One Fell Sweep

CHAPTER 8

“You’re not carrying me.” I pulled off my right sneaker and started down the street.

“You have no idea what’s on this street.” Sean wrinkled his nose. “It’s disgusting.”

“Then I will find a shoe merchant and buy a new pair.”

“You do realize that I could carry three of you and it wouldn’t slow me down?”

“You do realize that you can’t even handle one of me? Three of me would be entirely too much.”

Sean opened his mouth.

“I’m walking,” I told him. “It won’t kill me to go barefoot for a couple of blocks.”

Sean muttered something under his breath.

“I heard that,” I told him. I didn’t, but he didn’t need to know that.

Walking barefoot in this part of Baha-char was a bad idea. The big square tiles that lay in the open, baked by the sun, were too hot, which forced me to hug the edges of the street by the buildings, where trash and grime had drifted, pushed to the side by wind and the never-ending current of shoppers. Staring at the ground to make sure I didn’t step on anything that would slice my feet open got old very fast. But letting Sean carry me wasn’t an option. I had to preserve some dignity. Besides, being carried by him would be… nice. I had a feeling I would like it, and we weren’t out of the woods yet. I didn’t need to be contemplating how exactly being that close to him felt until we were back in the safety of the inn.

I looked up long enough to see where we were going. At the end of the block, a grimy storefront under a ratty green tarp had a bright neon sign that announced FOOTWEAR in seven languages. A colorful shell, resembling that of a garden snail but five feet tall and colored in hues of brilliant red, rich brown, and lemon yellow, sat in the doorway of the shop.

“Look, shoes!”

I sped up to the stall. The merchant, a Took, sensed me coming and stretched his wrinkly neck all the way out of his snail shell. Cookie rubbed his hands together.

“I just need a pair of shoes,” I told him.

“Of course,” the little fox answered. “As long as we get them at the right price.”

The inside of the shop contained a single massive pile of shoes made from all sorts of materials for all sorts of feet. It smelled like all sorts of feet too, but I didn’t care. I dug through it, trying to find something made for humans. Sean parked himself at the front of the store, watching the street. Cookie’s shaggy bodyguard stopped next to him.

I rummaged through the shoes. Too big, too small, too slimy, made for someone who only tiptoed like the elephants, too sharp, too… This pair wasn’t too bad. I lifted the two sandals up, little more than soles with a string of cheap beads.

“How much?”

The Took’s tentacles wavered. “Two credits.”

“Two credits!” Cookie staggered back and slumped over, as if punched. “It’s an outrage! Are you trying to murder us?”

Crap. I forgot he was with us. I had to cut this off now, before it devolved into bargaining. “Two credits is f—”

“Financially criminal!” Cookie announced.

The Took’s squid-like eyes flared, changing color from deep red to bright green. “This is genuine okarian leather!”

Cookie plucked the sandals from my fingers and waved them around. “Yes, from the genuine ass of an okarian nifrook. Have you smelled these shoes?”

“The odor adds character!”

“Character?” Cookie bared his teeth. “My friend isn’t interested in character. Do you not see that she is a young attractive female of her species? If she wears these shoes, we’ll have to charge you compensation for all of the potential mates this odious footwear will repulse.”

The Took’s eyes narrowed. “One and three-quarters credits.”

“As a matter of fact, if we were to buy these shoes, the rest of your pile would smell better. You should pay us for the service of removing these so-called sandals from your shop.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Now this!” Cookie raised my right sneaker in the air. “This is a shoe.”

I sighed and went to stand next to Sean.

“I should’ve just gone barefoot. Now he’ll be haggling until the cows come home out of principle.”

Sean didn’t answer. He was looking down the street, back the way we came. I looked into his eyes and saw Turan Adin there. The hair rose on the back of my neck.

“What is it?”

“We’re being hunted.”

“Is it Draziri?”

“I don’t know.”

When a wolf told you that he was being hunted, only a fool ignored it. I shut up. Sean’s senses were a lot sharper than mine, and distracting him right now was a dumb idea. I slipped on my glove and pulled the energy whip out of the inside pocket of my robe.

The street on both sides of us lay empty. The faint breeze that usually moved the air through the canyon-like streets of Baha-char died. The air turned hot and oppressive. I shivered. It felt wrong.

“And stay out!” the Took thundered behind me.

