One Fell Sweep Read online

  I crossed the threshold into the war room and stepped onto the wood. Wing was in his room and Helen in hers. Maud must’ve taken her upstairs. Perfect. A deep chime sounded through Gertrude Hunt, a clear high sound impossible to ignore. External shutters and walls clanged, locking down. My voice carried through the inn, echoing through every room.

  “Gertrude Hunt is under attack. We are under lockdown until further notice. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  Thin flexible shoots spiraled from the edges of the wooden limb on which I stood, forming a two-foot-tall lattice. I held out my broom. It split into a thousand glowing blue threads that streaked into my robe, adhering to my skin and to the lattice of the inn. It would make Gertrude Hunt and I faster.

  The walls around me faded, presenting a 360-degree view of the inn grounds. In the distance, from the north, six orange-sized spheres floated about two feet off the ground, slowly making their way into my territory. A quick scan told me they were rigged to explode.

  Magic shifted within me, announcing another intrusion. Ha! He thought I wouldn’t notice. Dear Draziri Commander had a lot to learn about the capabilities of innkeepers.

  Caldenia walked through the door, carrying a glass of wine. I smiled at her and let her usual chair rise from the floor. She sat and grinned back at me, flashing her inhumanly sharp teeth.

  My sister and Arland reached the doorway at the same time. They would’ve collided, but years of politeness ingrained in Arland took over and he smoothly halted, letting Maud burst into the room. My sister carried her sword. The Marshal of House Krahr was wearing armor.

  Maud looked at Caldenia. “Your Grace? Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in your rooms?”

  “Nonsense, my dear.” Caldenia’s eyes gleamed. “I love watching her work.”

  “He deployed scout spheres,” Arland said, watching the handful of robotic scouts meander their way into my territory. “He’s trying to map your range. An expensive way to do it.”

  “Expensive and pointless,” Maud said. “They’ve been in range for the last six meters. She isn’t just going to destroy them the moment they touch the boundary.”

  I concentrated on the depiction of the grounds. An area from the west side rushed at me, zooming closer and closer. The brush grew to mountain size, the individual blades of grass became a forest, and within that forest a chain of ten ants hurried toward the inn.

  I’d scanned the ants when I first felt them crossing the boundary and now I tossed the results of the scan onto the screen so the others could see it. One individual ant expanded, rotating, the analysis rolling next to its image, listing the complex readouts. I was looking at a masterpiece of cyborg technology: a living insect carrying within it roughly a million nanobots. Silent, virtually undetectable by all but the most advanced scanners, the ants were meant to reach Gertrude Hunt and let loose their horde of tiny robots, capable of everything from surveillance to sabotage. The Draziri had no idea the architecture of the inn was fluid and changed at my whim. He was trying to map out Gertrude Hunt, looking for weak points.

  Arland bared his teeth. “Clever bastard.”

  “Not as clever as he thinks,” I murmured.

  Magic tugged on me. I opened a second screen in the wall. The Hiru appeared on it.

  “How may I be of service?” I asked.

  “I realize… this time is not the best.” The Hiru’s voice sounded strained. “The first Archivarian has arrived on Earth.”

  Not good. “Where?”

  The Hiru raised his right palm. A small map of Red Deer appeared, a tiny glowing dot marking one of the streets. Walmart parking lot. Well, at least the first member of the Archivarius wouldn’t stand out.

  “What does it look like?”

  The Hiru touched his palm and a projection appeared of a man in his mid-thirties, brown-skinned, with a bald head and an intelligent face. His features were off somehow. Something about them telegraphed alien so loudly, it practically slapped your senses. It took me a moment to figure it out. His face had no pores. No wrinkles, no small imperfections, and no variations in tone troubled his skin. He looked plastic. The effect was freakish. But in darkness he would pass for a human.

  “The Archivarian must be retrieved,” the Hiru said. “Immediately.”

  No pressure. The ants were still a good two hundred yards away. The spheres drifted perilously close to the point where they would become a problem.

