The Hiru paused. “Colors,” he said. “Twisting and flowing into each other. Glowing rivers of colors against the dark blue sky.”
Mom was close with indigo. “Red, yellow?”
“Red, yes. Lavender. And lights.” The Hiru slowly raised his massive metal hand and moved it. “Tiny sparks of lights across the sky to the horizon.”
“Clouds?”
“Yes. Like a tall funnel, twisting.”
We reached the door. I pushed it open with my fingertips.
The round room stretched up, rising three stories high. At the very top, a maelstrom of clouds turned ever so slowly, a 3-D projection streaming from the ceiling. An aurora borealis suffused it with light, alternating among deep purple, red, pink, turquoise, and beautiful, glowing lavender. Tiny rivers of glowing dots swirled, floating gently through the illusory clouds. The chamber’s walls, deep indigo stone, offered two seats shaped to accommodate the Hiru’s body protruding from the far wall. In the center of the room, right under the sky, a pool of water waited, twenty feet wide, round, and deep enough to submerge the Hiru up to the chin of his helmet.
“Enjoy your stay.”
The Hiru didn’t answer. He was looking at the sky. Slowly, ponderously, he moved to the pool, the openings on his metal body hissing shut. He stood on the first step of the stairs, half a foot in the water. The glow of the aurora borealis played on the metal of his suit. The Hiru took another step, moving in deeper. The water lapped at his body, he turned, and collapsed into the water, floating, his face to the sky.
I stepped out and let the door shut behind me. I grinned in victory. Nailed it.
A quiet sob filtered through the room behind me. I froze. Another, sad and tortured, the sound of a being in mourning.
All my triumph evaporated.
He was all alone in the galaxy, one of the last thousand, all that was left of his species, and now he wept in my inn.
I tiptoed away, back to the front room. Maud had landed on the couch. Arland elected to stay where he was, in the doorway. Sean hadn’t moved from his spot by the wall.
“You know an Arbitrator?” Maud asked.
“As much as anyone can know George. He’s a complicated guy.” And he had just done me an enormous favor.
“Was he the same one I met?”
“Probably.” It had to be George. Only he would look at this situation and figure out a way to help me and the Hiru at the same time.
“Are you going to take the offer?” Sean asked.
“We would be fools not to,” Maud said. “We couldn’t afford to ask the Archivarius a question if we worked nonstop every day for the rest of our lives.”
She wasn’t wrong. George had given us a once-in-a-lifetime gift, but it came with serious strings attached.
“Our brother and I searched for our parents for years,” I said. “We found nothing. The Archivarius has an enormous wealth of knowledge. If anyone knows, it does.”
“I sense a but coming,” Maud said.
“We would be facing the Draziri. Sooner or later they will show up. We’re putting the inn at risk of exposure and the guests at risk of injury.”
Maud rubbed her face.
I thought of the Hiru in the room, weeping quietly at the memory of his planet’s sky. You would have to be completely heartless to say no. If the inn had no other guests… No, not even then. It would be irresponsible. Sometimes my job required me to be heartless. I knew the correct thing to do, so why was it making me feel sick to my stomach?
“Also, we don’t have the manpower,” I said.
“You have me,” Sean said.
“I appreciate it, but you are not part of the inn.”
Sean pulled his wallet out of his pants, took out a dollar, and handed it to me.
Okay. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Hire me.”
“I will be more than delighted to lend a hand,” Arland said.
“You are a guest,” Maud said.
“I’m on a sojourn,” he said. “Trying to improve my physical and mental state. A little exercise is good for the body. It is my understanding that an innkeeper must meet the needs of her guests. I require a battle.”
“Nobody asked me,” Caldenia said, gliding into the room from the kitchen. “Because I’m apparently, what is the saying, chopped kidneys.”
“Liver,” I said.
“Thank you, my dear. Chopped liver. However, I would welcome some excitement as well. Life can be so dreadfully dull without a little spice, especially around the holidays.”
