Clean Sweep (14 page)

The knock persisted. It didn't feel like a vampire come to rescue one of his own. This was insistent and rude with a kind of mindless efficiency.

I pulled the hood of my robe over my head, took my broom, and stepped out.

The night exhaled in my face, bringing with it varied scents: the damp grass, a hint of distant smoke, and something else. Something foreign. A kind of dry, bitter odor. My body balked like a rearing horse. This stink was bad. It was an evil, harsh stench, laced with pheromones and magic, and meeting its source was a terrible idea.

I stopped in the shadow of the oak and concentrated.

The magic swirled around me. The stench came from above.

I looked up.

It sat above me, on top of the streetlamp pole, anchored to it by large clawed feet. Blue-and-green pixelated armor protected its vaguely humanoid body. A helmet of interlocking plates shielded its head, leaving two triangular ears free. It had two legs and two arms and one head, but that's where the resemblance to
Homo sapiens
ended. Its spine was bent, not quite hunched over, but curved enough to permit it to easily drop down on all fours. Even with the curve, the creature was at least seven and a half feet tall. Its neck was thick, its shoulders massive, and its hips protruded at an odd angle, supporting a heavy lizard-like tail. Despite its muscular bulk, the dahaka looked limber, like a monkey. It seemed wrong somehow, so alien that the mind stalled, rustling through the mental Rolodex of familiar animals, trying desperately to come up with some sort of association for it and failing.

The creature stared at me with two glowing purple eyes. There was no pupil, just the electric-violet iris. Looking into its eyes froze me in my tracks. Instantly I knew it was vicious, cruel, and it thought I was prey. My thoughts and my feelings mattered to it not at all. Given a chance, it would hunt me and eat me.

"Target," I said.

The inn clanged, swinging the massive guns within itself to lock onto the creature.

It scuttled down the lamppost, slid down, and leapt onto the sidewalk just outside the inn's boundary. A deep sound, half subdued roar, half snort, issued from its mouth. The hair on the back of my neck rose. My body threatened to lock into a petrified freeze.

I glared at it. I would not be intimidated in my own home.

A small metal plate on its left cheek ignited with deep purple. "Give me the vampire, meat," the dahaka demanded. It sounded just as you would expect. Like it was a demon who'd crawled out of some deep pit.

"No."

"Then you die."

I had to stand my ground. "Come closer and we'll see who dies."

The dahaka raised his head, turning it like a dog listening to some odd noise.

I pulled the magic to me. My knees were shaking under my robe. The air between us vibrated with tension.

The dahaka spun about and dashed across the street and down the road.

Behind me a door banged open. I turned and saw Sean on the porch. He was in his human shape.

A red star sparked above us, plunged down, and exploded thirty feet above the sidewalk, turning into a glowing orb laced with twisted red lightning.

Sean cleared the distance between us in half a second.

The orb pulsed with red and spat out a man, who landed on one knee on the pavement. He wore black armor shot through with carmine. His long hair, a golden ash-blond, spilled over his wide shoulders and onto his breastplate. He held a long spear with the blood-colored banner of House Krahr.

A Marshal. My goodness. He was the military head of his House.

"They like to make an entrance, don't they?" Sean murmured. "Hey, you! You think you managed to wake everyone yet? Maybe you should bang on all the doors or yell fire."

The knight raised his head and straightened.

I stared. If you had to cast Lucifer before he fell, he would look just like that. About thirty, he wasn't just handsome, he was beautiful, but it was beauty with a touch of wicked edge. He had the kind of face that would stop traffic and when the cars finally finished piling up, he would quietly chuckle to himself about it.

"My lady," the vampire said in a deep, resonant voice. "I've come for my uncle. May I have your permission to enter?"

*** *** ***

The Marshal looked at me, waiting for an answer. Considering that his uncle was dying inside, there was only one answer I could give him.

"You may enter."

"Thank you, my lady."

"Follow me."

He trailed me down the path. Sean crossed his arms, shook his head, and joined us. I led them to the door. The Marshal thrust his flag into the ground and ducked inside, where his uncle waited under the glass hood. I waved my fingers at the flag. "Hide this."

The flag sank into the ground.

I nodded and went inside. The Marshall stood over his uncle, his face iced over.

"Remove the hood," I murmured to the house.

The glass rose above the body, lifted by a wooden tendril stretching from the wall, rolled off, and melted into the floor.

The vampire leaned over the prone body. His face turned grim. He leaned over the armor, placed his hands palms down on the chest, and pressed. Red light slid under his fingers. Probably scanning his fingerprints or DNA signature.

The armor clicked and the entire suit of armor split open and fell apart. Pieces of breastplate and leg plates fell to the floor. Lord Soren's bloody body lay motionless. A bright red stain marked his left side. If he were human, I'd say it was just under his heart.

A narrow blade slid out of the Marshal's right gauntlet. He sliced the shirt with a quick flick of the blade, revealing a wet hole gaping in Lord Soren's chest. The Marshal's left gauntlet split over the top of his forearm, and a disk of interlocking metal polished to a satin smoothness popped up. He plucked it free and squeezed the sides. Sharp spikes slid from the edge of the disk, pointing down. The Marshal positioned it over the wound and slammed it down into Lord Soren's body. Red glyphs flashed across the disk's surface. The Marshal turned to me.

"I've attached the field first-aid unit. It assessed the injury and will administer the necessary medicines. The wound is serious. I realize that I am intruding, but I humbly request some solitude. I must pray for my uncle."

"Of course."

"Thank you."

I looked at Sean. He sat in the chair by the coffee table.

"Sean? Don't you want to come upstairs to your room?"

"I like this chair. It's very comfortable."

