“Mr. Peterson, there are rules to this meeting. You must abide by them or it won’t take place.”
His eyebrows came together. He jerked his head at his bodyguard. The other man moved toward the door. They were planning to force their way in. Either they had discussed this en route or bullying his way into people’s houses was a normal thing for Rudolph Peterson.
There were a million ways I could stop them, most of which would betray the special nature of the inn to two humans. I settled on the simplest.
The bodyguard grasped the door handle of the screen door and pulled. The door remained shut. I had fused it into the wall. From the outside, it looked normal, but from the inside, the hinges and the outline of the door disappeared, melting into the wall.
The bodyguard stopped pulling and pushed. The door remained shut.
Peterson looked at him. The bodyguard locked his teeth, grasped the door handle, planted his foot against the wall, and pulled. He was remarkably strong, but he was trying to pull down the entire front wall.
The bodyguard let go, spun a kick, and hammered his heel into the door. It didn’t even shudder.
Peterson grimaced. “Cut it.”
The bodyguard pulled out a folding knife, flicked it open with a practiced twist of his wrist, and slashed at the screen. The knife glanced off with a spray of sparks. My screens were made from an advanced metal alloy. It would repel prolonged fire from a squad level assault weapon at point blank range.
The bodyguard looked at Peterson.
I petted Beast.
The short whoop of a police siren turned on for two seconds and echoed down the street. A black-and-white cruiser pulled up behind the SUV. Officer Marais got out, made a show of checking the SUV’s license plate, and marched up to my front door. Sean must have gotten ahold of him after all.
Peterson gave Marais a tough stare. Marais looked back at him with that flat cop expression that made you feel guilty even if you hadn’t done anything, because that look said you must have done something and now there would be consequences.
Marais finished looking at Peterson and decided to look at the bodyguard instead. His stare slid to the knife in the bodyguard’s hand.
The bodyguard looked uncomfortable.
Marais put his hand on his service weapon. “Drop the knife.”
The bodyguard let go of the blade and it fell to the porch.
“I have received a report of trespassing at this address. Ma’am, would you like these two men to leave?”
“I would.”
Marais pivoted to Peterson. “Sir, please exit the property.”
Peterson threw me a sharp look, his black eyes unreadable, turned and walked down the driveway without a word. The bodyguard followed. Marais winked at me, slid the cop expression back on, and trailed Peterson and his bodyguard down the driveway.
On one hand, knowing Sean worried about me and Marais cared enough to protect me made me warm and fuzzy. On the other hand, when Sean came back, I would have to go over the innkeeper policy with regard to exposure and seeking outside assistance. Plus, I totally had this. At no point were Peterson and his bodyguard coming into our inn, and the hardest thing about this whole ordeal had been making sure Beast didn’t show them her real teeth.
Marais aside, mission accomplished. Peterson hadn’t entered the inn and nothing out of the ordinary happened to make him suspect that Gertrude Hunt was anything other than a typical bed and breakfast. With a remarkably strong screen door.
On the street, the bodyguard opened the front passenger door for Peterson. The Evil Millionaire moved to get in, turned his head, and froze.
A very large man walked up to the inn. He wore a full-length leather coat and cowboy boots and he was making an odd metallic jangle as he walked. His hair was long and fell to his shoulders in perfectly symmetrical golden blond waves, as if he had spent a staggering amount of time with a curling iron and then killed half of the planet’s ozone layer spraying it in place. His features reminded me of someone from Polynesia, a Mauri or a Hawaiian, but something was definitely off about the proportions.
And who might you be?
The bodyguard gaped at the giant, his mouth slightly slack. Peterson squinted, as if aiming a gun. Both he and the bodyguard were a couple of inches above six feet, and this man towered a full foot or more above them.
I pulled up a screen and zoomed in on his face. The man’s irises were a brilliant, vivid magenta, the exact color of a spinel ring Caldenia pondered buying last year and dismissed as “too pink.”
The stranger fluttered his unnaturally long blond eyelashes and opened his mouth.
Don’t speak, don’t speak, don’t speak…
“Greetings, local keeper of the peace.”
