Kevin Hearne - Hammered

“How far is it?” Leif asked me. “This place where we will shift planes?”

“About an hour or two.” There were no healthy forests closer than that near the Phoenix metropolitan area. It was one of the reasons I’d chosen it as a place to live, because I was less likely to run across faeries. “Depends on how fast you drive.”

The vampire laughed and drove even faster.

“Now you’ve done it,” Gunnar said. “We’re doomed.” Because he said it deadpan and obviously in criticism of Leif’s driving, he wouldn’t be docked any testosterone points for that.

Leif wrenched the wheel to the left and we whipped onto 13th Street, headed toward Mill Avenue. He’d be able to take Mill south to U.S. 60, and once there he could really open up.

There was no question of fighting Bacchus. Unlike the Norse or the Tuatha Dé Danann, the Olympians (both Greek and Roman) were truly immortal and could not be killed—only inconvenienced. That tended to give them an advantage in any altercation. Unbidden, an appropriate sentiment bubbled from my lips: “ ‘Therefore, dear boy, mount on my swiftest horse; and I’ll direct thee how thou shalt escape by sudden flight: come, dally not, be gone,’ ” I said, quoting from Henry VI, Part I . Shakespeare’s genius was that he had something to say about almost any situation—even fleeing from a Roman god in a Mustang.

Leif flicked an annoyed glance back at me and affected the grumbly voice of old Capulet: “ ‘Go to, go to; you are a saucy boy.’ ” He didn’t object to the quote itself but to the idea I was starting a Shakespearean quote duel while we were running for our lives.

“Do you think I mean to engage you while you are busy getting us out of trouble?” I asked him. I should have apologized and ended it there, but again I couldn’t resist speaking the perfect line from Hamlet: “ ‘My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.’ ”

Gunnar groaned and planted his face in his hands. He knew what was coming.

Despite Leif’s attempts to speed through the neighborhood, Bacchus took a good angle through the air—because his bloody leopards were the flying sort—and caught up with us as we slowed to turn onto Mill. We heard them roar, and Bacchus joined in with a bellow meant to drive us mad with fear. Were any of us vulnerable to such magic, I’m quite sure we would have completely lost our shit. Claws scraped on the roof of the Mustang as we screeched around the corner.

“ ‘Alack, what noise is this?’ ” Leif said, grinning, getting into the spirit of the situation—a macabre fatalism that suggested we might as well enjoy ourselves as much as possible. Still, I carefully drew Fragarach from its sheath in case the roof gave way and I had to fend off swipes at our heads. The back of Gunnar’s neck was rippling as his wolf fought to get out. He hated being in the passenger seat right now, powerless to do anything but hope we could outrun the god.

We endured a couple more shrieking scrapes against the hardtop, clenching our teeth against the bone-shivering sound, and then the Mustang pulled away again under the weight of Leif’s booted heel against the accelerator.

“I hope you bought the optional insurance,” Gunnar said.

“Of course I did!” Leif said. “What do you think I am, a maniac?”

Horns honked in our wake, and people stomped on their brakes at the sight of a black Mustang being pursued by an airborne chariot. The witnesses would no doubt medicate themselves with an impromptu prescription of booze when they got home.

It was mayhem and Leif loved it. He leaned on the horn and flashed his lights at people to get them to swerve out of the way. “ ‘Now bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible; yea, get the better of them,’ ” he boasted, assuming the part of Ligarius from Julius Caesar .

The Roman reference reminded me of the perfect line from Antony and Cleopatra . “ ‘Come, thou monarch of the vine, plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne!’ ” I said, and that made Leif wince, acknowledging that I’d bested him with that one. He was cursing himself for not thinking of it first—if he ever knew it at all. I’d scored a palpable hit—a plumpy one, even—and he’d have a tough time answering it.

We were having a tough time pulling away from Bacchus too. Every time we slowed beneath 50 mph, his leopards tried to claw their way through the roof. He’s not a particularly martial god; the thyrsus he carries is topped with a pinecone, and that wasn’t going to smash through much besides toilet paper. Still, his raw strength was well known, a trait he shared with his Bacchants, and if he could once grapple with us, we’d be hard pressed to come away with all our limbs still attached. A red light was coming up at the freeway on-ramp. Cars were stacked up four deep in every lane, and Leif wouldn’t be able to weave through them.

The vampire gestured to the obstacle ahead of us and said, “That could be trouble. Should we split up,” he said to me, “get out of the car and let him go after you, then Gunnar and I will fall on him from behind?”

I twisted in my seat to view our pursuit. The leopards were partially obscuring Bacchus, but that obstruction gave me an idea. “No, I think I might be able to slow him down.” Concentrating on the pinecone of the god’s thyrsus—which he was brandishing high above his head—I constructed a binding between it and the narrow patch of fur betwixt the eyes of one of his leopards. It would do the beast no harm, but it would be sorely distracted. When I completed the binding, Bacchus became distracted too, for he never expected his thyrsus to fly out of his hand and land precisely between the eyes of his leopard. He cursed as one leopard yowled and started batting at its head while the other continued running, causing the chariot to spin in midair. To deal with it properly he’d have to descend to the ground, and he sank to street level behind us even as we slowed for the stoplight.

Leif and Gunnar craned their heads around once we were stopped and saw Bacchus trying to deal with a very annoyed pair of large cats.

“Oh noes, kitteh haz major angriez!” I said. I turned around to share a laugh with my companions and found them glaring at me. “What?” I asked.

Leif shook a finger and said in a low, menacing tone, “If you tell me I have to talk like an illiterate halfwit to fit into this society, I will punch you.”

“And I’ll pull out your goatee,” Gunnar added.

“Lolcat iz new happeh wai 2 talk,” I explained to them. “U doan haz 2 be kitteh 2 speek it.”

Leif cocked his fist and I held up my hands. “Okay, okay, I’ll stop! Light’s green, by the way.”

He shook his head and faced forward, stepping on the accelerator. “How you can go from Shakespeare to that meaningless babble is beyond me.”

I made no answer, because I was actually worried about the leopard. It was clawing at Bacchus, who had taken firm hold on the pinecone, and he looked mad enough to yank it free forcibly, tearing the fur out in the process. So while they were still in sight, I changed the binding: I loosed the knots to the leopard and instead bound the pinecone between the eyes of Bacchus himself. He could tear off his own skin if he wanted. His barbaric yawp shook our windows as we disappeared from sight, zipping down the on-ramp to U.S. 60.

“Is that it, then?” Gunnar asked. “Did we lose him?”

“Not for good,” I said. “He’s probably sharp enough to know where we’re headed; he’s dealt with Druids before. He can fly in a straight line and shave a lot of time off his trip.”