Right. He'd decided he would sit here and watch the vampire. "It's not necessary."

"It won't bother me at all," the Marshal said. "In his place I would do the same thing."

I could make Sean move, but adding force, agitation, and possible violence to this situation now would be disrespectful. I sent a small pulse of magic through my staff. "Protocol VIGIL."

The wall next to Lord Soren's body ignited with a soft glow. A vast garden came into focus, a long path winding its way between the flowers and plants one would never find on Earth. The path climbed up the mountain, passing by the waterfalls and colossal trees. A bell rang, melodious, subdued, and a soft, sad melody followed, floating in the air. A procession of figures wearing white robes, their faces hidden by deep hoods, appeared on the path. The draft stirred long blue and black ribbons wrapped around their hands. Each figure held a long pole with a round lantern attached by a chain to its end. The lanterns, perfectly round and frosted, glowed with gentle yellow light.

A female voice began singing in tune with the melody. Other voices joined in, their individual sounds like stems of a single tree, growing fast and winding around the first singer. The air smelled of flowers, bergamot, and lemon. A feeling of deep peace descended on the room as if the tranquility of the garden and the singers wrapped around us, not isolating us from the world, but gently muting its sharpness to a soothing calm. Soft light spilled from the ceiling onto the Marshal, forming a complex circular pattern on the floor.

He turned to me, his eyes opened wide. "The Liturgy for the Wounded Soul. How did you know?"

My parents had sheltered injured vampire knights before. "I'm an innkeeper," I told him.

He took a step forward and bowed. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. May She Who Heals ease his suffering."

"It will be as She wills it."

He turned to Lord Soren's body and knelt in the circle of light, his hair all but glowing.

Sean rolled his eyes, still seated in the chair.

"Are you sure you don't want to rest?" I asked him.

He leaned over, stole a crocheted blanket off the loveseat's back, and spread it over himself. "See? Perfectly comfortable."

"Good night."

"Good night."

I went upstairs. I had an wounded vampire knight, a Marshal of a vampire House praying over him, and an unstable werewolf watching over them in case either of them tried something funny. If only Dad and Mom were here, it would feel just like home.

Chapter Ten

I woke up because the morning sun was shining bright through the gap in my curtains, flooding the bedroom with honey-yellow light. It was so quiet. Usually birds were chirping by my window, but I guess I'd slept too late.

Common sense required that I had to come up with some sort of plan of action regarding the dahaka. I needed information, and I would have to somehow get that information out of the two vampires. I'd read what I could on the House of Krahr. They were a midsized vampire House with a long lineage and a fine tradition of extreme violence in the name of the Holy Anocracy. So far they had yet to contribute either a Hierophant, who served as the religious leader of the Anocracy, or a Warlord, a designated commander-in-chief of the Anocracy's combined military forces, who would lead them if a foreign invasion occurred. However, the knights of Krahr were financially stable, politically adept, respected by their peers and their rivals, and disinclined to suffer any insults.

In other words, they were a traditional House, which meant they would be secretive and suspicious and would take offense if the wind blew the wrong way. I was unlikely to be getting any answers out of them. I would need a crowbar just to learn the Marshal's name.

I looked at the wooden ceiling. Sadly no answers appeared on the planks. I'd gone through several bedroom styles in my life and my parents' inn always obliged. When I was a small child, I had a pretty princess bedroom, complete with a four-poster bed and clouds on the ceiling. When I was around ten, I saw a documentary about a Dale Chihuly glass exhibit and became obsessed with the strange bright shapes. My parents' inn had grown glass tendrils on the ceiling in every color of the rainbow. When the sun hit it in the morning, my room had shimmered like a mermaid's underwater palace in the middle of a magical reef. At thirteen, I wanted my room to be solid black. At sixteen, some of the black turned white for an uncompromising modern look. I had thought it was very adult. Going away to college was the strangest experience of my life, because for the first time my room refused to change depending on my mood.

When I moved to the Gertrude Hunt, I wasn't in a good place. I had been bumming about the universe looking for my parents for about three years and failed. I had told Klaus I wanted to stop looking, but he couldn't. The kids of innkeepers went one of three ways. A few led perfectly ordinary lives, happy to trade the sometimes uncertain environment of the inns for the reassurance of not having to worry about odd things like two ifrits from different hordes having a brawl in the lobby and setting the house on fire. Others became innkeepers, and fewer still became
ad-hal
. But the majority of us left, drawn away from Earth, into the cosmic Beyond. My brother was one of those travelers. There was too much to see and too much to do. He loved me but he wouldn't settle down and play house with me because I missed our parents.

Once I had accumulated a little money, I returned to Earth and went before the Assembly and passed with flying colors. There were only so many spots open for new innkeepers, and a high score was important. Normally a new innkeeper replaced one ready to retire or opened an entirely new inn, but for some unknown reason they had offered me the Gertrude Hunt, an old abandoned inn that had fallen so dormant nobody was sure it could be awakened. It seemed somehow fitting: we were both orphaned and unwanted. I accepted the offer and coaxed the Gertrude Hunt out of hibernation.

When I restructured the inn and created my suite, I wanted comfort and I wanted to feel at home. I was tired of not having a place that was just mine. I'd always had this romantic idea about a mountain lodge lost somewhere in the snowdrifts. I didn't want to completely replicate that, but I came close. Above me, heavy wooden beams crossed the knotty pine boards. The ceiling slanted at an angle, simulating an attic room, the lowest point near the queen-sized bed, the highest at the opposite wall where a tall window flooded the bedroom with light. The walls were a soothing beige, the thick rug by the bed was eggshell, but the same wide planks of knotty pine lined the floor. It wasn't a fancy place, but it was warm, comfortable, and completely mine.