Eight was definitely too many and from what I had seen so far, the Draziri were well-armed. I had a choice where to send Maud. She could approach the inn from the right, coming back exactly the way she came, or from the left, after she looped through some parallel streets.
Approaching from the right was the only responsible option. On the left, the houses on Timber Trail were packed like sardines on tiny lots. There was no way a fight wouldn’t be noticed, and some of the energy rifles the Draziri carried would slice through stucco and drywall like knife through butter. We would have bystander casualties.
On the right, a solid stone fence separated the bulk of the subdivision from the street, providing at least some protection for the houses. But Park Street veered slightly just past the inn. No direct shot. I had some things that could shoot around corners, but they honed in on body heat and the Draziri were masking theirs.
Magic chimed. Sean and Orro.
“In here,” I called.
Sean appeared on the doorstep of the war room, a small bag in his hands, and came to stand next to me.
“My sister and Arland went to get the first Archivarian,” I said.
“The counter?” Sean asked.
“Deadline to the Archivarian assuming its true form.”
“What form is that?”
“Energy. There are eight Draziri waiting for them on each side of the street. Both groups are too far for any of my quiet guns. I have the needler, but its darts hone in on body heat and they are not showing up on my infrared scanner. Anything else will be too loud and too obvious.”
My phone rang and I took the call. My sister’s voice echoed through the war room.
“We have him.”
I knew she could do it.
“Do you want me to come back the same way?”
She had to come back the same way, from the right, she would drive into an ambush. Even if I threw the tunnel as far as it could go, it wouldn’t be enough. The Draziri would hit the car before it ever reached the tunnel.
I’d have to use the bats from the cave on the inn’s grounds as a living shield. My heart squeezed itself into a tiny ball. The bats were a part of the inn and I would sacrifice every last one to save my sister, but they wouldn’t be enough. I had no way to bring her in safely.
Seven minutes. I had to answer her.
“Let me do my job,” Sean said.
“There are eight of them on each side.”
He looked at me, his eyes pure wolf, and I realized it didn’t matter how many of them there were. He would still go out there.
“Yes,” I said to Maud. “Come back the same way.”
She hung up.
“Left or right?” he asked.
“Right.”
“I need the specter.”
“Give him everything he wants,” I told Gertrude Hunt.
He dropped his bag and left the war room. I tracked him through the inn, as he stepped out of the kitchen door, a dark shape on the screen. Sean dropped his cloak and pulled out the curved knife with a green blade. His eyes shone with bright amber, reflecting the moonlight. He raised his hand and the specter rifle fell into it. Sean sprinted across the lawn into the trees, fast and silent like a phantom, and vanished into the woods, past the range of my scanners.
I pulled the feed from my probe, expanding it so it took up most of the wall directly in front of me. The Draziri had positioned themselves on the long wooden fence, crouching like camouflaged creepy angels. They didn’t have much choice. The fence ran for the next quarter of a mile up the street.
A vehicle roared down the road. I tensed.
A white truck thundered past us. Not Maud.
Three minutes.
The first Draziri on the right dropped like a stone. Sean had fired the specter rifle.
The second Draziri, directly behind the first, fell without a sound.
The remaining Draziri leapt off the fence and dashed across the street. The night lit up with orange flashes of light as they discharged their energy rifles. Sean landed in the middle of them, fast, so shockingly fast. He gutted the third Draziri with a short precise slash, reversed the blade, and sliced the fourth attacker’s throat. Blood sprayed.
The surviving Draziri spun, revealing short blades of bright pale metal. They attacked, twisting and leaping as if dancing, and Sean sliced through them, cutting a path as if he knew where they would be before they decided to move there.
Two Draziri peeled from the group on the left and dashed toward the fight right through my kill zone. Oh no, you don’t. The short-range pulse cannon fired once, its invisible beam slicing through the area. Two smoking corpses crumpled to the ground.
Sean’s attackers were down to one, but that last Draziri moved as if he were weightless, launching into a whirlwind of slashes and cuts and dancing away from Sean before the green blade could find him.
The phone rang. Arland’s voice filled the room. “Three streets out.”
Eighty seconds.
On the screen a Draziri blade caught Sean’s side. My heart jumped into my throat.