Hammered

Chapter 13

My hours with the widow passed quickly. I remained with her until sundown, when Leif called me. He and Gunnar picked me up at the widow’s house in a rented Ford Mustang GT, since the three of us wouldn’t fit into either of their two-seat sports cars. I noticed that it was black instead of silver: Leif must have paid for it.

The tableau made me miss Oberon. He would have had some comment to make about the three-way olfactory deathmatch in the car: Industrial Air Freshener vs. Wet Dog vs. Bouquet of Ancient Corpse. I wished the widow well, gave her a kiss on each cheek, and squeezed myself into the diminutive backseat. Gunnar’s hackles were raised already.

“Buckle up, he drives like a maniac,” Gunnar advised me. He and Leif were both dressed more practically than they had been the night before, but they still managed to look slightly ridiculous and out of touch. Gunnar had eschewed silver, presumably because he would not be seen by his pack anytime soon. He wore a blue-and-white-striped rugby shirt, which was tight across the chest and shoulders, and a pair of jeans over those clunky tan work shoes one sees on construction laborers. Leif looked fine—black leather jacket, black T-shirt, and black jeans—until you got to his footwear. His jeans were tucked down into lug-soled combat boots that rose to mid-calf and zipped up the side. Without the boots, he could have passed for a hip graphic designer; instead, he looked like an aging wannabe punk rocker who failed to realize his youthful days of rebellion were long past. He also wore the first jewelry I’d ever seen him wear: a necklace with a finely wrought silver pendant dangling in the center of his chest. It was Thor’s hammer, the ancient pagan symbol worn throughout Scandinavia at one time the way Christians wore crosses.

“What Mr. Magnusson means is that maniacs drive like vampires,” Leif explained. “The esteemed leader of our law firm fails to give me proper credit.”

“What are you talking about? I’ve already given you credit for running four red lights,” Gunnar said.

Leif ignored this. “Where to?” he asked me.

“Swing by my house; I need to pick up a quiver of arrows there.”

“Very well,” Leif said, and he accelerated gently, almost funereally, and I felt a smile coming on. He was making a point to Gunnar, and I had no doubt he would proceed at this snail’s pace until Gunnar told him to speed up.

Gunnar was nearly out of patience by the time we made it down to 11th Street, but I was glad we were going as slowly as we were. Once we turned the corner, Leif braked the car and stared down the street. He and Gunnar both sensed something. I flicked on my faerie specs and then I saw it too: Someone with major mojo was messing with my house. The magical spectrum showed me a shining white humanoid standing near my mesquite tree, gesturing with his hands to encourage ivy to shoot out of the ground and engulf my house. Judging by the sheer amount of white noise in his aura, he was probably a god. Waiting in the street, two leopards harnessed to a chariot pricked up their ears at us. They had a bit of white magical interference around their auras too.

“Hey, Leif, you know what? I don’t really need those arrows. Back us up and get us out of here.”

“Is that—”

“Don’t say his name. It’s the Roman deity of the vine.”

“What’s he doing here?” Gunnar snarled. Leif shoved the Mustang into reverse and drove it like a vampire. The tires squealed loudly as he backed onto Roosevelt Street. The leopards growled, and the glowing white figure turned and saw us. So much for the idea of a quiet exit.

“He’s after me, obviously. He—”

“Where do we go?” Leif interrupted.

“Hit U.S. 60 and head east.” Leif stepped on it and we shot south toward the freeway at criminal speeds through the neighborhood, giving me one last glimpse at 11th Street in the process. I turned off my faerie specs and the white figure resolved into Bacchus, currently leaping toward his singular mode of transportation. He wasn’t the effeminate pretty boy of Caravaggio or Titian, and he certainly wasn’t the pudgy baby of Guido Reni’s imagination; he was more the sturdy, well-muscled figure of Poussin’s Midas and Bacchus, except his skin was mottled in madness and his eyes burned with rage. Perhaps on a better day he’d look a little more smooth and androgynous, but he was not feeling the languid sot right now; he was visiting us as the primal avatar of apeshit wrath, arms and neck traced in either veins or vines, I couldn’t tell which.

