One Fell Sweep

CHAPTER 6

I closed my eyes and envisioned the inn. When one entered Gertrude Hunt through the front door, they saw a perfectly ordinary front room. Directly opposite the front door, on the wall, hung the portrait of my parents. It was unavoidable. If you entered the inn, you saw the portrait. During the peace summit, I formed a hallway behind the wall, moving the portrait back slightly. If you walked to the portrait, you had the option of turning right or left. One way would take you to the stairs leading to the Holy Anocracy’s wing and the other would bring you to the barracks of the Hope-Crushing Horde. Both places opened to the Grand Ballroom. According to human science, I’d bent space in ways it wasn’t supposed to function, but the inn was its own microcosm, reaching through dimensional boundaries and tangling the fabric of space.

In my mind, I pushed the Grand Ballroom back. It slid deeper into the expanse of the inn, the hallways leading to it stretching to maintain the structure of entrances and exits. Ten feet, twenty, fifty… Good enough. I reached deep below me. The core of the room pulsed and I pulled it up. A deep rumble shuddered through the inn as the chamber slid into its new place directly behind my parents’ portrait. I felt the cables sliver through the walls, anchoring the room’s equipment. The wall under the portrait split, pulling apart as if it were liquid to form a doorway. A wooden tendril caught the portrait before it had a chance to fall and carried it into the new chamber. I followed it.

The new space was a perfect sphere, its walls a smooth beige. In a time of need, the inn would send the feed from the outer cameras to it, giving me a 360-degree view of the inn’s grounds. In the center of the room, a section of the wood lay exposed, its telltale striped texture reminiscent of mahogany and bristlecone pine. A living branch of the inn, an artery to its heart. This was the war room, the heart of the inn’s defenses.

I stepped onto the wood. Magic waited, expectant. I closed my eyes and let it permeate my senses. My power stretched, connecting, flowing to the furthest branches of Gertrude Hunt. If I had wings, that’s what it would be like to spread them.

The bond between the inn and the innkeeper was far greater than the bond between a servant and master or pet and its owner. We existed in symbiosis. When an innkeeper died, the inn went dormant, falling into a deep sleep. With each passing year without a bond, the inn would slip further and further away, until finally it petrified and died. When I had found Gertrude Hunt, its sleep was so deep and it had gone so far, I wasn’t sure I could wake it.

The bond went both ways. Few innkeepers survived the destruction of their inn. Some died. Others lost their minds. The inn would do anything for the innkeeper, and the innkeeper had to protect the inn with their life. And that’s exactly what I would do.

The inn’s defenses shifted, as I realigned them. The last time I’d used the war room, I had configured Gertrude Hunt to repel a small army of bounty hunters after Caldenia arrived at the inn. The bounty hunters were truly an army of one – despite their number, every one of them was in it for themselves. They didn’t trust each other and hadn’t been interested in coordinating their efforts. The metal inlay on the Draziri leader’s forehead meant he likely led his own flock, a clan. Flocks were highly organized and disciplined. The Draziri would attack as a team. And they likely wouldn’t try to snipe the Hiru the way the bounty hunters tried to snipe Caldenia. Murdering the Hiru would be a religious triumph for them. They would try to breach the inn’s defenses and close in for the kill.

I tested the feeds from the cameras, turning slowly. Night had fallen, but the inn’s tech needed only a hint of light to present a clear image. The view of the orchard, the lawn, the oaks, the street, Sean’s Ford F-150 truck…

Sean’s truck. He’d said something about getting an overnight bag and left shortly before Mr. Rodriguez and Tony had taken off.

It was a short move, since his house was just down the street, but the truck was fully loaded and covered with a tarp. The truck springs creaked as he maneuvered it up the driveway and behind the inn.

Sean got out of the truck. He wore black pants and a skintight ballistic silk shirt, dark gray and black, designed to stop both a kinetic impact from a bullet and a low-power shot from an energy weapon. This was worth a closer look.

I waved my fingers half an inch and the inn zoomed in, expanding the image to the entire wall in front of me. The ballistic silk clung to Sean like a glove, tracing the contours of his broad shoulders and powerful back. Some men had muscular backs but a wider waist so they looked almost rectangular. The difference between Sean’s shoulders and his narrow waist was so pronounced, his back tapered into an almost triangular shape. His legs were long, his arms muscular. I liked the way he moved, fast, sure, but with a natural grace that very strong men sometimes had. There was something dangerous about him and his spare, economical movements. Something that said that if violence occurred, his response would be instant and lethal, and idiot that I was, I could stare at him all day…

“So what’s with you and the werewolf?” My sister asked next to my ear.

I jumped.

I didn’t hear her come in. I didn’t feel her come in, which was so much worse.

“Nothing.”

“Mhm,” Maud said. “That’s why you’re ogling him here on a giant screen.”

“I wasn’t ogling.” Yes, yes I was.

“You were holding your breath, Dina.”

“I wasn’t.”

Maud studied the screen. “He is kind of hot.”

“Kind of?” There was no kind of about it.

“There needs to be more…” Maud held her hands wide apart.

“More what?”

“Muscle. Bulk. I like them… oversized.”

“He’s big enough.” He was over six feet tall. “And he’s very strong.”

