Hunted

by Kevin Hearne

  I dropped to the ground on my right side, tossed aside Fragarach, and curled into the fetal position, managing to throw a protective left arm across the side of my face and ear. They fell upon me, and their hands latched on to whatever they could and bit down with those palm-jaws like lampreys, uncaring if it was cloth or raw meat underneath. My cold iron aura destroyed them in a puff of ashes before they could take a bite with their much larger mouths, but that didn’t stop them from tearing up two little gobbets of my flesh each and then plopping them wetly back onto my ruined skin as they expired. More of them kept coming; they weren’t quick learners. All they saw when their brothers exploded was a clearer path to dinner. Some of them chomped onto the half-masticated pieces of me that didn’t have to be torn free, but plenty more kept going for the freshest meat available. My whole left side seethed with them, a boiling mess of blood and cloth and ashes mixed with shredded muscle tissue. I triggered my healing charm and let it draw all the magic it wanted; it wasn’t the time for conservation. Even if I somehow survived the onslaught, I’d bleed out quickly if I didn’t get the wounds under control. I didn’t try to shut down the pain, because there was no point in diverting my limited magic to comfort. The verdict on whether I lived or died would be delivered soon enough.

  Had I brought Granuaile and Oberon, they would have been consumed inside a minute. Cold iron was the only thing giving me a wisp of a chance. Hundreds of tiny bites have a way of turning seconds into hours. Teeth scissored through the flesh all along my left side, and then the plosive thump of the faeries’ deaths punched each wound before a new set of teeth took another bite. I gritted my own teeth against the scream that wanted to erupt as my substance was gnawed away. No one would hear me over the screeching of the faeries, and even if they did, it probably wouldn’t be someone anxious to help me. Apart from that, I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, one of the pieholes would reach into mine with its hand-jaws and chomp down on my tongue.

  After an interminable time of sharp, churning pain, the noise and the bites and the deaths ended, leaving me shredded and covered in a thick paste of ashy blood. It drained slowly through the grate in the floor, which I had not been able to see until now—faeries had been everywhere. The floor was indeed a slick quarried stone, sloped gently to encourage the draining of blood—the source of that coppery smell. My thoughts were sluggish and I didn’t want to move lest I exacerbate my condition, but I had to do something. My bear charm was empty, and if I didn’t get out of there soon, I never would. My eyelids drooped and I wanted to sleep but knew I’d never wake up if I did. How had Midhir fed those damn things? He had obviously fed them regularly or the shit wouldn’t be piled so high, and he hadn’t schlepped in victims via the Old Way—it had been unused for centuries before I stepped through. Still, he’d maintained a huge swarm of pieholes here to guard it. That meant it was a weakness in his defenses he’d gone to great lengths to protect.

  I half-dragged, half-flopped my left arm off my face and whimpered when I saw the chewed tissue. Though the blood wasn’t pumping—my healing charm had shut down most of it and I was functioning on collateral circulation—I thought I could see a faint gleam of bone near my wrist and the top of my hand. I felt a new appreciation for the word raw.

  There was no way I’d be able to walk the Old Way out of here. My left leg wouldn’t be in any better condition than my arm, and I was drifting dangerously close to passing out. Even if I could get to my feet, I couldn’t cast magical sight to see the proper path anyway. And that was probably my doom right there; the exit was most likely as plain as day in the magical spectrum if I only knew where to look—the Morrigan had set up something like that at one of her lairs—but all I could see now were very broad hints that I was well and truly fucked.

  I turned my head up to the ceiling and could feel that it had been liberally gnawed on. The haircut Oberon had been suggesting had been delivered by faeries anxious to sample my scalp.

  The ceiling offered no signs of a trapdoor or any other egress. No ladders rose from the floor to the ceiling. But there had to be a way out besides the Old Way in.

  The drain, perhaps? Too small for me. Where was the conveniently human-sized ventilation shaft that appeared in every movie?

  Ventilation, I surmised, was supplied by tiny holes no bigger than a sparrow underneath the shelf of candles. They were gaps, basically, between stones. Large and numerous enough for good air flow, far too small for the tooth faeries—or me—to get through.

  My attention returned to the drain. Too small to squeeze through, but perhaps it led to plain old earth below, something I could tap into and replenish myself.

