by Kevin Hearne
“No, I meant Druids like you.”
“Then there are none like me. Until you become one. If you live long enough.”
“I’ll make it,” Granuaile said. “You gave me this completely unsexy amulet to make sure I do.” She lifted a teardrop of cold iron strung on a gold chain out from her shirt. The Morrigan had given it to me, and I had passed it on to my apprentice.
“That’s not going to save you all the time,” I reminded her.
“I know. It seems to me that the thing to do is to simply disappear.”
“No, they’ll still look for us.”
“Who are they?”
“The remaining Norse and any other gods who want to make a point that you can’t kill gods with impunity.”
“What if they think we’re dead? Will they still be looking for us then?”
I sighed and smiled contentedly. “You’re a constant relief to me, you know. Every time you say something smart it gives me hope that you might become the first new Druid in more than a thousand years.”
Chapter 7
Moving sucks.
Most people would nod and agree without question, but saying it that way leaves ample room for interpretation. How much does it suck? Well, it’s not as bad as the stink behind a steak house. Nor is it comparable to the slow burn of heartache or the breathtaking agony of a swift kick to the groin. It’s more like the secret existential horror I feel whenever I see gummy worms.
I had a girlfriend in San Diego in the early nineties who noticed that I was profoundly unfamiliar with modern junk food. One day as I dozed at the beach, she tested the boundaries of my ignorance by arranging an entire package of gummy worms across my body, assuring me when I opened an eye that these gelatinous cylinders were some sort of new spa treatment called “sun straws” with UV protection built in, and I gullibly accepted her explanation. I woke up with bright death trails of corn syrup crisscrossing my torso, silently and stickily accusing me of wormicide in the hot coastal sun. Even the mighty rinse cycle of the Pacific Ocean couldn’t wash them away; they clung to me like soul-sucking leeches. She wasn’t my girlfriend after that, and I moved out of San Diego that very night.
It gets worse the longer you wait between moves, because you’ve had time to accumulate massive piles of crap, even if you try to minimize your consumption like I do.
Looking around at more than a decade’s worth of accreted stuff, I was glad this move would force me to leave it all behind. If I took anything with me, then “they” would know I’d scarpered off somewhere. Some of my best twentieth-century goodies were going to be let go—various bits of detritus saved from previous moves. My signed copy of the Beatles’ White Album was going to stay behind. So were the cherry Chewbacca action figures in the original packaging. I had a baseball signed by Randy Johnson when he was with the Diamondbacks and a beer bottle that had once met the lips of Papa Hemingway. Most of the weapons in the garage would be left; all I would take was the bow and the quiver of arrows blessed by the Virgin Mary, because those could come in handy. Other than that, I’d take Fragarach and Oberon and the clothes on my back, leaving everything else. The house was easy.
The business was tough. If I was going to make it look like I planned on coming back, I had to keep it open. But I had only one remaining employee besides Granuaile—Rebecca Dane—and I hated to leave her in charge of the store all by herself, especially since it was the first place my enemies would look for me. By the same token, they’d know I’d left town instead of croaked if I packed it up or sold it; I’d prefer they think me dead.
No matter how I rationalized it, I couldn’t help thinking that leaving Rebecca in the lurch would make me every bit the cocknuckle Thor was reputed to be. Hiring someone new to help her would only increase my cocknucklery.
Added to this was the problem of my rare-book collection. There were seriously dangerous tomes in there, protected by seriously dangerous wards. I couldn’t leave either the books or the wards in place, but it had to appear as though the rare books were still there.
Problems like that are why I like to have lawyers. They do all sorts of useful things for me and keep it secret under the attorney-client privilege. After going for a morning jog with Oberon and tuning the TV to Animal Planet for him, I met one of my attorneys, Hal Hauk, at a Tempe bagel joint called Chompie’s. Hal ordered a bagel with lox (shudder), and I had a blueberry one with cream cheese.