“Oh I don’t doubt that he’s strong and really fast, too. But… bigger.”

I squinted at her. “I thought you were over your vampire fixation.”

“I didn’t say anything about vampires. I just like larger men.”

“Sure, aha.”

Sean pulled back the tarp, revealing crates and weapons. He swung a long slender weapon onto his shoulder and picked up a black crate that seemed to swallow the light.

Maud squinted at the screen. “Is that a specter sniper rifle he’s packing?”

“Mhm. Looks like a recent model, too.”

Specter weapons used an electromagnetic field rather than a chemical reaction to launch projectiles. Jam-proof and almost completely devoid of moving and potentially malfunctioning parts, specter sniper rifles fired bullets at just below 300m/s, under the speed of sound, avoiding the sonic boom better known as the crack of a bullet. They were completely silent.

Maud was studying a twisted shape in the truck. “You don’t have a HELL unit?”

“I have two and some smaller solid lasers linked by a computer into a defense net. But he doesn’t know that.”

“Aw,” Maud said. “He brought a High Energy Liquid Laser to protect you. Twue love.”

“Shut up,” I told her.

“Seriously though, that’s some expensive hardware.”

She was right. Liquid lasers were like computers. The smaller they were, the more they cost, and the portable unit in Sean’s truck was way out of my budget. My two units were each the size of a medium-range sedan, and both were at least two centuries old. Compared to Sean’s sleek modern beast, they were antiques, but they packed a hell of a punch.

“Envirosuit, camo cloak, pulse sidearm… He’s got enough weapons to finish a small war. How can he afford all this? Is he secretly a prince? Are you dating a galactic weapon-lord? Does he have a rich father or possibly brother?”

“No! He isn’t a prince, he isn’t a gun runner, and his father isn’t rich, he is a lawyer, and Sean is the only child. He did some highly paid mercenary work.”

“So you are dating him.”

“I didn’t say that.” Technically going on a date once didn’t strictly qualify as dating.

“Sean and Dina sitting in a tree. K-i-s-s…”

“I will so punch you.”

Sean looked up. I could’ve sworn he heard me, except that the inn was soundproof. I concentrated and projected my voice.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” he said. He didn’t jump, even though I just spoke to him from seemingly thin air.

“Do you need a hand with all of that equipment?”

“Oh sure, he totally needs your help with his equipment,” Maud whispered.

I stomped on her foot, but she was fast, and I only got the edge of her toes. There was no way to just project my voice. I also projected the sounds around me.

“Do you have an armory?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Can I have access to it?”

“Full access,” Maud whispered and batted her eyelashes.

“Yes,” I told him, opening a tunnel in the ground next to him. “Enter…” if I said tunnel, Maud wouldn’t be able to contain herself. “The path I just made. Underground. The inn will move the weapons there.”

“I thought I’d visit Baha-char after I’m done settling all that in,” he said. “I need to talk to Wilmos.”

“Sure. I’ll open the door for you, but could you take Orro with you? He wants some sort of weird spices and I don’t want him to go by himself.”

“Will do.”

He grinned at me, the look on his face positively evil, and went down into the tunnel.

I watched the inn swallow the truck whole, pulling it into the garage, and turned to my sister. “I hate you.”

“Did you see how he smiled?” Maud asked. “Do you think he heard me? I wasn’t projecting.”

“Yeah, he heard you. My neighbors across the street heard you. Don’t you know how to whisper?”

“Are you blushing?” Maud asked.

“Here!” I opened a ladder to the battle attic and dropped it into the hallway. “Since you butted in, you can check the pulse cannons instead of me. Make yourself useful.”

“Yes, Mother.” Maud paused in the doorway and took in the war room. Her voice turned quiet and wistful. “Brings back memories.”

Yes, it did. When I had called up the war room from the depths of Gertrude Hunt for the first time, I had reshaped it to mirror the war room in our parents’ inn. Mother made us do countless drills in a war room just like this one.

“We’ll get them back,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “We will.”

Maud climbed the attic ladder. I huffed and went to splash some cold water on my face. I was blushing, and my whole face felt like it was on fire.

Twenty minutes later I watched Sean and Orro walk through the door into the bright sunshine of Baha-char. Sean had pulled a tattered cloak over himself, hiding his face within the depths of a hood. Orro, on other hand, held his head high, but all his spikes shivered slightly, ready to be raised at a moment’s notice. I seriously doubted the Draziri would jump them there, but if they did, they would regret it.

I went back to the kitchen. In Orro’s absence, Arland had brought down a grey bag, which now lay beside him in a chair, and spread his armor on the dining room table. He’d turned off the lights. Only the two table lamps were on, their warm radiance soothing and buttery yellow. A kit similar to the one he’d sent to Maud rested on the table, opened, its contents backlit by a peach glow. The tiny vials of various liquids shone weakly with borrowed light. A quiet melody was playing from the kit, the sounds of silver bells and the measured chant of female voices soothing but mysterious, as if they were weaving some secret magic.

Helen sat in the corner, quietly fascinated.

“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” I asked.

“No.” She yawned. “I’m not sleepy.”

“Let her stay,” Arland said, his voice quiet. “I remember sitting just like that watching my mother. The smells and the lights, it’s comforting.”

