Kevin Hearne - Hounded

Tony Cabin isn’t situated in a bowl, nor on a hill, but rather in the middle of a meadow graced by little beyond dried grasses and weeds. Around it, sycamores and scrub oaks as well as mesquite and palo verde provide ample cover for stalkers. There are a few trees near the cabin itself, including a couple of sycamores, and it was to these that Hal and Oberon were chained. Oberon had not yet realized I was near, and for that I was grateful and continued to shield my thoughts as best as I could.

I saw where the werewolves had set off the witches’ trap: It was hard to miss, because there was a werewolf moaning pitiably on the ground, with silver needles sticking out of him like S & M acupuncture. It was a bit difficult to tell for sure, but I thought it might be Dr. Snorri Jodursson’s wolf, and I wondered how he had managed to draw the shortest straw. He wasn’t at the bottom of the Pack but rather near the top—and as the Pack’s doctor in both human and wolf form, they could ill afford to lose him. I would never understand pack politics.

There was a large fire pit giving off quite a bit of light in front of the cabin, but none of that light came from burning wood. It was orange and white and swirled around the pit in a torus like a hellish Creamsicle. It lit up the meadow fairly well, so I paused in the darkness about twenty yards north of Snorri’s prone form and scouted the scenario.

The werewolves had already taken out three of the witches and dropped a fourth even as I watched, but they had taken some casualties as well; I saw three werewolves bleeding on the ground near the bodies of the witches. They were alive but in very bad shape. The witches were awfully fast with those knives, perhaps using the speed spell that Malina had offered to use on me. There were only two witches left—Emily and Radomila. (Malina and the other witches were nowhere in sight, which meant that she had been telling the truth on the phone.) Radomila would indeed prove a challenge to the werewolves: She was chanting a spell from within a cage settled on the opposite side of the cabin from the prisoners, the bars of which were no doubt lined with silver. The werewolves wouldn’t be able to touch her.

Emily, however, had no such protection, and I saw her Barbie-doll eyes grow even wider than usual as she realized she was next up to become a chew toy. She was on the far side of the meadow, just visible between the sycamores next to the cabin, and she did not seem likely to stand her ground and die fighting like her sisters. Even as I thought this, she turned and ran into the woods, which would only encourage the werewolves to pursue her, frenzied as they were.

But then I saw it was cleverness as much as cowardice; she would lead them out to the perimeter of traps, which was still active, and the werewolves would trigger it again. Gunnar, whose wolf form was leading the chase, apparently realized this just in time, and he pulled up and commanded the Pack to stop too. They stood and snarled at the darkness Emily had disappeared into, frustrated to be denied her flesh but reluctant to leave the meadow when they were so close to freeing their pack mate.

It was time for me to act. There was nothing more they could do—I sincerely doubted they would be able to take on Aenghus Óg and last long. I doubted I could either, but I had some hope.

My nemesis was standing in the orange glow of that hellish fire he had summoned, facing the west, armored head to toe in silver plate. That wasn’t for my benefit: He knew that if I could get past his guard, Fragarach would slice through the armor as if it were tissue paper. It was proof against the werewolves, in case they got past the witches—which they practically had, with Emily run off into the woods and Radomila still chanting something but having no visible effect.

Aenghus wore a Greek Corinthian helmet, so it was all of one piece and required no visor plate. It afforded him maximum visibility and breathability, but it would be extraordinarily difficult for a werewolf to get a lucky claw in there or underneath the long cheek guards to get at his throat. Even if one did, his neck was well protected with a solid gorget over silver chain, and he also had a chain skirt falling past his knees; there would be no quick swipes at his hamstrings from behind. Ankles are usually tough to protect from a rear attack, but he knew that if he was dealing with a pack of werewolves, they’d go after his Achilles tendon, so in a surreal mash-up of medieval armor and American spaghetti westerns, he actually wore silver spurs, and there were spikes thrusting from the backs of his calves.

Given all of this, it was clear he’d never expected me to arrive alone, and neither had the witches. He’d planned to involve the Tempe Pack all along—for many months, it would seem, because that suit of armor had to be a fairly recent commission. Werewolves were never a problem in Tír na nÓg, and one doesn’t find custom suits of silver armor on Blue Light Special at Kmart. It spoke to me of a level of connivance that chilled the marrow of my bones—when he found out where I was, he had known I would involve the Pack through my lawyers—and I shuddered as I crouched behind the trunk of a cottonwood. It seemed to me as if we were playing a game of chess and he had thought many more moves ahead than I had. He had outplayed me with the witches from the beginning, had two different police departments playing fetch for him, and had anticipated or even counted on a pack of werewolves showing up tonight: What else had he thought of ahead of time? What was he doing with that fire pit, and what was Radomila up to? What would happen once I stepped out there and revealed myself?

As if in answer to my thoughts, something began to coalesce out of the fire pit and take shape to the right of Aenghus Óg. It remained somewhat insubstantial, with just enough translucence to show me the outlines of the cabin behind it, but its physical presence was undeniable: It was a tall, hooded figure on a pale horse, and its name was Death.

If I fell tonight, Death would come for me without delay. Somehow, Aenghus Óg knew of my bargain with the Morrigan. The simplest explanation, of course, was that she had told him. She would not betray her word to me—she’d never take my life—but I had never required her to keep our bargain secret. I had stupidly assumed she would keep it to herself so that Brighid would never know, but now it occurred to me that perhaps the Morrigan had decided to ally herself with Aenghus Óg, since Brighid had pointedly not asked for her help. If victorious, she would eliminate her biggest rival amongst the Tuatha Dé Danann and rid herself of a troublesome Druid who had lived long past his expiration date.

Something else disturbed me: Flidais had not been joking when she said Aenghus was drawing large amounts of power. It was dangerously high—so high that he was flirting with killing the earth for miles around, creating a blighted zone. If he went much further, it would take years of coaxing and care from a grove of Druids to bring it back to life again.

That sincerely chapped my hide and pulled me out of the whirlpool of doubt in which I had been flailing. Up to the point where I realized the threat he represented to the earth, I could have turned around and run. I could have gone to Greenland, where nothing was green, and hidden for a century or two. But now I could not. Aenghus Óg could betray me all he wanted, kidnap and even kill my beloved wolfhound, kill the whole Tempe Pack, even usurp Brighid’s throne to become First among the Fae, and I could have chalked it all up to the steep price one pays sometimes for living another day. But killing the earth, to which he himself was bound with the same tattoos I wore, bespoke an evil I could not countenance—it was solid proof that his priorities had widely diverged from the old faith, and he had bound himself to darkness. That’s what made me stand up and draw Fragarach from its sheath and charge into the circle of hellish light, leaping over the whimpering form of Dr. Jodursson. If I were to die tonight, then it would be a death any Druid would be proud of—not fighting on behalf of some petty Irish king’s wounded pride or his yearning for power over a small island in the great wide world, but fighting on behalf of the earth, from which all our power derives and from which all our blessings spring.