Staked (Iron Druid Chronicles)
Page 28
“Yes. That’s an outstanding idea.” I pulled out my new burner phone and punched in Rabbi Yosef Bialik’s number from memory. He answered in a sleepy voice—it’s not early afternoon in Toronto but rather closer to six in the morning. “Hello, Rabbi? Atticus here. How soon can you and your friends get to Rome?”
CHAPTER 25
After Atticus convinces the rabbi to fly to Rome as soon as he can, we have the rest of the day and a night to kill. It’s just as well: Neither of us is 100 percent healthy, still recuperating after our assorted run-ins with gods and the undead. We decide to shift elsewhere before the vampires wake up for the night, but we take our time returning to the Villa Borghese. We make a date out of it, visiting a charcuterie to fulfill my promise to Orlaith and delight Oberon in the process. I’m not super-familiar with Rome; I had to get instructions to find the Piazza di Spagna—so Atticus shows me a few things and we get espressos at one of the ubiquitous caffè bars that pepper the city the way Starbucks peppers Seattle. I love the clink of saucers and cups and the gurgling hiss of steam wands frothing milk over the music of the Italian language. When we get to the Villa Borghese it’s about an hour before dusk, and as we’re walking to the tethered tree we see a familiar figure walking toward us.
“Oi! Well, at least findin’ ye wasn’t the nightmare I expected,” a deep growly voice says. “Didn’t have to take a single step onto that dead land.”
“Hello, Owen,” Atticus says. “We were just about to leave. What are you doing here?”
“Lookin’ for you. I have news, good and bad, and some of your bollocks.” He tosses Fragarach to Atticus in its scabbard, and the leather strap flaps in the air. Then he tosses a plastic bag to him, which Atticus catches and examines.
“Oh! My new documents. Thanks. It’ll be good to have a bank account again. Huh—Connor Molloy. Not bad.”
The archdruid’s face twists into an ugly sneer and he spits to one side. “The good news is that Werner Drasche is finally dead. Greta killed him.”
“Oh, wow. That is good news! But wait—are you saying Werner Drasche was in Flagstaff?”
“That’s exactly what I’m feckin’ saying to ye, lad. And before Greta killed him, but very shortly after Hal Hauk brought your documents there and raised a toast to your bloody arse, Werner Drasche brought seven vampires with him and shot up our house. Now, why do ye suppose he’d do a thing like that?”
“Oh, no. I bet it was retaliation for Berlin.”
“What’s Berlin?”
“A city in Germany. I unbound nineteen old friends of Theophilus there, but he escaped. He must have told Drasche to strike back however he could.”
“So he hopped on a plane and came straight for us.”
“I guess so. Was anyone hurt?”
Owen’s fists clench at his sides and he shouts, “Yes, someone got hurt! Hal Hauk is dead, ye fecking shite-heap! Because of you! He was there to deliver your new identity and then he took a silver bullet to the brain because of something you did in Berlin! And the father of one of me apprentices was killed too!”
Atticus shrinks back under the onslaught. It’s awful, terrible news, and I see that it hits him hard. Especially since it was delivered with such a large load of blame.
“Oh, gods,” he says. “What can I do? Is there a service to be held, or…?”
“It’s been held already. I just came from there. And I have a message to deliver from the pack—packs, I mean, both Tempe and Flagstaff. You’re banished, lad. If ye enter their territory again, they’ll try to kill ye. They’re not going to hunt ye or set the world’s packs on your tail. But ye can’t ever go back. And Magnusson and Hauk won’t be your firm anymore after they finish what business they have with ye. Time to get some new attorneys.”
“What?” I say. “Wait, that’s—”
“Completely deserved,” Atticus says. “I understand their point of view on this. I don’t blame them.”
“Well, they shouldn’t be blaming you either!” I said. “It’s not like you pulled the trigger.”
