by M. D. Massey
“Not at all, Larry.” I reached out in my mind and called for the Druid Oak, which zapped into existence right before our eyes. “And what do you know—here’s our ride.”
When we arrived at our rendezvous point on the mesa, the Pack had already split up. The plan was for them to melt into the park posing as tourists and campers, and then head back to Austin separately in small groups so as not to attract attention from Cerberus. But that ended up being an unnecessary measure.
After their disastrous run-in with the Dark Druid’s undead army, and finding zero trace of us in the aftermath, Mendoza and Cerberus left the park. Samson’s government law enforcement connections informed him that Cerberus had gathered their dead and wounded and headed back to their secret hideout to lick their wounds. Word was, the entire operation had been categorized as a complete and utter disaster, leaving Mendoza in hot water with his superiors.
Once Samson told us it was safe, I called Maureen to see how she and Finnegas were doing. Kenzie Kupert of Borovitz and Feldstein, Attorneys at Law, had called earlier to inform us that the Department of Homeland Security had called off their investigation. Even so, I doubted we’d seen the last of Agent Mendoza.
Although the feds had backed off, Maureen seemed to think it best that I steer clear of the junkyard for a while. Finnegas agreed, saying a little time away wouldn’t hurt anything, as we all needed breathing room to process what had happened. Just in case Cerberus came sniffing around again, we had Borovitz and Feldstein do some asset protection trickery on the property, transferring ownership into a trust that had so many layers of ownership that no one could possibly trace the title back to me. Then, Maureen gave everyone notice that I was taking a break from my job as Druid Justiciar.
Once all that had been taken care of, I took Fallyn and Hemi back to Austin. Hemi was eager to get back to his apartment and domestic life with Maki, but Fallyn, not so much. Since time moved much more slowly in the Grove, the werewolf stuck around for a few days to help me get situated. I won’t say the company wasn’t welcome.
It’s kind of weird, living inside a sentient pocket dimension that anticipates your every need. If we were hungry, fruits and nuts would fall from the trees, perfectly ripe and ready for harvest. Or, the Grove would portal us somewhere that Fallyn could hunt for game. And while we didn’t need shelter there since the weather was always perfect, I still spent time crafting a cottage from the inside of a massive redwood tree trunk the Grove had provided for the purpose.
Once I was done, Fallyn and I stood back to admire my work.
“Looks like some elves should be baking cookies in there,” she remarked drily.
“Hmm—I guess it does have a sort of Keebler vibe to it,” I said as I looked it over. “But to be honest, I was kind of going for the whole ‘hobbit-hole’ look.”
“Then why didn’t you build it in the ground, doofus?” she asked.
“Doofus? Now you’re just being mean. Anyway, it’d take way too long to create all the interior woodwork, plaster, and lathing needed to make an earth home cozy.”
“Duh! After all that time we spent in caves recently, and you didn’t think to use stone?”
I rubbed a hand along the bark next to the door, which I’d fashioned using my druidic control of the Grove. Here, I could pretty much make anything with enough time and imagination—that is, within the limits of the raw materials available, and so long as it didn’t offend the Grove or Oak.
I shook my head. “Staying away from caves and stone was kind of the point. I’m not too fond of being underground, you know.” I took her by the hand and led her to a nearby bench that I’d formed from the tree’s roots. “Come, have a seat. We need to talk.”
She frowned slightly and her eyes narrowed. “You’d better not be dumping me before we’ve even gone on a date.”
“What? No, it’s not that. Just—sit down. Please.” I patted the bench beside me.
She hesitated a moment longer then did as I asked, pulling her hand away so she could cross her arms.
“Alright, speak,” she said, her voice devoid of emotion.
“Guarded much?” I asked. “Sheesh. All I was going to say was that I want to keep spending time with you. But in light of recent events, I thought it would be wise to keep things, you know, platonic.”
The tight set of her lips relaxed as her eyes lit up with amusement. “Holy shit, Colin, is that all? And what made you think you were going to get into my pants in the first place?”
“Wait—what? I never said…” She laughed and slugged me on the shoulder, hard enough to leave a mark. “Ow!”
