Page 6 of Magpies & Mayhem
I considered this information for a moment, then placed a calling chip between him and his glass. It contained the names of some of his competitors with new shipments, and it quickly disappeared into his pocket before he nodded and took another long pull of his drink.
“Pleasure doing business with you, sir.”
Chapter 4
Itookabreakfrom work the next day to check out the warehouse Bane had mentioned. I took a meandering flight before circling the building a couple of times, giddy with anticipation. Digging through a warehouse for supplies felt like a treasure hunt every time. I rarely found exactly what I was looking for, but I almost always found something interesting. Sparkles and baubles, and sharp, shiny tools… weapons, gemstones, and random artifacts of all kinds. Bartering, haggling, pawing through random piles of other people’s treasures… this was the language of my little magpie soul.
Workers at places I didn’t visit often weren’t usually cool with me poking around inside, so I decided to let myself in through an open window in the loading bay.
The biggest problem with being a bird is that we don’t have hands, a fact I lamented as I landed on top of a large wooden crate with no obvious openings that I could see into. If I were a box full of ceremonial daggers, where would I be? I hopped from crate to crate in the dusty, dimly lit warehouse, looking for labels and gaps large enough for me to get my head inside, growing more frustrated by the second. Stomping my foot just didn’t give as much satisfaction in this form, so I let out a raucous screech instead.
Instead of the silence I expected in response—since there wasn’t anyone around that I could see—I received a chirp. A really odd, pathetic, garbled-sounding chirp. Just one, and then silence. I called again and again, pausing and listening each time to the occasional response until I’d tracked the sound to the large, dilapidated wooden crate closest to the loading bay doors.
Shipping live animals wasn’t illegal, but the size of this crate told me it wasn’t chickens. The sound it was making wasn’t exactly birdlike—it didn’t sound likeanybird I recognized. I found a gap in the shoddily built crate that was large enough to cram the top half of my body into, and once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw red.
There were eggs—rough, pale yellow, and easily larger than a human soccer ball—packed in puffed stone. And these weren’t Voider eggs. They weredragon eggs. Some greedy, half-witscumwere smuggling them from the Boundlands into the Void, where they should have already died. Dragons are not creatures who can survive in the Void without the magic the Boundlands provides. What’s more, they need very specific conditions to incubate. Pressure and heat from the mountain fissures they’re lain in, usually threaded with gold and other magical conduits by their parents.
I pushed some of my magical energy blindly toward the middle of the crate, hoping to give the little creatures a boost until I could get back. I couldn’t spare much in this form, but I gave them as much as I could. Then I was out of the crate, through the hangar door, and into the sky in seconds flat, winging my way back to the shop in less than a minute. It would take longer to get back, but I repeated to myself that I could only do what I could do.
I shifted forms on the street in front of the door and wrenched it open, diving for the back room—and my clothing, phone, and weapons—talking at top speed all the while. “Elara, grab your phone. I’m going to text you an address. Call the Boundlands’ Enforcement line here in the Void and tell them there are smuggled dragon eggs in a crate in the warehouse there.”
I didn’t hear a response, so I turned to find her still frozen in her chair, probably confused by my nude jaunt through the front of the shop, but I didn’t have time for her to catch up mentally. I texted her the address and started strapping on weapons. “Can I grab your new emitters?” That snapped her into motion and she was up in a blink.
A few months ago, Elara had found a water sprite here in the Void, and like most creatures that venture into the Void and don’t belong here, she died before we could get her back into the Boundlands. Neither of us had been happy about it, but Elara, being who she is, had done what she always did when presented with something that distressed her: she’d fixated on it. Fixation had led to her experimenting with magic, as it usually did, and she’d created some magical emitters. They weren’t finished yet, but she had a working prototype that was created for this exact situation. If a magic-dependent creature was found in the Void and unable to get back through the Gate quickly enough, these emitters could be placed around them and, hopefully, provide enough magic to keep them alive long enough to make it safely back out of the Void.
It was genius.
It just… hadn’t been tested on anything living yet.
“You won’t be able to power them on or know how to set them up,” she said, grabbing her coat and dashing for the make-shift case she kept them in on a back shelf.
