The rogue regiment pixie.., p.1
The Rogue Regiment (Pixie Rebels Book 1), page 1
THE ROGUE REGIMENT
PIXIE REBELS™ BOOK ONE
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 © 2023 LMBPN Publishing
Cover by www.mihaelavoicu.com
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
A Michael Anderle Production
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LMBPN Publishing
PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy
Las Vegas, NV 89109
Version 1.00, February 2023
ebook ISBN: 979-8-88541-954-3
Print ISBN: 979-8-88878-121-0
THE ROGUE REGIMENT TEAM
Thanks to our Beta Readers
Larry Omans, David Laughlin, Malyssa Brannon, Rachel Beckford
Thanks to our JIT Readers
Dorothy Lloyd
Peter Manis
Jackey Hankard-Brodie
Diane L. Smith
Wendy L Bonell
Christopher Gilliard
Daryl McDaniel
Dave Hicks
Jan Hunnicutt
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
The Story Continues
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Author Notes - Martha Carr
Author Notes - Michael Anderle
Books By Michael Anderle
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CHAPTER ONE
The Key Bank was as dark and empty and securely shut down for the night as every other building at 11:27 p.m. in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Just not securely enough.
If anyone had bothered to take a closer look, they would have seen flickering lights inside the bank lobby that didn’t look like the normal blinking lights from security cameras and silent alarm systems. They would have seen a miniature flash of movement here, a tiny streak of color there, and the doors to the cash and safe deposit vaults slowly opening on their own.
They wouldn’t have been able to make sense of what they saw happening inside this Key Bank branch. It would have looked like fireflies were pulling money out of everywhere close to midnight when everyone else was safely tucked in bed.
This was just another night for the roving gang of pixies that was pulling off one hell of a bank heist. A well-trained gang of pixies, actually, led by Calinda who had handpicked every one of them for a particular skill set. Back on Oriceran, they had a rep and the gruesome Trevilsom prison had been mentioned more than once, but here it was a different story.
“How’s the security system looking, Marv?”
“A freakin’ joke, just like the last one.”
“Bill! I’m finally gonna get that Barbie car. You know the one, the hot Corvette! Look at all these bags they left us. I feel like I owe them a thank you note.”
“You know you can fly anywhere, right? Tiny wings on your back?”
“Yeah, but it’s nice to have choices.”
“What’re you waiting for, Kilder? Use the bags and fill ’em up.”
“Hell, yeah!”
“Hasher, what did I tell you about tagging the walls like that when we’re on a job?” yelled Calinda. Small can be beautiful was spray painted in neon orange on the wall.
“Aw, come on, Calinda. I was just—”
“What did I say?”
“I’m leaving clues behind, but how does that give us away? Nobody here will think, magic. They’ll think vertically challenged thieves.”
“Quit tagging the walls and get back to work. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Sure, sure, no problem.” Hasher added a spray-painted ant, his tag, and flapped his wings, zipping back to the teller drawers. Calinda rolled her eyes but was smiling at the same time.
“Remember, we got into this to also have fun,” said Kilder, still stuffing a bag with twenty dollar bills big enough for him to use as a bath towel.
“It’s fun till they catch us. Okay, everybody, hurry up. Ten minutes to take whatever you want and trash the rest. Then we’re outta here.”
A cash drawer at one of the teller windows pinged open, and a lime-green flash of light darted down from the ceiling and hit the open drawer with a jingle. A squeaking grunt of frustration rose from the pixie behind the counter. “Seriously? I finally get the thing open, and all they put in here are rubber bands and paperclips!”
“I could use some of those to make a hammock. Save me some, will you?” asked Hasher, his wings beating so fast they looked like a blur of glowing blue. “Bill, you help me?”
“The bank’s closed, Syd. They keep all the money over there by the… Well, look at that. Vernon got into the tellers’ cash safe.”
“Guys. Hey, guys!” Loose bills shot up from the open safe under the drive-through teller window, then fluttered all over the place in a rain of rustling green. “Look, it’s snowing!”
“That can be your cut, Vernon.”
“What? This is my idea of fun.”
“Whatever you want, man. It’s your cut.”
“Has anyone seen the triplets?”
Snorts and high-pitched snickers filled the bank’s lobby.
“I saw ’em headed for the safe deposit vault. They’re probably Scrooge McDuckin’ another crazy pile like last time.” Vernon did a backstroke, floating a foot across the lobby, kicking his small feet.