Only Caldenia would call the threat of an interstellar invasion “a little spice.”
My phone rang. I stuck the dollar into the pocket of my jeans under my robe and went to pick it up.
“Dina,” Brian Rodriguez said, his voice vibrating with stress. “So glad I caught you.”
“Mr. Rodriguez, what’s wrong?”
Mr. Rodriguez had never asked me for anything. Please don’t be the Ku, please don’t be the Ku…
“Do you get the Dallas station?”
“Which one?”
“Any network.”
I covered the phone with my hand. “Screen. I need the feed from WFAA8 from Dallas.”
A screen slid from the wall, blinked, and flared into light. A stretch of a highway, shown from above, clearly filmed from a helicopter. A pack of police cars sped down the asphalt, lights on. In front of them a pale oval of light slid at reckless speed, zigzagging back and forth among the vehicles.
“You know what, Jim, we are some distance away,” a male voice said through the mild static. “We’re going to try to push in on it, but so far we have been unable to see the nature of this vehicle. We are still quite a ways away, so we’ll try to get close and see if we can make out what is underneath that light. We’ll have to see what happens as this vehicle keeps going down the highway here.”
“We know how dangerous these high-speed pursuits are,” a female newscaster said. “Whether on a freeway or on surface streets. But when you have such a bright light obscuring the vehicle, that can’t possibly be safe. It is clearly blinding the officers who are pursuing this person. Can you imagine seeing that in your rearview mirror?”
Sean swore.
Oh no. Please no. I was very clear when Wing checked out of the inn before we went to get Maud. Very clear. I said to stay at Casa Feliz and behave or leave the planet.
“Well, as we can see, Jean, the police aren’t really following too close behind. In fact, they are giving this driver plenty of room, trying to keep him from panicking and doing something reckless…”
“I’m so sorry to ask you for a favor,” Mr. Rodriquez said. “But this is one of my guests. A Ku. His name is Wing.”
Damn it!
“He checked into my inn last night, went out just before sunrise, and now we have this mess happening. I have no idea where he is going.”
I knew exactly where he was going. He was heading down I45 toward me. He was coming back to Gertrude Hunt.
“Thank God someone fitted his boost bike with a daytime obfuscator,” Mr. Rodriguez said.
I looked at Sean.
He raised his hands and mouthed, “It was all you had in the garage.”
“I was his last stop,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “He never checked out.”
Wing was still a guest. If Wing was caught, Mr. Rodriquez would be hauled before the Assembly, and the Assembly wouldn’t be kind.
“He’s barreling down the highway toward you and he’s got half of the Dallas PD behind him. He’s about to clear the city limits and then the State Troopers are going to get involved. I can’t get to him fast enough. We'd have to get in front of him to grab him. Any vehicle we’d have to use to get to that kind of speed would be too attention-grabbing in daylight, and the news channels are having a feeding frenzy. Is there any way you could help me?”
* * *
“Why in the world would you put an obfuscator on his boost bike?”
Sean and I sat in the back of the Ryder truck we had rented forty minutes ago. We’d attached a photon projector to it, drove here, and parked it on the grass well away from the road, on the side of I45. In front of us the highway rolled into the distance, completely empty.
“Because he had nothing at all, and he is a Ku.” Sean rested his arms on the wheel and checked his phone.
“There were refractors in the garage. And a photon projector.”
“I didn’t see those, but even if I did, I wouldn’t have put one on his bike.”
“Why not?”
“Because he is a Ku. We used them as scouts on Nexus. He barely follows the rules as is and he drives like a maniac. If he got it through his thick skull that his boost bike was now invisible, he would zip around in daylight. We’d have a pileup on every major interstate after he was through. I put the obfuscator on there and told him it was only for emergencies and if he used it, law enforcement would come and hunt him.”
Put that way, I had to agree. Wing was a menace. He wouldn’t just cause accidents. He would cause many accidents. People would be hurt, possibly die.