“I think we got us a chariot race, boys.” I was proud of myself for staying so calm. What I wanted to do was scream, “GO! FUCKING GO, GO, GO!” But the three of us were all supposed to be badasses. Besides our lives, there were serious testosterone points at stake here. None of us could betray a moment’s concern or we’d be mocked mercilessly by the others.

“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.”

“So what I am hearing you say,” Leif said, already weaving past human motorists at dangerous speeds, “is that I should go a bit faster.”

“Right. But with the proviso that we need to remain alive and uninjured at the end of the journey.”

We tried to relax as we drove out to Superior and then took Highway 177 south toward a small town called Winkelman. When one is being pursued by a god, it’s extremely difficult to pretend that nothing is amiss, but we tried because machismo demanded it. We spoke of other things, as if we were out cruising instead of fleeing. Leif amused us with what he’d accomplished last night at the stadium, spending a large part of the drive giving us a play-by-play account of how he’d dismantled sixty-three vampires.

“The key to sowing mayhem in the age of electronics is to deprive humans of electricity,” he began. “I took out not only the transformer for the city block but the backup generators within the stadium as well. That meant the security cameras were out of it, and only dim flashes of movement would ever be seen by human eyes. Their cell-phone cameras work poorly in low light. I was thus free to travel throughout the stadium and hunt the Memphis nest at my leisure. They had foolishly spread themselves throughout the crowd rather than concentrate their strength in an unassailable position.” He grinned wickedly in the rearview mirror. “The young and naïve fell to the hand of experience and guile.”

“The papers didn’t say anything about irregularities with the bodies, but they probably didn’t discover them until today sometime,” I said. “I’m sure tomorrow’s headlines will be engrossing—it’s on the Internet already, I’m sure. Aren’t you worried that the existence of vampires will be exposed to the public?”

Leif shrugged. “My own existence remains a secret. I will worry about it when and if I return.”

“When,” Gunnar emphasized, “not if.”

“Come on, Leif,” I persisted. “One or more of those vampire bodies are going to get kissed by the sun and go up in flames. That’s going to be a big fucking clue. And even a semi-competent coroner is going to figure out that those bodies died a long time before last night. Admit it. You just made vampires real.”

“I admit no such thing. They will blame fires on undetected flammable gases or fluids. And the coroner who suggests that those bodies are vampires or anything close to undeath will lose his job. Whatever they figure out will either be squashed or disbelieved by a public raised on a diet of science and skepticism.”

I shook my head. “You must have a giant pair of hairy balls,” I said, then added, “unless you don’t. Say, Leif, do vampires have balls?”

Gunnar tried and failed to stifle a laugh.

“Atticus?” Leif said.

“Yes, Leif?”

“You have my permission to fuck off.” Pretending I had never spoken, he proceeded to flesh out his hunting story, culminating in the dismemberment of the Memphis nest leader.

From Winkelman we headed south on State Route 77 and picked up a police officer anxious to pull over a speeding muscle car. Leif eased up on the accelerator and let Gunnar hold the wheel steady. He rolled down his window and leaned out, facing the rear. His gaze captured the officer’s eyes and charmed him. Shortly thereafter, the sirens ceased their wailing and the police officer pulled himself over.

Leif pulled his head back into the car and spent a few vain moments straightening his windblown hair in the mirror, while Gunnar continued to steer from the passenger seat. I sniggered.

“You have something to say to me, Mr. O’Sullivan?” Leif asked archly.

“Please do not trouble yourself about your appearance, Mr. Helgarson,” I replied. “I assure you that you look very pretty.”

Gunnar chuckled and Leif raised his chin haughtily. “I shall ignore the jealous gibes of ugly men,” he announced.

“He’s talking about you, Atticus,” Gunnar said.

