by Kevin Hearne
“Going to kill him, eh?”
“Old school.”
About five thousand years ago, the Sahara Desert was a lot more lush than it is today. It was still a desert, but more like the Sonoran Desert—plenty of plants and animals around, instead of miles of sand dunes and a few weak clumps of sharply bladed grass. It wasn’t all that bad a place, until the sorcerer Nebwenenef bound the Saharan elemental and tried to take its power for his own. He died trying to contain it, and the elemental died as well, its magic spreading up the Nile river valley, lying around for other wizards and Egyptian gods to feast on. The desert became an überdesert, and Gaia decided that sort of thing should never happen again. That’s why she created Druids.
The primary responsibility of Druids is to protect the earth’s elementals from any sort of magical attack. Mundane attacks—like stopping industries from polluting the environment—are not really our business, but people tend to think that’s the sort of thing Druids would be worried about. I do worry about it, of course, but those attacks happen on such a vast scale that there’s very little I can do—and those sorts of threats to the earth didn’t exist when Druids were first conceived.
Guys like Elkhashab, who desire power over men, sometimes try to harness the power of the earth to do it, however, and in those rare cases there’s quite a lot I can do. Elkhashab’s counter to my bindings indicated that he had a trump card for the earth’s magic, and as such I was quite literally bound to destroy him. Plus, you know, anyone following in the footsteps of Nebwenenef demanded all my attention. And he’d also punched me.
I wouldn’t underestimate him again; this might go quickly, or it might not. If the latter were to be the case, I needed to make arrangements.
The current girlfriend was first: Since I couldn’t tell her that she was dating a man who was thirty times as old as her grandfather and who sometimes had to deal with shady warlocks, a text message that I had a family emergency and I’d be gone for a week would have to suffice. We traded texts for a bit; she offered condolences, wondered if she could help, hoped it would work out for the best, and that was that.
Oberon was a little harder to convince.
he said.
It’s going to be extremely dangerous, Oberon.
How many cats do you think you could handle at once, Oberon?
There’s a cat goddess there named Bast. She doesn’t like me at all and has forbidden me to return to Egypt.
Yes, but only in the deserts, where there were no cats. This time I’ll be going to Cairo, where there will be plenty of them.
I don’t think so. A lightbulb turned on in my skull. Well, now that you mention it, maybe …
I could probably use someone to watch my back.
The store was much easier to take care of. I didn’t have any employees yet who could run things in my absence, so I simply closed up the shop with a sign outside promising to return in a few days. Before I did so, I removed Nice Kitty! from the rare-book case. Perhaps a peace offering would make searching for Elkhashab a bit easier.
According to my driver’s license, I had recently turned twenty-seven, two whole years past the point American rental car companies considered me responsible enough to rent one of their vehicles. Age restrictions of all kinds tend to amuse me. I secured a compact car and squeezed Oberon into the backseat with a giant rawhide bone to keep him busy. I took Highway 87—the Beeline, the locals called it—north to Payson, and then 260 east toward Christopher Creek, up on the forested Mogollon Rim. There I could park the car in a campground and shift planes, using a tether I had created to Tír na nÓg.
Once I chose a spot at the Tonto–Horton Creek campground, Oberon bounded out of the car and barked at the surrounding ponderosa pines.
They can’t understand you, Oberon.
They are indeed lucky. Let’s go.
I had Fragarach slung across my back in a scabbard and Bast’s prehistoric porn instructions in a leather satchel; I had wrapped and bound the book three times in oilskin to protect it. There were also two daggers in the satchel, because I thought there was a chance of some quick and close fighting. I put one hand on Oberon and another on a tethered tree; Oberon put a paw on the tree as well, and then I pulled us along the tether to a similar tree in Tír na nÓg, far from the Fae Court and those who would like to find me. Not wishing to linger and risk the chance of being spotted, I redirected my focus and searched for a suitable place to shift into Egypt. I had created tethers there long ago in case I ever needed to visit on just such duty as this, and though I tried to maintain them along with the occasional help of Fae rangers under the direction of Brighid, First Among the Fae, many were missing now, no doubt destroyed by an ever-expanding city. The best I could do was a date ranch north of Cairo. I’d made the gamble that the trees on the ranch would stick around awhile, and it had paid off.
