One Fell Sweep Page 20

  Helen made a small noise and stuck her face into Maud’s clothes.

  “Shhh, my flower,” my sister whispered. “Don’t worry. Let your aunt work.”

  Where is it?

  The entire house twisted, trying to turn itself inside out to open to my inspection. Magic pulsed from me, again and again, rolling to the deepest reaches, to the smallest roots.

  It touched something deep underneath within the water line. Something tiny. Something that soaked up my magic. I concentrated on the minuscule spark. It felt so much like the inn itself, it was moving right past all of Gertrude Hunt’s defenses and it was growing, a tiny thread searching for the sun and warmth.

  I sealed the section of the pipe, cutting it off at both ends with plastic. The thread slipped through it, as if the solid barrier wasn’t there.

  Magic.

  If I used the void field to stop it, it would only delay the inevitable. Maybe I could jettison it once I found a way to contain it.

  I followed it, tracing it. I could barely sense it. It blended so well into the very fabric of the inn, if I hadn’t sunk everything into looking for it, I would’ve never known it was there.

  Kitchen.

  I pulled the broom back into its normal shape and moved into the kitchen doorway. Maud followed me.

  A flower grew out of the kitchen sink, its purple stem supporting a giant blossom four feet across. Waves of petals, shimmering with delicate pink and gold, wrapped its core, which was only the size of a basketball. Parachute-like protrusions, like dandelion fuzz, thrust from the core, their feathery ends glowing gently with beautiful crimson. I’d never seen anything like it.

  “Londar Len Teles,” Arland whispered next to me.

  My sister raised her eyebrows. “World killer?”

  “Don’t move,” Arland warned, his voice an urgent whisper. “If you move, it will launch spores, sting you, and grow from your bodies.”

  I held perfectly still.

  “Hold still, flower,” Maud said without turning her head. “If you move, we all die.”

  “Don’t raise your voice,” Arland said, his lips barely moving. “It reacts to any sign of life, movement, sound, heat, change in air composition. It’s a hunter. Are there any more?”

  “No. This is the only one.”

  The soft feathers of the parachutes trembled slightly, turning toward us.

  “Can you contain it?” Maud asked.

  “It passed through solid plastic,” I whispered.

  “You can’t stop it,” Arland whispered. “It’s impervious to fire, acid, energy weapons, and a vacuum. It will pass through whatever barrier you can summon, because it becomes flesh only when it meets its prey. If you send it to another world, you’ll doom that world to extinction. It will kill and grow and kill again, until it’s the only thing alive on that planet.”

  I couldn’t be responsible for the death of an entire planet. And I couldn’t contain it, burn it, or drown it.

  “How do we kill it?” I asked.

  “You can’t,” Arland said. “But I can.”

  “How?” Sean asked behind him.

  “My blood is toxic to it,” Arland said. “I’ll explain if I live. The seeds should fail to implant.”

  “Should?” Maud whispered.

  “Don’t move and don’t scream,” Arland said. “I have to be the only target. If it keys in on anyone else, the seed will bloom inside your bodies, and the contamination will spread. I might survive one plant. I won’t survive two.”

  “What about the void field?” I asked.

  “No,” Arland said. “I need to pull it out. If the void field works and you sever the stem, the flower will just grow again, in a new direction.”

  “This is daft,” Maud said, her voice strained. “There has to be another way.”

  Arland’s voice was eerily calm, his gaze fixed on the flower. “Lady Maud, should I die, say the Liturgy of the Fallen for me.”

  Maud opened her mouth. Her face turned into a bloodless mask, her eyes turned hard, and without moving a muscle, she transformed from my sister into a vampire. Her voice came out calm and even. Vampire words rolled off her tongue. “Go with the Goddess, my Lord. You won’t be forgotten.”

  Arland charged into the kitchen.

