Kevin Hearne - Hounded

“Fine,” she said, and she began chugging the tea as if it were an Irish Car Bomb, completely disregarding the damage the hot liquid might do to her tongue and throat. She really wanted to get this over with. She slammed it down forcefully, as if it were a shot glass instead of a teacup, and she smiled malevolently at me.

“And now, Druid, now that you have entered into a contract from which you cannot withdraw without severe consequences, I have the pleasure of informing you that the man you’re rendering impotent with this brew is none other than Aenghus Óg.”

Now, that was a pretty good bomb to drop on me. It raised all sorts of questions, foremost among them, “Where is Aenghus Óg right now?” If he was already in town and diddling the local witches to pass the time, then my paranoia was well justified. It meant he was far more directly involved in last night’s mischief than I had thought. And it meant something else, which Emily was obviously waiting for me to realize: Providing her with the agent for his humiliation would make Aenghus Óg duty-bound to kill me as soon as possible. He would no longer feel comfortable in taking the occasional pot shot at me from a distance; he’d have to actively hunt me down and make me pay.

Yep, storm clouds are thrice cursed. First the Fae found out where I was hiding, then my dog killed a human, and now I’d earned the very personal enmity of a god who had been content for centuries to simply let his minions slap me around.

Emily wasn’t going to get an expression of even mild concern from me, though. She wanted to see terror in my eyes, but I walled that all off and pretended she was talking about someone harmless, like Snuffleupagus or Captain Kangaroo.

“So you’ve come to me to make him wilt like lettuce?” I said. “You could have done the job yourself by shedding that skin and showing him what you really look like.”

Wow. I couldn’t believe I’d just said that. Her eyes bulged with the offense, and she whipped her right hand toward my face for a slap. Now, a slap from a normal woman I could handle. Heck, I’d suggest I needed one after saying something like that to a regular college kid. But a slap from a witch is simply not permissible, because sure as the moon rises full once a month, she’d use her nails to scrape some skin off my cheek, perhaps even draw some blood, and then she’d have me. A friend of mine fell prey to precisely this sort of trick centuries ago, and it had poisoned me against witches ever since. She had goaded him into saying something rude, slapped him and left marks on his face, and then that very night his heart exploded inside his chest. I don’t mean he had a heart attack: His heart had literally blown apart as if someone had planted explosives in it, long before gunpowder was invented. Some other Druids and I had taken him to the grove and done a rudimentary autopsy to see if we could puzzle out why he’d dropped dead so abruptly, and we found this crater inside his rib cage. That’s when I realized he’d been killed the moment she slapped him.

I’d never avenged him—the witch got away—and it still stung centuries later. That’s why Emily’s attempt to slap me got a very violent reaction: I knocked her arm down by crossing my right hand over my face, then I backhanded her really hard, much harder than I should have. I shouldn’t have hit her at all; I should have just backed up out of her reach, but I tend to flare up when people try to kill me—which was what she was trying to do, make no mistake. She squealed and staggered back a few steps, holding her nose.

I had broken it, and I sort of felt like an asshole even though she had planned to do much worse to me. While she was still in shock and processing what had happened, I took the opportunity to try to talk her down from escalating it. “You offered me violence and I defended myself. I know that a slap from you would have meant the end of my life, or at least the threat of it, and I could not permit that. And if you are thinking about using magic against me in my own shop, I would remind you that discretion is sometimes the better part of valor.”

“And I would remind you that I am not powerless. Radomila will hear of this!”

“That’s fine. I’ll show her my security tape,” I said, gesturing to the video camera mounted on the wall above the register, “which clearly shows you swinging first. On top of that, you have now given me cause to believe you are a close associate of an old enemy of mine. I’d be within my rights to treat you as hostile.”

“Go ahead and try something!” she challenged, eyes blazing.

“I don’t need to try anything,” I chuckled. “I’m in control here.”

“You go on thinking you’re in control, Druid,” she spat, heading for the door in a fury, her flip-flops flapping noisily. “You’ll soon find out you are very mistaken.”

“See you tomorrow for tea,” I waved cheerily as she slammed through my door.

Oberon said after the door closed and we were alone.

“Don’t worry about her,” I said, grabbing a spoon and moving quickly around the counter. “She’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.”

Oberon asked. He followed me out to the floor, curious. I had squatted down on my haunches, examining the carpet.

“Ah, there we go.” I found a droplet of blood on the carpet that hadn’t soaked thoroughly into the weave; it was not much, but it would be enough. I scraped it off the surface and walked toward the door, peering through the glass window to see if Emily was visible. She was getting into her car, parked across the street a short distance north, a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle. She would have to turn over her left shoulder to see me, so I darted outside, telling Oberon I’d return in a moment, and kicked off my sandals. I sank my toes into the same narrow strip of grass that had helped me heal my arm the day before, and I chanted a binding as I drew power from the earth. Emily felt the draw somehow, whipped her head around, and saw me standing there. I showed the spoon to her and smiled; her mouth dropped open in horror as she realized how careless she had been. I saw her lips move and her brow furrow in concentration, so I had no time to waste. I licked her blood off the spoon and completed the binding just in time. She flicked her fingers at me and I knew she had just hurled something my way, but all I felt was a gentle breeze.

A couple of seconds later her upper body was thrown painfully forward into her steering wheel, which caused the car’s horn to beep. Ha! She had tried to blow the spoon out of my hand—and knock me down in the process, off the grass strip and my source of power. Clever. But not fast enough. The binding I had performed was actually a ward, which meant that any spell she sent against me would rebound against her. The only way she could get out of it would be to get herself some new blood.

She leaned back slowly and clutched her chest. Probably bruised a rib or two. On top of a broken nose and wounded pride, she’d had a rough day visiting the local Druid. It made me wonder what she’d been told about me. Did she know how old I was? Did she think I was some sort of lame-assed neo-Druid, mucking about with holly branches and mistletoe? She turned around to stare daggers at me, and I gave her a jovial wave, then blew her a kiss. She flipped me off—a gesture that had zero cultural relevance to me—and then started up her Beetle and screeched away toward University Drive.

Chuckling to myself, I reentered the store, and Oberon came over and nuzzled against my legs, which was somewhat startling when he was in camouflage. I searched and found his head and gave him a good head rub for a minute or so. “Yes, you’ve been very patient, haven’t you?” I said. “Tell you what. Next time we go hunting, we’ll head down to the Chiricahua Mountains. That’s south of here and I think you’ll like it.”