Poison Fruit

by Jacqueline Carey

  He heard me out with deepening dismay. “Goddammit. Goddammit!” He rubbed his chin. “And you’re sure there’s no way to prevent this?”

  “Not on Hel’s end,” I said. “Can you talk the city council into reversing their decision?”

  The chief hesitated. “Daisy, the problem is that there’s not a lot of sympathy for Hel in town right now. Let’s face it—you’re talking about a deity no one but you has ever seen, a deity who has contributed nothing to the community in material terms. A deity whose inability to control the eldritch population has resulted in a considerable amount of pain and suffering.”

  “Oh, as opposed to a deity who deliberately bankrupted the community in order to get what she wanted?” I asked bitterly.

  He frowned. “You have a point, but . . .”

  I waited for the chief to finish his sentence, but he didn’t. I guess he didn’t need to. Even in her absence, Persephone’s charm held sway. Yes, she’d bankrupted the community, but she was paying it back with interest. She could walk aboveground among mere mortals, she was beautiful, she brought sunlight with her, and she smelled like an orchard on a summer day.

  Hel was right. This was probably a battle I was never going to win.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll try it myself. I just wanted to warn you.”

  “What are the repercussions for the community?” Chief Bryant asked.

  “Of two goddesses going to war?” I asked. “Sir, I honestly have no idea.”

  “Daisy.” He called me back as I was preparing to leave his office, his expression grave. “Whether you like it or not, Persephone will hold legal title to that property. And all I can do is uphold the law. I expect you to do the same.”

  I didn’t answer.

  I ran into Cody on the sidewalk outside the station. He looked like he hadn’t slept since yesterday. “Daisy.” He caught my arm. “I wanted to talk to you after the meeting, but Jen and Lee said you’d been summoned to Little Niflheim. What did Hel have to say?”

  I told him about the coming war, then lowered my voice. “Where do you think the, um, Fairfax clan will stand on this?”

  “I don’t know,” Cody admitted. “We were up all night talking about it, but at this point everyone’s in a state of shock. This is our home! Generations of Fairfaxes have lived their whole lives here in Pemkowet!”

  “I know.” My eyes stung and I gave a choked half laugh. “How do you feel about Seattle?”

  He shook his head. “Not good. This war . . . is there a chance we can win it?”

  “Mikill said that as long as Yggdrasil’s standing, there’s hope,” I said.

  “I’ll tell the clan,” Cody said. “I’ll let you know what they decide.”

  I nodded. “You should probably know that the chief warned me about upholding the law.”

  “Do you think he’ll fire you for siding with Hel?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I think that come the second day of spring, he might not have any choice, but right now I can’t afford to worry about it. By the way, if any of the guests from your mixer were planning to relocate, you might want to tell them to put those plans on hold.”

  “Good point.” He paused. “For the record, I’m not seeing her.”

  “Who?”

  Cody smiled wryly. “Stephanie. After her visit, we decided not to pursue a relationship. I don’t know what to call whatever it was you and I had going on, Daise, but I’m not ready to move past it yet.”

  “Oh.” I flushed. “And you thought now would be a good time to tell me?”

  “No.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Not really. Actually, it’s a pretty terrible time. I just thought you should know.”

  I eyed him. “You know . . . never mind. Right now, I’ve got to go summon the Oak King.”

  I drove out to the meadow where I’d first encountered the Oak King and he had given me his token—the meadow where Sinclair and I had laid the remains of Jojo the joe-pye weed fairy to rest.

  Everything was quiet and still. Although it was a few degrees above freezing, we’d had a blizzard the previous week, and the meadow lay under a thick coat of wet snow. I plodded through it, my footprints leaving deep, waterlogged impressions charting my progress across the landscape. In the center of the meadow, I fished out the Oak King’s token, the silver acorn-shaped whistle I wore on a chain around my neck.

  Setting it to my lips, I blew the whistle.

  It had a high, clear sound that seemed to hang in the air long after I’d stopped blowing, echoes sounding through the trees.

