The Iron Druid Chronicles 6-Book Bundle

by Kevin Hearne

  “Magical? It is an ancient cookbook.”

  I couldn’t believe he was trying to play dumb now. I had that market cornered. “Mr. Elkhashab. Where did you hear of this book and where did you hear that I might have it?”

  “Your store is world famous for antiquities,” he said, not answering either question. “I’m simply contacting as many rare-book dealers as I can.” I gave up trying to be patient. Normal customers don’t look for ancient Coptic texts that should have been burned long ago.

  “Please do not insult my intelligence. Earlier you said you had heard that I might have it. So you were either lying then or you are lying now. I do not need to sell this book, Mr. Elkhashab. I am quite content to keep it, because I think we both know it is the only copy in existence. If you wish to purchase it, you will need to make a trip to the United States and negotiate with me in person. I will not deal with representatives, lawyers, or even familiars.”

  He didn’t splutter or feign ignorance of familiars. He merely said in a stiff voice, “It will take me some time to get there.”

  “I’ll be here,” I said, and then added, “Most likely,” since I didn’t know what kind of time he was talking about.

  “Then I will see you soon,” he said, and hung up. I promptly forgot about him and prepared a blend of Creativi-Tea, since I had some fantasy role-players coming in for their weekly dungeon crawl, and the DM always wanted a little something extra to keep him on top of his players. It was similar to Mental Acui-Tea, which was my most popular blend around midterms and finals. During those weeks, students from Arizona State would file into Third Eye Books and Herbs and buy plenty of sachets to get them through the week—their rationale being that one week of real studying would make up for a semester spent staring at the bottom of a red plastic kegger cup instead of their books. Word of my “sick tea”—where sick had somehow been transmogrified into a positive adjective rather than an indicator of disease—had spread throughout the Greek societies after it helped one frat member pass his finals. This testimonial, along with some others, had given my shop the nickname of “Sick Hippie’s” amongst the wasted dude crowd, as in, “Bro, I need to pass or I’ll be cut off from my trust fundage. Let’s go get some tea at Sick Hippie’s.”

  For the record: I am not a hippie. But I guess in today’s world a knowledge of herbs and a counterculture vibe was enough to earn me the label.

  I happily lost myself in the daily needs of the shop and thought nothing more of the Egyptian, until he walked in a week later.

  When he crossed my threshold, I knew immediately, because the wards on my shop warned me that a magic user had entered my personal space. That’s about all they did, though; I hadn’t set up anything to shut down Egyptian magic systems—the odds of having to deal with that in Arizona were pretty slim.

  He was a middle-aged man with a lengthy but well-groomed beard; it was forked and fell below his sternum. He had wrapped the “tines” of the fork in strips of leather, allowing a puff of hair to explode out the ends. An unabashed unibrow protected deep-set eyes, which flicked about nervously. His hair was hidden underneath a rounded white brimless hat halfway between a skull cap and a fez, the sort commonly seen in North Africa. His kaftan and pants were similarly white, though the kaftan was embroidered with gold thread around the neck and the buttons in the center, and also around the edges of his sleeves. It was a look, in other words, that suggested he was a devout Muslim. I suspected that was a convenient disguise for him, though, or he wouldn’t be tripping my alarms as a magic user.

  After a quick scan of the shop, during which he determined that I was the only employee currently working, he looked disappointed and approached me at the tea station. “Pardon me,” he said in his accented English. “But I am looking for Mr. O’Sullivan.”

  “That’s me.” A twitch of the unibrow indicated his surprise. I look like I’m twenty-one and far too young to be an expert on anything, much less rare books. But he recovered quickly.

  “Excellent! I am Nkosi Elkhashab. We spoke on the phone about the Coptic book full of lamb recipes.”

  “Ah, yes, I remember,” I said. “I assume you wish to see it.”

  “Yes. If it is indeed the book I seek, I hope we can come to some profitable agreement.” He was all smiles and charm.

