Sweep of the Blade (Innkeeper Chronicles Book 4)

by Ilona Andrews

  She swore, and he laughed.

  Twenty feet from the fork in the hallway that led to both their rooms, Arland’s harbinger chimed. He glanced at it and continued. She was almost carrying him now. The unit chimed again and again.

  “Soren,” Arland told her.

  They reached the spot where the hallway split. They had a choice, his room or hers. Soren likely had a direct channel to Arland’s quarters with priority access. If they went to Arland’s room, they would get no peace.

  “Does Lord Soren have an override code to my quarters?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She turned right, to her room, and he went with her. The last fifty feet of the hallway were pure torture. Her knees shook and her back burned from the strain.

  The door whispered open. They stumbled through and it slid shut behind them. His full weight hit her. His face had gone blank and almost soft. He was done.

  “Bathroom,” she squeezed out. “We have to get you into the bathroom.”

  His face jerked, and he staggered to the bathroom, fueled by pure will.

  “Medbed!” she ordered as they crossed the threshold.

  A shelf shot out of the wall and she half-lowered, half-dumped Arland on to it. He landed on his back, his mane of blond hair fanning over the bed. His right leg hung off the edge. Maud heaved it on to the shelf.

  Arland tapped his chest. The syn-armor cracked along its seams, pieces of it falling off. Maud pulled parts of the breastplate off him, dropping them on the floor.

  “First aid kit!”

  A tray slid out of the wall, offering the usual vampire assortment of stimulants, antibiotics, wound sealants, and anesthetics. She got the last piece off of him. Arland was built like a vampire hero of legend. Saying that he had wide shoulders, a chiseled chest, and a washboard stomach didn’t do him justice. He was big. There was really no better word for it. Hard, powerful muscle sheathed his massive frame. When you looked at him, you saw pure force in physical form. A large, athletic human male would look like a fragile teenager next to him.

  All of that muscle came with a price. He had endurance and could deliver bursts of devastating power, but he couldn’t run for hours the way Sean, her sister’s boyfriend, did. Sean, being an alpha strain werewolf, had almost unlimited speed and stamina. Arland was designed to stand his ground. And that’s exactly what he had done. His entire left side was an oblong bruise. His right bicep bled in two places, where something had punctured the armor. His right hip had turned dark red, the result of blunt force trauma. He’d gotten hit in the back too, but she would deal with it later.

  Maud took a smooth nutrient cartridge from the tray, slid it into the injector with practiced ease, found a vein on his left arm, and shot it. Vampires healed faster than humans, but they required a lot of fuel to do it.

  “Scanner.”

  A mechanical appendage slid from the wall with two prongs about eight inches apart. She pulled it forward, positioning the prongs horizontally over the bruise on Arland’s left side. A screen shimmered into existence between the prongs, showing her a black and silver view of Arland’s bones. Two hair-line fractures. Not great, but not awful. She had half expected to find broken ribs puncturing vital organs. If he had been human, she would have.

  Maud moved the scanner to his right arm. Whatever punctured it had missed the major blood vessels. The bleeding had already slowed.

  His right hip was next.

  “A little to the left and down,” he said, his voice quiet.

  “Do keep in mind that I have a whole tray of tranquilizers.”

  “That would be nice, too.”

  The pain killers would have to wait until she finished evaluating the extent of his injuries.

  The hip offered her a muscle contusion, bruised bone, and hematoma. A lump had formed as a pool of blood saturated the injured tissue. It hurt like hell, which had contributed to him limping, but wasn’t fatal.

  She grasped his shoulders. “I need you to sit up.”

  He sat upright. She moved the scanner over his back. He’d taken the blow on his left shoulder blade. Fractured scapula. Crap.

  “Lift your left arm.”

  Arland raised his arm a couple of inches out to his side and stopped. “No.”

  “Does it hurt to breathe?”

  “I’ve had worse.”

  “You need a medic.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Human, vampire, werewolf, didn’t matter. If they were male and severely injured, they all thought they could just “walk it off.”