Sean growled under his breath. “Arland is ignoring my texts.”
“Have you tried sending a kissy face?”
Sean looked at me for a moment.
“Maybe he’s just not that into you.”
He tapped his ear piece. “They’ve just passed Madisonville. They threw out the spike strips, but of course he blasted right through them since he’s riding two feet above the ground. He should be in range in about two minutes.”
The Texas State Troopers must’ve reasoned that eventually the unknown vehicle would run out of gas, because all indications said they resolved to run it to ground. They also blocked the highway in both directions around Madisonville, and we had to creep past their road block. I held my breath the whole time. A photon projector could do wonders for making you near invisible, but it didn’t mask sound. Every time the truck springs creaked, I’d braced myself.
We were up against eight police cars and a helicopter. They had helpfully exiled the news helicopters ‘in the interests of public safety,’ so at least we didn’t have to worry about that.
I got my phone out and dialed Arland’s phone. I’d given him one of the spares we kept for guests and showed him how to use it. He didn’t seem enthusiastic.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Come on, Arland.
Beep.
“This is a ridiculous communicator,” Arland’s voice said into the phone.
I put him on speaker.
“What is with the swiping and the pushing? Why isn’t it simply voice activated?”
“The Ku will be in range in one minute and forty-five seconds,” I told him.
“Understood.” He hung up.
The phone might have been ridiculous, but it was safer than radio transmissions.
I dialed my sister. She picked up on the first ring.
“A minute and a half.”
“Got it.”
I drummed my fingers on the wooden floor of the truck’s back. It would work. It was a simple plan, and it relied on the thing vampires did best - hunting. Arland would apprehend the Ku, my sister would run interference against the cops, and we were the getaway drivers.
“Are you going to help the Hiru?” Sean asked.
“I want to.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“It would be a logistical nightmare. It would require me to be away from the inn, probably on short notice. The Draziri would invade in force, and I don’t think they care about being discreet. As an innkeeper, I’m supposed to avoid situations that put the inn at risk of exposure.”
“Mhm,” he said. “What’s the real reason?”
“Those are the real reasons.”
“I saw your face,” Sean said. “You almost cried when he told his story.”
So much for my inscrutable innkeeper face. “Just because I sympathize, doesn’t mean I can’t objectively evaluate the situation.”
He didn’t say anything.
On my left, in the distance, a dark dot appeared in the sky, quickly growing larger. The helicopter.
“Three… two…”
“One,” Sean said.
A white ball engulfed the helicopter. Maud had fired the white-out.
The ball expanded, turning gray and growing denser in mid-air. A second explosion flared, also blinding white and low on the road. The State Troopers had crossed the white-out anti-personnel mines we seeded minutes ago. The fleet of cop cars had just been blinded.
The explosion solidified, losing its brightness. The first pale ball from the white-out fell into it, pulled like iron to a magnet. The caravan of police vehicles would come to a gentle stop, with the helicopter softly landing somewhere, hopefully not on top of them. The sphere would hold them for up to six minutes, just long enough to knock out everyone within the cars, and then dissipate into empty air. The white-out tech was developed a few centuries ago by an enterprising galactic criminal cartel specializing in kidnappings. It cost an arm and a leg. I was watching two hundred thousand credits worth of ammunition in action. A good chunk of my peace summit profits. Two steps forward, one step back. But even so, I still came out ahead.
Here’s hoping the mines worked as advertised. Don’t get caught, Maud. Don’t get caught.
I jumped out of the truck, ran along the side, climbed into the cab, and pushed the off switch on the refrigerator-sized photon projector we had strapped to the truck’s cab. If someone had been watching us from the highway, they would see the Ryder truck suddenly pop into existence out of nowhere.
A lone rider shot into view on a monstrous-looking anti-gravity glider bike, pulling a net behind him. Arland, riding a cre-cycle and dragging the boost bike and the Ku behind him in a black net. He screeched to halt in front of me. “Bagged and delivered.”
