The Last Inn

by Rachel Gay

  Miles’s eyes narrowed, but he looked away when he heard Kota cough and say, “Let him go already.”

  “You’re bleeding,” Miles said, only changing his grip enough that the hunter could breathe easily.

  “Terra didn’t...” Kota tried to rub his face and remembered the wounds on his hands too late. He shook his head and said, “Barbed wire, that’s all.”

  Erin said, “He did carry him home, Miles.”

  The vampire, after some effort, let Terra go and said, “Can someone cover those blasted windows already?”

  Erin ran around the room, closing all of the shutters before going back into the kitchen to get some real bandages, while Kota examined the lacerations on his hands.

  “Unicorn blood?” Miles asked after a sniff.

  Kota shrugged. “Long story. Should at least keep away infection.”

  Erin took his hands and spread the ointment from the first aid kit over the cuts, all the while trying to ignore Kota’s attempts to hide his gasps of pain. While she carefully bandaged his hands, she asked Terra, “So you were working for Elzwig?”

  “For the mayor, officially,” Terra said with a shrug. He took the seat on the opposite side of the table and seemed to instantly regret it when Miles took the chair next to him. “The Judge simply added a few notes. I figured there was something going on, but...”

  Kota shifted under his gaze, even though he was staring at the polished wooden floorboards. “Sawdust,” he muttered.

  Erin glanced down too and said, “You’re not bleeding that much, and I think this should stop it. It’s only a few drops, I can clean that up in just a minute.”

  Kota did not answer, but that was because his eyes were nearly shut now and his head was starting to sag forward.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Terra asked again, with a bit more force since he could actually breathe this time. “Do you realize how stupid this was, keeping this a secret?”

  “We were afraid the people in town would...” Erin started.

  “Would what?” Miles asked. “Run him out of town? Kill him? Exactly what problem does this town have with irregulars? I’ve never heard of anything happening here before.”

  “Well, no, we’ve never really dealt with anyone like this before,” Erin said, but realized that wasn’t true. Mr. Sollis had written about the guests that came into the inn, and at times nearly a third of them probably weren’t even human. They just passed through the inn and never went into town, she supposed.

  “Wen warned me, said this town had a bad history,” Kota said, surprising Erin. She thought he had passed out again, but as she finished binding his hands and sat back she could see the small glimmer of his eyes.

  “Why would he say that?” Erin asked, and Kota shrugged his limp shoulders.

  “This Wen, whatever he remembers, it doesn’t matter, does it?” Miles asked, leaning on the table so that he could get a better look at Kota. “You didn’t want anyone to know long before he warned you.”

  “Can you blame me?” Kota said, drawing his legs up into his chair and resting his head on his knees. “I’ve lost count of how many times people have tried to kill me since I got this curse. That’s part of how it works.”

  “No home and no sanctuary for the lone wolf,” Miles said, and from her position Erin could see Kota’s eyes widen in shock. “Only death awaits the one who abandons his pack.”

  Erin wasn’t sure if Kota was even breathing anymore, and his face had paled. “Sorry, what was that?”

  “A saying in the far northern mountains,” Terra said, and this time it was Miles’s turn to look surprised. “Wolves are common there, a real problem this time of year.”

  “A bit more than a saying in some places,” Miles said, still staring so hard at Kota that Erin was sure the young man could feel it. “It’s part of a curse in one small village outside the bounds of the empire. Although I think Solkotan here could tell us more about it than I ever could.”

  Entry 66: How a Curse is Made

  “Solkotan?” Erin said, and she and Terra both looked at Kota, who pulled his legs closer to his body and buried his face in his knees.

  “Solkotan Volkov,” Kota said, and chuckled in a way that did not sound like he was very happy. “That’s my full name. But how do you know it?”

  “I had a little free time up in the mountains, when I wasn’t trying to track down a crazed hatter dealing illegal potions,” Miles said. “Long story short, I asked a few questions and didn’t get as many answers as I would have liked. I think it’s time you told us how you got your curse, Solkotan.”

