by Kevin Hearne
“Aha! Not so funny now, is it?” he says. “You shoulda stayed dead, Granuaile. Pretty thing like you is gonna hate what’s left of your life in prison. Now, put that fucking stick down slow or I’ll pop you in the knee. My boys there will testify I had no choice. And drop that axe too; then we’ll talk about what you’ve done to the wells.”
His condescending sneer—a frequent nightmare from my youth—sets off a rumbling quake of rage inside me, and the careful admonitions I had made to myself last night float down the River Lethe.
“Okay, okay,” I say, and slowly begin to sink to my knees, seeming to comply. Then I mutter the words to trigger invisibility, and as soon as I wink out of his sight I drop down behind the desk and roll out of the gun’s line of fire, moving to my right and his left, away from my hound.
“Hey, now,” he says, standing up and waving that gun around, searching for me. Orlaith is growling at him, and through our mental link I tell her not to move.
“Don’t fuck with me. No telling who could get hurt,” he says, the gun barrel drifting in Orlaith’s direction.
It’s not a direct threat, but it’s not subtle either, and if I was angry before, now I’m ready to erupt. I come up on his left, raise Scáthmhaide, and bring it down hard on his extended right wrist. It’s a blow across his body, but that’s why long staffs are handy. He shoots a round into the top of his desk before letting go, at the same time making a high squeal of pain because I’ve shattered the bones in his wrist. He clutches it, takes a step back, and I drop Scáthmhaide to lay into him with my fists. Doing so makes me visible and he sees me coming but not in time to do anything about it except reflexively widen his eyes. I crunch my fist into his face, and he lets out another cry as he collapses. I follow him to the ground and keep punching him in the body as I shout.
“No!” Whud. “Telling!” Fump. “Who!” Thud. “Could!” Smack. “Get hurt!” Whump.
“Oh,” I say in a tiny voice, rearing back and realizing that Beau has curled up into a defensive fetal position. I have just beaten the hell out of an old man. An evil old man, to be sure, but I’ve failed miserably at keeping the moral high ground. Now the entire confrontation will be about my violence instead of his decades of ruining the earth for profit. I’m torn, because it felt so good to lay into him like I’ve always wanted to, but I also wanted to be better than that.
Looking up, I see that a couple of the guards have won free of their shoes and one is circling around the desk to get behind me while the other is moving to the door. He opens it a crack, shouts to the secretary to call for backup, and closes it again. The other two guards will be free in another couple of seconds. I need to leave.
The guy who’s trying to pounce on me from behind moves too slow; his body language screams that I spooked him with the shoe thing. He can’t explain that shit with science so he’s got a clenched-teeth aggro face and nostrils flaring like a bull. Still, when I scramble to my feet, retrieving Scáthmhaide, he somehow summons the courage to try to bash me in the head with his baton. I knock it aside and then before he can swing it back around I whip the bottom end of my staff up into his unprotected groin. He goes down with a whimper, all the aggro gone and the totality of his existence now consumed with the throbbing of his bruised balls.
Movement in my peripheral vision alerts me that one of the guards is climbing over the chair and lunging for the desk. I get there a split second faster and snatch up Beau’s dropped gun.
“Nuh-uh,” I say, pointing it at him. “Back off. Drop the batons. All of you, away from the door. Move fast, now, or I’ll drop you with a bullet to the knee.”
I gesture, they scoot, and I mentally tell Orlaith to head for the door. She growls as she passes them, essentially exchanging positions with the guards, and stands in front of the door. The three guards—the last one finally free of the chair—keep their hands up and their eyes on me. Beau is still lying on the ground, moaning. With the guards disarmed and Orlaith out of danger, I take my eyes off the three guards just long enough to carefully step past the one I’d nutted. Couldn’t have him tripping me up.
When I reach the door, I’m afraid Beau might not take the proper lesson from this. “You were right, Beau,” I say, calling to him. “Granuaile is dead. I’m someone else. Someone you can’t control.” A line from Whitman floats up into my consciousness and I seize on it. “I help myself to material and immaterial, No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me. Bye now, Beau. Shut down Thatcher Oil and Gas and move on.”
Out the door when it opens, Orlaith, I tell her. I take care to turn on the safety, shove the gun in my waistband, and open the door. Orlaith trots out smartly.
The secretary is on the phone, calling for reinforcements, but looks up at our exit.
“Oh. Oh god. She’s here.” The phone drops from her fingers and she raises her hands. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Nobody’s dead. Just don’t move,” I say, closing the door and concentrating on the wood—a paneled composite, I realize, rather than the solid hardwood I was expecting. I’m still not good with binding the unseen, so I forget the lock and perform a different binding instead, fusing the wood of the door to the jamb. Beau and his minions will have to be hacked out of there to get out. My hand is still on the doorknob and someone tries to open it from the other side as I work. I maintain my hold on the knob until I complete my binding, and then he can rattle the doorknob all he wants after that.
“Call 911!” the guard shouts from behind the door. “We need an ambulance!” Binding complete, I let go of the door and turn to the secretary.