  “I’ll be happy to show it to you,” I said, “but after lunch.” His face fell. “The book is not currently on-site,” I lied, “but in a secure location. If you come back this afternoon, I will have it ready. Enjoy Tempe, in the meantime. Mill Avenue has many diverting places to shop and eat.”

  The unibrow dipped in the middle, signaling his displeasure, but it smoothed out as he realized that anger would do him no good under the circumstances.

  He nodded curtly and said, “Until this afternoon, then.”

  I nodded back. “See you.” I watched him leave and then picked up the phone to call one of my attorneys, Hal Hauk. As a lawyer, he had his hands in more than a few kinds of pies. As a werewolf, he had his paws in some additional pies made with supernatural ingredients. Some of them were shady. Seedy, even.

  “Hey, Hal. It’s Atticus. Need everything you can dig up on a character calling himself Nkosi Elkhashab out of Egypt.… As soon as possible.… Yep.”

  Hal would hire a private investigator and they’d do what they could from this end, then they’d hire someone in Cairo to find out more. In the meantime, I had my own methods of finding out the truth, and that’s why I needed some time before I sat the grimoire down in front of this guy. He couldn’t be simply a gourmet out to find a gastronomic miracle. Modern recipes for lamb have come a long way. Look at what those guys on the cooking shows can do with mint jellies and mango chutneys.

  I closed up the shop a few minutes before noon and hopped on my bicycle for the short ride home to the Mitchell Park neighborhood. I waved at the widow MacDonagh as I passed; she was cradling a glass of Tullamore Dew and serenely perusing the pages of a gory British crime novel. She was a sweet lady from the old country for whom I occasionally did some yard work, and who always enjoyed harassing me.

  “Ye should wear a helmet or some knee pads, ye know,” she called from the porch. “It’s dangerous to be that sexy ’round here, heh heh.”

  At home, a couple of barks came from indoors: my Irish wolfhound announced that he was guarding the place before he realized it was me. Through the special binding I’d created between us years ago, I heard his thoughts in my head:

  Yep. Home for a quick bite and to pick up something. Think you can handle some tuna salad for lunch? I opened the front door and he was there, tail wagging. I gave him some love behind the ears and chucked him under the chin.

 

  Sorry, Oberon, they’re not going to get stoned on your tuna breath.

 

  Sure. I opened three cans of tuna—two for Oberon and one for me—and mixed up a quick salad with some celery, chives, chopped grapes, and mayo. I slapped this mixture between fresh bread with some romaine lettuce and called it lunch. I took it with me into the garage, where I had a large iron trunk bound shut in several ways. Only one of them was a traditional, mundane padlock. It took me about ten minutes to unbind everything, but once the lid was free to lift up on its hinges, I extracted a scabbard with a very special sword inside.

  It was Fragarach—absolutely no relation to Fraggle Rock—an ancient Fae sword that I had come by about as honestly as I’d come by the Grimoire of the Lamb. Since there were a couple of Irish gods who’d dearly like to have it back, I tended to shield it in iron from divination and not play with it too much. For this occasion, it was worth the risk of revealing my hiding place. Fragarach’s name in Irish means the Answerer, due to an enchantment on it that forces
targeted dastardly types to answer questions truthfully. It would help me solve a mystery that had perplexed me for centuries.

  I had the grimoire waiting on the counter for Mr. Elkhashab when he returned to the store. While the light of avarice blazed in his eyes as he flipped greedily through the pages “for appraisal,” I brought out Fragrach from under the counter and spoke the words that would ensnare him.

  “Freagroidh tu,” I said, and the Egyptian wizard was abruptly caught in a hazy blue aura that would not let him move or speak untruths in answer to my questions.

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  “Nkosi Elkhashab.” So he hadn’t been lying about that.

  “What is your quest?”

  “To find the lost book of Amun.”

  I would ask him more about that in a moment, but I couldn’t resist completing the Monty Python line first: “What … is your favorite color?”