  “Take a deep breath, my lord.”

  “We’re back to ‘my lord,’” Arland said dryly.

  Right. Misdirection was a wonderful strategy, when it worked. Maud smiled and clapped her hand on his back. Arland jerked forward, sucking in a sharp breath.

  She plucked a heavy-duty pain reliever cartridge from the tray.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t want to be sedated. It will make me slow and sleepy. I don’t have time for a nap.”

  “You have a fractured scapula and two cracked ribs. You’ve lost the full use of your arm and every breath is torture. You need some quality time with a bone knitter.”

  “Maud,” he said.

  “No. You aren’t a teenager. We both know you require sedation and a visit to a medward. Why are we even having this con—”

  He reached out with his left arm and caught her wrist in his fingers, drawing her close. Suddenly they were face to face and he was looking at her. His eyes were very blue.

  It would have been easy to pull away. A part of her, the part that panicked and kept her alive on Karhari, warned her to be cautious. But she was so damn tired of being careful and prudent. Something wild swept through her like a scorching sariv.

  She kissed him.

  His lips were warm on hers and she opened her mouth and let him in. He tasted just as she’d imagined, hot and male, and he kissed her like she was the only thing that mattered. It started tender, then turned hungry, as if they both couldn’t get enough. Her whole body strummed with need. He kissed her until she could think of nothing except stripping off her clothes and climbing on top of him to feel him against her skin.

  They broke apart. His eyes had turned dark. She saw raw naked lust in his face and it thrilled her.

  “Looks like I still have some use of my left arm,” he said.

  “It does,” she said and emptied the cartridge of sedative into his back.

  Maud stared at the display projecting from her harbinger. The medic didn’t answer, which wasn’t unusual. Medics often ignored direct calls because they were occupied, and Arland’s handiwork on the lawn guaranteed the medical staff would be busy. But after calling him directly, Maud had tried the medward and hadn’t received an answer either. That didn’t happen. There was always someone in the medward.

  She had to find some way to get Arland down there. Leaving him alone wasn’t an option. He was sedated and had to be under observation. Besides, his injuries needed to be treated. They weren’t life threating, but they were urgent.

  She tried the medward again.

  No answer. What the hell?

  She could try Soren. Arland was ducking his uncle, but given that he was peacefully sleeping, Soren couldn’t exactly bug him with whatever duties Arland had been avoiding. She tried Lord Soren.

  No answer.

  A cold heavy weight landed in her stomach and rolled around. Something was wrong. Something bad had happened or was happening.

  Helen.

  Maud snapped a brisk order. “Helen, priority override.” The parental override would pierce through whatever Helen was doing. It would interrupt a video, or another call, and it would supersede a silence setting.

  No answer.

  Panic hit her in an icy rush. She used logic to surf the wave of fear, keeping on top of it. Either nobody was answering her calls, or her harbinger had been jammed. If someone was jamming her calls, it meant only one thing. An attack was coming.


  A door chime, normally soothing, lashed her senses. Maud unsheathed her sword, priming it. The blood blade screeched.

  Another chime.

  “Show me,” she ordered.

  A screen ignited above the door, showing the hallway and Karat, alone. Karat’s face was paler than usual, her expression tight, her eyes focused. Only House Krahr had enough power and resources to jam her unit. She was on their communication grid. The other vampire Houses didn’t have access to this part of the castle, and they didn’t have the capabilities to penetrate the House communication network and isolate her, specifically.

  She and Karat were friendly. If House Krahr had turned on her, that’s exactly who they would send.

  “Audio,” Maud said. The audio icon flashed in the corner of the screen. “Yes?”

  “Open the door,” Karat said.

  “I’m indisposed at the moment. Can it wait?”

  “It’s an emergency.”

  Sure it is. “What sort of emergency?”

  “Maud, we don’t have time for this.” Karat put her hand against the door. “Command override.”

  The door slid open. Maud backed away, putting herself between Karat and Arland, giving herself room to work.

