Clean Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #1)

Clean Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #1) Page 22

Unfortunately, walking through a nice and calm store pretty much by myself also tended to clear one's head. My head got itself cleared fast and I ran straight into a hard thought. One way or another, I had to get rid of the dahaka. I had zero ideas about how to do it.

No matter how I turned it around, Arland was my best bet. He had all the answers. However, the rules of hospitality dictated that I treat him as a guest. He'd asked for sanctuary, and I'd granted it. Our verbal contract was binding and could be broken only under very specific circumstances. The grant of sanctuary could be revoked if a guest had lied about the severity of his situation, if his presence inside the inn posed a risk to other guests beyond the innkeeper's ability to counteract, or if the guest willingly and knowingly aided in breaking the concealment provision.

Arland hadn't lied about the severity of his situation. His uncle was truly near death and both of them were in clear and immediate danger. The second clause was usually invoked when a guest was a violent maniac who attempted to attack other guests within the inn. Not only did Arland not fit that description, but invoking this clause almost always resulted in having your inn marked down. It was an admission of failure on the innkeeper's part. If an innkeeper knew she couldn't handle a violent guest, she shouldn't have let him in. Once she did, she had to contain the guest or she had no business running the inn in the first place. It was like holding a sign that said "Hi, over here, I'm incompetent." I reminded myself that Gertrude Hunt could not afford to lose a mark.

The last clause had to do with a guest who deliberately and knowingly compromised the secrecy surrounding the inns. Every planet and every world whose citizens sought refuge at the inns had sworn to conceal their existence and that of the innkeepers. Our planet at large wasn't ready for the big reveal of the universe. People had tried to test the waters --in October of 1938, for example --and the results weren't positive. However, Arland showed no inclination to approach random strangers on the street, declare that he was a vampire from a distant corner of the galaxy, and offer to let them touch his fangs. Back to square one.

I took some paper towels and stuffed them on the lower shelf of my cart. Maybe on my way out I'd treat myself to a slushy. Not that it would help me find my way out of this mess, but it would make me feel better.

I rounded the shelf. Sometime soon I'd need to make an excursion to a home-improvement store and buy some lumber, paint, and PVC. If the inn was going to expand, I'd need to help out by providing some raw materials. Gertrude Hunt had the advantage of age --the inn had really deep roots, but it had stood abandoned for so long. Even though the flurry of recent activity wasn't really straining it, I'd rather be safe than sorry...

A plump, dark-haired woman ahead of me stopped dead in her tracks and I almost ran my cart into her.

"Excuse me." I smiled.

She glanced at me, her eyes wide. "Did you see that?"

"I'm sorry, see what?"

"Over there." The woman pointed to the seven-foot-tall freezers.

I studied the units. Bright square packages of frozen pizza, bags of corn, peas, and Normandy mix. Nothing out of the ordinary.

"I guess I'm just going crazy." The woman frowned.

"What do you think you saw?"

A harsh, grating noise cut through the quiet. Something sharp was scratching across metal. I looked up. Above the freezer on the white wall sat a stalker, fastened to the drywall by its huge claws.

The woman gasped.

Son of a bitch. Out in broad daylight.

No broom. Security cameras. A carnivorous alien monster in a warehouse full of unsuspecting people. I took a split-second inventory of the shelves in front of me and my cart. Shelves: paper towels, paper plates, napkins. Cart: ten three-liter bottles of Mello Yello, big bag of dog food, plastic bags filled with bunches of mint and basil, cookies, twin jugs of Clorox, olive oil...

The stalker swiveled its head, its evil, vicious eyes measuring the distance between it and us.

"What the hell is that?" the woman whispered.

The stalker turned, twisting its body as if it were boneless.

"Run," I barked and grabbed the metal shelves, sending a precision pulse through the building. The magic zapped through the shelving and into the floor.

God, this place was huge. I pushed harder, the magic streaming from me, dashing through the wires under the floor and in the walls.

"What?" The woman gaped at me.

The stalker's muscles bunched.

"Run!"

The woman planted herself. "Like hell! This place is full of old people and kids."

The one time I get caught in the open and my bystander wants to stand her ground instead of running away.

The magic "clicked," wrapping around the right set of wires. The security cameras died.

The stalker leaped, claws poised for the kill. I yanked the gallon-sized jug of bleach from the cart and swung it like a bat. The jar connected with a solid thud, knocking the stalker aside. It flew, righted itself like a cat, and landed in the aisle, sliding back. Claws scraped the concrete.

