Sweep of the Heart (Innkeeper Chronicles #5)(55)

Karat slashed at the ad-hal. The creature slid out of the way, but the blood blade caught the edge of its robe. A piece of the fabric flew, cut free. Karat grinned, her face a terrifying grimace, and launched a frenzied attack. Left, right, swing, cut, slash, I could barely follow.

The werewolf darted in, stabbing.

Magic spun within the ad-hal’s robe.

“Run!” I threw my arm up, pushing my magic in front of me like a shield.

Karat ignored me and stabbed at the ad-hal.

Magic erupted from the creature like a shockwave from a collapsing star. The foul torrent hit Karat and the werewolf, tossing them behind me like they weighed nothing, and smashed into my shield. The air in front of me flashed with turquoise. Orange lightning smashed at the screen of my magic. It felt like a thousand red-hot needles pierced me in a single moment. My arm went numb.

The fetid magic died.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Karat convulsing on the ground. The werewolf sprawled on her back, making small wheezing noises.

The ad-hal hovered in front of me. A black stain spread through its robe, from the hood to the hem, as if it had shed its skin, exposing its true nature underneath.

I felt it. There it was. The corruption. The awful, wrong, cosmic thing that wanted to infect, consume, and smother.

Wisps of orange lightning snaked over the former ad-hal, rising up, as if the creature were caught in an invisible dust devil. This thing with clawed hands and a monstrous jaw used to be a person. A human just like me. Now it was a husk, a host for the corruption within, and that corruption would kill me, then it would kill Karat and the werewolf. None of us would get out alive.

Memories flooded me. Fighting a creature just like this one, almost dying, bringing its body to the inn, learning it was my brother’s best friend, and then watching the corruption within it leak out and escape. It crawled inside my inn like some disgusting parasite. It tried to infect Gertrude Hunt and Tony, while I could do nothing, helpless and torn from my own body by the death of the tiny inn I’d tried so hard to save.

I had killed that intruder. I had purged it from my inn. I was an innkeeper, and I would purge this one. It was my duty.

I pulled the broom from my back and planted it in front of me. Magic streamed around me, spiraling from my body and tugging at my hair.

The corrupted ad-hal snapped its hands up.

I pushed my magic out into the building under me. It streamed through the stone of the terrace into the first floor below, glowing from the soles of my feet like roots of a tree.

Twin balls of lightning flared in the ad-hal’s hands, fed by its magic. It clamped them together. The glowing clumps connected, merging into a blinding sphere churning with energy. More lightning clasped it, sliding from the creature’s robe.

“Dina!” Karat yelled behind me. “Get away from it!”

I wrapped my magic around me and the broom like a cocoon, binding us.

The brilliant sphere broke. A beam of orange lightning streaked toward me, mottled with dark magic.

I gripped my broom, pulsing my power through it.

The beam tore at my magic screen, trying to drill through it, scalding, burning, biting… The strain gripped my spine, crushing my vertebrae, so heavy it felt like I would crumple and collapse. The magic tore at me, trying to push me back, but I was anchored. My roots were deep. I would not be moved.

The beam flared with pure white.

Agony vibrated through me, radiating from my chest to my fingertips. I tasted blood and held fast.

The beam sputtered.

I waited, filled with pain.

The lightning died.

“My turn.”

I fed everything I had into my broom. The shaft split in my hand, sprouting tentacles of brilliant turquoise. They surged to the creature and gripped it in a vise, wrapping over its robe.

The corrupted ad-hal screeched. Its power flared, coating my tentacles, fighting against me. I gritted my teeth and squeezed. Killing it wasn’t enough. I had to contain it. It would not infect anything else.

The lightning dashed up the tentacles to the broom and bit at my hand. It felt like someone flayed me with an electric razor blade.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t rage. I just squeezed, harder and harder, trying to wring it out of existence. Nothing it could do to me would make me stop. If the sky cracked and fell on me, I would keep squeezing.

The creature screamed, flailing. Its magic ripped at me, and I felt the corruption within it rage. It burned with fury and frustration, a torch at its own funeral. It had been thwarted, and it knew it, indignant at being bound.

The former ad-hal jerked, frantically trying to rip itself free. My magic pushed against it, spreading from the tentacles, wrapping it up tighter and tighter. It shrank under the pressure. Its robe collapsed into a clump.

I kept squeezing.

The body of the former ad-hal was gone. It was just a blob of pure corruption now, viscous, liquid, but still bound by my power.

It wailed in my mind, enraged and helpless.

I reached deep within, to the bottom of my soul, and sent the final terrible pulse through my broom. My magic crushed the foul blob in its fist. It burst and rained onto the terrace, splattering the stone and the three of us with foul-smelling goo. Its magic was gone. It was just rotting fluid now.

I pulled the tentacles into the broom and wiped the disgusting sludge from my face. Behind me, Karat staggered to her feet.





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