Death & Honey
Table of Contents
Title Page
Death and Honey
Also by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne
Also by Delilah S. Dawson
Also by Kevin Hearne
Also by Chuck Wendig
The Buzz Kill
Chapter 1: Bee Alert
Chapter 2: Now I’m a Bee Leaver
Chapter 3: The Honey Badgely Don’t Care
Chapter 4: Bee-wildered
Chapter 5: A Rose by Any Other Name
Chapter 6: Bad Bee-havior
Chapter 7: Abuzz with Contradictions
Chapter 8: Hive Had Enough Isolation
Chapter 9: Setting Up the Sting
Chapter 10: Hark! The Herald Wolfhound Sings
Chapter 11: All Will Bee Well
Grist of Bees
Interlude: Tanager
1. That Was Then…
2. …This Is Now
3. Memory, All Alone in the Moonlight
4. Or Maybe Not Alone, After All
5. Succor
6. A Wayward’s Choice
7. The Farm
8. The Tree
9. Kill or Bee Killed, Get It, Bee Killed, Shut Up, Never Mind
10. Forgive Us Our Trespasses
11. But First, Coffee
12. Smoke Rose
13. Burnt Ends
14. The Meat Man Cometh
15. Revelations of the Meat Man
16. Monster Mission
17. Mistakes Were Made
18. Jane Coleman
19. Eschatology
20. Thunder Rumbles and the Craft Store Looms
21. The Nature of Masks
22. Shouting at the Dead
23. Miles to Go
24. The Drawer
25. A Life of Reparation and Repentance
26. The Left Coast
Acknowledgments
Copyright Notice
The Buzz Kill by Kevin Hearne
Grist of Bees by Delilah S. Dawson (writing as Lila Bowen)
Interlude: Tanager by Chuck Wendig
The Tales of Pell
Kill the Farm Boy
No Country for Old Gnomes
Star Wars
Phasma
The Perfect Weapon (e-novella)
The Shadow Series (as Lila Bowen)
Wake of Vultures
Conspiracy of Ravens
Malice of Crows
Treason of Hawks
The Blud Series
Wicked as They Come
Wicked as She Wants
Wicked After Midnight
Wicked Ever After
The Mysterious Madam Morpho (e-novella)
The Peculiar Pets of Miss Pleasance (e-novella)
The Damsel and the Daggerman (e-novella)
Servants of the Storm
Ladycastle
Sparrowhawk
Tie-in comics including: Marvel Action Spider-Man, Adventure Time #66-69, The X-Files Case Files: Florida Man #1-2, Rick and Morty: Pickle Rick, Star Wars Adventures #5-6, Star Wars Forces of Destiny: Rose and Paige
The Seven Kennings
A Plague of Giants
The Iron Druid Chronicles
Hounded
Hexed
Hammered
Tricked
Trapped
Hunted
Shattered
Staked
Besieged
Scourged
Oberon’s Meaty Mysteries
The Purloined Poodle
The Squirrel on the Train
The Iron Druid Chronicles Short Stories
The Chapel Perilous
Two Tales of the Iron Druid Chronicles
Star Wars
Heir to the Jedi
Star Wars
Star Wars: Aftermath
Star Wars: Life Debt
Star Wars: Empire’s End
Miriam Black
Blackbirds
Mockingbird
The Cormorant
Thunderbird
The Raptor and the Wren
Vultures
The Heartland Trilogy
Under the Empyrean Sky
Blightborn
The Harvest
Mookie Pearl
The Blue Blazes
The Hellsblood Bride
Zer0es
Invasive
Wanderers
Writing Wisdom
The Kick-Ass Writer: 1001 Ways to Write Great Fiction, Get Published, and Earn Your Audience
Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative
Bee Alert
THE TRUE DANGER of trotting around Tasmania with a Druid is that there are so many interesting animals to bark at. It’s difficult to stay focused, honestly, because in the course of chasing a wombat, for example, you might startle a tiger quoll or a barred bandicoot. Or you might run into a bunch of wallabies and they’re loads of fun. Nothing on the island is really ready for me and Starbuck, however, and Atticus said it’s not fair, so we don’t hunt them seriously. It’s all just exercise for me and my Boston terrier buddy.
