by Kevin Hearne
“Well, not us—that would be a direct spell, and your cold iron talisman would protect you from that. It’s not preventing people from divining your location, but it does protect against targeted magical attacks. What I hoped you’d learn is something about how Midhir operates.”
“He’s shady,” Granuaile said. “And patient. Once he knows what he wants, he’s willing to wait to get it and will set up everything so that his victory will be assured. Not afraid to do his own dirty work either—though he hasn’t shown himself to us yet, if he’s the one behind this.”
“It’s a different situation,” I said. “He can’t afford to be directly involved. Remember that, until recent events, the Morrigan was very much in my corner. He had to tiptoe very carefully to make sure she wouldn’t discover his involvement. And there are others among the Tuatha Dé Danann who are favorably disposed toward us. Goibhniu, for one, and Manannan Mac Lir, who are powerful and influential in their own right.”
“But wait a second,” Granuaile said. “If he’s doing all this to avenge his brother’s death at your hands, shouldn’t he have been destroyed years ago when Brighid and the Morrigan did their purge? They went around putting people down after Aenghus Óg tried to take over, didn’t they?”
“Excellent point. He must have concealed his allegiance very well.”
“Unless he was never allied with Aenghus at all. If he’s Aenghus’s half brother, then he’s Brighid’s too, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“So he might have been in Brighid’s camp all along.”
“True. But if that’s the case, that would still make him antagonistic to us now, since we are not Brighid’s favorite Druids.”
“Speak for yourself,” Granuaile said. “She likes me just fine.”
I grinned, acknowledging that she had a point there. “Either way, he’s still around and could have both the means and motive to wish us harm. We need to investigate when we get the chance.”
“What? Oberon, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Do you perhaps mean pi, the mathematical symbol?”
My efforts over the years to instruct Oberon in basic timekeeping and other mathematical concepts had failed utterly—except in the realm of vocabulary, I suppose. He soaked that all up and spouted it out later in unpredictable combinations. He had tried, for example, to rate dry dog food on “the quotient of the beef correlation coefficient” and sausage on a “pork echelon matrix.” But he still got confused if you asked him to count beyond twenty.
“Oh, I think I see now,” I said. “You are using shepherd’s pie as a unit of measurement.”
“But that’s math.”
“Didn’t you use gravy in this manner before?”
“I think so. This means that cold chicken, for example, would be a kind of gravy, while a slow-roasted tri-tip would be…?”
“Got it. I think you’re right, buddy,” I said. “Brighid is totally jealous.”
Granuaile and I shifted to our hooved forms and we picked up our pace again.
Chapter 9
It was unfortunate that we had no time to savor our surroundings on such a beautiful day. The mixed woods of Germany were the sort that deserved a good savoring—no, a savouring, with a British u in there for the sake of decadence, as colours are somehow more vibrant to me than mere colors. It was in the woods of Germany that big bad wolves ate grandmothers and girls who dressed in red. It was Germany that hid the gingerbread house of a witch who hungered for children to roast in her oven. And somewhere in the mountains that we were doing our best to avoid, Rübezahl still wandered with his storm harp, shaking the earth or fogging the skies as the notion took him.
We had successfully navigated northwest through farmlands and river crossings and had recently threaded the space between Bergen on the north and Celle on the south. As we headed into a lovely wooded stretch that gave way to dank moors here and there, the sun sank before us and filtered through the needled branches of evergreens.
Usually there are only two kinds of script one sees in forests: signs that warn off trespassers and hunters, and carved hearts in the trunks of trees with the initials of a couple who felt there was no more romantic thing they could do to celebrate their love than scar the local plant life. So when I saw a neat white envelope pinned to a tree, addressed to The Shakespearean Scholar in a neat calligraphic hand, I stopped to check it out and shifted to human.
“Hold up,” I called to Granuaile and Oberon. “I need to take a look at this. Stay alert.”
Granuaile shifted to human also. “What is it?” she whispered.
“A note.”
The envelope was sealed with red wax and the Old Norse word hefnd. Vengeance. The paper inside was a fine linen. There was no date or salutation or signature, just two lines from The Merchant of Venice, written with ink and quite possibly an old-fashioned quill. I read it aloud: “Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause; But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs.”
“It’s Shakespeare, Oberon.”
There was no postscript. Nothing written on the back. Nothing else in the envelope.