Hal looked very businesslike, his expression professionally bland and his movements conservative and precise. He seemed to be slightly uncomfortable in his navy pin-striped suit, which was ridiculous because it was perfectly tailored. I knew that meant he was nervous. He hadn’t behaved this way since I first moved into Tempe and the Pack hadn’t settled my status yet. It made me curious: Had my status changed somehow with the Pack all of a sudden?
“What’s got you all twitchy, Hal? Fess up.”
Hal’s eyes met mine sharply, and I watched with amusement as his shoulders visibly relaxed, but only with a conscious effort. “I am not the least bit twitchy. Your characterization is scurrilous and unfounded. I haven’t twitched once in the two minutes we’ve been here.”
“I know, and the effort at locking it down is going to give you indigestion. Why don’t you just tell me what’s bothering you so you can get it out of your system and relax?”
Hal regarded me in stony silence for a few seconds, then his fingers began drumming in sequence on the tabletop. He was worked up, all right. But when he spoke, I could barely hear him. “I don’t want to be alpha.”
“You don’t want to be alpha?” I said. “Well, then, your dreams have come true. You’re not. Gunnar is alpha, and you’re doggie number two.”
“But Gunnar is going with you to Asgard.”
I blinked. “He is?”
Hal dipped his chin in the barest of nods. “It was decided last night. Leif talked him into it. I’m to be alpha until he returns. And if he doesn’t … well, then I’m doomed.”
“Bwa-ha-ha, cue the derisive laughter. You can’t be top dog and tell me you’re doomed, Hal. Nobody is going to buy that.”
“I like being Gunnar’s second,” Hal groused. “I don’t want to make those decisions. And there will be plenty to make if he doesn’t come back. Scores more if Leif doesn’t come back.”
“How is Leif, anyway? Is that finger fully grown back?” Leif had lost his finger—and nearly his undead existence—in the fight with die Töchter des dritten Hauses, when they managed to torch his combustible flesh.
“Yeah, it’s fine, and he’s coming to see you tonight, along with Gunnar.”
“Good. What’s the problem with Leif not coming back?”
“We’ll have the bloodiest vamp war in centuries if he’s gone more than a month. They’re already sniffing around.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The vampires. They want his territory.”
“The bloodiest vamp war in history will be fought over Tempe?”
Hal stared at me to gauge whether I was being serious or not. “His territory is a whole lot bigger than Tempe, Atticus. You can’t tell me you didn’t know.”
“Well, yes, I can. Leif and I never talked about his territory, because I’m not interested and he’s not a braggart. I know that Leif must be in singular control of Tempe, because I’ve never seen or smelled another vampire in the city, but I don’t know how he could realistically hold any more.”
Hal snorted and held his face in his hands. He peered at me from between his fingers. “Atticus. Leif controls the entire state of Arizona. All by himself. He’s the baddest of badass vampires. He’s the oldest thing walking around this hemisphere, besides you and the native gods.” He dropped his hands and tilted his head at me like a curious canine. “You honestly didn’t know that?”
“Nope. Why would I care? I’m not a vampire and I don’t want his territory. You don’t want the whole state for your pack either, am I right?”
“Well, no, but you h
ave to appreciate what’s going to happen here.”
“No, I don’t. I’m moving.”
“Wherever you move it’s going to be felt. This kind of power vacuum is going to bring every wannabe vamp lord down on this state, all wanting to carve out a piece of it for themselves. And they’re going to leave other power vacuums behind them when they go. If Leif doesn’t come back, the ripples are going to be felt all over the country, I can guarantee it, and in quite a few other countries besides.”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
“Make damn sure both Gunnar and Leif come back. That way I don’t have to be alpha and I don’t have to worry about fighting off a bunch of bloodsuckers.”
“I can’t believe Leif is so feared. He’s a perfectly reasonable guy.”
“To you and me, yes, he is. He works very well with us. But he’s absolute hell on other vampires, from what I understand. They’re scared of him, and with good reason. You know, he shouldn’t have survived getting burned like that.”
