Junkyard Druid: A New Adult Urban Fantasy Novel (The Colin McCool Paranormal Suspense Series Book 1)

by Massey,M. D.

  We descended the stairs for an unnaturally long time; how long, it was hard to say. Time was different in the Underrealms, and you could spend days or weeks there and come back only seconds after you left the mortal world. Or you might be gone for what seemed like a single day, and lose decades here in the real world. I decided to trust that Maeve wouldn’t lead me into a dangerous time distortion, and kept marching down the stairs. The walls lit our way further down by emitting a pale blue luminescence, and Maeve kept my mind occupied by conversing with me about the finer points of how to plan seating arrangements for a proper dinner party.

  After an indeterminate amount of time, we reached the bottom. The stairwell opened up into a hall reminiscent of the room that held Smaug’s hoard in The Hobbit. The space itself was massive, lit by torches that burst into flames one by one as Maeve led our way through the hall and deeper into her treasury.

  “Few mortals have seen this, and lived,” she said simply as I followed her between piles of gold and gems. “Most of this is useless to my kind, but we use it to do trade with the dwarves and ogrish, and as a means of gaining leverage in human affairs.”

  As I walked behind her, I did the occasional pirouette so as not to miss anything. There was wealth here beyond imagining, enough to buy a thousand posh Victorian mansions and still have billions to spare. I was privy to a fortune that had been amassed over several millennia, and for my part I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity to gawk. Soon, however, Maeve stopped as we reached a large iron-clad door.

  “Ah, here we are.”

  She muttered and waved again, and as I shifted my senses into the magical realm I saw powerful wards releasing from the door and frame. Maeve donned a pair of thick leather gloves that sat on a pedestal next to the door, and they shrunk to fit her hands almost instantly.

  She held her hands up and grinned like a child, eyes twinkling as she spoke. “Wyvern skin. Difficult to get these days, and even harder to work with. Keeps me from feeling the effects of the iron in the door. I’d get you to do this, but some of the wards are permanent, and I need to keep you alive for what I’m about to ask of you. Good help is so hard to replace, you know.”

  Maeve grabbed the massive door handle and pulled, and despite her slight appearance the door moved with surprisingly little effort on her part. It swung open to reveal a smallish room, maybe twelve feet by twelve feet. There was an ivory pedestal in the middle of the room, upon which rested a crystal cube roughly one-foot square. An empty velvet pillow with a large round indentation in its center sat inside the cube.

  “Whoever took it from me was human, that’s for certain. The gloves will only accept my hands, and no fae could open that door without burning their hand to a stump.”

  “They could have brought their own gloves,” I observed.

  “Wouldn’t have mattered. The gloves are like a key that unlocks certain wards on the entry.” She nodded at the door. “That’s cold-forged dwarven steel, the very best. Now, take a good look at that display case.”

  I assumed she meant that I should look at it with my second sight, so I tuned into the magical frequencies once more. The magic spells and wards encasing the display nearly blinded me. Even the most powerful fae would have taken weeks to weave these protective spells, and no run of the mill mortal magician could bypass them alone. After adjusting my senses to filter out the magical glare emanating from the spells, I took a closer look at the case.

  “Whoever stole this object from you didn’t tamper with the wards. This is magic many degrees removed from my paltry skills, but as far as I can tell they’ve not been touched.”

  Maeve nodded. “Exactly. I’ve been trying to figure out how they did it since it happened. Damned if I know how they pulled it off. And let me tell you, boy, I’ve seen some tricks in my day.”

  I stood up to my full height and crossed my arms as I addressed the queen of the Austin fae. “Maeve, what in the world was in this case? What kind of weapon requires you to ward it so strongly? It was a weapon, was it not?”

  She smiled. “Figured that one out, did you? Well, it wasn’t an artifact as powerful as Fragarach, but it’s just as dangerous in its own right.” Her eyes darted to my Craneskin Bag as she mentioned the famous sword, making me wonder just how much she really knew about me.