“Your mom talked about me,” I said, and the werewolf abruptly lost his sense of humor and growled. I smiled and kept silent after that, as did Leif. You can push a werewolf only so far.

We turned left on Aravaipa Road and continued for twelve miles, the last eight of which were covered in gravel. The Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness is not technically a forest, nor does it contain much in the way of oak, ash, or thorn, but its healthy riparian habitat is strong enough to support a tether to Tír na nÓg. More than two hundred species of birds, nine species of bats, and fish species native to Arizona live there, along with black bears, bobcats, desert bighorn sheep, and coatis. The trees are largely broadleaf species, a pleasing mixture of alder, willow, walnut, cottonwood, and sycamore, all lining the perennial flow of Aravaipa Creek. There are true forests with stronger ties to Tír na nÓg slightly closer to Tempe as the crow flies, but in terms of getting the hell out of town quickly, this was my best option.

The three of us climbed out of the Mustang, and Leif left the keys in the ignition. I enhanced my vision for night and slipped off my sandals, carrying them in my left hand. The entrance to the wilderness was fenced off, but we vaulted it and began to jog toward the creek. The tabletop mesas on either side of the canyon held little in the way of wildlife; it was the bottom of the canyon that was rich in that regard.

“How far on foot?” Gunnar asked.

“About a mile in, we should be okay to shift,” I said. “Keep a sharp ear out for pursuit, will you?” My senses couldn’t begin to approach theirs while in human form. “I still don’t think Bacchus gave up on us.”

We loped easily through the night and I spoke to Sonora as I ran, informing him—or her, as Granuaile insisted—that I hoped to return soon.

Gunnar looked over his shoulder with about a half mile to go, and Leif did the same a second later. “He’s coming,” Gunnar said.

“No more jogging!” I said. “Leif, you’re the fastest on two legs. Can you carry us?”

“I don’t know where we’re going,” he protested.

“Straight down the canyon. I’ll tell you when to stop, then you guys just throw rocks at him or something, keep him off us until I can shift us away.”

Gunnar didn’t like the idea of being carried, but he saw the necessity. We weren’t going to stay ahead of flying leopards for very long. Leif picked us up easily in a fireman’s carry over either shoulder, and then he lit out with his best speed. It reminded me of the violent ride on top of Ratatosk. Still, the vampire’s best speed was short of a leopard’s. We heard a roar behind us and then a victorious “Ha!” from Bacchus. Immediately afterward, Leif dropped out from under us and I went flying through the air, along with Gunnar, to land painfully against the trunk of a cottonwood. I scrambled to my feet and saw that Leif’s legs were tangled in ivy—or perhaps grapevines. Bacchus was catching up and swooping down at us, his face a mask of the sort of frenzy he inspired.

Well, sanity was better than madness. I sent a message to Sonora through the earth: //Druid needs favor / Prevent rapid plant growth / My location / Now / Gratitude//

Gunnar was shucking off his shoes and jeans and going wolf. He didn’t bother with the rugby shirt, deciding for philanthropic reasons it was best for everyone if it got destroyed in the transformation.

“Just hamstring the kitties,” I told him while I was waiting for Sonora’s answer. “Don’t mess with the god.” Gunnar managed a nod before his face elongated into a snout and his human expression was gone.

//Favor granted// Sonora replied, and I sent him my thanks. Bacchus touched down and unleashed his leopards with the Latin equivalent of “Sic ’em!” before leaping out of his chariot to follow behind. The leopards sprang at Leif, who was now disentangled from the vines that had tripped him, but he dodged out of the way with vampiric speed and let them continue on. He stepped forward to confront the god of wine—who was notably bereft of his thyrsus and showing no sign that he’d had a pinecone stuck between his eyes an hour ago—while Gunnar advanced to meet the two leopards.