  I waited, trying not to think about Cody’s revelation. I mean . . . Jesus! Seriously? That was one infuriating werewolf. What did that even mean, that he wasn’t ready to move past our sort-of affair?

  I’ll tell you what: Nothing. Unless Cody was willing to defy his clan, it was just another version of the same I-want-you-but-I-can’t-have-you dance we’d been doing for months.

  Of course, if he did defy his clan for my sake . . . I’m not sure how I would feel about it. At least with Stefan, we’d gotten to a place where matters between us were clear and direct. Exhilarating, occasionally terrifying, but clear.

  Anyway.

  All thoughts of Cody, Stefan, and my overly complicated love life went out of my head the moment the Oak King appeared on the verge of the woods.

  The Oak King wasn’t a god, but he was eldritch royalty and he ruled over the nature fey in Pemkowet, which included the fairies who adored Sinclair so much, a phooka or two, the brownies and hobgoblins, and possibly others I didn’t have recorded in my ledger yet. In appearance, he looked like a tall man crowned with antlers, brown-skinned and brown-haired, a long cloak hanging from his shoulders that looked like deerskin one moment and a garment woven of leaves and moss the next.

  The meadow seemed to shrink as the Oak King crossed it, until he stood looming before me, his antlers silhouetted against the wintry sky, sorrow and foreboding in his dark eyes.

  I knelt in his presence. “Your majesty.”

  “Rise, Daisy Johanssen.” His voice was deep and hushed, like the stillness at the heart of an ancient forest. “It is not required that you kneel in my presence.”

  I stood, brushing the dampness from my knees. “I’ve come—”

  “I know why you have summoned me, Hel’s liaison.” The Oak King met my gaze. “War comes to Pemkowet, does it not?”

  “Yes.” I shivered. “The Greek Persephone—” God, now I was doing it. “The goddess Persephone is establishing legal title to Hel’s demesne and means to claim it as her own.”

  “Legal title.” He echoed the words as though bemused by them. “That such a thing should come to pass.”

  “Hel has no choice but to stand her ground and fight,” I said. “She seeks allies. And, um, you should know that if Persephone succeeds, she’ll only be in residence six months out of the year.”

  “Yes,” the Oak King said. “Her story is known to me, and I am aware of what her victory would betoken. My people and I would be unhomed.” His gaze shifted onto the distance in that staring-at-the-unknowable way of deities and eldritch royalty. “If that be so, I fear that there may be no further sacred places in the world with enough wilderness left to sustain us,” he murmured with regret. “Mortal cities have swallowed the demesnes of the gods. Even here, I am diminished, and our numbers dwindle. And yet it is the way of the world. Perhaps our time is upon us.”

  My tail lashed with anger. “So you’re just giving up?”

  Beneath the shadow of his antlers, his eyes glimmered like a deer’s, dark and liquid. “No, Daisy Johanssen. I do but weigh a grave choice.”

  I thought about Jojo being cut down by the Tall Man’s axe, and envisioned a horde of fairies with slingshots mowed down by gunfire. My shoulders slumped in defeat. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

  “Ah.” The Oak King inclined his head toward me. “You think of the little one who sacrificed herself.”

  I nodded. “Hel thinks Persep
hone will raise a mortal army. With, um, state-of-the-art weaponry.”

  “The joe-pye weed fairy’s sacrifice was valiant, but foolhardy,” the Oak King mused. “It is tricks and mayhem at which the least of my subjects excel, not warfare. They may be of aid, but there are others more suited to battle.”

  A spark of hope kindled in me. “Others who could help?”

  “It is aid that would come at a price, Hel’s liaison,” he cautioned me. “It is the Wild Hunt of which I speak, immortal riders who strike terror and madness into the hearts of mortal men. The Wild Hunt owes true allegiance to neither the Seelie nor the Unseelie Court, but there is a bond of long standing between us. They will answer my summons. But once unleashed, the Wild Hunt cannot be constrained until a day and a night have run their course. Not even by me.”

  “But you could unleash them on Persephone’s troops?” I asked him.

