Sweep of the Blade (Innkeeper Chronicles #4) - Ilona Andrews Page 0,43

shut behind them. The room tried to crawl sideways. Karat grabbed her arm and steadied her.

The medic, a lean male vampire with dark gray skin and long mane of dark hair pulled back from his face, pointed at her. “Out of the armor.”

Maud hesitated. The armor was protection. In enemy territory, it determined life and death. Taking it off would make her vulnerable and she was feeling vulnerable enough already.

“Do you want to walk out of here in two hours or do you want to be carried out?” the medic asked.

She couldn’t afford to be carried out.

Maud hit her crest. The armor split along the seams and peeled off her, leaving her in the under-armor jumpsuit. The sudden absence of the reinforced outer shell took her by surprise. The floor rushed at her, yawning, dangerously close. Strong hands caught her, and the medic carried her to a cot. A scalpel flashed and then her jump suit came apart on the right side. The cot’s arms buzzed and hovered over her, as if the bed was a high-tech spider suddenly come to life. The cushion supporting her rose, curving, sliding her into a half-seated position. A green light stabbed from one of the mechanical arms, dancing across her bruised ribs in a hot rush.

“How bad is it?” Karat asked.

The medic met Maud’s eyes. “You’ll be fine. If you get to me in time, I can heal almost everything. Except stupid. You’re on your own with that one.”

“What are you implying?” Karat demanded.

“Going toe to toe with Ilemina was stupid,” the medic said.

Karat fixed him with her stare. The medic swiped across his harbinger. A huge holographic screen flared in front of them. On it, Ilemina kicked Maud across the lawn. The memory of the foot connecting with her ribs cracked through Maud. She winced.

“Stupid,” the medic said.

Maud sagged against the bed. The cushion cradled her, holding her battered body gently. The bed’s upper left arm pricked her forearm with a small needle. A soothing coolness flooded her.

For some inexplicable reason, she missed her father. She missed him with all of the desperate intensity of a scared lonely child. She would’ve given anything to have him walk through the door. Heat gathered behind her eyes. She was about to cry.

A sedative, she realized. The medic must have given her a mood stabilizer or a mild relaxant with her cocktail of painkillers. It was probably standard practice for vampires. Once the pain was gone, most of them would decide that they were fine now and likely try to dramatically kick free of the medical equipment and destroy the door to finish the fight.

Gerard Demille wasn’t her biological parent, but he was the only father she ever knew. He came from a time when knowing how to use a sword meant the difference between life and death. His wasn’t the modern sword fighting as a sport or an artform, but a brutally efficient skill, a way to survive. When she was six years old, she’d picked up his saber and swung it around. He’d watched her for a couple of minutes, stopped what he was doing, got up, and delivered her first sword lesson. The lessons came every day after that, and when she beat him, he hired others—some human, some not—to teach her.

Maud sighed. Mom always thought it was part of her magic, her particular brand of power. That’s why Mother spent most of Maud’s adolescence worrying that an ad-hal would come to the door.

The ad-hal served as the Innkeeper Assembly’s enforcers. While the innkeepers were bound to their inns, capable of almost unlimited power on the inn’s grounds and able to do almost nothing outside of it, the magic of the ad-hal came from within them. They served the Assembly. Safeguarding the treaty that guaranteed Earth’s protected status, they investigated, apprehended offenders, and punished them. Seeing an ad-hal was never a good thing. The last time she saw one was just a few days ago, when he walked into the battle for her sister’s inn and paralyzed every fighter on that field.

I could have ended up just like that.

There was a time when becoming an ad-hal hadn’t seemed so bad. She didn’t have Klaus’ encyclopedic knowledge of every species and custom in the galaxy. He was exceptional even by innkeeper standards. She didn’t have Dina’s green thumb, either. Her sister could plant a broomstick in the yard, and next summer it would bear lovely apples. All Maud had was an ability to