  Something else was draining through the grate besides my blood. It thinned out and flowed more quickly near my feet. There was water coming from behind me, but just beneath my feet.

  I tried to push myself up using my right arm, but that was a fail; my abdominal muscles, not to mention parts of my back, had been chewed upon and were on strike. I had to pull myself around using only my right side in extremely awkward fashion.

  The water trickled out from a source in the rock wall, no bigger than the ventilation holes above, so it offered no escape. It did offer hope, however.

  That thin trickle represented the only source of water for the pieholes, so they had been careful not to shit anywhere near it. The space on either side was clear for a few feet, and what it revealed was blessed, glorious bare earth. The quarried stone didn’t extend all the way to the walls—it had simply appeared that way on all other sides because the hills of faerie shit obscured the stone’s edge.

  I should have known there would be earth here somewhere. There could hardly be an Old Way without it—nothing to bind to otherwise. Now all I had to do was drag myself over there before I died. It was probably fifteen feet.

  I pushed it as much as I dared and it still took me three or four bloody minutes to inch my way across the slick stone that distance, but the agony of my left side made it seem longer. Based on the look I’d had at my arm and hand, I imagined that my left side looked like ground beef, or like Hel’s dead and rotting half. Most of the motor function was gone, so it was all deadweight. I curled my fingers around the edge of the stone and made one last heave before flopping the back of my undamaged right hand onto the earth. Energy rushed into me through my tattoos, and with it came relief. I drank deeply from the water stream to rehydrate, laboriously shut off every source of pain, and drifted off to sleep, healing now on autopilot.

  When I awoke an indeterminate time after, the candles had either burned out or the magical switch had snuffed them due to a profound lack of movement. I shivered and a new thrill of pain washed up my spine. I was running a fever and had the chills because my many open wounds had no doubt become infected. I took a drink from the stream to slake my parched throat—I’d been unconscious for a good while—and my bladder informed me it was ready for a blowout special. I had to move.

  I tried to lift my left arm experimentally to see what kind of calamity would ensue. Turned out I couldn’t extend it properly or raise it far from my side. It was locked into a bent position because vital hunks of my triceps were missing. My leg was in much the same shape; my range of movement was very limited and it sure wouldn’t hold my weight. I could rebuild all that tissue in a week provided I ate a whole lot of protein and kept in touch with the earth, but there was no food in this chamber. I had been the food. I couldn’t get better until I escaped; I’d only get weaker.

  I filled up my bear charm and then reluctantly removed the back of my hand from the caress of the earth. Firmly bearing down on the pain in my side, I pushed myself up with my right hand until I was leaning, awkwardly, on what I supposed I must call my right flank, though I didn’t generally think of myself as having flanks. The darkness remained uncomfortably Stygian.

  Grunting and sweating with the effort, feeling tugs of tissue that I knew would be screaming at me had I let them, I forced myself to a precarious sitting position—eno
ugh that I could take my weight off my right arm for a few seconds. I lifted it from the floor and waved it madly over my head and almost cried in relief when the candles relit. That was a remarkable binding, and I hoped I’d have an opportunity to learn it.

  Using my right arm for support once again—a bit unsteady and weak—I looked down and gasped. Scabbed and purulent skin covered most of my wounds, but many were still open. With smaller wounds my healing spell could cannibalize tissue from elsewhere to fill in what had been lost, but in this case I’d lost way too much.

  My condition wouldn’t improve until I ate a cow or five. Casting magical sight, I scanned the walls for clues. They were made of flat flagstones piled on top of one another and mortared together with lime. I didn’t spy anything magical until I looked behind me above the spring. One of the stones was outlined in the telltale white glow of magic. I heaved myself slowly over there and pushed it, breathing heavily by the time I made it.

  Crackling and grinding ensued as twenty slabs of stone broke free of the mortar and rotated out into the circular space, forming a stairway beginning directly over the spring and just missing the slope of the first mound of faerie shit. The stones were long ones so that they swung out past the two shelves where the candles rested and the pieholes had roosted. Once safely above the candles, the stones didn’t swing out: A bunch of them swung inward instead, creating a narrow doorway through which I could escape, if only I could get there. Natural light filtered from it, which was especially encouraging.