I sat in the chair. It was comforting to watch in a way. There was a meditative, unhurried quality about his movements, as if he were going through a ritual he’d done hundreds of times before. The light played on his profile and the strands of long blond hair that had escaped his ponytail. He was right. Helen probably watched her father or my sister check their armor just like this.

For a while he worked quietly. Helen’s head drooped. She sighed and put her head on the table onto her arms. Her eyes closed. She wasn’t quite asleep yet. I could see her eyelashes trembling. A few more minutes and I would let the inn carry her to bed.

“How well do you know Sean Evans, my lady?” Arland asked quietly.

“As well as I know you.” Actually, I knew Sean better. He had shared his secrets with me. Arland hadn’t.

“I don’t believe he is who he presents himself to be,” Arland said.

“What makes you think that?”

Arland raised his hand with a small tool in it and drew an imaginary line. It started low, climbed upward, and evened out in an arc. “This is a standard planet-to-orbit shuttle trajectory.”

He moved his tool low and drew a second line. This time it kept going low, accelerated, and curved sharply, shooting up. The trajectory was almost completely inverse. “This is what Sean Evans did.”

“I don’t follow.”

“The second trajectory sharply accelerates the craft before the drastic atmospheric climb. It’s less comfortable for the passengers and it’s harder on the shuttle.”

I could testify to it being less comfortable. At the time, it felt like a rhino sat on my chest.

“There is only one place where that trajectory is absolutely necessary. The atmospheric anomalies there make flight unpredictable and unsafe, so it is necessary to attain the proper speed and acceleration at low altitude before punching through the atmosphere as fast as possible while at the same time ascertaining that the way is clear and you’re not taking the craft straight into an anomaly that suddenly formed above your shuttle.”

“And where is this place?” I knew the answer.

“Nexus,” Arland said.

That’s what I thought.

“I don’t know what he told you he did, but I asked him where he’d learned to fly.”

“I was there. I remember. He said Wilmos taught him.”

Arland nodded. “I did some checking through our databanks. Wilmos isn’t unknown to my House. I give you my word as a knight of the Holy Anocracy that Wilmos Gerwar knows the proper trajectory for a planet-to-orbit shuttle ascent.”

“You think Sean was on Nexus.”

Arland nodded. “The Merchants employed many mercenaries.”

“Would it be such a bad thing if he was?”

“Nexus changes people,” Arland said. “I’m concerned only for your safety.”

“In that case she should be concerned about you as well,” Maud said from the doorway. “After all, you’ve done two tours, Lord Marshal.”

Arland raised his head and studied her.

My sister walked in and put her armor on the table. The inn’s wall opened and the repair kit Arland had given her slipped out. She caught the heavy box and placed it on the table.

“I’m a knight. I’ve been conditioned to handle the rigors of war from childhood.”

Maud spread her armor out, her eyes half closed under her long eyelashes as she surveyed it. “You would be surprised how many knights break under the rigors of war, my lord. They break and they run, as their honor lies dying behind them.”

“I do not run, my lady.”

Maud arched her eyebrow. If I didn’t know, I would’ve sworn she was a vampire. “I have run, my lord. And I would do it again, if the circumstances called for it. Honor can’t keep my daughter alive, but I can.”

“There is a difference between blindly fleeing for your life and a strategic retreat because the battle is lost,” Arland said, spraying pearlescent solution onto his armor.

“Sometimes it is very difficult to tell the difference between the two.” Maud tapped the kit. It unfurled like a flower. She selected a narrow tool with her long elegant fingers and concentrated on some imperceptible flaw on the right shoulder.

Arland’s eyes narrowed. “Although if I wore your armor, I would run, my lady. Is that a manual terminal on your vambrace?”

Maud grimaced.

“Was your crest damaged?”

“It was ripped off my armor when House Ervan exiled me and my husband, my lord. You’ve read the file.”

“You seem very sure of that, my lady.”

She shot him a quick glance. “A knight conditioned to handle the rigors of war, such as yourself, would make sure he knew exactly who he allowed on board his destroyer.”

Arland opened his bag, took out a black box, and set it by his armor. Square, six inches by six, the box was completely solid. No seam, no line marking the place where the lid fit. Just a solid box that seemed to absorb the light.

Maud’s eyes widened. Arland went back to working on his armor. Maud did as well. Some sort of strange vampire communication was taking place here.

“To exile a child is unprecedented,” Arland said.

“It is,” Maud agreed, making valiant efforts to ignore the box.

“What led to that decision?”

My sister smiled. “Perhaps, one day I will tell you, Lord Marshal.”

“Regardless of the reasons, you’ve been wronged. The child has been wronged. The Holy Anocracy doesn’t have so many children that it can throw them away. Especially one as gifted as Helen.”

“You’re too kind.”

“Perhaps you would allow me to ask for a small kindness in return,” Arland said. “Allow me to correct a small part of the injustice.”

He pushed the box toward her and proceeded to ignore it.

This was better than a soap opera.

Maud touched the top of the box. The lid slid apart section by section. She dipped her fingers into it and withdrew a crest. Unlike Arland’s crest, which showed a stylized snarling krahr in red on black, this crest was solid black and blank. A no-House crest. I’d seen them before. Vampires who’d left their House wore them. They functioned just like the regular House crests: they controlled the armor, sent out signals that communicated with ships and defensive networks, and stored information.

