Hunted

  Malina scoffed. “Whose prophecy?”

  “The sirens who tempted Odysseus.”

  Malina exchanged a look with Klaudia, the waifish witch who always looked like she’d just completed erotic exercises. She managed to wear her clothes in such a way that you were certain she hadn’t been wearing them a minute ago. “The sirens told Odysseus that Ragnarok would begin next year?”

  I shrugged. “Not in so many words, but the evidence does point that way. They said the world would burn. Loki is quite the pyromaniac, and I have no doubt that, once Surtr leaves Muspellheim, there will be much aflame. But, honestly, I don’t know what the prophecy truly means. Maybe they’re talking about lots of forest fires during an especially hot summer.”

  “I doubt that. The sirens did not speak idly to heroes of insignificant events.”

  “Ah, so you’ve heard about their accuracy?”

  “Indeed. Is there something we can do? Because our divination suggested some sort of fire would be started here.”

  “It did?”

  “Yes. You know I do not joke about such things.”

  “Well, yeah, but I don’t know why a fire would start—what?” Granuaile had tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention. Once she had it, she pointed up. “Oh,” I said. “Now it makes sense. Incoming!”

  A large ball of fire was headed straight for us, arcing out of the western sky. We gave ground, and a palpable shock wave buffeted us when the fireball hit the earth. A twelve-foot-tall madman cackled in the midst of it while clasping his hands together in glee.

  “There!” Loki said, his face intensely pleased. “Fff-fff-fffound you!”

  Chapter 5

  I drew Fragarach and charged him; there was no time to talk. He could set everyone on fire with a wave of his hand, so I preferred that he focus on me rather than watch him cook Granuaile and Oberon to ashes.

  I was a little fire-shy after getting cooked myself by some dark elves, but Loki’s fire was the magical sort and I knew my cold iron aura would protect me from it. He giggled as his right hand disappeared and the stump of his wrist became a flamethrower. Heat rained down on me as I leapt at him and slashed down with my sword. He was quick and stepped back, but I opened up a long wound down his right thigh.

  Loki roared and turned off the flames. His eyes boggled at me as his head twitched. I should have been barbecued but clearly wasn’t. “You can’t burn us, Loki Firestarter,” I said. “We’re all protected.”

  You’re not protected, I told Oberon with a quick thought. Get Granuaile out of range.

 

  Loki waggled a finger at me and squinted. “You are nuh-no construh-uh-ukt,” he stammered. “Dwarf-ff-fffs sssay they don’t nuh-know you. Llllliar!”

  “Who cares what the dwarfs know or don’t know?” I smiled in a fashion that I hoped was unsettling. He was already mentally unstable and might therefore be more susceptible to intimidation. “All you need to know is this: I’m the guy who’s going to kill you.”

  Loki’s eyes widened and he took a couple of steps back as I advanced. But then his right arm disappeared behind him, he arched his back a bit, and the arm reappeared holding a very long sword that ignited from guard to tip as I watched.

  I frowned. “Now, where, exactly, did you pull that from?” His daughter, Hel, had done something similar; she kept her knife, Famine, lodged between her lower ribs on her left side. She must have learned the trick of using the body as a scabbard from dear old dad. As shape-shifters, they would have the knack.

 

  Oberon, tell Granuaile to talk to the witches. They need to charm Loki if they can.

 

  Loki’s eyes went dark and he raised his sword. Hurry, Oberon! The flaming blade fell, but I wasn’t there. I leapt directly at him again, because the best thing you can do when facing someone with enormous reach is to get inside it. I didn’t hack or stab at him but delivered a straight kick between his hips, right in his center of gravity. He doubled over, let go of the sword as he staggered, and then fell heavily. I heard Polish behind me but kept my eyes on Loki. He shrank and morphed and sprang to his feet—this time as a Vedic demon with blue skin, four arms, and a blade that he pulled directly out of his body in each hand. He smiled with especially sharp teeth and twirled the swords at me, and I didn’t have time to wonder until much later how he’d ever come across that particular form.

  I had to fight my feet not to give ground. It had been quite some time since I’d practiced against more than two blades. When I was younger and everyone had a sword, you were more likely to run into that sort of thing. Nowadays you were more likely to run into multiple guns than multiple swords.

  Loki’s newly black eyes shifted from my face to a point over my right shoulder. He blinked hard, blinked harder, shook his head, and his swords stopped moving. He tried to refocus on me but his eyes drew away once more, and this time he flinched backward and dropped a couple of his weapons. The hands slapped at his eye sockets, and then he pressed his palms into them.

  “Nuh! No! Ssstop!”

  Worried about me, he lowered his hands and peeked over his fingers to make sure I wasn’t about to run him through. That’s when Malina stepped in front of me and tossed her hair at him. That did it. His hands dropped, his jaw dropped, and the other two hands still holding swords dropped as well.

  “He’s charmed now,” Malina said over her shoulder, her gaze locked on Loki. “You can kill him and get this over with.”

