Kevin Hearne: Hounded

“How does he know what we’ve done?” Coppertone whispered.

“I thought the Druids all died before Rome fell,” Coffee said.

“All but one,” I said. “The Romans never found me.”

“I still can’t see him,” Pinky complained in a frustrated whisper. “Can’t do anything.” That told me they would have thrown some juju at me already if they had line of sight.

“Show yourself!” Coppertone shouted, taking a couple of steps in my direction. They weren’t shy. They’d made no move at all to cover their nudity.

“I’m sorry for you ladies,” I said over the pained cries of the squirrel. “You obviously have some magical talent, and you might have turned out to be great witches. But I can’t let you have Kaibab’s power. It needs to be free.” I still didn’t know what kind of witches they were. The Seal of Arielis suggested a Kabbalistic background, but it had also been used by priests of Voodoo and Obeah and teenage girls who had found the damn thing on the Internet. Whatever they were, they were clever enough to adapt the Seal to their own purposes, and their purposes were not benign.

“We can’t let him break the circle,” Pinky said, stepping toward me with her arms groping the air, and then she switched to speaking Russian, no doubt thinking I wouldn’t understand it. It would have been a good assumption if they were dealing with a young American guy, but they were dealing with a truly ancient Irish guy who spoke forty-two languages, some long dead. “Nam nuzhno ostanovit ego ,” she said. We need to stop him. Coffee and Coppertone formed up on either side, searching with their hands for the source of my disembodied voice.

Coppertone continued in the same language, “We should cast a speed spell.” Smart girl. If they couldn’t target me with their magic, they could target themselves and search for me more quickly. They switched languages again, to one I thought I recognized, but didn’t understand: It sounded like Romany. They spoke in concert and moved their right arms in a synchronized gesture, and afterward their movements blurred with speed.

Creeeeeepy. And evidence that they were much more accomplished than I had originally thought. They were probably much older than they looked too: These were witches of the Old World come here to take on the power of the New.

They advanced quickly, and if they got hold of me they’d probably do some damage. I didn’t want to find out how powerful they were by experimentation: If they could bind Kaibab, they could probably bind me too. There were several things I could do to bind them, but all of them would take more time than they would allow, and speaking the words at this point would draw them closer to my position. If I tried to run around them, they’d spot the movement and hear my footfalls, and I’d be dealing with Romany curses flung at my feet. The only solution was to knock them down and hope I had time to break Kaibab out of the circle.

I let them get close and then I sucker punched them, and I’m not ashamed of it. People who try to fight fair with witches tend to die unfairly. Coffee and Pinky each took a fist in the nose, and as they were reeling backward, Coppertone swung a fist at the mirage of my camouflaged head. She was superfast, but not a trained martial artist. I had already dropped to the ground so that I could sweep her legs, and as she tumbled awkwardly to the forest floor I chopped down hard just below her ribs, driving all the air out of her lungs. She gasped and clutched at her midsection. She wouldn’t be casting any spells—or chasing me—until she got her breath back.

Now that I’d established clearly in their minds that I had fists and knew how to use them, I changed my shape to make a break for the circle. I bound myself to the form of a sea otter—which I almost never take on land—and scampered directly toward Coffee and Pinky, who were trying to find me. They heard me coming, and they saw something moving near the forest floor as my camouflage tried to compensate for the changing surroundings, so they aimed a curse in my direction and let fly about three feet above my head, assuming that they’d hit me in the torso if I was in human form. I heard tree bark splintering behind me and was glad they had missed. I darted right between Pinky’s legs, proud of myself for not looking up, and leapt for the stone circle that bound Kaibab.

The breath whuffed out of me as I crashed into an invisible barrier like a bird into a sliding glass door. Damn witches were much better than I had originally thought. As I thrashed myself back onto my short legs and looked for a likely place to retreat and hold still, Coffee and Pinky realized I’d gotten behind them and charged the circle. They saw the shadows of my movement near the ground, and this time they just tried to tackle me. Pinky missed me entirely, but Coffee got a lucky hand wrapped around my tail. I whipped around and bit her with my sharp otter teeth, and she let go.

“Ow! What the—? He’s not human anymore!” she exclaimed as I scurried away.

“What is he then?” Pinky asked. She expressed no disbelief; she just coldly wanted to assess the new threat.

“I don’t know,” Coffee said as the two of them regained their feet and I ducked behind a ponderosa to the south of the circle. “Something with fur and sharp teeth. I think I grabbed his tail.”

“All right, keep your eyes on the ground and aim low,” she said.

The physical approach hadn’t worked, so it was time for me to try something else. I switched back to my human form and dug my toes into the ground. I concentrated on the soil underneath the circle of rocks and felt its substance through my bond to the earth. I heard the witches approaching on my six, but I couldn’t let that distract me. I spoke in Irish, the language used centuries ago in the ritual that bound me to the earth, and thus the language I use to work my magic on it: “Tabhair uaidh,” I breathed, sending the command down through my tattoos, and upon my word the soil caved in, spilling the rocks in all directions as the earth shifted, breaking the circle.

A loud whump and a shock wave of compressed air announced the escape of Kaibab from the circle. The witches cursed in Russian and asked one another what happened. They looked back at the squirrel, and it appeared to be nothing but a normal, frightened rodent now.

“No!” Coffee cried. “It got away!” While they were distracted, I moved slowly out from behind the tree so that I could see them well. Coppertone had recovered and joined them near the tumbled ring of stones.

Pinky stamped her foot and balled her hands into fists. “How’d he break the circle?”

//Kaibab thanks Druid / Freedom sweet / Binding unjust / Unbound now / Rage / Vengeance//

“Make peace with your gods now,” I warned the witches as pine needles began to stir and whirl around them clockwise. “I don’t think Kaibab is going to give you a trial of your peers.”

“Now, wait,” Coffee protested in my direction as she eyed the shifting ground, “we didn’t think it would go this far! We never expected to succeed!”

“But you hoped you would,” I said, not buying her plea of innocence for a second. “You tried to bind a force of nature and take its power for yourselves.”

Pinky turned back in my direction and snarled past a rising whorl of pine needles, “Spare us. If you’re a real Druid, then all you do is bind nature and use its power.”

“No, that’s only part of what I do. As the earth is bound to me, so I am bound to it, and I must answer when it calls. Normally I’d sentence and punish you, too, because elementals aren’t supposed to touch humans, but there’s a self-defense clause in the rules of engagement, and I’m afraid you’ve triggered it. Kaibab can do whatever it wants to you now.”