Cookie emerged with the sandals and deposited the shoes and a credit chip into my hand. “Here are the sandals and half a credit. I have given him your right shoe in trade.”

“Thank you.” I slipped the sandals on my feet.

“I had to redeem myself.” Cookie smiled.

“Let’s go,” Sean said quietly.

We hurried down the street. Cookie started out skipping, but two turns later the fun went out of him. He slunk now, fast and silent on velvet paws.

I glanced over my shoulder. The street was still empty. The darkness seemed to pool behind us. My heart rate sped up. Maybe it was my imagination, maybe not, but I wasn’t willing to take chances. We were almost running now.

We took one last turn and emerged into one of the main streets. The noise of the crowd washed over me. I exhaled. We wove through traffic, with Cookie’s monster bringing up the rear.

I glanced behind me again. Nothing but the crowd.

Deep breath. Deeep breath. Almost home.

Sean’s face seemed to relax slightly. Good.

Two more blocks and we would turn into the alley leading to the inn’s door.

Magic crept up my spine, icy and slimy. I recoiled. It was revolting, but it felt almost… familiar? How…

The crowd in front of us thinned at an alarming speed. Creatures fled, escaping into the shops and side alleys. The street emptied, leaving a lone creature standing in front of our alley.

Eight feet tall, it wore a tattered robe with the hood pulled up. It looked like a mirror of my own, except larger, with a deeper hood, and wider sleeves. It had to be a coincidence. The galaxy had a million robes. It was highly possible that two of them would be cut and sewn together in a very similar way.

I squeezed the energy whip, releasing the thin filament. It dripped to the ground, sparking off the stone.

Next to me Cookie pulled a knife out of the jeweled sheath on his apron.

Sean looked at Cookie’s shaggy bodyguard. “He’s in danger.”

The creature bared its fangs. A massive hand landed on Cookie’s shoulder. The beast yanked the small fox up, spun, and ran down the street, carrying Cookie and the tank back the way we came, each stomp of its mammoth feet like the blow of a sledgehammer. Cookie’s outraged screeches faded.

Sean pulled out his green-edged knife.

The robed creature waited between us and the alley. There was no other way to the inn’s door. We had to go through it.

“Dina?” Sean asked quietly. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

The creature thrust its left arm up, exposing a humanoid hand, pale and withered, with thick yellowed claws. The veins in its arm pulsed. I felt the magic gather around it, revolting and sickening. If that magic had a body, it would’ve been a putrid corpse. But the pattern in which it flowed, the underlying core of it… Shock gripped me.

“It’s an innkeeper.”

“What?”

“It’s corrupted somehow. We have to kill it. It’s an abomination.”

A sphere of pure energy shot out from the creature’s fingers, a ball of orange lightning as big as a grapefruit. Sean leapt up and forward, but it streaked past him and curved to follow me. I couldn’t outrun it.

Sean pulled a gun from within his clothes and fired, running at the robed creature. The air around the hooded figure rippled. Pulse projectiles, the deadliest in the galaxy, and it was blocking them.

The ball lightning lunged at me.

Like killed like. I flicked the energy whip.

The lightning exploded.

White haze drowned me. The magic shock wave reverberated through my bones and exploded in my chest, like my heart tried to burst. I gagged and vomited onto the ground. Sean bounced from the side of a building and landed behind the creature. He lunged, too fast to see, aiming the knife into the hooded figure’s ribs. Lightning bit him. Sean flew back as if punched by a massive fist.

Oh no, you don’t. I gritted my teeth and staggered forward, my whip burning with energy.

A second ball of lightning dripped from the creature’s claws and shot at me. I swung my whip. It connected. The lightning burst over me. Heat and pain seared my chest and stomach. My robe caught fire. I tore at it, trying to get it away from my skin.

Sean’s body blurred and a massive werewolf landed on the tiles, tall, muscular, with enormous shoulders and huge hands armed with two-inch claws. The robed figure spun toward him. The werewolf bared his fangs and lunged at the corrupted innkeeper, stabbing so fast, the knife turned into a green streak. Lightning burst from the robed figure and singed his fur, but he kept stabbing in a frenzy.

I yanked the robe over my head. The skin on my chest burned as if someone had taken a cheese grater to it, but I didn’t care. I sprinted to them.

The fur on Sean’s arms curled. The stench of burned hair polluted the air. The robed figure spun, trying to avoid the knife. Shreds of its robe fluttered in the air—Sean had landed some cuts.

