Wilmos smiled.
Somehow Sean cleared the fifty yards separating him from the overturned stalls. He leapt over the left one. Shots rang out.
“Hold your fire,” the grizzled dark-skinned werewolf barked.
Across the street someone screamed, a desperate terrified shriek, cut off in mid-note.
A clump of fighters in pale Draziri cloaks burst from between the two stalls, bouncing up and down the street like an out of control spin top.
“I hope you got a DNA sample before they cut him to pieces,” a blond male werewolf said.
“Watch,” Wilmos said.
The clump spun, the spaces between bodies opening for a moment, and within its depth Sean moved, lightning quick. He struck, his movements short, precise, yet fluid, cutting, stabbing, severing, fast, so fast. Each vicious swipe of his knife drew blood. He was cutting the Draziri like they were mannequins standing still. Dark stains splayed over his body, turning his fur nearly black, sliding left to shield the stomach, then up to his neck to ward off a strike. It must’ve been his subcutaneous armor.
“Will you look at that…” someone murmured.
The Draziri tried to cut him down, but he moved among them, slicing them out of existence and moving on before they had a chance to fall. A dancer on the edge of a blade.
There was a desperate need about the way he moved, as if he was trying to rend the fabric of reality to pieces. He loved me, I realized. He loved me so much, and the wounds of Nexus had barely scabbed over. The prophecy had pushed him over the edge. He had to vent or it would tear him apart from the inside out.
The werewolves stood up. They were watching him with those odd longing expressions on their faces. Something was taking place among them, something I didn’t quite understand.
Wilmos pulled a translucent datapad off the wall. His fingers danced across it.
A loud, insistent beat tore from some hidden speakers, the melody wild and frightening. A male and female chorus joined the music, singing wordlessly, their voices blending into a single powerful howl. The hair on the back of my neck rose.
Wilmos’ mercenaries bared their teeth. The dark-skinned werewolf raised his head and howled. To my left, the older female mercenary howled too. All around me eyes turned amber, gold, and green.
The terraced walls on both sides of the fight rained Draziri. The reinforcements had arrived.
The werewolves blurred, shifting into their wetwork shape, and charged. I caught a glimpse of Wilmos, his eyes on fire, his fangs bared, his face human one moment and grizzled monster the next. His wolflike pet snarled and ran into the melee next to him.
They fell onto the Draziri, while the battle hymn of a dead planet howled in triumph.
Eventually there were no Draziri left to kill. The injured survivors fled. Nobody chased them. It had felt like an eternity, but my phone told me only five minutes had passed since Sean and I entered the store again.
Sean walked over to me, hulking and soaked in blood. I put my arms around his wet furry shoulders and hugged him. He sighed quietly.
“Let’s go home,” I said.
“I will come too,” Wilmos said.
“We’ll hold the shop,” the female mercenary said.
The four of us, Sean, Wilmos, the Archivarian, and I weaved through the streets of Baha-char. Nobody assaulted us. We reached the door to the inn, I opened it, and we slipped inside.
A stasis tank rose from the floor, swallowing the Archivarian and carrying him to join the rest of its parts and I stood alone in the hallway with two werewolves in wetwork shape, Wimos with a graying muzzle and Sean, a full head taller. A few months ago, I’d have been mildly alarmed. Now it was just business as usual. I sighed and snapped the void field in place. When I first started, it was like slipping on a jacket. Now it felt like a car settled on my chest. Maintaining it was draining me so much, I felt the weariness all the way in my bones.
It would end eventually and then I would rest.
I started moving. I needed to get them both into showers.
“Dina!” A screen popped open in the wall and slid, matching my pace. Maud’s eyes were the size of saucers. “We have a problem.”
Damn it, can I just catch a tiny break? Just one? Please for the love of all that is holy in this infinite universe. “What problem?”
“A big one,” my sister hissed. “Get over here.”
There were strangers in my inn. In my front room. Coming through my door.
I sped up. The werewolves followed me. We burst into the front room.
Two people stood in my front room, a man and a woman, both middle-aged. There was something vaguely familiar about their faces. My sister waited on the left with a carefully neutral expression on her face. Arland stood next to her, clearly torn between pulling his weapon out and trying to remain polite.
The man and the woman looked at me, and then at the two werewolves behind me.
The man squinted. “Wilmos?”
The woman peered at Wilmos, then her gaze slid to the left. Her voice was a whisper. “Sean?”
The hulking monster unhinged his jaws. “Mom? Dad? What are you doing here?”
Oh crap.
Sean’s mother was slightly plump, short, and blond. If I bumped into her during a grocery run, I would’ve smiled, said excuse me, and never thought of it twice. She was looking at Wilmos now, and there was a wolf in her eyes, a frightening, mad she-wolf. When she opened her mouth, her voice froze the air in the room.
“Wilmos, how do you know our son and why does he smell like blood?”
“Uh…” Wilmos said.
Sean’s father dropped his bags. He looked a lot like Sean, athletic, broad-shouldered, his brown hair cut short. His gaze pinned Wilmos like a dagger.
“Four months ago Agran called me and said that there was a war on Nexus and that you’ve been supplying the Merchants with a general every time one of theirs took a dive. He said that the last one they got was off the charts and rumor was that the guy was an alpha-strain werewolf. I dismissed it, because every time some phantom fighter shows up, our people take credit.”
Wilmos took a careful step back.
“Did you send my son to Nexus?” Sean’s father growled. Black ink crept up his neck.
Oh no. No, I didn’t want to do this. This wouldn’t make a good impression.
Wilmos opened his mouth.
“Corwin,” Sean’s mother said softly. “Sean’s wearing Auroon Twelve.”
“Wilmos?” Sean’s father snarled.
The old werewolf sighed. “Yes.”
“How dare you!” Rage shivered in Sean’s mother’s face. “We survived. We escaped. We built a life, so our child would never have to fight the way we did. And you, you obsessive asshole, you worm, you … you sent him to Nexus!”
Sean’s father blurred. A massive dark werewolf spilled out and leapt at Wilmos. I let his feet leave the ground and then the inn snatched him out of the air in mid-leap. Strong. Really strong.
A second werewolf lunged across the floor. Sean stepped forward smoothly and caught her. She snarled.
“Mom,” Sean said gently. “You’re not making a good first impression.”
“Sean William, let go of me this instant!”
“I can’t do that.”
She strained against him. The muscles on Sean’s arms stood out.
“That girl over there,” Sean said quietly. “That’s my girl. If she’s forced to bury you in the floor to hold you still, it will be awkward.”
His mother bared her teeth and suddenly stopped. “Wait, what?”
“I think we should all calm down,” I said. “Would anyone like some tea?”
“Yes,” Arland said, finally breaking his silence. “Tea would be a very good idea.”
It took about half an hour for the werewolves to shower, stop snarling, and settle in the dining room. Arland, my sister, and the rest of the guests wisely decided to give them some privacy. Apparently, Sean’s parents didn’t react well to Arland. Sean had told them a few things that happened when Arland and he first came to the inn, and when Maud failed to produce Sean, his father had suggested that maybe Arland should run out into the orchard to find him and have a cup of coffee first if it would help. Arland discreetly informed me that in the interests of avoiding a bloody incident, he would give them some breathing space. Even Caldenia stayed away, which was for the best, because I didn’t want to explain Her Grace and her comments about the deliciousness of werewolves to Sean’s parents.