Hounded tidc-1
Page 25
“My authority is here.” I waved Fragarach and tapped its power to send a gust of wind at Aenghus. I only meant to intimidate him with its creepiness, but I must have put too much of my anger behind it, because the gust was so powerful it blew him backward onto his silver-plated derriere.
I noticed that I had lost some energy by performing that little trick; the power to control winds may be inherent to Fragarach, but the will and force had to come from somewhere, and since I couldn’t tap the earth here, it came directly from me—that is, it came from the energy Morrigan had lent me. That changed everything: If I was going to get tired, I couldn’t fight him the same way. He was in the same situation, of course, so instead of charging him, I remained where I was and laughed. Go ahead, Aenghus, get angry. Throw some magic at me and spend yourself, and see what happens.
I put my left hand up to my necklace to reassure myself that it was still there and undamaged, as Aenghus struggled to get up. The spikes on the backs of his calves and the spurs on his ankles were giving him trouble, and I laughed all the harder. The werewolves started yipping at him too; most of the little demons had either cleared off or been killed, so they were able to watch the spectacle a bit and enjoy the silver man’s difficulty.
His face red and flushed, he gave me one of those “You will pay!” looks and whipped his left hand at me as if he were throwing a Frisbee. But what came at me wasn’t a pleasantly spinning plastic disc—it was a bright orange ball of hellfire, the sort that you get to fling around only if you’ve made a deal you really shouldn’t have.
I’m not going to pretend my sphincter didn’t clench—my survival instinct is too well developed—but other than that I gave no outward sign that I was concerned about the hellfire as I stood my ground. Now I’d find out how good my amulet was.
You know how it feels when you’ve nuked a Hot Pocket and you touch it too fast before it cools down? Well, the hellfire was like that: a flash of intense heat that was gone in less than a second, leaving nary a mark but setting my entire body to sweating.
Aenghus couldn’t believe it. He thought he’d see a crispy critter clutching a glowing sword, but instead he saw an annoyed, very live Druid staring back at him, clutching a glowing sword.
“How is that possible?” he erupted. “Druids have no defense against hellfire! You should be dead!”
I said nothing but began to circle around to my right, trying to get to some ground that wasn’t covered with slippery demon leftovers.
It was at this point that the figure on the pale horse began to laugh. Everything in the meadow stopped breathing, listened to the cloaked figure’s hoarse, raspy chuckle, and wondered what it thought was so funny.
Taking advantage of the pause, Aenghus Óg’s uncertainty, and the dry ground, I charged. What more was there to say? I’d sentenced him to death, and he’d demonstrated he wouldn’t submit meekly, so there was nothing left but to go to’t.
I wanted one of those fabulous anime moments where the hero sticks the sword into the bad guy’s guts and everything quivers, even the sweat droplets, and the bad guy vomits blood and says something in a tiny surprised voice, like, “That really was a Hattori Hanzo sword,” right before he dies. Alas, it was not to be.
Aenghus had been something of a swordsman in his earlier days; he’d helped the Fianna out of a tight spot or two—he had serious battlefield cred, unlike Bres. He parried my first flurry of blows, cursing all the while and promising to mutilate my body and then dig up the bones of all my descendants and turn them into glue, blah blah blah. He tried to back up, disengage, and give himself some space to begin a counterattack. That was precisely what I could not afford, so I pressed the attack and realized we were both fighting in the old Irish patterns—which was perhaps all he knew. But it certainly wasn’t all I knew. I hadn’t spent centuries in Asia and the last ten years sparring with a vampire to fall into old ruts like that. I switched my attack pattern to a Chinese series of forms that incorporated some deceptive wrist movements, and that brought me some success: He crossed his sword above him to parry a blow from above, only to find that it was coming from the side instead. The blade bit deep into his left arm above the elbow, and I snapped it out when I felt it hit bone. He yowled his pain and I think he tried to say something, but it was so mangled with spittle and inchoate rage that I didn’t process a word. His left arm was useless now, hanging there like a mesquite branch damaged in a monsoon, and his balance would be skewed. I could gamble a wee bit—people with poor balance rarely win sword fights.
I backed off and let him bleed, allowing him to weaken with every passing second. He’d use some power to stop the bleeding, and that was fine with me; he’d still be weakened, and there was no way he could knit the muscle tissue in time. It was his turn to attack. I knew he’d do it; at this point we hated each other as much as it was possible for two Irishmen to do—and that’s quite a bit.
“You’ve hounded me for centuries,” I growled. “And you might have hounded me for many more, but your petty jealousy of Brighid has brought you to this end.”
“Your end, you mean!” Aenghus roared, completely unhinged by my reducing all his elaborate schemes to a case of sibling rivalry. He lunged at me with a long diagonal hack, with all his strength behind it. But I knew how he fought now—the same old way. I saw it coming, and I knew I was faster, and stronger too. I parried his blade by sweeping mine in a rainbow move to my right, so that his sword was underneath mine when I brought it down and his sword arm was crossed in front of him. I stepped forward quickly and whipped Fragarach through his neck before he could regain his balance and try a backhand. His head tumbled backward, eyes wide in surprise, and wound up bouncing off his back as he fell to the ground.
