When that war finally ended, Sean gave the armor back to the Merchants and stayed with me because he loved me. Nobody was supposed to find out that he used to be Turan Adin. However, Wilmos couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He was bursting at the seams with pride and little by little he let that cat out of the bag, one secret conversation at a time. The werewolves knew.
The werewolf woman narrowed her eyes at Sean. “Word is, Wilmos asked you for help and you turned him down because you were too busy playing house with a human girl. People say you’re a coward. That you’ve gone soft. The wolf who subdued otrokars and vampire knights, reduced to a mere shadow of himself. So, I came to see for myself what happened to the hero of Nexus. You used to be somebody. What’s that like? To just give up and turn your back on a friend?”
She leaned forward as much as the restraints would allow, focused on him. She’d challenged him in his territory, and now she expected him to react. She would’ve liked it if he’d hauled her upright, slammed her against the wall, and growled in her face. It would be a display of dominance she could understand. She would submit, and then they would go to search for Wilmos together, without me, so she could prove to him how much more awesome she was as a potential mate.
Sean opened his mouth. “I don’t know you.”
The werewolf woman blinked.
He held his hand out. His broom landed into his fingers, except for him it was always a spear, a sturdy shaft tipped with a razor-sharp blade.
“Your welcome is withdrawn.” He tapped the butt of his spear on the floor.
The inn opened, walls and rooms flying out of the way, revealing a hallway leading to a distant door. It snapped open, and the bright sunshine of Baha-char flooded through it.
The tendril binding the werewolf woman jerked her off the floor.
“Wait!” she screamed.
The tendril shot toward the door and tossed her out, into the light. The door slammed shut. The normal architecture of the inn reasserted itself. Beast let out a satisfied bark.
“A little rough,” I said.
“She’ll land on her feet. This is getting tiresome. They need to get the message.”
We started toward the kitchen.
“What was that about Wilmos?” I asked.
Sean shrugged. “No idea.”
“Liar. You big fat liar. Did he ask you for help?”
“He always asks me for help.”
That was true. From Wilmos’ point of view, every job could benefit from Sean’s presence. He visited the inn at least once a month, and Sean always stopped by his store when we went shopping at Baha-char. I couldn’t recall a single time the conversation didn’t end with, “I’ve got this little project I’m working on.”
Wilmos genuinely liked Sean, and not just because Sean was the pinnacle of everything the people of Auul had tried to achieve. Sean also cared about me, and that made me important to Wilmos as well. If anything happened to us, the old werewolf would come running with a truckload of weapons and would sacrifice himself to save us without a second thought.
Sean saw Wilmos as the closest thing to a grandfather. Logically he knew that his parents were superb fighters, but they were his parents, who had settled into a mundane life on Earth. Wilmos wasn’t just an old, grizzled veteran who told war stories and went on adventures. He was bigger than that. To Sean, he was an elder, a link to the planet that was forever lost. A part of Sean knew that he never quite fit into the “normal” life on Earth. I had introduced him to Baha-char and aliens, but Wilmos was the one who had opened the door to the galaxy for him.
“You think he might be in trouble?” I asked.
“Last I checked, Wilmos was fully grown. He is well-armed, well-connected, and able to take care of himself. Just like he did for fifty years before he met me.”
We walked into the kitchen. Sean sighted the cake and went straight for it.
I took a plate out of the cabinet, added a fork, and handed it to him. He took a knife from the butcher block, cut a quarter of the cake, slid it onto the plate, and looked at me, his eyes hopeful. “Coffee?”
“Freshly brewed.”
I poured him a mug of decaf, added some creamer, and brought it over to him. Sean took a sip of his coffee, then a bite of his cake, and sighed happily.
“The cake is delicious,” he said. “Thank you.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
I cut my own slice and sat down across from him. He reached out. I took his hand. He squeezed my fingers, smiled, and ate another bite of cake.
3
Mysterious things are happening in Baha-char, the intergalactic bazaar we know, love and yearn to shop at. Will Sean and Dina really not investigate Wilmos’ disappearance?
Sean frowned at the communication unit. We stood in the narrow alley just outside the door leading to Baha-char, dressed in our travel innkeeper robes. His resolve to not look for Wilmos lasted about as long as his piece of cake.
“Nothing?” I guessed.
“It isn’t picking him up.”
He pulled his hood on, hiding his face. I did the same, and we started down the alley toward the wide street, where the myriad of galactic shoppers of all shapes, colors, and species flowed like a river through the canyon of tall, terraced buildings.
Wilmos’ shop lay off the beaten path, just inside an alley branching off from the main street, its door sheltered by an archway. Sean turned into the alley and stopped. I stopped too.
He inhaled. A second passed. Another.
“What is it?” I asked him softly.
“It smells like Michael.”
Dread washed over me. My fingers went ice cold. Michael Braswell had been my older brother’s best friend. He’d become an ad-hal, an innkeeper enforcer, one of many responsible for neutralizing threats the innkeepers couldn’t handle, then he’d disappeared. Nobody had seen him for over a year until he blocked our way on the street at Baha-char and tried to kill us. He was no longer the Michael I knew. He was decay and rot, a living corruption oozing foul magic. He’d almost killed me, and then his corpse had infected Gertrude Hunt and tried to kill another ad-hal.
“The scent is old,” Sean said. “Stay behind me.”
I followed him to the door. Sean keyed a long code into the electronic lock. It clicked, and the thick, reinforced door swung open. He stepped into the gloom. The automated lights came on, bathing the store in a sharp artificial glow.
The shop was in shambles. Wilmos had a place for everything, and his wares were arranged with military precision. Now the place looked like a bomb had gone off inside it. Weapons littered the floor among shards of glass. Store shelves hung half torn from the walls. Ahead, a counter had been split in two and by it, on a piec of glass, sprawled a large lupine body covered with blue-green fur. Gorvar, Wilmos’ pet and guard, one of the last Auul wolves.
Dear universe, what the hell happened here?
“Clear,” Sean said.
I rushed to Gorvar. His fur was matted with congealing blood, still viscous but old. I put my hand on his neck, searching for a pulse. His eyelids trembled. He raised his head, trying to snap, but he had nothing left.
“It’s me,” I told him.
Recognition sparked in his green eyes. Gorvar whined softly.
“Hold on, big guy.” I spun to Sean. “We have to get him to the inn.”
Sean scooped the massive beast into his arms and carried him out like a puppy. I followed, pushing the door shut behind me. The lock clicked.
We hurried through the streets, dodging traffic. The shoppers of Baha-char had seen everything, and nobody paid us any mind. In fifteen minutes, we reached the inn’s entrance. Sean handed Gorvar to the inn.