  “Fragarach, yeah right,” I muttered to myself. “Like the Tuatha would be stupid enough to leave that laying around to be stolen.”

  Maeve ignored my muttering and continued her sales pitch. “No, my boy, what was taken from me was a priceless treasure, a weapon powerful enough to give the Tuatha of old pause. The thieves stole the Tathlum, the sling stone that old Lugh used to kill Balor himself.”

  I whistled softly. “The stone that killed the king of the Fomorians. That must be some weapon.”

  The Fomorians were the original boogeymen of ancient Irish mythology, sort of the Celtic counterparts to the Titans of Greek and Roman legend. Big, ugly, and hella mean. Anything that could take their king down was bad news, no doubt about it.

  Maeve nodded in agreement. “It is. And I don’t have to tell you the only reason to gain possession of such a weapon is to bring the high and mighty low.”

  I spared a glance at Maeve as I continued to look around. “Which begs the question, why did you have it? And how did you get it in the first place?”

  Maeve snorted, which sounded peculiar coming from her. “In answer to your first question, for insurance. And as for the second, let’s just say it was given into my hand for safekeeping by someone who was very close to the original owner, and leave it at that.”

  “Who else knew it was here, beside you?”

  She shrugged slightly, a gesture that seemed out of place for a nearly immortal being. “No one, not even my own kin. Not that I could trust them anyway. It’s dangerous at the top, you know.”

  I nodded and continued looking around the room for clues, using my mundane eyesight and then scanning with the second sight. After several minutes, I slapped my hands to my sides. I was as stumped as she appeared to be.

  “Well, I’m not seeing any way they could’ve gotten in here. There’s no sign that they broke your wards, even if they were capable of such a feat. And the only thing I know of that could bypass wards this strong is—”

  “The Dullahan?” she asked. I nodded, and she smiled slyly. “But of course, no one’s seen him in centuries, have they?”

  The Dullahan, the Dullahan that is, was an unstoppable harbinger of death in Irish legend. He was also the so-called headless horseman from Washington Irving’s story, which was based on true events. Legend had it that the Dullahan could bypass any lock, gate, door, or ward. He’d be the ultimate cat burglar and second story man, if he wasn’t so preoccupied with damning his victims to a painful death and beheading them.

  But why would a creature like the Dullahan have been involved? He was a harbinger of death, and unconcerned with normal, mortal affairs. Sure, he could have gotten into the room, but it just didn’t make any sense. One thing was for certain, though: I didn’t want to have anything to do with this mess if the Dullahan was involved.

  “Well, Maeve, intrigued as I am by your problem, I don’t see how I can be of any help to you. I’ve retired from hunting, from druidry, from being a champion—all of it. And, to be honest, you don’t have enough gold in this entire treasury to change my mind.

  “Besides, I don’t see why you just don’t get one of your own people to track this thief down. Surely you have fae in your employ who are better suited than I am for this sort of thing.”

  Maeve shook her head slowly from side to side. “That’s the problem facing me: how can I trust that it wasn’t one of my own who stole from me? By assigning one of mine to investigate, I could easily be handing this job to the very individual who took the Tathlum. No, I can’t trust anyone from inside my court to handle this. It has to be an outsider.”

  I held my hands up. “Sorry, Maeve, but I just can’t help you.”


  She hung her head slightly, then looked me in the eye. “Well, you can’t fault me for trying. Come, let’s get you back upstairs so you can give that pretty little glaistig friend of yours a break from your freshman composition professor’s droning.”

  I allowed her to lead the way back to the stairs after she’d locked the room. Strangely, the trip up took only a fraction of the time it had taken to descend, and if I had to guess I’d say we ascended no more than a few flights of stairs at most. As we exited the magical doorway, I waited politely while Maeve reset her wards and concealment spells.

  When she was finished, she addressed me with a barely detectable grin. “Colin, before you go there’s one more thing I’d like you to see. Come.”

  Without waiting for me, she glided off into another part of the house. Once again in fear of getting lost and wandering for all eternity inside her home, I followed without comment.