Atticus has been healing Tasmanian devils every day for like five trillion days, I don’t know, but it seems like a long time and it’s not very interesting even if it’s super important, so Starbuck and I have to entertain ourselves somehow since we don’t have cable in the wild and can’t watch cooking shows anymore. Atticus says we can play around as we like while he’s busy healing as long as we follow the rules:
Stay in mental shouting range
Don’t kill anything
Don’t dump on anyone’s lawn but go ahead on golf courses because they’re not technically lawns and maybe a rich guy will step in it
Stay away from people and cars
Sometimes that last one is tough when we are near a city. Right now we’re near one called Launceston, and you never know when you’ll run into hikers who immediately cluck their tongues and loudly condemn Atticus for letting us run around off the leash. Not that they know him. They just say things like “Some idiot’s dogs are loose,” or “I wish people would take better care of their pets,” or “Bloody hell, that’s a big dog!”
Comments like that get my hackles up sometimes and I get tempted to go bark at them and tell them their socks are stupid or something else really damaging to human psyches, but Atticus said they might have pepper spray or cauliflower or other horrible weapons that could hurt us and we should just stay away no matter what they say—especially if they offer us food. “That’s going to be a trap every time,” he warned us.
Ha! He didn’t need to tell me. I’m no puppy meeting his first cat! Besides, they usually offer things like dry dog biscuits and I have no interest in those. Atticus feeds us really well and someone would need to produce a saucier capable of whipping up some kind of hipster gravy before I’d even consider coming over for a look. And a sniff!
Mmm. Rosemary sausage gravy. That’s the stuff. Uh…what was I talking about?
Oh yeah! The danger of chasing things in Tasmania. Once Atticus found a den of devils to heal outside of Launceston, he let us go explore and we soon found a butterfly called a Tasmanian hairstreak, a brown-and-yellow fellow we’d seen before, and we followed him for a bit and snapped in the air beneath his wings. Chasing butterflies is kind of like playing with a balloon, except you never know where they’re going to land. But they have a thing for flowers the way we hounds have a thing for asses. They can smell things other creatures can’t.
Starbuck said.
It was nice to have a purpose to the day’s wanderings. I had learned all about bees from a nature documentary plus some additional things Atticus told me, and I was happy to tell Starbuck all about them as we waited for the honeybee to load up on nectar before heading back to the hive.
Eventually, her legs were weighted down with a payload of vomit catalysts, and we followed her, crashing through underbrush for probably half a mile or something. I’m not sure, honestly, but I called out mentally to my Druid to make sure we weren’t breaking rule #1.
Sure can, buddy, his voice replied in my head, and I was still getting used
to the fact that it had an Irish accent now. He’d been depressed for a while when we got here and then kinda snapped out of it when he realized that he no longer had to pretend to be anything but himself, that he could just serve Gaia from now on as the Irish lad he was. No gods were after him and he didn’t owe anyone any favors after this big fight he called Ragnarok. He had lost his right arm in that fight and said he was lucky that was all he lost, and the considerable upside was that he was free for the first time in eons, or epochs, or something like that. What are you up to? he asked.
Okay, but try not to disturb it. It might be a commercial hive. Launceston is one of the hubs of the Tasmanian honey industry.
We kept following the bee and came to an abrupt halt when she flew up a tree where a feral hive was wedged between the trunk and a lower branch. I only noted that briefly, however, as something else grabbed our attention.
His hands and forearms had pale, waxy skin and his hair was thick, dark, and styled somewhat wavy and poufy. He had been fond of product, I suppose. He had a rugby shirt on, blue jeans, and some chunky tan-colored hiking boots, all of which made it difficult to see where he’d been injured, but my guess was it had been in the back and somehow he wound up falling on top of it.