“Yeah, they’re good at that, aren’t they? Let’s get a move on, pixies. We don’t have all—" The pixies’ laughter echoed across the lobby. “What am I saying? Of course, we have all night! There’s nobody here!”
The pixies flittered back and forth across the lobby and behind the teller windows laughing and falling all over each other, shoving cash into bags at the same time. Fun is fun, but they were well trained. In the end, the mission came first.
Three of the pixies in Calinda’s gang—affectionately nicknamed “the triplets” by the others—were too far away to have heard everyone laughing in the front of the bank. It was hard for Z Thornbrook to hear much of anything beyond the click and scrape of the cylinder in the lock housing, moving with agonizing slowness as she pushed it with both hands—from inside the lock. Dark tattoos of different numbers, one per finger, stood out against her pale skin. Speculation in the group was that the numbers were a combination to something valuable on Oriceran. But Z wasn’t the type to share information and her ability to throw a punch or a magic spell at the slightest provocation was very well known. She would tell them when she was ready, or never.
A murmur of laughter reached them, and Z’s pointed ears twitched, taking it in.
“They sound like they’re wasted,” her cousin Domino muttered. “Think we should wrap it up pretty soon?”
Z grunted and doubled down on her efforts to push the mechanism’s tiny pieces into place without the key. “After I get this one open. I have a real good feeling about what’s in here.”
Domino positioned himself in front of the vault’s single long table, and didn’t flinch when a box beside Z popped open with a metallic clang. A flash of beating wings the color of dull steel darted out of the box, zipped over, and stopped beside Domino with a soft pop.
A grey pixie was quickly growing to the size of a small seventh grader, crowing Domino. He was used to it. “I got this, Echo,” said Domino. He was the quiet elf’s brother and protector. The two of them were part of the pixie clan from the mountains of Oriceran. They were known for their ability to get in and out of tight, tiny crevices and then grow large enough to push rocks out of the way.
Echo had landed perfectly, appearing next to her brother in front of the table, towering over him. She was dressed in black fishnets, knee-high combat boots, and a tank top with dozens of rips across the back. Just how she liked it. Echo was the quiet one amongst them, with a lot going on inside. Everyone in the gang knew not to underestimate her.
The added size was needed occasionally for bigger jobs when a pixie’s natural tiny stature wouldn’t cut it. “Trolls have got nothing on us,” Domino trumpeted, flying around his sister in a quick circle.
As she folded her glittering black wings against her back, Echo leaned toward
She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and whispered in Domino’s small ear.
Domino relayed, “She says, that’s what you said about the last three boxes. On the last three jobs.”
“Even a larger size, she won’t say something directly to me,” muttered Z, shaking her head. “Well, Echo, you’re not wrong.” Sighing, Z double-checked how far she had left to push. “And technically, I didn’t not find really good stuff inside all of them.”
Domino snorted and folded his arms, his golden-brown wings twitching against his back. “At this point, I honestly care more about getting out of here before Bill and Hasher start another contest to see how far they can throw each other. Still not sure why you’re into all this money. I mean, we’re magicals,” he said, holding his arms out wide.
“It’s kind of like a language thing. If you want to trade with humans, you have to speak their language, and money talks,” Z retorted with another grunt of effort. “Be grateful this stuff is still protected by vaults and alarms. I mean, me, I keep the important stuff inside an enchanted drawer or a tree stump with a few trolls I can slip some elderberry honey. That’s their love language.”
“Oh, right. Instead of a bank without wards or protective spells, so any magical can break right in and take whatever they want.”
Z leaned sideways against the cylinder and smirked. “Not just any magical, Dom. Us.”
Echo leaned toward her brother again to whisper in his ear.
Domino playfully rolled his eyes. “She says if you don’t use magic to open that lock, she will.”
“That’s not the point and it could alert the Silver Griffins. Then we would have a problem.”
“She says you’re wasting—”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it.” Z pushed away from the cylinder and stood up inside the lock, glaring at the mechanism that shouldn’t have been so difficult to push into place. She flicked her finger at it.
A bolt of bright blue light burst from her fingertip and clanged against the metal cylinder. “Silver Griffins be damned,” she muttered. The last millimeter of metal slid into place the way she wanted, and the deposit box’s lid sprang open. Z looked through the keyhole at her human-sized cousins, giants compared to their natural pixie dimensions. “I pushed it most of the way there.”
“Uh-huh. What was that?” Domino looked at his wrist and the nonexistent watch on it. “A whole five minutes? Woohoo!”
