Sean regarded the spheres with calm interest. "Can you activate them?"
"Yes."
"Did the trackers turn themselves off because the stalkers died?"
"I don't think so. From the scans, they look simple: turn on, turn off."
"So the dahaka deliberately turned them off."
"Probably."
Sean leaned back. "If I were him, stuck in an unfamiliar place, I would want to know where my dogs were at all times. He turned off the trackers. He's hiding, but not from us. From someone who can track him by whatever signal these things send out."
I thought out loud. "He could be hiding from someone he's hunting."
"Or someone who's hunting him," Sean said.
If someone was hunting a dahaka, that someone would be armed to the teeth, ruthless, and powerful. In other words, someone we would be wise to avoid. Or befriend.
Sean picked up one of the spheres and studied it. "You have to decide how involved you want to be."
"I know." If we left the dahaka to his own devices, he would kill again. I had no doubt of it. He had turned off the trackers for a reason, and he would want them kept off. If we reactivated them, he would stop what he was doing and come directly here to investigate. And not just him, but anyone else who could pick up his signal, predator or prey. "We can ignore him or we can give him a target."
"Agreed." Sean leaned back in his chair.
As long as the dahaka concentrated on the inn, the rest of the people would be somewhat safe. I was better equipped to deal with him than pretty much anyone else in the county. And if I did activate them, it would have to be here. I wasn't quite useless away from the inn's grounds, but I was a great deal weaker.
Activating the trackers on the grounds went against the fundamental principle of keeping an inn. The safety of the guests had to be maintained at all times. If I turned these things on, I would be putting Caldenia at risk. But the dahaka graduated to killing human beings. I was in a position to do something about it. Then again, if I made the inn a target, I would put my neighbors at risk. I would have to make sure to hold his attention here at the inn, where I was at my strongest.
I realized I was looking at the portrait of my parents. I wished so desperately I could ask for advice. I might as well wait for money to rain from the sky. I was alone. Nobody would offer me any guidance. I wasn't even sure guidance would do any good. I knew the appropriate course of action: sit on your hands, guard the inn, and do nothing.
Somebody had answer for the murder of John Rook.
"What happened to them?" Sean asked.
"Mmm?"
He nodded at the portrait.
I missed them so much. Telling him this probably wasn't a good idea, but I was hurting and lonely and I wanted him to understand why. "My parents owned an inn in Georgia. It was very old and very powerful. Most inns top out at four marks. My parents' inn was rated at five. It was a thriving, magical place and I loved living there. But I wanted to go to college. Two months into my first semester, I received a message from my brother. He'd come home after a long trip and he couldn't find the house. I dropped everything and got back. I stood next to my brother and looked at the spot where the inn used to be. The trees, the garden, and the house had vanished. There was just an empty lot with bare dirt."
The lot had been completely stripped of any life. Even the grass had disappeared. I remembered this terrible hollow feeling inside. When I was a child, I went swimming at a friend's house and when we ran to the pool, we saw a dead kitten on the bottom. The kitten was a stray who had climbed the fence, fallen into the pool, panicked, and drowned. Kelly's father had tried so hard to revive the little cat. He tried to clear her mouth and pushed on her chest and even held her upside down while we stood there and cried, but the kitten was dead. Seeing that empty lot had felt like that, awful and final. Something terrible had happened there, something irreversible, and the footprint of it had made my heart speed up. The anxiety, fear, and desperate need to reverse it, to somehow rewind time and undo what happened, had gripped me and wouldn't let go, not even after I had emptied my stomach on the bare patch of dirt that used to be our front lawn.
"Where did it go?" Sean asked.
"Nobody knows."
"Did your parents have any enemies?"
"They were like most people: they had some acquaintances they avoided and some of those acquaintances didn't like them, but nobody I would consider an enemy. After the inn disappeared, my brother and I talked to anyone we knew. We came up empty-handed."
"Did you look for them?"
"I did." I had spent two years looking for them and another year drifting aimlessly, because I didn't know what to do with myself.
"What about your brother?"
"Klaus? He's still out there, looking." Klaus had always been a wanderer and he never gave up. I hadn't given up either. I nodded at the portrait. "My sister had married and moved away, but I don't think my brother will ever stop searching. That's why the inn's rating is so important. The more marks we earn, the more people will visit. One day this inn will thrive and every guest who passes through these doors will have to look at the portrait of my parents. Eventually one of them will react and then I'll start looking again."
The two trackers waited on the table in front of me.
"What would your parents do?" Sean asked.
"I don't know. I know they would do something. They would never tolerate someone from outside killing people in their neighborhood." I looked up at Sean. "If you're going to bail, now is the time."
"I'm in," he said. "No conditions, no strings attached. He doesn't get to come to my planet and use our bones for dog toys."
I reached over the trackers and passed my hand over them, sparking the tiny flame of magic with my power. The spiral lines on the spheres glowed brick red. I held my breath. The spheres came apart, the sections of wood turning like a Rubik's Cube. The trackers realigned themselves, the spirals arranging themselves into concentric circles, and lay still, emanating a steady pulse of magic.