  “The retrieval may have to wait.”

  The Hiru leaned forward, his voice gasping. “The Archivarian cannot maintain its form in your planetary conditions. He must be submerged in inert gas to contain himself.”

  Inert gas meant an argon chamber. A piece of cake, but only on the inn grounds.

  “What happens when he loses his form?” I asked.

  “He is a being of energy.”

  Not good. So not good. The release of energy could mean anything from explosion, to bright light, to complete disintegration of the local space-time continuum.

  “He must be retrieved. We have risked everything.” Desperation vibrated in his voice.

  This information would’ve been excellent to have had earlier. “How long?”

  “Thirty-four minutes.”

  Damn it. I tossed a counter on the wall, seconds ticking back from thirty-four minutes to zero.

  “Very well,” I said. “How will the Archivarian know my people?”

  “Take this.” The Hiru’s left forearm slid open, revealing a small pen-like transmitter. “He will hunt your signal.”

  And so would the Draziri, if they ever put two and two together. Arguing about it would waste time we didn’t have. After we dealt with this initial assault, the Hiru and I would have to sit down and talk.

  I nodded and cut off the communication.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Maud said.

  I loved my sister so much. “Take my car. It’s bulletproof. Walmart is only seven or eight minutes from here.”

  “My lady,” Arland said, and it took me a second to register that he wasn’t talking to me. “I would be honored to assist.”

  “I can handle it,” Maud said.

  “Take the vampire, my dear,” Caldenia said. “You never know when you may require muscle.”

  Maud’s eyebrows knitted together.

  I pulled the feed from the Park Street. At first glance everything appeared normal. Fortunately, the inn had been recording the street for the last four hours. A comparative analysis took only a few fractions of a second and the contours of four Draziri lit up on the screen, each wrapped in a high tech camo cloak. The cloak mimicked the surroundings the same way a chameleon would, replicating the fence and the bushes with painstaking accuracy. They must’ve had some way to block their body heat as well, because they didn’t show up on the infrared scan.

  The Draziri waited in the shadows, two by Mr. Ramirez’s fence and two on the other side of the Camelot road leading into Avalon subdivision. They caught a lucky break - Mr. Ramirez had left for his weekly bowling meeting and took his dog with him.

  “How much cover can you give me?” Maud asked.

  “I can do Mom’s Take Care,” I said.

  “That should be good enough.”

  “Exit won’t be a problem,” Arland said. “But the return may present a slight difficulty.”

  Thirty minutes. We had to decide now.

  Arland was right. The Draziri wouldn’t expect them to leave, but they would expect the vehicle to return. My range was limited and I was bound by the innkeeper laws. I couldn’t do anything too loud or too obvious. The Draziri would ambush the vehicle on its way back. One well aimed shot from any number of fun galactic weapons, and my sister, Arland, and the Archivarian would be vaporized.

  A quick calculation took place behind Maud’s eyes. She turned to the vampire. “Lord Arland, it is my honor to accept your generous offer.”

  Arland unleashed his smile. It bounced from Maud like dry peas from the wall.

  My s
ister strained, concentrating. I felt the inn move in response. The ceiling above us parted and car keys fell into her palm.

  “Told you,” I said. “Like riding a bicycle. Don’t forget the Hiru’s gadget.”

  She turned and ran. Arland followed her.

  The robot spheres clicked in unison, preparing to explode. I smiled and punched a hole through reality. For an instant, an orange plain flashed under a purple sky, a vista that couldn’t be found anywhere on Earth. The dimensional rip bit at the spheres. The robotic mines vanished, transported in a moment to a planet thousands of light-years away. There was no return from Kolinda.

  I let the ants continue.

  “You’re toying with him, dear,” Caldenia said.

  “I’m letting him think he still has an ace up his sleeve.”

  “I approve.” She smiled, her eyes sparkling with delight.

  The image of the garage appeared on my left. Maud revved the engine. Arland sat in the passenger seat, a positron cannon in his hand.

