Three Slices (10 page)

“Good. We’re allowed to sample the fruit? It’s not forbidden?”

“All you want. No forbidden fruit here.”

She plucked two from the nearest branch, their skins a pale rose shot through with streaks of yellow, and tossed me one of them. “You first,” she said.

I chose to be amused rather than annoyed that she suspected I’d brought her to an island full of poisoned apples. I tore into mine without hesitation and it was delightful, crunchy and sweet with just a tiny hint of tartness. Seeing that, she took a bite of hers. “Damn, that’s tasty,” she said around a mouthful. I nodded agreement, and we began walking.

All right, Oberon, why do you want to stay here so badly?

The Book of Five Meats,
Atticus, and if we’re going to write the definitive work on the subject, we have to start with quality ingredients. I figure this god-tended grove will give me the best apples in the universe for my chicken apple sausage.>

Do you see my eyes rolling at you right now?

Apples are only one ingredient.
Where do you expect to get the finest chicken for this?

Oberon, that’s not a real chicken. Monty Python made that up.

You’re going to lose interest in this as soon as I give you another bath.

He had a point.
Okay, taste test incoming.
I plucked an apple for him and lobbed it in his direction. He snatched it out of the air and began his awkward chewing.

I’m sorry, buddy, we have to go to Toronto after a quick stop at the cabin.

As soon as we can.

“Mm,” Mekera said, finishing her apple and tossing the core. “So—just to review—who knows I’m here?”

“Just me, and soon, Manannan Mac Lir. It’s like a paradise made of privacy and vitamin C. But look, Mekera—”

The tyromancer affected a look of concern. “You said you should be going, right?”

“Ah. I’m trampling on your solitude already?”

She beamed at me, pleased I had figured it out so quickly. I think that once she saw me confirm the apples were safe, she was ready for me to go, and had endured me just long enough to finish. “Thanks for the walk. See you when you’ve rid the world of vampires, Siodhachan.”

“May harmony find you, Mekera.” I sincerely hoped it would.

“You know what?” A slow smile spread on her face as she looked around her. “It might. I’m grateful to you for the talk. I’m not ready to deal with the world’s cruelties yet, but I’m willing to think about it now.”

“Good enough.”

Oberon and I shifted to our cabin in Colorado, where someone had left a once-sizeable fire burning down by the creek and then smothered it with a layer of dirt. Granuaile and Orlaith were nowhere to be found, but the elemental informed me they were in Asgard in the company of Odin, trying to remove Loki’s mark.

“Well, I guess I can’t avoid it any longer, Oberon,” I said, after showering and changing into something that wasn’t caked with mud. “I have to go back to Toronto as Nigel.”

“You don’t. But I don’t want a protracted war either, and being Nigel for a while is the best way I can think of to keep it short.”

I scratched my friend behind the ears. “That’s all the war I ever want you to see.”

To be continued in
Staked
, book 8 of the Iron Druid Chronicles

Read more by Kevin Hearne

1.

I
SHOOT
my cuffs, step into the dining car, and play my favorite game: Who should I kill?

Not that I’m going to kill anyone. I’m not allowed to—and it would be bad manners. So, I just smile my sharp smile and nod my polite nods and cut through the crowd of placid humans like an elegant shark through a school of fish. They unconsciously shift and part as they wait in line for their lunch, turning away as I pass and tugging up their collars, fidgeting with their gloves. Silly creatures.

Before I’ve reached his window, the cook has already deposited a blood vial on the counter for me and disappeared. My fingers tighten around the still-warm glass tube, and I know who I would choose, who I would kill and drain until he was utterly empty: the vile gobbet of flesh holding court in his corner of the caravan’s dining car. Barnum himself.

Kill the ringmaster, take the circus. Easy as that.

Barnum sees me watching him, and his fat finger draws a line across his well-covered throat in warning. I walk a fine line here, as the only Bludman in a company of humans, daimons, and freaks. He needs my magic, but he keeps me on a short chain, and I have a bad habit of slipping my collar. One more mark against me, and he’ll either call the Coppers to drag me off to some dank city’s dungeon or drain me himself and make a pretty penny bottling my forbidden but intoxicating blood.
Tit for tat
, the old duffer would say, silver coins dancing in his eyes.

With the slightest bow to my all-too-mortal master, I pocket the blood vial and leave the wagon. I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend all afternoon among the caravan’s human riffraff, discussing weather and the popular cut of trousers with the creatures who should rightfully be my prey. One day, I’ll rule this circus, or something like it, and on that day, things will change.

Criminy’s Captivating Caravan
has rather a ring to it. Much better than
Barnum’s Traveling Circus
. Not that anyone can tell old Barnum that.

Back in my closet of a room in one quarter of a proper wagon, I flick the cork from the vial as easily as I could rip Barnum’s head off his neck. The blood is cooler than I prefer, lumpier than blood has any right to be, and carries the taste of the sea, tangy and wild, which means it’s at least two weeks old and was taken as payment when we were camped by the shore. One copper coin or one vial of human blood: That’s the only way to get through the circus turnstiles—unless you’ll work for less than that. Two tubes a day is standard, but Barnum only allows me one so I’ll know my place.

Hours later, just as the circus starts up for the night, I entertain myself by picking the locks on the dining wagon and pocketing half a dozen vials of blood. I think of Barnum’s pulsing jugular as I drink them one after the other, swirling through the caravan’s shadows in a floor-length cape as I hurry to the stage. The audience is waiting for me, so close that I can smell their excitement and fear. I wipe the red from my lips, lick the dregs from my fangs, toss the vial to the ground, and whirl out from behind the black velvet curtain in a clatter of glitter and calliope pipes.

Everyone in the crowd wants to be chosen. From the lantern-lit stage, I see a sea of eager faces and waving, gloved hands. It’s rare that a human from the city can interact safely with a tame Bludman like myself, a dapper gentleman in topper and tails with a cultured accent and a smile hiding fangs. I look twenty, but I’m so much more than that. And they have no idea. They live such small lives, have such small thoughts. They think me a monster, manacled in satin and doeskin, and they’re not wrong.

It’s always a woman that I choose, though. The way they’re trapped inside their homes, herded behind the high walls of cities, and kept far from a proper education and world view—it makes them pliant and suggestible and eager to please. They practically hypnotize themselves.

She can’t be the loveliest girl in the audience, the one I select. That just makes the plainer girls jealous. But it’s also hard to manufacture chemistry with a homely dullard. What I need is a pretty girl, not too slender and not too plump, not too petite and not too tall, neither a glossy blonde nor a vivacious redhead. She must be agreeable and innocent, with a certain universal girl-ness to her, a shy, dimpled maid in whose wide brown eyes all the other girls can envision themselves.

A girl I can fleece, but who’ll be glad of the fleecing, you see.

That’s part of the magic.

There she is. Third row, flowered bonnet, pink dress that covers her from throat to toes, wrist to wrist. Rosy cheeks, mouth open just a little in excitement to show gapped front teeth. I grin a perfect grin and whip out my arm, flinging sequins and fireflies into the air to rain down on the crowd.

“You, love.”

I point at her and turn my hand over, curling my finger at her, drawing her to me. She gasps and puts a gloved hand to her well-covered chest, laughs at her good luck. Her two friends push her towards the stage, and she blushes as I hold out that same blood-red velvet glove to help her up the steps between the lights.

“What’s your name, darling?” I ask as I lead her to a gilt-armed chair in the center of the stage.