  A cold breeze sprang up, stirring the Oak King’s cloak. It rustled with a sound like dry leaves rattling in the trees. His dark eyes gleamed, and it was a hard gleam now. “Yes.”

  “Your majesty . . .” I paused. I’d read a lot of fairy tales in my life. “If I ask this of you in Hel’s name, will I have cause to regret it?”

  “It is possible, Hel’s liaison.” There was still a sense of deep quietude to his resonant voice, but it was a different hush—a cold midnight hush, the hush a rabbit might hear before the owl struck on silent wings, leaving nothing but bloodstains on the snow. “It is always possible. Do you ask it?”

  I took a breath. “I do.”

  “Then it shall be granted.” The Oak King smiled, and there was a joyful wildness to his smile. “I do not wish to fade and vanish without striking a blow against the men who come with iron weapons to destroy all that is wild and free in this world. I do not wish to accede without a whimper to the whims of a goddess who uses such men and their weapons to her own ends.”

  “I’m guessing she wasn’t always that way,” I murmured.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I do not believe it to be so. But it is so now.” Reaching out, he laid a strong, sinewy hand on my shoulder. “Tell your mistress Hel that I will join her forces. Tell her that the Wild Hunt will ride on her behalf.”

  “Thank you, your majesty,” I said. “I will.”

  Once more, the Oak King’s antlered crown dipped toward me. “I will see you on the battlefield, Daisy Johanssen.”

  Shit.

  This was getting real.

  Forty-nine

  I spent the following weeks marshaling forces to fight a war.

  A war.

  “You know that the Outcast stand beside you, Daisy,” Stefan said to me in an unofficial war council meeting. “We will do what we can.”

  “I’m thinking we need weapons, big man,” Cooper said bleakly. “Real weapons. Firepower, do ye ken? Not just swords and the like.”

  “Which you wouldn’t use unless it was necessary to defend your lives, right?” Oops, wrong question to ask one of the Outcast. “Or, um, the lives of your comrades?”

  “If there are mortals on the battlefield, we will do our best to prevent casualties, but you are speaking of war, Daisy.” Stefan nodded at Cooper. “Look into it.”

  “I will.”

  I didn’t ask for details. I didn’t want to know.

  It did give me ammunition—no pun intended—to meet with the mayor and the city council in a last-ditch effort to get them to back out of the deal with Persephone. The good news was that I was able to get through to them. Confronted with a scenario of warring goddesses and the eldritch population giving battle to a possible mercenary army, they finally realized the magnitude of their decision, and that they might really, really have cause to regret it.

  The bad news was that they’d signed a binding agreement with penalties that would send the town and the tri-community area straight back into crippling bankruptcy if they tried to get out of it. That’s what comes of letting a hell-spawn lawyer with powers of persuasion handle the paperwork.

  “It would destroy the entire community, Daisy.” Jason Hallifax looked sick. “Literally. And I’m sorry, but I’m not convinced that isn’t a worse outcome. I mean this war . . . it only affects the eldritch, right?”

  “I can’t say that for sure. Definitely not if Persephone brings in her own private militia,” I said. “If Hel’s right, we’re talking about ordinary human mortals. Do you want their deaths on your hands?”

  Marian Warner, one of the council members, shook her head. “No one wants anyone’s death on their hands, Daisy, but we have to act in the interest of the community, not the members of some hypothetical militia.”

  The discussion went on a lot longer, but in the end, the result was the same. It still wasn’t a battle I was ever going to win.

  The galling thing was that if I’d had powers of persuasion, I could have gotten them to change their minds in a heartbeat. Actually, if I’d had powers of persuasion, none of this would have happened in the first place. I tried not to think about that, but it was hard. God, I was just so sick of being so fucking helpless! It didn’t seem fair that Persephone or Hades, whichever one had done it, could basically commission a surrogate mother to get knocked up by a demon to breed the living embodiment of every lawyer joke ever written, and that Dufreyne could claim his birthright and wield power with impunity, when all I was trying to do was keep the peace and protect my community.

  And it didn’t seem fair that I had to live with the knowledge that power was mine for the asking when I needed it the most. Power; El Mano in my mom’s reading. My greatest desire . . . and my greatest fear.

