In Truth and Claw (A Mick Oberon Job #4)

by Ari Marmell

  And so I did. I staggered my way down the slope and into the clearing, which—despite the lack of snow—wasn’t any warmer than the woods’d been. Kept my distance from the iron and got a slant at the door, but other’n the woodburning stove and the pots, pans, horns, and herbs that hung at various levels from the ceiling inside, the place didn’t seem to hold much.

  Took one more step, made as though I was gonna enter… and the hut moved.

  It shifted first, leaning sideways as if to topple over, then straightened again—now five feet off the ground. Then ten, fifteen, more, as it rose to its full height atop a giant pair of scaled, flaking chicken’s feet.

  Once it was entirely upright, it took two scrabbling paces back from me, nearly plunging into the trees.

  “All right, take it easy,” I said. Yes, to the hut. “I ain’t comin’ in.”

  Then, calling out a lot louder, “You’re here, ain’tcha? I’ve come a long ways to see you, and I’d hate to have wasted the trip. Plus, your house ain’t too happy to see me. I’d rather not be left alone with it. I got no idea what kinda small talk it prefers.”

  First hint I had that me’n the house weren’t alone was the sound of sweeping. She appeared from the forest off to my right, whiskin’ the last bit of snow outta the clearing with a broom taller and thicker than my coat rack back home.

  A broom made of a sorta silvery white wood.

  “Hardly fair for you to expect an old woman to break her routine,” she said, watchin’ the snow as it sprayed from the end of the broom and vanished into the shadows. Her voice was the cracked breath of a sickly crone, yet it carried across the clearing, and I’m sure well beyond. As far as she wanted it to be heard, probably. She spoke in Russian, but even if I hadn’t spent a while travelin’ through Soviet territories, it woulda only taken me a minute to pick it up.

  “Especially,” she continued, “when you visit unannounced. It is your fortune to even find me home.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose it is. Good afternoon, Little Grandmother.”

  “A good afternoon to you, Mick Oberon,” said Baba Yaga.

  Her mug was a mass of wrinkles and crags, deep enough to sheathe a dagger, bony enough to hammer a nail. Her schnoz was a long, twisted thing, like a carrot wrapped in leather, and her stringy hair the color of iron. Her teeth and her nails were iron, and if you wanna know how any creature related to the Fae could survive that way, could develop that way without goin’ mad and dying, well, you’n me both. It was hardly the biggest mystery surrounding the witch that even I thought of as ancient, let alone the only one.

  Oh, she also stood close to four feet taller’n I did. Probably coulda outwrestled a troll with one arm tied behind her back. Not that the dumbest, meanest, craziest troll would even try.

  “So, little aes sidhe.” She took a few impossibly long strides to the mortar, laid the pestle across the rim, and sat on it as if it were the most stable and comfortable chair. The broom she allowed to drop to the ground beside her. “What brings you so very many leagues to my stoop?”

  I started to speak, but she abruptly raised a finger. “A moment. I said, to my stoop!”

  The hut dipped downward, as though chagrined, shuffled up behind her, and settled back where it’d been, so the mortar— and now Baba Yaga herself—were once more seated right by the door.

  “Better. Now, continue, please.”

  “Well, the short version is, someone’s been muckin’ around with my memory.”

  It was the only conclusion I’d been able to come to. So many things I’d missed with Adalina that I felt I oughta recall, the various “episodes” when I found myself confused or noodlin’ too hard on certain topics, my moment of confusion when I’d apparently forgotten my precise relationship with my namesake.

  “Has someone indeed? Remember this happening, do you?” She snorted and chortled at her own joke, and I waited for her to finish.

  “Even if this is so,” she said eventually, “why come to me?”

  “Because,” I said, takin’ the bull by the horns, “I think you did it to me.”

  “Do you.” Not really a question. She wasn’t smilin’ anymore. Not steamed, not yet—and gods, I never wanted her to be!— but not smilin’. “This is a severe accusation, Mick Oberon. There are others who have such power.”

  “A few. Not many, though. Besides, there’s this.”

  From my pocket, I drew the chunk of wood I’d found in my office hide-hole. White birch. Just like Baba Yaga’s broom.

  I tossed it her way. She didn’t bother to catch it, just examined it as it lay in the mostly dead grass at her feet.

  “Nobody coulda put that where I found it,” I said. “Nobody but me. But it didn’t make any sense to me until I realized my memory had holes in it. I musta known somethin’ was gonna happen, because I left myself a trail of breadcrumbs, Little Grandmother.

  “And look,” I added quick. Don’t make her mad, don’t make her mad. “I ain’t here to accuse you. I’m tellin’ you the facts as I know ’em before I ask for your help.”

  “Ah. You wish me to undo what has been done to you.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, if you would.”

  “Again, there are others who could do this.”

  “Again, not many. And those who could? They got their own agendas. They’re all tied to the Seelie or Unseelie Courts, one way or another. You’re… a free agent.”

