The fennel cost me an arm and a leg and so did the cheese, but Orro refused to compromise on the pasta course. It had to have fennel, it had to have the expensive cheese, and that was that. Well, at least if they filled up on pasta, it would make them full and happy and less prone to casual murder.

At the vampire table, the three new comers with Lord Beneger at the lead, had barely touched the food, wrapped in their hostility like it was a winter cloak. On the otrokari side, Dagorkun, a smaller female on his left, and a huge hulking mountain of an otrokari male on his right, were watching Beneger very carefully, keeping their food intake light.

There would be trouble. I could feel it.

I just had to keep them from attacking until the main course. Orro had made pan-seared chicken. I had no idea what he had done to it, but the smell alone stopped you in your tracks. I had happened to walk into the kitchen to check on things just before the banquet and I couldn’t recall ever having such intense reaction to the cooked chicken before in my entire life. Orro was a wizard. Finding the ingredients that didn’t set off digestive alarms in five different species would’ve driven me crazy. He not only managed that, but turned what he found into culinary masterpieces. Too bad he would leave after the summit. I would miss him and I wasn’t sure what I regretted loosing more, his great food or his dramatic pronouncements.

“Main course! Pan-seared chicken with golden potatoes.”

Beneger surrendered to his fate and attacked the chicken. At the far end of the table Caldenia put an entire drumstick in her mouth and pulled it out, the bones completely clean. Sophie, wearing a lovely seafoam gown, watched her in morbid fascination.

The smell was too much. If I didn’t get some of this chicken, it would be a crime.

Cookie and Nuan Cee’s guest reached the back door. I opened it for them and made sure they had a straight shot to the ballroom. At my feet Beast sat up. Apparently the new intruder smelled odd.

“Easy,” I murmured.

Beast wagged her tail.

Cookie appeared in the doorway and scampered in, adorably fluffy. The creature behind him was anything but. Seven feet tall, he wore armor, but not the rigid high-tech metal of the holy knights. No, this armor was made with maximum flexibility in mind. Obsidian black, it coated him, mirroring the muscles of his body, thickening slightly to reinforce the neck and shield the outside of the arms and the chest. At first glance it looked woven, like high-tech fabric, but when he moved, the light rippled on it, fracturing into thousands of tiny scales shimmering with green. It sheathed him completely, flowing seamlessly into clawed gauntlets on his huge hands and angling into semblance of boots on his feet. A charcoal-grey half-tabard half-robe draped the armor, embroidered with a rich green pattern. The tabard left his arms free, narrowed at the waist, where it was caught by a decorative cloth belt, and flowed down, split over his legs, so a single long piece hung down in front while the rest of the fabric obscured his sides and back, falling to above his ankles, its hem tattered and frayed. The tabard came with a hood that rested on the newcomer’s head. I looked into it.

He had no face.

Darkness filled the hood, an impenetrable, ink-black darkness that hovered there like a living thing. It was as if the creature himself had no muscle or bone, but was formed from jet-black cosmos and held together by his armor alone.

Everyone froze.

“Turan Adin,” Lord Robart whispered to my right.

A torturous moment of silence stretched.

“Of for the love of all holy,” Lord Beneger roared. “He is but one man! You sniveling cowards, I’ll do it myself!”

He leapt over the table, as if he weighed nothing. Turan Adin halted, waiting.

Oh no, I don’t think so. The walls of the inn erupted with its smooth roots.

“No!” George barked at me. “Let it happen!”

Damn it, I was getting sick of being yelled at in my own inn.

Beneger’s two knights charged after him. The huge vampire lord got there first. His blood axe whined, primed, and came down in a devastating blow, so fast, I barely saw it. Turan Adin sidestepped. It shouldn’t have been possible but somehow he dodged the axe that should’ve annihilated him and struck out with his right hand. His claws punched straight through the reinforced neck collar of Lord Beneger’s ornate armor. The vampire lord froze, all of his powerful kinetic momentum checked, broken on the slimmer form of Turan Adin like the rage of an ocean shattering on a wave breaker. A faint gurgle broke free of the huge vampire’s mouth. Turan Adin tore his hand free, a clump of Lord Beneger’s esophagus and flesh caught in his claws, opened his hand, and let the bloody chunk fall to the floor. The vampire lord took a step forward and collapsed onto the floor, face down. Blood spread on the mosaic image of Gertrude Hunt.

With a vicious roar, the two remaining vampires of House Meer fell onto Turan Adin. He danced between them, as if he were vapor. A short black blade appeared in his hand. He hammered it into the back of the left vampire’s head, right where the neck joined the skull, let go, spun around his victim to avoid the other knight’s blow, pulled the blade free as the injured vampire crumbled to his knees, and sank it into the remaining vampire’s left side, slicing through the armor between the ribs and up.

Ruah, the otrokari swordsman, jumped onto the table and dashed along it toward Turan Adin. Sophie sprinted across the floor toward him, her gown split apart on one side as the secret seam had come open. The swordsman saw her. His eyes narrowed. He changed the angle of his charge, running straight for her. His blade flashed with orange and Ruah shot past Sophie, his sword a blur, and halted five steps behind her. If Sophie had moved, I missed it.