  The flower exploded. Every parachute sprung into the air, the bright pink seeds at the end glowing, and clamped onto the vampire. Arland snarled like a wounded animal. The parachutes engulfed him, wrapping around him like a strait jacket, the seeds pulsing with red, sinking through his armor, then falling off, black and lifeless. They battered his face, drawing blood. He gritted his teeth and locked his hands on the core of the flower. The petals flared bright red. Arland howled, his voice pure pain, and pulled the flower to him. The petals turned black. His whole body shook. The immovable mountain that was Arland barely stayed upright. The stem of the flower wrapped around his arm like a constrictor trying to choke its victim. Arland gripped it and pulled, hand over hand, his teeth bared, his eyes bulging out. The vine spilled out, coiling around him. It whipped him, penetrating the armor like it wasn’t even there. Blood drenched his face, slipping out of the dozens of tiny wounds. Arland went down to his knees, still screaming, raw and desperate, tears streaming from his eyes. I wanted to clamp my hands over my ears and curl into a ball so I wouldn’t have to hear or see him. Maud stood rigid beside me, her hands locked into fists, breath hissing through her clenched teeth.

  The last few feet of the stem spilled out of the drain, carrying a glowing blue bulb the size of a walnut at the end of it.

  The Marshal of House Krahr gripped it. It pulsed with blinding light. He dug his fangs into it, ripping a hole in the bulb, bit his hand, and spat his own blood into its center.

  The bulb turned black.

  The plant convulsed, squeezing him in a last attempt to strangle its victim, turned black, and became still.

  Arland raised his hand and growled a single word. “Clear.”

  Maud sprinted to him.

  “Well,” Caldenia said. “Nobody can say that this siege is boring.”

  * * *

  Arland couldn’t get off the floor. Welts formed on his face, swelling into blood-filled blisters in seconds. He was breathing like he’d run a sprint.

  “You need to take off the armor,” Maud told him. “You’re bleeding under it.”

  “What I need… is a… moment… to catch my breath.”

  “Arland,” I said. “You need to get out of the armor.”

  He didn’t answer. Prying him out of the armor would be next to impossible without his cooperation. For the knights of the Holy Anocracy, armor was everything. They spent more of their lives in it than out of it, and, in times of life-threatening injuries, the urge to keep it on often overwhelmed them.

  Sean stepped in front of Arland, grabbed his arm, and hauled the Marshal to his feet.

  “You stay in the armor, you die,” he said.

  “Don’t die!” Helen yelled from the front room.

  Maud slapped her hand over her face. “You can move, darling.”

  Helen dashed into the room and hugged Arland’s leg. “Don’t die.”

  A tremor gripped Arland’s body. He bit the air, as if trying to kill the pain.

  Maud stepped close to him, their faces only inches apart. “I know,” she said, her voice strained. “I know. I’ve been there. The last thing you want is to be without armor now. You don’t want to be vulnerable. But you will die, my lord. I don’t want that to happen. Helen doesn’t want that to happen.”

  Arland looked at Helen. She clung to his armored leg, her terrified eyes opened wide. “Don’t die.”

  Arland swallowed and hit the crest on his chest. The armor fell off him.

  “Medbay!” I ordered.

  A tendril sprouted from the floor, wrapped around Arland and pulled him deeper into the inn. I followed. Helen took off after me, but Maud caught her.

  “No.”

  “But why?”

&
nbsp; “Because he’s very proud. Stay here, Helen.”

  I stepped into the medbay. Maud was only a step behind me. I sealed the doors behind us. The inn deposited Arland onto the metal examination table. I took a scalpel from the drawer and sliced through the black fabric of his jumpsuit.

  Bloody blisters covered his entire body. Some had broken and viscous blood, tainted by something foul, leaked onto his skin. It smelled like vinegar and rot. I touched his skin. Too cold.

  “What can we do?” I asked him.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I live or I die.”

  “There has to be something I can do.”

  He sighed. “The last time, there was a bath. With star flower.”

  “Mint,” Maud told me as if I didn’t know.

  “It helped some.”

  I opened a screen to the kitchen, making sure Arland was out of its view. Orro was deep-frying something on the stove.

  “I need mint,” I said. “All of it. Everything we have.”

  “We have two plants,” Orro said. He’d pitched a fit over fresh herbs not long after the summit was over, and I had created a hothouse, which we were slowly stocking with herbs.

