Don’t miss the first three books of THE IRON DRUID CHRONICLES by Kevin Hearne

Hounded

Hexed

Hammered

Two Ravens and One Crow is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A Del Rey eBook Original

Copyright © 2012 by Kevin Hearne

Excerpt from Trapped by Kevin Hearne copyright © 2012 by Kevin Hearne

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY and the Del Rey colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Trapped by Kevin Hearne. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

eISBN: 978-0-345-53543-6

Cover design: Gene Mollica

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v3.1

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

First Page

Excerpt from Trapped

About the Author

What would it be like, I wonder, if humans could slobber as freely as dogs? There’s no social stigma for dogs when they slobber and it looks like a lot of fun, so I envy them that freedom. I’ve certainly wanted to slobber at various times—there are situations where nothing else makes sense—but despite having lived for 2,100 years and in many countries around the world, I have yet to find a culture where it’s even mildly acceptable, much less looked upon with approval.

I guess some things will never change.

Despite the universe’s refusal to change enduring truths according to my will, lately I’ve been wishing I could train a Druid in a five-minute karate-movie montage rather than the necessary twelve years. After ten seconds of futile effort trying to solve a problem, the initiate would abruptly improve or learn the lesson and her expression would fill with wonder, and I would award said initiate a cookie or a tight nod of approval. The initiate would bask in the glory of an achievement and then move on to the next difficult challenge for another ten seconds, and so on, until a triumphant swell of music and a slow-motion high-five signaled victory and completion. We would smile the radiant smiles of actors in fast-food commercials, merrily chuckling as we ate enough grease to make our hearts explode like meat grenades.

But training my apprentice, Granuaile, wasn’t like that at all. Shaping her mind for Druidry was rough and monotonous for both of us, yet shaping her body was fraught with peril. The peril was the sort Sir Galahad had faced at Castle Anthrax: stupefying sexual tension.

Every winter solstice, I gave my apprentice an entire wardrobe of loose, shapeless sweats, and she kept buying herself tight, form-fitting outfits to wear in the summer months. I had trained my Irish wolfhound, Oberon, to help me through it and be my Lancelot whenever Granuaile made my jaw drop, which was more often than I would care to admit. She’d go through her kicks and lunges and various stances and build up a sweat, then I’d start thinking about other ways to get sweaty, and shortly thereafter I’d need to be rescued.

Can’t I have just a little bit of peril? I would ask Oberon through our mental link.

<No, it’s too perilous,> he’d say, and then I’d have to give him a snack, which would force me to tear my eyes away from Granuaile and redirect my thoughts into less prurient channels. It might sound silly, but it was self-preservation.

Granuaile picked up on the pattern after a while, unfortunately.

“Sensei?” she asked.

“Yes?”

“Why are you always leaving about halfway through a workout to give Oberon a snack?”

<To hide the evidence of his BLISTERING PASSION—>

“What? Well, he’s a good dog.”

<To sequester the sight of his UNTRAMMELED LUST—>

“Granted, but he’s a good dog all the time, and the only times you interrupt what you’re doing to give him a snack are during workouts.”

<To conceal the tower of his CARNAL DESIRE—>

“I reward him sometimes for using big words. And sometimes I reward him for shutting up.”

<To delay the dawning of his ENORMOUS LONGING—>

Now would be a good time to shut up.

<I’d better get a snack.>

Deal.

“So what did he say just now?” Granuaile asked.

“I’m sorry, but that’s classified information.”

Oberon chuffed, and Granuaile’s eyes narrowed. She knew the dog was laughing, blast him, and now she’d be determined to find out what he thought was so funny.

I was saved by the arrival of an extremely large crow. It spat out “Caw!” at Klaxon-level volume, landing on top of our trailer. It startled us all, including Oberon, who barked at it a couple of times. The bird’s eyes glowed red and he stopped, tucking his head down and retracting his tail between his legs.

“Morrigan?” I said.

The red glow faded from the crow’s eyes as she tilted her head and spoke in a throaty rasp, “Surprise, Siodhachan.” The Celtic Chooser of the Slain would never call me Atticus. The head bobbed once at my apprentice. “Granuaile.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, because the Morrigan did not make social calls. I belatedly realized that I should have offered her refreshment or adhered to some standard of hospitality, but thankfully the Morrigan was too focused on her mission to notice my awful manners.

The crow rustled her wings and announced, “We have business to attend to. You will be gone for at least a week but perhaps two. You won’t need to bring anything, not even a weapon. Shift to your bird form and let us be gone.”

“Wait, wait. I’m going to need more of an explanation than that. Can’t my apprentice come, or my hound?”

“No. Definitely not. Our business does not concern them.”

<That’s fine with me. I’ll happily stay behind,> Oberon said.

I glanced uncertainly at Granuaile, and she shrugged.

“You say we’ll be gone two weeks?”

“At the most. But we must begin immediately. Make haste.”

Arguing with the Morrigan would be unwise. Spending at least a week with her—maybe two—would not be any wiser.

I’m doomed, aren’t I?

<Yep. It was good to be your hound.>

“You’re not doomed,” the Morrigan said, and I belatedly remembered that she could read my mind now—or at least hear thoughts that I projected. “But you will be if you don’t hurry up.”

I turned to Granuaile. “Take a few days off if you wish. You’ve earned it. But continue to practice your languages and work out every day.”

“Okay, sensei. Maybe Oberon and I will head up to Durango.” Our place in Many Farms was just over a hundred miles southwest of there. She fingered her hair, dyed a brown so dark it might as well be black. “I can get this mess fixed up. It’s time.”

Her roots were beginning to show again, which meant mine were too. Our ridiculous fake identities had served us well in this remote location; we kept to ourselves and no one really gave a damn about us. Aside from the embarrassment of our assumed names—the trickster, Coyote, had fixed it so we had to call ourselves Sterling Silver and Betty Baker in public—we liked living and training in Many Farms. Taken all around, Coyote had done us a solid, and he in turn was mighty pleased about the way his renewable-energy projects were coming along, thanks to my help. Six years had done him and the tribe a world of good; the coal mine was shut down forever now that Coyote’s ventures were creating lots of jobs.

“All right. You know the drill, right? If I don’t come back—”

“I’m supposed to call Hal Hauk, I know,” Granuaile said. “He’s got your will. But you won’t make me do that.”

“I sure hope not. See you later.” I ducked into the trailer to undress before I shifted, and the Morrigan squawked impatiently.

<Hey, Atticus, bring back some wildebeest flanks, will you?>

Where do you think I’m going? I said as I threw my shirt into the hamper.

<I don’t know. I’ve just always wanted to say that. It makes me sound like a boss when I can casually order up some wildebeest. Or it sounds like something Dr. Seuss might say: We’re going to have a feast. A feast! On some wonderfully succulent wildebeest.>

If you wanted to go hunting for wildebeest, you should have said so. Listen, watch Granuaile for me, will you?

<I always do.>

Divested of my clothes, I triggered the charm on my necklace that bound my form to a great horned owl and hopped over to the door.

Thanks, buddy. I’ll have to owe you that snack. Though I’m sure Granuaile will completely spoil you while I’m gone.

<She always does.>

I hopped down from the trailer doorway and hooted a good-bye to Granuaile. The Morrigan flapped her wings noisily and launched herself to the southeast.

Come, Siodhachan, her voice said in my mind. I shuddered and took wing after her. I didn’t like having her in my head, though at the moment I had to admit it was convenient. Unlike the Morrigan, I couldn’t speak like a human while in bird form.

<So what’s the emergency?> I asked her. We were flying toward Canyon de Chelly, where we could find a tree bound to Tír na nÓg and shift out of the state.

You need to repair your tattoo, the Morrigan replied.

<You mean the back of my hand? That’s been messed up for six years.> Ever since I’d been chewed on by a giant locust—courtesy of Coyote’s attempt to save the world—my ability to heal myself had been damaged. Colorado (the elemental, not the state) had taken care of what few needs I’d had since then, because I’d known all along that at some point the Morrigan would have to be the one who doctored my tats. The problem with that was that, unlike most doctors, the Morrigan didn’t agree with the credo of “First, do no harm.” The rest of the Tuatha Dé Danann thought I was dead—at least, I hoped they did—so I was stuck with the Morrigan as my ink slinger.

You have procrastinated long enough.

I stopped flapping my wings out of shock and dropped like a stone for a second before I recovered. The Morrigan was not a type A personality who worried about procrastination—hers or anyone else’s.

<What’s really going on? Have you seen something coming? Some reason I’ll need to heal?>

One thing at a time, Siodhachan.

<Fine. What’s really going on? You’re not worried about procrastination.>

She didn’t answer. She kept flying as if I hadn’t said anything and allowed me time to realize that she wasn’t going to answer any more questions, whether I asked them one at a time or not. This was highly unusual behavior for the Morrigan. Usually she couldn’t wait to tell me about all the dire shit that was about to befall me. Pronouncing my imminent doom held a certain relish for her. I couldn’t understand why she was being so closemouthed now, but my curiosity was piqued.

We shifted from Canyon de Chelly to a deserted patch of Tír na nÓg, where no Fae would see us, and then from there to a damp gray fen in Ireland, surrounded by yew trees, that the Morrigan called her own. She led me to a barrow that I suppose I should call her home or estate or perhaps a simple dwelling, but those words don’t really fit the feel of the place so much as the word lair. The Morrigan was a bit too savage to live in a home; she could rock a lair like nobody else, though. Bones, I noticed, were a strong decorative motif. Skulls too. Perhaps that subconsciously tilted me toward the word lair instead of home; few homes are so abundantly adorned with bones—especially ones that the owner has quite probably gnawed on.

We flew straight through an open portal into a longish tunnel lit by torches, until we emerged in a large chamber with a table and a single chair. It had a pitcher resting on it and a lone goblet made of carved and polished wood. Clearly the Morrigan was unaccustomed to entertaining visitors.

The Morrigan shifted in midair so that her feet touched down lightly and gracefully next to the table. I tried to do the same thing and discovered that the graceful bit was something that one achieves only after much practice. My momentum was far greater than I had judged it to be, and I stumbled toward the table. I panicked as I realized that some very vulnerable body parts were about to be squashed into the edge of the table, so I twisted as best as I could and instead smashed my hip against it. Did I mention the table was stone? My entire leg went numb and I crumpled to the ground at the Morrigan’s feet with a pained groan.

The Morrigan laughed hysterically. I’d heard her laugh before, but it had always been evil-genius laughter, not genuine mirth.

It really was ground that we lay on, and not tile or marble or anything else. There was nothing to prevent us from contacting the earth here. And nothing to prevent me from blushing, because the Morrigan was laughing so hard that she couldn’t breathe. Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes. She sounded almost girlish, but I carefully refrained from noting this out loud and did my best to banish it from my thoughts as well.

Seeing that she would be at it for some time, I took the opportunity to examine my surroundings a bit better; it would distract me while I waited for the pain in my hip to subside. (If I drew any power to smoosh the pain, the Morrigan would feel it and laugh all the more.)

There were two other entrances to the chamber, equidistant from the one we had used. They were lit similarly and lined with bones on the walls. A wrought-iron chandelier with candles in it blazed above our heads.

The chamber was circular, I now realized, the very center of a barrow-mound with three entrances. It seemed like an awful lot of effort had gone into building such a plain room. There wasn’t even a hearth with some questionable stew bubbling in a cauldron.

“What is this place?”

The Morrigan took her time in answering. Once she had wound down, she said, “It is a place for rituals. For mortals it is a place of mystery and dread. Now, thanks to you, it is a place for laughter.”

I chose to ignore that last bit. “I see no thorn bush here.” The tattoos that bound us to the earth had to be made with a living plant; Gaia would be present in our minds and direct the process.

“The ritual spaces are all hidden. Come.” She rose to her feet and brushed dust off her body. I rose too, limping a little, and followed her down the passageway to our left. After maybe ten yards she paused and faced the bony wall to her right. “The doors are easily seen with your magical sight. Mortals would never find them.”

Before I could shift my sight to the magical spectrum, she touched an inconspicuous knob of bone, which pushed in like a button, and a section of the bone wall sank backward and then shifted left with a hiss of air. Pneumatics. The Morrigan must have seen the surprise register on my face.

“I know you think me old-fashioned and resistant to change,” she said. “And that is probably not without merit. I still prefer the sword to the firearm. But I think I may have learned something from you. Many somethings. Come.”

She stepped through the door into a humid indoor garden ripe with oxygen and floral scents that tickled the nose. A glass ceiling turned the chamber into a sort of conservatory; along the top of the walls, near the ceiling, bindings carved into the surface spoke of abundance, fertility, and harmony. And, underneath those, bindings that meant the above were to apply liberally to all living things in the room. It was the sort of general, nontargeted binding that my cold iron aura had difficulty suppressing; I’d have to ward specifically against it if I didn’t want to fall prey to it, but, honestly, why would I bother?

Wait. As Hamlet said, That would be scanned. Harmony with the Morrigan?

More alarming: abundance and fertility … with the Morrigan?

I needed to change the subject quickly, even though the subject was only in my head. The Morrigan might spot it there.

“You know, Morrigan, I’ve been meaning to speak with you about how I got this wound,” I said, gesturing to my scarred right hand. “You were nearby at the time. You could have stepped in and prevented it, yet you didn’t. I could have died, and you would have broken your word.”

The Morrigan blew air through her nose in a sort of halfhearted snort, and a corner of her mouth turned up. “Why are you paying attention to what might have happened? Tell me what did happen.”

