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.
17
When we last left our inn crew, Dina, Karat, and the werewolf fought the corrupted ad-hal. The Sovereign’s date with Ellenda is looming ever closer. Will our trio get back to the inn in time for Dina to fulfil her role as an innkeeper and will they survive that journey? Stay tuned for the next exciting instalment… Okay I will stop now.
The door leading from Baha-char to Gertrude Hunt swung open, and Karat and I staggered through it, smeared with blood and fetid fluids and carrying the unconscious werewolf between us, her arms draped over our shoulders. We took a step down the hallway and ran straight into Sean.
“God damn it,” he snarled, grabbing the werewolf woman out of our arms.
“We don’t have time for this. She’s critical, and Karat is injured.”
“I’m perfectly fine.” Karat gave me a trademark vampire-knight sneer.
Of course, she was. The left side of her face was the color of a pomegranate, she was taking short shallow breaths, and her armor would need hours of repairs. Vampires didn’t bruise easily. She either took a hard hit or landed on her face.
I opened the tunnel to the medward in the floor. Sean lifted the werewolf like she was a child and started down. “Once this is handled, we will make time.”
It sounded like a threat.
The moment Sean lowered the werewolf into the nearest med unit, it unfolded like one of those three-dimensional greeting cards. Scanners slipped out from under the bottom of the bed, sliding diagnostic lights over her body, and robotic arms sprung from the frame, stripping her clothes. The results of the scans flashed above the unit. Three broken ribs, shredded lung, internal bleeding… Oh wow. The corrupted ad-hal had sliced right through her hardsuit and her ribs like they were tissue paper.
Ironically, hardsuits were considered soft armor, soft being a relative term. There were many variations of it, but the essential requirements dictated that it was flexible, close fitting, and able to stop a typical blade. I could hack at the werewolf woman all day with an ordinary knife and not leave a mark. One look at her chest told me her suit was beyond repair.
Karat touched the House Krahr crest embedded in her breastplate. Her syn-armor came apart at the seams. She lowered it to the floor. Oh. It was worse than I thought.
Normally, getting a vampire out of their armor was an impossible task. They took it off only in the privacy of their quarters, for rest and intimacy. For them, the armor was a second skin that kept them safe, and sometimes they fought to keep it on even when severely injured. Karat dropped hers without any hesitation.
It was an unprecedented show of trust. Of course. She was Maud’s best friend and I was Maud’s sister. Karat trusted me to keep her safe.
The vampire woman winced as the last of her armor slid free. The dark gray suit Karat wore underneath was thankfully blood-free.
“If I fall asleep, wake me up,” she said. “I can’t miss the Sovereign’s dates.”
“We will,” I promised.
She climbed into the unit, and it sprang into action. The scan flashed on the holographic screen above the bed. She had a broken rib, and there were early signs of sepsis.
Sean stepped in front of me, his face harsh. “Dina. Decontamination shower.”
I touched the nasty goo drying on my skin, looked at my stained fingers for a second, and went to clean up.
Ten minutes later, I emerged with clean hair and skin and wearing another robe over my shorts and T-shirt. The runoff from the shower drained into a tank under the floor. The fetid slime I washed off my body felt inert, but I heated the tank until the dirty water evaporated and then flushed the reservoir with acid just to be on the safe side.
Karat was napping in her med unit with a dreamy smile on her face. Sean was staring at the werewolf woman, Gorvar sitting by his side.
I came to stand next to them. “How is she?”
“She’ll live.”
“Karat will be happy. She’d carried her most of the way.”
“Tell me,” he said. “All of it.”
I did.
He looked up at the ceiling, his face unreadable.
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
“For what?”
“I had no idea she would jump from the roof and start a fight.”
It had been a priceless opportunity to communicate with Wilmos’ kidnapper. I didn’t even know if the corrupted ad-hal could speak or understand me, but I would’ve tried my hardest. Every crumb of information was precious. It killed me that I didn’t get anything more out of the corrupted ad-hal.