  “That’s not enough. Take all of the mint tea we have and brew the biggest pot of tea we can.”

  He nodded. I closed the screen

  Maud took Arland’s hand.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t want you… to see me like this.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Maud told him. “A pack of rassa couldn’t make me leave.”

  “My lady…”

  She put her fingers on his lips. “I’m staying.”

  I took the handheld showerhead from the side of the bed, adjusted the water to warm, and washed the polluted blood off him.

  He didn’t say a word. He just lay there. No strength to protest. No energy to be embarrassed. He lay there and held Maud’s hand.

  We couldn’t lose Arland. We just couldn’t.

  “I can’t feel a vigil room,” Maud said. “Do you have one?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m going to make one. Off the kitchen.” She closed her eyes, concentrating.

  Vampires treasured their families. The worst fate a vampire could imagine was dying alone. They fell in battle, surrounded by other vampires, or they died at home, watched over by their relatives and loved ones. Arland wouldn’t be alone. It was the least we could do.

  “It needs to have a tub,” I told her.

  She gave me a look that told me she wasn’t an idiot and closed her eyes again.

  I felt the inn move as parts of it shifted in response to my sister’s will. There was a sluggish quality to its compliance, almost as if Gertrude Hunt hesitated before making the adjustments.

  “Do what she asks,” I whispered, so quiet even I couldn’t hear it. It wasn’t an order or a demand. It was permission.

  The inn moved faster.

  Arland was still bleeding. The more I washed him off and patted his wounds dry, the more polluted blood seeped from the wounds. If I sealed the wounds, I would be trapping the rot and poison inside his body.

  I looked at Maud. She took the showerhead from me and kept washing.

  Arland’s breath slowed. His chest barely rose.

  “Don’t let go,” Maud told him. “Hold on to me.”

  He smiled at her. When Arland smiled, it was a declaration of war. It dazzled. There was vigor and power in it. There was no vigor in his smile now.

  “Fight it.” Maud squeezed his hand.

  “Everything is slowing down.” He raised his hand. It shook. Maud leaned to him. His fingertips brushed her cheek.

  “No time,” he said.

  “Fight it.” Desperation pulsated in her voice. “Live.”

  He was dying. Arland was dying.

  I felt a presence outside the door. Caldenia.

  She knocked.

  What could she possibly want right now? I draped a towel over Arland’s hips and opened the door. Her Grace stepped inside, carrying a small wooden box in her hands. She craned her neck and glanced at Arland. “Well. As prime a specimen as I remember from your wonderful excursion to the orchard.”

  “I’m not dead yet,” Arland’s voice trembled. He was trying to snarl, but he didn’t have the strength. “You can’t eat me.”

  Caldenia raised her eyes up for a long moment. “My dear, I’m not ruled by my stomach. Right now, I’m moved by an altruistic impulse. It will be very short-lived, so you should take advantage of it while it lasts.”

  She opened the box and took out a small injector with clear liquid inside it.

  “What is that?” Maud asked.

  “This is a vaccine synthesized from a certain bacteriophage,” Caldenia said, snapping the protective tip off the injector. “The same prokaryotic virus that our dear Marshal carries in his blood.” She turned to Arland. “I’m going to inject you with it, unless you just want to die on this table for the sins of your ancestors. Or, I suppose, in your case, for their ridiculous bravery and absurd ethical obligations.”

  She raised the injector.

  “No,” Arland squeezed out.

  Caldenia looked at me. “He will die, Dina.”

  Arland tried to rise. His whole body trembled from the effort. He collapsed back down.

  “Do you trust her?” Maud asked.

  “No,” I said. “She doesn’t have altruistic impulses.”

  “I have finally taught you something,” Caldenia smiled, exposing her inhumanly sharp teeth.

  “But I trust her survival instinct. Without Arland the inn is more vulnerable, and if the Draziri break in, they will slaughter everyone. Her Grace didn’t travel light-years across the galaxy to be murdered by some feathered religious fanatic.”

  Arland lay flat, his gaze on the ceiling.

  “The safety of my guests is my first priority,” I told him, gently brushing his hair off his face.

