Staked (Iron Druid Chronicles) Read online

  “Atticus, where are you?” he said.

  “Toronto. Look, Hal, I need you to get ahold of Leif and ask him for Werner Drasche’s number.”

  “What?”

  “You can still get in touch with Leif, can’t you?”

  “Yes, but who’s this Werner Drasche?”

  “Long story. I just need his number right away, okay?”

  “Okay, but we’ve been trying to get hold of you regarding something else. Your archdruid wants to start a grove up near Flagstaff, take on six apprentices.”

  “Apprentices? Where’d he find them?”

  “I found them. They’re the children of pack members, born before their parents were turned.”

  “Sounds perfect! Except that things are going to be warming up on the vampire front. You all should look out, take precautions.”

  “Were you responsible for this morning’s headlines?”

  “Yeah, that was me. Or sort of me. Remember that guy in my shop with the beard who tried to throw a silver knife at you that one time?”

  “Oh, yes, that odd rabbi.”

  “He’s much more calm now. It was his organization that did all that last night, using information I gave them. I’m moving fast and ambushing them as much as possible, but they’re going to catch up with me eventually. There could be blowback, especially after today, so you guys should watch out.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  A familiar growly voice shouted in the background of the call. Hal said, “Your archdruid says to meet him in Tír na nÓg at the Fae Court. He has something for you.”

  “All right, I will, but I have things to do here first. Werner Drasche’s number.”

  “Call you back soon.”

  It was only five minutes of agonizing waiting in the old chapel before Hal called back with Drasche’s number and gave me Leif’s as well for future reference.

  “Leif was only too glad to cooperate,” he said. “Said to tell you to carry on, you’re doing well.”

  “Gods below, he’s a smug bastard.”

  “What’s he talking about?”

  “I’ll have to tell you later. Clock’s ticking.”

  We rang off and I dialed the number for the arcane lifeleech. He picked up immediately and answered in German. I replied in English.

  “Hello, Werner. It’s your favorite Druid.”

  “O’Sullivan! Where are you?”

  “Probably not that far from you if you’re in Toronto.”

  “I am. Your little stunt will not do you any more good. I’ve sent notice that everyone should move.”

  “You must be very popular among the vampires right now, what with compromising their security and making them lug their coffins around. And all those staked vampires on the West Coast. Your people will be scrambling around to keep the reports on all those autopsies secret.”

  He cursed in German. “That witch in Africa said you’d never return to Toronto!”

  Mekera was a tyromancer, not a witch, but Drasche probably would not care about the distinction. “She told you the truth as best she could see it. I’m just unpredictable. We have that in common, Werner. When you killed my friend Kodiak Black, you left a note that said you wanted to talk, yet all you did in Ethiopia was spray bullets at me. That’s uncommon rudeness, Werner, especially when I spared your life the first time we met.”

  “You want to talk? We’re talking now.”

  “It’s not good enough somehow. Let’s do it in person. I have something to say to your face, and I bet you’re wearing a fabulous ascot today. Meet me in Massey Hall on the corner of Victoria and Shuter in a half hour. I’ll be inside.”

  I disconnected before he could reply. Whether he came alone or with a bunch of hired muscle, the people of Toronto would be safe. He couldn’t leech anything from an empty theatre. I ducked my head back into the classroom and saw Gwendolyn still hovering there, a vision in red.

  “Everything’s settled. Shall we go?” I extended a hand to her and she floated toward me, something approaching a smile curving the slash of a mouth on her face. We descended the grand staircase together, and the single person we saw on the way froze for a second and then hurried up past us without saying a word. When we stepped outside into the sunlight on the steps where she died, I paused to look at her.

  “Ready?”

  “I’m ready, Nigel,” she said, though her voice was a faint whisper in the daylight and she looked like someone had gotten too enthusiastic with the transparency slider.

  “Excellent. Please don’t trouble yourself about these roads and the strange carriages and clothing people wear. There have been a few changes since you passed. Progress.”