Cairo was nine hours ahead of Phoenix, so we arrived there at three in the morning. It was harvesting season for the dates, but it would be hours before the workers came along to discover us. I cast night vision on us both and we stole out of the grove undetected.
And you look marvelous.
Yeah! You know, that would be a great band name.
North of Cairo. We need to find an Internet café so I can see what Hal has dug up on this guy. Keep an eye out for cats, but, whatever you do, don’t bark at them.
No. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. Just give me a heads-up if you see them coming.
We managed to hitch a ride into town in the back of a flatbed truck, but the early hour frustrated me. Until people woke up and cafés opened, there was little I could do. Still, we were hours ahead of Nkosi Elkhashab, who might still be waiting to board a plane back in the United States. Even if he was already airborne, we still had a few hours before he could possibly touch down and clear customs.
We hadn’t specified to the truck driver where we’d like to be dropped off, and in hindsight that was a huge mistake. He stopped near an open-air market, saying he had to pick up a load of bread from a local bakery and drive it back north, and we thanked him for his courtesy.
That’s when a quizzical meow ruined everything.
Thanks, I heard. I saw too. It was a gray tomcat with white socks, peering out from the darkness of an alley.
I asked the driver before he ducked into the bakery which way to the Nile. He pointed east and said, “A few kilometers that way.”
Let’s go, Oberon. Stay by my side. Do not attack or even give a dirty look to a cat here. I ran south toward a major street that ran east–west. Oberon easily kept pace with me.
He and every other cat in the city, yes.
Then you may kill if you have to.
Seriously. But once they begin attacking, they won’t stop. We want to avoid that as long as w
e can. There are thousands of cats in Cairo and only two of us.
Oberon was great about picking up new words from me and improving his speech all the time, but he had difficulty holding on to concepts of time, and any number larger than twenty was simply “a lot” to him.
It’s more than you’ve ever seen in one place before.
Right. So think of how many cats would be in twenty pet stores.
But now double or even triple that, and you’ve got a thousand.
Exactly. That’s why you don’t want this fight to get started. It won’t be fair.
We turned left and headed east toward the Nile. For the first half kilometer or so, we were in the clear—at least as far as cats were concerned. In the crepuscular light of an approaching dawn, I could see that the air wasn’t very clear. There was plenty of smog and a thin cloud of dust blown in from the desert, and I smelled more rotting garbage than I would have liked. Since the muezzin hadn’t sounded yet for morning prayers, traffic was still extremely light—and that was a blessing, because there didn’t seem to be any discernible laws that drivers followed. I was nursing a faint spark of hope that we might have gone unobserved when Oberon jinxed it by remarking that we appeared to be running away from nothing.
Before I could reply, a low, querulous “Rrrrrow!” chased our heels, and a black cat darted out from an alley to pursue us.
I slowed temporarily to kick off my sandals and then sped back up, chest heaving now. I had a limited supply of magic left in my bear charm and no guarantee of running across a place where I could recharge; this stretch of Cairo was well paved, so I was cut off from the earth. The riverbed of the Nile was my best shot, but I wanted to be ready in case an opportunity presented itself and to conserve my magic while I could.
There’s more at stake here than your canine reputation, Oberon. This is just the beginning. You notice the cat hasn’t closed the distance? It’s not trying to catch us yet.
Oberon checked his six and fell back a few paces in the process but quickly resumed his place at my side.
Friends.
We were passing through a residential area now, with apartment buildings on either side and cats coming out of the windows and emerging from the alleys. Flashes of white and gray and orange in my peripheral vision told me cats were flooding out of their homes along this street and coming from blocks away to join in the hunt. Those that emerged ahead of us didn’t get in our way but rather waited for us to pass and then joined the growing herd of felines that followed us at a distance of six meters or so. Bast was behaving exactly as I predicted: She’d take me down with overwhelming numbers, sacrificing as many of her people as needed to finish me off.
Our procession started to cause trouble at intersections—at least, in those where there was any traffic to speak of. Oberon and I weren’t slowing down for anything, and the cats weren’t slowing down either. If there was too much cross traffic to risk stepping into the street, I turned south and ran until there was an opening, then darted across with Oberon and took the next left to continue east toward the river.
One of these zigzag moves resulted in a few of our pursuers getting run over. There was lots of yelling and leaning on car horns, not to mention plenty of blood and fur, but the cats were unfazed. The survivors kept coming after us, swarming around and between the cars, never varying their pace, and more joined them all the time.