The corrupted innkeeper raked at Sean with its withered hand, its claws dripping magic. Blood gushed from the werewolf’s chest.

I flicked my whip, feeling the creature’s magic shift in response. The energy whip snapped, bouncing off the empty air two inches from its head. Fast. I snapped the whip again. Somehow it slid aside. That’s fine. It couldn’t dodge me forever.

Sean slashed at its back.

Magic exploded from within the robe. The blast wave lifted me off my feet. I flew back, swept away like a mote of dust in a tsunami, and hit a building with my back. Oh, it hurt. It hurt so much.

Sean fell through the canopy above me and crashed next to me in the middle of broken wood and torn fabric.

The creature brought its arms together. A torrent of energy shot out from between its hands, a lance aimed at us.

I scrambled to my feet and thrust myself in front of Sean. The whip wouldn’t stop it. We were dead.

It was an innkeeper.

I dropped the whip and the glove, grabbed a piece of broken railing and held it in front of me, focusing on it. It wasn’t a broom, it was barely a staff, but I was an innkeeper, damn it, and he would not kill Sean.

The torrent of energy punched me and broke over the staff, the orange lightning splitting and burning with deep turquoise where it touched my staff and magic. My skin went numb. Someone had sunk tiny hooks into my veins and yanked at them, trying to rip them out of my body.

It hurt.

The hooded creature arched its back. Its robe turned pure black, as if the color had been sucked out of the fabric. The tattered hem frayed, unraveling. The torrent hit me harder.

God, it hurt. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt…

My whole body shook from the strain. Pain wrapped around each vertebra in my spine and squeezed, grinding cartilage and bone to nothing. My arms tried to wrench out of my shoulder sockets.

An eerie, unearthly shriek cut at my ears. The hooded thing was screaming.

I tasted blood in my mouth.

I couldn’t hold it forever. I…

A stream of bullets hammered the creature from the left, each impact a ripple in the air, stopping just short of hitting its body. The torrent of energy weakened. It was shifting magic to cover itself.

The agony was turning my brain into mush. I gritted my teeth and stepped forward, pushing the torrent back. A step. Another step.

The hooded creature took a step back.

Yes!

It took another step, bending under the strain of shielding itself from the barrage of bullets and my magic.

Sean darted from behind me, the knife in his hand.

I screamed and sank everything I had into my staff. It split the way innkeeper’s brooms did. A sharp wooden blade formed on its top. I pushed it into the torrent, until the blade pointed directly at the corrupted innkeeper, slicing through the current of energy.

The robed creature’s magic tore out of it in an orange half-sphere, covering it against me and the shooter. Sean loomed behind it. The knife flashed and the robed figure collapsed in a limp heap.

The pressure of the foul magic vanished.

I sank to my knees and lay on the ground. On my left a grizzled older werewolf lowered a bizarre-looking Gatling gun. Thank you, Wilmos. Cookie stopped jumping up and down next to him and ran to me.

Sean picked me up off the ground. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. I couldn’t even talk.

His lips brushed mine and he squeezed me to him gently as if I were the most important thing in the world.

My mouth finally obeyed. “Tank?”

“At my shop,” Wilmos said. He was looking at me as if it hurt him.

Sean started down the street in the direction of the inn.

“No!”

“Dina, you’re badly burned. You need the inn to heal you.”

“Get the tank.”

“Later.”

“No.”

“Don’t argue with me.” He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t look any different. But his tone severed the words like a knife. It was impossible to keep arguing. I still tried. Making words took effort and endurance I didn’t have.

“Failed once. I can’t… walk into the inn without the tank. Guest. Trust. Please. Please, Sean. Please.”

He snarled, his wolf mouth baring his teeth.

“Please.”

Wilmos looked at him.

“We’ll get the tank,” Sean said.

“Body…”

“And the corpse,” he said, fury snarling in his voice. His gaze fixed me. It was direct and cold. A wolf gaze. “Not another word until we get to the inn. Close your eyes and rest.”

The last thing I saw was Cookie’s bodyguard picking up the hooded body. I laid my head on Sean’s shoulder and closed my eyes, drifting, neither awake nor asleep, but stuck in a painful confusing place in between. My chest burned.

Time stretched, long and viscous.

The inn’s magic touched me. I felt the cooling air on my skin—we’d passed from Baha-char’s heat into my home. The walls creaked and snapped in panic. Gertrude Hunt was screaming. I opened my eyes and smiled when I saw my sister’s terrified face.

