s precise movements.

  “Thank you.” She rubbed her sore wrists, chaffed in record time from her flailing, then she stopped herself and put her hands in her lap. “I’d tell you I appreciate it, but I’m guessing there aren’t many people who enjoy being chained up.”

  The doctor grabbed the handle of the steel cart and wheeled the thing closer to the bed. She removed a metal lid that looked like a steam pan turned upside down and stuck it on the cart’s bottom shelf.

  Cheyenne almost laughed. Well, I guess it’s not traditional torture implements.

  On the cart was a plastic cafeteria tray, which held a rectangular plastic plate with square sections of various sizes: mashed potatoes, mashed peas, something that looked like pork that had been chewed up and spit back out, and a wobbling mass of radiation-green Jell-O. Cheyenne reached for the tall plastic cup of what she hoped was water. She wasn’t disappointed.

  While she drained half the cup in two gulps, the doctor grabbed the tablet off the monitor and returned to its obviously important data.

  “So.” Cheyenne swallowed, more grateful for the cooling relief of water in her parched throat than she expected. “You want me to keep calling you ‘Doc,’ or do you go by something else?”

  Nothing.

  “Fair enough. How about telling me why I’m here? Or, more specifically, why you had me chained to this bed?”

  The woman stepped back and raised her glasses on the bridge of her nose—not by pushing up the nosepiece, but by using the edges of the frames to push them into place.

  She’s taking all this pretty seriously.

  “You know,” Cheyenne raised her eyebrows, “I’d settle for the time if you have it on that little tablet of yours. It shows the time, right?”

  Without looking up from her device, the doctor pointed at the cart beside the bed. “Eat.”

  The halfling released a dry huff. “Skipped the section on bedside manner in med school, huh?”

  The reply Cheyenne got was a split-second of the doctor’s lips pursing before the woman turned and headed for the exit. It swung open, and the doctor disappeared into whatever lay beyond.

  “Okay. Nice talk.” Cheyenne let herself rub her wrists a little, which weren’t too scraped but still stung. She reached for the plastic tray and winced. “What?”

  That was when she noticed the paper-thin hospital gown covering her body instead of the baggy black pants with chains and the fishnet shirt she’d been wearing. “I better get those back.”

  She had to lean in the opposite direction to tug the edge of the hospital gown—open at the back and tied together with thin strings below the base of her spine—out from under her right thigh. She lifted it to see a thick, square patch of white gauze stuck to her hip with medical tape. An experimental tap on the loose bandage made her grit her teeth. Right. I got shot. Or something.

  Cheyenne peeled the tape away and lowered the top half of the gauze for a better look. Sure enough, the raw, red patch of skin was punctuated by twisted, puckered raised flesh the size and shape of a penny. She ran her fingers over the shiny new scar. It felt warm.

  With a grunt, she ripped the gauze and the rest of the medical tape off in one swift jerk and tossed it onto the floor. She reached for the tray, brought the entire thing onto her lap, and picked up the plastic spork that came with it.

  Yeah, I’m not touching that pseudo-meat slop.

  The mashed potatoes weren’t bad if one enjoyed thick and sticky without any flavor, and the mashed peas tasted like freezer burn with a hint of green. She’d managed to slide a mouthful of almost-apple Jell-O down her throat before the door swung open. A man walked in this time, not in white scrubs like the orderly or in anything doctor-ish. He had graying hair and wore military fatigues, the bland colors crisply detailed, and black combat boots that thumped on the linoleum.

  Cheyenne stab-scooped another wobbling sporkful of Jell-O and raised it to her mouth. I’ve seen that mustache before.

  “Well, would you get a load of this!” The man clasped his hands behind his back, and his beady eyes surveyed the drow halfling from the tip of her black-dyed head to the points of her toes beneath the thin sheet. Cheyenne was aware the doctor hadn’t unlocked the cuffs around her ankles. “Now we know what you look like.”

  The drow halfling stuck the next bite of Jell-O in her mouth and didn’t bother pretending to chew it before swallowing. “I’m always myself.”

  “Oh, sure. That’s more than most people can say. I’m trying to figure out if that applies to the outside as much as the inside.” Mustache strolled to the foot of the bed and raised his eyebrows. His gaze fell on the raw, red flesh above the halfling’s exposed hip, which Cheyenne didn’t bother to hide under the hospital gown. He glanced at the discarded bandage on the floor.

  “How’s the grub?”

  Cheyenne dug the spork into the gelatinous green mountain and shoved the next bite into her mouth. “Sucks.”

  “Yes, it does. You up for a little chat, halfling?”

  The chains locking her ankles to the metal railing at the foot of the bed clinked when she rolled her foot to the side. “Well, I’ve got a deep-tissue massage scheduled in half an hour, but I guess I can spare a few minutes.”

  Mustache licked his lips, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “I’ll keep it short and sweet.”

  Chapter Two

  Cheyenne scooped the last two bites of Jell-O into her mouth, then swallowed the jiggly
mass and gave another grunt of pain when she leaned to return the plastic tray to the cart. Another two gulps killed the rest of the water, and once she’d set that down, she folded her hands in her lap and blinked at Mustache. “Where am I?”

  “I don’t answer questions, halfling. I ask them.” The man rolled his shoulders, his hands still clasped behind his back. “You know, if I wasn’t standing here looking at you, I’d say you were nothing more than a fart in the wind.”

  Cheyenne nodded at the tray on the cart. “I think you smell the meat slop.”

  “We ran you through multiple recognition programs to locate a DNA match. Twice. Would it surprise you to hear nothing came up?”

  “That’s a bummer.”

  The man sniffed and dipped his head. “Who are you?”

  They stared at each other for a moment. This guy must be pretty desperate if he’s laying this much on the table. Cheyenne offered him a little shrug. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  “Tempting.” Mustache lifted his chin, his eyebrows doing a weird little dance as he blinked. Seemed he couldn’t decide whether to frown or try another expression. “I guess I can’t expect you to remember much of anything from the last time we spoke. Well, I spoke at you. You flashed in and out of different skins and tried hard to be coherent. Let’s start with my name. To you and everyone else in this facility, my name is Sir. I’ll ask one more time before I bring Dr. Minkert back in with a sedative and a more outdated pair of dampening cuffs. Not so cutting-edge. A lot more painful. Who are you?”