Staked (Iron Druid Chronicles) (32 page)

That’s not a man, I realize. That’s a damn vampire. We’re being attacked by vampires. Fecking Siodhachan!

I shift back to human, take off after him, and then I recite the words of unbinding before he can get out of range. The vampire comes apart with a wet sound as the elements of his body forcibly separate, and I pivot immediately to give the wolf pack some help behind the house.

Siodhachan said that we might get some vampire blowback from whatever he was doing, but I didn’t expect anything like this. Guns, I mean. I haven’t figured out how to ward against those. Or people with a basic understanding of tactics. You don’t have to get into the house and pass my wards when you can shoot from outside them and get everyone to come to you. It’s not in the nature of werewolves to sit behind walls: You poke them and they’re going to hit back. Shoot them and they won’t rest until they have your entrails in their teeth.

By the time I round the corner of the house, most of the gunfire has died down: It’s close quarters fighting now, because the pack has streamed out of the house to make a meal out of whoever ruined dinner. Magical sight tells me there are six vampires and one human against fourteen werewolves all told, when you count the parents and translators and the visiting pack leaders. I don’t think they expected to be outnumbered two to one; you’d have to be daft to think that would work out well. I think they were expecting just me and Greta, maybe a couple more.

The werewolves are all bleeding and completely savage. The vampires didn’t use silver bullets, so all they did was make the wolves crazy. The only way to beat them is through silver or to tear them up physically. It
can
be done, and it already has: One wolf is down and not moving, two legs ripped completely off and its lower jaw missing. He’s undergoing his final shift, what Greta calls the “termination clause” of lycanthropy—for all the shit ye have to endure while ye live, at the end it at least gives ye back your humanity. It’s Nergüi, Tuya’s father, lying there. Damn it.

Two vampires are down and the rest are surrounded. I recognize the wolf forms of Sam, Ty, and Greta, but the rest are a mystery to me since I’ve never sparred or run with them before. There was just that one brief time with the trolls, and I never figured out who was who.

Sam, Ty, and Greta have formed a hunting group with a fourth wolf that might be Hal Hauk—he’s the biggest of the big dogs. They’re masterful, surrounding, nipping, timing their springs at the vampire so that he hardly has a chance to land a blow before he loses a chunk of flesh somewhere else. Once he goes down, he doesn’t get up; teeth lock on the throat and tear it. Then it’s on to the next target. The three other vampires are surrounded by less-experienced wolves; they might take longer to go down, but it’s inevitable. The human is backpedaling away, shouting at the vampires in some sort of spitting language, and it’s him the leaders target next.

Something’s dodgy about him. He’s acting like he’s the boss of their party, but I see nothing in the magical spectrum that would explain why six vampires were taking his orders. I turn off the sight as I get closer, and he’s dressed strangely too. Not a commando outfit or any sort of modern warrior gear; he’s wearing a suit with a brightly colored scarf thing around his neck.

I see the moment where he counts four wolves coming and understands that this is the end for him and in the next instant his grim determination to take somebody with him. I’m too far away to do anything; all I can do is pray he won’t be successful. The first big wolf leaps at him; he raises that gun of his, crying out in defiance, and shoots it point-blank down the wolf’s throat. The bullet explodes through the back of the head and the big wolf goes down, completely still. In the next instant Greta takes the man down and ends him before he can take another shot. Sam and Ty get in there and help tear him apart, even though he’s dead now and there are still three vampires standing.

I can help with that part, so I do, not wanting any other wolves to get hurt. One by one, I unbind the surrounded vampires, then finish off the fallen ones. None of them will rise again. But this doesn’t calm those younger werewolves down like I think it will. They are still far beyond the horizon of calm, and when they spot me standing there naked with a pumping heart and meat on my bones, they come after me to have a bite.

“Bollocks,” I say. I could handle a few of them, maybe, but not nine, and not without hurting them seriously. I can’t fly away as a kite with me torn shoulder muscles, but bears can climb trees much better than wolves. Maybe I can climb high enough to keep me out of reach of their jaws. I shape-shift and muster what speed I can for the nearest ponderosa. The brass on me claws should help me climb three-legged.

Once I reach the tree, it’s grand for a couple of seconds. I get up maybe five feet off the ground, but me arse is still low-hanging fruit for the pack. Claws and teeth sink in; I shake a couple loose, but one will simply not let go, and I have to haul him or her up with me. Without the claws anchoring me to the tree and the strength it lends, I wouldn’t have been able to do it, and I make a mental note to buy Creidhne a beer.

Once I get me arms and chest around a branch high enough off the ground to be safe, I have to figure out how to get rid of the wolf attached to me arse. The simplest solution, which I use, is to shape-shift back to human. Part of that expansive backside just flows right over and between those teeth, and suddenly there’s not enough purchase for him to hold on. The wolf falls but takes a mouthful of me backside with him. The wee pack of young wolves collects around the base. They leap up to reach me but can’t quite make it.

Safe for the moment—if ye don’t count me chewed arse—I call to them.

“Greta! Sam! Ty! It’s Owen! Can ye get everybody calmed down so we can talk?”

I’m not sure how much of that penetrates, if anything. Greta says it’s tough to process spoken language when she’s a wolf—the pack tends to communicate via their own link. And when they’re far gone into the animal side, like during a full moon or when the anger is running high, the human is pretty much gone. Right now we’re at a half moon, so we should be fine, except the anger is about as raw as a wound ye rub with salt and lemon juice. Looking over at where the big wolf fell, I understand why. The final shift is over, and that is indeed Hal Hauk lying there with the back of his head missing. Maybe that was a silver bullet the human used and maybe not. Tough to survive a head wound like that, either way.