  Again she cackled. “Free agent. Yes. Yes, this is a good term. I am a free agent.” Then, outta nowhere, “You know a hex lies upon you, yes?”

  “I… Yes. Cast by a mortal witch, a powerful one. I been tryin’ to counter it, but—”

  She waved a few gnarled, hairy knuckles my way and I felt a hundred pounds lighter. “It is gone.”

  Damn. Just like that. “Spasiba, Little Grandmother.”

  “Pozhaluysta. But do not be so free with your gratitude. With your other matter, I cannot help you.”

  I don’t remember decidin’ to sit, but I found myself cross-legged in the grass. Gods dammit, if this was beyond Baba Yaga herself…

  “You’re sure? The magic’s that strong?”

  “It is not the magic, Mick Oberon.”

  It took a minute to sink in, and then I clenched my mitts around two handfuls of grass and frozen soil to keep from shoutin’. “You mean you won’t help me.”

  “If I were to have hidden pieces of your past from you,” she said, idly scratchin’ a wart the size of a sugar cube on one cheek, “it would have been for reasons of only the greatest import. Reasons that are unlikely to have changed.”

  “Shit. Shit!”

  She raised an eyebrow, said nothin’.

  I rose and turned to go. It was rude, but anythin’ I coulda made myself say to her woulda been even less polite. What was I gonna do? I couldn’t force cooperation, not from her. She didn’t make it sound as though we hadda be enemies over this, but if she’d gummed up my brain, how could we not be? I—

  Say…

  “If you won’t help me for my sake,” I said, “what about for everyone who might get hurt?”

  “And why should this harm anyone else, Mick Oberon?”

  So I told her about Adalina. All of it. Her bein’ swapped out for Celia, bein’ raised as human, her slow maturation into somethin’ that clearly wasn’t. Her exposure to Orsola’s magics, her injury and her coma, her awakening at the hands of Nessumontu, her half-awakened screaming—in multiple languages, some of ’em long dead—that she wasn’t ready. And of course, what’d happened in the last couple months.

  When it was all said’n done, she looked graver than I’d ever seen her. Well, than I ever remembered seein’ her. For near ten minutes she sat, thinkin’, decidin’, and I wasn’t near bunny enough to disturb her.

  When she was finally done ponderin’, I realized she was chewin’ on a hunk of meat. I didn’t know where it’d come from; she hadn’t moved from her makeshift bench. And I sure didn’t wanna know what it’d been.

 
; It had fingers.

  “I will help you this much, Mick Oberon. You have, since you first met this girl, been asking the wrong question.”

  “Oh? How’s that?”

  “You have been asking ‘what.’ You should have asked ‘who.’”

  I near staggered, as if I’d just taken a poke in the jaw from one of the Firbolg. “Reincarnation? That only happens with the darkest curses, Little Grandmother! Curses like… like…”

  Couldn’t get it out. Could barely move. I wanted her to foresee what I was tryin’ to say, to tell me I was wrong.

  Maybe she did the first, but I wasn’t so lucky with the second.

  What I finally forced out wasn’t even a whisper. “The Bereft.”

  Baba Yaga nodded, once. For all her efforts at sweepin’ the snow from her doorstep, it was startin’ to fall again, thick and heavy.

  You won’t have heard that name from me. Won’t find it in your legends. But you’ve heard me talk about the concept, around the edges.

  I’ve told you, the Fae don’t make oaths lightly, ’cause there are consequences for breakin’ ’em. Sometimes it’s a curse. Sometimes it’s an emotional stain that turns others against us. Sometimes it’s a creature that we can’t face, can’t escape, that’ll do a lot worse’n kill us.

  And sometimes, when a broken oath does great harm to one of our own, one of the Fae, they come back. Over and over, to make us—all of us, but especially those responsible—suffer.

  Those are the Bereft.

  If I’d felt like I was punched a minute ago, now I was back in the Union Stockyards, with phantom claws diggin’ deep into my gut—only worse, now, worse ten times over.

  Because now, knowin’ what I knew, bits and pieces were comin’ back to me. All those clues Áebinn was shocked I’d missed.

  She’d been right. Oh, gods, she’d been right. I hadda find Adalina. Maybe… maybe I even hadda kill her.

  She’d woken up before her mind had recovered, before her earlier memories—her past lives—had caught up with her. If they did… she wouldn’t be Adalina anymore.

  And then I might not be able to stop her at all.

  Her appearance. Speaking Old Gaelic. Old Polish. Old Norse.

  I knew. I knew, I remembered, who she was, who this Bereft had been. Dozens of names, some—when she’d been found, killed, before she could begin her hunt—nobody had ever heard. But she’d had others, and now, in the shadow of Baba Yaga, I remembered, though the details refused to return, that I’d known her, or known of her, in so many…

  Jenny Greenteeth, haunter of British rivers. Wąda, sovereign of the bagienniks, so-called Queen of Underwater Lawns. Possibly Caoránach, dubbed Mother of Demons, though we were never entirely sure if that creature was really her. And more.