  “Kota,” Kota snapped the word out, and his eyes flashed as he looked up at Miles for the first time. “Just...Kota, okay?”

  He sighed and ran a bandaged hand over his face, stopping at the mark above his left eye before he began to speak.

  “Well, like you said, I come from a small village, just outside of your Empire and too small to be noticed. There, in the mountains, it’s similar to your forest. There’s more than just wolves and deer to deal with. Spirits, beasts, ‘irregulars’ like you call them, and like here they’re everywhere.”

  “No, they’re in the forest,” Erin said, ignoring the glare Miles sent her at the interruption.

  “Really? You’ve seen Voi, and there’s a lot more than him hanging around this old inn,” Kota said. “You have a phoenix in your clock tower, a troll under your bridge, and I’m fairly sure there’s more than a few spirits hanging around just your father’s forge.” Kota shrugged at Erin’s expression. “You don’t see them, but they’re here all the same. In the village, the smaller spirits assist just about everywhere.

  “It’s the wild ones that they have more trouble with. Cut the wrong tree, stray into the barren rocks unbidden, or disrespect the mer, and it could bring trouble on you or even the whole village, and that was just the spirits. Creatures like the cannishifts, the worst sort of goblin, and griffins didn’t need much of an excuse to play havoc with our lives.”

  Miles leaned back in his chair and said, “Of course, your village must have had a way of dealing with them. Hunters?”

  “For some, yes, but we had...I suppose you would call them tamers,” Kota stopped and chuckled. “Maybe not tamer, they weren’t much like Lani. Our tamers could see the spirits and speak to them, in a way.”

  “You were a tamer,” Erin said, thinking of how Voi came out only for Kota. Even the way Arlo and Kota looked at each other, it seemed like the two were thinking the same thing.

  Kota nodded. “So was my father. There were a few others in the village, but none of them had the gift like him.”

  “They said he saved the village more times than anyone could count,” Miles said, studying Kota’s face closely. “Even the king of the mountain knew his name. They talked and talked about him, but you know, none of them would tell me how he died.”

  “Of course they would’’t!” The anger that flashed across Kota’s face reminded Erin fiercely of the wolf under Lani’s spell. “You want to know how he died? Two years ago, on midwinter’s eve, the leaders of the village went with him for the annual ritual in the barren stones. A beast, unlike anything they had seen before, had sheltered in the stones. It was hungry, and terrified, and lashed out at them, and the leaders fought back. My father tried to stop them, and he was hurt in the process. So what did they do? They left him there.”

  Shaking, Kota buried his head in his knees again, but continued to speak, “And they came back, and they lied to me, told me the beast had killed him, when they left him to freeze in the dark with no one to help.”

  “How did you find out the truth?” Miles asked, and it was Erin’s turn to glare at him.

  “I went to him, of course. The wound that killed him, all of them, came from weapons, not from that poor creature that had huddled with him, trying to keep each other warm enough to survive the night.” Kota looked up, this time at Erin, with eyes red from holding back tears. “You remember when you asked when
was the last time I was so angry I couldn’t think?”

  Erin nodded, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything.

  “I don’t even remember walking back to the village, or what I did. They said I would have killed someone if they hadn’t been able to knock me out.” Kota turned his gaze back to his knees. “That’s when they gave me a choice.”

  “To stay in the village that abandoned your father, or live as an outcast under their curse.” Kota nodded in response and Miles stood up and slowly walked around the table. “Easy to see which choice you made.”

  “This mark on my face once represented my family line,” Kota said, touching it again. “Now I’m all that’s left, and it’s just a reminder of what that place took from me.”

  “That’s not the choice they gave you though, is it?” Miles stopped in front of Kota’s chair and crossed his arms as he looked down at him. “You’re a tamer, and they need their tamers just to survive. I doubt they were about to give you up. So why did they put the curse on you?”