  “Put that away!” Karat waved her hand. “You have to come with me. Helen was poisoned.”

  14

  Maud ran.

  She had heard two words: poisoned and medward. She didn’t wait for anything else. She just sprinted. Hallways flew by, the doors flashing one after another. The air in her lungs turned to fire, but she barely noticed. Karat chased her but had fallen far behind.

  The medward loomed ahead. There were people in the antechamber, Ilemina, Otubar, Soren, but they might as well have been ghosts. Getting to the door was all that mattered. She tore past them and burst into the triage chamber.

  Maud saw it all in an instant, the image was seared into her mind in a fraction of a second: Helen lying on a medbed, tiny and pale; a dozen metal arms hovering over her; the spiderweb of an advanced iv drip; and the medic sitting next to her, his face grim.

  She charged to the bed, and then Karat was on top of her, pulling her back with all of her strength, and the medic was in front of her, holding his arms out, saying something. She fought her way forward, dragging Karat, and the medic rammed into her, pushing her back, his voice insistent.

  Finally, the words penetrated. “…do not touch…”

  She had to stop. It took a few more seconds for her body to catch up with her mind. Maud stopped struggling.

  “…stable for now,” the medic said.

  Her mouth finally worked. “What happened?”

  Karat gently but firmly pushed her back to the antechamber. “Not here.”

  “I need to see her.”

  “Stop,” the medic said. “Look at yourself.”

  Maud forced her gaze away from Helen and looked at her armor. She was smudged with Arland’s blood. She’d washed his arm and sealed the wounds, but some of it must’ve gotten on her when he kissed her.

  “I’ve got her stabilized,” the medic said. “You’re carrying a horde of germs and you’re covered in blood. You can’t help her by going in there. You can only hurt her.”

  Maud had to walk away. Everything in her screamed to get back into the room, as if just walking up to the bed would magically fix everything, and Helen would sit up and say, “Hi, Mommy.” But it wouldn’t.

  It didn’t seem real. It felt like a dream, like some nightmare, and she wished desperately to wake up. She wanted to undo this. If only there was some button she could press to rewind it all back to normal.

  “Come with me,” Karat said.

  There was nothing she could do. Maud turned and walked into the antechamber. The medic and Karat followed.

  “What happened?” Maud asked again. Her voice sounded strange, like it was coming from someone else.

  “Helen was at the lake with other children,” Soren said. “The bugs were there as well, swimming in their designated area. After a while, the chaperones made the children get out of the water to take a break, warm up, and snack. The children ate and decided to play hunt and run.”

  Hunt and run was the vampire version of tag. Helen would’ve loved it.

  “Helen ran close to the tachi,” Soren continued.

  “Then one of them bit her!” Ilemina snarled.

  “Helen collapsed,” Soren said. “She was rushed here, to the medward. The tachi was apprehended, and the rest of them are confined to their quarters. We tried to question him, but he refuses to talk. None of them are talking to us and harming him is out of the question until we know if Helen will survive.”

  That “if” hit Maud like a sledgehammer. She wanted to sink to the floor, ball up her fists, and scream. But she had no time.

  “He bit a child.” Ilemina’s face was terrible. She bared her fangs, eyes blazing. A primal snarl shook her lips. It was like looking at rage personified. “I will slaughter every single one of them. I will decimate their planet. Their grandchildren will tremble when they see a vampire coming.”

  From anybody else, it would seem like grandstanding. But Ilemina meant every word. Otubar snarled in response. Karat gripped her blood sword. The entire room was a hair away from violence. This was how wars started.

  “It’s more complicated than that,” the medic said. “We have data on tachi venom, but there is a synthetic compound in her system that is inconsistent with what we know of the tachi.”

  The sharp, jagged pieces snapped together in Maud’s head. Vampires cherished children. There was no greater treasure. They cherished Helen, too. They considered her one of their own. And then a bug bit her, like she was prey. It had awakened a primal response, the collective racial memory of Mukama, of invaders who devoured vampire children.