“Oh suck it up, you big baby.” Fallyn crossed her legs, resting her forearms on them as she leaned in to look me in the eye. The look she gave me was warm, friendly, and altogether unsettling. “Colin, I appreciate where you’re coming from. And honestly, I still feel guilty about maneuvering for you the way I did back at the park, right before Jesse died. So sure, take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”
I cleared my throat. “That’s just the thing, see? I’m going to be in here, training with Finnegas, Hideie, and—er, others, while you’re in the real world. You’ve seen how time passes here, right? It might seem like weeks have passed here for me, while for you it’ll only be hours, if that.”
Her almost-yellow hazel eyes bored into mine. “So what you’re saying is, you might want to take the next step sooner than later?”
“From your perspective, yes. Although I might spend months or years in here before that happens.”
She smiled and reached out to cradle my cheek in her hand. At first it was a gentle gesture, then she patted my face in a playfully rough manner. “Sounds like a pretty damned convenient arrangement to me. You take your time—in here—but don’t you dare forget about me while you’re learning how to be a jedi or whatever.”
I chuckled and rubbed my cheek. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
The next night, I dreamed of Jesse.
We were outside the Dagda’s cottage in Underhill, walking through fields of wheat that were ripe and ready for harvest. Birds, bees, and dragonflies flitted and flew lazily overhead and amidst the rolling acres of grain. The sun was shining, a soft breeze blew, and the air smelled like honeysuckle and rich, moist dirt.
I glanced around, taking in our surroundings. The entire place had a dreamlike, fairytale quality to it, like that scene in Gladiator when Maximus finally reaches the Elysian fields and is reunited with his family. It was like looking at a photo-processed Thomas Cole painting, awash with a permanent golden light and soft-muted so only beauty showed through, sans the harsh details of reality.
I looked over at Jesse, who had the same ethereal quality about her, from the flowers in her neatly braided hair to the long, gauzy, flowing dress she wore, to her perfectly clean bare feet. She looked exactly like she had the day before her first death, in the full bloom and beauty of her youth and health. More than anything, that’s what tipped me off with regards to our location.
“This isn’t Underhill,” I said.
“No, it isn’t. Part of my deal with The Dagda was that he’d take me to Tír na nÓg once my task was complete.”
“And what exactly was that task?” I asked.
“Haven’t you figured it out? He needed you to bond with the Oak and Grove, to become its master. Druidry was dying out, Colin. I’d died, you were reluctant to continue your studies, and Finnegas doesn’t have much time left. If Finn had passed on without completing your training, there’d be no one left to keep druidry alive.”
“Except the Fear Doirich,” I remarked.
“And what a horrible legacy for The Dagda to leave,” she replied. “Do you think he wanted that, for all that knowledge to be left in the hands of a madman?”
“It’s hard to say what the Tuatha want, Jesse. Their motives are as twisted and warped as those of the fae. Even the ones history and legend call ‘good’ can’t be trusted.”
“But sometimes, they tell the t
ruth. Like when the Dagda told me I wouldn’t last long after you bonded with the Grove.”
“That’s why you were so sullen after you became human again,” I said.
“I couldn’t tell you,” she replied. “Because I knew you’d try to stop it. And you needed the Grove’s magic—all of it—to help you survive facing the Fear Doirich.”
“Yeah, Jess, but if I’d known, I would’ve kept you away from him and protected you instead of leaving you alone.”
“I’d have died regardless, and you would’ve blamed yourself. It was better that I die at his hands.”
“You let yourself be taken.”
She smiled, but her eyes were wet with tears. “Once you claimed the Oak and bonded with the Grove, the magic that sustained me was supposed to pass back to you, fully. I wasn’t even supposed to come back again—my spirit was meant to move on to Tír na nÓg. The only reason why I came back was because you wouldn’t let me die. The Grove sensed your desires, so it left some of its magic behind with my mortal remains.”
I nodded—now it all made sense. “And that left you somewhere in between life and death.”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen that way, but yes.”
“Why’d you do it, Jess? Not being taken, I mean, but the whole thing?”
She looked away in an attempt to hide whatever emotions were written on her face. Sadness, mostly, with traces of regret. “The Dagda showed me a thousand futures where you faced the Dark Druid without having claimed the Druid Oak or bonded with the Grove, and you died every single time. As I said, the only chance you had of surviving that confrontation was with the Grove’s magic. There was no other way.”
I laughed, mirthlessly. “And typical of the gods, he failed to understand human emotion and motives. He figured the spirit of the Grove would be irresistible to me cloaked in your form.”
“And with my spirit cohabiting the body of the dryad, he thought it’d be a done deal from the start.”