Maud pondered it as if it were a diamond.

“Thank you.”

Arland inclined his head and went back to his armor.

The inn’s magic chimed in my head. The Draziri were on the move.

I rose. “We have visitors.”

It started as a single ping, an intruder brushing against the boundary. It touched the boundary and burst into half-a-dozen intruders moving fast. The Draziri weren’t playing. Good, because I wasn’t either.

I crossed the threshold into the war room and stepped onto the wood. Wing was in his room and Helen in hers. Maud must’ve taken her upstairs. Perfect. A deep chime sounded through Gertrude Hunt, a clear high sound impossible to ignore. External shutters and walls clanged, locking down. My voice carried through the inn, echoing through every room.

“Gertrude Hunt is under attack. We are under lockdown until further notice. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

Thin flexible shoots spiraled from the edges of the wooden limb on which I stood, forming a two-foot-tall lattice. I held out my broom. It split into a thousand glowing blue threads that streaked into my robe, adhering to my skin and to the lattice of the inn. It would make Gertrude Hunt and I faster.

The walls around me faded, presenting a 360-degree view of the inn grounds. In the distance, from the north, six orange-sized spheres floated about two feet off the ground, slowly making their way into my territory. A quick scan told me they were rigged to explode.

Magic shifted within me, announcing another intrusion. Ha! He thought I wouldn’t notice. Dear Draziri Commander had a lot to learn about the capabilities of innkeepers.

Caldenia walked through the door, carrying a glass of wine. I smiled at her and let her usual chair rise from the floor. She sat and grinned back at me, flashing her inhumanly sharp teeth.

My sister and Arland reached the doorway at the same time. They would’ve collided, but years of politeness ingrained in Arland took over and he smoothly halted, letting Maud burst into the room. My sister carried her sword. The Marshal of House Krahr was wearing armor.

Maud looked at Caldenia. “Your Grace? Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in your rooms?”

“Nonsense, my dear.” Caldenia’s eyes gleamed. “I love watching her work.”

“He deployed scout spheres,” Arland said, watching the handful of robotic scouts meander their way into my territory. “He’s trying to map your range. An expensive way to do it.”

“Expensive and pointless,” Maud said. “They’ve been in range for the last six meters. She isn’t just going to destroy them the moment they touch the boundary.”

I concentrated on the depiction of the grounds. An area from the west side rushed at me, zooming closer and closer. The brush grew to mountain size, the individual blades of grass became a forest, and within that forest a chain of ten ants hurried toward the inn.

I’d scanned the ants when I first felt them crossing the boundary and now I tossed the results of the scan onto the screen so the others could see it. One individual ant expanded, rotating, the analysis rolling next to its image, listing the complex readouts. I was looking at a masterpiece of cyborg technology: a living insect carrying within it roughly a million nanobots. Silent, virtually undetectable by all but the most advanced scanners, the ants were meant to reach Gertrude Hunt and let loose their horde of tiny robots, capable of everything from surveillance to sabotage. The Draziri had no idea the architecture of the inn was fluid and changed at my whim. He was trying to map out Gertrude Hunt, looking for weak points.

Arland bared his teeth. “Clever bastard.”

“Not as clever as he thinks,” I murmured.

Magic tugged on me. I opened a second screen in the wall. The Hiru appeared on it.

“How may I be of service?” I asked.

“I realize… this time is not the best.” The Hiru’s voice sounded strained. “The first Archivarian has arrived on Earth.”

Not good. “Where?”

The Hiru raised his right palm. A small map of Red Deer appeared, a tiny glowing dot marking one of the streets. Walmart parking lot. Well, at least the first member of the Archivarius wouldn’t stand out.

“What does it look like?”

The Hiru touched his palm and a projection appeared of a man in his mid-thirties, brown-skinned, with a bald head and an intelligent face. His features were off somehow. Something about them telegraphed alien so loudly, it practically slapped your senses. It took me a moment to figure it out. His face had no pores. No wrinkles, no small imperfections, and no variations in tone troubled his skin. He looked plastic. The effect was freakish. But in darkness he would pass for a human.

“The Archivarian must be retrieved,” the Hiru said. “Immediately.”

No pressure. The ants were still a good two hundred yards away. The spheres drifted perilously close to the point where they would become a problem.

“The retrieval may have to wait.”

The Hiru leaned forward, his voice gasping. “The Archivarian cannot maintain its form in your planetary conditions. He must be submerged in inert gas to contain himself.”

Inert gas meant an argon chamber. A piece of cake, but only on the inn grounds.

“What happens when he loses his form?” I asked.

“He is a being of energy.”

Not good. So not good. The release of energy could mean anything from explosion, to bright light, to complete disintegration of the local space-time continuum.

“He must be retrieved. We have risked everything.” Desperation vibrated in his voice.

This information would’ve been excellent to have had earlier. “How long?”

“Thirty-four minutes.”

Damn it. I tossed a counter on the wall, seconds ticking back from thirty-four minutes to zero.

“Very well,” I said. “How will the Archivarian know my people?”

“Take this.” The Hiru’s left forearm slid open, revealing a small pen-like transmitter. “He will hunt your signal.”