I crinkled my brows. “No? Why not?”
“That wasn’t a normal fire where you could just stop, drop, and roll. That was hellfire, Atticus. It’s almost impossible to put out. It would have destroyed any other vampire I’ve ever heard of.”
Silence fell as I considered this. A vampire war would indeed be inconvenient for everyone, but I didn’t see how I could prevent it on top of everything else I had to do. I was also able to conclude to my satisfaction that it wasn’t really my problem anyway.
Hal said into the silence, “Let’s proceed to business, shall we?”
“Yeah, let’s.” Hal put his briefcase up on the table and took out a legal pad. I told him what I needed: approximately three hundred semi-rare books—nothing remarkable, just old—delivered by FedEx tomorrow morning. I also needed the firm to draw up paperwork to handle the sale of the store to Rebecca Dane after three months for a buck seventy-two.
“Why the seventy-two cents?” Hal wondered aloud.
“Because everyone who looks at the deal will ask the same question. I want Detective Geffert to think it’s a significant clue. I hope he builds a conspiracy theory around it. But it’s purely there to mess with his mind and waste his time.”
Hal shrugged and wrote it down. I also arranged for the firm to provide three months’ pay to Rebecca and any additional employees she should choose to hire on her own. “I’ll let her know that she is to manage the place and to let anyone who inquires know that I have gone on an extended vacation to the Antipodes.” Hal raised his eyebrows but made no comment.
I’d brought a parcel to the restaurant, and it rested next to me on the vinyl material of the booth seat. Now I hefted it onto the table and untied the string around it before removing the top. A truly rare book lay inside in a nest of tissue paper. The green cloth cover with gilt lettering and blind-embossed leaves finally got a reaction from Hal.
“Is that … a first edition?” he asked.
“Uh-huh. Extremely rare copy of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. It should fetch at least a hundred fifty grand, probably much more. This goes to Rebecca Dane once she’s bought the store—not before.” I replaced the box lid, and Hal stared at the book cover until it disappeared from view.
“All right.” He shook his head to clear it and get back to business. “What else?”
“I’ll need new IDs for myself and my apprentice. Pick some random Irish names.”
“All right, email me some pictures. Where’s she going to be while you’re gone?”
“She’ll stick around for a couple days, then move to a secure undisclosed location.” Hal looked up at my choice of words. “No, the vice president won’t be there.”
“All right. Is that all?”
“Almost. Granuaile is to contact you after three months if she doesn’t hear from me by then. You’re to assume I’m dead if she contacts you in that case.” I really hoped this wouldn’t be necessary, but it was best to plan for the worst. “I’ll need Oberon to be looked after, preferably by Granuaile, and I need to set up a trust for her now.”
We worked out the details of that and then Hal said, “I have some news to share with you. You recall that we set an investigator on the trail of this group calling themselves the Hammers of God?”
“Yes.”
“The investigator’s missing. Presumed dead.”
“Hmm. Are we also presuming that the rabbi is returning with reinforcements?” The Rabbi Yosef Bialik had been convinced to leave town without harm, but I’d always assumed he’d be back.
“Yes. Everyone in the Pack will shortly be wearing a thin body armor underneath their clothes. Should be good enough to stop a thrown silver knife.”
“They enchant the handles too, so I’d suggest gloves. The idea is to hit you again when you try to pull the knife out.”
Hal shrugged. “Magic doesn’t scare me. Only silver.”
I wondered what it would be like to be scared of only one thing.
After breakfast with Hal, I went to the shop and met Rebecca Dane there. I made her day by telling her she was getting a promotion and a raise, then spent the morning reviewing how to run the shop all by herself. She wouldn’t be able to make some of the more complicated teas that required the use of binding, but all the straight herbal stuff was well within her compass, including Mobili-Tea, my best seller for arthritic customers. “You can hire some help if you like. I’m going away for a while, and so is Granuaile. We are going on an archaeological dig in the Antipodes.”
