“Your lover?”
A slight hint of derision touched his mouth.
“It’s your mother. Mekrikzi.”
Something vicious crossed his eyes. I fought an urge to step back.
“My mother is a remarkable woman,” he said quietly. “She won’t spend a single moment in hell and you’re not fit to sully her name with your filthy mouth.”
That’s just great. Now I had a filthy mouth. Well, if that wasn’t a splash of emotion, I didn’t know what was. “I can understand now why you have no wife.”
“And why is that?”
“We have a term for men like you on our planet.”
“And what that would be?”
“Momma’s boy.”
He smiled again. There was no humor in the smile, just a vicious baring of alien teeth. “Everyone has a weakness. We all have people who are close to us. I will find yours.”
“You should look for my parents,” I suggested. “Tell me what you find.”
The smile faltered slightly. “You have friends. Family.”
“They are all in this inn. Everyone I care about is here.”
“I’ll sift through your life. I’ll find every guest who ever stayed in your inn.”
“Start with the Khanum of the Hope-Crushing Horde and her elite warriors. You should totally pay them a surprise visit and drop some vague threats while you’re at it. They love that sort of thing.”
He stopped. His beautiful face turned savage. “When this is over, I’ll burn your house to the ground, put a slave collar around your neck, and drag you out of here. You’ll suffer for years and when I’ve satisfied myself with every cruelty and perversion my mind can invent, I’ll sell the pitiful wreck that you’ll become to the highest bidder.”
His cloak flared and he vanished into the brush.
I sighed. “Come on, Beast.”
We finished our walk and I came back to the porch. Sean had put together a wicked-looking gun. Caldenia was on her third can of Mello Yello.
“Well, that was that.” I sat down in a chair. “I’ve learned nothing useful, except that Freud would love to interview him and that he has apparently given some thought to torturing me.”
“On the contrary, my dear.” Caldenia set the can down. “We’ve learned a great deal.”
“What do you mean?”
“You heard, but you haven’t listened. You must learn to listen, Dina.”
Within the depths of the inn, the door to Baha-char opened. I felt Maud and Arland and nobody else. Crap.
“What?” Sean was on his feet.
“They’re back. Alone.”
The door flew open in front of me and I hurried into the kitchen and then into the front room, Sean and Caldenia behind me. Maud and Arland emerged from the hallway. Mush, fruit peels, and garbage covered their armor. Some unidentifiable sticky yellow slime stained Arland’s breastplate, and pieces of some broken circuitry stuck to it. White ash filled Maud’s hair. Arland was shaking with rage. Maud looked ready to rip someone’s head off. The reek of rotting garbage filled the room and I gagged.
“What happened?” I squeezed out. “Where is the Archivarian?”
Maud hurled her sword onto the floor and spat a single word. “Muckrats!”
“You let muckrats steal the Archivarian? Are you crazy?” Of all the… How could they… Argh!
“They were already there!” Maud waved her arms. “I swear!”
“Lady Maud is correct,” Arland said. “When we arrived, the merchant’s shop was ransacked.”
“He owed money to the muckrats,” Maud added. “He missed a payment so they went through his shipment and took the Archivarian.”
I put my hand over my face. Of all the creatures, it had to be muckrats.
“Why would they want the Archivarian?” Sean asked, his voice calm.
“The lights,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Sean asked.
“The tank is likely big, ornate, and has blinking lights on it.”
“We pursued,” Arland said. “And then we tried to bargain. When reason failed, we attempted to storm their compound.”
“Did you happen to storm it through a garbage compactor?” Sean asked.
Arland gave him a blank look.
“It’s not his fault,” Maud said. “He was brave and he tried. I tried too. They dumped garbage on us and then acid.” She crouched, grabbed her sword off the floor, and stood up, all in one fluid motion, and stuck her sword under my nose. The blade resembled a half-melted candle.
“Two years.” Maud’s voice trembled, and I couldn’t tell if it was from despair or outrage. “I’ve had this sword for two years. It saved my life. Look at it.”
“You needn’t worry, my lady,” Arland said quietly. “I assure you that you will have a new blade, one suited to your skill, before nightfall.”
I heaved a sigh. Berating and yelling wouldn’t fix anything. It would make me feel a lot better, but we didn’t have time to waste.
“We came back here as soon as we could,” Maud said.
“I still think that a prolonged assault may have yielded some results,” Arland said.
“No, Maud is right.” I pulled my robe off and grabbed the car keys from the hook by the door. “You can’t fight muckrats. You can’t reason with them either. You can only trade. Maud, I need you to defend the inn. The Draziri likely won’t attack. It’s broad daylight.”
“Where are you going?” Sean asked.
“To Walmart!”
“I’m coming with you. Kiran’s fixated on you. You can’t count on him being rational.”
I opened my mouth… It would take longer to argue and we didn’t have time. For all I knew the muckrats were prying the argon tank open as we spoke. Besides, he was right. The Draziri had made it personal during our last conversation.
“Okay.” I turned to Maud. “Hold the inn. Please.”
“I got it,” she said.
I stuck my feet into my shoes I had left by the front door and ran for the garage. Sean followed me.
I jumped into the driver’s seat, he took the passenger one, and I forced myself to casually drive out of the garage and pull into the street at a reasonable speed instead of peeling out of there like a Nascar driver. Nobody assaulted us. Nobody followed.
“What are muckrats?” Sean asked.
“Magpies of the galaxy. They have a fort at Baha-char.”
Ten minutes later we marched through Walmart’s doors. I headed straight for the toy aisle.
“What are we looking for?” Sean asked.
“Look for the most annoying thing you can find. Anything that’s loud, has flashing lights, and complicated moving parts.”
I surveyed the toys. The pickings were slim. I thought there would’ve been more, but with the holidays approaching, the toy isle had been picked over.
Wait. I pulled a box off the shelf. Musical Fun Hammer Pounding Toy Game. A variation on Whack-A-Mole, with plastic eggs with funny faces in bright Easter colors popping up and a hammer to whack them with. Please tell me there is a demo… There it was, at the end of the aisle, where the toy was hooked up to a cord. Four buttons on the bottom. I pushed one. Horribly loud music blared from the toy. So far so good. I grabbed the green plastic hammer and pushed the demo button. The blue egg popped up. I smacked it and it lit up from the inside with a seizure-inducing strobe light and gave a police-siren wail. I whacked another egg. A primate’s screech cut my eardrums. Perfect. I grabbed the box and emerged from the aisle, almost running into Sean.
I showed the box to him. “What do you have?”
He lifted a bizarre-looking contraption that resembled a cross between a hair dryer and a megaphone with an array of lights along its plastic frame.
“What the heck is that?”