And so would the Draziri, if they ever put two and two together. Arguing about it would waste time we didn’t have. After we dealt with this initial assault, the Hiru and I would have to sit down and talk.

I nodded and cut off the communication.

“I’ll take care of it,” Maud said.

I loved my sister so much. “Take my car. It’s bulletproof. Walmart is only seven or eight minutes from here.”

“My lady,” Arland said, and it took me a second to register that he wasn’t talking to me. “I would be honored to assist.”

“I can handle it,” Maud said.

“Take the vampire, my dear,” Caldenia said. “You never know when you may require muscle.”

Maud’s eyebrows knitted together.

I pulled the feed from the Park Street. At first glance everything appeared normal. Fortunately, the inn had been recording the street for the last four hours. A comparative analysis took only a few fractions of a second and the contours of four Draziri lit up on the screen, each wrapped in a high tech camo cloak. The cloak mimicked the surroundings the same way a chameleon would, replicating the fence and the bushes with painstaking accuracy. They must’ve had some way to block their body heat as well, because they didn’t show up on the infrared scan.

The Draziri waited in the shadows, two by Mr. Ramirez’s fence and two on the other side of the Camelot road leading into Avalon subdivision. They caught a lucky break—Mr. Ramirez had left for his weekly bowling meeting and took his dog with him.

“How much cover can you give me?” Maud asked.

“I can do Mom’s Take Care,” I said.

“That should be good enough.”

“Exit won’t be a problem,” Arland said. “But the return may present a slight difficulty.”

Thirty minutes. We had to decide now.

Arland was right. The Draziri wouldn’t expect them to leave, but they would expect the vehicle to return. My range was limited and I was bound by the innkeeper laws. I couldn’t do anything too loud or too obvious. The Draziri would ambush the vehicle on its way back. One well aimed shot from any number of fun galactic weapons, and my sister, Arland, and the Archivarian would be vaporized.

A quick calculation took place behind Maud’s eyes. She turned to the vampire. “Lord Arland, it is my honor to accept your generous offer.”

Arland unleashed his smile. It bounced from Maud like dry peas from the wall.

My sister strained, concentrating. I felt the inn move in response. The ceiling above us parted and car keys fell into her palm.

“Told you,” I said. “Like riding a bicycle. Don’t forget the Hiru’s gadget.”

She turned and ran. Arland followed her.

The robot spheres clicked in unison, preparing to explode. I smiled and punched a hole through reality. For an instant, an orange plain flashed under a purple sky, a vista that couldn’t be found anywhere on Earth. The dimensional rip bit at the spheres. The robotic mines vanished, transported in a moment to a planet thousands of light-years away. There was no return from Kolinda.

I let the ants continue.

“You’re toying with him, dear,” Caldenia said.

“I’m letting him think he still has an ace up his sleeve.”

“I approve.” She smiled, her eyes sparkling with delight.

The image of the garage appeared on my left. Maud revved the engine. Arland sat in the passenger seat, a positron cannon in his hand.

I took in magic, building it up.

“What is ‘Mom’s Take Care?’” Caldenia asked.

“You will see.”

The magic wound around me, tight and ready. The inn creaked.

Maud gave me an okay through the windshield. I shoved with my magic. The garage door vanished. A tunnel of dirt, stone and the inn’s roots whipped into existence, spinning down the driveway and turning right, down the street. Maud gunned it. My car shot through the tunnel like a cannonball and burst onto the pavement. The Draziri stared after it, too stunned to fire off a shot. I pulled the tunnel back and dissolved it. The whole thing took two seconds. From the street, the house once again appeared normal, just as it had been a few moments ago.

The counter said twenty-nine minutes. Good luck, Maud.

“Our mother used this to provide additional security for high-risk guests leaving the inn,” I said.

“Your mother is a remarkable woman,” Caldenia said. “Now what shall we do about the ants?”

“I think they are having such a nice time walking,” I said. “We should let them continue.”

Caldenia leaned forward and watched as I broke the laws of physics to keep the ants moving. The soil beneath them shifted subtly, a large chunk of the lawn crawling back just as they moved forward. From their monitors, the ground would appear perfectly stationary. Eventually whoever was monitoring them would figure out that they were no closer to the house than they were ten minutes ago, but it would buy me some time.

It bought me fifteen minutes. The ants finally turned, attempting to exit and I jettisoned them into Kolinda’s wastes.

Thirteen minutes.

Across the road, a Draziri abandoned subtlety, hopped onto the wooden fence, and ran along it with breathtaking grace all the way to the right, out of the range of my quiet guns. Another dashed in the opposite direction. The rest followed, splitting into two groups. They were moving through the subdivision, half to the left and half to the right, not sure from which direction the vehicle would be returning.

I launched two probes. The tiny cameras streaked along the street, tracking the Draziri and the split screen showed two groups of invaders. The one on the left holed up next to Timber Trail, a quiet street that was the newest addition to the Avalon subdivision. Lined with houses, it led to an elementary school. The group on the right crouched on the fence just behind the bend of the road. One, two, three, four… Eight on each side.

He had a lot more troops than I expected.

Eight was definitely too many and from what I had seen so far, the Draziri were well-armed. I had a choice where to send Maud. She could approach the inn from the right, coming back exactly the way she came, or from the left, after she looped through some parallel streets.

