Chapter Eight
I stepped outside and walked along the curving path toward the edge of the lawn, where six vampires waited. Sean followed me. The men-at-arms watched us. All above six feet tall, all with identical square bulges under their trench coats, which made them look like football players with their pads on. Syn-armor. They weren't playing around.
No banners. Odd. Usually they had a banner.
"Protocol ARMED," I murmured. "Maximum threat level."
Behind me things slid as the house prepared for battle.
It'd been a long time since I'd dealt with the Holy Cosmic Anocracy and back then I always had my parents to back me up. Now my backup was an unpredictable werewolf who was prone to making snap judgments and acting on them with maximum force.
The largest vampire stood in front of the others. He was big with broad shoulders, a great wealth of brown and gray hair cascading down his back. A short beard traced his square jaw. Human males tended to bulk up with age. For vampires that process was even more pronounced: they grew more muscular and grizzled. The one looking at me now had to be close to sixty. And because he stood with his back to the streetlight, I couldn't see him clearly.
I sent a pulse of magic into the broom. The top of the handle glowed a gentle blue. The vampire's eyes caught the light and reflected it back, glowing pale red like the irises of a tiger. The blue light of the broom played on his syn-armor, molded to the lines of his powerful chest. I covertly looked for the glyphs glowing with dark red. His rank translated roughly to Knight Sergeant. Bad news.
I stopped about six inches from the boundary of the inn.
Another vampire stepped forward and snapped a tube up, holding it horizontally in his hand at about eye level. A dark red cloth unfurled, almost touching the grass. Ah. Here was the banner.
A predator's head with large fangs and vicious eyes was embroidered in gold on the red fabric. It looked like a cross between a bear and a sabertooth.
"House of Krahr!" the vampire with the banner barked quietly.
"Krahr," the other four vampires exhaled and glared at me.
Usually they roared their house name at the top of their lungs, trying to intimidate... Oh. They were trying to be inconspicuous. I bit my lip to keep from laughing. I'd never had an attempt at intimidation whispered at me before.
"Gertrude Hunt greets the House of Krahr and offers her hospitality to its brave warriors," I said. Protocol was important. It kept everyone civil and limited the disembowelment to a bare minimum.
"House of Krahr greets the innkeeper," the older vampire said. "We wish you no ill will."
"Would you like to come in?" I asked.
"We must regretfully decline," the older vampire said. "I'm Lord Soren, son of Rok, son of Gartena, Baron of Nur Castle."
"Dina Demille, daughter of Gerard and Helen. My lord, why are you wearing trench coats?"
"We must blend in," he said. "This is a covert operation."
Don't laugh, don't laugh, don't laugh... "It's very hot," I said. "Trench coats are a cold-weather garment."
Sean cleared his throat. "Half a dozen big guys in ill-fitting trench coats pouring out of black Hummers into the Texas heat? Are you sure you meant covert and not showy?"
Lord Soren's bushy eyebrows came together. "Is there a warm-weather alternative?"
"Rain ponchos," Sean said. "If it's raining. Otherwise, oversize football jerseys and helmets are your best bet."
"Are you sure you wouldn't like to come in?" I asked.
"No. I'll come straight to the point: we've come for one of your guests."
It's like this then, huh. "My lord, if the House of Krahr feels entitled to threaten the safety of my guests, I'm afraid you simply haven't brought enough manpower."
The vampires snapped up guns, swords, and axes. A quiet buzz announced blood blades being primed. When activated, a blood blade could chop down a wooden telephone pole. I'd seen it happen.
I plunged the broom into the lawn. Blast shutters clanged into place, guns swung into view, and magic churned around me, stirring my robe. Next to me Sean tensed, his eyes predatory, his face hard.
"Wait." Lord Soren raised his arms. "Will you walk with me?"
"As you wish." Walking away didn't diminish my ability to target them.
We strolled along the boundary, he on his side and I on mine.
"We seek the dahaka," he said.
"Why?"