  Maeve spoke over her shoulder as I tagged along. “It’s my art collection, you see. As I understand it, you’re in a position to appreciate the arts as well as anyone. What, with your mother being a famous artist and all.”

  At that moment we entered a sizable room that had probably once been used to entertain guests. But now, the walls and floor were lined with paintings. Dozens of them, in fact. And I recognized each and every one—or at least who had painted them.

  “These are my mom’s paintings. How—”

  She cut me off. “I’ve been a ‘silent patron’ of your mother for several years now. In fact, my patronage was instrumental in getting her noticed by the art world. Although, I daresay that interest in her work has waned in recent years. Were it not for the many purchases I’ve made of her paintings recently, it’s quite possible that the woman would be destitute.”

  My voice dripped venom as I replied. “And since you own the majority of her work, you could ruin her, any time you choose.”

  Maeve nodded to me matter-of-factly. “Oh yes, I could easily flood the market with her paintings, and make her work practically worthless overnight. She’d be back to working as a legal secretary in no time. But at her age and with those long hours, well—I wouldn’t recommend such a career move.”

  My shoulders sagged and I hung my head. Maeve had found a weakness and ruthlessly exploited it. And the infuriating thing about this turn of events was that she’d been scheming to get me in her pocket for years… and I’d never even known it.

  This was exactly why I hated dealing with the fae. They were devious, absolutely merciless, arbitrary, manipulative, unpredictable—and they played the long game like nobody’s business. They were very nearly immortal, after all. Trying to outsmart the fae was like trying to beat a chess grandmaster while you were blindfolded and drunk. You’d lose every time, before you’d even located your chess pieces.

  “Fine. I’ll do this one job for you, but once it’s done it’s done,” I said as I squared my shoulders and stared daggers at her. She might have had me in her pocket, but what she didn’t know was that I was all sharp corners and rough edges, and very hard to hold.

  Maeve gave a Cheshire grin and totally ignored my obvious displeasure. She clapped her hands together, clasping them at chest level.

  “Splendid! Then I suggest you start by investigating this gentleman.” She reached to a side table and handed me a business card that had been sitting there since we’d entered the room. Obviously, she’d planned to bring me here all along.

  I read the card aloud. “Elias Henderson, mystical conservationist?”

  “Yes, the very same. My sources tell me he possesses knowledge about whoever pulled off the heist. He’s either connected, or knows someone who is.” She walked me to the door, and I exited without another word.

  As my feet hit the front walk, she called to me from the doorway.

  “And Colin?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. “I know—‘don’t fail or else.’ This ain’t my first rodeo, Queen Maeve. Just tell your goons to stay out of my way. I prefer to work alone these days.”

  I kept walking without waiting for a reply, and heard the door latch behind me. As I left the property, I paused just long enough to flip off the troll who watched me from the bushes.

  10

  Journal Entry—Eight Months, Twenty-Eight Days A.J.

  I’m convinced it’s real—that she’s real. I found a handprint in the fog on the shower glass this morning. Not a large one—a small, female handprint.

  Okay, I don’t know that it was female for sure, but it wasn’t mine and I don’t think it was my mom’s either. She learned the hard way back when I was a teenager that she shouldn’t interrupt me in the shower. Yeah, I know, gross—but hey, everybody does it.

  Anyway, I think I need to do some research on this to find out whether this is really Jesse, or just an echo. Or, maybe it’s a projection from my own subconscious… something I’m creating because I want her back so badly.

  I’m going to take a trip into the city and visit the Cold Iron Circle’s library, just to see what I can dig up.

  -McC

  Austin, Texas—Present Day

  Before I hopped on my scooter, I sent a text to Sabine to tell her I wasn’t going to make it back to campus, and promised I’d make it up to her for taking notes for me in my remaining classes. I was way too keyed up to be around a lot of people right now—and besides, I needed to vent in order to clear my head.