“I suffered unnecessarily.”

The mention of suffering caused the Morrigan to close her eyes in pleasure and make a yummy noise. “The necessity can be debated. But you lived. I never broke my word.”

“But it was an awfully close thing, Morrigan. A skinwalker tore out my throat—”

“And you healed,” she finished. “I have been faithful in my promise to you. I never promised that you would remain free from injury or suffering. For one thing, that would have interfered with my sex life.”

I flinched and took a step back. The Morrigan noticed and laughed. “Speaking of which, Siodhachan, how is yours of late? Do you even have one?”

“Yes, I have one,” I replied. I did my best to keep my tone matter-of-fact rather than sullen. It was more difficult than I thought it would be.

Her disbelief was clear. “You keep a mistress in that tiny town?”

“No. We head into Farmington or Durango on the weekends, or Gallup and Flagstaff on occasion. We both have various partners in these places willing to, uh, spend time with us.”

“Your gift for euphemism continues to thrive. But I think I have heard of such modern relationships. There is a colloquialism for them, yes? They are boogie calls.”

“Boogie? Oh! Nice try. You were very close. They’re known as booty calls.”

“That’s what I said. Booty calls.”

“You said boogie—” The Morrigan’s eyes flashed red for the briefest moment, and I cleared my throat. “Pardon me. I must have misheard you. Quite right.”

“So your apprentice has these booty calls as well?”

I shrugged. “As far as I know. It’s not really my business. She’s had a steady boyfriend or five over the years. She got a marriage proposal, too, which she rejected.”

“And you were not jealous?”

“It’s not my place to be jealous, because I have made it very clear to her that we cannot have a relationship beyond that of master and apprentice.”

“I didn’t ask about your place or anything regarding propriety. I want to know how you feel about her dalliances. Are you jealous?”

I considered. To claim I was completely indifferent would be dishonest. And there were times, perhaps, when Granuaile was a bit too eager to share her conquests with me. After she first met her boyfriend in Durango, she reported that “he was so hot that he damn near made my ovaries explode.” But that was as it should be; there was no reason for Granuaile to settle for anything less than hotness. Neither should she settle for anything less than joy. I hoped she would find someone to provide that for her since I couldn’t. For my part, I had not been trying very hard lately, and despite the general truth of what I’d told the Morrigan, I hadn’t made a booty call in quite some time. There were many beautiful, delightful, intelligent women in the area, especially in the college towns, but somehow they all fell short of Granuaile in my eyes, and I had been choosing to do without rather than settle for a sort of surrogate. It wasn’t celibacy, I told myself. It was high standards.

“No,” I finally said. “She is my apprentice but isn’t mine in any other sense. I am a tad envious of her partners, perhaps, but nothing more. I am happy for her happiness.”

The Morrigan scoffed openly. “Happiness? Neither of you is happy. Your auras scream of repression.”

“That’s okay,” I said.

“It is not. Sexual repression is conduct unbecoming a Celt.”

I shrugged. “Better that than having to deal with guilt ferrets.”

“What are guilt ferrets?”

“They’re bastards. They cling to your neck and tickle and bite and generally make you miserable, which is a pretty good trick for a metaphor.” They were also impervious to logic—perhaps their most diabolical power. There was no cause for me to feel guilty about any liaisons with other women, since Granuaile and I were not in a relationship and monogamy was not required, but the guilt ferrets attacked me anyway every time.

“I dislike guilt,” the Morrigan said. “It is regret and recrimination and despair over that which cannot be changed. It is like eating ashes for breakfast. It is the whip that clerics use on the laity, making the sheep slaves to whatever moral code the shepherds espouse. It is a catalyst for suicide and untold other acts of selfishness and stupidity. I cannot think of a more poisonous emotion.”

“I don’t like it either,” I admitted.

“So why do you bother to feel it?” the Morrigan asked.

“Because an inability to feel guilt points to sociopathic tendencies.”

The Morrigan made a purring noise deep in her throat, and her hands rose to pinch her nipples. “Oh, Siodhachan. Are you suggesting I’m a sociopath? You always say the sweetest things.”

I took a step back and raised my own hands defensively. “No. No, that wasn’t meant to be sweet or flirtatious or anything.”

“What’s the matter, Siodhachan?”

“Nothing. I’m just not being sweet.”

The Morrigan’s eyes dropped. “Fair enough. Looks to me like you’re scared stiff.”

I looked down and discovered that the sodding abundance and fertility bindings weren’t messing around.

“Ignore that guy,” I said, pointing down. “He’s always intruding on my conversations and poking his head in where he’s not wanted.”

“But what if I want him?” The Morrigan had an expression on her face that was almost playful; it humanized her, and for a moment I forgot she was a bloodthirsty harbinger of death and realized how stunningly attractive she was. She reminded me of one of those old Patrick Nagel prints, except very much in three dimensions and far more sexy. I found it difficult to come up with a clever reply, perhaps because most of the blood that used to keep my brain functioning well had relocated elsewhere.

“Well, um. Uh. Pretend I’m saying something witty right now. Also: nnnn—” I couldn’t say no. I wanted to, but I was physically unable to say it. I kept trying. “Nnnn …”

The Morrigan laughed and drew closer, taking me into her hand. I tensed up, expecting pain. She chuckled a bit more about that and leaned forward to whisper in my ear.

“Relax, Siodhachan. You have nothing to fear. You saw the bindings for harmony in this room. They work on me too. There can’t be harmony if you’re terrified, now, can there? So we will do it your way. This once.”

Harmony, I discovered, could be horrifying. That was what kept me from saying no. There couldn’t be open disagreement in the presence of these bindings. Combined with fertility and abundance, what the Morrigan currently wanted was precisely what the bindings wanted. I was the one out of harmony, so I felt the force of it. I thought of simply exiting the room, and managed a single step before my legs refused to move any farther in that direction. “Do we have to do it at all?” I said, desperately.

“You need it. So do I. And I can play nice when I want to.” Her words fell on my ear in soft warm puffs of breath, and she stroked me gently to prove she spoke the truth. My eyes closed and then snapped back open as I realized what was happening.

“But …”

“Shh.”

“Weren’t we supposed to be in a hurry?”

“I allowed for some wiggle room.”

She kissed me, preventing any other protest, and played nice. But the physical pleasure didn’t come with a side of emotional fulfillment. A zoo full of guilt ferrets bit me the whole time.

*  *  *

*  *  *

A Druid’s tattoos aren’t the sort one gets in a parlor from an excessively pierced person. The needle has to be living—in other words, a thorn from a live plant—and Gaia must be present. She guides where the ink goes and creates the binding that allows us to tap into her magic. Alone it took me about a week to get in touch with Gaia, but together with the Morrigan we were able to enter the trancelike fugue state and meld our minds in only five days. Touching up the tattoo on the back of my hand took an additional two, and during that time we were able to speak of the Morrigan’s progress on her cold iron amulet, amongst other things. One needs a distraction or five when getting stabbed repeatedly with pointy bits. Gaia doesn’t let you turn off the pain; gifts and talents earned without pain are so often taken for granted.

“So it’s been six years,” I said. “Are you about ready to bind your amulet to your aura?”

A hint of red crept into the Morrigan’s eyes and she didn’t respond at first, so I was going to let it slide and pretend I’d never asked the question. She surprised me by answering a few minutes later, just as I was about to introduce the topic of crocheted superhero plushies and their excessive cuteness.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready, Siodhachan,” she said. “The trick is winning the favor of an iron elemental. As I have said to you before, I am unskilled in the arts of currying favor. If I curry anything, it is fear. But I cannot scare an elemental into binding cold iron to my aura. All I can do is scare them away.”

“But I thought you were making progress with one. The last time we spoke of this, you were feeding it lots of faeries and it was pleased with you.”

“Yes. Well, shortly thereafter I lost my patience and it fled. The same thing happened with two others. What is that American game you like so much, where a player gets three chances to succeed?”

“Oh—I think perhaps you mean baseball.”

“Yes. Baseball. I have struck out, Siodhachan—is that the correct phrase?”

“It is.”

“I have witnessed a couple of those games in crow form, because you find it so fascinating.”

“Really? Who did you see?”

“I misremember. My attention wandered, but I believe one team was inordinately proud of the color of their socks.”

“Oh, yes! Boston or Chicago?”

“Boston. That was it. Many fine Irish people there. I perched on top of a large green wall, and I can understand your attraction to the game. The players suffer greatly yet mask it with stoicism.”

“You liked the suffering? Well, that’s not why I enjoy it, personally.”

“How can you not appreciate their inner struggles? Whether they strike out or allow the opposing team to score or commit any number of other tiny failures, they are filled with doubt and self-recrimination and outright fear that their careers have ended, that they have lost the talent or skill that earned them the opportunity to play professionally, and with dread at the possibility that they have publicly shamed themselves. It is magnificent drama. It is little wonder that people pay to watch it and swill cups of poorly made beer while gobbling up those tubes of low-grade meat paste covered in ketchup and mustard. What are those called?”

“Hot dogs.”

“Why? Do they contain dog meat?”

“I certainly hope not. It’s just an idiomatic term.”

“Americans are a strange people.”

“Granted.”

“But the despair, Siodhachan! It is so very succulent. They strike out and return to their bunker area, you know what I mean—”

“It’s called a dugout.”

“Their dugout. They sit on a bench, curse their luck, and loudly accuse the opposing team of having Oedipal relationships with their mothers.”

“What? Oh, that took me a second. Thankfully, Morrigan, motherfucking is not nearly so common in America as baseball players would have us believe.”

“I am relieved to hear it. But then they chew gum or sunflower seeds or cancerous wads of tobacco and try to forget their failure, even though it gnaws away at them. They tell one another lewd jokes and speculate about the sexual orientation of the umpires. All of it is an attempt to lift their spirits to the point where they can compete successfully at their next opportunity. The true beauty of the game is in the dugout, Siodhachan.” She paused and swallowed before continuing in a subdued tone. “And that is where I am, regarding the binding of my amulet. I have failed and I need to convince myself that I can succeed the next time.”

“I don’t think there’s any question, Morrigan. You can.”

“I think you do not see my problem. To men I am either sex or violent death. Sometimes both. Occasionally I am a healer of battle wounds. But I am no one’s friend.”

“But, Morrigan—”

“Hush, Siodhachan. There is nothing you can say to alter the truth of matters. You have been more kind to me than anyone in my long life, but even you fear me. You are a wonderful lover, but I have taken you as I have taken all the others. I understand that I am not given friendship because I give none. It is truth, and I must face it here in my dugout.”

I had no ready reply. Perhaps the single tear trailing down her face stunned me to silence. Perhaps there is nothing one can add to the truth if it is properly told.

The Morrigan sniffled once and wiped the tear from her cheek. “I would not share my emotions were we not bound with Gaia in a room of harmony. You see? I cannot give my trust or anything of myself without the aid of magic. All I do is take.”

“Well, I think you should take me out to a ball game or five after this. I will admire the grace under pressure and you can get off on the despair in the dugout. Great fun for the both of us. I’ll spring for the Cracker Jacks and maybe buy you a jersey. What do you say?”

“You want to simply … spend time with me?”

“Yeah. It’s what friends do. How does it sound?”

The Morrigan smiled and her eyes glistened. “It sounds like a gift. I would be grateful.”

*  *  *

*  *  *

“We are going to Norway now,” the Morrigan announced as soon as we left the room of harmony, abundance, and fertility and stood in the hallway of bone. Her tone immediately returned to the cold, businesslike rasp I was used to, and I was on my guard again.

“Why?”

“For an exquisite meal. And a rendezvous with certain gods who very politely requested a word with you.”

“Which gods?”

“They wish to introduce themselves.”

“They’re not Norse gods, are they?”

“They are.”

“I can’t see them!”

“You must. I have given my word.”

“That’s not my problem.”

Her eyes locked on mine and glowed red. “Oh, I rather think it is, Siodhachan.”

After our heart-to-heart talk in the binding room, this severe return to her old, implacable self was a bit jarring. “Could we maybe go back into the room of harmony and discuss this?”

“No.”

“Morrigan, I’m supposed to be dead, remember? If the Norse find out I’m alive, they’ll just want to kill me all over again.”

“Some of them are already well aware of the deception.”

“That’s the same as all of them.”

“No, it is not. Come. You will be safe.”

This statement, meant to put me at my ease, utterly failed to reassure me. I remembered that the Morrigan’s definition of safe varied widely from mine. Hers included excruciating pain and severe injury just short of death. Mine included beer and a recliner chair. The fact that she felt it necessary to repair my healing capability before we made this trip suggested very strongly that she knew it would be dangerous.

Hand in hand, we used one of the yew trees in her fen to shift from Ireland to Tír na nÓg and from there to an evergreen stretch north of Oslo. We took our bird forms and flew into the city until we banked down a narrow alley, where the Morrigan shifted to her human form as the last rays of sunlight moved off to the west and left us in darkness. I shifted as well and felt doubly naked without a sword over my shoulder in enemy territory. No one witnessed our metamorphosis, nor did anyone spy our public nudity. The Morrigan unbound a locked access door, and we stepped into the back room of what looked like a tailor’s shop.

“Padraig,” she called. “We are here.”

I cast a questioning glance her way. That wasn’t a Norwegian name.

“There are plenty of people outside Ireland who pay me respect, Siodhachan,” she said. “Don’t look so surprised.”

“Of course,” I said.

A short lad with a florid complexion bounded through a black curtain that presumably led to the front of the shop. His eyes grew wide when he saw us and he started to bow to her, but the Morrigan stopped him.