"It's a private House matter. A matter of honor. We owe him a blood debt and we always settle our accounts."
The dahaka had killed someone. Someone important. "Is this a mission of revenge?"
"It is a private matter," Lord Soren repeated. "He is a monstrous creature. Produce him and this is over."
"I can't do that." Come on, tell me why you want him.
"I do not wish to resort to violence."
"Lord Soren, you come from a predatory species whose members bring down their victims by biting through their necks. At any given time there are at least five ongoing military conflicts between the Houses of the Holy Anocracy. You come to me wearing syn-armor and I've heard you prime your axe. I would argue that you don't have to consciously resort to violence. It's your default response."
Lord Soren stopped and stared at me. "I have five men-at-arms. All seasoned veterans."
"I have my broom, the inn, and the alpha-strain werewolf."
Lord Soren glanced at Sean, who blocked the five vampires, his arms crossed over his chest. "Really?"
"Yes."
Lord Soren's face turned thoughtful. Sean had made a bigger impression than my broom or my house. Obviously they knew more about alpha-strain werewolves than I did.
"If we start something, it will be loud and bloody. We wish to avoid detection, but this isn't our planet. We will crush you and leave."
"You will try."
"Even if you succeed in defending yourself, you will be left to deal with consequences."
He was right. It would be very messy.
"Earth is a neutral ground," I told him. "If you attack me without provocation, the Assembly will revoke your House's access to our services. I'm sure House Krahr is a powerful House with enemies who would take full advantage of your travel delays."
He loomed over me. Didn't like that, did he?
"Nobody has to know you surrendered the dahaka."
I raised my eyebrows. "Are you suggesting I compromise my honor?"
Lord Soren paused. I'd backed him into a corner. Honor wasn't a concept a vampire was comfortable compromising. Especially a knight.
"If you were to revoke his welcome, he would no longer be your guest."
"We do not surrender our guests to the first armed person who comes to the door."
Lord Soren chewed on that for a long minute. "Then we shall set up camp and watch the inn until he leaves."
He wouldn't give me any information. Time to end this. "That would be quite useless, my lord, because he isn't a guest."
"Do not toy with me. We are locked on to his trackers' signals."
"These trackers?"
I pulled the two trackers out of my pocket.
"Explain," Lord Soren growled.
"Don't give orders to her," Sean called.
Werewolf hearing. Much more sensitive than I'd anticipated.
"Explain, please," Lord Soren said.
"He's killing Earth's citizens, livestock, and hounds. He killed my neighbors' dogs, so I killed his stalkers in retaliation."
Lord Soren pondered the situation. "You activated the trackers. Why?"
"To draw him near."
"That isn't your way. You are neutral."
"Lord Soren, I run a specialized type of inn, catering to a very specific clientele. I don't handle things the way other innkeepers do. You and your men are welcome to join us and wait until he shows up."
Lord Soren looked at his men, looked at Sean, and back at me. "No. As I said, the House's honor is involved. We will handle it alone."
Anything I could say would be perceived as impugning his honor, and his House's honor, and his men's honor, and the honor of their parents and their parents' parents... "That's your prerogative, my lord."
Lord Soren studied the trackers in my hand. "House of Krahr desires to purchase the trackers from you."
"I would be willing to part with one."
"It will do," he said. "Name your price."
I held my hand over the boundary and dropped one tracker into his palm. "A gesture of good will, my lord. Perhaps next time we meet, we won't open our discussion with threats. I ask only that you do not involve my neighbors in your battle."
He blinked and bowed. "It will be so."
Lord Soren raised his hand with a tracker in it and bared his teeth. His inch-long fangs glistened in the streetlamp's light. The vampire weapons vanished as if by magic and his men-at-arms grinned back at him, their sickle teeth on display.
He turned to Sean. "This is our hunt. Stay out of it."
"Knock yourselves out," Sean said.
I walked over to him and we watched them pile into their Hummers and speed north, up the street.