I cursed a blue streak in my head, knowing she was right but that her coming would put her in danger. I grabbed an extra set of daggers to stuff in my boots, and my handgun went into the waistband of my pants.Don’t try this at home, kids.“If you’re coming, I’m going ahead first to make sure it’s clear,” I announced as I bolted for the door. My instinct to protect her warred with my acknowledgement that she had her wasp constructs full of venom with her, as well as the desire—no, theneed—to get those eggs to safety. It felt like déjà vu from my earlier bid to rescue the water sprite, and I couldn’t let the outcome be the same this time.
I made good time on the way back to the warehouse, and I knew I’d have longer than I liked to get the building secure for Elara to arrive. Try as she might, that girl couldn’t run any faster than a mountain troll taking a Sunday stroll.
I started scanning the outside grounds, but only found two workers in the main loading bay. I grimaced a bit at the force needed to overpower both of them, but there was no way these guys didn’t know about the smuggling going on in there. These operations didn’t hire random people they couldn’t trust not to narc when they found out what was going on. Not for the first time, I wished I had the abilities that Elara possessed to control her creepy venom weapons, but then we’d probably get caught for having the venom since we were involving authorities this time. This was why I hated involving cops; they complicated everything. If Rowdy or Bane were involved in this, I was going to gut them both.
Elara arrived shortly after I’d popped the top of the crate with a pry bar. As much as I wished I could trust the Voider cops or Boundlands Enforcement to swoop in and know how to save the eggs, I absolutely, one hundred fifty percent, did not. The thought was laughable.
The eggs were nestled down neatly in the rocky medium, but there was no heat source at all. The shells were leathery and rough feeling, cold to the touch. “I don’t know how to get enough heat to all of these,” I grumbled. “I don’t even know if they’re still alive. I could hold one or maybe two against my stomach and wrap my arms around them to give them warmth, but it’s not going to be enough heat and there are too many eggs for that anyway.” I mimicked the chirping sound I’d heard earlier, hoping to get a response, but got none. “How do I know which ones to focus on?”
Elara glanced up to where I was perched precariously on the edge of the wooden crate. “How many eggs are there?” Her voice had an odd note as she worked carefully to set up the three small stone pillars around the crate.
I hopped down and worked to haul the wooden box away from the stack of crates it was stacked against so she could have more room to maneuver, grunting as I answered. “I’m not sure because they’re all buried down in here, but there’s at least three I can see from the surface.”
She made a face but continued to fuss with the pillar placement as she spoke. “I can feel magic from inside there. There’s something alive. I can look at them when I’m done, but I have to get these running. You should call Jordan.”
That was a record scratch moment if there ever was one. I blinked at her, probably looking like a startled owl, but she wasn’t looking at me. “Why on earth would I do that?”
Elara paused with her fingers on a gemstone set in the middle of the pillar she was holding and looked at me out of the corner of her eye. Her expression clearly said I was missing something. “Sidney, you said you know Jordan. What does Jordan do?” Her tone said she was trying to jog my memory.
I gently scraped some of the shipping medium away from the closest egg to examine the state of it. No mold, that was a good sign. “Uhhh, glares at me, skulks around in the shadows, smokes cheap cigarettes, and drinks blood from little plastic pouches?” I wouldn’t have known about that last one if she hadn’t told me, but I still had no idea what she was getting at.
“He also got hired on to some Boundlands’ Enforcement task force here in the Void, and I’m pretty sure he’s a fire elemental.”
I blinked repeatedly, memories from my childhood flooding back. Jordan playing with a smoldering stick as he talked with another boy while they waited for a match to start. Jordan with flaming orange eyes as he fought for the ball against a boy twice his size. Jordan wearing gloves at every match, because he couldn’t control his heat levels when he got amped up at a game. All of his game poles—the long sticks with curved hooks on the ends used for directing the ball in a game called hooks—were covered in scorched handprints from practices.How could I have forgotten that?I guess it was because those things hadn’t really mattered much to a twelve-year-old with a crush. I just saw his handsome face and the way he moved with precision down the field and the confidence with which he’d held himself… I shook my head to snap out of it.
There was no way I was going to call Jordan. What good would a fire elemental do anyway? He’d be just as likely to cook the eggs as he was to warm them. I growled. “I don’t even have his number; how would I call him?”