“I’m okay. Everything will be fine.”

The inn’s tendrils wrapped around me and I sank into the depths of Gertrude Hunt, where the inn’s glowing heart waited for me. It opened and embraced me. I closed my eyes and finally fell asleep.

“Will Aunt Dina be okay?” Helen asked.

I opened my eyes. Helen and Maud stood together in the soothing darkness. Maud wore her armor. A sword hung in the scabbard on her hip. Helen’s eyes were big and round.

Around me tendrils of smooth wood intertwined into a pillar, holding me between the floor and the ceiling. The inn’s lifeblood flowed through them, wrapping me in the healing warmth, and the tendrils glowed, lit from within by green. Faint blue lights floated around me, born of pure, thick magic. The air smelled so fresh here. Clean and filled with life.

I had been here twice before. The first time when I woke Gertrude Hunt from its deep sleep. I sat right here with my hands on its heart and coaxed it back to life. The second time I had used too much power outside of the inn, and when Sean brought me back, I was almost dead. The inn healed me then as it did now.

I stirred, checking the magic within the tendrils. Strong. Much stronger than it had been after I was healed the first time. I must not have expended as much magic as I thought. Or maybe I was giving Gertrude Hunt too little credit.

“Aunt Dina will be fine, my flower,” Maud said. “She’s resting.”

“She’s awake,” I said.

Beast bounded out of the darkness and Helen ran toward me and hugged the wooden pillar of tendrils holding me inside.

The inn sighed around me. It was a happy, contented sigh.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’ll try not to do it again.”

“You better not do it again,” Maud growled.

The tendrils parted, letting me step on the floor. Beast licked my feet, flopped over on her back, and then dashed away, running in a circle as if her canine feelings had gotten the better of her. I crouched and hugged Helen.

“You have flowers on your chest,” my niece said.

I looked down. The inn had healed my burns—they weren’t deep—and the skin was smooth but faint scars remained. They didn’t look like flowers. They looked like pale swirls. And they probably wouldn’t go away. I was permanently scarred.

“It doesn’t look that bad,” Maud said.

I looked at her.

“Oh for the love of… Stop acting like your boobs burned off. You look fine. Nothing a tanning lotion won’t fix.”

She marched to me, hugged me, and handed me my robe.

I slipped it on.

Beast dashed by my feet. Helen squealed and chased her.

“How’s everything?”

“Sunset was overjoyed to receive another Archivarius member. The inn tried to keep the corpse of whatever you brought in out, and then when I held the door open so they could carry it in, it tried to shrink away from it. We put it into a plastic container and sealed it. That’s the only way Gertrude Hunt would stop freaking out. We need to analyze it, but it won’t let me go near it and it locked me out of the lab where we put it. The birds tried a direct assault just after dark. I let that idiot and your werewolf have them. I think Sean might be disturbed. He cut off their heads and put them on sticks in the back yard.”

I sighed. “Can you see them from the street?”

“No. Focus. I’m telling you your boyfriend beheaded your enemies and threaded their skulls on sticks, and all you care about is if your neighbors can see them.”

“Is he okay?”

“Physically, yes. Mentally… Don’t get me wrong, the heads are an effective tactic. But still—disturbed. If you happen to catch his eyes in the right moment, something stares back at you.”

“It’s a wolf,” I told her.

“What?”

“It’s a wolf in the dark woods.”

Maud sighed. “You see the wolf. I see cities burning. There is something not quite right about him. Something unsettling. I’ve been through hell before. I know that look, Dina. It’s not too late to change your mind.”

“I like him.”

Maud rolled her eyes.

“Did the Lord Marshal deliver?”

“Deliver what?” she asked.

“You know what. He promised you a sword. I think his exact words were, ‘A new blade before nightfall.’”

She clamped her mouth shut and drew a blood sword from her scabbard.

“Is it a good sword?”

“It’s exquisite.” She sounded like she just tasted a lemon. “He had it sent down from his ship. He made a huge scene out of it. A courier in full armor with crimson banners arrived and knelt in front of me to present it.”

I wished I could’ve seen the look on her face.

“I tried to refuse it.”

Arland could be extremely persistent when it was in his best interests. “How did that go?”