“Never mind that,” she said. “We don’t have time. Just fetch our clothes.”

“Right away!” he blurted, joy writ large on his features, and he fled back through the curtain.

“How cute,” I said. “You have a fanboy.”

“Minion.”

“A matter of nuance. Why not simply cloak yourself in darkness as I’ve seen you do before?”

“We are to arrive without bindings or wards of any kind. No magic is allowed.”

“What? That’s insane! First no sword, and now no magic?”

“They are bound by the same rules. Make sure you follow them.”

“Forgive me, Morrigan, but these Norse gods, whoever they are, might not feel as bound by the rules as you do.”

“This is a formal summit of deities. They would not dare to cross me. Nor will we cross them.”

Padraig returned before I could register any further objections. He held a black evening dress made of silk and lace in his left hand and a tuxedo in his right. He sort of threw the tuxedo at me and then grandly presented the gown to the Morrigan. His eyes drank in her body, and his breathing was already labored. The Morrigan surely noticed this but made no comment.

Since I was certain she wasn’t carrying any cash on her, I didn’t particularly want to see what form of payment Padraig was expecting for these rather expensive clothes. I began to dress as quickly as possible, hoping that I’d be able to exit and wait outside before I had to bear witness to something tragic.

Unfortunately, the dress was a much simpler affair to don than a tuxedo. It slipped over her head, and with a couple of tugs here and a zip there she was ready. The dress was stunning; the black silk was a flat matte in some places but shone with highlights elsewhere. A curling vine pattern of lace interrupted the silk and hugged her curves, allowing her porcelain skin to show through. Starting over her left breast, the lace curved between them and then underneath, tracing its way in a spiral around her torso until it reappeared above her right hip, where it fell in a serpentine wave down the front of her thigh. The dress ended just above the knees.

“You didn’t forget my shoes, did you, Padraig?” the Morrigan said.

A brief flash of panic crossed Padraig’s face as he realized he may have committed an unpardonable sin. “No, no!” he said, hands up in a placating gesture. “I simply couldn’t carry them along with the dress and tux. I’ll go get them and be right back.”

He bolted through the curtain again.

I cocked an eyebrow at the Morrigan. “Do I get shoes too?”

“He might forget,” she replied. “How shall we punish him?”

“Let’s not and pretend we did,” I said. “Let’s leave the poor man alone.”

“That would be unkind, Siodhachan,” she said. “He prayed so fervently for my favor. He’s fully aware that there will be a price for it.”

“What if he’s unable to pay?”

“Oh, they are always able to pay. Was it Shakespeare’s Shylock who was so eager to extract a pound of flesh? I’m like him. I’m happy to carve off a pound. Or two. I never seem to have a scale handy when it’s time to take what’s due.”

Padraig returned with a pair of black shoes for me and some sandals for the Morrigan—the type with lots of leather straps on them to wind around the calves. I dragged a chair over from a desk piled high with receipts and invoices. I parked myself on the chair and squeezed my feet into the shoes. I’d rather have remained barefoot, since anything I wore on my feet would cut me off from the earth, but the Morrigan seemed to have arranged matters so that I would be at my greatest disadvantage when I met whomever we were meeting. My bear charm was just below full, since I’d charged up in the forest before we took wing and only used a little bit of it to transform back to human in the city. It felt good to have something available even though the Morrigan kept insisting I wouldn’t need it. That was simply too trusting of her—yet more unusual behavior.

I didn’t understand what was going on with her. On the one hand, she had nearly wept at the idea of going to see a baseball game with me. Now she spoke of carving pounds of flesh from a man who’d been praying to her. It was like she had swerved toward kindness and sanity for a moment, but now she was overcorrecting and trying to be extra-special savage. I feared what she would do to Padraig; I wanted to tell him to run for his life, because this was the Morrigan that gives Irishmen nightmares. Sandal straps twined sinuously around her calves, she addressed Padraig in a silky tone, if the silk was draped over a knife blade.

“Everything appears to be in order, Padraig. You have done well. Are you ready for your payment?”

“Oh, yes, I’m ready, very ready,” he said.

The corners of the Morrigan’s mouth twitched upward in idle amusement. “Take off your shirt, Padraig,” she said in a husky whisper, and suddenly I felt warm as she began to employ her seductive powers on the poor lad. I’ve always thought them more powerful than those of succubi, but she hadn’t needed to use them on me back at her lair-o-bones because the fertility bindings accomplished the same thing. I was partially protected from her wonted powers of seduction by my cold iron amulet, and in this case they weren’t even directed at me, but Padraig was utterly helpless. He was practically panting as he tore at his shirt and wrestled himself out of it.

“Yes, Morrigan!” he cried. “Oh, goddess!” The front of his trousers twitched and strained as if one of Ridley Scott’s alien babies were trying to erupt from it. The Morrigan placed her hand flat on his chest, just underneath his right collarbone, and he shuddered at her touch. Then her fingernails turned long and black, almost into talons, and she dug into his chest with them and began to slowly rake across and down to his left. Padraig cried out, and both his hands clutched at the Morrigan’s wrist—not to pull her hand away but rather to force it deeper. Blood welled underneath her nails and began to run down his ribs and belly; Padraig moaned and wailed and his hips began to buck uncontrollably as she tore at his chest.

I wondered if he had any customers in the front of the store. Tailor shops are not usually so fraught with pain and ecstasy.

Padraig screamed when the Morrigan’s nails sheared off his left nipple. She pulled her hand away then; Padraig let go of her wrist and fell to the floor, jerking and trembling.

“We can go now,” she said, stepping over Padraig’s twitching body and through the black curtain, leaving me alone with a man having a bloody epic orgasm on the floor.

I wanted to kneel and heal up his chest but suspected that the Morrigan would object in violent fashion. I didn’t know what to do. “Well, thanks! Um. Have a nice day!” I finally said, and followed after the Morrigan. Once through the curtain, I saw that the shop was empty and the Morrigan was heading for the front door. “Aren’t you going to help him?” I said. I had to raise my voice to be heard over the noise Padraig was making.

She stopped and turned, perplexed by my question. “I just did, Siodhachan.”

“He’s losing a lot of blood and he sounds like he’s in pain.”

“Yes, but he’s also in pleasure. He’ll live. And, besides, he asked for it.”

“He asked to be mutilated and—whatever else that is?”

“He will ejaculate for five more minutes and then pass out.”

I blanched. “Is that even possible?”

“Yes. When he wakes, he will experience the most intense period of creativity he’s ever known. His designs will make him one of the most sought-after tailors in all Europe.”

“Oh. So that’s what he asked for?”

“Yes. I’m not a goddess of craft, like Brighid, but I do what I can.”

“He didn’t ask to lose a nipple and be permanently scarred, did he?”

“People who court my favor know what kind of goddess I am,” she replied. “And there are still plenty of people willing to make Faustian bargains. They tend to focus on the results rather than the costs to achieve them.”

She turned away, signaling an end to the conversation, and I sighed in defeat. I hoped Padraig would think it was worth it in the end.

We exited the shop, closing the door on the tailor’s rapture and ruin, then hailed a cab. The Morrigan told the driver to drop us off at the corner of Kirkegata and Rådhusgata.

There’s a seventeenth-century building at that location that currently houses one of the finest gourmet restaurants anywhere. It’s the sort of place where you have to dress up to walk through the door and even the toothpicks are posh. Dinners are served in four to six courses, and there’s not only a professional waiter but a professional sommelier at your elbow.

At some point the building had been painted a belligerent shade of mauve—it was mauve, damn it, and proud. It was a generous two stories tall, with frequent narrow white-framed windows blessedly interrupting the Great Mauve Wall. Above a gray cornice loomed a black-shingled roof, which had architecture of its own, allowing for an attic room or three and their concomitant windows. Movement up there drew my eyes, and I spied two enormous ravens perched on the eaves, seeming to look straight at me with equal parts gravitas and gloom. Each one of them had an eye that gleamed white.

“That’s an overdose of Poe, isn’t it?” I said.

The Morrigan, seeing the ravens, gave a short bark of laughter. “There’s no Poe involved at all. Use your head, Siodhachan.”

I remembered we were supposedly meeting members of the Norse pantheon and said, “You don’t mean he is here—”

The Morrigan slapped me. “I said use your head, not your mouth.”

“But how can he—”

I got slapped again.

“Right. Sorry.”

The Morrigan took a deep breath and closed her eyes, clenching her fists at her sides. It was the first sign I’d seen that she felt the least bit nervous about this encounter.

“How do I look?” she asked, and I wondered again at how she could be simultaneously so ruthless and insecure.

“Fearsome. Deadly. A bit delicious.”

She smiled. “You always know what to say. Let’s go. And, remember, no magic.”

Once inside, we were greeted with a large smile by the maître d’, an impeccably scrubbed and barbered man dressed in black-tie livery. He ushered us to a window table in the Cleopatra Room, where waited none other than the goddess who gave her name to Friday. She rose to receive us.

Frigg glowed the way stained glass does; she had that sort of beauty, very colorful and beatific yet flat and gauzy with the suggestion that you’re missing quite a bit of depth. The question was whether the depth was carefully hidden or if it was simply missing.

She appeared cordial yet tense, like a little boy who’s being forced by his mother to be nice to his aunt Ethel or else, except that Aunt Ethel is the one with the hairy mustache and it’s all he can do to keep from screaming when she arrives and wants a kiss. The pleasant expression on Frigg’s face, with a ghost of a smile, didn’t reach her eyes; they were cold and unfriendly. She wore a royal-blue sheath gown circled with a wide black sash just beneath her ribs. Circling her neck was an extremely shiny something, set with enough diamonds to feed several families and a stable full of ponies for a year. I was about to check her out in the magical spectrum when the Morrigan grabbed my jaw and yanked it right to face her. She spoke in Old Irish so Frigg wouldn’t know what she said.

“Remember what I said about magic?”

“Not supposed to use any,” I managed to say while she had an iron grip on my chin.

“That’s right. None. But you were about to cast magical sight, weren’t you? See my eyes? They’re brown instead of red because I can’t use magic right now. Pretend they’re red, Siodhachan. I’m watching you.”

“Got it.”

She let me go and then I felt like the little boy, except I’d failed to greet Aunt Ethel properly and received a royal chewing out as a result. I blushed and muttered a quick apology in Old Norse to Frigg for my manners. “Call me Atticus, please.”

“Thank you for coming,” she said, then waved a hand at the chairs across from her. “Please, sit.”

I pulled out the Morrigan’s chair for her, and after she was seated I took the spot nearest the window. The sommelier showed up to welcome us to Statholdergaarden and discuss wine before we could say anything. Frigg ordered a bottle of Australian Shiraz, surprising me somewhat. It must have shown on my face, because she explained the order afterward.

“One gets so tired of mead from the teats of a magic goat every night. Not that I’m complaining about the quality—I dare anyone to find a better brew flowing from the udders of a she-goat—but one does need a bit of variety now and then. The food and drink here will be a welcome change.”

I was completely unprepared to answer her. Not only had I not drunk the same thing every night for centuries, I had never made small talk about goat teats before. I realized that my mouth had dropped open after the Morrigan reached over and pushed up on my chin. My teeth clacked together audibly, and then Frigg’s face turned crimson, realizing she’d introduced an awkward topic of conversation. The Morrigan seemed determined to embarrass everyone tonight.

Unsure of what to say, I kept silent and waited. I couldn’t think of a safe topic of conversation—not even the weather, because that might be interpreted as a reference to Thor. I didn’t want to embarrass myself or anyone else, and I didn’t want to earn another rebuke from the Morrigan for saying the wrong thing—like, for example, inquiring after the missing occupant of the chair next to Frigg’s. There was a place setting there, and Frigg had asked the sommelier for four glasses, but there was no other sign of the last member of our party. Unless you counted the two ravens on the roof.

I suppose there was a statistical non-zero probability that this could be a coincidence—two normal ravens just happened to be perching on the roof of a restaurant in Oslo where I was about to meet unnamed Norse gods—but I felt it was fairly improbable. It was far more probable that I was about to have an extremely uncomfortable formal dinner with two deities who had a long list of reasons to kill me.

Granuaile asked me once how it could be possible for all the world’s gods to be walking around without anybody noticing. The answer was (and is) simple: cosplay. Most gods cosplay as humans when they visit earth and do their best to stay in character. If they perform miracles here and there, they’re always small things that no one outside the local area will notice. But, more than anything else, they don’t show themselves because humanity doesn’t truly believe they ever will. We imagine them chilling out in their heavens or nirvanas or planes of punishment, and they’re generally expected to stay there. And if they’re going to work their divine magic on earth or pull a deus ex machina, then they act through surrogates or from afar. In a sense, deities are incapable of showing themselves because most people don’t believe they’ll meet their gods before they die. I am a notable exception to the rule. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed they could run into the Olympians, though, so that allowed Zeus and company to start all kinds of shit in the old days.

The silence lengthened. I couldn’t believe Frigg’s entire repertoire had been exhausted on goat teats and mead, but for the nonce, at least, her speech was on hiatus. Taking a deep breath, I employed the architectural-history gambit: “Why is this called the Cleopatra Room?” I asked.