“No, I meant your end,” I said.
Death laughed again and goaded his horse toward us. I stood aside as the rider reached down and scooped Aenghus Óg’s head from the ground, then began to tack his horse back around to the fire pit, laughing maniacally all the while.
The love god’s mouth did not move, but still I heard him protest, No! The Morrigan is supposed to take me! Not you! Morrigan! Take me to Tír na nÓg! Morrigaaaaan!
The pale horse of Death leapt with its rider and cargo into the fire pit and descended back to hell, and I was finally free of Aenghus Óg.
Chapter 25
You got it, buddy. Let me get the werewolf free first so the Pack doesn’t think I’m insulting them. You understand the need for diplomacy here, right?
The werewolves gave me some appreciative yips as I approached Hal and took the black bag off his head. His eyes were yellow and his wolf wanted out, but the silver wrapped around him was preventing it. His chest was heaving, and he was just barely able to hold on to his language faculties.
“Thanks … Atticus,” he managed. “Saw through pack link … you know red-haired woman … who warned about silver traps.”
“Yes, I do. That was Flidais.” I frowned as I bent to examine his chains. They were locked with a padlock, and I wasn’t a locksmith. Trying to dissolve the chains magically would take too much time. Someone had to have the key. “Why do you ask?”
“She was the one … who kidnapped us!”
“What? I thought that was Emily.”
“No.” He shook his head. “No. She drove car. Flidais talked us into … backseat.”
I looked over at Oberon. “Why didn’t you mention this before?” I asked aloud so all could hear.
“Fair enough,” I said. “
Hal, I need a key. Any idea who has it?”
He jerked his chin in the direction of Radomila’s remains. “Dead witch.”
“Yuck. That’s going to be messy.” I walked over to the other side of the cabin where the cage was and grimaced at Laksha’s handiwork. Radomila had been wearing a fine leather jacket, and once I dragged her corpse to the edge of the cage where I could reach her pockets, I found several keys in her right one. There was a lock on the cage she was in, and I unlocked that first to go inside and retrieve the necklace for Laksha. It was a bloody mess—the phrase “o’ersized with coagulate gore” came to mind—but since she had caused it, I figured she couldn’t complain.
I went over to Hal next, who was panting heavily in anticipation. “Are you going to go wolf as soon as I unlock this?”
He nodded, too wound up to answer.
“All right. Tell the Pack this for me: If they see Flidais, leave her alone. She has promised to come back and help with your wounded. What I need you to do is go after Emily and bring me her head.”
That got his attention. “Her … head?”
“Yes, I need it. Do what you want with the rest. But don’t tear after her until we make sure those traps are disabled. Either Flidais can tell us or Laksha might be able to, when she gets here.”
“There is no need, Druid,” said the Morrigan, who had flown down and taken her human form beside me. She was naked again—must be feeling randy after watching an ancient rival get decapitated. “The traps expired when that witch did,” she said, gesturing at Radomila’s leftovers. “They were not permanent enchantments.”
“Thank you, Morrigan,” I said, and turned to Hal and began unlocking him. “There you go. Hunt well. I’ll wait here and take care of your wounded as best I can.”
The chains smoked a bit where they had come into contact with Hal’s flesh, peeling some of the skin away with them. He hissed and snarled and changed form as soon as the silver chains were off him, ripping right through his nice three-thousand-dollar suit, for which I had no doubt I would be billed. The Pack surrounded him and welcomed him back, then he took his place next to Gunnar as they ran to the spot where Emily had left the meadow, to begin their hunt.
“Did you ever find that bloodsucking demon, Morrigan?” I asked as I unlocked Oberon. He gave me some sloppy kisses and I hugged him.
“Found and destroyed,” she said. “Did you notice that my casting came true?”
“Aye, I noticed that,” I replied, smiling. “Though it applied to Aenghus Óg, as I’d rather hoped. May I ask you something?”
“Certainly.”
“Did you tell Aenghus Óg of our arrangement? That you would never take me?”
She slunk up next to me and overwhelmed my libido with that peculiar magic of hers, which my amulet could mute but not negate. She ran a fingernail down my bare chest and I forgot to breathe.
“Oh, but I am going to take you, Druid,” she said, “many times, when you have recovered your strength.” She snaked her tongue into my remaining ear.
“That’s not what I meant,” I managed to say, pulling away. I determinedly began to think of baseball. Randy Johnson pitching. Great player, but not sexy. No sex. Stay focused. “Did you tell him you would never come for me?”
She laughed throatily and latched on to my left side again, her breath tickling my neck, and I reddened.
“I mean, did you tell him that you’d never take my life?”
“Yessss,” she whispered in my ear, and I had to close my eyes. Two outs, nobody on, bottom of the first. Completely unsexy.
“Why?”
She dug her nails into my pecs and I gasped, remembering when they were talons.