  “No, we don’t want to kill him,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because if we do, Hel will know it and launch her army out of spite. Ragnarok will begin. Hel would much rather start the show with Loki than without him, see. She has daddy issues and doesn’t want to win without his approval and participation, so if you keep him busy we’ll be in good shape.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Loki’s been looking for me for about four months now. Well, he’s been sleeping for most of it, but still. Hel didn’t make a move in all that time except to protect him.”

  Roksana, the witch with a mass of curly hair tightly bound behind her in a ponytail, spoke up in her proper diction: “You want us to keep him charmed for an extended period?”

  “Yep.” I grinned at her.

  Malina snorted. “This man is extremely unstable, and it will take a lot of work to keep him calm. You saw that it took several of us to subdue him just now. What do we get out of this, Mr. O’Sullivan?”

  “Well, you get a world without Ragnarok, for starters. And I can buy you all some of those shiny black boots you tend to like.”

  “That is unacceptable. I might as well let him go right now.”

  “You’d help bring about the end of the world?”

  “He seems to want to end you first, Mr. O’Sullivan. So tell me why shouldn’t we let him go.”

  “I can score you some Girl Scout Cookies. You can’t get Thin Mints in Poland, can you?”

  “Be serious.”

  “Samoas, then?”

  Malina simply glared at me.

  “All right,” I said, “what do you want?”

  “You have given me the impression that we’d be not only saving your life but saving the world. We need more than cookies for that.”

 

  “Understood, Malina. But what? I don’t know what you think I can give you.”

  “I want Poland to be free of vampires.”

  A silence grew in the field and Granuaile eventually broke it by saying, “Is she trying to be funny?”

  “When and for how long?” I asked.

  “After Ragnarok comes and goes or in a year: If we are here, and you are here, and vampires are here, you keep Poland vampire-free by whatever means necessary.”

&nb
sp; “All big ifs. But, all right, it’s a deal: One month of keeping Loki captive equals one year of vampire-free Poland.”

  “That is acceptable.” We shook hands on it.

  “By the way,” I said. “Hel has this hound called Garm, who can track anything, even across planes. She will send him to find Loki. When he does, Hel will bring an army of the damned to protect her father. Good luck with that. Oh, and Artemis and Diana are on my tail, so they’ll be coming through here soon looking for someone to shoot. Bye. Gotta run.” I gave her a short wave and took off running west. Granuaile and Oberon followed.

  “What?” Malina’s outrage was plain. “Mr. O’Sullivan! Come back!”

  I grinned and kept running. It wasn’t every day I got the best of Malina. I was sure to pay for it in the future, but in the meantime you have to surf the waves that come your way, and this one was super shaka nar nar.

  Chapter 6

  I cannot share the euphoria I feel, because Atticus would take me to task. His eyebrows would draw together and he would attempt to convey through his expression how very, very old he was, and as a comparative youngster—even a whippersnapper—I could not possibly know how inappropriate it would be to feel euphoric. But I cannot help but feel that way, even though we are running for our lives. Because we are running fast through satin darkness with strength coursing through our bodies, a percussive corps of hooves and paws tapping out a rhythm of flight, clods of earth kissing us farewell and swishes of grass caressing our ankles, like the soft fingertips of mothers who don’t want to let their children leave home but know that they must; they let go but keep contact as long as they can, extending hands and arms until their children finally pass beyond their reach, and then they feel sad yet proud and live on a kernel of hope that someday their children will come back to them and say, Mother, I am home. That is the source of my euphoria: I feel a mother’s love with every step I take on the earth. Wherever I go now, I am welcomed home, embraced and adored and supported. I am a Druid of Gaia, beloved of the earth, and the wonder of it is still fresh in my heart.

  When I was a child unbound—in my old life—my mother and stepfather used to take me to places with mountains and trees for family vacations, since we lived in the flattest part of the country and saw little of nature but the sky and amber tops of wheat fields. Walking through the forest and touching the white trunks of aspens, I suspected that the trees kept secrets, but they would tease me, using the wind in their leaves to whisper of mystery and then rustle and fade, dry chuckles of merriment at my expense, the ginger girl from the plains. I thought the aspen groves must know something important, something cool, because when they loomed over my head and whispered amongst themselves, they shook slightly in their excitement. But now the world is undressed for me, naked and gorgeous and waiting for me to explore it, and all its secrets would be vouchsafed to my ears if I simply took the time to ask.

  I know we’re in terrible danger. It’s the kind that Atticus kept warning me about—he tried to scare me into quitting my apprenticeship so many times. And it’s true we have been in a whole lot of danger ever since he began the binding process. Still, though we are running for our lives, it’s all I can do to keep from busting out a barbaric yawp like Walt Whitman.

  Now, there was a man who knew how to celebrate life and tell us about it. Atticus prefers the British poets and has memorized all of Shakespeare, but, while sublime, the Bard dwells too much on the dark side of human nature to capture my unswerving devotion. During my training, I had to memorize a large body of work as a first step to learning how to operate in different headspaces, so I chose Walt Whitman’s. Whitman saw the world for the endless wonder it was. He called grass the handkerchief of the Lord.

