Staked (Iron Druid Chronicles) (15 page)

Mademoiselle Maupin hit the road again, singing, taking a series of male lovers, and occasionally kicking someone’s ass in a duel, until she arrived in Paris and joined the opera there. Her life was only mildly tempestuous for a while—she had to beat the hell out of a misogynistic actor once and her landlord on another occasion—but then she landed in serious trouble again when she attended a fancy ball dressed as a man and kissed a young woman there in front of nobility. This was quite offensive according to the social customs of the time, and she was promptly challenged to a duel by three different men. She went outside and beat them all, one after the other; while they bled in the street, she went back inside and kissed the girl again.

Kissing the girl wasn’t the true problem: The problem was that she had very publicly broken the king’s law against dueling within the limits of Paris and had to leave the country for a time. She relocated to Brussels, sang in the opera there, had several more affairs, and then returned to France, where she sang in the Paris Opera until 1705. Her final affair was with a woman who died in an untimely fashion, and she took her lover’s death quite hard and retired from the opera altogether. She entered a convent, in fact, and died a couple of years later at the young age of thirty-three. It was a short, violent, but passionate life she led. She didn’t give a damn about gender roles, and she kissed and fought whomever she felt like kissing or fighting, and she sang beautifully and snatched bodies when she needed to. That was Julie d’Aubigny, or Mademoiselle Maupin.

“I did not meet her personally, but I did see her perform
Tancrède
at the Paris Opera in 1702.”

“Oh, she was very good. And you are very good. We almost have all this gunk off you. How are you feeling?”

I examined the area, parting the fur with my fingers, and found a shallow scratch from a bone splinter there. I’d taken the brunt of it, but Oberon hadn’t escaped completely. There was some yellow discoloration around the scratch, which meant that it had indeed been ichor-covered and some of it had managed to get into Oberon. I would have to directly heal him or else it would get worse. Ichor poisoning functioned like cancer in that it turned a mortal body against itself, and even small amounts could be fatal eventually. There wasn’t an herbal remedy for it that I knew of, so I’d have to break it down inside him, as I’d done to myself.

“Okay, you’re cut up here. Don’t shake yourself off or talk or anything. I need to concentrate to deal with this. Just let me know when it stops stinging.”

Directly healing another creature by the old laying-on-of-hands is always a tricky business. The Hippocratic maxim of “First, do no harm” is especially true when it comes to using Gaia’s energy, since she frowns rather severely on using the earth’s magic to do any direct injury. But finding what was
not
Oberon and was clearly invasive wasn’t that difficult—it simply required patience and thorough attention. It turned out there were only a few milligrams of ichor inside him, nothing to send him into shock or seizures now, but enough to do the job eventually if I didn’t stop it. Unbinding the molecular chains of the ichor into their components left a few random proteins coursing through him—they would eventually get flushed out—and rendered the rest of it inert. Oberon was shivering by the time I was finished.

“Okay, buddy, sorry that it took so long. You can shake off now and roll around on a towel. I have to trade places with you and wash myself.”

Once I scoured myself several times and my skin stung all over with the raw thrill of exfoliation, we emerged damp but refreshed from the bathroom. I borrowed Ty’s phone to call Hal Hauk and tell him my Sean Flanagan identity was toast. “I’m going to need a new set of papers,” I told him.

“I’m going to need money for that, and you can’t afford it anymore,” he said. “Your accounts are drier than a high-desert well since Drasche got access through Kodiak Black and emptied them. You’re going to owe me.”

“Understood. I’m good for it, Hal. It’s this war with the vampires. It’s so very draining, hahaha.”

“Gods.” Hal’s voice was weary. “I sentence you to three centuries in pun prison for that.”

“You are the very best of attorneys.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“How’s the Oregon deal progressing?” Kodiak Black hadn’t managed quite everything of mine, and that’s where most of my remaining funds had gone—a cabin property in the Willamette National Forest. For me, the entire point of building up multiple accounts had always been for precisely this purpose: to pay for a new hiding place the next time I had to run. I couldn’t flip houses; I had to abandon them along with my identity every time I ran, and that took cash. Once we had our new safehouse settled, I wouldn’t need to impose on anyone else.

“Almost finished. Few more days. I’ll bring your ID up to Flagstaff when it’s ready.”

“Thanks, Hal.”

We rang off and I turned to find Sam and Ty standing behind me, arms crossed and staring as if I’d trespassed somehow.

“What did I do?” I asked.

“You tell us,” Sam said. “Which Olympian’s ichor did you just wash down our drain?”

“Diana’s.”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “The huntress Diana? You have her on your trail—a trail that leads to our door?”

“I certainly hope not. Jupiter said he’d take care of it.”

“Jupiter can’t even control his own urges,” Ty pointed out. “What makes you think he’ll be able to rein in Diana’s?”

He echoed my own worries about the situation, but I didn’t want to openly agree. “Look, fellas, I’m leaving in a few minutes. I have this thing to do with Brighid on one of the Norse planes. If Diana shows up—and that’s a
big
if—you’re welcome to tell her I’m in Svartálfheim.”

Sam’s jaw dropped in disbelief. “You’re seriously going to visit the dark elves?”

“It’s either that or displease the Morrigan. I really don’t want to annoy the Chooser of the Slain. But I can’t take Oberon with me. It’s too dangerous.” I clasped my hands together and gave them my best pleading, hopeful expression.

I have to. Svartálfheim is no place for a hound. It’s no place for a Druid either.

Sam shook his head and Ty sighed. “You really are a giant pain in the arse, like Owen says.”

“I’ll find a way to make it up to you,” I promised.

“Oh, no, we’ll think up something ourselves,” Ty countered.

