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Arland rose to his feet, suddenly fast and liether the olf and the va the dahaka The blood mace whirred and struck home and for every blow of Arland’s weapon, Sean landed two or three cuts The dahaka fought back with vicious fury Blood sprayed, and I no longer could tell whose They kept pressing hi toward me

He should’ve been disabled by now That was the plan But he danced back and forth, fully mobile At any moment, he could break away and run, and ould have to chase hih The dahaka was outnu and he knew it I could feel hi on the brink of a decision If he ran, it would be all over

I melted my halberd in a bundle of blue fila to sink deep into the ground behind h it My power streah the wire and back into the inn, forging a connection

I cried out It was a s alone and weaponless outside the inn’s boundary, leamed In the split second he stared at me, I saw the calculation plain in those alien eyes Sean pressed him from one side and Arland from the other I was the only possible exit He could e, and either way the twome It was a in scenario

The dahaka whipped around and charged at me

Sean chased him, but the alientoo fast to count Blood thudded through my head The air tasted like metal

The dahaka ca off the rails

I spread ers reaching for hi that made me an innkeeper,rass, and every stray root reached forithhis lungs just before he inhaled The alien realized it was a trap and spun around in a desperate rush to get away Sean cut at him, but the alien batted him aside For a second the way to his escape looked clear, and then Arland drove hishihtened and pulled the empty air with both hands The wind roared as the entire inn pulled withto resist the storm made just for him His feet sank into the soil He dropped down to all fours, clawing at the dirt, screeching in pure terror

The house and I pulled, trying to drag hiht to ht up at me, claws out, teeth bared Fila him in a dozen places The dahaka howled, suspended inlike a fish on a hook Behind him, Sean leaped ten feet up and severed the dahaka’s head with one precise blow

It rolled to my feet The purple fire went out of the alien’s eyes

My knees buckled and I sat on the grass It reached to er for a stroke

We’d won

Sean sat on the grass next to ood cuts

We watched as Arland searched the dahaka’s ar, examined it closely, and came to sit next to us In his hands was a vampire’s crest He showed it to "

"He?" Sean asked

"My cousin"

"How did you know?" Sean asked

"He’d opposed the Pact of Brotherhood Nothing forceful, just a snide coh to let us knoasn’t happy about it Orig has poor ihts for frivolous reasons As an adolescent, he had to learn the hard way that wo assaulted He is at his best when he is set loose on the battlefield in the ranks, but in his mind, he is the Marshal He spoke at the feast in e and bluster and hoould find those responsible andout of theirby hiht he was alone He was sht it was odd at the time I used your terht plans for the past six , he’d taken a trip to Savva The idiot had charged the House for the fuel There is one in every falanced at alaxy," I told him "If you wanted to hire a killer, that would be the place"

Arland grimaced "Now I’ll have to et this over with"

"Don’t you want to heal up?" I asked

"No, I don’t" The way he said it ether, bleeding quietly onto the grass I hurt in half a dozen places Funny how in the fight I hadn’t noticed, but apparently, I was all cut up to hell The inn could heal the ical injuries but not the physical ones Well, this would curefor trouble for at least a feeeks