“He made it clear it was a gift from his House. If I didn’t take it, I would’ve offended the entire House Krahr. I couldn’t put us in that position. I looked up your rank while you were gone. You are at two and a half stars.”

“The inn was dormant for a long time.”

Maud waved her hand. “What I mean is, House Krahr publicly endorsed Gertrude Hunt. It would be both dangerous and ungrateful to offend them.”

She took it. Of course, she did.

“I made it clear that I will repay this gift at the first opportunity. I don’t like him,” Maud said. “He is stubborn, bullheaded, and insists on doing things his way.”

“You do realize all of those are synonyms?”

“I don’t like him, Dina. I have a responsibility to my child. I won’t risk reentering a society that threw her away like trash. We’re done with vampires. Come on. We have work to do.”

I took a deep breath. The void field snapped into place. I held my hand out. A broom rose from the ground and I fastened my fingers around it, feeling the worn, warm wood. I was home. It was time to soothe wild wolves and examine corrupted corpses.

The wolf waited for me on the second-floor balcony, in the spot I had come out to meet him in the middle of the night. It seemed like so long ago, but it was only a few days. I stepped out on to the balcony, Beast weaving around my feet.

Sean leaned against the wall on the left side of the doorway. He saw me. His eyes flashed amber, catching the light. He didn’t say anything. Apparently, it was up to me to start the conversation. That was only fair. My errand almost got him killed, and without him I would’ve died on that Baha-char street.

I heard you killed some people and put their heads on sharpened sticks. I wanted to check to see if you are feeling okay… It was probably best to start with something simple.

“Hi.”

“When you are in the inn, I trust you with my life,” he said. “When you are outside, you have to trust me with yours.”

“I do.”

“That means when I say run, you run. You don’t argue. You don’t cry. You do as I tell you, or we both die.”

Oh. It was that type of conversation. I crossed my arms.

He faced me. “I trust you to do your job. You have to trust me to do mine.”

“I trust you. I don’t trust your priorities.”

I wanted to reach over and pull that stone-hard expression off his face.

“My priority is making sure you survive.”

“Exactly. My priority is keeping my guests safe. They’re not always one and the same.”

“The Hiru was safe at the inn,” Sean said. “Your insistence on bringing the tank in because you wanted to impress him—”

“It wasn’t about impressing anyone. It was about trust. I promised to retrieve the tank. I had to come back with it.”

“— endangered you, me, Cookie, and Wilmos. Instead of concentrating on retrieving the tank from Wilmos’ shop, I had to carry you.”

“I’m sorry for inflicting this horrible burden on you.” I regretted it the moment the words left my mouth.

“It also endangered everyone in the inn. If you had died, Maud wouldn’t be able to hold off the Draziri. The Hiru would die.”

“My sister would’ve done just fine.”

Beast barked by my feet, unsure, but feeling the pressure to provide canine support. Sean ignored her.

“I have skills and abilities you don’t. More, I have experience.”

“So do I.”

“I’ve watched you kill,” he said. “You kill only when you have to. Of all the responses to a threat you face, killing someone is the last choice for you. For me, it’s not a choice. It’s instinct. I don’t think about it. I see a threat and I neutralize it. Of the two of us, I’m better equipped to handle an attack outside of the inn.”

“This doesn’t make you sound any more trustworthy.”

“It kept me alive. And, if you let me, I’ll keep you alive. I’ll do everything I can to make sure you survive.”

“Believe it or not, I somehow managed to survive for all these years without your help.”

“Either you trust me or you don’t. Decide, Dina. Because if you don’t, there is no point in me being here. I can’t do my job if you dig your heels in when I need you to follow my lead. I’m packed. Let me know what you decide.”

He jumped off the balcony.

Great.

“Idiot werewolf.”

Beast whined.

“Hush,” I told her and stomped back downstairs. He had a point. One of us ran the inn and the other killed hundreds of sentient beings. Of the two of us, he was a much better killer and a much better bodyguard. He’d made the call and I should’ve trusted it. I implied that I would follow his lead when I hired him for a dollar. Instead I did what I had to do to ensure that Sunset didn’t lose confidence in my ability to deliver. Was it truly necessary or did I do it out of pride? I didn’t want to think about it.

That whole conversation didn’t go the way I was hoping it would have.

A delicious smell permeated the downstairs, floating on the breeze. It smelled like… chicken.

Oh no.

I marched into the kitchen.

“Orro!” My voice cut the air like a knife.