  She made no answer, and it was just as well. I had to worry instead about other people troubling themselves about the red apparition floating next to me. Perhaps I would get lucky, I thought, and I’d be the only one who could see her.

  That didn’t happen. I was hailed twice on the brisk walk to Massey Hall, once by a pedestrian and once by someone in a car, and asked what was that red smudge next to me.

  “What?” I asked. “I don’t see anything.” That got rid of them. They would no doubt make optometrist appointments soon.

  Massey Hall was a dirty brick lump of a building on the outside, covered in soot and grime reminiscent of buildings from the Industrial Revolution. Fire-escape stairwells on the front of the building, intended to give people on the balcony a fleeting chance in case of disaster, sloped down to the left and right, bracketing the front doors in an iron triangle. Three double doors with small windows above them were painted candy-apple red to reassure everyone that the building wasn’t derelict and promised all kinds of fun inside. The inside was a beautiful theatre with excellent acoustics, which was why everyone put up with the ugly outside. And like most theatres, it’s spectacularly empty during the day, making it an excellent place for a tête-à-tête in the middle of a huge city. Drasche would appreciate that I’d be cut off from the earth. It would be a fair fight—or appear so to him as he walked into an ambush. And it was fine if he suspected an ambush: Short of demolishing the building with me inside, there would be nothing he could do, and I hoped the half-hour window to act would prevent him from orchestrating something like that.

  “The man who ran you down,” I said to Gwendolyn, “is bald and has strange tattoos all over his head. I want to talk to him alone inside this building. If anyone else tries to enter the building—from any door on any side—please keep them out as best you can. Close and lock the doors. Toss them across the street. Whatever it takes. Just get the bald tattooed man in and keep everyone else out.”

  “Vvvvery well.”

  “Can you lock and unlock these doors?” I asked, pointing to the first pair. Best to make sure.

  “Yess.”

  “Would you please unlock one for me?” She could do it faster than I could by flipping the tumblers, and I didn’t want to use any of my stored energy if I didn’t have to. Once they clacked, I pulled open the door.

  “Thanks, Gwendolyn. You can leave this one open until the bald man comes inside. He shouldn’t be long.”

  If he was the punctual sort, anyway. It had taken most of a half hour to walk from the conservatory to the concert hall, and that was a nervous speed-walk.

  “Beeee careful, Nigel,” she said.

  “Thank you, I will.”

  I had to cast night vision once inside and find the light board. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out how to bring up the house lights, but once I did I returned to the main seating area and shuffled sideways down the twelfth row of seats. In the middle of it I crouched down on the floor, which was a bit cramped but kept my head out of sight. I took off my confining shoes with a sigh of relief.

  Drasche burst through the doors in the back of the theatre moments later, shouting my name. “Where are you? Let’s have that talk!”

  Casting camouflage and beginning the drain of my bear charm, I peeked above the chair backs t
o locate him. His suit was a somber slim-cut black for a change, but he’d come through on the ascot, with a glowing shade of teal that qualified as optic assault. Hands clasped behind his back, he scanned the theatre for me, and his eyes flicked up to the low ceiling directly above him, which was the floor of the balcony. He probably wondered if I was up there, and he hesitated before stepping out from under it, not wishing to give me a free shot at him if I was waiting above.

  “Talk to me, Druid. What is it you wish to say?”

  I whispered a simple binding to see if he’d learned anything from our first meeting on the beach in France and discovered that he had; all his clothing was synthetic fiber now. Nothing natural for me to bind.

  “You’re an abomination and a threat to all life,” I called, and his head swiveled in the direction of my voice, trying in vain to spy me. “And since you did nothing positive with your life once I spared it, I need to rethink my mercy.”

  I put the sole of my foot on a metal seat back, which was bolted to the floor and under which I knew Ferris, the iron elemental, lurked. I didn’t feel the buzz of him immediately underneath me, but he had to be nearby. He was still waiting for his treat after yesterday’s heist.

  //Man with magic in his skin / I sent to him through the metal / It is yours now//

  “Here’s my mercy,” Drasche said, and he brought his hands forward with automatic weapons in each hand, little machine guns with huge clips curving down from the handle. He pointed them in my general direction, and his fingers held down the triggers.