  “Red.”

  “Why do you wish to find this lost book?”

  “The thirteen spells will restore Egypt to its rightful place as supreme among the world.”

  So it wasn’t an ordinary cookbook after all. “You told me they were lamb recipes before. What are they really?”

  “They are recipes to alter fate. Six recipes alter your destiny in different ways; seven alter the destinies of your enemies.”

  “Let me guess. The thirteenth recipe slays your enemy.”

  “Correct.”

  Well, I no longer had to wonder why this book was in the restricted section. “Why do all the recipes involve lamb?”

  “None of them involve lamb.”

  That slowed me down. “Lamb is listed as the first ingredient in every recipe.”

  “No. The lamb is supposed to be sacrificed to Amun before you begin the recipe.”

  Gods below! Blood sacrifice to kill your enemies or make yourself rich or whatever definitely classified the grimoire as a book from the dark side. And this guy couldn’t wait to get his hands on it.

  “Where did you hear about this book?” I asked him.

  “I used to work in the Ministry of Antiquities. We discovered some records at the Alexandria site some years ago, and I came across a reference to the work there. It made clear that the book had been removed before Aurelian. Its existence was confirmed in other work I recently discovered.”

  “How did you find out about the sacrificing of the lambs and everything?”

  “It is described in the writings of Nebwenenef, Egypt’s greatest sorcerer. He is the author of this grimoire.”

  I blinked, then swallowed. In the origin story of Druids that every archdruid taught his apprentices, Nebwenenef was the name of the sorcerer who’d killed the Saharan elemental five thousand years ago. But the grimoire was a first- or second-century work. How did he write it if he’d already been dead for three thousand years? “Where did you find these writings?”

  “Underneath my home.”

  “It was buried?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who else has seen these writings?”

  “No one.”

  That was a small blessing, at least. “Do you know who I am?” I asked. This was a rather important question and not intended as a threat to him in any way. If he knew too much, I’d have to leave the area.

  “You are Atticus O’Sullivan, rare-book dealer.”

  “That’s all you know about me?”

  “You clearly have some magical talent. I am not sure how much or of what kind.”

  Maybe not all was lost, then.

  “How did you discover I might have a copy of this book?”

  “I summoned an imp of the Fourth Circle of Hell. He told me.”

  Well, that would do it. And it also meant I was probably still safe here; the imp would have already traveled back to hell without telling anybody else where or who I was, or this guy wouldn’t be standing in front of me now. “So you dabble in all sorts of black magic, not simply the Egyptian sort?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the imp told you what about me, exactly?”

  “He said you possessed the lost book of Amun and thought it was a cookbook. He said your magic was probably earth-based.”

  Clever imp, leaving out the fact that I was a Druid. “What else did the imp say?”

  “He said you have excellent defenses but cast few offensive spells, if any.”

  That was true enough. When I wished to give offense, I usually gave it with the blade of Fragarach.

  “Hypothetical question. If we were in a galaxy far, far away, would you try to become a Sith lord?”

  “I do not know what that is.”

  “Sith lords can shoot lightning out of their hands, and they cackle maniacally as their enemies turn crispy before their eyes.”

  The Egyptian smiled. “That sounds very good. Yes.”

  I’d heard more than enough. I neatly snatched the grimoire from his fingers and placed a protective hand over it, then dispelled Fragarach’s binding and lowered it.

  “I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Elkhashab, but this grimoire is not for sale.”

  His eyes blinked rapidly. “Not for sale? But you told me to come here to negotiate.”

  “Negotiation does not guarantee that you will be able to purchase the goods.”

  I began to pull the grimoire closer to me, and that’s when everything went pear-shaped. Without a single telltale warning in his facial expression, Elkhashab’s left arm snaked forward and he punched me. Not hard enough to break my nose or anything—it was more of a jab than a determined attempt to destroy my face—but it was enough to make me rock backward and take my hand off the grimoire. That was all he wanted. He grabbed the book and bolted for the door, figuring that if he couldn’t buy it, he’d simply steal it.

