“Please, allow me this small diversion. I’m but a guest on your planet. It was a long trip and I have sat for far too much of it.”
Argh. He out-mannered her. As absurd as his claim was, he backed her into the role of the host and the laws of vampire hospitality dictated that the guests were to be indulged.
Wait, I’m not a vampire. Why does it even matter?
A male vampire kicked. She stumbled back, bounced off the Krahr’s broad back and threw herself into the fray.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dina fighting her way to the exit, the orange energy whip hanging loose and sparking on the floor. Helen was in her arms. What was she doing? Helen’s best advantage was in her size and speed. Now neither of them could move.
She doesn’t know, Maud realized. Her sister had no idea what kind of a child her daughter was.
The werewolf thrust himself in front of them and began carving a path to the door.
“My lord!” Maud called. “We’re leaving.”
He grunted. “I’ll be there shortly.”
“My lord!”
“I’ll cover your retreat.”
Dina and Helen were only a few yards from the door. Maud charged at the remaining vampires. In two swings she was through the gauntlet.
“Arland!” the werewolf screamed, his voice cutting through the noise of the Lodge.
So that was his name. Maud looked over her shoulder and saw him, drenched in blood, mowing down bodies.
“Arland!” the werewolf snarled.
The Krahr turned, saw them, and began backing up toward the door.
The heavy metal doors swung open. Dina ran out, clutching Helen to her, and the werewolf followed. As Maud sprinted through the doorway, she saw the barkeep waving at her with a small surreal smile.
A narrow black shuttle waited on the landing strip and they ran toward it. The doors slid open. Maud leapt into a seat and plucked Helen from Dina’s arms. The werewolf landed in the pilot’s seat and started the pre-flight check, his fingers flying over the controls.
Where was the Krahr? If he didn’t emerge in the next ten seconds, she would go back in and get him. He fought for her and her daughter. She owed him that much.
A ball of bodies rolled out the door and collapsed into eight individual fighters. Arland appeared, fangs bared, face splattered with blood. It was like something out of one of the Anocracy’s pseudo-historical dramas—a lone hero on a strange planet, standing against impossible odds, roaring his rage to the heavens.
Arland swung his blood mace. It smashed a female fighter’s skull in a gory explosion of blood and brains. Before the swing was finished, the Krahr knight turned, grabbed the one to his left by his throat, shook him once like a rag doll, and tossed the dead body aside. The perfect blend of sheer brutality and efficient precision was beautiful to watch.
The Krahr knight kicked a huge raider to his left, driving the full power of his armored leg into the vampire’s knee cap. The man dropped, and Arland backhanded his jaw with his mace, almost as an afterthought, turned and sank the head of the mace into the ribs of the raider on his right. A hammer landed on his back. Arland shrugged it off as if he’d been smacked with a flyswatter, spun, too fast on his feet for a man of his size, and slammed the mace against his attacker’s right arm. The arm went limp. The vampire turned and ran. Arland hurled his mace. It soared through the air and bounced off the vampire’s smaller back. The armor, already dented and hanging together on a prayer, cracked, and the raider flew into the side of the building, bounced off and fell to the ground.
Wow.
Vampires took pride in ground combat; her husband was one of the best, but this, this was on another level. Where did House Krahr even find him? What did he do for them?
She turned to Dina and pointed at Arland. “Who the hell is that?”
“The Lord Marshal of House Krahr,” Dina said.
Oh sweet galaxy, he was the military head of his House. How in the world did Dina manage to rope him into this rescue?
The two remaining raiders charged in concert. The Marshal braced himself for the attack, roaring a challenge. When one of the raiders got close, he stepped to the left, crouched, and dove low into the charging vampire. The attacker had no time to react to the sudden shift in the center of gravity. The momentum carried him forward while the Marshal drove him up and over his shoulder in one smooth movement. The raider fell on his head. His neck snapped with a dry crunch. The Marshal scooped up the dead vampire’s hammer and brained the last remaining raider with it.
Maud remembered to breathe.
The Marshal sprinted to the shuttle.
Sparring with him would be amazing. She could go all out without holding back.
In a couple of breaths, he jumped into the cabin and landed in the seat next to the werewolf.
The door of the Road Lodge slid open and a mob of vampires tore out, snarling and roaring.
“Do you even know how to fly, werewolf?” the Marshal growled.
“Buckle up.” The werewolf pulled a lever and the slick craft sped into the sky.
Gravity sat on Maud’s chest. It was real. They were leaving. She hugged Helen to her.