“Did you hear that?”
She nods at me, eyes huge like hardboiled eggs.
“Well, better get on it, then. Tell them to bring something to hack through the door.”
I head for the stairwell, ruling out the elevator as a death trap. The secretary watches me go until I’m past her desk, then she grabs for her phone.
Move down these as fast as you can manage, Orlaith, I tell her as I open the door. But stay in contact with my hand. As soon as it clicks shut behind us, I speak the binding that will turn us invisible again, drawing on a dwindling reserve of energy. I’m still somewhat stiff from my encounter with Weles, despite my opportunities to heal, so I can’t move as quickly as I would like. After a few flights down we hear the door above slam open and boots clomping after us. Additional security must have arrived via the elevator only to be told by the secretary that we went downstairs. On the third-floor landing, I hear a door open below and hold up, telling Orlaith to stop.
Squish yourself against the wall right here, away from the banister, I tell her. More boots pound upstairs and soon three black-clad security guards round the banister, stick to the rail, and hurry right past us on the landing, soon to meet the other guys coming down. I wait for them to round the next flight before giving Orlaith the all-clear. Let’s keep going down, but try to go quietly.
I think it will be okay. Their boots are loud. Plus they’re shouting at one another now, wondering where we are.
We sneak out without incident after that, I toss Beau’s gun into a public trash can—the kind with a lid on it, so people can’t see it in there—and I keep a hand on the back of Orlaith’s neck to guide her a couple of blocks away, out of the immediate vicinity of the building and security cameras. The invisibility melts away in an alleyway before I can dispel it, the energy completely drained from the silver reservoir of Scáthmhaide, and then, as sirens wail on their way to aid my stepfather, I shudder from the adrenaline comedown and wonder what I should be feeling.
I sink to my knees and wrap my arms around Orlaith’s neck. “This is so strange,” I tell her. “I feel terrible and awesome at the same time. Pretty sure that’s wrong.”
&
nbsp; “I’m supposed to feel just terrible for utterly failing to be a good person up there.”
“But I didn’t need to be violent. Even when he pulled that gun, I could have used Druidry instead of my weapon. Thrashing him felt good, but still I’m horrified at my lack of control. Thank you for stopping me from doing anything more.” The fact that he needed an ambulance was bad enough.
That makes me laugh. “You have a point there.” I think, not for the first time, that Oberon and Orlaith are far more emotionally stable than humans. Hounds have much to teach us, as do all the creatures of the earth. I’ve made my share of mistakes, but thank all the gods that I have yet to regret choosing to become a Druid. I get to my feet and dust off my knees. “Okay, back to the park, and then we shift out of here.”
We might be observed by traffic cameras on the way, and authorities might trace my path later, but there is no helping it. I have nothing left to keep us camouflaged across the city.
During the jog to the park, I continue to ping back and forth between elation and guilt. I’d undeniably done a good thing for Gaia by shutting down the operations of TO & G, but in hindsight my visit with Beau was definitely a mistake. He doesn’t feel remorse over what he’s done. He doesn’t see that I’m right, only that I can punch him whenever I want and get away with it—and that I can make leather shoes stick to his upholstery. Maybe my leaving that binding in place, along with sealing his office door, will be a nice reminder that I’m not playing by the rules he’s used to. That might be the only thing that gets through to him, short of driving his company bankrupt. I do hope that he decides to get out of oil without further prompting, but it’s more likely that I will have to slowly choke his company to death. And no one should doubt that I will do it, with purpose and vigor and justice for Gaia.
What truly worries me is the idea that the elementals’ habit of calling me “Fierce Druid” isn’t merely a badass honorific. Maybe it points to something darker in my makeup, something latent that I didn’t realize lurked within me until events conspired to yank it to the surface.
The thing to do, if I must be fierce, is to channel it into virtuous channels. I need to study Polish and memorize Szymborska to improve my Druidry, and I have to fight Gaia’s battles until I can’t fight anymore.
Orlaith and I return to the same peaceful meadow in Ecuador to seek some balance after the violence of Wichita. The runoff lake is cold, but I feel cleaner after a swim. And after whiling the day away under a tree in meditation, I open my eyes at dusk and smile, having come to an emotional mountaintop where I can breathe easy.
It was ugly work, dealing with Beau, and I certainly could have controlled myself better. But confronting him was a wall I had to climb to see the splendor of the other side. I think I’ll take Orlaith’s wise advice and not dwell on the mistakes I made while scaling that wall. I will focus instead on not repeating them.
I suspect most people have someone like Beau Thatcher in their lives—a person standing in between who you used to be and who you want to be, guarding the wall and proclaiming that you shall forever be imprisoned by their expectations and obligations. Crossing to the other side will always be a struggle and fraught with dangers that may leave scars. But, oh, the reward when you leap over that wall or break through it and shed the burdens of the past! I am light and free and my path ahead is smooth and wide through a land of burgeoning promise.
