One Fell Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #3)(77)

Sean bared his teeth.

“I know,” I told him.

A swirl of tiny white lights drifted from the trees, lining up to light a path in the grass. We were being summoned. I followed it, Sean moving next to me on silent wolf paws. We walked deeper into the woods, but the trees didn’t become denser. It remained the same: a tree, some fruit, and the grass, then another tree…

We came to a clearing. A stone wall blocked the way, leaning to the side slightly, its surface slicked with moss. The lights flared and vanished.

A creature stepped from the shadows behind the wall. She was eight feet tall and slender, with leathery skin the color of butter. She stood upright on two long legs. Her four arms, delicate and narrow, put you in mind of a praying mantis or a damselfly, but her eyes belonged to an owl: large disks of blood-red with round black pupils. A gossamer tunic obscured her body, made with diaphanous layers of pale glittering fabric.

“Dinaaa.” Her voice lingered in the air, refusing to fade.

“Holy Seramina,” I said. “You called and I came.”

“You brought your wolf.” Seramina said. The echoes of her voice hung above the grass.

“Yes.”

“It’s good,” she said.

She knelt by Sean and looked into his eyes. “He doesn’t like me.”

“He doesn’t like this place.”

Seramina rose. “It is calm here. It is quiet. We have serenity. Peace. You will need peace soon, Dina.”

“I ask for your wisdom,” I said the ritual words. “I ask for your guidance. Oh holy one, tell me what danger lies in my future.”

“You will be offered that which you cannot refuse,” she whispered. “It will kill everything that is alive inside you.”

Fear squirmed through me. “Is there any way to avoid it?”

“No. It will come to pass. You cannot stop it, because you cannot deny the nature of who you are.” She knelt by Sean again, studying him. “When her soul dies, bring her here. She will never live again, but she can exist here, with us. She can be one of us, one of the broken. She will find peace here. That is my prophecy.”

She stood up and walked away into the trees.

I turned and followed the lights out. The Archivarian sat cross-legged just inside the gates. Beyond them a portal opened. Not a gate defined by a technological arc, not a tunnel, but a ragged hole punched straight through reality.

At our approach, the Archivarian rose and followed us without a word.

We walked through the tear. The universe died. There was empty blackness and then the back room of Wilmos’ shop burst into existence around us. The air smelled of energy discharge and gunpowder. The sounds of many weapons firing at the same time pounded on my ears.

The wolf tore and Sean spilled out, wearing nothing except his subcutaneous armor.

He grabbed me and pulled me to him, his eyes wild. “I’m never taking you back there.”

His lips closed on mine. The kiss seared me and for a moment I tasted Sean and the forest inside him.

The human Sean broke free. His body blurred. The massive lupine monster brandished a green knife and burst through the door of the back room into the gunfight.

*

I pressed myself behind the wall and peered out through the doorway. The front wall of Wilmos’ shop was gone. A ragged gap, its edges smoking and sputtering, had torn through the storefront. The werewolves had taken cover behind the counters, firing short bursts at the street, where the Draziri, hidden behind a couple of overturned merchant stalls, returned fire.

Sean flashed through the room, a dark blur that cleared the gap and burst into the street.

Sean!

“Idiot!” the older female werewolf yelled.

The werewolves line erupted with shots, as they tried to provide cover fire.

Wilmos smiled.

Somehow Sean cleared the fifty yards separating him from the overturned stalls. He leapt over the left one. Shots rang out.

“Hold your fire,” the grizzled dark-skinned werewolf barked.

Across the street someone screamed, a desperate terrified shriek, cut off in mid-note.

A clump of fighters in pale Draziri cloaks burst from between the two stalls, bouncing up and down the street like an out of control spin top.

“I hope you got a DNA sample before they cut him to pieces,” a blond male werewolf said.

“Watch,” Wilmos said.

The clump spun, the spaces between bodies opening for a moment, and within its depth Sean moved, lightning quick. He struck, his movements short, precise, yet fluid, cutting, stabbing, severing, fast, so fast. Each vicious swipe of his knife drew blood. He was cutting the Draziri like they were mannequins standing still. Dark stains splayed over his body, turning his fur nearly black, sliding left to shield the stomach, then up to his neck to ward off a strike. It must’ve been his subcutaneous armor.

“Will you look at that…” someone murmured.

The Draziri tried to cut him down, but he moved among them, slicing them out of existence and moving on before they had a chance to fall. A dancer on the edge of a blade.

There was a desperate need about the way he moved, as if he was trying to rend the fabric of reality to pieces. He loved me, I realized. He loved me so much, and the wounds of Nexus had barely scabbed over. The prophecy had pushed him over the edge. He had to vent or it would tear him apart from the inside out.