“I wanted him to summon Death,” she said, “so that when you killed him, I would never have to see him again. I knew he would do it when I told him of our agreement, and he did. Thus I am eternally revenged for millennia of petty annoyances. He is now in a hell he never imagined for himself, denied his rest in Tír na nÓg. Am I not a fearsome enemy?”
“You frighten me primally.”
The Morrigan sighed and ground her pelvis against my leg. What do you know? She liked to be told she was scary. Kinky.
“Why did he want Fragarach so badly?” I wondered. “I never got to ask him.”
“There is a faction in Faerie—a rather large one—that thinks you should not wield it, since you are neither Fae nor of the Tuatha Dé Danann. They think Brighid has let too many of the old ways go, and allowing you to keep Fragarach is something they point to as evidence of their claims.”
“So I’m a political football in Tír na nÓg.”
“I don’t know what a football is,” she breathed in my ear. “But I know you are aroused.” Her left hand caressed the flat of my stomach and started to trail south to my jeans. “You cannot hide this from me.”
She abruptly whipped her head to the northeast, and fun time was over. “Flidais approaches. We will speak later. You have some power to return to me. Spend the night regenerating your own, and I will return in the morning.” The Morrigan turned back into a crow and flew off to the southwest even as Flidais entered the meadow from the opposite direction.
The goddess of the hunt gave me a cursory wave and ran over to Dr. Snorri Jodursson, who looked like a silver pincushion. Of the three other wolves who had fallen, two were turned back to human form, which meant they were dead. No wonder Hal and the Pack were so eager to catch up with Emily.
Oberon said, as I ran to help the other surviving werewolf. He loped easily alongside me, happy to stretch his legs.
In a sense. She serves two masters.
Herself and Brighid.
I smiled. I missed you, Oberon. Let’s see what we can do for this werewolf.
It was a female I didn’t recognize. She growled and snarled when she first saw us come into view, but she subsided abruptly after she recalled we had been with the Pack. She had been stabbed under the left front leg and had a gash across the tendons of her right. They didn’t look life-threatening, but she couldn’t walk and the wounds wouldn’t heal because of the silver traces in them.
My magic wouldn’t work on her—werewolf immunity—but if I could get her wounds cleaned up she would heal herself. Easier said than done.
“Oberon, do you smell water anywhere nearby?”
He raised his snout to the air and took a few good long snuffles—he sneezed a couple of times—but he sounded sorry when he replied,
“Aenghus Óg killed the land here. It won’t obey me now.”
“Do not trouble yourself, Druid,” Flidais said from twenty yards and closing, running over to help. “I can clean the wounds without water and get her healing started.”
“You can? You’re already finished with Snorri?” I looked over at Snorri, who was still lying on the ground as before but without all the needles in him.
“I am. He is healing now. And soon this one will do the same,” she said, kneeling down on her haunches and placing her tattooed hand on the werewolf’s cut leg. “Her name is Greta.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I told you I would come back to heal the Pack.”
“But you were the one who kidnapped Hal and Oberon and put them in a position to be harmed.”
Flidais hissed with impatience. “I did so onl
y at the instruction of Brighid.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. “What?”
“Do not pretend you cannot follow me,” she snapped. “You know us well, and we know you even better. Admit it, Druid: Without your friends being held hostage, there was a significant chance you would have simply fled the confrontation. Brighid did not want that to happen, so I provided Aenghus Óg with a lever to make sure you showed up to be attacked. Thus Brighid got what she wanted—the removal of a rival—and Aenghus got what he deserved.”
During this conversation, I missed what exactly Flidais did to remove the silver—I wanted to learn the trick, because it could come in handy later—but when I looked back down, the werewolf’s wounds were already beginning to close, and the last thing I wanted was to be in Flidais’s debt. I supposed I would have to find a lever against her.
I was flabbergasted by the extent to which I had been manipulated by various members of the Tuatha Dé Danann. I had indeed been a pawn for Brighid, Flidais, and the Morrigan—a pawn who took down two very troublesome gods. Still, there were clear blessings to be thankful for: I was still alive, and my worst enemy was in hell instead of angling to become First among the Fae. I could think of nothing else to say to Flidais that would not get me in trouble, so I took refuge in good manners.
“Thank you for healing the Pack, Flidais.”
“It was my pleasure,” she said, rising. “And now I get an even greater pleasure. Did you see that one of the large demon rams escaped?”
“Yes, I saw that. Big lad, he was.”
“I’m going after him now.” She grinned. “He’s had a decent head start. Rams like him are casters, you know. It’s going to be a fine chase, a finer battle, and he’ll be a choice trophy on the wall of my lodge.”
“Happy hunting.”
“Fare you well, Druid,” she said, and then she sprinted toward Haunted Canyon, using who knew what for energy in this wasted land. The Tuatha Dé Danann obviously had access to a power source that I did not—but I could see now that they had labored for millennia to preserve the fiction that they were as limited as Druids were. Perhaps it did not matter anymore to keep it a secret: Who was I going to tell?