“Thank you very sincerely for watching him. But I gotta warn you guys: After the bathtime story I just told him, Oberon may try to hump your leg and then challenge you to a duel. Or vice versa.”

I
’ve had a few days to prepare, but me palms are sweaty when I see the families approaching from the house. I hope I look competent to their modern eyes and not like some wild cock-up of a man. I’m in a robe, since I plan to be shape-shifting, and me bare feet are chilled while the rest of me feels overheated. Sam and Greta are with the group and they smile at me, happy over what is to begin here, but the families and the children look as nervous as I feel. Or maybe they’re just tired; they all had long trips to get here on short notice.

Not a one of them looks Irish or anything close to it, and I think that’s grand. It’s best, methinks, to have Druids from all over Gaia; that way they’ll each have a special stretch of the earth calling to their hearts. It’s what we should have done back in the old days, if we’d been thinking properly, but instead of actively trying to spread Druidry everywhere, we just assumed it would grow outward from Ireland and keep going. It never got out of the European continent, and that’s a mistake we don’t need to repeat.

I’m standing a good distance from the house in a field of bunch grass already gone dormant for the winter. Pines stand tall behind me in formations leading up the mountain, and the air is crisp. There are worse places I could start a grove. Greta presents me to them all, and I nod once and say, “Welcome.” I get a few nods and a couple of shy smiles in return. Then the introductions begin.

First is a married couple and a wee girl from someplace called Mongolia. They have a translator with them while they’re learning English, but Greta assures me that she’s pack also. Straight dark hair, high cheekbones, golden-brown complexions. The father, Nergüi, is the new pack member; his wife’s name is Oyuunchimeg, but she wants to simply be called “Meg” in the United States. The girl is seven and her name is Enkhtuya. The parents get nods, but I squat down on me haunches so I’m not so large and intimidating and grin at the girl, who wants to be called Tuya.

“Nice to meet ye, Tuya,” I says, and she relays a polite reply via the translator.

Next in line is a family from Peru. Both of the parents, Diego and Rafaela, are new pack members and are very worried about protecting their boy, Ozcar. They speak English with a charming accent and have warm-brown skin and thick black eyebrows. Ozcar is a shy lad and doesn’t respond to my greeting except after prompting from his parents. He might be a bit small for his age, a bit thin. Time and oats will take care of it.

Mohammed and his son, Mehdi, hail from a village in the mountains of Morocco, a place called Chefchaouen, which is rather fun to say out loud. The boy’s mother is missing, but I don’t inquire about it right then; she may be in the house, or simply elsewhere, and if not, there is plenty of time to collect such stories later. They’re dressed in white, and Mohammed has a little cap on his head that I suspect has some kind of religious significance. I’m not up to speed on all the religions that have sprung up since me own day, but it really doesn’t matter. Gaia doesn’t require worship, so Druids can pray to whomever they want.

“Thank you for doing this,” Mohammed says. “I don’t want to outlive my son. If Mehdi becomes a Druid, he can live longer, yes, like wolves?”

“That’s right,” I tell him, though I leave out that this is a recent development thanks to Siodhachan. “I know I don’t look like it, but I’m in me seventies.”

Mohammed clasps his hands together and says something in a language I don’t recognize as he lowers his head in what I assume is a prayer of thanks. One of the monotheist religions, I’m guessing.

The religion of Sajit, however, is a serious problem for him now that he is a werewolf, as his translator explains. He’s a Hindu from Nepal and this has something to do with why he’s a strict vegetarian, yet when he shifts once a month his wolf won’t let him shift back without eating meat, which he finds very distressing. He wants to make it very clear, therefore, that his daughter, Amita, should not be forced to eat meat as part of her apprenticeship.

“Ye both can eat what ye want,” I says to him, and shrug. “It doesn’t matter to me.” Amita’s mother is absent as well, and the wee girl is reluctant to make eye contact. Her complexion is lighter than her father’s—tawny where his is a warm sepia—but I can tell she’s going to be tall like him.

Luiz is an earnest six-year-old from Brazil and missing his father. His mother, Natália, greets me in broken English. They have a translator but clearly already know a few words. Luiz has a gap between his front teeth that makes me like him.

The last family is a father and daughter from Zambia, and they possess skin of a deep, rich umber; their hair is cropped very close to their skulls. The girl is by far the tallest of the children, though I’m unsure if that’s simply because she’s older than the rest or if she’s truly above average. The father, Sonkwe, is fluent in English, and his daughter, Thandi, is learning well. I note that her eyes take in everything: When she’s finished absorbing me, her eyes drift to the trees as her father speaks, volunteering why he’s a single parent: “After I was bitten,” he says, “my wife left us. She thinks I am a monster now.”

If she truly thinks that, then I wonder why she would leave her child with a monster, but I keep me questions in reserve. Now is not the time for them.

“There isn’t a one of ye that’s a monster,” I says, and nod to the translators to indicate that they should relay my words. “You’re just bound to lycanthropy now. Fancy word for a certain kind of binding. All magic is a binding of some kind. And Druids are bound to the earth. To Gaia.” I’d stood to meet the other children after Tuya, but I go ahead and squat again so that the kids would know I was speaking to them and not their parents. I pull up my right sleeve to reveal my tattoos, then speak to the apprentices, sweeping my eyes across them in turn. “This ink is not for decoration. It’s my binding to the earth, and that in turn allows me to bind myself to four animal shapes and do many other things besides. When you are ready, you will be bound to the earth in the same way, and then you will be able to shape-shift into four different creatures. But a Druid’s shape-shifting is different from a werewolf’s. It’s faster, painless, and we don’t have to do it at all if we don’t want to. But you’re probably going to want to. Wouldn’t you like to fly?” The kids nod and I smile. “Sure! Who wouldn’t? One of your shapes will be a bird of some kind. I’ll show you in a minute.”