"Thank you for watching my back," I said.
"No problem. Vampires, huh?"
"Mhm."
"I heard a heartbeat and I saw one of them sweat. They're not undead."
"No, they're a predatory strain of humans. We are situational predators and omnivores. They're carnivores."
"How do they get mistaken for corpses?"
"They have thick skin. They don't blush, their core body temperature is lower than ours, and you saw how pale their lips are. They also tend to put themselves into stasis in coffin-like modules when they know they're going to be stuck on our planet and they'll have to wait for a long time to be picked up. Sometimes they bury these modules because they don't want to be accidentally found."
We started back toward the house.
"That's a long way from a walking corpse," Sean said.
"Myths tend to spiral out of control. Do you howl at the full moon and steal maidens to devour?"
"Depends on the maiden," he said.
Was he flirting with me? Devouring didn't really go with flirting, but his tone of voice did. Was this how werewolves flirted? Hey, baby, if I had to kill any girl and eat her flesh, it would be you...
"They look human." Sean shook his head.
"They're similar to us. Our species are compatible. There have been vampire-human hybrids."
He turned and looked at me.
"There are werewolf-human hybrids." I shrugged. "The basic set of genes is the same..."
A howl of pain cut through the night. It came from the north.
Sean spun toward the sound. He blurred and suddenly a monster rose in his place. Tall, muscular with enormous shoulders, he was covered with dense, dark gray fur. His big, squarish head, more wolf than human and equipped with colossal jaws, rested on a thick muscular neck. His hands, armed with two-inch-long claws, could enclose my head. He was huge. The werewolves from my memories would be like kids next to him.
Fear gripped me, born of pure instinct. My knees shook.
He snarled, his eyes bright amber. A deep voice came forth. "Stay here."
"Sean!"
"Stay here!"
He dashed across the lawn, impossibly fast, clearing the hedge in a single leap.
*** *** ***
Everything in me screamed to go after him. But with violence so close, I had the inn to protect.
I held very still, trying to listen to the night noises. Gloom drowned the subdivision streets.
Come on, Sean. Don't get hurt and get out of there. Someone will call the cops.
If they arrested him, I'd totally bail him out.
A faint scrape came from the right. I turned, scanning the house across the street. It sat with its side to me, facing Camelot Road. I peered at the darkness under its bushes, searching for any hint of movement.
Nothing.
Something watched me from the darkness. I couldn't see it, but it was there. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. The gaze pressed on me, like a razor blade slowly cutting into my nerves.
The broom flowed in my hand, forming two long, swordlike blades, one on the top and one on the bottom.
Show yourself.
Nothing.
At least Beast was locked inside. The last thing I needed was her getting hurt.
Somewhere in the darkness muscles tensed and ligaments stretched as something prepared for a leap. I could almost feel it.
"Don't fire," I whispered. The inn creaked in acknowledgment. The less noise, the better.
In the depths of the subdivision a dog barked.
The darkness stared back at me with invisible evil eyes. My knees shook. Every muscle clenched inside me. This wasn't my first hand-to-hand fight, but except for the stalker, I had never stood against this kind of attack alone. My parents or my siblings had always been with me.
Now wasn't the time to freak out. Whatever I did would work. It had to work. That's why we practiced.
Show yourself.
A stalker shot out of the gloom under the bushes and sprinted across the road so fast it was a blur, then leaped over the hedge. All thoughts dashed out of my head in a terrified stampede. I spun my broom, turning into it, just like in practice.
The stalker flew through the air, hurtling toward me.
The first blade sliced the stalker's chest. His leap carried him forward. My second blade cut across its flank. The stalker crashed to the ground. The inn's roots shot out of the lawn. The long woody tendrils grasped the stalker, holding it still for a second. I spun my spear and sliced its head off. White liquid bubbled from the wound.