The rest of the wolves all race to the bottom of the tree and surround the base, snarling and snapping at me. I just keep hollerin’ at Greta, Sam, and Ty, hoping something will get through. It’s grim and desperate shite, yelling at them and getting barks and growls in return, but keeping their attention here is better than letting them tear off through the woods so close to the city. They could wind up killing people out for an evening stroll—or, worse, go back into the house and see if they can get after what’s in the basement. And me heart drops down to me guts as I realize how Greta’s going to take this: Hal will be the second pack leader she’s lost because of something Siodhachan did. Gunnar Magnusson was the one who turned her, but Hal was there when he did; she’s known him since her old days in Iceland. I have little doubt that were Siodhachan here right now, she would try to kill him. And I fear that may be where she stands regarding him from now on, nothing to be done about it.

It’s Sam who gets control first. His form begins to shudder, and then his bones slide and pop under the skin and most of the hair falls out, and his howls turn into hoarse screaming as his vocal tissues transform. Ty goes next, and the two of them start to exert their influence on the rest of the pack, calming them down. But Greta is having none of it. She leaves the tree and returns to Hal’s body, snuffles a couple of times, and then throws back her head and howls. Maybe if it was just an ordinary wolf doing its ordinary thing I wouldn’t care, but because I know who it is and why she’s howling it’s the most terrible, lonely thing I’ve ever heard in me life. Part of me wants to join in, because we’d been having a laugh together not ten minutes ago. This had gotten so cocked up so fecking fast.

Sam and Ty let her do her thing while they get all the other wolves either shifted or in the process of shifting—it’s rough, because they’re riled and haven’t all torn into something, but the leaders’ commands have a powerful influence on them. Then they turn their attention to Greta, calling her name and no doubt trying to reach her on the pack level too. But she shakes her head, rips out a few ragged barks, and takes off uphill, disappearing into the trees.

I could chase after her, but I don’t see the point. She has a lot of anger to work out, and she’s going in the right direction to do it without hurting anyone. Putting meself forward as a target for that anger would be dangerous as well as foolish. She’ll come back when she’s ready—and I’m aware that it might not be for days.

In the meantime, we have a fecking mess to manage. I drop down from the tree and nod at Sam and Ty, who have blood on their faces. We walk together to where the human’s body lays sprawled and mutilated. If Sam and Ty feel sick at being responsible for the torn flesh and the blood on their mouths—
in
their mouths—they make no indication of it.

Ty asks, “Are the kids safe in the basement?”

“Aye. None of them were hurt.”

“Good,” Sam says. “So who the hell was this?”

“I have an idea,” I reply, “but I don’t know for sure. He looks like someone Siodhachan told me about. Might be the guy who put him in the hospital in Toronto.”

I squat down and pat through the shreds of his coat until I discover an Austrian passport. “Werner Drasche,” I read aloud. “Yeah. This is the guy. Supposed to be the lover of the really old vampire, Theophilus.”

“Why is he here?”

“I don’t think he’ll be fecking telling us.”

“He lost the privilege of conversation when he started shooting.” Sam crouches down and picks up Drasche’s gun, checking the ammo. “Damn.” He drops it as if stung. “He’s got silver. The others don’t.”

He’d know, I suppose. I see a hole in Sam’s side, and if that was a silver bullet he’d be at death’s door himself instead of walking around. Someone would have to dig that out of him before his skin closed over it; accelerated healing can have that drawback against these modern weapons.

“Doesn’t make sense to come in here with only one clip of silver rounds,” Ty says.

“It does if you’re traveling in a hurry and expecting only one werewolf instead of fourteen,” I tell him. “I don’t think ye were the target. I think they were after me and knew that Greta would be here.”

“Oh. You think this is that vampire war against Druidry?”

“Aye, that’s what I figure. Siodhachan told me he was going to go around blowing shite up and something like this might happen. I have wards on the house, but they never got close enough to trip them. And I didn’t expect firearms. I’m sorry.”

“Ffffuck,” Sam swears. “I have phone calls to make and a memorial service to arrange. And this isn’t over. Killing a well-loved pack leader like that is going to have consequences.”

“Wait,” I says. “Let me help you with that bullet, at least. And anyone else who got shot. I can maybe pull it out of there without digging around too much.”

The iron content makes it a challenge to bind those bullets to me palm, but not an insurmountable one, and it’s better and faster than going in with tweezers. Nobody was facing the window directly when the bullets started flying, so most of the wounds are in the sides, arms, and legs, and a few glanced off ribs.

They’ll all be fine in a few days, but no one’s worried about that. We have to get dressed and look presentable before we bring the kids up out of the basement. And it falls to me and Ty to tell Meg and Tuya—through a translator—that Nergüi got killed. It’s really on me, but Ty feels some responsibility too. The pack, he says, should be represented and reassure them that they are still welcome and will be taken care of.

I expect I’ll lose Tuya as an apprentice; even if she wants to continue, I’m not sure that’s something Meg would want. People understandably want to avoid pain, and I think this house—especially the basement—will always be a source of pain for them. They might decide to forgo the company of wolves and Druids from now on, and I would not blame them. And Greta, when she comes back, might not be too fond of Druids either. I’ve failed them all so miserably, I’m not sure I want to keep me own company anymore.

I
’m not even a quarter of the tracker that Flidais is, and I didn’t want to ask for her help finding Theophilus again but I saw no other choice. She flatly refused to help, however, for the very good reason that, shortly after helping me earlier, she heard that Fand had escaped her prison and Manannan Mac Lir was most likely responsible.

“Oh,” I said. “That’s not good at all.”

“No. Finding her is my priority now.” It would be Brighid’s priority too, no doubt, and most likely Owen’s, since he had a hand in imprisoning her. If I knew him at all, he was incandescently pissed at himself right now. He couldn’t go around calling other people cock-ups if he made such a huge one himself.