  But the one I know you’ve heard of? Her first and most infamous monstrous incarnation? She never had a name of her own that I, or anyone else, ever heard. She was known, far and wide, only by the name of her son.

  As the Mother of Grendel.

  That was who dear, confused, innocent Adalina was—or would become. That was what the goddamn Chicago Fae had let loose on the world.

  I had no idea where she was. No idea what she’d find herself able to do, or when the curse of her past would catch up to her, turn her into a monster worse than any Unseelie.

  I knew only one thing. I still had no memory of it, couldn’t have told you how I knew, but I felt it. From deep in the past I couldn’t remember, from deep in my soul. This was my fault. Because somehow, sometime, so many centuries ago…

  I’d created her.

  A BRIEF AFTERWORD

  So, first things first. The whole vampiric watermelon/pumpkin thing?

  Yeah, he wasn’t lying to you. That really is a genuine myth. Obscure, but genuine. It traces back to a particular branch of the Romani in the Balkans. Feel free to look it up.

  But the main reason I’m writing this afterword is to talk about mistakes.

  I make them. I do a lot of research for these books, and I try to get everything just so, but things still slip by me. The use of pink as a girl’s color in Hot Lead, Cold Iron—it was considered more appropriate for boys at the time—or the use of “Ms.” as a title in Dead to Rites. It existed, but it wasn’t in common usage. You know, little stuff like that.

  But the one that bothers me, and the one I’m discussing here, is fata.

  As you may have noticed, Orsola uses that term to refer to Mick a lot in Hot Lead, Cold Iron, but she doesn’t do so in this book. That’s because, between the two, I’ve spoken to a native Italian speaker, and I’ve learned I used the term incorrectly. It doesn’t mean “Fae,” as I thought it did, but refers more to a female sorceress or witch. Worse, it’s become something of a pejorative in modern times for referring to effeminate men.

  Obviously, I can’t go back and change Hot Lead, Cold Iron. But as I won’t be using it moving forward, I wanted to explain the inconsistency to readers who may pick up on it, and to apologize, however unintentionally, for the use of the slur. Mea culpa.

  FAE PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

  Áebinn [ey-buhn]

  aes sidhe [eys shee]

  bagiennik [baig-yen-nik]

  barbegazi [bar-buh-gey-zee]

  barghest [bar-gest]

  bean sidhe [ban shee]

  benandanti [ben-ahn-dahn-tee]

  brounie [brooh-nee]

  cu sidhe [koo shee]

  dullahan [dool-uh-han]

  dvergr [dver-gr]

  Elphame [elf-eym]

  Eudeagh [ee-yood-uh]

  Firbolg [fir-bohlg]

  ghillie dhu [ghil-lee doo]

  Goswythe [gawz-weeth]

  Grangullie [gran-gull-ee]

  haltija [hawl-tee-yah]

  Ielveith [ahy-el-veyth]

  kobold [koh-bold]

  Laurelline [Lor-el-leen]

  Luchtaine [lookh1-teyn]

  Lugh [lugh2]

  Oberon [oh-ber-ron]

  phouka [poo-kuh]

  Raighallan [rag-hawl-lawn]

  Sealgaire [sal-gayr]

  Seelie [see-lee]

  Sien Bheara [shahyn beer-uh]

  Slachaun [slah-shawn]

  sluagh [sloo-ah]

  spriggan [sprig-uhn]

  Tuatha Dé Danann [too-awt3-huh de4 dan4-uhn]

  Unseelie [uhn-see-lee]

  vuoren väki [vour5-ren va-kih]

  1 This sound falls between “ch” and “k,” as in the word “loch.”

  2 “Gh” pronounced as “ch,” but more guttural.

  3 This “t” is almost silent, and is separate from the following “h,” rather than forming a single sound as “th” normally does in English.

  4 Strictly speaking, these “d”s fall somewhere between the “d” and a hard “th”—such as in “though”— but a simple “d” represents the closest sound in English.

  5 This is a rolling r.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  When Ari Marmell has free time left over between feeding cats and posting on social media, he writes a little bit. His work includes novels, short stories, role-playing games, and video games, all of which he enjoyed in lieu of school work when growing up. In addition to the Mick Oberon series, he’s the author of the Widdershins YA fantasy series, The Goblin Corps, and many others, with publishers such as Del Rey, Pyr Books, Wizards of the Coast, Omnium Gatherum—and, of course, Titan Books.

  Ari currently resides in Austin, Texas. He lives in a clutter that has a moderate amount of apartment in it, along with George—his wife—and the aforementioned cats, who probably want something.

  You can find Ari online, if you’re not careful.

  Website: mouseferatu.com

  Twitter: @mouseferatu

  Facebook: facebook.com/mouseferatu

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