The beast charged me. I swung the bleach again. The stalker dodged left. The dark-haired woman grabbed a six-pack of Del Monte canned corn from her cart and hurled it at the creature. The blow took it on the shoulder. The stalker stumbled and shied toward me. I smashed the bleach over its head. The stalker jerked back and raked the bottle with its claws --the plastic held.

A huge jar of tomato paste crashed into the beast's side. The stalker snapped at the woman, lashing with its claws. The tips of its talons cut across the woman's forearm, and she cried out. I grabbed a bottle of olive oil from her cart and brought it down like a hammer. The stalker leaped back. I threw the bottle at it.

The stalker made an eerie, whispery growl that raised every hair on my body. The woman swiped cans from her cart and threw them one after the other. The stalker retreated under the barrage of cans, baring ugly red teeth. Step, another step. The shelves loomed behind it.

The stalker leaped straight up, scuttled over the plastic-wrapped inventory on the shelves so fast it was a blur, and leaped straight at me. I had no time to react. The huge claws caught my arms, ripping through the fabric. Pain lanced my shoulders. The impact knocked me back and my spine hit the metal shelves. The red teeth snapped an inch from my face. Fetid, sour breath washed over me.

I twisted the cap off the bleach and dumped it over the ugly face.

The stalker's scream was like nails on a chalkboard.

The woman took a running start and smashed her cart into it, knocking it off me and driving the cart and the creature into the shelves. The stalker squirmed, pinned between the metal framework and the cart.

I pushed from the shelves. It liked bleach, I would give it bleach. I ran and dumped the bottle on the beast's face. The chlorine drowned its eyes and mouth.

The stalker convulsed. The cart went flying, cans and meat scattering on the concrete. The creature thrashed about, spasming, its limbs twisted. Cramps wracked its body. It jerked off the floor and crashed back like a fish out of water, and its head hit the concrete with a wet crunching sound. Cracks split its skull, seeping white slime. It hammered its head against the floor, leaving wet puddles.

The beast arched its back, clawed at the air, then stopped moving.

The woman picked up a set of cans wrapped in plastic off the floor. Ten jars of Bush's Best Baked Beans rose above her head and came down on top of the stalker's skull with a solid, crunchy thud. Score one for Homo sapiens.

The woman stared at the ruined body. Blood dripped from her arm. A fine spray of red covered her face --must've been cast off when she slammed down the cans. She wiped her face with her left forearm and kicked the stalker's corpse with her sneakered foot. "Don't mess with Texas."

I looked at her.

She shrugged. "Seemed like the right thing to say."

I had a dead stalker in the middle of Costco. There was no place to hide it. Even if I managed to miraculously stuff it somehow behind some paper plates, it would stink and be found, not to mention I had an eyewitness who probably wouldn't change her story and if someone suggested she was crazy would likely hit them with a thirty-six-ounce can of vegetables.

We were on the verge of complete exposure. Ice slid down my spine. Thoughts came in a panicked stampede, stumbling one over the other. They would come for the body, take tissue samples, snap pictures, and document it. It would be on the Internet within minutes. Once the body left Costco, there would be no way to contain it, and I would be irreversibly tied to it. I had fried the cameras and the hard drive, but my fingerprints were all over the place. The woman would identify me. I had blood and alien slime on my clothes. I had to take care of it here and now.

I had to hide the body.

Now.

"What the hell is this thing?"

"I have no idea, but you need to take care of that arm." I struggled to keep the shaking out of my voice. "It doesn't look sanitary."

"Isn't that the truth. It got you too. You think I should get the manager?" She looked at me.

I gripped the jug of bleach so tight it hurt. "Cleanup on aisle five." I smiled.

She giggled. I giggled back. It came out a little crazy. I sounded like a lunatic who just saw the full moon. I swallowed the giggle. "You go get the manager. I'll watch this, whatever this is."

"Okay. I'll be right back."

"Wait!"

She turned.

"Quietly," I said. "Old people and children."

She nodded and took off.

I sprinted to the corpse and dropped the bleach bottle onto the stalker.

It lay on a solid concrete slab. In a building that wasn't an inn.

Don't think about it. Just don't think about. Just because everyone says it can't be done doesn't mean jack.

The olive oil. I turned on my foot, ran down the aisle, grabbed the bottle, and dropped it onto the body. Cans dotted the aisle. I had to pick them up.

No time.

I crouched by the body, pressed my palms into the floor and concentrated. Why couldn't it have been wood? I could've wrenched individual boards up.