  I took a few more seconds to text Belladonna to find out where her murders had occurred, because I had a feeling that before this job was finished I was going to need her backing me up. I figured I’d better earn all the points I could get before that time came. Hopping on my scooter, I headed toward the south side of town, to a little strip center off Lamar with graffiti on the walls, potholes dotting the parking lot, and bums sleeping on the sidewalk.

  One of the things I’d learned during my recovery was that avoiding violence simply did not cut the mustard for keeping me sane. I’d been born a warrior and had fighting in my blood. Besides keeping me from becoming a Celtic version of the Hulk, what the complete avoidance of violence did was make me a nervous wreck. I became edgy to the point where I went off on people for no reason, and was constantly jumping out of my skin. When I’d told Dr. Larsen about it, she suggested that I find an outlet for my aggression, and fast.

  I tried long distance running, which burned off a lot of energy but still left me with an edge after the endorphin high faded. After that I tried chopping wood, doing Crossfit, training for Spartan races and a number of other high-risk, high-calorie activities that didn’t involve fighting. None of them satisfied the natural urge for violence within me that was screaming for an outlet.

  Thankfully, Belladonna had come to my rescue by inviting me to the dojo she trained at when she wanted to get away from work. Camelot MMA was run by a former Circle hunter by the name of Talyn. Somehow he got screwed by management a few years before he hit retirement age, so he decided to take his retirement early and go fishing instead. But like me, he couldn’t get away from his natural desire to mix it up now and again.

  To answer that need, he opened a dojo and started training competitive fighters by day and hunters at night. Of course, the mundane members who weren’t clued in had no idea about the “special” training that Talyn offered after hours. Even so, the day classes were still hard core enough to provide me a way to blow off steam. There were enough pros and serious amateur fighters training at Camelot to give me a run for my money, and there was always an ample supply of juice heads who were there looking for some good hard sparring.

  Because of the supernatural gifts I possessed I was never ever in any real danger of injury, even when facing the pro fighters. Champions, the kind who were born to fight supernatural creatures, were supernaturally tough and resilient. We were strong, fast, and agile beyond the capabilities of even elite Olympic athletes. In fact, many of the most successful pro fighters and athletes were actually champions who were either unaware of or exploiting their
talents.

  Still, that meant we had to tone things down when training with average mortals, and the only time I really got to rev it up was when I got matched with another hunter—which wasn’t often, since most of them came to train after hours. That didn’t mean I couldn’t get a good workout in though, and I needed to work off some energy today. No sooner than I’d hit the front doors, I was headed back to my locker to gear up so I could throw down.

  When I emerged from the locker room a few guys were already hanging out around the cage gearing up. I walked up and greeted a couple of the regulars, sizing up a beefy-looking dude that might have been Samoan or Polynesian. At about six-foot-six and three hundred and ten pounds, he was easily the largest person at the gym today. I was no tiny dancer, coming in at six-foot-one and two hundred, but this guy was a monster. He’d do.

  After some casual introductions I found out his name was Hemi. He’d been fighting competitively in his native New Zealand, but he’d recently moved to Texas looking for bigger fights and better training opportunities. He asked me what I liked better, kickboxing or ground work, and I told him we could just mix it up doing full MMA sparring and see where that took us. He smiled and said that was fine by him.

  We entered the ring and touched gloves, and started off with a light round of technical sparring to warm-up. Hemi was quick for a big man, and had good Muay Thai striking skills as well as some pretty smooth takedowns. But, like many big men, I could see that his jiu-jitsu was weak. He mostly relied on ground and pound techniques that involved smashing his opponents into the canvas. I tucked that info away as the bell struck at the end of our warm-up round, and waited for the next round to begin.

  It was unspoken but understood that we’d increase the contact in the next round, and the big Maori wasn’t shy about trading leather. He stepped in immediately with a whip-fast jab cross combo followed by a high right round kick that very nearly connected with my head. I parried his punches and danced back as his foot whizzed by me, and proceeded to take the fight back to him with a series of punches and low kicks designed to get me some respect. Before long, we were trading blows and working each other pretty good, then the bell rang and we went back to our “corners.”