I groaned.
“Can I help you, sir?” Marais asked, the same flat expression on his face.
“Might I inquire about the location of the closest lodging house?”
Marais didn’t bat an eye. “Up that driveway.” He nodded to indicate Gertrude Hunt.
“I thank you muchly,” the stranger declared. “Fare thee well, constable.”
He turned and jangled up my driveway. I zoomed in on his feet. His boots had spurs.
Who had I upset in my previous life?
The man raised his shovel sized hands and held them together, touching his index and middle fingers at the top and his thumbs at the bottom, forming a diamond space between. A Medamoth with a humanizer. Just what we needed.
I raised my hands, interlacing my fingers and holding them straight with thumbs pressed against palms, so my hands formed an x.
“Greetings, innkeeper.”
“Welcome, honored guest.”
He grasped the door handle, the screen door swung open effortlessly, and he ducked inside.
I glimpsed Peterson as I shut the door. He stared at me, jaw bulging and face as pale as a corpse.
I shut the door. Five minutes. If only the Medamoth had shown up five minutes later.
I turned around, retrieved my robe and slipped it on.
The Medamoth stretched. His human body turned static, frozen, as if it were an image on pause, split into hexagons, which turned white, then rained down, as the projection collapsed, leaving a massive being in their wake. He stood eight feet tall, with broad shoulders and powerfully muscled limbs. His skin, deep green on his back, and bright orange on his front, looked thick and rough, like the hide of some prehistoric shark. His legs had more in common with a kangaroo than with a human, but his arms were fully humanoid, long, with large hands equipped with four dexterous digits, each tipped with a claw. His head belonged to a predator—long terrifying jaws, designed to pierce struggling prey with four inch fangs and hold it still as it thrashed, dying; large canine ears, standing straight; a sensitive nose at the end of a long muzzle; and large amber eyes, front set, like the eyes of Earth’s predators, to notice and track prey.
The Medamoths were born hunters. Tracking, hunting, and killing was instinctual to them, and their predatory drive kicked in as soon as they opened their eyes. A baby Medamoth released into a meadow would kill every rabbit and mouse in it, gorge themselves, and then cry because the rest of the meat rotted and now they were hungry. The Assembly classified them as high risk. There had been cases of them trying to hunt other guests, and some busier inns, like Casa Feliz, were reluctant to take them, because they had to be closely supervised.
I had an inn full of delicious plump koo-ko and a Drífan liege lord was coming.
The Medamoth wore a voluminous robe of undyed plant-based fabric, reminiscent of linen. Normally they wore an assortment of weapons and metal jewelry studded with gemstones. He wore a knotted rope around his neck, decorated with plain wooden beads. An identical rope hugged his waist. A red tattoo marked the back of his neck, standing out against the green and luminescing slightly, so the troops behind him could see his rank during a battle and know who to follow.
“That’s better,” he said.
I spun a hallway off the left side of the front room and motioned for him to enter. “Please join me, General Who Sinks His Fangs Into The Throat Of His Enemy.”
He shook his hand at me in a dismissive gesture. “No rank please. Today I’m just a pilgrim.”
We strolled through the hallway. I had built arched windows into it on the fly, and the sunshine flooded through, drawing golden patterns on the wood floor.
“What brings you to Earth?”
“I’m being groomed for a government position.”
“Congratulations.”
He grimaced, baring nightmarish fangs. “While many may view it as a prestigious position, it’s simply another way to serve. I have served, I will serve.”
“May I inquire as to the nature of the position?”
“Colonial governor. It’s a frontier position. Conflict is expected.”
“Why?”
“Because the colony is in a contested system. The other planet is occupied.”
“By whom?”
“The Hope-Crushing Horde.”
That explained volumes. “The Horde exists to acquire new territory. “
He showed his teeth again. “So my predecessor found out. Our settlement is well defended, we breed faster than the Otrokar, and the logistics are on our side. However, the Horde does not know the meaning of reason. We are hunters. We have learned to adapt to the limits of our biosphere. The Horde is a swarm that devours all and moves on.”