Clean Sweep

by Ilona Andrews

  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 cha
rged 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.

  Chapter Nine

  The magic tugged on me. Something skimmed the boundary of the inn's grounds. The pulse lingered, stopped, then flared and lingered again. Someone was knocking.

  I glanced at the stairway. Sean had gone to the bathroom to wash the blood off because it "smelled loud" and made him easy to track. Lord Soren still lay on the table. I had sealed him in an oxygen tank that pumped in the optimal atmosphere. Vampires preferred twenty-four percent oxygen in their air. The tank was transparent and now he resembled a warped version of Snow White resting in her glass coffin.

  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.