Phew. "Secure the bodies."
Pits opened beneath the stalkers as the house pulled them under. I jogged to the door, melting the weapon in my hand back into my broom.
*** *** ***
Inside Sean laid the vampire on the table. A brown mane touched with silver spilled over the edge. Lord Soren. Oh no.
"Console," I ordered.
A communication console emerged from the floor like a mushroom on a thin stalk. Blue icons flared on the smooth metal surface.
"What happened?"
"They were ambushed." Sean pulled at the armor. "He hit them hard. One vehicle is completely in chunks of scrap metal, like something froze it and then busted it to pieces. The other was in a ditch."
Something gurgled, whistling, and I realized it was Lord Soren breathing.
Sean tugged the armor again, nearly lifting the prone vampire off the table. "By the time I got there, their vehicles were in the ditch and two stalkers were dragging him off. He's a tough old bastard. He killed two before the others got him. He was the only one I found. Dina, he's bleeding out. How do we get this damn armor off?"
"We can't. It's genetically locked onto him. Unless he becomes conscious or a blood relative shows up, we're stuck. I can heal him, but not with the armor on."
"Can't we cut it off?"
I shook my head, adjusting the settings. "That's why people killed them with stakes. Back when the legends started, they didn't mean little garden stakes, they meant a sharpened four-by-four. If he were a man-at-arms we probably could, but he's a knight. His syn-armor is reinforced."
"So he's just going to die?" Sean stared at me, incredulous, his eyes luminescing.
"Not if I can help it."
He finally noticed the console. "What are you doing?"
"We can't get the armor off, but other vampires can. They got here very quickly, which means either there's a gate somewhere or they have a craft in orbit."
"And since this is an extraction, they didn't plan to stay long," Sean said. "Either way, they would've left someone to guard it."
"Exactly. He should have a House crest on his body. It'll have that panther-bear with teeth."
Sean plucked the crest from the armor and passed it to me. It was about the size of a note card. I slid it into the slot on the console so it stood straight up and touched the exclamation mark on the console. A tiny red light ran along the edge of the crest, circling it.
"Exclamation mark?" Sean asked.
"Universal sign for distress. If there are any members of his House within the vicinity, they will arrive shortly. Until then, keeping him comfortable is the only thing we can do."
A pale pink line appeared on the wall above the table. It moved, drawing peaks and valleys.
"Heartbeat?" Sean guessed.
I nodded. "If it stops, he's dead."
We looked at each other. The pink line gently zigzagged on the wall.
The only thing we could do now was wait.
Chapter Nine
The magic tugged on me. Something skimmed the boundary of the inn's grounds. The pulse lingered, stopped, then flared and lingered again. Someone was knocking.
I glanced at the stairway. Sean had gone to the bathroom to wash the blood off because it "smelled loud" and made him easy to track. Lord Soren still lay on the table. I had sealed him in an oxygen tank that pumped in the optimal atmosphere. Vampires preferred twenty-four percent oxygen in their air. The tank was transparent and now he resembled a warped version of Snow White resting in her glass coffin.
The knock persisted. It didn't feel like a vampire come to rescue one of his own. This was insistent and rude with a kind of mindless efficiency.
I pulled the hood of my robe over my head, took my broom, and stepped out.
The night exhaled in my face, bringing with it varied scents: the damp grass, a hint of distant smoke, and something else. Something foreign. A kind of dry, bitter odor. My body balked like a rearing horse. This stink was bad. It was an evil, harsh stench, laced with pheromones and magic, and meeting its source was a terrible idea.
I stopped in the shadow of the oak and concentrated.
The magic swirled around me. The stench came from above.
I looked up.
It sat above me, on top of the streetlamp pole, anchored to it by large clawed feet. Blue-and-green pixelated armor protected its vaguely humanoid body. A helmet of interlocking plates shielded its head, leaving two triangular ears free. It had two legs and two arms and one head, but that's where the resemblance to Homo sapiens ended. Its spine was bent, not quite hunched over, but curved enough to permit it to easily drop down on all fours. Even with the curve, the creature was at least seven and a half feet tall. Its neck was thick, its shoulders massive, and its hips protruded at an odd angle, supporting a heavy lizard-like tail. Despite its muscular bulk, the dahaka looked limber, like a monkey. It seemed wrong somehow, so alien that the mind stalled, rustling through the mental Rolodex of familiar animals, trying desperately to come up with some sort of association for it and failing.
The creature stared at me with two glowing purple eyes. There was no pupil, just the electric-violet iris. Looking into its eyes froze me in my tracks. Instantly I knew it was vicious, cruel, and it thought I was prey. My thoughts and my feelings mattered to it not at all. Given a chance, it would hunt me and eat me.
"Target," I said.
The inn clanged, swinging the massive guns within itself to lock onto the creature.