The Morrigan pointed up. “The ceiling,” she said. Craning my head back, I saw an elaborate stucco on the ceiling. Back in Arizona, they just sprayed stucco on the outside of houses and called it an exterior. But long ago, back when this building was originally constructed, artists used it as a medium to create permanent bas-relief sculptures. This one—undoubtedly one of the finest I’d ever seen—depicted the suicide of Cleopatra, who’d famously decided to leave this world by snakebite. Seeing it made me immediately miss Oberon, because I knew he would find the opportunity for parody irresistible, and I knew what he would say if he could see it now, complete with the voice of Samuel L. Jackson: <Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking ceiling!>

“Beautiful,” I said, and hoped my smile would be interpreted as art appreciation rather than amusement at my hound’s fondness for movies.

“Yes,” the Morrigan agreed.

Our scintillating conversation was blessedly interrupted by the sommelier, who returned with the bottle of Shiraz. He poured a little out for our suspiciously missing homie, then left us to fill the silence once again. We had nothing, so we drank a bit and speculated about all the different flavors we could taste in the fermented grapes. The Morrigan opined that it had a layered flavor, stony but finishing with a lush réglisse. Frigg tasted spice, whatever that meant; I doubt it was an allusion to the planet Arrakis. I am not proficient in the language of wine, so I was just about to suggest there was a faint top note of mango chutney when Frigg’s eyes shifted over my shoulder and her expression softened. She rose from her chair, and the Morrigan and I followed suit. Turning to follow Frigg’s gaze, I saw a tall man in a tuxedo approaching our table. Gray hair flowed about his head and down to his shoulders, but it wasn’t thin and receding; it was somehow virile and imbued with badassery. The simple black eye patch over his left eye didn’t make him look like a pirate but instead communicated wisdom—precisely the prize for which he gave up his eye. It spoke of his suffering and his willingness to sacrifice—to stop at nothing—to remain the wisest of the wise. His epic beard was a bit surprising and somewhat intimidating: I’d expected an unruly carpet flowing down his chest, but it was a densely packed and trimmed affair, almost like topiary, which gave his features the weight of a carefully constructed edifice that few men could pull off. Most guys grow beards that do nothing for them other than communicate to the world that “this is what happens when you don’t shave.” The beard of Odin told you that he wasn’t a hippie or a barbarian or a fantasy author but a god who could bring order to chaos.

He took his wife’s hand and planted a kiss on it. Then he turned to the Morrigan and nodded to her once. “Morrigan.” She nodded back. Then his eye swiveled to face me, and I could feel the frost of his hatred; I had to suppress a shudder. “So you are the one,” he said. “Slayer of the Norns and Freyr and so many others.” His voice reminded me of whiskey—and I don’t say that just because I’m Irish. His words were rich and smoky and quite possibly had been aged in oak barrels for years before he spoke them. “Since I recovered, I have watched you from Hlidskjálf, unable to believe what I saw. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, I saw nothing in you that suggested you were capable of defeating us. But now, seeing you in person, I can perceive your essential nature. You are deceptive.”

“Frequently,” I admitted. “Hello, by the way. I’m honored to meet you.”

Odin’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “Honor!” he growled. “You cannot speak to me of honor when you have none!”

Frigg placed a delicate hand on his arm. “Let’s sit down, shall we?” The tension drained from Odin’s shoulders, and his fists unclenched. We all sat, and as we did so I realized that Odin and I had something in common: We were both under the complete control of the woman sitting next to us. I admired Frigg’s good sense. Sitting down made it much more difficult for Odin to lunge across the table in an attempt to snap my neck. And seating the Morrigan directly across from him would serve as a reminder that, should matters come to blows, she would be the one choosing the slain.

The waiter appeared, an earnest man intent on regaling us with specials and options he’d been at pains to memorize, but Odin stopped him and spoke in the modern Norwegian language. “We will all take the full six courses,” he said. “If there are options, please leave it as chef’s choice. And please inform the sommelier that we also trust his judgment regarding wines for the remainder of the evening. We have much to discuss and do not wish to be distracted with decisions to make.” A credit card appeared in his hand. “This will assure you that we will pay for whatever you serve.”

The waiter bowed, took the card, and said, “Very good. I’ll return shortly with the first course, which is crayfish from the fjord and—”

Odin waved him silent. “We’ll figure it out when we eat it, my good man. Forgive me if I am being rude. I assure you we will tip generously.”

“Very good,” the waiter repeated, and went away to orchestrate what would no doubt be a very large bill. Odin returned his gaze to me and his language to Old Norse. Before he could enumerate the reasons I deserved to die, I jumped in. I had much to answer for, but I wouldn’t passively accept whatever he wished to say—especially regarding my supposed lack of honor. I like to think I have a smidgen of it, at least.

“Odin, wise as you are, I am sure you have already noted that I twice held Gungnir in my hands and twice refused to target you personally when I could have done so. In both cases, I chose to do that which would secure my safety and nothing more. You sit here before me today because I stayed my hand. Twice.”

“And you think because you spared my life twice that you are honorable?”

“The entire reason I came to Asgard was to honor my promises. I killed only those who seemed bent on killing me. The Norns tried first but killed Ratatosk instead. Having no choice, I slew them and then went to the hall of Idunn and Bragi. I could have slain them, but I left them alone.”

“But you stole one of Idunn’s golden apples! Your honor is the honor of a thief.”

“A thief who keeps his word. You tried to kill me for it shortly thereafter. I could have taken your life. Instead—with great reluctance, I might add—I took Sleipnir’s.”

“There was no honor in that decision. It was strategically the best course of action, because it occupied the attention of the Valkyries as well. Had you slain me outright, they would have pursued you to avenge me.”

“Even so, my point remains: I responded with violence only when it was first offered to me.”

“Ha! What violence from Thor prompted you to bring a party of men and giants to Asgard to slay him?”

“That is a separate matter. But, again, I was keeping my word.”

“You promised to kill Thor?”

“No, I promised to provide transportation to Asgard.”

“So in your mind you have done us no wrong?”

“I did not say that, Odin.”

We paused as the waiter brought out the first course. The crayfish was there, but so was a small trout roulade. I sampled it and discovered that the chef knew what he was doing. If this was to be my last meal, I couldn’t ask for a finer one. None of the gods touched their food. They watched me eat and waited for me to continue.

“On the contrary,” I continued, “I believe I acted shamefully during that second trip, and I deeply regret what happened. I apologize to you both, though I know the words are inadequate.”

Odin snorted. “They’re worse than useless. It’s insulting that you would even try to pay for what you did with a meaningless phrase.”

“How would you suggest that I pay? Paying with my life is not an option.”

I expected an argument here, but Odin surprised me by agreeing. “No, it’s not,” he said. “There’s not enough of you to pay the blood price.”

“Blood price?”

“It’s a common enough concept.”

The waiter swooped in and cleared the first course away before depositing the second in front of us, a seafood soup garnished with avocado and other goodies. Once he left, Odin changed the subject.

“We will speak of blood later. What I would like to know is why you’re alive.”

“Why didn’t I die before the Common Era, you mean? How did I manage to live long enough to vex you?”

“Precisely.”

“I occasionally drink an herbal tea that renews my cells and reverses the aging process.”

“Interesting.” Odin looked down at his soup and, deciding it looked good enough to eat, picked up a spoon. Frigg, the Morrigan, and I did the same, and we slurped up a spoonful or two before Odin asked another question. “And this tea you drink—is it readily available in these modern supermarkets? Or is it something you invented?”

“No. I got the recipe from Airmid, one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. She’s long dead now, however. Tragic circumstances.”

“A tragedy! Forgive me for noticing, but they seem to follow in your wake.”

“You’re forgiven. May I ask you something?”

“Of course.” His spoon hovered over his bowl as he waited for my question.

“How did you find out where I was?” My cold iron amulet normally shielded me from divination; not even the Norns had seen me coming.

“Hugin and Munin found you a couple of months ago, working out in the desert with that apprentice of yours.”

Mentioning Granuaile wasn’t an accident. It was a subtle threat, but I pretended not to notice. “Oh. About the ravens. Which one …?”

“Did you kill? Hugin. I languished in dreams of the past for years, attended by Frigg and unable to function in the present. But eventually Munin remembered Hugin and laid an egg. The new raven, when he reached maturity, became Hugin again. I awoke, sent the ravens abroad in search of you, and, once you were found, I watched from Hlidskjálf.”

“I see. And how many of the Norse know I’m still alive?”

“Only Frigg and myself.”

“Why didn’t you tell them all?”

“That is related to the blood price of which we will speak further. If you would not mind, I would like to know precisely how you learned the recipe for this brew of eternal youth.”

I shrugged. “I already told you. Airmid taught me.”

“Yes, but why? Why you and no one else?”

I put down my spoon and exchanged glances with the Morrigan. She knew the answer, but no one else did. “Oh. That is quite a story.”

Odin gestured at the table. “We have four more courses.”

“It is not that long, but it is a story I have never shared before and I am reluctant to share it. It has a certain value.”

Odin’s eye bored into mine. “Understood. Consider it a part of what you owe us.”

“Very well.” I saw the waiter and sommelier approaching. “I will begin once we’ve been served the third course.”

The third course was pan-fried pike with a side of white asparagus and some other assorted vegetables artfully arranged on a white plate, drizzled with a beurre blanc. The sommelier, an older gentleman with thinning hair but crisp movements and a steady hand, served us all a glass of chardonnay. After that, I had to share a secret I thought I’d never speak aloud.

*  *  *

*  *  *

In the days when the Tuatha Dé Danann were puissant in Ireland, the most famous physician of the time—if I may use the modern word—was Dian Cecht. During the First Battle of Mag Tuireadh, the king, Nuada, lost his right arm in battle, and he applied to Dian Cecht for remedy. Despite his victory over the Fir Bolgs, he was no longer fit to rule with such a disability.

Together with the craftsman Creidhne, Dian Cecht fashioned a magical silver hand and arm for Nuada; once it was attached, it functioned just like a regular arm would, and Dian Cecht’s fame grew ever greater throughout Ireland. People began to call the former king Nuada Silver-hand, for it was truly a miraculous sight and all who saw it were amazed. In public, Nuada was mightily pleased and recognized the fame his silver hand brought him. But in private—well, there were issues. It repelled his wife, who did not want it to touch her. And whether he wore it or not, Nuada could not help but feel incomplete and out of balance. Despite the miracle of the silver arm, he was diminished.

But Miach, son of Dian Cecht, felt Nuada’s pain and dared to help him. He was an extraordinarily talented and empathetic healer, who avoided conflict with his father whenever he could. But in the case of Nuada, he could not withhold help when it was in his power—and his power only—to give it.

Over nine days and nights of chanting and ritual, he managed to regenerate a new arm and hand of flesh and blood for Nuada. The king was whole again and could return to the throne. Miach had surpassed his father, however, and Dian Cecht was not the sort of man who suffered such things in passive silence. Indeed, rather than feel pride for his son’s accomplishment and broadcast it far and wide, he was consumed with jealous rage and confronted his son with a sword.

Miach protested that he did not want to fight and bore only love and goodwill for his father, but Dian Cecht was beyond reason. His first stroke grazed Miach’s skin, but his son healed it immediately. Such a display only drove Dian Cecht to further violence. Despite Miach’s attempts to dodge, his father’s second attempt stabbed him in the gut—but Miach healed even that. Dian Cecht became more animal than man when he saw. His third stroke cleaved all the way down into Miach’s brain, and that overcame his son’s ability to heal. He died, and then Dian Cecht threw down his sword in horror at what he had done.

His horror was not a fraction of Airmid’s, however. Airmid, sister of Miach, was quite a healer in her own right and a powerful Druid. Her rage was such that she did not attend her brother’s funeral for fear that she would kill her father. Instead, she waited until the funeral had ended and everyone had gone home, and then she visited her brother’s grave to pay her respects. She wept for three days and nights on his grave and sang him songs in broken sobs. She wept for love and loss and memories she could no longer share but had to keep in trust for them both, and she wept for all the memories that would never be now that he was dead. Exhausted, she collapsed next to his grave and slept.

When she woke, a wonder greeted her eyes. Out of Miach’s grave, watered by her tears and the blood of Miach’s body, grew 365 herbs of medicinal power. Possessed with a purpose, realizing the gift before her, Airmid spread out her cloak and began to test and catalog the herbs, examining their qualities and preserving in her mind their unique properties. But before Airmid was finished, Dian Cecht, possessed by grief and guilt, came to visit the grave of his son.

He saw Airmid’s cloak spread on the ground and the world’s medicinal herbs laid out in order upon it. He saw the herbs themselves growing from the grave in the shape of Miach’s body, and his jealous rage rose again.

“Even in death he mocks me and renders my life meager in comparison!” Dian Cecht roared. He tore at the herbs growing in the earth, then yanked Airmid’s cloak from the ground and snapped it in the wind, scattering the herbs into the sky. Because of this deed, it is said that no one alive knows the sum of the earth’s herblore.

It was at this point that Airmid lost her composure. Wielding a stick as her weapon, she attacked Dian Cecht, battering him about the face and body with all the strength a Druid could bring to bear, until he crumpled to the ground. Throwing down the stick, she picked up a boulder and raised it over her head, intending to bring it down upon her father’s head. But a voice from Tír na nÓg stopped her.

“Airmid, no!” it cried, and she froze. It was the voice of Miach, calling her from beyond the veil. “For the love you bear me, do not slay our father!”

The rock tumbled from her fingers, and she left Dian Cecht bleeding on the ground to heal himself. She picked up her cloak and walked away from the grave without speaking a word. She did not speak to anyone for nine days, in fact, and the first person she spoke to was me.