A second stalker burst from the left, clearing the hedge. I twisted and cut across its stomach as it was in mid-leap. Pale blood flew and splashed onto the trunk of the nearest oak. The stalker fell to the ground, snarled in an unearthly voice, and charged me. I lunged and drove the blade into its chest. The metal cut through flesh like a knife through a ripe fruit. The stalker gurgled, impaled on my spear but still trying to claw at me.
A third beast charged toward the inn, galloping down the road. I had to get rid of the second one before I could take the third one on.
I shot a pulse of magic down the broom. The blade of the broom split into a dozen spikes. The spike tips burst through the stalker's chest and out of its back, their razor-sharp tips glowing with faint blue.
The stalker gasped and went limp.
I yanked the broom out of its body, retracting the spikes.
The third stalker was almost to me.
A muscular furry body leapt into the road, blocking the stalker's path. Sean. An armored figure hung over his shoulder, slung fireman style.
The stalker charged.
The werewolf swept the creature off its feet and jerked it up, one enormous clawed hand constricting the beast's throat. Sean shook the hundred-pound beast once, a violent sharp motion like cracking a whip. Something snapped. The stalker hung limp. Its head lolled to the side.
He just killed a stalker, one-handed. Okay. Good information to have for the future, especially if I decided to threaten him again.
The sound of an approaching car engine rumbled from the right.
"Sean!"
The werewolf tossed the stalker on my lawn and dashed to the house. I stabbed the stalker's corpse just in case and stepped behind an oak. Sean ducked into the doorway.
Car lights illuminated the night and a lone truck rolled past us and kept going.
Phew. "Secure the bodies."
Pits opened beneath the stalkers as the house pulled them under. I jogged to the door, melting the weapon in my hand back into my broom.
*** *** ***
Inside Sean laid the vampire on the table. A brown mane touched with silver spilled over the edge. Lord Soren. Oh no.
"Console," I ordered.
A communication console emerged from the floor like a mushroom on a thin stalk. Blue icons flared on the smooth metal surface.
"What happened?"
"They were ambushed." Sean pulled at the armor. "He hit them hard. One vehicle is completely in chunks of scrap metal, like something froze it and then busted it to pieces. The other was in a ditch."
Something gurgled, whistling, and I realized it was Lord Soren breathing.
Sean tugged the armor again, nearly lifting the prone vampire off the table. "By the time I got there, their vehicles were in the ditch and two stalkers were dragging him off. He's a tough old bastard. He killed two before the others got him. He was the only one I found. Dina, he's bleeding out. How do we get this damn armor off?"
"We can't. It's genetically locked onto him. Unless he becomes conscious or a blood relative shows up, we're stuck. I can heal him, but not with the armor on."
"Can't we cut it off?"
I shook my head, adjusting the settings. "That's why people killed them with stakes. Back when the legends started, they didn't mean little garden stakes, they meant a sharpened four-by-four. If he were a man-at-arms we probably could, but he's a knight. His syn-armor is reinforced."
"So he's just going to die?" Sean stared at me, incredulous, his eyes luminescing.
"Not if I can help it."
He finally noticed the console. "What are you doing?"
"We can't get the armor off, but other vampires can. They got here very quickly, which means either there's a gate somewhere or they have a craft in orbit."
"And since this is an extraction, they didn't plan to stay long," Sean said. "Either way, they would've left someone to guard it."
"Exactly. He should have a House crest on his body. It'll have that panther-bear with teeth."
Sean plucked the crest from the armor and passed it to me. It was about the size of a note card. I slid it into the slot on the console so it stood straight up and touched the exclamation mark on the console. A tiny red light ran along the edge of the crest, circling it.
"Exclamation mark?" Sean asked.
"Universal sign for distress. If there are any members of his House within the vicinity, they will arrive shortly. Until then, keeping him comfortable is the only thing we can do."
A pale pink line appeared on the wall above the table. It moved, drawing peaks and valleys.
"Heartbeat?" Sean guessed.
I nodded. "If it stops, he's dead."
We looked at each other. The pink line gently zigzagged on the wall.
The only thing we could do now was wait.