He raised his head from a pot and turned toward me.

“Are you cooking Draziri?”

The needles stood up on his back.

“Don’t lie to me. I thought I made it perfectly clear. I won’t tolerate any…”

Orro jerked the oven open and yanked out a large roasting pan. On it, roasted to a golden-brown perfection, sat a medium-sized bird.

“Roasted Duck,” Orro said. “With buckwheat porridge and apple stuffing.”

Crap.

He drew himself to his full height, somehow taking up most of the kitchen, looming like some demon hedgehog of legend.

“In all my years, since I was a lowly apprentice barely tall enough to slide a pot onto a stove, I have broken the kitchen code only once. Once I have let a dish I hadn’t tasted leave my kitchen. I have never broken it before or since. The code is my life, my religion, and my conscience. Without it,” he ripped the air with his claws, “I am but a lowly savage.”

There was no stopping it. I brought it on myself, I had to stand there and take it.

“Rise early to be at your station early,” Orro intoned. “Keep your knives sharp. Never touch other chef’s knives. Keep yourself, your station, and your food clean. Never let a dish out of your kitchen without tasting it. Know your ingredients. Respect the creatures on your prep table; honor their lives. Know your diners. Cook to the tastes of those who dine, not your own. Never serve a dish that harms your diners’ health or soul. Never settle for second best. Never stop learning. These are the cornerstones of everything I am. They are the firmament of my universe.”

He paused over me.

I nodded.

“Am I some vagrant you found on the street cooking rats in a rusted pot?”

Oh for the love of…

“Do you honestly think I would sink so low as to harm your soul by serving you a sentient being? Do you think so little of me?”

“I apologize.”

He slapped his clawed hand over his eyes in a pose that would’ve made any Shakespearean actor proud. “Go. Just… go.”

I fled the kitchen before he decided to continue with the speech.

So far I fought with Sean and Orro. The way today was going, if I lingered long enough, I would probably mortally offend Caldenia. Clearly there was only one place where I could safely be right now. I opened the floor and took the stairs down to the lab.

The corpse of the corrupted creature lay on the lab table. When Maud said “encased in a plastic container,” I took it to mean they put it in some plastic tub. They didn’t. A block of clear plastic greeted me, ten feet long and four feet wide. The corpse lay inside it, like some demented version of Snow White sleeping in a glass coffin.

How… Oh. Maud must’ve stuffed the corpse into an anchor tube, a clear cylinder of inert PVDF plastic. I had a whole section devoted to them in storage. They came in all sizes and were usually used to quarantine odd objects, provide microhabitats for small aquatic guests, and generally contain things when low thermal conductivity and high chemical corrosion resistance were a must. PVDF didn’t conduct electricity, was impervious to most acids, and resisted radiation. The argon chamber I used for the Archivarian was made of PVDF.

Maud must’ve found my storage set, or Gertrude Hunt had dug up a large container in response to stress. But securing the corpse in said container didn’t prove to be enough. The inn had somehow managed to encase the anchor tube in plastic.

I reached out and touched it. The inn creaked in alarm. No, not plastic. Clear resin. The inn had secreted resin and sealed the anchor tube in it until eight inches of its own sap shielded it from the corpse.

I would have to drill to get a sample and Gertrude Hunt would fight me every step of the way. I could feel it.

“We have to get a sample,” I said.

The walls of my little lab wavered as if invisible snakes slid just under their surface.

“We have to do it,” I said.

The walls shook.

“I know you’re scared. I understand. But you have to be brave.” I patted the wall. “It’s dangerous. We must know what it is before it hurts us or other innkeepers and other inns. I’ll be with you every step. I won’t let it hurt you. I blocked it once when I was off the inn’s grounds. I’ll block it again. Together we are stronger.”

The inn didn’t answer. I sat quietly and gently stroked the wood. It moved under my fingers like a cat arching her back. I could have forced Gertrude Hunt to respond. The inn obeyed the innkeeper. Eventually there would come a time when I would have to impose my will on it. Every innkeeper faced that challenge sooner or later. But forcing the inn’s compliance was a matter of last resort, used only to preserve life when no other way presented itself. I had witnessed my parents do it only twice, and it came at a great cost to them and to our inn.

“I know I’m asking a lot. But we must learn whatever we can so we’ll be ready. If there are more of them, if they come calling, we can’t be blind.”

Silence.