“Hey, I’m trying to be a little more disciplined.” Z jumped off the box, and her shimmering blue wings, the same hue as her short hair, carried her up and over the table toward her cousins. With a soft pop, she grew to human size as well, standing on the other side of the still snack-size Domino.
All three pixies stared at the open box.
Echo studied Z for several seconds before whispering in her brother’s ear again.
Domino snickered. “She says forget five minutes. Do you have any idea what a zap could’ve done in five seconds?” He was floating between the two, glancing back and forth.
Z’s ears twitched and she stared at his sister. “We’re the only ones in here, Echo. You don’t have to keep—”
“Yeah, but the others could walk in here at any second,” Domino interrupted. “She’s not gonna talk.”
Z glanced at the open door of the vault and shrugged. “I do know what a fun little zap can do, by the way. I’m just trying to spice things up. You know, add a challenge every once in a while.”
Her cousins choked back their laughter with poorly muffled snorts.
“This is why our family reunions turn into food fights.” It was true. Hundreds of pixies trying to pull a fast one, always making a joke. It was only a matter of time before someone threw a plump blueberry at somebody else. It always ended in a family picture, tiny arms around each other, decorated in tomato sauce and saffron.
She fixed them with a deadpan stare. “You think that’s funny.”
“Grand theft isn’t a challenge to you? You don’t need a challenge, Z.” Domino’s voice trembled in his attempt not to laugh at her. “You need a life.”
“I have a life. I spend it keeping you two ingrates alive and out of Trevilsom.”
Echo whispered in her brother’s ear, and he nodded vigorously in agreement. “She says you need a hobby, so add that to the list. Or a date. I added that one.”
“Oh, yeah. Thanks. Screw you too,” Z snickered. Her cousins laughed harder, Domino landing on Echo’s shoulder. Z nodded at the deposit box Echo had opened. “Find something useful in that, huh? Domino, you doing another one?”
“Nah.” With a grimace of distaste, he adjusted his hands on the large duffel bag he’d been holding open for the women the whole time. “I like it right here where it’s easy to see everything. You don’t want me crawling into any more locks anyway. I’d just end up showing you how it’s really done.”
“Uh-huh. Keep talking.” Shaking her head, Z rubbed her hands together over the safe deposit box, fingers twitching. “Gimme something good.”
She pulled the lid of the box back and let it ping against the table, disappointment instantly washing over her. “Another watch? Seriously?”
“Think it’s real?” Domino asked.
“That’s not my area of expertise, dude. I don’t know, somebody bothered to put it in here.”
“Well, toss it in the bag. If it’s junk, I’ll wear it.”
The jingling and clinking of gemstones and metal filled the vault as Echo pulled a gaudy necklace dripping with diamonds and rubies from her box. She shook the heavy piece of jewelry and grinned.
Domino barked a laugh. “Sure hope those are real.”
Echo tossed the fabulously valuable necklace into the duffel bag with everything else they’d scored in this room. Z tossed the possibly fake Rolex over her shoulder, and Domino jerked the duffel bag forward to catch it.
“Personal documents,” Z muttered, pulling papers out of the box and tossing them across the table in a scattered mess. “More personal documents. This guy must think he’s the King of the Earth?”
Domino cleared his throat. “Echo says there’s no such thing—”
“It’s a figure of speech.”
The siblings shared a confused look, then Domino wrinkled his nose. “Says who?”
She ignored her cousin and kept rifling through the box. Passports. Credit cards. Wads of cash in four foreign currencies.
Might be useful. Weird. This looks like the kinda box that’d have a stupid gun at the bottom, and that’s the last thing we need to have around Hasher or Bill. Wait, what?
Z froze with a passport in her hand and stared at the last item in the box. It wasn’t a gun.
What in the world is some man with fake names and plenty of cash doing with Oriceran symbols on a shady looking package hidden at the bottom of his safe deposit box? And where have I seen this one before? Z tapped the top of a squiggle that ended in an ‘o’.
The package at the bottom of the box was a little bigger than a standard mailing envelope. Judging by the way it bulged around the middle and pulled at the corners, it was stuffed full of something.
“Something far more important was locked up with the rest of its owner’s mostly useless junk,” muttered Z. She looked up at Domino, excited and calm. It’s what always happened to her when a job took an unexpected turn. “It has to be magical since, as a general rule, humans didn’t go around stamping Oriceran symbols on their paperwork.”