I was in the twilight of my normal lifetime and dwelling on my approaching death. I wasn’t decrepit or arthritic, for Gaia sustains us well, but my physical prime was four decades gone at the least, and the prospect of a steep decline into death’s embrace had somewhat soured my disposition. I was drinking alone at an inn when Airmid entered, searched the room, and picked me out. She saw the signs of morbidity in my aura, no doubt. But she also saw the tattoos on my arm and knew I was a Druid.

She sat down across from me with a satchel and said, “Old man, indulge a young woman. What would you do to have your youth again? To feel the bounce of vigor in your step, to feel the hard wood of your cock again, and to nevermore lose it to the ravages of age unless you will it?”

I did not know who she was. She was robed and gloved, so I did not even know she was a Druid, much less a member of the Tuatha Dé Danann. “Do you jest or do you ask in all seriousness?” I said.

“I am in earnest,” she replied. “I truly wish to know what you would be willing to do for a gift like that.”

“I would kill for that,” I said. Men have killed for far less.

“Then I have a proposal for you,” she said, and withdrew a sheaf of skins from her satchel, filled with all the herblore she could remember from before Dian Cecht threw her work to the wind. “I am a Druid, and I have discovered a blend of herbs that, when slightly altered with a simple binding and brewed as a tea, confers the blessings of youth on he who drinks it. That secret and so many others are contained in these pages. They are yours if you kill a man for me.”

I perused a few of the pages and realized that the herblore set down therein was far beyond my ken. I examined her aura and saw no hint of deception there or in any gesture of her body. That is no guarantee of honesty, for we can all be deceived easier than we would like to think, but so far as I could tell she was making me a genuine offer, and I was desperate enough to accept. But I had to ask: “Why not simply kill him yourself? I can see that you are a powerful Druid.”

“I cannot kill him, because he is my father.”

“I must kill your father in exchange for this herblore?”

“Yes. What say you?”

“Who is your father?”

“Dian Cecht of the Tuatha Dé Danann.”

She recounted for me the story of her brother’s death and told me how she managed to classify and catalog 327 of the 365 herbs before her father destroyed her work. “A Druid doesn’t forget,” she said. “I have spent the last nine days writing down this lore and experimenting further. This new tea of youth is the best of my discoveries, but there are more.”

“I am engaged,” I said. “Tell me where to find him.”

Legends say that Dian Cecht died of a terrible plague. To the bards who told it that way, it seemed like an ironic and just ending for a villainous physician. The truth of his end involves a terrified chicken.

Airmid directed me to Dian Cecht’s house. When I arrived there, he was not at home. I approached it in camouflage and disabled his few simple wards, went inside, then put them back together. Since I was over sixty, I didn’t feel equal to besting him in a fair fight, and I dislike fair fights anyway. I needed an advantage, so I greased down the floorboards near the door. Once he closed it behind him, I would spring from hiding and the uncertain footing would negate any advantage he had in speed.

The entrance to his house was a kitchen and dining area. A hallway from this led to other rooms, and after I was finished with my preparations, I hid around the corner and sat in the hall.

Hours passed, during which I had ample opportunity to reconsider, but I convinced myself that, in a very real sense, it was either him or me. If I didn’t kill him, I would die—eventually. If I did, I wouldn’t die, period. I had killed men in battles but never plotted a murder before. It didn’t sit well with me, but neither did the prospect of gasping my last breath.

When Dian Cecht finally came home, he brought a chicken with him to pluck for his dinner. He clutched it tightly against his chest with one hand—his sword hand. When I leapt out of my hiding place and shouted, “HA!” with my own sword drawn, I killed him. Or, rather, the chicken did.

He let go of the chicken to reach for his sword, and the creature exploded from his grip and slapped him several times in the face with her beating wings as she pecked at him. In his attempt to shy away from the chicken and also draw his weapon, he slipped on the greasy floor, cracking his head open on the edge of a worktable near the door as he fell. He was dead before he hit the ground. And that’s when I first met the Morrigan. Though I had never crossed swords with Dian Cecht, the intent had been there, and thus our confrontation had fallen to her sphere of influence. She had chosen Dian Cecht, not me, to be slain, and she let me know.

She couldn’t choose him for death against Miach, because Miach had never tried to fight back. And Miach thwarted her again when he made Airmid promise not to kill her father. I was an acceptable work-around, however, and she said at the time we would meet again. I thought she meant she’d choose me to die in battle soon; I had no idea at the time that our association would last so long.

I took the chicken back to the inn where I’d met Airmid and had them cook it for me. She came in as I was finishing up and I told her that the deed was done.

“Where did you cut him?” she asked.

“I didn’t use my sword,” I said, then pointed at the bones on my plate. “I used this chicken.”

I told her what had happened and she seemed pleased. True to her word, she gave me the sum of her notes and showed me the binding I needed to use to create Immortali-Tea, as well as several other bindings for other special brews. And that is how I not only gained the secret to eternal youth but gained the herblore of the greatest herbalist ever to walk the earth. Plus a great chicken dinner.

*  *  *

*  *  *

Odin set down his fork and dabbed his mouth with a napkin. He looked at Frigg and said, “I hope the fourth course won’t be a chicken dish.”

“I don’t think it is.”

“Good.” He turned to me and said, “I can see why you prefer to keep that story to yourself. It is a terrible thing to be henpecked.”

The fourth course was a veal sirloin stuffed with morel mushrooms and another attractive arrangement of vegetables on the side. I tore into this since I’d never enjoyed a bite of the third course, occupied as I was with the story. The gods enjoyed their wine but didn’t touch the food. Apparently they don’t do veal. Perhaps they would have enjoyed chicken after all.

“I have had much time to ponder the ramifications of your actions in Asgard,” Odin said as I was eating. “And much time to ponder my response. In the old days, there would be no question—we would have killed you and any known associates. But this is a different time, and the simple vengeance we crave would not serve us well in the long run. We would rather, instead, that you serve us well.”

I stopped chewing. “I beg your pardon? Are you suggesting some sort of indenture?”

“No. A blood price. Ragnarok is coming soon, and since you have killed or assisted in the killing of many gods who were to fight on our side, we wish you to take their place.”

I very nearly choked and needed to drink a bit to clear my throat before I could speak. “You want me to take the place of gods?”

“Not entirely by yourself. It would be helpful if you could recruit some others. You clearly have the powers of a classical hero, and your assistance would be invaluable. All that matters is defeating the forces of Hel and Muspellheim: Next to that, our vengeance is a trifling matter. Fight with us, and the blood you shed on our behalf will expiate your debt. That, and one other thing.”

“What?”

“I would appreciate the return of Gungnir.”

“Promise not to throw it at me again?”

A flicker of irritation crossed Odin’s face. “Yes.”

“Okay, sure, I’ll return it. I have no use for it. Send Hugin and Munin to visit me in Arizona three days from now. I’ll tell them where to pick it up.”

“Thank you. And Ragnarok?”

I thought about Hel and her attempt to kill me near Kayenta. I thought about the world overrun with draugar. Even people who were preparing for the zombie apocalypse would have trouble with those things. “If the shit goes down, Odin, I’m on your side.”

“Excellent. Will you fight with him, Morrigan?”

The Morrigan, like Frigg, had remained silent for much of the meal. Now she gave a thin smile. “I’m afraid I’ll have to miss that particular battle. The Valkyries will have to suffice.”

Odin’s expression darkened. We had killed twelve of the Valkyries when we raided Asgard. I don’t know how many remained, if any. To change the subject, I said, “Can I ask what happened to Thor’s hammer?”

“Why?” Frigg asked. “Did you promise someone you’d steal it?”

The nastiness of the question surprised me. We’d been getting along so well. But I tend to react when provoked. “No,” I said. “If I had, it would already be in my possession.” Frigg seethed and Odin chuckled softly.

“You were supposed to keep my anger in check,” he said.

The fourth course was cleared away—the waiter making sure we were all okay, since the gods hadn’t touched the veal—and the fifth was laid before us. Five different well-aged cheeses were attractively presented on a white rectangular platter with crackers and fruit compote. Some were sliced in triangles, some in thin, translucent pieces. It was a superlative achievement in both geometry and dairy. The sommelier served us something from Italy; I didn’t quite catch it.

“Mjöllnir rests in Gladsheim,” Odin said once the servers had retreated.

“No one wields it now?”

The Norse gods frowned as if I’d asked something particularly inane. “Like who?” Odin said.

“I was thinking maybe some other, later aspect of Thor. The one from the comics is popular right now.”

Odin scoffed. “Popular, perhaps. But he is not worshipped, and you know what that means: He can’t muster magic enough to manifest himself! He has to be played by a human actor in his own movies. He’s nothing but cheap entertainment. Surely you know this.”

I did know it, but it never hurts to let possible antagonists think they are smarter than you.

“Well, if he can’t do it, then surely some other aspect of Thor can?”

“They are all comfortable in their current situations, and none is as strong as the original. I wouldn’t want a single one of them at my back. No, Thor’s responsibility is now yours.”

“Mine? You want me to face the world serpent?”

“Or find someone else to do it, yes.”

This twist in the conversation reminded me uncomfortably of Cleopatra on the ceiling. I looked up and examined it again past the glow of the chandelier, and, while I did, the gods directed their attention to the cheeses.

The artist had taken quite a bit of license; Cleopatra reclined, leaning on her right arm, while her left hand held a snake up to her breast, inviting it to bite her. I thought the snake would have simply bitten her hand when she reached to pick it up, but that was the least of the odd choices the artist had made. For some reason, he had decided to give Cleopatra European features and provide her with a Rubenesque figure; my archdruid would have described her as “festively plump.” She also appeared to be dressed in Greek style rather than anything Egyptian. Though still quite beautiful as a work of art, the inaccuracy bizarrely exposed what I think is the true tragedy of Cleopatra: No one really understood her or her decision. But maybe some could empathize with the feeling of being trapped by circumstances. I certainly could.

“I can’t agree specifically to a cage match with Jörmungandr,” I said, “but I will fight on your side against Hel, see if I can recruit additional aid, and return Gungnir to help make amends for my wrongs against you.”

Odin opened his mouth to reply but closed it again as the sommelier arrived to bring us a dessert wine for the final course. It was to be a macaron filled with Bavarian vanilla and strawberries and served with champagne jelly, and he assured us it would arrive shortly. But I never got to try the macaron. Never got to hear Odin’s stifled reply.

As the sommelier drew close behind me to deposit a glass over my right shoulder, several things happened in quick succession in a fraction of a second. The Morrigan’s left hand blurred and pushed me so violently from my seat that my head hit the floor while my ass was still in the chair. Glass tinkled. The sommelier cried out and fell backward, to hell with the wine. The report of a rifle cracked in the air. Odin and Frigg lurched to their feet.

After the second passed, the Morrigan’s words floated down to me as I struggled to stay low but get in a defensive position. “There, Siodhachan,” she said, amusement in every word. “I saved your life. Now you can stop whining about our agreement.”

Someone had tried to shoot me in the head through the window and had shot the sommelier instead. Since he’d taken the bullet in the hip and had been standing behind my right shoulder, that meant the shot had come from the roof across the street and had been aimed more or less at the top left side of my face.

The sommelier clutched at his hip and loudly informed the room, in case they missed it, that he’d been shot. Upper-class squeals and calls for emergency personnel filled the restaurant, but I blocked that out and kept my eye on Frigg and Odin. It seemed insane to me that they would go through that whole charade of a dinner just to kill me anyway—especially since they didn’t have Gungnir back and didn’t know where it was—but I had to suspect they were responsible, because they had good reason to kill me and they were the only ones who knew I was here, apart from the Morrigan. I ruled the Morrigan out as a suspect, because she could have killed me anytime she wanted to in the last two millennia without any witnesses. The only possible reason to arrange it like this would be to blame it on the Norse—but why would she have cause to do that?

Still, she obviously had known the shot was coming, or she wouldn’t have known when to push me. She must have divined it and, in so doing, might have seen other things.

“Who pulled the trigger, Morrigan?” I asked, watching the two Norse gods and keeping my back to the wall.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I foresaw the attempt on your life, but the assassin is shielded from my sight. Tracking him or her down should provide us some after-dinner entertainment and will aid digestion.” She calmly rose from the table and tossed her napkin down. “Shall we begin?”

“No, wait,” I said. “How do we know they didn’t order it?” I gestured at Odin and Frigg. Odin was looking up at the ceiling rather than at me or anything else. It was an odd moment for art appreciation. Frigg spoke instead.

“Of course we didn’t order it. Odin is sending the ravens now to follow the shooter.”

“Well, then, Odin’s using magic, isn’t he? I’d like to use some to heal this poor guy, if it’s all right with you.” Our waiter and the maître d’ had crouched down next to the sommelier, who was telling his colleagues that, if he died, he wanted all his worldly goods to be given to his hamster. I didn’t think it would hold up; he wasn’t of sound body and might not be of sound mind anymore.

“No, let me do it,” Frigg said, coming around to help the sommelier. Her necklace flashed in the light of the chandelier. “He’s one of ours. You three go find the assassin.”

“Go find someone who wants to kill me accompanied by a god who wants to kill me?” I said.

Odin tore his gaze from the ceiling and spoke. “I don’t want to kill you; I want you to die horribly in Ragnarok. But not until you tip the scales in our favor.”

“He will,” the Morrigan said, but it was unclear whether she was speaking of tipping the scales or dying horribly. Or both.

Frigg knelt down next to the sommelier and laid a hand on his forehead. His eyes rolled up, locked on her face, and he quieted. The maître d’ rose to attend to other matters; there were customers to calm and emergency services to greet. Our waiter remained next to the sommelier.

