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“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.