  I wish I could go back in time and tell him how deliciously close to the truth he’d been. It’s Gaia’s handkerchief, Mr. Whitman, but you got the rest right. The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, / And if ever there was it led forward life … / All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, / And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

  Not that I look forward to dying anytime soon. Or that the Morrigan’s death was lucky. But I think she must be well on one of the Irish planes now, at peace in the green somewhere. I will ask Atticus later, when the shock of her end is not so fresh. It is an object lesson that even gods are not eternal.

  I do look forward to a long life, if I can secure it. For one thing, I still want to memorize the works of T. S. Eliot in addition to those of Whitman—I need to keep adding new headspaces. And there are more languages to learn. Plenty of love to be made. And Gaia to protect with all of my skill.

  Considering Atticus, though, I can see that eventually my giddiness will fade. I’m not sure that, having lived so long and seen so much, he has the ability to feel wonder anymore—well, except where I’m concerned. For some reason he thinks a freckly girl from Kansas is something new, and I confess that my vanity is content to let him think so without protest. He is a man unlike any other, and I love him. And I know without doubt that he loves me back. We are bound, he and I; I have seen it.

  Yet he is still a mystery to me. If he feels the love from Gaia that I feel, as I know he must, then how can he maintain his laissez-faire attitude toward pollution and extinction? He only bestirs himself to outrage if a magical threat to the earth presents itself, but I think most of the mundane threats are every bit as horrific. If we can somehow outmaneuver the Olympians and our other enemies, I will defend the earth from those who defile it. Fiercely. Starting with my stepfather’s oil company.

  Atticus thinks I overreact to such things. Perhaps I am an extremist. Or perhaps he’s fallen prey to apathy like so many others, worn down and weary and too worried about who’s chasing him to muster any outrage at desecrations petty or grand.

  He has a point. There is plenty to worry about now. But there is so much to cherish, too, like the smell of turf and the wind in my mane—I have a mane!—and the effortless way I can leap over fences. This run has been a salve for what Bacchus and Hel left raw; Atticus and I enjoyed a nice interlude in Mexico, but that was more about us than about my bond with Gaia. Now, touching a new patch of earth with every step and feeling the energy waiting there, I am beginning to understand the scope of my gift and the size of my new responsibility.

  The number of obstacles and changes of direction required to stay hidden in Poland far exceeds anything we saw in Hungary or Slovakia. Granted, our route is taking us roughly parallel with E40, a major thoroughfare in the southern end of the country. It is no wonder that we find it more densely populated. But it has slowed us down a bit, and I’m sure our average speed has dropped as a result. We do not know how fast the huntresses are moving or even if they are still behind us. I keep thinking they will drop down from the sky and put an arrow through our chests and all our running will come to naught. But in the absence of information we must act on the vague instructions of the Morrigan.

  We snuck into Katowice about an hour before sunrise, a bona fide metropolis of millions. Atticus worried about our disconnect with the earth the entire time, and I empathized completely but pretended it wasn’t that big a deal. Inside, I was all ew. I didn’t like the dead feeling of asphalt. Honestly, I didn’t know how he managed to wear sandals on a regular basis when he didn’t strictly have to. I’d go barefoot all the time if I could.

  But the sneaking was necessary. I needed some more throwing knives, since they had proven their efficacy so well; we had no other ranged weapons, short-range as the knives were. We found a sporting goods retailer by snatching the smartphone of a despondent clubber and conducting a search. Said clubber wore a gray suit and a forlorn expression. I think it was near dawn, like five-thirty, the hour when early risers are brewing coffee and making bacon, though the sun had yet to hint that it would be arriving soon. The clubber had yet to find a bed where he could get started gestating a legendary hangover. He was weaving uncertainly on the sidewalk and softly slurring his way
through a song of self-pity. He must have struck out on his quest to score, because he was staggering through the streets alone with a half-empty bottle of Żubrówka—a favored drink in Poland that Atticus claims is a rather tasty vodka.

  And thus I added the Polish drink of choice to my bucket list and learned that other people’s electronic devices can be a fugitive’s friend. Traffic was still light to nonexistent, consisting almost entirely of early-morning delivery vehicles. While the street was clear, Atticus put the phone back in the man’s pocket as I dispelled my invisibility for a few seconds in his full view, a finger resting provocatively on my lower lip, giving him a come-hither look under a streetlight. His jaw and the bottle of Żubrówka dropped at the same time. It shattered, drawing his eyes to the sidewalk, and I took the opportunity afforded by his distraction to disappear again.

  Oberon said, watching the man look wildly around for me and pawing at his eyes as if to clear them.

  Why? I asked. I’ve done him no harm.

 

  You’re haunted by someone flashing you on a street corner?

 

  Oh, here we go.

 

  But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Kind of romantic? A vision of perfection you can treasure forever, unspoiled by reality.

 

  Look, Oberon, that man is lonely. He’s too skinny and sweaty, and I’m willing to bet you five cows that he’s socially awkward or he wouldn’t be staggering drunk at this hour. But now, for the rest of his life, he will remember the naked woman on the street who looked at him with desire. When people treat him like something untouchable, he will have that memory to comfort him.