Even if Frigg and Odin weren’t directly behind taking a shot at me, it had to be someone they knew. I sincerely doubted Odin had been careless enough to reveal this meeting in someone’s hearing, but if it hadn’t been a careless word, then the security leak had to have come from some other source. Before the Morrigan could stop me, I triggered the charm on my necklace that would cast magical sight. Through that filter, I saw the white nimbus of magic around Odin’s gray head. Two strong ropes of it wound away and through the ceiling, which I assumed were his connections to Hugin and Munin. The rest of his body looked completely human; he was doing nothing but communicating with his ravens.

Frigg was another matter. Her entire body was suffused with a soft white glow, though at the moment it was concentrated in two places: her right hand, placed on the sommelier’s forehead, and around the necklace she wore. Her hand was clearly serving as a chill pill for the panicked shooting victim, but what was that necklace doing?

I moved away from my position on the wall, figuring it was safe now and the Morrigan would slap me out of the way of any further shots. As I crouched down next to Frigg and the sommelier, a hint of annoyance crept into her tone.

“I told you I would take care of him,” she said.

“You’re taking excellent care of him,” I agreed. “I wouldn’t dream of attempting to do any better. I’m curious about your necklace.”

Her left hand drifted up to touch it. “My necklace?”

“Yes. What purpose does it serve?”

Exasperated now, she ground out, “It is personal adornment. Is this some sort of trick or an attempt to make me feel stupid?”

“Forgive me, I meant to ask what magical purpose it serves.”

“None. My magic comes from within.”

“Then why is it awash in magical energy?”

“What?”

“Confirm it for yourself. Morrigan, Odin, please look at Frigg’s necklace. It is not merely jewelry, is it?”

The Morrigan’s head tilted slightly to one side and Odin focused his gaze on the necklace. The Morrigan spoke first.

“It is enchanted with something, but it is not a binding of the Tuatha Dé Danann or the Fae.”

“No, it is not,” Odin said. “It is Norse magic.” This horrified Frigg so much that she took her hand off the sommelier, who abruptly remembered that he hadn’t finished panicking properly.

“Wauuggh!” he cried, and Frigg returned her hand to his forehead to shut him up.

“Odin, get it off me,” she said, using her left hand to sweep her hair away from the back of her neck and reveal the clasp of the necklace. “I want to take a good look.”

Sirens began to wail in the distance; police and ambulances were on their way.

Odin came around the table and unclasped the necklace. As soon as he did, the magic glow extinguished.

“That’s interesting. The magic is gone,” I said. “Odin, would you mind clasping the necklace together again for a moment?”

He did so and the magic glow returned. The Morrigan said, “Interesting indeed.”

Odin unclasped it, the glow faded, and Odin placed it on the table.

“Does the magic return every time it’s clasped?” I wondered aloud. Odin connected the two ends together once more, but nothing happened.

“No. Only when it’s worn,” he said. “Clever work.”

“Do you know what the spell does?” I asked.

“It is a tracking spell. A locator.”

“And who would want to know Frigg’s location badly enough to enchant her jewelry?”

“I do not know,” he replied. “But I dearly wish to find out.”

The waiter, who’d been focusing on his friend and keeping silent, and thus had been ignored until this time, made an unwise decision to speak up. “You people keep talking about magic and calling one another by the names of gods. Are you mental?”

“Frigg, if you please?” Odin said. His wife sighed and placed her left hand briefly on the waiter’s forehead. He collapsed next to his friend. Frigg’s eyes flicked up to mine.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s merely in oblivion. An effective talent for healing but surprisingly useful for occasions like this as well.”

The sirens outside grew loud and car doors slammed. Lots of people got shouty.

“We should make our exit now,” I said.

“Allow me to camouflage us,” the Morrigan said.

“Not me,” Odin said. “I’ll use my own methods.”

I still felt sorry for the aging sommelier who had an inordinate fondness for his hamster. Why had Frigg not sent him to oblivion? She somehow inferred what I was thinking and said, “Go. He will be fine.”

“Meet you outside,” the Morrigan said.

The slight tingle of camouflage settled over my skin, and I began to thread my way past customers and staff and then police and paramedics until I was in a bit of free space on Kirkegata. The Morrigan’s sandpapery voice entered my head.

Across the street, Siodhachan, she said.

Turning my head, I saw that the Morrigan and Odin had dropped their concealment and were staring at me from the other side of the street. The sensation of camouflage left me and I became visible as well. After waiting for another couple of cars to pass on the street, I jogged across to them.

“The assassin is athletically gifted,” Odin informed us. “He’s leaping from roof to roof, which is quite an accomplishment when one considers that they are sometimes of differing heights. And my ravens have just witnessed him leaping across an entire street.”

“So not human, then.”

Odin shrugged. “He is not a dark elf. I have seen such feats from berserkers, however. Some of the Einherjar can perform like that. This one may have been granted some strength—but by whom? We need to catch up quickly before he goes someplace my ravens cannot follow.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“We’ll go to the roof of this building,” Odin replied, as if that made everything clear. The Morrigan and I followed him inside a four-story brick building, and we climbed until we reached the blessedly flat rooftop. “He went that way,” Odin said, pointing to Kirkegata. There were very few flat roofs ahead, and even if I could bridge the distance between them and leap over streets, the steep shingled surfaces on some of them didn’t look as if they’d offer a safe landing.

“Unzip me, Siodhachan,” the Morrigan said. “I’ll go as a crow and join Odin’s ravens.” I want to see what’s going on for myself, she added telepathically as I moved to unzip the back of her dress. I dislike being dependent on others for my intelligence.

When she shifted to her crow form and launched herself into the night, I was left alone with Odin, who took the opportunity, out of sight and hearing of Frigg and the Morrigan, to tell me how he really felt.

“I like looking at you about as much as a jötunn’s yawning asshole,” he began.

“Right,” I said.

“I’d rather spit you like a hog, roast you with thyme, and feed you to my wolves than track down this assassin. But I can’t have the Morrigan thinking I don’t keep my word. I promised a peaceful meeting and now it’s been ruined.”

“I understand that completely.”

“I also don’t like the fact that someone used Frigg to track us. That question needs answering. So we’re going to pull a Johnny Cash. Have you heard of him? American singer?”

“Yeah, I know him. The Man in Black.”

“Good.” He turned to the north, put two fingers between his teeth, and whistled a rather haunting series of notes. The night sky answered with the neighing of horses.

“Oh, no,” I said.

“What’s the matter, Druid, afraid of horses?”

“Well, these are fairly special ones, aren’t they? So special that they have no physical presence?”

“That’s entirely in their favor. Smoother ride.” Odin’s tuxedo morphed before my eyes. The jacket lengthened to a long trench coat and turned skull gray. His shirt turned to a tunic, his pants became breeches, and his shoes grew up his calves and hugged them as leather boots—all of it gray. His face weathered and shrank in a bit, turning gaunt and tough. The architecture of his beard unraveled and became an untamed mane. His teeth flashed white in the darkness. “Haven’t done this in a long time. Should be fun, even with a pile of weasel shit like you.”

“Kind of you to say.”

Blue-green lights approached from the northern sky; in a matter of seconds they resolved into the outlines of spectral horses and hounds, and they came to a halt more or less on the roof.

“Up you go, then,” Odin said, leaping onto the back of a horse. Even though only the outline was there and I could see through the damn thing—I saw Odin’s leg dangling down the other side—the Norse god appeared to be sitting on something very solid.

I approached one of the horses and mounted it against all visual evidence that it would be possible. I was simultaneously relieved and skeeved that something extremely horsey supported my weight.

“The Wild Hunt rides!” Odin said, his face alight with savage joy. He kicked at his phantom stallion and the whole pack of us leapt forward, floating just above the rooftops. His mouth rounded and he bellowed out the old Johnny Cash chorus about ghost riders as we sort of slid across the skyline of Oslo. A few of the extra horses neighed along, and some of the hounds bayed at the stars.

Riding a spectral steed was much like hopping on one of those moving walkways in the airport; it was as smooth a ride as Odin promised. But I confess it freaked me out a little bit. I was quite used to flying as an owl, but it felt completely alien to be floating above the world in human form. Having additional horses and a pack of blue-green ghost hounds keeping pace with me only highlighted the fact that our party should be coursing on the ground rather than in the air.

We quickly gained on the two ravens and one crow, who were following the shooter. The Morrigan’s voice slipped into my head. I see him. He is dressed like a modern mercenary. Black body armor and boots. He left the rifle back on the roof across from the restaurant.

I didn’t answer. I looked at Odin’s face to see if he had any reaction to receiving the same news from his ravens. His expression, formerly excited, had turned into a sour frown.

“What’s the matter, Odin?”

He scowled at me. “I’m missing my spear, damn you to Hel,” he said.

“That brings up an excellent point,” I replied. “What are we supposed to do when we catch up with this guy if we don’t have any weapons?”

“The hounds will bring him down,” Odin assured me.

Beware, the Morrigan said. The shooter hasn’t seen me or the ravens yet, but he heard the hunt and knows you’re behind him.

I was unsure what she thought I should do with this information. There were no reins on my unreal horsie. I couldn’t turn or slow down or speed up. For all practical purposes, I was on an amusement park ride called the Wild Hunt and locked into my seat. Sort of.

The assassin came into view, head and shoulders highlighted by moonlight but otherwise as difficult to see as the Wild Hunt. He landed on a flat roof ahead of us and turned, a handgun in his right supported by his left. He methodically squeezed off a few rounds in our direction, and the third one shot Odin out of his seat. With a whuff, he toppled backward and I followed his trajectory, seeing him land awkwardly on a rooftop below. The Wild Hunt continued on and I swiveled to see his arms scrabble for purchase, so I knew he wasn’t dead. And then I got punched backward too, understanding that I’d also been shot down only when I was already falling toward a street, not a nice comfy roof.

It was in situations like this that I truly appreciated my charms, which I could activate with a mental command rather than speaking the bindings aloud. I triggered the charm that would allow me to shape-shift into an otter, then oriented myself legs down, falling inside my abruptly overlarge tuxedo. It acted as a bit of a parachute so that the impact, when it came, was merely painful rather than fatal. The squealing tires I heard approaching would have been fatal if they had run over me, but, thank goodness, modern Norwegians are reluctant to run over formal wear that rains down from the sky. While I gave out soft little otter moans and tried to assess how badly off I was, I heard a car door open and close and some hurried footsteps approaching to see if there was a dude inside the tuxedo. I struggled toward the collar and managed to poke my head through it, though I didn’t feel like moving at all. I’d been shot between my ninth and tenth ribs on the left side, which meant he’d pretty much destroyed my spleen. I triggered my healing charm and projected mentally to the Morrigan, hoping she would hear me. That fucker shot me. Odin too.

I told you to beware, came the reply. Now you know why we had to fix your tattoo. Coming around. I heard a quick sequence of gunshots from above. The woman—for it was a woman—who had nearly run over me startled and made a wee squeaky noise and looked up. Then she looked behind her as cars began to honk. She had yet to see me.

What about the assassin? I asked the Morrigan.

The hounds of the Wild Hunt are tearing him apart. He just discovered through experiment that bullets do not affect the incorporeal.

But now we won’t know who’s behind him, I said.

I think the answer is coming.

The nice lady who didn’t run me over finally looked down and spotted me. She was wearing a large yellow name tag on her sweater, presumably from work, that read Linda. She squinted through a pair of large spectacles and bent forward a bit to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating.

“Oh! It’s an otter! A cute little otter! What are you doing here? Wait. What am I doing here? Ahhh! Stop honking! Go on, little otter. Move. Out of the street now.” She made shooing motions, as if human hand signals were universally understood by animals. I rolled over onto my back and tried to look pathetic, which didn’t tax my thespian talents in the least. Linda shrewdly noticed I was not well. “Hey. Are you all right? You don’t look so good. Poor thing.”

I gave a mournful little otter cry to push her sympathy button. Magic or no, getting shot takes something out of you; I wanted a ride out of there, and it worked.

“Oh! You must be ill. I’ll take you to the vet if you promise not to bite me.”

I didn’t know what kind of promise she expected me to make as an otter. I was beginning to suspect Linda might have some issues. Still, she was a kind soul and more likely to help me than the average person. I repeated the wee moan and closed my eyes. That did it. She picked me up, keeping me wrapped in the shirt, and took me to her car; it was one of those tiny European jobs that look like a doorstop with wheels. The coat and pants she left in the street. She nearly dropped me when she realized I was bleeding.

“Oh! Oh, my goodness! Please don’t die!”

She completely ignored the honking cars behind her now; they didn’t bother her anymore. She had a mission. She opened the passenger door and gently laid me down in the seat before running around to the driver’s side. Safely ensconced with my line of sight obstructed by the dashboard, I never saw the attack coming. Linda didn’t see it coming either, because she was looking at me when it hit.

A figure in black dropped out of the sky and rammed its fist down onto the hood of Linda’s car just as she hit the accelerator. The front end stayed put and the rear leapt up, tumbling me painfully from the seat into the tiny area where people were supposed to stretch out their legs. This did nothing to improve the condition of my spleen.

Linda screamed as she was thrown forward and the driver’s side air bag deployed. The honking behind us ceased, the drivers realizing that something serious was happening ahead and the stoppage of traffic wasn’t due to one person’s whimsy.

“Out of the car!” an angry voice bellowed. It may have been a woman’s voice; it was speaking modern Norwegian. Linda was either too disoriented or too wise to comply.

Under attack, I sent to the Morrigan.

I saw. If I forget to tell you later, thank you for a lovely evening of mayhem.

