One Fell Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles 3)

Less than a minute later Sean came striding through the door. Arland was only a few steps behind. Helen rode on his shoulder like a parrot. Maud opened her mouth and clicked it shut.

“The third Archivarian is arriving to the inn in four minutes and ten seconds,” I said. “I have to drop the void field. Are you in?”

“Of course.” Arland gently set Helen on the floor.

“Yes,” Sean said.

So much for his ultimatums.

“For the Archivarian to get here, the other side must open a door,” Maud said. “A portal. If I were the Draziri, I’d try to detonate it the moment I saw it.”

“The portal will open in the back field,” I said. Each inn listed the official coordinates for the designated arrivals. Ours were in the back, where the house would block the view. “We must preserve the Archivarian at all costs. We need a plan. Sean?”

A calculation took place in Sean’s eyes. “The Draziri are positioned all around the inn on the wooded side. They’re watching the grounds.”

“You want to structure our defense around the portal?” Arland asked.

“No,” Sean said. “I don’t want to defend it at all.”

Arland mulled it over. His blond eyebrows edged together. Maud grinned like a wolf and pulled her new blood sword out.

“If they see you, they will key in on you,” Sean said to me.

“He’s right,” Arland confirmed. “You’re a high-priority target. If they eliminate you, their chances of killing the Hiru rise substantially.”

“How safe would you be out in the open?” Sean asked me.

“Perfectly safe as long as I’m on the inn’s grounds.” I could block any kinetic projectiles and the inn could absorb most energy bombardments with my direction. “Do you want me out there to play bait?”

“Yes,” Sean said. “Does the inn have something that could bombard the land outside of the boundary?”

“Can you be more specific?”

“A weapon that won’t draw attention from the street but will be dangerous enough to scatter the Draziri.”

Gertrude Hunt was a lot stronger than it used to be. Still, its resources were limited.

“Does it have to be precise?”

“No,” Sean said. “As long as it has an impact.”

It was my turn to smile. “If you want impact, I’ll give you one.”

A short shadow fell on the doorway.

“Wing?” I asked.

The Ku stepped into the open. His feathered crest lay completely flat on his head. He was terrified. “I fight.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I fight,” the Ku said. “I want to help.”

He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at Sean.

“We can use you,” Sean told him.

* * *

The sun was setting. Twilight descended on Texas, turning harmless trees dark and twisted. I opened the kitchen door, dropped the void field, and walked out into the backyard, Beast on my right and Wing armed with one of Sean’s weapons, a short simple-looking rifle, on my left. I’d asked Sean what it was and he told me it was the space equivalent of a sawed-off shotgun.

We reached the middle of the lawn. I stopped. The soil shifted and slid under me.

For a tense moment, nothing happened. Then a volley of shots, energy and kinetic, tore through the dusk, coming at me from a ragged semicircle. There you are.

Roots burst from the ground, dragging a wall of dirt with it to shield me from the worst of the barrage. The broom split in my hand and I plunged it into the ground. Magic poured out of me.

The lawn belched. Three rocks the size of a washing machine burst from the ground. I heaved with my magic. The boulders rolled at the Draziri. Wing fired, his rifle spitting pale blue projectiles. They landed in the trees and the brush, expanded like water balloons, and exploded silently in bursts of bright blue light. The glow caught fleeing shapes of Draziri, scattering through the brush. The boulders chased them, spinning along the boundary.

A twisted spiral of deep purple spun into existence above the ground, directly over the entrance coordinates. Individual Draziri broke free of the trees, trying to avoid my rocks and sprinting toward the forming vortex, light on their feet as if they could dance on air.

I pushed. The grass between the vortex and the boundary erupted and spat Arland in full battle armor. The Marshal of House Krahr roared and charged the ragged Draziri line. He tore into them like a bowling ball, mace swinging. A single hit sent a Draziri flying onto the inn grounds. The roots wound around her body and hurled her through the trees back the way she came.

Arland raged, loud and terrifying. The Draziri stabbed and cut at him and he tore through them, immune to fear and pain. The blood mace crashed down again and again, crushing skulls and breaking bones. I couldn’t see it, but I knew that behind the battle, in the dark, my sister and Sean sliced through the Draziri ranks from the sides, like the two blades of scissors.

The vortex was almost complete.

A scream tore the night. Another. The Draziri dashed to and fro, panicking.

The vortex spat an Archivarius member. An argon tank rose from the lawn. The being stepped into it and the tank sank into the ground. Got him.

A second shape loomed within the vortex, a grotesque clunky shape. Another Hiru was coming through.

A large projectile shot out of the tree line. In the split second it flew over the inn’s territory, my magic told me what it was. I shoved a doorway in its way, ripping through the fabric of our world. The missile tore through the hole in reality, sped over an orange ocean, and crashed into alien waters. Kolinda’s ocean screamed. A mountain of water and vapor burst upward, blooming like some horrible flower.