So, he’d been perforated by bullets or ventilated with a knife and then the bees stung him. Or maybe the bees stung him first and then someone ventilated him for making the bees mad. Whatever it was, he had been bleeding and stung at nearly the same time. Hard to tell which killed him, but the bees ultimately didn’t matter. All that blood meant someone had murdered the dude, because bee stings don’t cause people to bleed out.
Well, uh, is this a hypothetical question in which you’re suggesting we search for a crime scene and try to help the police?
Oh, bollocks. I was afraid you were going to say that. What’s the crime?
Wait, so the murderer might still be nearby? Oberon, be careful!
We heard some rustling in the bushes off to our left. Starbuck turned his head, his bat-like ears on alert, and growled.
I gave a warning woof but the rustling only grew louder. Whatever was causing it wasn’t easily scared off.
Start barking now and don’t stop until I get there, he said.
Now I’m a Bee Leaver
THE THING MAKING all the noise turned out to be a woman. She sounded like a happy person and probably was one until she came out of the bushes and saw us. She heard us barking and said, “Is that a puppy?”
I am not a puppy and neither is Starbuck. She realized her error when she emerged from the undergrowth and laid eyes on us. She was a middle-aged white lady with yellow hair underneath a wide bonnet thing wrapped in flowers and feathers. She had khaki pants tucked into knee-high brown leather boots that looked and smelled new. The rest of her smelled like she’d sprayed most of a perfume bottle on herself before she went outside. Her right hand carried a cell phone and her left carried a water bottle, and she had a backpack on that looked full of stuff.
Her pleasant smile melted away and her eyes widened in shock when focused on me. “Gah! You’re bloody huge!” Her gaze then shifted to the dead guy underneath the leatherwood tree, and her jaw dropped open and a small whine leaked out as she processed what she was seeing. Then she took a deep breath and belted out an impressive scream, supporting well from the diaphragm like a trained singer. She held it for three years or so before turning and diving back into the bushes.
We were still barking like Atticus told us to but he heard the scream too.
Oberon, who is that?
Well, the good news is that she’ll probably call the police. The bad news is she’ll probably call the police.
Police occasionally serve justice, yes. But sometimes what they do is an injustice.
If you’re trying to be subtle about being fed soon, you’re failing.
Not at being subtle.
We heard Atticus coming a few weeks before he arrived.
Okay, you can stop barking, he said in our heads. Then he saw the dead guy and said, “Oh, shit,” out loud.
“Yes, the police need to get involved. But I don’t want to get involved, and now I don’t have a choice.”
“Because that woman saw you. She will describe an Irish wolfhound and a Boston terrier standing next to the body. The police will trace you to me and then I’ll be a suspect—or at least questioned as to why I didn’t report the murder. So, now I have to report it.”
He pulled out his cell phone and dialed 000, which is easier to remember than 90210 or whatever the emergency number is in the US. “And they’re going to be asking questions and my current passport is American, so I have to return to that accent now.” He grimaced as a tinny voice picked up the phone and asked him what his emergency was.
“Yes, hello? I need to report a murder.”
He switched back to mental conversation with me as he spoke out loud into his phone.
Give me a minute here, Oberon. He gave his name as Connor Molloy, his best guess at the location, and no, he hadn’t touched the body, and yes, he’d wait nearby until officers arrived. Once he hung up and pocketed his phone, he looked at the body again.
“Did you go anywhere near him? Sniff him up close, step in any of that blood?”
“Starbuck? What about you?”
“Good. I need you both to stay away from him. However, before the police arrive, I think it would be wise to see if we can figure out how he got here. Which way did the woman come from?”
I lifted a paw and pointed across from us.
“She was alone?”
“Any blood on her?”
“Okay. Without getting closer to the body, and trying not to disturb the ground at all, can the two of you use your noses and pick up his path to that tree? If you find it, then I want you to carefully follow it backwards, looking down to make sure you do not put your paws in any blood or footprints that might help the police.”