  “She’s too polite to tell you,” Caldenia said. “If I were to kill you, I would be breaking my contract with Dina. The contract stipulates that the moment I kill another guest, even if I do so in self-defense, she has the right to void our agreement. I’d lose my safe haven. It would be very inconvenient for me.”

  Silence stretched.

  Arland looked at Maud.

  “Take it,” she said. “Please.”

  “Do it,” he squeezed out, his voice weak and hoarse.

  Caldenia pressed the injector against a wound on his stomach and squeezed. Arland jerked and sucked in a deep breath.

  “You must restrain him now,” Caldenia said. “It will sting.”

  Maud clamped her hands on his wrists.

  Arland screamed.

  I thrust my broom over him. It split apart, binding him to the table. Maud threw herself over it, wrapping herself around him as much as she could.

  Foam slid from Arland’s lips. He flailed under the restraints.

  I squeezed my hands into fists. There was nothing I could do. Maud’s face was terrible, her lips a flat, bloodless slash across her face, her eyes dull as if dusted with ash.

  Another convulsion… Another…

  A shallow tremor.

  He inhaled and lay still.

  Did he die?

  “Arland?” Maud called softly. “Arland?”

  His eyelashes fluttered. He opened his blue eyes, looked at her, then closed them again. His chest rose and fell in an even rhythm.

  She rose. I released the broom. Maud washed the blood off of him. The water ran red, then clear. The wounds stopped bleeding. That was fast. Really fast.

  I pulled a clean sheet from the drawer and covered him.

  “How?” I asked.

  Caldenia smiled again. “Strictly speaking, that flower isn’t really a plant. It’s closer to a macrobacterium in structure, very heavily modified, of course. A pathogen affecting both plants and animals. The science of it is long and complicated. Suffice it to say that about three hundred years ago a naturally occurring va
riant was discovered by a group of enterprising vampires. It existed in a delicate balance, kept in check by virulent bacteriophages that preyed on it as it preyed on other life. The vampires colonized the pseudo-flower’s planet and promptly attempted to manipulate it into a weapon to destroy their enemies once and for all. They were quite successful. It wiped out all of the native life on that world.”

  “It’s a thing that should never have been,” Arland said quietly. “It should be unmade.”

  He spoke. He still sounded weak, but a shadow of the power that made Arland was there. Maud took his hand in hers and stroked his fingers.

  “Oh I don’t know.” Her Grace waved her long, elegant fingers. “There is a savage beauty to it.”

  It was beautiful, deadly, and had an indiscriminate appetite. Of course she would feel kinship with it.

  “What happened?”

  “Contact with the colony was lost, and the Holy Anocracy bestirred itself and sent a rescue fleet,” Caldenia said. “The first group to land consisted of volunteers, of which several were from House Krahr and House Ilun. There was a third House, wasn’t there, dear?”

  “House Morr,” Arland said.

  “Long story short,” Caldenia said, “two dozen beings went in, five came back, and then the fleet bombarded the planet’s moon with nuclear and kinetic projectiles, until it shattered, causing increased volcanic activity, tsunamis, and other catastrophic developments on the surface of the planet. Gravity tore the remnants of the moon into a ring, and the Anocracy’s fleet helped the resulting asteroids fall to the planet, initiating an impact winter. Nothing survived.”

  “Then how did the flower get here?” I asked.

  “Money.” Caldenia winked at me. “Given the right equipment, it can be contained. Prior to being killed by their own creation, the weapon makers sold samples to fund their research. I bought one. And the antidote, of course. One should never unleash a weapon if one cannot survive it.”

  I stared at her.

  “It is my understanding that the two surviving members of House Krahr were so impacted by their experience, that they insisted on vaccinating their entire clan. Unfortunately, their supply of the vaccine was limited, and the potency of their defensive measures became more and more diluted with each generation. Supposedly, our darling boy here had to go through a ritual at puberty, like most of the members of House Krahr who showed potential. The ritual involved being stung by a single seed, and I use that term loosely. It is thought that this trial by fire would raise the concentration of the bacteriophage in his blood in the event he ever encountered the flower.”