  “In case I escaped,” Kota whispered, and clenched his hands despite the pain from the cuts. “Once I left the village, the curse would start.”

  “And a curse like that would only have one way to break it,” Miles said, this time glancing at Erin.

  She had listened to this whole exchange in increasing horror, and thought she knew what Miles meant. “It would only stop if you went back.”

  Kota swallowed and nodded, unable to speak.

  “You weren’t afraid someone would kill you,” Terra said, catching on. “You were afraid they would return you.”

  “We would never have done that,” Erin protested. She put a hand on Kota’s shaking shoulder. “I promise, I would never let someone do that to you.”

  “And if we’ve learned anything, it’s that she’s stubborn enough to keep her word,” Miles said, earning a small, fleeting grin from Kota. “Erin, do you think you can help Kota get up to his room? I think he could use some rest.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Erin said quickly. She really did have to help Kota stand, and together they staggered up the stairs to his room.

  “Heartwarming,” Terra said as they watched them go up. He turned back to Miles and added, “But you don’t look so sure.”

  “Observant, aren’t you?” Miles flopped down into Kota’s vacant chair and let his head roll over to look at the hunter. “I got the villagers to tell me a little more about Kota’s curse, after some persuading, and asked the wizards at the city about it last night while I had their attention. This sort of curse is made to escalate after a year, to force him to come back any way possible. Kota escaped from his village one year after his father’s death, on last midwinter’s day.”

  Terra groaned, already seeing where this was going. “Escalate how?”

  Miles glanced back at the stairs to make sure Kota and Erin were still out of earshot. “I don’t know, but if a cure is not found, Kota may have no choice but to return to his village by midwinter’s day.”

  Entry 67: Sawdust

  When Erin came back downstairs a few minutes later, Terra and Miles jumped up, and quickly thought up excuses to leave.

  “Gotta go and tell the mayor his ‘beast’ has been taken care of,” Terra said, and ruefully looked down at his broken bow. “Guess I can see if he’ll chalk this up to business expense.”

  “I don’t know about you two, but some of us have a day to sleep away,” Miles said before stretching and exaggerating a yawn.

  “Oh, what did the wizards say about the drawing?” Erin asked.

  Miles dropped his arms and shrugged. “Just that it’s an old spell, probably cast when they built the clock tower. Very powerful stuff, maybe even draws on one of the old powers. Which I guess is fascinating enough for them, but not much use to us.”

  Erin sighed and missed the glance the other two passed each other before they went their respective ways. She had figured as much, but it was still disappointing to find yet another dead end.

  Alone now, and with no guests on the way, Erin had little to look forward to as she wet a rag in the kitchen and returned to the common room with water and soap. Dropping to her knees, she scrubbed at the places where Kota had dripped blood and sighed with relief when it came up rather easily.

  As she wiped the floor clean, Erin thought back to how nasty this floor looked when she first arrived and smiled. Even Mr. Sollis himself would have a hard time recognizing the place after all of the cleaning and so many repairs.

  “Sawdust,” Erin muttered, recalling Kota’s word. There had been sawdust all over the place, hadn’t there?

  She stood and looked around at the floor. Mr. Sollis had never bothered to coat the floor with the stuff before then.

  An itching started in Erin’s head as she remembered the blood spot in the clock tower, and Kota’s first thoughts when he uncovered all of the sawdust. You used the stuff to soak up spills, like oil and grease. And blood, Erin added to herself silently, and tried, and failed, to dismiss the thought.

  Sollis had drawn the emblem in his journal. The idea, for whatever reason, had mattered enough to him that Erin could not imagine he would not think to go to the clock tower at least once if he even thought it had something to do with the key to breaking his curse, whoever the “he” was that Sollis kept writing about.

  Erin paced the floor slowly, looking for a sign of something, anything. If Sollis went to the tower, then it wasn’t that much of a stretch to think he was the one who took whatever had been at the bottom of the fake gear box. The blood there, if he had been bleeding or hurt, where would he have gone then?

