I sank to my knees and lay on the ground. On my left a grizzled older werewolf lowered a bizarre-looking Gatling gun. Thank you, Wilmos. Cookie stopped jumping up and down next to him and ran to me.
Sean picked me up off the ground. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. I couldn’t even talk.
His lips brushed mine and he squeezed me to him gently as if I were the most important thing in the world.
My mouth finally obeyed. “Tank?”
“At my shop,” Wilmos said. He was looking at me as if it hurt him.
Sean started down the street in the direction of the inn.
“No!”
“Dina, you’re badly burned. You need the inn to heal you.”
“Get the tank.”
“Later.”
“No.”
“Don’t argue with me.” He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t look any different. But his tone severed the words like a knife. It was impossible to keep arguing. I still tried. Making words took effort and endurance I didn’t have.
“Failed once. I can’t… walk into the inn without the tank. Guest. Trust. Please. Please, Sean. Please.”
He snarled, his wolf mouth baring his teeth.
“Please.”
Wilmos looked at him.
“We’ll get the tank,” Sean said.
“Body…”
“And the corpse,” he said, fury snarling in his voice. His gaze fixed me. It was direct and cold. A wolf gaze. “Not another word until we get to the inn. Close your eyes and rest.”
The last thing I saw was Cookie’s bodyguard picking up the hooded body. I laid my head on Sean’s shoulder and closed my eyes, drifting, neither awake nor asleep, but stuck in a painful confusing place in between. My chest burned.
Time stretched, long and viscous.
The inn’s magic touched me. I felt the cooling air on my skin—we’d passed from Baha-char’s heat into my home. The walls creaked and snapped in panic. Gertrude Hunt was screaming. I opened my eyes and smiled when I saw my sister’s terrified face.
“I’m okay. Everything will be fine.”
The inn’s tendrils wrapped around me and I sank into the depths of Gertrude Hunt, where the inn’s glowing heart waited for me. It opened and embraced me. I closed my eyes and finally fell asleep.
“Will Aunt Dina be okay?” Helen asked.
I opened my eyes. Helen and Maud stood together in the soothing darkness. Maud wore her armor. A sword hung in the scabbard on her hip. Helen’s eyes were big and round.
Around me tendrils of smooth wood intertwined into a pillar, holding me between the floor and the ceiling. The inn’s lifeblood flowed through them, wrapping me in the healing warmth, and the tendrils glowed, lit from within by green. Faint blue lights floated around me, born of pure, thick magic. The air smelled so fresh here. Clean and filled with life.
I had been here twice before. The first time when I woke Gertrude Hunt from its deep sleep. I sat right here with my hands on its heart and coaxed it back to life. The second time I had used too much power outside of the inn, and when Sean brought me back, I was almost dead. The inn healed me then as it did now.
I stirred, checking the magic within the tendrils. Strong. Much stronger than it had been after I was healed the first time. I must not have expended as much magic as I thought. Or maybe I was giving Gertrude Hunt too little credit.
“Aunt Dina will be fine, my flower,” Maud said. “She’s resting.”
“She’s awake,” I said.
Beast bounded out of the darkness and Helen ran toward me and hugged the wooden pillar of tendrils holding me inside.
The inn sighed around me. It was a happy, contented sigh.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’ll try not to do it again.”
“You better not do it again,” Maud growled.
The tendrils parted, letting me step on the floor. Beast licked my feet, flopped over on her back, and then dashed away, running in a circle as if her canine feelings had gotten the better of her. I crouched and hugged Helen.
“You have flowers on your chest,” my niece said.
I looked down. The inn had healed my burns—they weren’t deep—and the skin was smooth but faint scars remained. They didn’t look like flowers. They looked like pale swirls. And they probably wouldn’t go away. I was permanently scarred.
“It doesn’t look that bad,” Maud said.
I looked at her.
“Oh for the love of… Stop acting like your boobs burned off. You look fine. Nothing a tanning lotion won’t fix.”
She marched to me, hugged me, and handed me my robe.
I slipped it on.
Beast dashed by my feet. Helen squealed and chased her.
“How’s everything?”
“Sunset was overjoyed to receive another Archivarius member. The inn tried to keep the corpse of whatever you brought in out, and then when I held the door open so they could carry it in, it tried to shrink away from it. We put it into a plastic container and sealed it. That’s the only way Gertrude Hunt would stop freaking out. We need to analyze it, but it won’t let me go near it and it locked me out of the lab where we put it. The birds tried a direct assault just after dark. I let that idiot and your werewolf have them. I think Sean might be disturbed. He cut off their heads and put them on sticks in the back yard.”
I sighed. “Can you see them from the street?”
“No. Focus. I’m telling you your boyfriend beheaded your enemies and threaded their skulls on sticks, and all you care about is if your neighbors can see them.”
“Is he okay?”
“Physically, yes. Mentally… Don’t get me wrong, the heads are an effective tactic. But still—disturbed. If you happen to catch his eyes in the right moment, something stares back at you.”
“It’s a wolf,” I told her.
“What?”
“It’s a wolf in the dark woods.”
Maud sighed. “You see the wolf. I see cities burning. There is something not quite right about him. Something unsettling. I’ve been through hell before. I know that look, Dina. It’s not too late to change your mind.”
“I like him.”
Maud rolled her eyes.
“Did the Lord Marshal deliver?”
“Deliver what?” she asked.
“You know what. He promised you a sword. I think his exact words were, ‘A new blade before nightfall.’”
She clamped her mouth shut and drew a blood sword from her scabbard.
“Is it a good sword?”
“It’s exquisite.” She sounded like she just tasted a lemon. “He had it sent down from his ship. He made a huge scene out of it. A courier in full armor with crimson banners arrived and knelt in front of me to present it.”
I wished I could’ve seen the look on her face.
“I tried to refuse it.”
Arland could be extremely persistent when it was in his best interests. “How did that go?”
“He made it clear it was a gift from his House. If I didn’t take it, I would’ve offended the entire House Krahr. I couldn’t put us in that position. I looked up your rank while you were gone. You are at two and a half stars.”
“The inn was dormant for a long time.”
Maud waved her hand. “What I mean is, House Krahr publicly endorsed Gertrude Hunt. It would be both dangerous and ungrateful to offend them.”
She took it. Of course, she did.
“I made it clear that I will repay this gift at the first opportunity. I don’t like him,” Maud said. “He is stubborn, bullheaded, and insists on doing things his way.”
“You do realize all of those are synonyms?”
“I don’t like him, Dina. I have a responsibility to my child. I won’t risk reentering a society that threw her away like trash. We’re done with vampires. Come on. We have work to do.”
I took a deep breath. The void field snapped into place. I held my hand out. A broom rose from the ground and I fastened my fingers around it, feeling the worn, warm wood. I was home. It was time to soothe wild wolves and examine corrupted corpses.