“Just chuck him back upstream, Leif; don’t test your strength against his!” I shouted as Gunnar and the leopards collided in a mess of fur, claws, and teeth. Bacchus wasn’t completely incompetent as a fighter, as evidenced by his stance as Leif approached, but neither was he used to confronting vampires with a thousand years of martial arts experience. Leif jabbed a couple of lightning raps to his jaw to set him back on his heels, then he spun and dropped the wine god on his ass with a kick to the side of the knees. While Bacchus was still down, Leif quickly grabbed him by the feet and yanked to deny him leverage for a kick, then spun him around in a discus toss, finally throwing him several hundred yards away up the canyon. He landed heavily in the rocky creek bed and probably broke something. Shame about that.

In the meantime, Gunnar had lamed the two leopards, but not without taking on significant damage himself. The good news was that he would heal and the leopards wouldn’t be pulling Bacchus along to harry us anytime soon.

“Nice throw,” I said. “Come on, let’s go. It’s just a little bit farther.”

I gathered Gunnar’s jeans and shoes and carried them with my sandals as Leif scooped me up again to continue down the canyon. Gunnar kept pace alongside now that he was in wolf form.

“Keep to the creek bed if you can,” I requested. Leif obligingly swerved to take the requested course, which would allow me to keep a sort of jittery surveillance on Bacchus. The Olympian staggered to his feet in a fury and located us easily. He had one hand pressed to a spot on his lower back, but as I watched, he brought both hands around in front of him at waist height and slowly raised them, a clear gesture commanding something to rise from the ground—vines of some sort, no doubt. Thanks to Sonora’s help, nothing happened. Leif ran unencumbered, and I chuckled.

Speaking in a conversational tone, I said in Latin, “Lord Bacchus, can you hear me? Nod if you can hear me.”

Bacchus dropped his hands and nodded.

“You have never killed a Druid all by yourself, and you never will. Only with hordes of Bacchants and Roman legionnaires and the aid of Minerva have you ever managed to slay a single one of us. Your lackeys may get me eventually, and I know that I will never be able to slay you, but admit to yourself now that you, alone, will never prove my equal. The earth obeys me, son, not some petty god of grape and goblet.” I switched to English for a postscript. “So suck on that, bitch.”

Bacchus didn’t bother to compose an intelligible reply. He merely roared his defiance and came after us. But he wasn’t especially fast on his feet; he was no quicker than any mortal man, and he had hundreds of yards to make up.

“Find me a nice tree, Leif, anywhere near here,” I said. Leif immediately steered us out of the creek bed and deposited me at the base of an impressive sycamore. Unlike the Fae, who specifically needed oak, ash, and thorn to shift planes, I could use any stand of timber that was sufficiently robust to connect to Tír na nÓg. It didn’t matter if I used a sycamore or a sequoia; all I needed was a healthy forest.

Gunnar sat on his haunches next to us, panting and bleeding. “All right, both of you touch me and the sycamore at the same time.” I looked at Gunnar to make sure he understood. He responded by rising on his hind legs and placing one huge paw on my chest, the other against the trunk of the tree. I needed skin contact, so I poked a finger of my left hand—the one holding the shoes and jeans—into his fur. Leif condescendingly put a hand on my head and the other on the tree.

I took one last look upstream to check on the wine god’s position. He was sprinting somewhat spastically down the creek and not paying enough attention to his footwork. He slipped on a moss-covered rock and looked very mortal as he executed a spectacularly graceless face plant. I laughed, because I knew he could hear me and I wanted him to know I’d seen his humiliation. We still had plenty of time to shift.

Sensing that I was about to escape, Bacchus looked up from where he lay in the streambed. “Your insults will be paid in good time,” he said in a voice of barely restrained fury. “I swear to Jupiter I will tear you apart myself, Druid. Your death is long overdue.”

“Perhaps I deserve to die,” I admitted. “But you don’t deserve to live. Your very existence is nothing but a feeble echo of Dionysos. You are a weak copy of a better god.”

I gave him no chance to respond, proceeding on the maxim that it’s always best to have the last word. I closed my eyes, sought the tether to Tír na nÓg, and pulled us through to the land of the Fae.