  Well, Erin knew the first place she or Kota would go. She stopped her pacing occasionally to tap the creaking floorboards with her feet, listening as hard as she could. Near the fireplace, she stopped and tapped again, and then dropped to her knees and rapped on the floor with her knuckles.

  Even if Mr. Sollis had been bleeding, there would never have been a need to coat the entire floor with sawdust, not unless he was using it for another reason: to keep someone from looking at it too closely and noticing the clear marks where one of the boards by the fireplace had been ripped up and put back down again.

  After struggling with the board a minute, Erin ran into the kitchen and came back with an old butterknife, which she used to lever the board up. In between the joists that supported the floor and the ceiling of the cellar, she could just make out a cloth-wrapped bundle.

  Erin reached in, trying not to imagine what else could be under the floor, and grabbed the surprisingly heavy bundle.

  “Well, isn’t this convenient timing?”

  Erin froze, staring down into the hole and wishing she did not recognize that voice.

  “It’s almost like I was waiting for just the right moment,” Lani said with a breathy chuckle.

  “What are you doing here?” Erin said as she turned around to face the tamer, careful to keep the bundle out of sight but not as careful to keep the disgust out of her voice.

  Lani stood in the middle of the room, but she wasn’t alone. A massive creature, its head coming up to her chest, paced the room behind her on wide, webbed paws that did not make a sound. Its matted fur barely covered a head that ended in a sharp, dangerous beak and did nothing to hide the ribs that stuck out from its sides. A pair of tattered things on its back might have been wings, but Erin doubted they could support anything, much less the creature, even as emaciated as it was.

  “A griffin,” Lani said, in response to her stare. “Lost its pride, I think. It was the best I could find in the little time I had, but I think she’ll do.”

  “But how...I broke your flute,” Erin said as she slowly got to her feet. The griffin’s yellow eyes watched her every movement, but Erin’s eyes went from it to the open door. She could not believe it managed to fit through the door, much less that she had completely failed to notice their coming in.

  “That thing? It just amplified my talents, but don’t you worry, I have her un
der control.” Lani passed a hand over the griffin’s matted head, and it seemed to briefly shine before she took it away. The griffin growled, a rumbling that shook the floor under Erin’s feet.

  “What do you want?” Erin asked, fighting the urge to back away or to look to the stairs. Had Miles or Kota heard that?

  “To finish what I came here for,” Lani said and slowly walked up to Erin until they were face to face. “I never did turn in my notice, you know.”

  “Leave Kota alone.”

  “Oh, yes, Kota.” Lani grinned. “I’ll deal with him later, and it will be delightful, but the wolf was always just a side job. Now, why don’t you be a dear and hand over what you’re hiding behind your back?”

  Erin brought her hand around, as fast as she could, and leaned into the punch that knocked Lani right off her feet. Behind her, the griffin roared, shaking the rafters even after the sound died out, and leapt.

  Erin dropped and rolled, the floor bouncing as the griffin landed and turned on her, but by then she was already up on her feet.

  “Run!”

  She obeyed the command without looking back, running through the kitchen because the griffin had the other door blocked and out through the back door. Erin dropped the package into the basket of her bicycle and took off on it, trying to put as much distance between her and the monster tearing its way through the kitchen as fast as she could.

  Back at the inn, Lani looked up and smirked at Miles on the top of the stairs before running out the front door. Miles, without hesitation, jumped the stairs and made it as far as the front porch before he had to stagger back inside before the blinding sunlight and laid shivering on the bare floorboards. He barely registered the sound of footsteps clattering down the stairs and, after a pause to check the vampire, out the door as well.

  Entry 68: The Bike's Last Ride

  Erin leaned over the handlebars, urging the bike to go faster as she pedaled as hard as she could, but she barely maintained a lead on the griffin. Her only thought was to get away, as fast as possible, somewhere the scraggly thing couldn’t follow. The town and the Farmers’ place were both too far away, even if the griffin couldn’t just bash through the door like it did to the back door of the inn.