Kevin Hearne: Hounded

“Your continued existence,” the Morrigan spat.

I thought she would say something like that. The Morrigan has never been noted for her diplomacy.

“That is a good beginning for negotiations,” I replied. “Shall we formalize it? I will teach you this new Druidry, painstakingly formulated over centuries of trial and error, in exchange for your eternal ignorance of my mortality—in other words, you will not take me, ever.”

“You are asking for true immortality.”

“And for this you receive magic that will make you supreme amongst the Tuatha Dé Danann.”

“I am already supreme, Druid,” she growled.

“Some of your cousins may beg to differ,” I replied, thinking of the goddess Brighid, who currently ruled in Tír na nÓg as First among the Fae. “In any case, regardless of your decision, you have my word, freely given, that I will not teach this magic to any of them under any inducement.”

“Fairly spoken,” she said after a pause, and I began breathing again. “Very well. You will teach me how each charm on this necklace was achieved under the terms you described and how you bound the iron to your aura, and I will let you live forever.”

Smiling, I told her to find a lump of cold iron to use as her amulet and then we could begin.

“You should still fly from here now,” she told me when we had sealed the bargain. “Just because I will never take you does not mean you are safe from other gods of death. If Aenghus defeats you, one of them will come eventually.”

“Let me worry about Aenghus,” I said. Worrying about him was my specialty. If love and hate were two sides of the same coin, Aenghus spent an awful lot of time on the hate side for a god of love—especially where I was concerned. I also had to worry about the effects of aging, and if I lost a limb, it wasn’t going to grow back. Being immortal did not make me invincible. Look at what the Bacchants did to that poor Orpheus fella.

“Done,” the Morrigan replied. “But beware the agency of humans first. Working at the behest of Aenghus, one of them found you on some sort of new device called the Internet. Do you know of it?”

“I use it every day,” I said, nodding. If it was less than a century old, then it qualified as new to the Morrigan.

“Based on the word of this human, Aenghus Óg is sending some Fir Bolgs here to confirm that Atticus O’Sullivan is the ancient Druid Siodhachan Ó Suileabháin. You should have used a different name.”

“I’m a stupid git, and no doubt about it,” I said, shaking my head, piecing together how they must have found me.

The Morrigan’s expression softened and she grasped my chin in her fingers, pulling my mouth to hers. Her black robe melted away into nothingness, she stood before me like a Nagel poster come to life, and the heady scent of everything desirable to a man again filled my nostrils, though the effect was muted since I was now wearing my amulet. She kissed me deeply and then pulled away with that same maddening smirk on her face, knowing the effect she had on me, magically assisted or not. “Wear your amulet at all times from now on,” she said. “And call on me, Druid, when you have need. I have some humans to hunt now.”

And with that she turned back into the battle crow and flew out the door of my shop, which opened of its own accord to grant her passage.

I have been around long enough to discount most superstitions for what they are: I was around when many of them began to take root, after all. But one superstition to which I happen to subscribe is that bad juju comes in threes. The saying in my time was, “Storm clouds are thrice cursed,” but I can’t talk like that and expect people to believe I’m a twenty-one-year-old American. I have to say things like, “Shit happens, man.”

The Morrigan’s exit did not put me at ease, therefore, because I fully expected the day to get worse from there. I closed up my shop a couple of hours early and headed home on my mountain bike with my necklace tucked inside my shirt, worrying a bit about what might be waiting for me there.

I headed west on University from my shop and took a left on Roosevelt, heading south into the Mitchell Park neighborhood. Before the dams got put up on the Salt River, the area was floodplain land, with very fertile soil. It was farmland originally, and the lots were gradually subdivided and built up from the 1930s through the ’60s, complete with front porches and irrigated lawns. Usually I took my time and enjoyed the ride: I would say hello to the dogs who barked a greeting at me or stop to chat with the widow MacDonagh, who liked to sit on her front porch, sipping sweaty glasses of Tullamore Dew as the sun set. She spoke the Irish with me and told me I was a nice young lad with an old soul, and I enjoyed the conversation and the irony of being the young one. I usually did her yard work for her once a week and she liked to watch me do it, declaring loudly each time that “If I were fifty years younger, laddie, I’d jump yer wee bones and tell no one but the Lord, ye can be sure.” But today I hurried, tossing a quick wave at the widow’s porch and churning my legs as fast as they would go. I took a right onto 11th Street and slowed, stretching out my senses in search of trouble. When I pulled up to my house, I did not go in right away. Rather, I squatted near the street and sank the fingers of my tattooed right hand into the grass of my lawn to check on my defenses.

My house was built in the fifties, a north-facing cottage with a white-posted raised porch and a flower bed in front of it. The lawn in front is dominated by a single towering mesquite tree planted to the right of center, while a driveway on the right leads into a garage. A flagstone path goes from the driveway to my porch and front door. My front window told me nothing, being cast completely in late-afternoon shadow. But by examining my wards through the grass … yes. Someone was there. And since no mortal or lesser Fae could ever break through the wards on my house, that meant I had two choices: Get the hell out now, or go find out which member of the Tuatha Dé Danann had untied my knots and was waiting for me inside.

It could be Aenghus Óg, and the thought chilled me even though it was nearly a hundred degrees outside (Arizona does not cool down to sensible temperatures until the second half of October, and we were still a week or so away from that). But I could not imagine him leaving Tír na nÓg, despite the Morrigan’s insistence that he was on his way. So I checked in with my pet—well, I should say in all honesty, my friend—Oberon, with whom I was specially bound.

How goes it, my friend?

Oberon answered from the backyard. I did not pick up any tension in his thoughts. I rather got the impression that his tail was wagging. The fact that he had not been barking on my arrival was another clue that he thought everything was fine.

I know. Who is it?

She spoke to you? In your mind, like me? It took some effort to make an animal understand human language; it was not a simple binding, and not all of the Tuatha Dé Danann would bother. Most often they confined themselves to communicating emotions and images, as one does when speaking to an elemental.

High praise . Oberon was indeed a magnificent specimen of Irish wolfhound, with a rich dark-gray coat and sturdy constitution. His sires of old were called warhounds, not wolfhounds, and they accompanied the Irish into battle, unhorsing cavalry and attacking chariots. The warhounds of my youth were rather less friendly creatures, not like the gentle wolfhounds of today. Indeed, most modern wolfhounds are so mild, bred for gentle dispositions for centuries, that they can scarcely conceive of attacking anything beyond a bowl of dry kibble. But Oberon personified a fine blend of characteristics, able to turn the savagery of his heritage on and off as occasion demanded. I found him online at a rescue ranch in Massachusetts, after becoming frustrated with breeders in Arizona. Everything they had was too tame. Oberon, once I flew out to visit, was practically wild by modern standards, but of course all you needed to do was talk to him. He simply wanted to hunt once in a while. Allow him that, and he was a perfect gentleman. No wonder you like her. Did she ask you any questions?