We started for the stairs.
“Do you believe her?” the vampire knight asked.
“Trust but verify,” I murmured. And I knew just the person who could get me the information I needed in a fraction of the time.
A cold, nasty feeling bloomed in my spine, as if icy, rotting slime dripped onto the back of my neck. Revulsion squirmed through me. I knew this magic.
“Stop!”
Karat froze with her foot an inch off the ground.
A creature moved up the stairs. Its long, tattered robe, so much like my own, swept the stones as if it floated rather than walked. Wide sleeves hid its hands, and the inside of its deep hood was darkness.
Karat put her foot down and pulled her sword from her thigh. Bright red light burst from the hilt, running through the veins within the blade. The blood weapon whined, priming.
The corrupted ad-hal emerged onto the terrace and faced us, blocking our escape. The light caught the bottom half of its face, and I saw the outline of a pale, leathery jaw. We had nowhere to go. The staircase and the building next to it were in front of us. The weapons shop was behind us, and I highly doubted the mystery woman would let us in.
The creature raised its right arm. Its sleeve fell back, revealing a monstrous hand clenched into a fist. The corrupted ad-hal opened its long, clawed fingers. A clump of longish hair fell onto the stones, black shot through with gray.
Goosebumps slid up my arms. Wilmos.
“Someone you know?” Karat asked, her gaze fixed on the creature.
“Yes. This thing shoots lightning. Don’t try to block it.”
A phantom wind stirred the corrupted ad-hal’s robe. Fetid magic condensed around it, like a nauseating cloud.
“Is he alive?” I asked it.
The ad-hal didn’t answer.
“What do you want? What can I trade you for his life?”
The magic pulsed, so intense I almost gagged.
Something leaped off the roof of the building in front of us. It plunged through the air and smashed into the ad-hal.
The werewolf woman. Oh no.
She ripped into it, stabbing the robe in a frenzy with two blood-red knives. The ad-hal grabbed her and flung her off. She flew, smashed into the building behind the staircase with a crunch, and slid down.
The creature’s magic sparked, spawning orange lightning between the fingers of both hands. It leveled one ball at us and the other at the werewolf woman.
“Stay behind me!” Karat barked and charged.
The werewolf woman rolled into a crouch on the stairs and leaped at the ad-hal.
The creature hurled the twin lightning balls. I lunged left, Karat lunged right, and the blinding sphere tore between us. The second ball caught the werewolf in midleap. She’d tried to twist out of the way, but it splashed over her side and back in a burst of white flame. She screamed, the sound of pure agony, and collapsed onto the terrace, writhing in pain.
My body remembered being hit with that lightning. It felt like being thrust into the center of a star, drowning in an unimaginable, searing, unbearable pain that set the marrow of your bones on fire. It had almost killed me. The echo of that pain rolled through my body. Fear filled me, pushing out everything else.
Not again. No, never again.
The lightning ball aimed at us, curved, and streaked to me like a heat-seeking missile.
I dashed to the side, spurred by panic, ripped the energy whip off my belt, and squeezed it. The filament burst out in a shower of yellow sparks. I snapped the whip. The tip caught the ball of lightning. The impact reverberated through my arm, and I threw myself to the ground.
The orange sphere exploded with white fire. The magic blast wave punched me, pushing me backward across the stone. The overload of revolting magic stomped on my ribs, and my heart screamed in my chest. Pain drowned me. I swam out of it, gagged, sobbed, spat blood out of my mouth, and rolled upright.
Karat sliced at the corrupted ad-hal, insanely fast, her sword an extension of her body. The creature raked her armor with its claws. She roared and kept swinging, fast, precise, leaving it no opening to gather its magic.
The werewolf woman staggered to her feet, gripped her knives, and lunged at the ad-hal, looking for an opening. They tore at the creature from opposite sides. It darted between them like a rag on a clothesline dancing in strong wind.
I wasn’t fast enough to keep up with either of them. If I tried to attack, I’d hit one of them with the whip.
A long streak of blood drenched the side of Karat’s face, wetting her hair. The werewolf’s right side was a mess of holes and smoldering clothes. The black hardsuit she wore underneath showed through the gaps.
Karat thrust. The ad-hal spun, turning its back to her, and her blade missed by an inch. The werewolf saw an opening, dove in, and slashed with both knives. The ad-hal jerked aside, avoiding the slash, and lunged at her in the split second her arms were apart. Its clawed hand caught the werewolf just under the sternum. The creature ripped its hand upward, carving flesh and clothes with its claws in a spray of blood. The werewolf screamed.
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.