Um. You’re welcome?

Wincing with the effort, I managed to extricate myself fully from the tuxedo shirt and crawl back into the passenger seat as the driver’s side door was yanked open and Linda was torn from the vehicle by unseen hands. She should have worn her seat belt.

I shape-shifted back to human and gasped as my insides rearranged. It didn’t improve my situation except that I could better see what was going on. Steam rose from under the hood; the car was totaled and wouldn’t be running anytime soon. The figure in black, I saw, didn’t intend to rip me from the car too; he or she intended to pick up the car and throw it somewhere with me still inside—a godlike variation on vehicular homicide. I couldn’t tell much about the attacker, because he or she was outfitted not only with black mercenary body armor but with a black ski mask as well. Absolutely none of the clothing was made of natural materials, so I couldn’t bind anything. I fumbled for the door release as the figure lifted the car from the front corner, grabbing on to the well of the wheel with one hand and latching on to the front bumper, perhaps, with the right. It’s frightening to be in a car as it leaves the ground. There’s a fundamental sense of wrongness to be airborne in a car that isn’t performing a movie stunt.

The Morrigan dove out of the sky, shifted midair, and kicked the person in the jaw. The car dropped back to earth, I banged my head somehow, and then I got to watch the Morrigan throw down with this strange assailant in the middle of the road. Naked. Weaponless. And with a growing crowd of witnesses.

They both began to move faster than the eye could track, blurring in motion as they landed blows and kicks on each other. That made the assailant a god in disguise; nobody human was a match for the Morrigan. That made me think of vampires; I supposed a sufficiently old one could match her. The Morrigan acknowledged this by disengaging for a moment to wipe some blood away from her lips. She smiled, both her teeth and eyes now red, and said, “Oh, you’re delightful, whoever you are.”

I wish somebody could have filmed it at high speed so I could later appreciate the martial arts involved; the few people trying to capture this fight at night with cellphone cameras were going to be disappointed. The Morrigan and the anonymous figure fell to’t again, trading audible blows yet unable to do significant damage to each other.

I opened the car door and slid out into the street without camouflage, wishing to preserve what magic I had left. I clutched my open wound, which I hadn’t closed up yet because the bullet was still inside and needed to be extracted. My emergence caused some comment among the general public. Some variation of “That man is naked and bleeding!” could be heard rippling through them, but this spectacle was only momentarily diverting compared to the woman who was naked and fighting.

Linda, however, who was thankfully okay if a bit rattled, found my exit both fascinating and horrifying. “Who is that? How did he get in my car? I don’t know who that is! I swear he’s not mine! I was not driving with a naked man! Which is kind of a shame, really, now that I think about it. Look at that, eh? Yum!”

There was very little I could contribute to the fight. I was in no condition to match speed or strength with them, and I had parts that were extremely vulnerable right now. Despite my winning record against pagan gods and vampires so far, I didn’t relish facing off against one that could go toe-to-toe with the Morrigan. I was also supposed to be in hiding, so the increasing number of camera phones was making me nervous. I left the scene with an odd gait that tried to minimize impact and headed for a dark alley between buildings. No one tried to stop me until I entered the alley itself.

A gray figure loomed out of the darkness, and moonlight glinted on his brow and the ridge of his nose. Blood covered his tunic and some of it had seeped through his coat as well, high up on the right side of his torso. “Where are you going?” Odin said.

“Oh! Away, I guess? I hadn’t thought it through too much. Whoever that is out there, if he was able to track me he wouldn’t have needed to enchant Frigg’s necklace, and, besides, I’m not in any shape to fight.”

Odin grunted. “Neither am I. I suppose our business is concluded and you’re free to go. But don’t you wish to find out who wants to kill you? I do.”

“I figured someone would send me a memo. Where’s the Wild Hunt?”

“I dismissed them. The hunt is wonderful above the rooftops but not so ideal among the civilians at street level.”

“Good call. Speaking of which, if you’d like to get the fight moved into this alley for closer observation, I could probably manage it. There would be no civilians unless they followed.”

“Do it.” Odin’s appearance began to shift from the Gray Wanderer to the impressive tuxedo-clad authority figure.

I reached out to the Morrigan with my mind. Move into the alley behind you. I’m here with Odin. I didn’t get an answer, but the nature of the battle changed. Morrigan altered her tactics and managed to grab hold of her opponent and toss him or her across the street and into the alley where we waited. The assembled crowd gave a collective gasp. The figure landed with a whuff of breath at our feet. Odin bent down and tore off the ski mask with his left hand, revealing the assailant to be female after all.

I didn’t recognize her at first, since her hair was mussed, her nose and mouth bloodied by the Morrigan, and I was looking at her face upside down. She recognized me, however, and pushed and pivoted on the ground and tried to sweep my legs. I hopped over her kick like it was a jump rope, but I hadn’t sped up my movements yet and she was much faster than me. Up on her feet before I knew what she was about, she punched me in the solar plexus and sent me sprawling backward in the alley. She would have followed up had Odin not interposed himself and grabbed her by the throat with his left hand. She roared and flailed at him, but he did not let go, and his grip was unbreakable. For a guy who wasn’t in shape to fight, he seemed to be doing quite well for himself.

“You will submit! Freyja! Cease this instant!”

Freyja, the Norse goddess of war and beauty, had more than the average number of reasons to hate me. We didn’t need to interrogate her to figure out what she’d done and why. I’d killed her brother and made a truly terrible decision to offer her in exchange for the aid of the frost giants. She would loathe me forever and want me dead, Ragnarok be damned. Odin pinned her against the wall, her feet lifted off the ground, until she stopped struggling and went limp. Then he let her down and loosened his grip but did not let go.

“We will discuss your betrayal at length back in Asgard,” he growled.

“Who is betraying whom, Odin?” she spat, blood flying from her lips. “Making deals with a murderer of your own kin—”

“In Asgard!” Odin roared. She quieted, clenched her jaw, and squeezed her eyes shut, unwilling to look at me unless she could kill me. I got to my feet but held my tongue. There was no apology I could make that would balance my ledger with her.

The Morrigan, bloodied and bruising, appeared in the background.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Freyja. It was a proper meeting indeed.” She gave a bloody grin. “I hope we get a chance to meet again.” Freyja did not respond.

Odin turned his head to face me. “I cannot begin to express my dismay …”

“No need,” I said. “Our agreement holds. Give me a few extra days to heal and arrange the delivery of Gungnir. I will tell your ravens where. And I will be there to help at the end of the world, if the world doesn’t kill me first.”

He nodded curtly. “Leave us now, if you will.”

I was only too glad to oblige. Morrigan, we need to take the cellphones of the witnesses. We can’t have a record of your fight or my existence hitting the Internet.

Done. Go and heal, Siodhachan. She strode forward and planted a bloody kiss on my lips. Call me soon. I would like to catch a baseball game. She cast camouflage on herself and vanished from view. Shortly thereafter, cries of dismay could be heard in the street as people watched their phones leap out of their hands, pockets, and purses and smash to pieces on the sidewalk. No one could prove that gods fought in the streets of Oslo; it was all hearsay.

I left Odin and Freyja in that dark alley and recovered my pants and tuxedo jacket from the street, ignoring the curious queries of bystanders. Getting dressed allowed me to hail a cab a couple of blocks away to drive me out to the woods, where I could shift away to safety.

*  *  *

*  *  *

After some time to heal and some scouting in southwestern Colorado, I found a place in the woods that I could use as a sort of safe house. It was definitely a fixer-upper, an old miner’s cabin nestled in the mountains above the wee hamlet of Ouray, but the solitude was perfect. The only people who ever came up the road nearby were 4×4 Jeep tourists, and they never stopped at the cabin. They sometimes stopped at Camp Bird Mine a short distance below, but mostly they were on their way to enjoy the wildflowers of Yankee Boy Basin. Also, their traffic was limited to the summer; the road was impassable once the snows came, and those didn’t begin to melt until late spring. I could shift directly there, however, because the entire area was full of pine and spruce, and once I bound it to Tír na nÓg, I could appear within a kung fu leap of the front door.

I made arrangements to buy it through my attorney, Hal Hauk, and decided to use it as a drop point for Gungnir. The paperwork took longer than I would have wished, but once I finally had the keys to the place and was assured no one but me would be poking around in there, I shifted to Canyon de Chelly and hitchhiked back home to our trailer in Many Farms. My apprentice and hound were quite happy to see me and full of questions about what had happened.

I held up the back of my right hand. “The Morrigan fixed my tattoos, among other things,” I said. “Has everything been okay here?”

“Fine until a few days ago,” Granuaile said. “I think something must have died nearby, because we’ve had ravens circling the place, but I can’t find it and the damn things won’t go away.” She pointed to the sky where two black-winged shapes soared above. As my eyes found them, the ravens banked and dove toward the trailer. They landed on top of my trailer, much as the Morrigan had, and peered at me from the roof.

“Okay, that’s really weird. It’s too bad you don’t have a bust of Pallas,” Granuaile remarked.

<Or crackers. I hear birds are wild for crackers.>

“I know who these birds are,” I said.

“Who they are? You mean these are shape-shifters?” Granuaile asked.

“No, these are Hugin and Munin. Odin’s ravens.” I pulled out a marked-up map of my real estate purchase and showed it to the birds. “Odin,” I said, addressing the ravens for his benefit, “I will leave Gungnir at the cabin on Midgard that is marked on this map.” I pointed at a circled area. “It will be there by this evening. The cabin is unoccupied and will be unlocked. I will leave Gungnir in the closet of the master bedroom. Safe travels.” I folded the map and tossed it on top of the trailer. The ravens squawked and one of them hopped over to grasp the map between its talons. They flew away with another hoarse cry, and I was quite nearly back to peace and seemingly interminable training.

<Huh. Guess they didn’t want a cracker after all. Another myth busted.>

“That was Hugin and Munin?”

“It sure was. Granuaile, if I ever get restless and yearn for action in the remaining years of your training, I want you to remind me of this episode.”

“Not sure what the episode was yet, but I will, sensei.”

<Hey, Atticus, that reminds me! You wanted me to remind you that we need to get barbecue in Atlanta!>

I did?

<Well, somewhere in the South. You said I would get pulled pork and beef brisket.>

I seriously don’t remember this.

<That’s why I have to remind you, see.>

I smiled. You are a very clever hound.

<And you are an excellent food provider.>

Well, don’t get all mushy on me.

“When do I get to hear the details of this episode?” Granuaile asked. “It sounds like Odin is back.”

“He is. I’ll tell you everything later tonight. It’s actually not over yet; I have one more detail that needs my attention. Continue your training and pretend I’m not here for now.”

“Aye, sensei.”

Gungnir was buried in the earth near our trailer and encased in iron to protect it from divination. With the help of the elemental Colorado and the iron elemental, Ferris, I retrieved it with little trouble. I inspected it to make sure it was in good condition, being careful not to touch the spearhead engraved with runes, lest my aura nullify its magic.

This spear had shed a whole lot of blood, and now that I was returning it to Odin, it would shed a whole lot more. But people who truly want to shed blood will find a way to shed it, just as people who wish to do good will find a way to be a benediction to their neighbors.

Building and growing are so much harder than cutting something down. I once spent twelve years training an apprentice to accept the magic of the earth, only to see him beheaded by the forces of Al-Mansur in Galicia. After I lost Cíbran, the hopelessness of training an apprentice had overwhelmed me for far too long, and I’d had serious doubts about taking on Granuaile and several thoughts along the way of giving up.

But the meeting with Odin reassured me and gave me new hope. Now that we were sort of on the same side and he would keep my fake death a secret, I could face the remainder of Granuaile’s training with a bit more confidence that we would not be discovered and summarily destroyed.

I had less confidence, however, in my ability to avoid distraction where Granuaile was concerned. After weeks of tiptoeing around the Morrigan’s severe mood swings, I wanted nothing so much as to talk with Granuaile, to enjoy her mind and sense of humor and appreciate a well-balanced personality. It wasn’t that Granuaile was serene or at peace with herself yet, but she was walking along that road and it was a joy to sense that and appreciate it, whereas the Morrigan was lost in the apeshit wilderness. Right now, it would be far too easy for me to forget myself and smile at Granuaile in a way that communicated how much I cared for her.

The weather wasn’t giving me a break on the physical side of things either. It was still hot outside, and Granuaile was still wearing very tight workout clothes. She had begun a series of advanced tai chi forms while I was retrieving Gungnir from the earth.

<Atticus, I should warn you that you’re in terrible peril.>

Come on, not yet. She just started.

<No, it’s true. We’re out of snacks. I now have no incentive to rescue you from your animal desires.>

What? How can we be out of snacks?

<A perceptive question! Granuaile noticed the shortage a few days ago. “We’re running low on snacks,” she said. I heard her quite clearly. But then she did nothing to fix the problem. I can only conclude that she wanted the snacks all gone. And from that we can deduce that she doesn’t want me to save you anymore. Holy revelation, Druidman! She’s on to us!>

I didn’t want to believe him, but I also have a suspicious nature. I turned my head and saw that Granuaile’s forms were perfect. She was mesmerizing. And, soon enough, she caught me watching.

Gods below, I think you’re right! Quick! To the Geekmobile!

<Let’s go!>

We had recently traded in Granuaile’s hybrid SUV and bought a new one with a bright-green paint job that the manufacturer called “Lime Squeeze.” It looked like Mountain Dew, the drink of choice for nerds, geeks, and dorks everywhere, so it had earned the name of Geekmobile.