“No, but I gave Drasche a reason to go there. They’re perfectly justified.” His voice has gone cold and dead, and I know what he’s doing: He’s walling up his pain in a different headspace. But at least it’s calming down Owen, who looked for a moment as if he would throw a punch. He looks up at his old archdruid and says, “Thanks for letting me know. And bringing me my sword.”
Owen merely grunts in reply and turns to me. “Speaking of weapons, I have something for you too, Granuaile.”
I immediately assume it’s a parting gift and gasp, “What? Am I banished too?”
“Not that I’ve heard. I imagine they won’t jump to do ye any favors, but I don’t think they’d go after ye either. No, what I have is a stake carved by Luchta.”
He’s dressed in jeans and a soft brown leather coat lined with lamb’s wool. He pulls out a hardwood stake, beautifully carved, and tells me it’ll unbind a vampire no matter where you stab it.
“Siodhachan and I each have one as well.”
“It works,” Atticus assures me. “Luchta’s a genius.”
“Thank you,” I say, taking it from Owen’s hand. It’s well balanced, and I might be able to throw it. I’d have to experiment first.
“Right,” the archdruid says, clapping his hands together. “How can I help ye stop this vampire shite?”
Atticus is surprised at first but doesn’t reject the offer. “We can’t do anything until tomorrow. We need to catch up anyway. Let’s shift to a place I know almost directly south of here. It’ll be a warm night and keep us in the same time zone. Follow me.”
He and Oberon shift planes, leaving a binding to trace him through Tír na nÓg and thence to a cliffside view of an ocean with a sandy beach below. The sun is low on the horizon and painting a bank of clouds orange and pink.
“Ah, nice. Where’s this, then?” Owen asks when he appears behind me at the tethered tree.
Atticus gives a tiny grin. “Welcome to Caotinha Beach in Benguela, Angola. No one is going to bother us here. We should be able to relax and recharge.”
We pick our way down off the cliff, and the water in the bay is an attractive blue-green. A lonely fishing boat is parked so far offshore it appears to be little more than a flattened buoy. The sand is warm without scorching, and we have this isolated stretch of the beach to ourselves.
I don’t think Atticus or Owen wants to continue talking about Hal or being banished, and it’s probably too soon to battle-plan for tomorrow, so I flail about for a safe topic. The hounds splash into the ocean and play in the tide while we take seats in the sand.
“Let’s think ahead for a minute, Atticus. Owen’s going to be training his apprentices from now on. But what are we going to do if we get to the other side of this vampire problem?”
He squints at me in the sun. “Well, we’ll live in Oregon, I suppose.”
“I know that. But what will we do? Because I want to defend the earth.”
He cocks his head to the side. “Aren’t you already doing that?”
“I mean actively defend it from pollution. Clean it up. Tip the climate back toward something that won’t kill us all. Restore balance after centuries of unsustainable exploitation.”
“That sounds impossible to me. Like taking up the labor of Sisyphus and expecting the boulder to stay at the top of the hill for you when it never would for him. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should.”
For a moment I’m taken aback, but then I recover. “No, Atticus, that argument is what you use when you’re talking about crazy shit like eating brains or fucking a goat—”
Owen interrupts to say, “I tried to tell him that centuries ago, but he didn’t listen.” I don’t want to go there, not least because it would distract me from making my point, so I continue as if the a
rchdruid hadn’t spoken.
“That’s not a valid argument when you’re a Druid talking about defending Gaia. The right thing for us to say is, ‘I should fight despoiling the earth because I truly can.’ We should be trapping carbon and forcing the petroleum and coal industries to gasp out their final blackened breaths.”
He appears genuinely perplexed by my reasoning. “But that’s not why Gaia made Druids. She’s going to be fine and continue to exist whether humans are here or not. She allowed humans to be bound to the earth to protect elementals from magical exploitation, not mundane wear-and-tear.”
“The rising sea levels and mass extinctions are hardly mundane wear-and-tear. And industrial-level contamination didn’t exist five thousand years ago, so of course that wasn’t on Gaia’s mind.”
Atticus shrugs like it’s not important. “I think it’s a waste of time.”