  “Where is the tachi now?” she asked.

  “Across the hall,” Soren told her. “You can’t hurt him, Lady Maud. He may hold the key to your daughter’s recovery.”

  “I need to speak with him.” She sank steel into those words.

  “Come with me.” Soren marched out of the room and into the hallway, to the door opposite the medward.

  Maud followed him, aware of Ilemina, Otubar, Karat, and the medic directly behind her. The door slid open, exposing a small cell. Inside it, a male tachi sat on the floor, bound in a captivity suit. Made from tough polymer and weighted, it wrapped around him like a straitjacket. His exoskeleton had faded to barely visible gray.

  Maud marched into the room, dropped to her knees in front of him, and released the lock on the captivity suit. It fell away, and he sprang up to his full height above her.

  She jumped to her feet and bowed her head. “Thank you for saving my child.”

  The tachi turned brilliant indigo blue. “You’re welcome, daughter of the innkeepers.”

  “Somebody better explain this to me,” Ilemina growled.

  “Tachi venom isn’t lethal to most species.” Maud stepped aside, giving the tachi room to stretch his wings. “It’s meant to put the prey into a suspended state, slowing down its life functions to preserve the freshness.”

  Karat winced.

  “If he wanted to kill Helen, he would’ve just sliced her head off,” Maud continued. “As soon as you said he’d bitten her, I knew it wasn’t an attack.”

  Ilemina turned her glare onto the tachi. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  The tachi spread his indigo appendages. The gesture looked so much like a human spreading his arms in a Gallic shrug, as if to say “None of this is my fault; I didn’t mess it up, you did. Deal with it.”

  Ilemina turned to Maud. “What does that mean?”

  “It means he thinks you are a xenophobic species prone to rash and violent reactions, so he saw no point in explaining himself. You wouldn’t have believed him anyway.”

  Ilemina’s eyes narrowed. She pierced the tachi with her stare.

  “I can’t make it simple for you,” he said.

/>   Ilemina flashed her fangs. “Try me.”

  The tachi turned to Maud, switching to the Akit dialect. “They think I killed the child; the royal is angry. Now they know I saved the child; she is angry. I do not comprehend this species. How have they ever managed to achieve interstellar civilization without self-destructing?”

  “Could you please tell me what happened to my daughter?” Maud didn’t even try to keep the desperation from her voice.

  The tachi’s color lightened for a moment. “Yes, of course.” He folded his arms in an apologetic gesture. “I will use short thoughts. We were bathing. The children were running and making excited noises. Your child ran close to us. She was not afraid like the other children. They could not catch her. She ran too close and almost ran into me. Then she apologized for disturbing my tegah.”

  Maud had given Helen a primer on tachi manners. Until now she had no idea any of it had stuck.

  “She is such a polite child,” the tachi said. “We spoke. Something hit her in the neck, on her left side. She fell. I caught her. I saw a wet spot on her skin. It smelled wrong. Her eyes rolled back in her head. I knew I had to act. I bit her to keep the poison from spreading.”

  “Which way was she facing when it hit her?” Soren asked.

  “She was turning away from me to rejoin the game. She was facing the rest of the children. The lake was on her right and the castle was on her left.”

  “A sniper shot from the bluff,” Otubar said.

  Karat bared her teeth in a grimace. “There is a clear line of sight from the western edge of the game grounds to the lake. They distracted us with the krim match, then goaded Arland into a fight, and while we were watching, they shot Helen.”

  “Pull the video feed,” Ilemina ordered. Karat took off at a run.

  There were implications and conclusions to be drawn from all of this, but right now, none of them mattered. “Did you recognize the poison?” Maud asked.

  “No,” the tachi said. “I would know it again. It smelled strong.”

  The vampire medic failed to identify it and the tachi didn’t know it. The tachi coma wouldn’t last forever. It could fail at any moment. She had to do something now, or Helen would die. There was only one place she could turn to.