Approaching from the right was the only responsible option. On the left, the houses on Timber Trail were packed like sardines on tiny lots. There was no way a fight wouldn’t be noticed, and some of the energy rifles the Draziri carried would slice through stucco and drywall like knife through butter. We would have bystander casualties.

On the right, a solid stone fence separated the bulk of the subdivision from the street, providing at least some protection for the houses. But Park Street veered slightly just past the inn. No direct shot. I had some things that could shoot around corners, but they honed in on body heat and the Draziri were masking theirs.

Magic chimed. Sean and Orro.

“In here,” I called.

Sean appeared on the doorstep of the war room, a small bag in his hands, and came to stand next to me.

“My sister and Arland went to get the first Archivarian,” I said.

“The counter?” Sean asked.

“Deadline to the Archivarian assuming its true form.”

“What form is that?”

“Energy. There are eight Draziri waiting for them on each side of the street. Both groups are too far for any of my quiet guns. I have the needler, but its darts hone in on body heat and they are not showing up on my infrared scanner. Anything else will be too loud and too obvious.”

My phone rang and I took the call. My sister’s voice echoed through the war room.

“We have him.”

I knew she could do it.

“Do you want me to come back the same way?”

She had to come back the same way, from the right, she would drive into an ambush. Even if I threw the tunnel as far as it could go, it wouldn’t be enough. The Draziri would hit the car before it ever reached the tunnel.

I’d have to use the bats from the cave on the inn’s grounds as a living shield. My heart squeezed itself into a tiny ball. The bats were a part of the inn and I would sacrifice every last one to save my sister, but they wouldn’t be enough. I had no way to bring her in safely.

Seven minutes. I had to answer her.

“Let me do my job,” Sean said.

“There are eight of them on each side.”

He looked at me, his eyes pure wolf, and I realized it didn’t matter how many of them there were. He would still go out there.

“Yes,” I said to Maud. “Come back the same way.”

She hung up.

“Left or right?” he asked.

“Right.”

“I need the specter.”

“Give him everything he wants,” I told Gertrude Hunt.

He dropped his bag and left the war room. I tracked him through the inn, as he stepped out of the kitchen door, a dark shape on the screen. Sean dropped his cloak and pulled out the curved knife with a green blade. His eyes shone with bright amber, reflecting the moonlight. He raised his hand and the specter rifle fell into it. Sean sprinted across the lawn into the trees, fast and silent like a phantom, and vanished into the woods, past the range of my scanners.

I pulled the feed from my probe, expanding it so it took up most of the wall directly in front of me. The Draziri had positioned themselves on the long wooden fence, crouching like camouflaged creepy angels. They didn’t have much choice. The fence ran for the next quarter of a mile up the street.

A vehicle roared down the road. I tensed.

A white truck thundered past us. Not Maud.

Three minutes.

The first Draziri on the right dropped like a stone. Sean had fired the specter rifle.

The second Draziri, directly behind the first, fell without a sound.

The remaining Draziri leapt off the fence and dashed across the street. The night lit up with orange flashes of light as they discharged their energy rifles. Sean landed in the middle of them, fast, so shockingly fast. He gutted the third Draziri with a short precise slash, reversed the blade, and sliced the fourth attacker’s throat. Blood sprayed.

The surviving Draziri spun, revealing short blades of bright pale metal. They attacked, twisting and leaping as if dancing, and Sean sliced through them, cutting a path as if he knew where they would be before they decided to move there.

Two Draziri peeled from the group on the left and dashed toward the fight right through my kill zone. Oh no, you don’t. The short-range pulse cannon fired once, its invisible beam slicing through the area. Two smoking corpses crumpled to the ground.

Sean’s attackers were down to one, but that last Draziri moved as if he were weightless, launching into a whirlwind of slashes and cuts and dancing away from Sean before the green blade could find him.

The phone rang. Arland’s voice filled the room. “Three streets out.”

Eighty seconds.

On the screen a Draziri blade caught Sean’s side. My heart jumped into my throat.

Sean buried his knife in the Draziri’s chest, freed it with a sharp tug, and leapt into the scraggly Texas woods bordering the inn.

“Clear,” I said and hurled the tunnel down the street. It caught the car. Maud drove into the garage, the car screeching to a halt. The Archivarian stumbled out. A cylindrical vat shot out of the ground, enclosing him. The top of the vat clanged closed. Argon filled the inside.

Ten seconds.

Nine.

Five.

Three.

Two...

One.

The Archivarian looked at my sister from the inside of the vat, still humanoid.

We made it.

Sean.

I ran out of the war room and through the lawn and the woods to the east.

Be okay. Please be okay.

He crossed the boundary and I saw him running toward me. We collided and I threw my arms around him. For a second he stood there, as if not sure what to do and then he hugged me to him.

“Are you okay?” I whispered.

“I am now,” he said.

The problem with all men, and werewolves in particular, was their odd perspective. Sean viewed the gash across his ribs as a scratch. I viewed it as an open wound made by a monomolecular blade able to cut through the werewolf armor and contaminate his body with extraterrestrial microorganisms and possibly poison. We agreed to meet somewhere in the middle. He allowed me to sterilize and seal the wound, and I promised to stop threatening to restrain him.