“He expresses himself with economy.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Thinking aloud. Unwisely.” The clue was in the quote: Vampires ahead. The last time I saw him, back in Thessalonika, Leif Helgarson had told me that he would try to warn me with Shakespeare when Theophilus was getting close. Theophilus was the old vampire who’d set the Romans after the ancient Druids and had, until recently, thought we were all dead. Now that he knew we were alive he wanted to finish the job. But it wasn’t quite dark yet on our second day of running: That meant if Leif had left this note for me, he had to have left it before dawn, while we were still chugging through Poland. That spoke of an uncomfortable prescience regarding the route I was taking, even if someone in Tír na nÓg was doing the divining. The wind was behind us and I was sure he wouldn’t be able to tell, but I asked my hound anyway:
Oberon, do you smell the dead? Vampires?
My hound paused to sniff the air.
Smell this envelope. Any trace of the dead on it?
So Leif had written the note, but someone human had left it here, most likely at his instruction. Oberon confirmed this after snuffling around a bit at the base of the tree.
“Well, there are some kind of bad guys ahead,” I told Granuaile, “if this note is to be believed. It suggests vampires, but they still have a while to sleep.”
“Let’s go around.”
“Around where? We don’t know how far away they are or anything else. This note may be intended to make us change our course. If we go south, in the direction of the mysterious note delivery
man, we’ll be in the Harz Mountains, and that won’t be fun. If we go north we risk getting pushed into the sea before we’re ready. What we do know are two things: There are two huntresses on our tail, who are gaining ground while we talk, and heading due west is the fastest route through this piece of country since it presents the fewest obstacles.”
“I’m sure the vampires know that too,” she said. “We should go around.”
“It’s just now dusk,” I pointed out. “They can’t all be up and waiting for us yet.”
“It’s not worth the risk,” she responded. “Let’s swing a single mile to the north and then turn west again. We’ll avoid whatever’s waiting ahead and lose no more than a few minutes.”
“All right. But let’s go as humans so our weapons will be ready. Oberon and I in camouflage, you in full invisibility. Oberon, if you smell anybody but us, you let us know.”
Granuaile disappeared from my sight and her disembodied voice said, “After you.”
I cast camouflage on my hound, and he shook as if he’d just gotten out of the bath.
Are you going to giggle? We can market an invisible plush doll of you and call it the Tickle Me Oberon.
I laughed and cast camouflage on myself. “Let’s go,” I said aloud, so that Granuaile would hear as well. I headed north and continued the silly discussion in hopes that it would help me relax.
How would poodles even know about it? They haven’t learned language like you have.
You mean put your toy in the aisle with all the other plushies?
Ha! Oh, my gods, Oberon, the imagery…
We had gone about three hundred yards when we found ourselves at a wooded lakeshore. The water looked inhospitable; we would fight both submerged plants and scum on the surface should we attempt to swim it. If we wanted to continue north, we’d have to go around. If we circled east we’d be heading back toward the huntresses; if we went west it would be toward whatever nameless threat waited for us.
“Bugger. Boxed in and we didn’t even know it,” I said. “You okay with turning west, Granuaile?”
Her voice answered from my right. “We don’t have too far to go. It doesn’t look like a long lake. We can swing back north on the other side of it. If vampires are waiting for us, I’d rather get past them if we can before they rise.”
“Good call.”
After clearing the lakeshore and turning north, we broke into an odd-shaped field that might have been natural at one time but had clearly been cultivated in the past. Now it lay fallow, with random weeds and grasses sprouting out of it. It was the sort of place one expected to find deer and the like, but no whitetails bounded away from us. No birds chirped either. Despite being in camouflage, I felt exposed. When moving quickly like this, I wasn’t exactly invisible; the camouflage couldn’t keep up with the constantly shifting background and I could be seen as a distinct blur, especially since there was still a bit of sunlight left.
Oberon, do you smell anything?
I don’t like this meadow. There’s something out—
Chapter 10
When the blurred shape of Atticus fell in front of me, at first I thought he’d simply tripped and I almost laughed, because pratfalls have been amusing since the Stone Age. Then I heard the belated crack of a rifle to the south and Oberon’s startled cry:
Stay with him, I said, as the training kicked in and I turned toward the direction of the shot. I’m on the threat. There was nothing I could do for Atticus that he couldn’t do for himself, except address the sniper. And by address I meant destroy him, no shriving time allowed. My scruples regarding the taking of life evaporate when people try to kill us.