“What happened?” Dina asked. “Where is Melizard? Where is your husband?”
“Melizard is dead. He led a revolt against his House. They stripped him of all titles and possessions and sent us to Karhari. Eight months ago he crossed the wrong local and the raiders killed him.”
“We killed them back,” Helen said.
“Yes, we did, my flower.” Maud smiled at her and petted her hair. “Yes, we did.”
It was over. It was finally over.
The Marshal turned around and looked at her. He seemed shell-shocked, as if her existence somehow upset the structure of his universe and he couldn’t quite reconcile the two. She’d seen that look before. None of the vampires expected a human to know which end of the sword to point at the enemy, let alone wear their armor. Dina must’ve told him something, so he’d expected a human, but he hadn’t expected her, and she clearly blew his mind.
Maud met his gaze. Shockingly handsome. His features were strong and masculine, carved without any weakness, yet neither crude nor cruel. His thoughtful eyes, a deep intense blue, took her measure, noting her armor and lingering on her bloody sword. He looked back at her face, and Maud saw surprise and respect in his eyes, an admiration of a fighter appreciating a peer’s skill.
Something forgotten and repressed stirred inside her.
“Well fought, my lady,” he said quietly.
“Well fought, my lord,” she answered on autopilot.
“Are you or your daughter hurt?”
“No, my lord.”
“All is well then.”
He smiled at her. He was handsome before, but he was impossible now.
No, she told herself. No. You tried before, you tried your best for years, and they threw you and your child away like garbage. She wouldn’t become involved with another vampire again. She wouldn’t even entertain that idea, no matter how hard he fought or how much admiration reflected in his eyes when he looked at her.
She was done with all things vampire.
Three weeks later
Arland lay naked on the metal examination table. Bloody blisters sheathed his body. Some had ruptured, leaking polluted, foul blood that smelled of acid and decomposition.
Panic flailed and clawed at Maud’s insides. She took his hands. His fingers were like ice. He looked at her, his blue eyes brimming with pain. It cut Maud like a knife.
You fool. You stupid fool.
They were besieged in Dina’s inn. An alien had asked her sister for shelter and she took him in, knowing that his entire species was a target of a planet of religious zealots. A clan of assassins had targeted the alien. She and Arland had been helping to hold them off, fighting side by side, sparring, eating in the same kitchen, repairing their armor at night at the dining room table in a comfortable silence. He provoked her, she responded, then she provoked him, and he parried. She watched him play with Helen, treating her like a treasured vampire child. She noticed when he smiled. She trained with him and she told herself that none of it mattered. They were just friends fighting for the same cause.
Today the assassins managed to introduce a seed of the World Killer into the inn. A flower with the power to wipe out the entire planets, the World Killer was impervious to fire and acid. Made of energy, it passed through every barrier they could throw in its way and only became flesh when it was about to attack. It would kill and grow and kill again until nothing alive remained on the planet and the five of them, Dina, Sean, Helen, Arland, and she would become its first victims.
They stood frozen in the kitchen, afraid to make the slightest movement. Then Arland declared that his blood was toxic to the flower. She saw him look at Helen, look at her, and she knew deep in the very core of her soul that he would sacrifice himself for them. The enormity of that realization smashed into her, throwing her so off balance, she couldn’t even think.
She remembered his voice, so calm it chilled her. “Lady Maud, if I die, say the Liturgy of the Fallen for me.”
Saying the Liturgy of the Fallen fell to the one you treasured most. Your spouse. Your lover. Your one who was everything. She couldn’t dishonor that confession and she answered him in the language of vampires. “Go with the Goddess, my Lord. You won’t be forgotten.”
He had thrown himself at the flower. It stung and seared him, wrapping around him like a constrictor snake. It pierced him again and again, poisoning him until it brought him to his knees. He’d screamed, his voice raw with pain, tears streaming down his face, and still he fought it until he finally grasped its root, tore it open and spat his own blood into it. It died.
And now Arland would die too.
They made him release his armor while Helen cried and begged him not to die, then they brought him here into the medward. He had grown so weak. There was barely any strength in his fingers. Her sister kept washing him, rinsing the polluted blood off his body, but his wounds bled and bled. There was no antidote.
She couldn’t lose him. She couldn’t. Thinking of getting up in the morning, knowing she would never see him, shredded her soul. She wanted to scream and rage, but he was looking at her face, their stares forging a fragile connection. She held his hand and looked back at him, terrified this tether would snap and he would be gone forever.