They all want to kill us, Oberon! How is that good?
A breath of damp, dirty air invaded my lungs, and I smiled in relief; the moisture indicated we were approaching the Nile, though it was still an uncomfortable distance away.
It was creepy being chased by that many cats. Their feet made no noise, but I knew they were there, because a good number of the house cats had little bells around their necks, and those become damn menacing when there are more than two on your heels.
I smirked and shouted at the city of Cairo, “ ‘Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ ”
Close. John Donne. We’re getting close, Oberon. I can smell the river. How’s your breath holding up? Can you sprint with me?
I’m going to use some magic to increase my speed, see if we can leave the kitties behind. I can use it on you too if you need it.
I withdrew the daggers from my satchel as I ran, and once I had them gripped in either hand, I spoke the binding that would let me use the stored magic of the earth as my own energy, allowing me to run even faster without tiring—as long as the juice held out. I hoped it would last until the river. I created a similar binding for Oberon.
A startled collective yowl rose up from the herd of cats behind us as Oberon and I suddenly pulled away. They spent some time trying to catch up, and when they discovered they couldn’t, the character of the pursuit changed. The cats that were converging on us from the sides and ahead of us—those that were actually coming from the river—didn’t let us pass anymore. Or, rather, they didn’t let me pass. Oberon wasn’t the target. That didn’t stop him from snapping at the odd cat that veered within range of his jaws.
For my part, I only needed to keep them off my face and neck. There isn’t much else a single cat can do to bring down a human quickly, and they knew it. The knives scythed the space in front of me when they jumped, feline screams rent the early-morning air as they fell to the sides, and I kept running. I tried not to do any permanent damage; I was making quick slashes, never stabbing, and hoping that Bast would feel properly guilty about this later and help those that were injured.
Deflect and maintain speed, I told Oberon as he fell behind to shake ‘n’ snap a cat’s neck. Killing isn’t necessary, and it takes too long. We don’t want the horde behind us to catch up.
How many are back there?
Oberon whined.
A tabby latched on to my left shoulder, and I spun around to launch him off me. He left deep gouges in my skin as the centrifugal force threw him into a wall, but those would heal. I couldn’t slow down. The spin gave me a brief glance of our pursuit, and I could see what had boggled Oberon’s mind. There were far more cats back there than anyone could handle. I fought the nascent scream of panic growing in my belly.
We still had a quarter of a kilometer to go, and the cats weren’t thinning out. If anything, they were getting worse. I ducked a Siamese that screeched in dismay as it sailed over my head, then struck out with my right to knock down a portly Persian as I ro
lled my left shoulder back to let a Peterbald ping off my arm with nary a single claw’s scratch. The cats that tried to attack my legs were either kicked away or tossed aside as I churned ahead; my momentum was too great to be stopped by a ten-pound cat.
There were more ahead of me, bounding in my direction. Perhaps more than I could plow through. Oberon was providing some protection on my right side, and I was glad he’d talked me into bringing him along. I might have already gone down if it weren’t for him.
“Bast!” I shouted in Coptic. I didn’t know how to speak the truly ancient Egyptian language, but I felt reasonably sure she would understand the form of it commonly spoken until the seventeenth century. “I know you can hear me!” She’d identified my presence on the basis of one cat’s pair of eyes, so she’d have to be deaf if she couldn’t hear me through the ears of however many hundreds she had following me now.
“We don’t have to do this! No more of your people have to get hurt! I can return what was stolen! Let’s stop and talk!”
The cats didn’t stop coming, and I didn’t stop running or cutting them down as necessary. Oberon didn’t stop batting them away or snatching them out of the air and tossing them aside. That was all okay. The overture of diplomacy had been made. Bast was far too proud to answer right away.
It was a mess of gore and screams for a while, my knives flashing in the wan light of a gray cloudless dawn. Lights began to flick on in the buildings we passed, slumbering citizens awakened by cries of rage and death and offering up Arabic WTFs in the still, dry air of their apartments. And then the Nile beckoned, black waters lying still without sufficient sun to light the ripples of the current, the stench of oil and untold shit rising from its surface instead of the fresh breath of life it used to be in ancient days.
The juice ran out fifty meters from the riverbank and I slowed, lungs heaving and informing me in no uncertain terms that they hated me to dickfinity.