“Oh,” she said, a faint wrinkle of concern appearing between her eyes. “For how long?”
“It might be months.” It would certainly be months. Years. I prepared her for it as best as I could, explaining that the law firm of Magnusson and Hauk would be paying her and keeping in touch. She was excited and flushed with the responsibility. She was fresh and affable, and my regulars liked her. She radiated innocence and served people without a trace of guile or condescension. I hoped that would be enough to save her when people came looking for me and realized that she knew nothing.
My lunch date was Malina Sokolowski, the leader of the Sisters of the Three Auroras. We met in Four Peaks Brewery on 8th Street. She was wearing the same red wool coat she’d worn the first time we met almost two months ago. Her blond hair lay upon her shoulders like a rich nude woman on a divan, sleek and shiny and unapologetically decadent. I felt the eyes of envious men boring into my back as she favored me with a brilliant smile of welcome and a pleased purring of my name.
It was strange to think that I had made peace with a coven of witches, but I had to admit that Malina’s crew was different. Though they still took advantage of people and were always, always plotting to exert some sort of control over others, they at least had pretensions of being good citizens otherwise. We had fought side by side and recognized that there was a patch of common ground between us, a sliver of ellipsoid in a Venn diagram of a witch and a Druid where we could meet—meet and pretend that the vast area of the spheres behind us was undiscovered country rather than our comfort zone.
We spoke of small things at first. She inquired after Granuaile and Oberon; I inquired after her coven sisters. Our draughts came: I had a Kilt Lifter and she was drinking the Sunbru Kölsch. We toasted healthy alliances and sighed appreciatively as we set our glasses down.
“Beer like that almost makes me forget the incredible danger we’re in,” Malina said.
“I beg your pardon? I mean, yeah, the beer’s good, but what danger?”
“We’ve been continuing our divination rituals because we’re unconvinced that we’ve seen the last of the Hammers of God. From what we can tell, the rabbi is definitely coming back with more Kabbalists just like him. But that’s not all,” Malina said. “Something else is on the horizon. Several somethings. I think one of them is Bacchus. He might be coming here to look for you.”
This wasn’t a surprise, between what I’d done to his Bacchants in Scottsdale and the blame I’d l
aid at his door while I was in Asgard. “How soon?”
“Tomorrow at the earliest, if I’m reading things right.”
That was a surprise. “Gods Below,” I cursed, “I don’t have time to deal with that.”
“Time?” Malina spluttered. “What about the strength? You can’t take on one of the Olympians.”
“I seem to remember you doubting I could take on Aenghus Óg,” I teased her. “Have I not earned at least a fighting chance against Bacchus? But that’s assuming I’d want to fight him, and I don’t. What else did you see?”
“Many vampires.” If I needed any confirmation that Hal was right about the vampire war, this was it. “How goes the recovery of Mr. Helgarson?”
“Absolutely peachy as far as I know. I’m supposed to see him tonight. But, look, between your coven and me, he’s leaving tomorrow.”
Malina’s lips tightened. “Leaving for good?”
I shrugged. “That’s my assumption. This place will be crawling with would-be replacements before long.”
Malina grimaced and muttered something in Polish that I guessed was a curse.
“By the way, I’m leaving too.”
Her eyes widened and the Polish cursing became more vehement.
“Plus Gunnar Magnusson.”
She didn’t have words to express her shock at that. Why would an alpha ever leave his pack? “What is going on?” she breathed.
“I can’t tell you. But what I respectfully suggest to you, as an ally, is to get yourself out of here. The Hammers of God are coming for you every bit as much as they’re coming for me. And you don’t want to be around when the vamp war begins. Whoever comes out on top is probably not going to ignore your coven like Leif did.”
“No, that’s for certain,” Malina said, and took a long pull on her beer for courage. “I think your advice is good and we should pursue it, but I don’t know where to go. We were counting on this area remaining stable.”
“The era of stability is already gone. This city is about to pass through the Valley of the Shadow of Deep Shit. Best to cut and run while you still can.”