“I’m curious,” Maud said, when I was finished. “Do you always threaten people who try to help you or is he special?”

“He isn’t,” Arland volunteered. “She threatened to drown me in sewage once.”

“The Lord Marshal deserved it.” I put down the surgical tool and examined my handiwork. The wound was reduced to a hair-thin red scar. Considering how well werewolves had been bioengineered, it would likely heal fast. In a few days, you wouldn’t even be able to tell that someone tried to kill him.

We were in the front room. It had enough seating for everyone and I had formed three different screens to watch the surroundings. On the front screen, the six remaining Draziri were carefully retrieving the bodies of their dead. They had given the inn a wide berth, using back streets to skirt it and stay out of the range of my guns. They shouldn’t have bothered. As an innkeeper, my job was to respond to threats, not to initiate an attack. Once the skirmish ended, they were safe. As long as they didn’t try to shoot at the inn, they could parade in front of it all day long.

Sean pulled his T-shirt back on. I wouldn’t have minded if he had kept it off a few minutes longer, but with my sister here, there would be hell to pay later if I looked at him too long or noticed how muscular his back was. Or noticed his abs. I had taken a close look at his stomach while working on the gash, but it wouldn’t hurt to give it a second glance.

“Did you find what you were looking for at Baha-char?” I asked.

“Yes.” Sean pulled a small square of a data chip from his pocket and offered it to me. I took it off his finger, called up a terminal from the wall, and deposited the chip onto it. The terminal’s surface swallowed the chip. The face of the Draziri who’d come to talk to me appeared on the center screen.

I rose. “Let me get the Hiru for this.”

I walked into the depths of the inn past the Hiru’s quarters to a narrow chamber protected by a door. A series of recesses waited in the wall, the first filled with an argon tank. The Hiru stood by it, looking at the humanoid creature inside.

I fought a valiant battle against the smell. The human nose was supposed to stop recognizing an odor when exposed to it for several minutes, but the scent of the Hiru pretty much destroyed that rule. Only sheer willpower prevented me from gagging. The Hiru didn’t notice, absorbed in watching the tank.

“What do you see?” I asked.

The awkward alien sighed, his voice sad. “The future.”

We watched the first member of the Archivarius rest on the floor in a trance. I had asked if it required anything, but the Hiru told me the tank was sufficient.

“There are too many spaces,” the Hiru said, pointing at the wall. “There are ten.”

“How many should there be?”

“Nine.”

That meant we still had to retrieve eight members of the hive. I had hoped for two or three.

“You must give us more of a warning next time,” I said. “We need to know in advance where the next member will appear and when. If you don’t give us enough warning, the Draziri will get them first or we may not be able to retrieve them in time.”

“I will try,” the Hiru promised. “My people are trying to make sure the Archivarius is safe but matters are complicated. They are in hiding.”

And any appearance of the Hiru would draw the Draziri like moths to a flame.

“We are about to review the information about the Draziri who attacked us. Will you join us? Your input may prove valuable.”

The Hiru didn’t respond.

I waited. I had a feeling he wanted to stand right here and guard the tank.

“I will,” he said finally.

I led him back to the front room and watched everyone attempt to keep their stomach contents where they belonged. He stopped in a corner, away from everyone. Orro watched from the kitchen doorway. Her Grace sat in her usual chair.

“We’re ready now,” I told Sean.

“His name is Kiran Mrak za Ezara za Krala-Kric,” Sean said.

“That’s a mouthful,” Arland put in.

“The Draziri society is segregated into flocks,” I said. “The flock usually consists of the leader and his family and the retainers who choose to serve them. The greater the leader, the bigger the flock. Some flocks have thousands of members, some only a dozen or so. The name translates into ‘Kiran Mrak, the First Bird of the Flock Something’. I don’t know that last word.”

“Wraith,” Sean said.

“High aspirations,” Maud said.

“The name was chosen long before Kiran was born,” Sean said. “He controls about three hundred families and a force of roughly two to three hundred mercenaries. He could have many more, but he’s selective in his hiring. It’s not a big flock, but it’s a wealthy one,” Sean continued. “Flock Wraith plays dirty. Kiran took it over from his father twelve years ago, and he’s been busy.”

“What is the nature of his business?” Arland asked.

“Arms dealing, espionage, but mostly assassinations. That last one bit him in the ass.” Sean glanced at me. “Turn the page for me?”

“Next image,” I said.

A new Draziri appeared on the screen, this one old, his skin sagging and wrinkled, his long feather-hair a dark crimson. A gold design was etched into his forehead, a stylized shape of a bird with four wings spread.

“An onizeri?” I murmured. “He killed a high priest?”

Sean nodded.

Wow.

“I thought their society was a theocracy,” Arland said.

“It is,” Sean told him. “The high priests are guarded so well, they’re almost impossible to kill. When contracts on them pop up, the price is always outrageous. Usually nobody takes the bait and if someone does, they don’t come back.”

“So, he’s a renegade,” Caldenia said.

I startled. She had been so quiet, I forgot she was there.

“I didn’t know Wilmos dealt in assassinations,” I said.

“He doesn’t,” Sean said. “He deals in mercenary talent. He doesn’t walk in the shadows, but he knows where to look. Kiran Mrak has made himself quite a name in certain circles.”