  Climbing those steps with only half a functioning body wasn’t going to be easy, but I didn’t have a choice, just as I didn’t have a choice about whatever waited for me up there.

  Fragarach still lay where I’d tossed it. The strap to its scabbard had been gnawed through, but the scabbard itself had fallen off my back and looked intact where it lay near the center of the room. I dispelled magical sight and boosted my strength in hopes that it would allow me to move faster. Dragging myself around was still laborious but quicker with the assist. I retrieved Fragarach and slid it into the scabbard, took time to make a generous donation to the drain, and then returned to the bottom of the steps as the energy in my bear charm dwindled. I paused to rest and fill it back up. I’d have to deplete it for strength again to get up the stairs; I doubted I’d be able to make it otherwise.

  Once I was ready, I clutched Fragarach by the scabbard and reached up to the second step, laying it there. Then I placed my hand flat on the step, elbow high, bunched my right leg under me, and pressed myself up to a somewhat vertical if severely asymmetrical position. The movement pulled my mangled left side in new, subtle ways, but the stabbing pain that accompanied it wasn’t subtle. I paused to deal with this torture, then improvised a wretched, miserable bunny hop to ascend the stairs. At the top, gasping and sweating, I discovered that the passage was a very short hallway that led to another open door, through which I could see sunlight on stone and hear the chuckle of a fountain. Once into the hallway I was able to brace myself against the wall and knew that the going would be a tiny bit easier. I closed my eyes and smiled, relieved that I’d made it out of that pit. Whatever awaited me ahead, at least I wouldn’t literally die at the hands of greedy pieholes.

  The open doorway was made of shifted flat stones identical to the ones on the inside of the pit. Hopping through it, I found myself facing a hallway graced with paintings and sculptures and lit by circular skylights spaced periodically down its length. I was standing in a niche with a small stone selkie fountain on one side and a chair on the other, the skylight above me presumably disguising this secret entrance as a reading nook. Or something.

  The ground was blessedly bare underneath my feet, and I could feel the magic there—a common feature of all the homes of the Tuatha Dé Danann. With the exception of a few rooms here and there, they would never willingly cut themselves off from power for the sake of interior design. And who needs a foundation when you can bind everything you need to stay still with the earth’s help? Their estates also rarely had a second floor; if they did, they were reserved for non-magical guests or those who did not depend on the earth for their power. That meant I wouldn’t have to climb any more stairs to find Midhir. Having a steady supply of magic again, I cast camouflage and magical sight. The nose of the selkie fountain glowed white, giving its purpose away, and I pressed it. The stones behind me shifted and the door to the piehole pit closed. Midhir couldn’t have used this as a way to feed them, though; they would have flown out if he had. That meant there was some other way to access the room, but I wasn’t terribly interested now that I was out of there.

  I checked the hall to see if any noises I’d made had drawn attention. Apparently not. There were no signs of magical booby traps in either direction, so I took a cautious hop into an exposed position. Now that I was paranoid about discovery, it sounded abnormally loud. I supposed there was no good way to hop stealthily. Since my left side was ruddy useless, I turned right, holding Fragarach in my hand and using the wall for support, giving it fist bumps as I hopped. It turned to a smooth plaster past the niche, interrupted at intervals by some works of art. The first door I came to led to an unused bedroom. Past it on the left, an open archway hinted at a parlor or library or some other sitting area full of books, and, through that, another room promised a much larger living space that might lead to a kitchen. I hoped I’d make it there and find something to eat. But there was one more door I wanted to check before I crossed the hall and moved on. It wouldn’t do to leave it at my back without knowing what was in there.

  It was another bedroom—the master suite, in fact. It was tastefully appointed with a sod floor fed by regular waterings and sun angling through a long glass panel on the far side of the very high ceiling. On the near side of the ceiling, a wrought-iron chandelier with those ingenious motion-sensing candles flared to life as I opened the door. Midhir—it was definitely him, for I recognized the Druidic tattoos on his biceps—hung upside down from it, wrapped in iron chains to nullify his magic. His throat had been cut, and the blood had sheeted down his face and turned the grass below a dark red. Unable to cast a healing spell and cut off from all earthly aid by his suspension, he’d bled out.

  “Gods below,” I breathed, “I’m in deep shit now.”