  Steel-jacketed bullets zinged and popped off the theatre seats and I ducked down, lying flat in the aisle and maintaining my camouflage. Lots of bullets was Drasche’s answer to Druidry, and it was why I hadn’t bothered bringing Fragarach: You don’t bring a sword to a gunfight.

  Unfortunately, Drasche didn’t need to see me to hit me. With all the ordnance he was throwing around, it was only a matter of time—seconds, in fact—until one of them ricocheted off the metal seats and nailed me. I felt it plunge into my back and perforate my liver. I grunted involuntarily, dropped my camouflage, and triggered the healing charm instead, hoping a single bullet would be all I had to deal with. But I heard him run out, reload, and start up again, and he must have heard me grunt, because this time he zeroed in on my row and the next one down. One burst got me four times when it hit the chairs behind me. Two in the same area of my back, one ripping low through my guts, another that missed my spleen and got my pancreas instead, and two more that tore through the hamstrings of my right leg. When he ran out of ammunition for the second time and I heard him reload once more, I dug into my pocket for my phone. I was rapidly running out of juice dealing with my wounds and wouldn’t make it without help. It was all I could do to stop the internal bleeding and knit my stomach back up before the acids leaked out and dissolved my intestines. If I died here, cut off from Gaia, there’d be no save from my soulcatcher.

  Drasche got off perhaps ten rounds from his fresh clips before Ferris finally emerged from the floor, much later than I would have wished but very hungry. “Was ist das?” he said in German. “Nein!” I had to see this, so I risked levering myself up on my left arm and poking my head out in plain sight, gasping in pain as I did so. Drasche didn’t put a bullet in my head, because he wasn’t looking in my direction anymore. He was staring at his pointy-toed boots and dancing around as a furry black collection of iron shavings crawled up his legs and torso, traveling up to his head. “O’Sullivan!” he shouted, dropping his guns and frantically brushing at the flowing iron, which ignored his efforts and continued upward. “What is this?”

  “That’s Ferris,” I said. “Never bring a gun to an elemental fight, Drasche.”

  Ferris reached the alchemical tattoos on Drasche’s scalp and cheeks—arcane sigils that gave him the power to leech energy directly from living things as long as he had line of sight—and then the iron elemental began to feed on the raw magic imbued in the symbols.

  Judging by the sounds Drasche made, it was not a painless process. His attempts to repel Ferris were fruitless—the furry iron flowed like water around and under his fingers. I smiled faintly as I sank back to the floor and dialed 911. The screaming in the background would provide some urgency, I hoped, to the ambulance and the police. The operator tried to ask questions about what she was hearing, but I thumbed off the connection once she knew the location and that I’d been shot.

  A dull thud suggested that the lifeleech had collapsed to the ground, but I didn’t worry about his health. Ferris woudn’t kill him—he couldn’t, because that would be breaking the rules Gaia set down for elementals. He’d merely turn Werner Drasche from a monster to a human with monstrous proclivities.

  I was far more worried about myself. The energy in my bear charm ran dry—overtaxed by the demands of healing and further evidence that I should really make another ten or so—leaving me with five gunshot wounds, a wave of pain, and a fine start on a case of shock. When my vision turned red, I thought I was on the verge of blacking out, but it turned out to be Gwendolyn floating above me.

  “NNNNigel? You’re hurt?” her whispery voice breathed.

  “Yes. The blackguard shot me. But paramedics—I mean, a doctor is on the way.” She wouldn’t know what a paramedic was. “Though I’m not sure he’ll be in time.”

  Her pale smudged face turned to where Drasche writhed and screamed in the aisle.

  “What is happening to himmm?” she asked.

  I didn’t know how to explain Ferris to her, so I said, “Justice. Are there any more men outside?”

  “Nnno. He came alooone. He shhhhould die.” Her fists clenched at her sides and her eyes lit up with rage.