  I took in magic, building it up.

  “What is ‘Mom’s Take Care?’” Caldenia asked.

  “You will see.”

  The magic wound around me, tight and ready. The inn creaked.

  Maud gave me an okay through the windshield. I shoved with my magic. The garage door vanished. A tunnel of dirt, stone and the inn’s roots whipped into existence, spinning down the driveway and turning right, down the street. Maud gunned it. My car shot through the tunnel like a cannonball and burst onto the pavement. The Draziri stared after it, too stunned to fire off a shot. I pulled the tunnel back and dissolved it. The whole thing took two seconds. From the street, the house once again appeared normal, just as it had been a few moments ago.

  The counter said twenty-nine minutes. Good luck, Maud.

  “Our mother used this to provide additional security for high-risk guests leaving the inn,” I said.

  “Your mother is a remarkable woman,” Caldenia said. “Now what shall we do about the ants?”

  “I think they are having such a nice time walking,” I said. “We should let them continue.”

  Caldenia leaned forward and watched as I broke the laws of physics to keep the ants moving. The soil beneath them shifted subtly, a large chunk of the lawn crawling back just as they moved forward. From their monitors, the ground would appear perfectly stationary. Eventually whoever was monitoring them would figure out that they were no closer to the house than they were ten minutes ago, but it would buy me some time.

  It bought me fifteen minutes. The ants finally turned, attempting to exit and I jettisoned them into Kolinda’s wastes.

  Thirteen minutes.

  Across the road, a Draziri abandoned subtlety, hopped onto the wooden fence, and ran along it with breathtaking grace all the way to the right, out of the range of my quiet guns. Another dashed in the opposite direction. The rest followed, splitting into two groups. They were moving through the subdivision, half to the left and half to the right, not sure from which direction the vehicle would be returning.

  I launched two probes. The tiny cameras streaked along the street, tracking the Draziri and the split screen showed two groups of invaders. The one on the left holed up next to Timber Trail, a quiet street that was the newest addition to the Avalon subdivision. Lined with houses, it led to an elementary school. The group on the right crouched on the fence just behind the bend of the road. One, two, three, four… Eight on each side.

  He had a lot more troops than I expected.

  Eight was definitely too many and from what I had seen so far, the Draziri were well-armed. I had a choice where to send Maud. She could approach the inn from the right, coming back exactly the way she came, or from the left, after she looped through some parallel streets.

  Approaching from the right was the only responsible option. On the left, the houses on Timber Trail were packed like sardines on tiny lots. There was no way a fight wouldn’t be noticed, and some of the energy rifles the Draziri carried would slice through stucco and drywall like knife through butter. We would have bystander casualties.

  On the right, a solid stone fence separated the bulk of the subdivision from the street, providing at least some protection for the houses. But Park Street veered slightly just past the inn. No direct shot. I had some things that could shoot around corners, but they honed in on body heat and the Draziri were masking theirs.

  Magic chimed. Sean and Orro.

  “In here,” I called.

  Sean appeared on the doorstep of the war room, a small bag in his hands, and came to stand next to me.

  “My sister and Arland went to get the first Archivarian,” I said.

  “The counter?” Sean asked.

  “Deadline to the Archivarian assuming its true form.”

  “What form is that?”

  “Energy. There are eight Draziri waiting for them on each side of the street. Both groups are too far for any of my quiet guns. I have the needler, but its darts hone in on body heat and they are not showing up on my infrared scanner. Anything else will be too loud and too obvious.”

  My phone rang and I took the call. My sister’s voice echoed through the war room.

  “We have him.”

  I knew she could do it.

  “Do you want me to come back the same way?”

  She had to come back the same way, from the right, she would drive into an ambush. Even if I threw the tunnel as far as it could go, it wouldn’t be enough. The Draziri would hit the car before it ever reached the tunnel.

  I’d have to use the bats from the cave on the inn’s grounds as a living shield. My heart squeezed itself into a tiny ball. The bats were a part of the inn and I would sacrifice every last one to save my sister, but they wouldn’t be enough. I had no way to bring her in safely.

