One Fell Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #3)(49)

Sean pulled out his green-edged knife.

The robed creature waited between us and the alley. There was no other way to the inn’s door. We had to go through it.

“Dina?” Sean asked quietly. “What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

The creature thrust its left arm up, exposing a humanoid hand, pale and withered, with thick yellowed claws. The veins in its arm pulsed. I felt the magic gather around it, revolting and sickening. If that magic had a body, it would’ve been a putrid corpse. But the pattern in which it flowed, the underlying core of it… Shock gripped me.

“It’s an innkeeper.”

“What?”

“It’s corrupted somehow. We have to kill it. It’s an abomination.”

A sphere of pure energy shot out from the creature’s fingers, a ball of orange lightning as big as a grapefruit. Sean leapt up and forward, but it streaked past him and curved to follow me. I couldn’t outrun it.

Sean pulled a gun from within his clothes and fired, running at the robed creature. The air around the hooded figure rippled. Pulse projectiles, the deadliest in the galaxy, and it was blocking them.

The ball lightning lunged at me.

Like killed like. I flicked the energy whip.

The lightning exploded.

White haze drowned me. The magic shock wave reverberated through my bones and exploded in my chest, like my heart tried to burst. I gagged and vomited onto the ground. Sean bounced from the side of a building and landed behind the creature. He lunged, too fast to see, aiming the knife into the hooded figure’s ribs. Lightning bit him. Sean flew back as if punched by a massive fist.

Oh no, you don’t. I gritted my teeth and staggered forward, my whip burning with energy.

A second ball of lightning dripped from the creature’s claws and shot at me. I swung my whip. It connected. The lightning burst over me. Heat and pain seared my chest and stomach. My robe caught fire. I tore at it, trying to get it away from my skin.

Sean’s body blurred and a massive werewolf landed on the tiles, tall, muscular, with enormous shoulders and huge hands armed with two-inch claws. The robed figure spun toward him. The werewolf bared his fangs and lunged at the corrupted innkeeper, stabbing so fast, the knife turned into a green streak. Lightning burst from the robed figure and singed his fur, but he kept stabbing in a frenzy.

I yanked the robe over my head. The skin on my chest burned as if someone had taken a cheese grater to it, but I didn’t care. I sprinted to them.

The fur on Sean’s arms curled. The stench of burned hair polluted the air. The robed figure spun, trying to avoid the knife. Shreds of its robe fluttered in the air - Sean had landed some cuts.

The corrupted innkeeper raked at Sean with its withered hand, its claws dripping magic. Blood gushed from the werewolf’s chest.

I flicked my whip, feeling the creature’s magic shift in response. The energy whip snapped, bouncing off the empty air two inches from its head. Fast. I snapped the whip again. Somehow it slid aside. That’s fine. It couldn’t dodge me forever.

Sean slashed at its back.

Magic exploded from within the robe. The blast wave lifted me off my feet. I flew back, swept away like a mote of dust in a tsunami, and hit a building with my back. Oh, it hurt. It hurt so much.

Sean fell through the canopy above me and crashed next to me in the middle of broken wood and torn fabric.

The creature brought its arms together. A torrent of energy shot out from between its hands, a lance aimed at us.

I scrambled to my feet and thrust myself in front of Sean. The whip wouldn’t stop it. We were dead.

It was an innkeeper.

I dropped the whip and the glove, grabbed a piece of broken railing and held it in front of me, focusing on it. It wasn’t a broom, it was barely a staff, but I was an innkeeper, damn it, and he would not kill Sean.

The torrent of energy punched me and broke over the staff, the orange lightning splitting and burning with deep turquoise where it touched my staff and magic. My skin went numb. Someone had sunk tiny hooks into my veins and yanked at them, trying to rip them out of my body.

It hurt.

The hooded creature arched its back. Its robe turned pure black, as if the color had been sucked out of the fabric. The tattered hem frayed, unraveling. The torrent hit me harder.

God, it hurt. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt…

My whole body shook from the strain. Pain wrapped around each vertebra in my spine and squeezed, grinding cartilage and bone to nothing. My arms tried to wrench out of my shoulder sockets.

An eerie, unearthly shriek cut at my ears. The hooded thing was screaming.

I tasted blood in my mouth.

I couldn’t hold it forever. I…

A stream of bullets hammered the creature from the left, each impact a ripple in the air, stopping just short of hitting its body. The torrent of energy weakened. It was shifting magic to cover itself.

The agony was turning my brain into mush. I gritted my teeth and stepped forward, pushing the torrent back. A step. Another step.

The hooded creature took a step back.

Yes!

It took another step, bending under the strain of shielding itself from the barrage of bullets and my magic.

Sean darted from behind me, the knife in his hand.

I screamed and sank everything I had into my staff. It split the way innkeeper’s brooms did. A sharp wooden blade formed on its top. I pushed it into the torrent, until the blade pointed directly at the corrupted innkeeper, slicing through the current of energy.