“Well, I think it’s the best possible use of it.”
“Ohhh, are ye going to get into a fight?” Owen says, a hopeful note in his voice. “Me nipples are getting hard already.”
This clearly isn’t the safe topic I’d been hoping for, but now that I’m in it I can’t stop. “So you want to live in Oregon and just do nothing?”
“What I do isn’t nothing. I’ve been on call for the world’s elementals for two thousand years. I have plenty of tethers to mend, new ones to make, and a fortune to rebuild.”
“But that’s it? You don’t want to do anything to help?”
“I help every time an elemental asks for it.”
“I know, Atticus, but I’m talking about your love for the earth and the desire to help even when it’s not asked for.”
“It was never really an option for me before now,” he says. “If I used magic I’d be sending a beacon to Aenghus Óg, telling him where to find me. That threat is gone now, but I’m still not in a place where I can think about this as a realistic occupation. I mean, you could spend your whole day at it, and then what would you do to buy your hound a steak?”
Owen interjects again, but this time he’s not mocking but correcting. “That’s poor thinking there, lad. Ye let your hound hunt. There’s nobody who can live off the land better than Druids. Ye don’t need these modern economic bollocks, and ye know it.”
“That’s true, Atticus. You’ll own the Oregon property free and clear, and we won’t require much else except maybe beer money.”
“What is this, are you guys tag-teaming me?”
“I don’t know what a tag team is, but we’re not attacking ye, lad. Honest, now. Ye said it yourself: For too long it was just you, and ye couldn’t do a damn thing but survive. But now it’s different, and ye should consider how your duty might have changed with the times.”
“It’s not that different yet,” Atticus replies. “I’m still just trying to survive.”
“As are we all. Perhaps it’s premature to be thinkin’ of the future. I can’t be speakin’ for Granuaile, so I’ll say me own advice is to avoid falling into your old patterns if we get past this vampire bit. Give the options a good think. As for me, I know what I’ll be doing: making more Druids.”
“And I’ll be doing everything I can to make dirty energy so expensive that people will flock to solar and wind. But I’ll also get a day job in Poland, I think.”
“Really?” Atticus asks. “Why there?”
“To immerse myself in the language. And besides,” I say, brightening at the thought, “I like having beer money. I might even bartend again.”
Atticus drops his head, draws his knees up, and wraps his arms around them. His voice is low and muffled. “I remember going to Rúla Búla with Hal when you worked there. He was truly one of the good guys. Gods, I miss him already.”
I should go ahead and admit it to myself: I’m terrible at choosing safe conversation topics.
CHAPTER 26
When I woke up on the beach in Angola, Oberon curled against my side, I felt physically healed but afflicted with an emotional malaise. Or, to be more specific, an unholy horde of Guilt Ferrets. They’re bastards.
The Jewish tradition has a day of atonement, and right then it sounded like a great idea to me. Except that a single day might not be enough in my case. I might need something like a year of atonement. I know that I did not kill Hal myself—or Kodiak Black, or Gunnar Magnusson, or the Morrigan, or innumerable others—but that’s not how guilt works on a mind. It points out a string of cause and effect to saddle you with responsibility that isn’t yours, and then it hops into that saddle, rakes you with spurs, and rides you until you collapse.
Unless you can find some redemption along the way.
Owen hasn’t said anything, but I’m sure he’s feeling the bite of guilt about Fand and Manannan Mac Lir. I shared with him what Mekera told me, in hopes it would help him on his own journey.
“Owen, listen: I know where Fand is,” I said. An odd way to begin a conversation at sunrise, but my archdruid has never cared for niceties. “She’s holed up at the Morrigan’s Fen with Manannan. They’re going to be tough to peel out of there, but I imagine the sooner you move against them the easier it’ll be.”
“How d’ye know that?”
“I talked with a seer who’s quite a sight better than you or me. She told me.”
“Well, it fits. I could see that they were in a swamp, and the Morrigan’s Fen certainly qualifies. Damn good hiding place. I never would have thought to look there. Thank ye, lad.”