Wing stared at me with terrified eyes.
Behind Arland, a second cre-cycle sped toward us. Maud. My heart hammered in my chest. She was in one piece. It was okay. Everything was okay.
Sean jumped to the ground, pulled out the retractable ramp, and lowered it to the pavement. Arland drove the cre-cycle into the truck, dragging the Ku behind him. I pulled a capsule out of my pocket.
“No!” Wing cried out.
“Yes. You’re in so much trouble.”
I stuck the capsule under his nose and broke it open. Green gas puffed and the Ku passed out.
“Nice,” Sean said. He and Arland grabbed the net containing Wing and the boost bike and heaved it into the truck.
“Sadly this doesn’t work on human anatomy.” Otherwise Officer Marais would’ve been much less of a problem.
Maud pulled up, the big white-out cannon slung over her shoulder, and drove into the Ryder truck, wedging her cre-cycle next to Arland’s. I handed her two more capsules. “If Wing stirs, drug him.”
She nodded.
Sean slammed the door closed. I dashed to the cabin, opened the door, climbed up, and punched in the code in the photon projector. The unit’s pale blue light blinked. I jumped down and took a few steps back, careful to walk in a straight line.
The Ryder truck vanished. If you looked very closely, you could see the slight wavy disturbance, but you had to be only a few feet away.
“Are we good?” invisible Sean asked.
“We’re good.” I walked straight back and almost jumped when the truck popped into existence eighteen inches in front of me. I climbed into the passenger seat. Sean eased the truck out of park and we crept across the grass onto the interstate. Sean picked up speed.
“How are we doing?” Sean asked.
I checked my phone. “Two more minutes before the mine effects dissipate. Twenty-three minutes before the photon projector runs out of charge.”
He stepped on it. The Ryder rocked and rolled. It was just me and him in the cabin. This whole thing wasn’t just risky, it was reckless. If we were caugh
t, there would be hell to pay.
Sean sat in his seat, focused on driving. He didn’t say anything to reassure me. He just projected a quiet, competent calm. I had a feeling that if a spaceship suddenly appeared in the sky and fired at us, Sean would somehow pull a massive gun out, shoot it down, and keep going, the same calm expression on his face. If Sean wasn’t here, I would’ve done all of it myself, but right now I was glad he was in the cab with me.
“You asked why I have to turn the Hiru down,” I said.
“I did.”
“Maud. And Helen. I just rescued my sister and my niece after they lived through hell. Maud deserves some peace and quiet.”
“Your sister looked pretty excited when you handed her the white-out warhead.”
“I know. That’s what I’m afraid of. If I put the inn in harm’s way, she’ll be on the front line cutting off heads.”
“It’s her choice,” Sean said.
My alarm chimed. I flicked it off. The highway patrol was about to wake up.
“I know it’s her choice. My brother-in-law brought a lot of what happened to him on his own head. Melizard was responsible for their exile, and once on the planet, he lost his mind. From what Maud said, he grew desperate and wasn’t thinking clearly, and eventually he betrayed the House that hired him and got himself killed. A normal human thing for Maud to do would’ve been to try to get off the planet or try to establish some safety net for herself and Helen. Instead, my sister declared a blood feud and pursued it for months.”
“Like a proper vampire,” Sean said.
“Yes. We’re not in the Holy Anocracy now. We’re on Earth. This is her home. It will take time for her to remember what it’s like to be human. I’m not going to make her choices for her or tell her what to do. I just don’t want to thrust her into another bloody fight with no breathing room between that and what she went through. I want to give her a chance to adjust to humanity.” I sighed. “The Draziri are single-minded. They will go to any lengths to kill the Hiru. You went through… things. How do you deal with it?”
“I can’t speak for your sister,” Sean said. “Everyone deals with it in their own way. People say you need peace and quiet and while you’re there, in the thick of it, when everything is death and blood, you think so, too, because you idealize that. And then you get home.”