  All I had to do was break the world to get it.

  Needless to say, my nightmare returned during the days leading up to the vernal equinox. More often than not, I woke up sweating with terror, the crack of doom ringing in my ears.

  Meanwhile, the deal went through, and Elysian Fields officially claimed ownership of Hel’s territory.

  But at least my recruitment efforts were paying off.

  When I paid a visit to the House of Shadows, for the first time in our acquaintance, Lady Eris treated me as an equal, possibly because she was well and truly pissed off at the notion that her vampire brood would have to find a new haven.

  “We have made our home here for more than fifty years,” she said grimly, holding audience in the ballroom. “Abiding by Hel’s order and dwelling in peace alongside mortals and immortals alike. We will not be forced out of our home at the whim of some obsolete goddess.”

  Dwelling in peace might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I wasn’t in a mood to argue with her.

  “Of course, any aid we might provide must be given by stealth under the cover of night.” Lady Eris gave me a cunning sidelong look. “Hel’s liaison, you speculate that Persephone’s army will be composed of mortal humans. Do we have your mistress’s permission to treat them as lawful prey?”

  A soft sigh of indrawn breath went around the perimeter of the ballroom, where the members of her brood were watching and listening.

  “Ooh, I’ve never had the chance to drink a mortal dry!” Jen’s sister, Bethany, whispered with creepy delight.

  “No.” I held up my rune-marked left hand. El Mano. I pushed that thought away. “Sucking blood and enthralling mercenaries against their will, yes. But they probably have no idea what they signed up for. So no drinking dry, not unless your own lives are, um, at stake. Agreed?”

  Lady Eris—I still had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that Eris was actually her real name—rolled her eyes. “Agreed.”

  The same sentiments were echoed throughout the eldritch community. No one wanted to be unhomed.

  “I’ve got nowhere else to go, mamacita!” Skrrzzzt said in a plaintive tone when I brought a six-pack out to the abandoned Presbyterian camp to talk with him. He gestured around with one thorny, long-fingered hand. “I mean, look at this. A bogle needs a proper haunt. I’ve got over a hundred acres here! You think I’m going
to find a hundred-acre haunt in a major metropolitan area?”

  “There’s Central Park in New York,” I said. “That’s huge, right?”

  The bogle snorted. “If you think there’s an acre of Central Park that hasn’t already been claimed, you’re kidding yourself.”

  “I just want to be sure you’re making the right choice,” I said. “I don’t want you to feel pressured because we’re friends.”

  “Friends.” Skrrzzzt mulled over the word, then spread his leathery lips in a gaping smile. “Hell yes, we are!” He chugged a beer. “You can count on good ole Skrrzzzt. I’ll be there.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll put you down for the night brigade.”

  He shot me an offended look with his molten-lava gaze. “What, you think I’m not good enough to fight in the light of day?”

  I was confused. “I thought bogles only came out at night.”

  Skrrzzzt waved a dismissive hand. “Yeah, that’s a personal choice. I’m not a freaking vampire, mamacita! Hey, if you’ll give me a lift, I’ll introduce you to a couple of trolls who live under a bluff down on the lakeshore.”

  I recruited the trolls, who were large and shaggy, and appeared to relish the idea of a good fight.

  I recruited my mom’s neighbor Gus the ogre, who was equally large and imposing and equally ready to give battle. “Anything for you and your mother, Daisy,” he said in a voice like rocks grating, squaring shoulders the size of boulders and baring teeth like, well, smaller boulders in a terrifying grimace. “And this is my home, too!”

  My mother was less sanguine. “I don’t like this, honey,” she said to me in the kitchen of her double-wide. Her blue eyes were troubled. “It scares me. It scares the hell out of me.”

  “Me, too,” I admitted.

  She searched my face. “Are you sure there’s no way to stop this?”

  You have but to ask . . .

  I shuddered. “I’m open to suggestions. Got any?”

  “No,” Mom said in a rueful tone. “It’s just . . . this shouldn’t be your fight, Daisy.”