“How much money did he make from that kill?” Maud asked.

“Enough to buy a lot of expensive toys,” Sean said. “But I don’t think he did it for money.”

“He did it out of pride,” Caldenia said.

Sean nodded. “He’s the only one on record in the last two hundred years who managed to pull it off. The last assassin who succeeded before Kiran was named Rookar Mrak za Ezara za Krala-Kric.”

“A relative,” Caldenia said.

“Great-grandfather,” Sean said.

“So it’s a family tradition,” Arland said. “Once every couple of generations they kill a holy man just to dissuade anyone from thinking they’ve wavered in their commitment to crime, murder, and blasphemy.”

“Pretty much,” Sean said. “Some of the families have been with the flock for generations. They’re very good at what they do. What I killed out there tonight was hired muscle. There was only one member of the flock among them and he left me a reminder to take them seriously.”

“In short, we’ve been targeted by a Draziri crime syndicate specializing in murder and willing to assassinate their own priests.” This was just getting better and better.

Maud leaned back and laughed.

I looked at her.

“You don’t do anything halfway,” she said.

“Question.” Arland raised his index finger. “Is he excommunicated?”

“Apparently, the Draziri don’t excommunicate, they condemn,” Sean said. “There are only two ways a Draziri can get into heaven and receive his wings in the afterlife. One requires an exemplary life and a lot of financial contributions. The second requires—”

“Death of a Hiru,” the Hiru said quietly.

“Yes,” Sean said. “Kiran is officially condemned to hell where, according to the Draziri holy texts, he will fall into darkness for eternity while snakes of fire rip his body to pieces, feeding on his insides. Everyone within his flock is condemned with him. All his followers, their spouses, their children, everyone is going to a bottomless hell, unless the flock kills a Hiru. If they manage to murder one, every member of the flock, even those who already died in pursuit of the Hiru, will be elevated to heaven.”

“That is a twisted religion,” Arland said.

When a vampire thought your religion went too far, you definitely had problems. “So, he’s desperate.”

Sean nodded. “Desperate, skilled, and well supplied. His people are motivated. He’ll be a pain to kill.”

Great.

“There is a silver lining to all of this,” Maud said. “We don’t have to worry about a full-scale invasion.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because Flock Wraith wants to be the one to kill the Hiru. They’ll keep it quiet. Otherwise they risk losing their target to some other flock. They’re doing this on their own.”

Small comfort. I turned to the Hiru. “Do you have anything to add? Anything that could help us?”

“They will stop at nothing to kill me,” the Hiru said. “They will run through fire. There is no obstacle you can put in their way that will deter them.”

The room fell silent.

“I don’t deal in fire,” I said. “It’s difficult to control and the inn doesn’t like it. But I’m excellent at creating a void field.”

Sean stared at me.

Arland coughed. “A void field requires a high efficiency nuclear reactor.”

“Or an inn with a skilled innkeeper,” Maud told him.

“You can do that?” Sean asked me.

“I already did it,” I told him. “I put it in place as soon as you made it in.”

Arland opened his mouth and closed it without saying a word.

The void field was difficult to maintain, but the area I needed to cover was relatively small and the peace summit had provided the inn with enough power to keep it up for the next few days.

“The void field will stop organic, inorganic, or energy based projectiles,” I said. “It won’t hurt you, but it won’t let you pass through either. Please be aware that none of you can leave the inn grounds. I think we should call it a night. Sleep well. You are safe here.”

Maud hugged me and went on to bed. Arland nodded to me and went to his room. The Hiru left as well.

Caldenia rose from her seat and approached Sean. “Be a dear. Get me everything you can on Kiran Mrak and his employees. And I do mean everything.”

Sean nodded.

“Good night.”

“Good night, Your Grace.”

She went on her way. Orro had disappeared, too. It was just me and Sean now. He got up and walked toward me, stopping just a few inches away.

“You trapped me in the inn,” he said.

“It’s for your own safety.”

“Are you worried about my safety?” There was a hint of a smile hiding in the corners of his mouth.

My heart was speeding up. Too much happened tonight. I wasn’t scared—not exactly—but anxiety ate at me. I had to protect us from the Draziri, and retrieve the rest of the Archivarius, and keep all this a secret. I wanted to stop thinking about it just for a few hours.

Sean stood in front of me, so close that if I reached out, I would touch him. It would feel so good to touch him. It would feel even better to be in bed with him. He would hold me. I knew exactly how it would feel. It would feel safe, warm, and right. If he got in bed with me, I would forget all about the Draziri and the Hiru.

I met his gaze. There was a forest in his eyes, a deep, dark wood and on its edge a wolf waited, wondering if I would coax him out.

It would be so easy. One step, and I could run my hands up his chest to his shoulders. I would throw my arms around him and kiss him, and he would come with me.

Did I want Sean because I wanted him or did I want him because I was scared and exhausted and wanted to feel safe? I couldn’t tell. I wasn’t sure. I needed to be sure.

I was an innkeeper. I always had it together. Saving Maud really got to me. Now wasn’t the time to come unglued. Sean deserved better. I deserved better.

“Good night, Sean.”

The wolf melted back into the woods. “It might have been,” Sean said.