  Whoever had done this to Midhir could easily do the same thing to me. I could cast spells past my iron amulet and aura, of course, but wrap me up in that much iron and cut me off from the earth and I was as vulnerable as a tadpole.

  I cast a wild-eyed glance back down the hall, expecting a trap of some sort to be sprung. I immediately assumed I’d either suffer the same fate as Midhir or else be framed for his murder. But seconds ticked by and no cries of alarm sounded. No one snuck up in camouflage and punched me in the junk. The phrase deathly silent came to mind.

  My panic gradually faded as minutes passed and it became clear that the world was unaware that I’d just found the body of an ancient being. Eventually, though, they’d figure it out; if nothing else, once Midhir’s body was discovered, Brighid’s hounds would be brought in and they’d pick up my scent.

  I toyed briefly with the idea of shifting to a hound myself to pick up some scent clues but discarded the idea as unwise when I was so messed up. Hounds can’t hop on one side very well. And, besides, once this got out, Brighid’s hounds would pick up the scent of whoever had really done this.

  Though it was unwise to approach any farther and place myself in the same room as the murder, I spied another tangle of chains, resting on the feather bed. This demanded a closer look, for there were clothes underneath the chains—clothes I thought I recognized. And as a couple of hops improved my angle of vision, I saw that there wasn’t actually a body there—just ashes and foppish clothing that could only belong to Lord Grundlebeard.

  I had no way of knowing if those were really the ashes of Lord Grundlebeard or if he—or someone—was clever enough to fake his death this way. But Midhir’s death certainly wasn’t faked. And a powerf
ul magician like him couldn’t have been so thoroughly dominated this way except by another member of the Tuatha Dé Danann.

  Though I knew it was all conjecture, the deaths of Midhir and Grundlebeard suggested that they had indeed been involved in the hunt for us. They’d kept an eye on Granuaile through divination or else had spoken to someone who did, and then they’d communicated with vampires and dark elves and Fae assassins and shuttled them around the Old World where they’d be most likely to run into us. They’d even told the Olympians where to ambush us back in Romania. And maybe they’d told Ukko where to find Loki, thus setting him free and possibly accelerating the beginning of the end. In that sense, this ending for them felt like justice.

  But they hadn’t been the true bosses. They’d been something akin to executive assistants, a layer of insulation from where the real orders originated, and once Granuaile and I had escaped their net, these two, who could point fingers and name a name, had to be eliminated. Something else clicked into place: It had always bothered me that Faunus began to spread pandemonium throughout Europe at the same time that Perun’s plane was destroyed by Loki. But Grundlebeard could have easily sent a message to Faunus to begin as soon as I arrived at the Fae Court and then made up a cover story to match. He’d probably been the one to send that pod of yewmen after us as well—at someone else’s orders, of course. But now that someone had drunk his milkshake, and Midhir’s too.

  Thinking of milkshakes reminded me of the kitchen and my dire need for protein. There was no good I could do by lingering in the bedroom, but I could do myself all kinds of good if I found something to eat. My stomach clenched and rumbled at the thought—genuine hunger pangs. If I fed it, perhaps I’d be able to think more clearly.

  The parlor-cum-library, when I hopped through it, turned out to be one of my favorite rooms ever. A tree grew in the far corner to my right, its trunk allowed to stretch up through a hole in the ceiling and spread its canopy there. The floor was a lovely trimmed lawn. Starting on either side of the tree, walnut bookshelves lined the walls, oddly but fabulously filled with nothing but graphic novels and manga. Centered in the room, a copy of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta was set precisely in the middle of a matching walnut coffee table set low to the ground, Japanese style. The room invited you to pick a graphic novel and read on the grass, perhaps leaning against the trunk of the tree. But the placement of V for Vendetta bothered me. It hadn’t been casually laid near one of the edges, which would indicate that it had been left by a reader. It was aligned squarely in the center, so that the table edges acted like a frame, directing one’s attention to the cover. Perhaps it was a message of some kind? If so, intended for whom? For whomever found Midhir’s body? If Midhir had been killed to conceal the identity of the real person behind my hunting, was this message intended for me? Or maybe Midhir’s death had nothing to do with me at all. The vendetta might have been against him rather than me, and this timing was entirely coincidental. Regardless, it only increased my suspicion that there was a trap here somewhere and I had yet to spring it.