I tossed Gungnir into the back and opened the back door for Oberon so he could hop inside.

“Hey, where are you going?” Granuaile asked.

“We need supplies,” I said. “Running down to Chinle.” And also to Canyon de Chelly, where I could shift quickly to the cabin near Ouray and drop off Odin’s spear. Oberon and I might go hunting while we were there.

“I want to go!”

“No, continue your training. Target practice with the throwing knives, and don’t forget to work with the staff. We’ll get into some new martial-arts stuff tomorrow, I promise. And I want to hear how you’re progressing in your Old Irish.” I closed the cab door and started the engine before she could talk her way inside. We kicked up some dust in my haste to escape.

<How many more years do you have to train her? Like five hundred?>

Only six.

<Doesn’t matter. You’re going to need to come up with another plan. Not that I object to snacks.>

I know. I’m running out of ideas, though.

<You could draw a mustache on her with a Sharpie while she sleeps.>

She has a mirror, Oberon.

<All right. Take her to get her hair cut and secretly pay off the stylist to give her a mullet.>

That would probably work, except that she would murder the stylist. It would never work. There was more to Granuaile than her hair.

<Oh, yeah. Well, that’s all I’ve got. At some point you two will go all Discovery Channel on each other, and then you’ll feel so guilty you’ll wear hair shirts and sleep in iron maidens. You’re doomed.>

His words reminded me of my promise to fight on the side of the Norse in Ragnarok, when and if it came. We’re all doomed, I said. But for now I think I’ll count my blessings.

<Oh, let me help! Blessing number one: me!>

He stuck his head between the front seats and deftly licked my ear, delivering a classic Wet Willy. I shied away and laughed. Always, buddy, I said.

Read on for a preview of the next book in the thrilling

IRON DRUID CHRONICLES,

Trapped

Coming soon from Del Rey Books!

Chapter 1

You know those spastic, full-body twitches you get sometimes when you’re almost asleep and your muscles want to play a practical joke on your brain? You startle wide awake and immediately get pissed at your nervous system, wondering what the hell that was all about. I’ve caught myself talking to it before: “Damn it, Dude,”—yes, I call my nervous system Dude, and the Dude abides—“I was almost asleep, and now you’ve slain all the sheep I was gonna count.”

What I felt as I walked on the Kaibab Plateau was kind of like that, except it was Gaia doing the spastic full-body twitch. It was more of an uncomfortable shudder that I felt through my tattoos, like when you step barefoot into the garage in winter and your nipples pucker up. But as with those nervous muscle spasms, I got irritated about it and wondered what the hell was going on. And while I wasn’t about to go to sleep, I was about to enjoy the culmination of twelve years of training an apprentice—and save for the first few months of it, I’d conducted it all in peace. Granuaile was finally ready to become a full Druid, and we were searching for a place to bind her to the earth when I felt the tremor. I shot a question to the elemental, Kaibab, in the cocktail of feelings and images they use instead of language: //Confusion / Query: What was that?//

//Confusion / Uncertainty / Fear// came the reply. That chilled me. I’ve never heard confusion from an elemental before. The fear, on the other hand, was perfectly normal: Despite their awesome power, elementals are afraid of almost everything, from placer mines to land developers to bark beetles. They can be real scaredy-cats sometimes. But they’re never uncertain about what’s going on with Gaia. Stopping in my tracks and causing Granuaile and Oberon to turn and look at me quizzically, I asked Kaibab what there was to fear.

//Plane across ocean / Early death / Burning / Burning / Burning//

Well, that confused me too. Kaibab wasn’t talking about an airplane. He (or she, if Granuaile was talking) meant an entire plane of existence, a plane that was tied to earth somewhere on the other side of the globe. //Query: Which plane?//

//Name unknown / God from plane seeks you / Urgent / Query: Tell him location?//

//Query: Which god?//

The answer to that would tell me what plane was burning. There was a pause, during which time I stalled with Granuaile and Oberon. “Something’s up with Kaibab. Hold on.” They knew better than to interrupt, and they took this news as an invitation to be on their guard, which was wise. Anything worrisome to the avatar of the environment you currently occupy should rouse you to a caffeinated state of paranoia.

//God’s name: Perun// Kaibab finally said.

Almost unconsciously, I sent //Shock// in reply, because it was truly my reaction. The Slavic plane of existence was burning, perhaps even dead? How? Why? I hoped Perun would have the answers. If he sought me in hopes that I had them, we’d both be disappointed. //Yes / Tell Perun location//

I’d also like to know how Perun even knew to ask for me—did someone tell him I’d faked my death twelve years ago? There was another pause, during which I filled in Granuaile and Oberon.

<Hey, isn’t Perun that hairy guy you told me about who can turn into an eagle?> Oberon asked.

Yep, that’s the one.

<I’ve always wondered why he doesn’t shill for shaving cream or razors with twenty-five ultrathin vibrating blades. He’d revive the steel industry based on razor sales alone.>

I don’t know why, but perhaps you’ll get a chance to ask him.

//He comes// Kaibab said. //Fast//

“Okay, incoming,” I said out loud.

“Incoming what, Atticus?” Granuaile asked.

“Incoming thunder god. We should move near a tree and get ready to shift away to Tír na nÓg if necessary. And get the fulgurites out.” Fulgurites would protect us from lightning strikes; Perun had given them to us himself when Granuaile was just starting her training, but we hadn’t worn them for years, since all the thunder gods thought I was dead.

“You think Perun is going to take a shot at us?” Granuaile asked. She shrugged off her red backpack and unzipped the pouch containing the fulgurites.

“Well, no, but … maybe. I don’t know what’s going on, really. When in doubt, know your way out, I always say.”

“I thought you always said, ‘When in doubt, blame the dark elves.’ ”

“Well, yeah, that too.”

<I don’t think those are very practical solutions to doubt,> Oberon said. <They don’t leave you feeling satisfied. “When in doubt, eat your neighbor’s lunch” is better, because then you would at least be full.>

We stood in a meadow of bunch grass and clover. The sky washed us in cerulean blue and the sun kissed Granuaile’s red hair with gold, the black dye we’d worn for years washed away, and Oberon looked like he wanted to plop down and bask in the light for a while. Our backpacks were weighted down with camping gear that we’d bought at Peace Surplus in Flagstaff, but after Granuaile retrieved the fulgurites, we jogged over as best we could to the nearest stand of ponderosa pine trees. I confirmed that there was a functioning tether to Tír na nÓg there and then started to look up for signs of Perun’s arrival.

Granuaile noticed and craned her neck upward. “What’s up there, sensei?” she wondered aloud. “I don’t see anything but sky.”

“I’m looking for Perun. I’m assuming he’s going to fly in. There, see?” I pointed to a dark streak trailed by lightning bolts in the northwestern sky. And behind that, at a distance of perhaps five to ten miles—I couldn’t tell from so far away—burned an orange ball of fire.

Granuaile squinted. “What’s that thing that looks like the Phoenix Suns logo? Is that him?”

“No, Perun is in front of it, throwing all the lightning.”

“Oh, so what is it? A meteor or a cherub or something?”

“Or something. It doesn’t look friendly. That’s not a warm, cozy hearth fire that you gather ’round with your friends to read some Longfellow while you toast s’mores. That’s more like napalm with a heart of phosphorus and a side of hell sauce.” The lightning and the fireball were turning in the sky and heading directly our way.

<Um. Hey, Atticus, think we should try that escape route just to make sure it works?> Oberon said.

I hear ya, buddy. I’m ready to scoot too. But let’s see if we can talk to Perun first.

The sky darkened and boomed above. Everything shuddered; Perun was traveling at supersonic speeds. He crashed heavily into the meadow about fifty yards away from us, and large chunks of turf exploded around a newly formed crater. I felt the impact in my feet, and a wave of displaced air knocked me backward a bit. Before the turf could fall back to earth, a heavily muscled figure carpeted in hair bounded out of it toward us, panic writ large on his features.

“Atticus! We must flee this plane! Is not safe! Take me—save me!”

Normally, thunder gods are not prone to panic. The ability to blast away problems tends to turn the jagged edges of fear into silly little pillows of insouciance. So when an utter badass like Perun looks like he’s about to soil himself, I hope I can be forgiven if I nearly shat kine—especially when the fireball whoomped into the crater Perun had just vacated and sucked all the oxygen out of my lungs.

Granuaile ducked and shrieked in surprise; Oberon whimpered; Perun was tossed through the air toward us like a stuntman in a Michael Bay film. But upon rolling through the landing gracefully, he leapt back up again, his legs churning toward us.

Behind Perun, the fire didn’t spread but rather began to shrink and coalesce and … laugh. A high, thin, maniacal laugh straight out of creepy cartoons. And the fire swirled, torus-like, around a figure twelve feet tall, until it gradually wicked out and left a lean giant with a narrow face standing fifty yards before us, his orange and yellow hair starting from his skull like a sunburst. The grin on his face wasn’t the affable, friendly sort; instead, it was the sociopathic rictus of the irretrievably, bug-fuckeringly insane.

His eyes were the worst. They were melted around the edges as if they’d been burned with acid, and where a normal person would have laugh lines or crow’s feet around them, he had bubbly pink scars and a nightmare of blistered tissue. The whites of his eyes were a red mist of broken blood vessels, but the irises were an ice blue frosted with madness. He blinked them savagely, as if he’d gotten soap into them or something, and soon I recognized it as a nervous tic, since his head jerked to his right at odd intervals and then continued to twitch uncertainly afterward, like a bobblehead doll.

“Go, my friend, go! We must flee!” Perun said, huffing as he reached us and putting one hand on my shoulder and another on the pine. Granuaile followed suit; she knew the drill, and so did Oberon, who reared up on his hind legs and leaned one paw against me and the other on the tree.

“Who in hell is that, Perun?” I said.

The giant laughed again and I shuddered involuntarily. His voice was smooth and fluffy like marshmallow crème, if the crème also had shards of glass in it. But he had a thick Scandinavian accent to go with the nervous tic.

“This puh-puh-place—is Mah, Merrica, yes?”

A twitch, a stutter, and an English-language learner. He’d drive me insane just listening to him. “Yes,” I replied.

“Hah? Who? Thppt! Raah!” He spat a fire loogie and shook his head violently. Perhaps this was more than a twitch. It might be full-blown Tourette’s syndrome. Or it might be something else, as the signs all pointed to a highly unpleasant conclusion.

“Who gah-guh-gods here?” He giggled to himself after this, pleased that he’d managed to ask the question. There was a disturbingly high squealing noise coming from his head, like the sound of fat screaming in a frying pan or when you let the air slowly out of a balloon. The giant rested his hands on his knees and scrunched up his shoulders in an attempt to steady his noggin, but this produced the unsettling effect of turning his flamelike hair to actual flames. The noise intensified.

“You are a god here,” I said, taking an educated guess. I could have confirmed this by looking at him in the magical spectrum, but there was no need. There wasn’t much else that Perun would fear. “But I don’t know which one. Who are you?”

The giant threw back his head and roared in delight, clapping like a child and high-stepping as if I’d asked him if he wanted ice cream. My jaw dropped, and Granuaile muttered a bewildered “What the fuck,” which mirrored my own thoughts. What had happened to his mind?

Perun chucked me urgently on the shoulder. “Atticus, is Loki! He is free. We must go. Is smart thing to do.”

“Gods Below,” I breathed, gooseflesh rising on my arms. I’d feared it was him once I saw the eyes, but I’d also clung to the hope that he was something a bit less apocalyptic, like an escaped military experiment along the lines of Sharktopus. Instead, Loki, the Old Norse villain of the Eddas, whose release from captivity heralded the start of Ragnarok, was unbound and ready to paint the town batshit.

<Listen to the hairy guy, Atticus. Tall, scarred, and fiery there is Stranger Danger if I ever saw it.>

Perun and Oberon were right, the smart thing to do would be to leave. But the smarter thing to do would be to get Loki to leave too. I didn’t want to scarper off and leave Kaibab at his mercy; I wanted Loki off this plane as quickly as possible. Time to lie to the god of lies.

“I am Eldhár,” I called out to him in Old Norse. His laughter, already dying out, choked off abruptly and he focused those blue-and-blood eyes on me. The name was one I’d used before: It meant “flame hair” in Old Norse, and I’d employed it years ago when I’d gone to Asgard to steal a golden apple. “I am a construct of the dwarfs of Nidavellir.” Tapping into my adrenaline and an older, more primitive part of my psyche, I smiled at the giant in the same disconcerting way he had smiled at us. “Glad am I that you are free, Loki, for that means your wife is free also, and I was built specifically to destroy her and all your spawn. I will behead the serpent. Eviscerate the wolf. And as for Hel … even the queen of death can die.” I laughed menacingly, hoped that it was convincing, and thought that would serve as a good exit line.

Without giving him a chance to respond, I pulled my center along the tether to Tír na nÓg, bringing Granuaile, Oberon, and Perun with me, shifting us safely away from earth and leaving Loki to consider how to address this new problem. Hopefully he’d return to the Norse plane and start asking questions—and hopefully the dwarfs had fire insurance.

I had plenty of questions for Perun—like how had Loki gained entrance to the Slavic plane, what was Hel up to now, and where was Fenris—but foremost among them was finding out what idiot had thought it a good idea to teach an old god of mischief how to speak English.

About the Author

Kevin Hearne is a middle-aged nerd who still enjoys his comic books and old-school heavy metal. He cooks tasty omelets, hugs trees, and paints miniature army dudes. He lives with his wife, daughter, and doggies in a wee cottage.