  Seven minutes. I had to answer her.

  “Let me do my job,” Sean said.

  “There are eight of them on each side.”

  He looked at me, his eyes pure wolf, and I realized it didn’t matter how many of them there were. He would still go out there.

  “Yes,” I said to Maud. “Come back the same way.”

  She hung up.

  “Left or right?” he asked.

  “Right.”

  “I need the specter.”

  “Give him everything he wants,” I told Gertrude Hunt.

  He dropped his bag and left the war room. I tracked him through the inn, as he stepped out of the kitchen door, a dark shape on the screen. Sean dropped his cloak and pulled out the curved knife with a green blade. His eyes shone with bright amber, reflecting the moonlight. He raised his hand and the specter rifle fell into it. Sean sprinted across the lawn into the trees, fast and silent like a phantom, and vanished into the woods, past the range of my scanners.

  I pulled the feed from my probe, expanding it so it took up most of the wall directly in front of me. The Draziri had positioned themselves on the long wooden fence, crouching like camouflaged creepy angels. They didn’t have much choice. The fence ran for the next quarter of a mile up the street.

  A vehicle roared down the road. I tensed.

  A white truck thundered past us. Not Maud.

  Three minutes.

  The first Draziri on the right dropped like a stone. Sean had fired the specter rifle.

  The second Draziri, directly behind the first, fell without a sound.

  The remaining Draziri leapt off the fence and dashed across the street. The night lit up with orange flashes of light as they discharged their energy rifles. Sean landed in the middle of them, fast, so shockingly fast. He gutted the third Draziri with a short precise slash, reversed the blade, and sliced the fourth attacker’s throat. Blood sprayed.

  The surviving Draziri spun, revealing short blades of bright pale metal. They attacked, twisting and leaping as if dancing, and Sean sliced through them, cutting a path as if he knew where they would be before they decided to move there.

  Two Draziri peeled from the group on the le
ft and dashed toward the fight right through my kill zone. Oh no, you don’t. The short-range pulse cannon fired once, its invisible beam slicing through the area. Two smoking corpses crumpled to the ground.

  Sean’s attackers were down to one, but that last Draziri moved as if he were weightless, launching into a whirlwind of slashes and cuts and dancing away from Sean before the green blade could find him.

  The phone rang. Arland’s voice filled the room. “Three streets out.”

  Eighty seconds.

  On the screen a Draziri blade caught Sean’s side. My heart jumped into my throat.

  Sean buried his knife in the Draziri’s chest, freed it with a sharp tug, and leapt into the scraggly Texas woods bordering the inn.

  “Clear,” I said and hurled the tunnel down the street. It caught the car. Maud drove into the garage, the car screeching to a halt. The Archivarian stumbled out. A cylindrical vat shot out of the ground, enclosing him. The top of the vat clanged closed. Argon filled the inside.

  Ten seconds.

  Nine.

  Five.

  Three.

  Two...

  One.

  The Archivarian looked at my sister from the inside of the vat, still humanoid.

  We made it.

  Sean.

  I ran out of the war room and through the lawn and the woods to the east.

  Be okay. Please be okay.

  He crossed the boundary and I saw him running toward me. We collided and I threw my arms around him. For a second he stood there, as if not sure what to do and then he hugged me to him.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered.

  “I am now,” he said.

  * * *

  The problem with all men, and werewolves in particular, was their odd perspective. Sean viewed the gash across his ribs as a scratch. I viewed it as an open wound made by a monomolecular blade able to cut through the werewolf armor and contaminate his body with extraterrestrial microorganisms and possibly poison. We agreed to meet somewhere in the middle. He allowed me to sterilize and seal the wound, and I promised to stop threatening to restrain him.

  “I’m curious,” Maud said, when I was finished. “Do you always threaten people who try to help you or is he special?”

  “He isn’t,” Arland volunteered. “She threatened to drown me in sewage once.”