I exhaled heavily. “You knew better, Jesse. Again, why’d you do it?”
She took my hands in hers. “Because it was a chance to be with you, one last time. I’ve never stopped loving you, Colin, and my love has never changed. It broke my heart to watch you move on and become involved with Belladonna. But I also knew it was the best thing for you at the time.”
I snorted. “Yeah, that worked out well.”
“She was your rebound girl, slugger. Did you really think it’d last?”
“Belladonna is a good person, Jesse. She didn’t deserve what happened to her—to us.”
Jesse gave me a sad smile. “Life’s not fair, Colin. And you can’t go back—you can never go back. If this whole experience should have taught you anything, it’s that.”
My cheeks were wet with tears. “I still wish I’d never have asked you to come with me that day at the baseball fields. I should’ve just left you to get ice cream with your family, instead of dragging you into this life with me.”
“I don’t really think that was your call,” she said as she brushed a tear from my cheek.
I looked around at Tír na nÓg, at the fairytale perfection of the place. “You don’t belong here, Jesse. You should be somewhere else, where you can be reunited with your family and loved ones when they pass.”
“This is just a rest stop, Colin.” She smiled at me with bittersweet warmth. “I was with you from the start, and my heart is with you to the end. Until you need me again, I’ll be here, waiting.”
“Will you be okay?”
Jesse nodded. “I will, don’t you worry.” She stood on her tiptoes, leaning in close as if to give me a kiss. Instead, her lips caressed my ear as she whispered, nearly inaudibly. “The gods have their eyes on you, McCool. Whatever you do, don’t let anyone know about your relationship with the Welshman. Your life depends on it!”
She pulled away quickly, looking over her shoulder with worry in her eyes. “Colin, I—”
The next moment, I was awake in my bed in the Grove. Only Roscoe and Rufus were there—I’d refused to leave them at the junkyard, and they’d seemed happy to chase the Grove’s rabbits and lounge all day in the sun. As I swung my legs off the side of the bed, Roscoe walked over and nudged my hand.
I wiped a few tears away as I absently rubbed his neck with my other hand.
“It’s alright, boy. I’ll be fine. It’s just going to take some time.”
Epilogue
Austin, Texas, 3:17 am.
(A large oak tree suddenly appears in the Barton Creek greenbelt near Zilker Park, close enough to local retail stores to get a decent Wi-Fi signal. A young man steps out from behind the tree with two pitbull mixes in tow. He sits down with his back against the trunk, pulls out a smart phone, and brings up a live feed of the local news. The dogs sniff around the tree and start doing dog stuff.)
Male News Anchor: “…and now we go to the latest weird news story from Mexico City. Susan, what can you tell us about this bizarre situation?”
Female Reporter: “Well, Bob, reports have been pouring in from Mexico's capital city, where eyewitnesses claim they've seen a—well, a giant bat committing acts of heroism. One woman says the bat pulled her baby from a burning building, a skydiver says the giant creature saved him after his chute failed to open, and yet another eyewitness saw what he described as a ‘bat-like man’ swoop in to catch a suicide jumper before he fell to his death. And footage has even been floating around the internet of an attempted robbery that was supposedly foiled by this bat creature.”
(The news cuts to grainy footage of an apparent convenience store robbery. A man in a mask pulls a gun, then a dark blur swoops in and the gunman is suddenly gone...)
Female News Anchor: “Wow, Susan, that certainly is some amazing footage. But honestly, does anyone really believe that giant bats are fighting crime in Mexico City? What’s next, chupacabras sniffing for drugs at the border?”
(The news anchors and reporter all share a good chuckle, then the studio cameras cut back to the news anchors.)
Female News Anchor: “And in other news, law enforcement officials south of the border are seeing a massive uptick in drug-related killings as the war between the drug cartels heats up. The latest victim was the leader of the notorious Garcia cartel, Rodolfo Garcia himself. Mexican police report his body was found in his bed, completely exsanguinated, with no signs of gunfire or struggle.”
Male News Anchor: “Now, for the local weather…”
(The young man releases a sigh as he shuts off the phone screen, just as one of the dogs returns to lay its head in his lap.)
"Well, Rufus, I guess we’d better brush up on our Spanish..."
This concludes Book 8 and the second tetralogy in the Colin McCool urban fantasy series. Be sure to subscribe to my newsletter at https://MDMassey.com to get a free book, and to be among the first to know when I release my next Junkyard Druid novel!