I caught a couple of pensive expressions on Granuaile’s face last night, which she claimed represented nothing when I asked. I didn’t know if she was wrestling with Guilt Ferrets of her own but speculated that her renewed fervor to battle the slow poisoning of the earth might be her own method of atonement. Few things shape our lives so strongly as guilt.
Or perhaps she was worried about Loki, with good cause. I’d already known that Loki had found her at our cabin in Colorado, but over last night’s campfire she told Owen and me for the first time the details of what had happened there. Inside the fire ward we’d placed around our cabin, she had beaten him up, put a tomahawk in his back, and pronounced that he was now living under the death sentence of a Druid. There was no doubt that the reverse was also true—he would kill her on sight, if he could. And the same was probably true for us.
I’m sure he had something to do with her worry. When she first asked to become my apprentice, I did all I could to warn her: Magic users sometimes lived very long lives, but they very often died violent deaths. And I showed her that stinking carnage at Tony Cabin, had her look upon the chewed-up head of Emily the corrupt sister, all of which was more powerful than simply telling her, and she still chose to be a Druid. But even being shown rather than told about violence is nothing compared to experiencing it yourself, and I think she was changed by her encounter with Loki in India. How could she not be? I hoped that striking back at him, coupled with the protection of her divination cloak, gave her a measure of therapeutic satisfaction. But the insouciance she possessed when she was first bound and flush with the wonder of Gaia—that might have been crushed like her bones, and she couldn’t bind those feelings together again.
“Before we get into this today,” I said to her, “we should probably think of where to keep the hounds safe. This place is nice, but there isn’t much in the way of fresh water or game. Pretty much a desert up on top of those cliffs.”
“I know a good place,” she said. “Foothills of the Andes. Mild temperatures right now. Nice freshwater lake. Fat, slow llamas nearby if they get hungry.”
“We should feed them first, but, yes, that sounds good.”
When we asked the hounds what they wanted to eat, Oberon had an immediate answer:
We got them both to Toronto, where it was just past midnight, but Poutini’s House of Poutine on Queen Street West was open late and we scored some huge containers of the good stuff. Then we took them to the spot in Ecuador that Granuaile knew about. Even though they’d slept all night in Ang
ola, they assured us that they would have no trouble sleeping some more after the glories of a full belly.
The bitter cold of Rome contrasted starkly with the warmth of the Southern Hemisphere, and Owen noted aloud he was thankful for his coat.
“Me tits would be all in an uproar if I didn’t have it,” he said.
We all filled up our reservoirs of energy before we left the Villa Borghese. Rome was one of the oldest and most continuously paved cities in the world. Even beneath the pavement there is more pavement, a city built on centuries of older cities. We wouldn’t have endless energy to spend against the vampires should it come to a fight. Our best hope was to break through their wards and take them out before nightfall.
“’Tis a dead, frigid hellscape for a Druid, an’ that’s no lie,” Owen commented as soon as he hit the city proper and the touch of Gaia was lost.
“It’s really unusual, though, for it to be this cold here,” I said. It was midmorning, and the city was covered by the sort of low dark clouds one would expect to boil out of Mordor. “Looks like it might snow, and that happens maybe once every twenty years. I bet you the Romans will freak out and stay at home.”
“Good,” Granuaile said. “The fewer people we have to worry about, the better.”
Tourist traffic in the Piazza di Spagna was almost nil. Even the vendors selling selfie sticks and other nonsense had written the day off and stayed home. We’d told the rabbi to meet us in Babington’s, a decision that at least kept us cozy while we waited.
He in turn spread the word to the other Hammers, and we saw them begin to trickle in after noon. We didn’t hail them and invite them to pull up a table but rather let them find each other and wait for Rabbi Yosef. I was worried that some of them might possess the extremist views that Yosef had in his youth, and I’d rather wait for him to arrive before introducing ourselves to devout monotheists as pagans adept in the practice of magic.