I was still invisible, but that was way too close for a random shot—especially since he’d obviously hit Atticus while he was in camouflage. Logic dictated that the sniper must be able to see us—probably using an infrared scope. Our spells did wonders in the visible spectrum but did nothing to mask our heat signatures.
Though I was reluctant to do it, I dropped my staff and said goodbye to my invisibility. Atticus had taught me that superior fighters sometimes lose because of a failure to adapt to a shift in the enemy’s tactics. The enemy had clearly come prepared to fight against camouflage and invisibility, so it was time to mix it up. Sniper rifles are usually mounted on stands or pods and are ill suited to taking out fast-moving aerial targets. So I shifted to a peregrine falcon and flew as fast as I could. I still wasn’t terribly good at flying, but I figured it would get me above the canopy in one piece. Once I was above the trees, he’d have more trouble finding me than I would have finding him.
Stay and guard him, Oberon. Trying to make sure we don’t get shot at anymore. I’ll be there as soon as I can.
I hoped it wasn’t serious. Blood on the ground sounded serious, but I couldn’t begin to think about what that might mean yet. If I allowed myself to get distracted, I wouldn’t survive. Fight now, feel later.
Another shot boomed through the early evening, but it wasn’t close enough for me to sense its passing. I saw the muzzle flash and banked around in that direction.
My eyesight as a falcon made me feel half blind as a human by comparison; I could see three times the detail with my black eyes that I could with my green eyes. I could clearly track the sniper abandoning his stand and rifle and running through the forest from two hundred yards away. From that distance, he was one hell of a sniper to hit Atticus on the run.
He pulled a sidearm from his vest—one of the bulletproof type, not a waistcoat—and loaded a round into the chamber. All black gear, no natural materials for me to bind, and if I’d been trying to follow him with human eyes, even with night vision, he’d be tough to spot. But I was looking at him through a raptor’s eyes: His silhouette stood out against the forest floor like ink on bristol board.
The sidearm would be a problem if he got a chance to use it. He hadn’t exhibited any supernatural powers yet—nothing vampiric, anyway—but he clearly had some paramilitary training at the very least, if not the real thing. I couldn’t take him out as a falcon, so I considered my alternatives as I closed the distance between us. If I swooped down on him and changed to human, he might be able to get a lucky shot into me despite my training. I needed a quick kill. Dropping onto him as a sea lion was obviously a nonstarter, and horses are not generally known for their mad assassination skills. I did have a jaguar form, but it was problematic for me. It came with an extraordinary sense of smell that triggered uncontrollable sneezing fits—at least, it had the first time I tried it. I hadn’t taken the form since shortly after my tattoos were complete. I’d been too afraid to smell all those horrible things again. What if I turned into a jaguar, all snarly and toothy, and just sneezed on the guy instead of slaying him? He’d shoot me for sure, and that would be such a stupid way to die.
But I had done some reading on how jaguars hunt. They had a surefire kill move, and I was fairly certain I could pull it off if I didn’t think about
it too much.
The guy looked up over his shoulder and I saw the infrared goggles. I dove in response, assuming he’d take a wild shot. He didn’t; I’m not sure he spotted me. I threaded my way through the canopy and then leveled out underneath it, gaining on him fast and still maintaining some altitude above him. He was changing directions, little jukes here and there to try to fake me out. That wasn’t going to happen. He might be a trained soldier, but there was no way he could hope to be faster than me as a falcon—or as a jaguar, for that matter, or even in my normal form juiced up on the earth’s magic.
I pointed myself to a spot ahead of him and folded my wings in tight against my body, gaining speed as I dove and keeping silent. I quietly opened my beak to its full extent as I approached the top of his head and shifted to a jaguar an instant before landing heavily on top of him. I rode him down to the ground, my jaws clamped around his skull, and bit down as hard as I could. He screamed and shot the gun once, a spasm of his finger more than anything else, and died with his blood filling my mouth. He twitched a few times, and that, coupled with his blood and brains on my tongue, freaked me out. I shifted to human and couldn’t control my revulsion: I spat a couple of times, felt the chunks of brain pass my lips, and then vomited right on top of his body. It was so much worse than sneezing. I crawled away as soon as my stomach gave me half a chance.
Threat neutralized, I told Oberon.
He still hasn’t moved or said anything to you?
Something lurched in my stomach again, and I suddenly felt cold. I heard a tiny voice wail, no no no, but there was no one else around to make those sounds but me.
You didn’t say that before! I scrambled to my feet and pelted back toward the meadow, leaving the sniper’s body to rot.