  “No, no. Gwendolyn, listen to me,” I said, realizing that this was my chance to set her free. “He is getting what he deserves now and will get more when he arrives in hell. Do not tarnish your soul with violence. It is time for you to move on, as it is time for me. Go on and wait for me, Gwendolyn. I’ll be there soon and we can be together again.”

  Her head turned back to regard me, and the signs of anger fell away. All her edges softened and she made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a coo. The ghost swooped down until she was a mere inch above me, and I shivered from the chill of her proximity. “I love youuuu, Nigel.”

  “I love you too, Gwendolyn,” I said, hoping it would be enough to soothe her restless spirit. “Always. Go on now, and I’ll join you. Very soon.”

  “Sooooon,” she said, slowly rising and then dissipating in wisps of red until all I could see was the ceiling of the theatre.

  “Farewell,” I whispered, hoping that wherever she went she would find the real Nigel waiting for her.

  Werner Drasche’s screams wound down to moans and eventually whimpers in German, and I might have let loose a moan or two of my own. When Ferris finished with the lifeleech, he thanked me before leaving.

  //Delicious// he said.

  //Thanks for your help earlier// I replied, since he could do nothing else for me, and he melted away, leaving me to shiver in silent pain and hope I didn’t bleed out before help arrived. Or that Drasche wouldn’t summon the strength to grab one of his guns and crawl down here to finish me off. Apart from getting shot, it had been a couple of good days in Toronto—though to be truthful almost any day would be good in comparison to getting shot. Still, I had enlisted the Hammers of God in the world’s biggest vampire hunt, stripped Werner Drasche of his powers, and sent a long-suffering ghost to her rest. It would be a good story to tell Oberon—oh, gods below, Oberon! He was still in the hotel room, and I wouldn’t be getting back to him anytime soon. He was also much too far away for me to reach via our mental bond, so he’d be worried. I thought of calling Hal, since I didn’t know where Granuaile was, but didn’t want to remind Drasche that I was still alive. I silenced the phone and texted him instead:

  Shot in Toronto. Need someone to take care of Oberon in hotel. Send Owen maybe?

  I added the hotel info and
sent it. In a few seconds I got a glorious if terse reply:

  On it.

  “O’Sullivan,” Drasche’s voice grated. “What did you do to me?”

  I made no answer and tried to breathe as quietly as possible. The lack of damage to my lungs kept me from coughing, at least.

  The acoustics of the theatre allowed me to hear the rasping of cloth on carpet as Drasche dragged himself down the aisle and a wet hand slapping against the metal of a gun. “Going to make verdammt sure you are dead,” he growled.

  There was nothing I could do. I had all the mobility and martial capability of a soggy sponge and the same magical ability as he did—that is, none whatsoever. He must have picked up only one of his guns, because I heard him begin to crawl in my direction and the gun made a clacking noise at odd intervals when his hand came down. He grew closer and closer, and the sound reminded me of that final sequence of The Terminator where the robot dragged itself after Sarah Connor. Except that she could move a little bit and had some handy machinery around to crush her pursuer.

  “Ahh, there you are!” I stretched my neck, looked to the end of the aisle, and saw Werner Drasche peering back at me. His eyeballs gleamed abnormally white and mad in a puffy red face with little pinpricks of blood dotting it and plenty more smeared around where he had tried to shoo Ferris away. The ink of the alchemical tattoos still remained, but the magic infused with them was gone and he still didn’t realize it. He knew from experience that he couldn’t leech any energy from me, so he truly didn’t know what had been done to him except that it had hurt. “Lying defenseless in a pool of your own blood. I kept telling Theophilus that gunning you down was the simplest solution. How delightful to be proven right.”

  “That’s not his real name, is it?” I asked. “Theophilus. That’s some kind of nickname he thinks is clever.”

  Werner Drasche laughed at me. “You think I would ever tell you that? I would—”

  He cut off abruptly as a squad of shouty, armed men burst into the theatre and demanded that he drop the gun now. He looked back over his left shoulder, but since he was flat on the floor the result was that I saw the very top of his head for the first time. He had a Rose Cross there instead of an alchemical symbol. Strange.