The corpse of the monstrous creature lay waiting. Even in death there was something sinister about it, almost as if a dark shadow shrouded it, permeating the body and clothes. A ghost born of the cold emptiness between the stars. It lay still but aware. It might have been my imagination, but I felt like it was watching me.

I was inside my inn, where nothing could hurt me unless I allowed it, and still this thing gave me the creeps. I didn’t want to open its transparent prison.

But if I didn’t and it attacked again, the responsibility for the lives that might be lost would land on my shoulders. I was an innkeeper. I had a duty.

“We can do it. Together.”

Silence.

I waited.

The lab’s floor parted. A small plastic container rose from the floor.

“Thank you.”

I raised my broom and channeled my magic into it. It split, the shaft fragmenting to expose the electric blue core of pure magic. I held it above the resin.

“Ready?”

A root slipped out of the ground, curving to hover above my broom. A viscous drop of resin formed on its tip, swelling to the size of a large grapefruit.

I set the broom on the hardened block of resin and pushed. The blue core sank into the sap, burning its way down. I let it work. There was no hurry. Coils of fragrant smoke curled from the drill site.

Quarter of the way in.

Half.

Three-quarters.

We only needed a trace of its body, just enough to run the basic analysis and scans.

Almost there.

The broom sank through the resin and met the hard resistance of the plastic. I pushed gently.

The plastic shell melted.

The black shadow I’d sensed surged up, toward the broom, covering the few inches of space between the body and the upper wall of the plastic in a blink. Foul magic clamped my broom and spiraled up. Fetid, cold, and terrifying power streamed through the broom, trying to get out.

I grasped my broom with both hands and fought back, sending my magic through it.

The shadow curved, winding around the glowing tip of the broom. It had no face, it had no substance, but there it was, right there, fighting me. It wanted out. I felt its furious hunger. It wanted to devour me and Gertrude Hunt and everything within.

I poured my power into the broom. No. Not happening.

The shadow held on for a torturous moment… and broke. I stabbed the broom into the body. A mental shriek cut across my mind like metal screeching against metal. I pierced the shadow again. It screeched and wailed, lashing in my mind.

Not in my inn. Not while I’m watching.

I stabbed and stabbed, until finally it sank deep into the body and hid there.

I dimmed the broom and slid it into the body, sliced off a small sample of the flesh, and pulled it free, depositing the sample into the plastic container and snapping the lid shut. The moment the broom came free, the inn dripped resin into the opening, sealing the shadow inside. Green and red lights flashed as the inn scanned the sample.

I waited, watching the corpse, waiting for any sign of the shadow returning.

A chime announced the DNA scan completing. Too fast. Sequencing an alien creature should’ve taken much longer. I turned to the screen to see the results.

Ice shot through me, from the top of my head all the way to my toes.

“We’re going to need another anchor tube.”

Ten minutes later Maud walked into the lab. “Here you are.”

She dropped into the chair, crossing her long legs. “Helen said she heard a weird scream, so I searched the grounds, and found nothing.”

“What did it sound like?”

“She said it sounded like a night shrieker. It’s an ugly bird. Well, more reptile than bird really. Sounds like nails on a chalkboard.”

Or metal on metal.

She nodded toward the corpse encased in plastic, sealed in resin, then encased in a larger plastic tube and sealed again. The inn was still pouring sap on it.

“Don’t you think you’re going overboard?”

I punctured the lid of the sample container and poured viscous purple liquid into it.

“Is that carnyte?”

“Yes.”

I waved my hand. The wall in front of me flowed open, revealing a desolate landscape. I tossed the sample jar into it. The inn’s wall reformed, turning transparent. The jar fell and burst into smokeless crimson fire. Carnyte was one of the worst things ever invented in the galaxy. It burned through just about everything, ripping molecules apart.

“Okay,” Maud said, stretching the word out. “Mind sharing?”

The crimson fire was still burning.

“I sequenced the DNA.”

“That was fast.”

“There was a match in the database.”

Maud stared at me. “Are you telling me that thing is… was human?”

I pointed to the corpse. “It’s Michael.”

She frowned. “Michael…?”

“Michael Braswell.”

She drew in a sharp breath.

I waved at the screen. A picture of an innkeeper filled it, a man in his thirties, honest face, light brown hair, blue eyes.

We turned to look at the crimson fire at the same time. It was easier to watch it burn than to face that I had killed the abomination who used to be my brother’s best friend.