CHAPTER 19
Sometimes you get an idea so simple that you wonder why you never thought of it before. What is the point, I asked myself, of having your own goddess of the hunt if you don’t ask her to show off once in a while? Flidais was unlikely to do anything but follow her own whimsy, but since Brighid was on record as wanting the vampire threat eliminated and it was a genuine challenge, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask for Flidais’s help in tracking down Theophilus. A quick trip to Tír na nÓg to present the problem to her was in order. Instead of asking her to help, I challenged her to beat me.
“I haven’t been able to find an ancient vampire for months now,” I said. “I wondered if you could succeed where I failed.”
And, as it turned out, Flidais was longing for something to occupy her attention. She was prone to ennui after hunting everything on the earth over a couple thousand years, and she needed something to distract her from dwelling on Fand’s betrayal of Brighid anyway. She accepted my challenge straightaway and accompanied me back to Prague, bringing a rather moody Perun along.
I worried at first that she was breaking Brighid’s offer of sanctuary by having him leave Tír na nÓg—he was supposed to stay there, and sanctuary was forfeit if he left—but she said not to worry about it, so I didn’t.
I took her to the Grand Hotel Bohemia and said we’d be looking for the oldest vampire there, if that was a trail she could isolate somehow. She brought a couple of scent hounds with her, cast invisibility on them, and entered the hotel with the admonition to give her a few hours. She’d bind with them and coach them on what to search for. I might be able to do something similar but could never achieve the same link she could and be certain they had picked up the right scent; her hunting experience and skill with animals put her in a completely different league from me. I took Perun and Oberon to the Grand Café Orient, near the hotel. The café was determined to take advantage of the sunny weather in winter and offer outdoor seating. They had umbrellas over the tables to protect against sunburns or sudden rain, but I thought the latter was more likely, considering Perun’s sour disposition. Clouds began to form and whirl directly above us. Tourists walking down the cobbled street looked up at them, a bit worried, and then looked at Perun as if the huge man wearing a blue sleeveless shirt on a chilly day was responsible. He was, of course: If there’s some odd weather rolling in, you can almost always blame it on the big guy flaunting his hairy shoulders. People were trying to be cool about it and not stare, but they couldn’t help themselves. They spotted him dwarfing his chair, looking as out of place as one might expect a thunder god in an outdoor café to look, and smiled or laughed at him. A pair of Spanish tourists thought he was an eccentric local and wanted to take a picture with him, and he obliged, grateful for the attention. It cheered him up a bit, I think.
After they left and we had Czech pilsners in front of us, Perun began to speak of what troubled him. He had seen Granuaile recently and she had suggested that Weles was working with Loki. Apparently Perun’s old enemy had squirreled away another god of his pantheon and a horse used to divine the outcomes of battles. Perun and Granuaile had found the horse—and Weles had found them, and then later Loki appeared briefly, proving the link—but they had not found the god, Świętowit.
“I am thinking I go looking for Świętowit,” Perun said. “Others of my peoples too. I thought all were burn by Loki, but maybe they live. The Zoryas do. Flidais may help with looking for others if Brighid does not need her in Tír na nÓg.”
“I wish you luck with that. But if you don’t mind backtracking a bit: Do you know why Granuaile would concern herself with the horse?”
“She is wanting cloak of divination. Witches in Poland give to her if she give to them horse. Good witches who worship Zoryas.”
Interesting. Either she’d removed Loki’s mark and wanted a cloak until she completed binding cold iron to her aura, or she hadn’t and was hoping the cloak on top of the mark would shield her from Loki’s sight. It was all news to me, and I felt a physical ache in my chest at the thought that I should be with the one I love rather than chasing down vampires. And there was a dollop of guilt on top of it, melting like whipped cream on hot pie, for not thinking of her earlier. I could smell that strawberry lip gloss of hers—or at least the memory of it was so strong that it seemed to be in my nose right t
hen. Oberon was thinking similar thoughts, presumably because the mention of Granuaile reminded him of her hound.
he said, and sighed heavily next to us.
Hopefully we’ll get to see her soon, I told him privately, and it meant Granuaile for me as much as it meant Orlaith for him. But it was good to hear that she was taking measures to protect herself. I was doing much the same. Removing Theophilus would theoretically remove his death sentence on Druids—which would never have happened if I had kept running when I should have. I shook my head at the realization that all I did anymore was fight to get back to that place where I had only one Irish god after my ass. Aenghus Óg was long gone now, his spirit trapped in hell, but I supposed Fand could fill the role of Irish antagonist quite admirably from her prison.
Perun and I waited at that café for more than a few hours, downing schooners of pilsner and trading stories of older days while Oberon napped, but eventually I was too cold to stand it anymore. The clouds had moved off as Perun’s mood lightened, but the temperature was trending toward icy. “You know what?” I said. “Let’s go shopping. Flidais will find us wherever we are, right?”
“Is right. She does this to me before.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
“What do we buy?”
“I need a jacket,” I said, quite nearly shivering. I didn’t want to employ the earth’s energy to raise my temperature when there was a simpler fix. “Maybe we’ll find one for you too.”