  He plainly did not know much about my magic. Before he was out the door, I began to construct a binding between the leather of the cover and the wool carpet I kept as a doormat. Since both were of natural materials, once I energized the binding the book would fly out of his hands and I’d be laughing at him.

  It didn’t work out that way.

  I energized the binding and the book tried to escape, but he held on with one hand and made a gesture with the other like flicking water from his fingers, and the binding broke.

  I was so shocked that he was halfway across Ash Avenue before I could think to try again. But now he had the grimoire held close to his chest, and my line of sight was ruined. I watched him scramble into a rental car across the street and thought a different binding would serve me well. Though pure synthetics shut me down, nature is present in even some of our most refined products: I bound the rubber of his tires to the bitumen in the asphalt concrete as I strode forward to reclaim my property. South of University Drive, Ash Avenue doesn’t have a lot of traffic, so I didn’t need to worry much about getting plowed into the pavement.

  He started the car and shoved it into gear. When it didn’t move, he rolled down the window and looked at the front tire. I activated my faerie specs—a charm that allows me to see in the magical spectrum—to see what he would do. I wanted to know how he destroyed my bindings.

  His aura was strange. Next to his skin, he was limned in white, like any magic user, but beyond that it was muddy, as if somebody’s kid had decided to mix all the finger paints together to see what magical hue would result. Tiny flashes and hints of color winked here and there, but mostly it was monkey-shit brown.

  Elkhashab flicked his fingers at the front tire with the same motion he’d used before, and I saw what appeared to be a spout of water gush forth and blanket my bindings. It was odd, undisciplined magic; bindings have definite structure and appear as Celtic knotwork, and even the magic of other systems, like Wicca or Vodoun, have an orderly look to them as they execute. His magic looked like a particularly splody ejaculation.

  He tried to accelerate, but the back tire held him fast. The bindings on the front tire had already melted—or perhaps dissolved—away. He flicked hi
s fingers toward the rear, the bizarre miniature flood gushed forth in my magical sight, and my binding ceased to exist.

  Elkhashab stomped on the gas and squealed away with the Grimoire of the Lamb. I let him go because I was fighting ignorance as much as the man himself. His magic was a little frightening. The tattoos that bound me to the earth and allowed me to draw on its power were bindings as well. Could he toss some of his magic spooge at me and unbind me from the earth? I needed to find out, but not by trial and error. The error could well be fatal. Instead, I’d see what Hal had turned up and shift myself to Egypt before Elkhashab could fly out there. When he got home, eager to sacrifice a lamb and start some evil shit, he’d find me waiting for him.

  He’d also be extremely paranoid. If I were Elkhashab, there would be no way I’d ever believe that someone like me would simply let him go. And he’d be right.

  I called Hal on my cell phone. “Hal, have you got anything on that Egyptian character yet?”

  “You haven’t even given me two hours, Atticus,” Hal growled.

  “He just stole one of my rare books. One of the really evil ones.”

  “Not one of those summoning ones where you can call up something to eat Utah for breakfast?”

  “No, it’s the kind where you can kill anyone you want. Ideal for political assassinations.”

  “Shit. He swiped it from under your nose?”

  “He’s a serious magic user. He’s got something that can dissolve my bindings. I need to go after him in Egypt, and I need some help tracking him down.”

  “You want me to contact a pack there?”

  “Is there a pack in Cairo?”

  “Sure is. Guy named Yusuf is the alpha.”

  “That would be wonderful. I only need their tracking services. You know I’m good for whatever they charge. And please email to me whatever info you dig up and I’ll check it when I get to Egypt.”

  “What are you going to do when you find him?”

  “He wasted his chance at mercy when he stole the book. And he told me what he’s going to do with it.” He’d also told me who had written it, and that made the grimoire itself something I should have burned long ago. “So I think I’ll be applying Druidic law.”