Sean and I looked at each other.
"I guess that's it," he said.
"Did you expect them to explode?" I had, a little bit.
"It crossed my mind." Sean leaned back. "There's a good chance he'll show up tonight."
"Would you like to spend the night here?"
"I think it would be wise. I promise not to try anything funny. Unless you want me to." The wolf winked at me.
"Let me make this perfectly clear: try something and you'll find yourself tied to a metal table with steel cables even you can't break."
An evil light sparked in his eyes.
"Don't," I warned him.
He raised his hands, palms up. "I'll be an angel."
Ha-ha. Right. "What are your preferences for the room?" He would want something clean and simple. Probably with a touch of country so it felt more like home and less like Spartan barracks. I could put him in the Romantic Bedroom for giggles. The look on his face when he saw the canopy bed would be priceless. I began moving the walls upstairs, shaping the room and bringing the furniture out of storage. I had just the thing in mind...
He shrugged. "I don't need much. A bed. A bathroom would be nice. As long as it's clean."
I glared at him. How to insult an innkeeper in five words or less...
"What?"
"No, it's filthy, but I didn't think rotten food and dead hookers under the bed would bother you." The room was almost done.
"I've slept in worse."
Finished. I rose. "Come with me."
I led him up the stairs to second bedroom on the right and opened the door. A spacious square bedroom stretched in front of us. Very light, knotty alder-wood paneling covered the walls and ceiling, giving an illusion of a rustic log cabin. A large, simple bed with a polished headboard that still managed to pretend it was roughly cut from a random block of wood sat against one wall, supporting a soft mattress with white sheets, a small army of pillows, and a sage-color
ed bedspread. Two side tables, a dresser, and a bookcase, all matching the headboard in style but clearly not part of the same set, completed the room.
"Nice," Sean said.
"The bathroom is on your right." I nodded.
He walked through into the bathroom, which was almost as large as the bedroom, looked at the garden tub, the shower, and stopped by the small windows.
"That's a huge bathroom," he said.
Bathrooms were my pet peeve. "At least it's clean."
He turned. His eyes narrowed. "We're on the southeast side of the house. I can see the road."
"Yes."
"I've spent a lot of time studying your house from the outside."
"Aha." Where was he heading?
"I know for a fact that there are three arched windows side by side with a small balcony in the place where this bathroom is." Sean pointed to two small, rectangular windows situated one under the other to flood the tub with light.
"If you would like a large arched window so people can view you in all your naked glory while you bathe, that can be arranged."
"Dina," he growled.
"People say that physics has laws," I told him, walking to the bedroom door. "I prefer to view them as a set of flexible guidelines."
Sean followed me out. A flat screen TV slowly materialized on the wall across from the bed. The ceiling spat out a remote and Sean caught it reflexively.
"Thank you for staying, Sean," I told him. "I'm glad you're here. You know where the kitchen is, so if you get hungry in the middle of the night, you're welcome to the food. Please let me know if there is anything else you need."
He opened his mouth, closed it as if he'd changed his mind, and said, "Sure."
I stepped out and closed the door. I needed to take a good long shower and wash all the smoke out of my hair.
Two hours later I was in bed, catching up on my reading and trying to ignore the fact that Sean was three rooms away, when Beast barked. A few seconds later I heard a car roll up and stop by the inn. I checked the window. Two Hummers parked on our street. The doors opened and the vehicles disgorged large men in trench coats.
Hmm. And who might you be?
The last man out leaned into the vehicle and took out something long wrapped in cloth. With my luck, it would be a missile launcher. Prepare to be exploded in three, two, one...
The man straightened, his coat shifting. Long dark hair spilled out.
Not a government agent. Last I checked, neither the FBI nor CIA permitted their operatives to have long flowing locks.
The man handed his burden over to another, pulled a couple more out, and closed the car door. As if obeying some invisible signal, the men stopped and bowed their heads, their hands together, arms bent at the elbow, as if holding their hands in prayer. I squinted. Fingers of their hands together, palms apart, thumbs and pinkies touching and held horizontally. The Holy Pyramid. Got you.
I grabbed my bra and pulled my keeper robe out of the closet. They would want to talk and they were sticklers for formality, and I didn't have time to actually get dressed.
Ten seconds later I went down the hall, dressed in a long gray robe with a cowl, broom in hand. Sean was already out of his room and dressed.
"Who are they?"
"The Holy Cosmic Anocracy. I don't know which House."
"That doesn't tell me anything. And why are you dressed like a monk?"
"I need to get you a primer to read." I went down the stairs. "If we're lucky, it's just men-at-arms. If they have a knight with them, things could get complicated."
"How complicated?" Sean asked.
"Very."
The magic pinged, letting me know someone stood at the edge of my territory. They didn't cross onto the grounds. They just let me know they were there. A good sign.
I reached the door.
"Dina," Sean said. "I need to know what we're dealing with."
"Vampires," I told him. "Please let me do the talking."
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 sw
ung 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."
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