Sweep of the Heart (Innkeeper Chronicles #5)(3)

The street looked familiar. He was on Rattlesnake Trail, by the high school, heading east, with the walled subdivision on one side and the school’s baseball diamond on the other. Bright summer sunshine flooded the mostly empty road. The record temperatures chased the kids inside or to the pools, and their parents were still at work.

A dark humanoid shape shot past the car. Marais was going at least 35. Top human speed was 28 miles per hour and whatever that was blew by his vehicle like it was standing still.

“Someone was running at superhuman speeds in broad daylight for all the honest world to see,” Marais said. “Apparently, she thinks the Earth Treaty doesn’t apply to her.”

The Treaty applied to everyone.

I motioned to Gertrude Hunt. A much thicker tendril emerged from the ceiling and plucked the woman out of the trunk. The stun net dropped to the floor. The inn’s tendril split into smaller branches, wrapping around the woman, and spun her in the air, rifling through her clothes. Weapons rained to the floor of the garage: a short-range energy sidearm, two knives, a monomolecular cleaver short sword, and three small sticky bombs, each the size of a large grape. When attached to a door and detonated, they could blow a hole through the strongest terrestrial safe.

Nice.

The tendrils twisted my captive upright and lowered her to the floor, anchoring themselves through the floorboards. She glowered at me and snarled.

Beast snarled back by my feet.

The werewolf woman didn’t seem impressed. In her place, I wouldn’t have taken the seven-pound shih tzu seriously either. It was a potentially deadly mistake.

“You are in violation of the Earth Treaty,” I told her. “Do you know what that means?”

She didn’t answer.

“The Treaty expressly forbids exposing the human population to the existence of extraterrestrial life. Any traveler wishing to visit Earth must make arrangements with an inn like this one. Have you made such arrangements?”

No answer.

“She knows,” Marais said. “I read her the rights on the way. She was heading this way when I apprehended her. Probably to see you.”

“Not you.” The woman sneered.

Oh. Another one.

“Thank you, Officer,” I told Marais. “I’ll take it from here.”

“Never a dull moment.” He opened the front door of his cruiser, reached for a hidden button in the dashboard, pressed it, and the net slid back into the trunk, primed and ready to be reused.

“Oh! I have something for you.”

I held out my hand. The ceiling parted and a vacuum-sealed parcel landed in my hand, two skeins of wool yarn, shimmering with blue and green. “For your wife.”

“Thanks. She’ll love it. What kind of wool is it?”

“Tell her it’s muskox.” It was close enough unless someone did a microscopic analysis. It was a gift from a guest, and Officer Marais’ wife ran a knitting blog. She would enjoy it much more than I would.

“Thanks again.”

I watched Officer Marais get into his vehicle and drive off. A moment later I felt him cross the boundary of the inn.

It was just me, the female werewolf, and her undying hatred for me. I didn’t take it personally.

The werewolves of Auul were poets, and storytelling was in their blood. Sadly, the saga of their planet had turned out tragic, the way sagas often do. They were invaded by an overwhelming force, so they bioengineered werewolfism to repel it. Then decades later, the enemy made their own version of supersoldiers and invaded again. The people of Auul built teleportation gates, knowing they would destabilize their planet, and created even better werewolves, the alpha strain, more dangerous and deadly, to guard them as they evacuated.

The alpha strain werewolves protected the gates to the bitter end, until the cosmic forces that powered them tore Auul apart. Almost all of them died in that last stand.

Sean was the son of two alpha strain werewolves who somehow made it out just before the cataclysm. He was born against all odds, he was freakishly powerful, and after serving in the military, he met me, learned where he came from, and caught a glimpse of the galaxy. It had beckoned, and Sean had followed its starlight. Everything he had done since had become the stuff of legend.

He had fought a devastating war on Nexus, bringing both the Hope Crushing Horde’s and the Holy Anocracy’s offensives to a halt. He was a superb strategist, an excellent tactician, and he had no equal in close-quarters combat. He could lead an army or stand alone against overwhelming odds.

It was simply too much for the werewolves. Here was the son of their heroes who came out of nowhere and became the best werewolf ever. They were a people without a planet, refugees scattered across dozens of worlds. They needed a folk hero in the worst way, and Sean proved to be irresistible. Everything about him was legendary and mythical. The fact that he shunned fame and glory only made it worse.

Werewolves favored a direct kind of courtship. In the past few months, we’d had several female and male visitors who’d arrived at Gertrude Hunt to declare their admiration and interest. Luckily for me, the man was very different from the legend he had inspired.

The image on the screen changed into a big timer counting down. 30… 29… 28…

My cake!

“I have to go,” I told her.

“I want to talk to him!” the werewolf woman snarled.