Staked (Iron Druid Chronicles) Read online

  CHAPTER 7

  Damn Siodhachan to a dark and juicy hell for making me shift to an unfamiliar city to tend his perverted hound. I can’t even bring Greta with me as a guide, because he told me once what happened to her old leader, Gunnar Magnusson, when he shifted planes: The poor lad was sick all over his shoes. Werewolves don’t handle plane-shifting well, and I can’t ask her to suffer through that just to let a hound outside for a dump.

  Hal Hauk pointed out that I didn’t have to go; he could have called some pack that lived outside the city limits and one of them could have driven into town to take care of Oberon. But Siodhachan asked for me specifically, and, besides, I’m curious about who could have put his bony arse in the hospital. Maybe I’ll get to try out me new brass knuckles on him or her—or it.

  So I shift into Queen’s Park in Toronto with a sheaf of printed papers that Hal calls “Google Maps,” whatever the feck that means, and they’re all marked up with arrows telling me where to go to get to the hotel and then a bunch of numbers to call to figure out which hospital Siodhachan is in. Once I find him—Greta says he’s officially using the name Sean Flanagan these days—I have another stack of maps telling me how to get there. I also have a handful of small pieces of paper with the number 20 on them and a picture of an old woman wearing a necklace of white beads. Greta says to me, “These are Canadian,” and that if I give them to people in this country they’ll do what I want. When I asks her if that will work on Siodhachan, she says probably not.

  It’s midafternoon and the walk from the park to the hotel takes me a half hour or so. I keep asking strangers if I’m heading in the right direction. They’re a friendly and helpful lot, and I wonder if it has anything to do with the old lady on the small pieces of paper.

  The hotel is a tall building, which means a lot of stairs for me. Greta says the elevator is faster, but I don’t trust them, because I don’t know how they work. I know how stairs work and that will be good enough.

  Siodhachan’s room is on the sixth floor, Hal told me. Room 633. When I reach it, I can hear the television blaring inside and there’s a sign on the doorknob that says DO NOT DISTURB. I figure that has to be a joke, since Siodhachan asked me to come here, but I don’t think it’s very funny.

  I try the handle, only to discover that it’s locked. I pound on the door and call out to the hound. “Oberon. Open the door if ye can. It’s Owen.” His voice filters into me head.

 

  “Because I can hear ye talk and answer back. I’m here at Siodhachan’s request. He’s been hurt and I’m to take care of ye until he’s well.”

 

  “I don’t know yet, I just got here. Would ye let me in so I don’t have to keep shouting through this fecking door?”

 

  True to his word, the lock disengages and the handle, a short horizontal bar, moves down. I push it open and the giant wolfhound bombards me with questions before I’m even in the room.

 

  “I don’t have details. All he did was text Hal Hauk in Arizona that he’s in a hospital somewhere in this city. So we have to call around to find him. Is there a phone here?”

 

  “Good. When we find which hospital he’s in, we’ll go straight there and get some answers.”

  The television is on and showing pictures of people eating way too damn loud. The hound shows me how to turn it off and then we can concentrate in peace.

  The phone is an intimidating device and it’s full of instructions on the front, unlike cell phones. But it doesn’t work like it should. Greta said when you use landlines like this, you get a dial tone first and then you dial the number. Except when I start dialing, the fecking thing starts ringing as soon as I punch the first number.

  “Room service,” a voice says in me ear.

  “What? I’m trying to dial the hospital.”

  “Pardon, sir? Is this an emergency?”

  “No, not for me. I just need to make a call, and when I started dialing, you answered.”

  “Oh, I understand. You need an outside line. Hang up, then dial nine, wait for the dial tone, then dial your number.”

  “I hate this fecking century.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  I slam the phone down on the voice and pick it up again. There’s a dial tone, but I do what the man said and punch 9. The tone skips a beat, then continues. I try the number for the first hospital again, and this time it works.

  Unfortunately, there’s no one registered under the name Sean Flanagan at Mount Sinai Hospital, so the call is a waste of time. I move on to the next number, St. Michael’s. The lady on the phone says, yes, Sean Flanagan is a patient there, but she can’t give me any more information unless I’m a family member. I hang up on her rather than argue. I’ll just go down there and see with me own eyes how he’s doing.

  “Right, he’s at St. Michael’s.” Consulting the Google map, I notice it will take us a while to get there. “Looks like a bit of a walk. You need a walk anyway, don’t ye?” I ask the hound.

 

  “Anything ye need to bring? We won’t be coming back here, because I don’t have the key.”

 

  “I should imagine so.” I retrieve it, strap it to me back, leash the hound, and leave the rest. Down the stairs we go, past some rather shocked people in the lobby who didn’t know they made dogs in Oberon’s size.

  Once he’s outside, Oberon informs me that he’s going to need to do some “urban fertilization.”

  “Is that what ye call it?”

 

  “And what do ye do when ye have to shite in the big city?”

 

  “Hey, I know that already, ye don’t have to tell me!”

 

  “Gods blast it, I was asking ye where you shite in the city, not where I should do it!” I might have said that a bit too loudly, because people on the sidewalk look at me out of the corners of their eyes and swerve away from the man talking to a giant dog about where to drop a pound. Maybe I should talk to him the way Siodhachan does, with me mind instead of me mouth. I can do it, but it doesn’t come naturally. I never bound myself to an animal this way.

 

  “Fecal urgency? This is the strangest conversation I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some bloody strange ones lately.”

  The hound eventually takes care of his business behind a hedge we’re passing and then brags about his discretion.

 

  “Well done,” says I, thinking for two whole seconds that I’m going to have some peace before the hound speaks again.

 

  “That’s too bad. I don’t have any food on me.”

 

  I start to object that I don’t have one of those credit cards that people always use to pay for things
but then remember that Greta gave me the paper with the old lady on it, and something clicks. I pull it out and show it to the hound. “Hey, do you know if this is cash money?”

 

  “Who’s this lady with the beads, then?”

 

  I don’t understand all of that, but at least I learn that Canada is ruled by a queen.

  “All right, where should I go to get food?”

 

  He stops in front of a small shop with a large glass window painted with red and white letters. POUTINERIE, it says.

  “What is a poutinerie?” I asks him. It’s an unfamiliar word.

 

  There’s a small line inside and a menu posted near the ceiling. I can’t make any sense of it except that it sells all different kinds of whatever poutine is.

  “Give me whatever’s most popular here,” I says to the merchant when I get to the front of the line. “As long as it has gravy on it.”

  “Everything has gravy on it,” the young man says. He has dull eyes and red spots on his face, but his tone sounds like he thinks I’m stupid.

  “Good. Two of your popular things, then.”

  He asks me if I want a drink; I says water, then he pronounces a number and looks at me like I’m supposed to do something. I give him Canadian money and he gives me some back—it has a number 5 on it and no queen; it has a dodgy man with a bald pate and a stiff white collar instead. Maybe he’s the king of Canada. He also gives me a small white piece of paper and calls it a receipt. I have just completed me first modern trade.

  There’s a short wait and then I’m given two brown boxes with folding flaps on top and a bottle of water. I take this outside to the hound, open one box and set it down for him. Poutine turns out to be fried potatoes with cheese curds all covered in gravy.

  Oberon says as he gulps it down. I have to admit that once I try my own, it’s not bad. Hunger slain, we proceed to the hospital, where the hound suggests that I camouflage him so that he can go inside with me. I figure I have plenty of juice in me knuckles, so I put them on, cast the spell, and we go inside together.

  I pretend to be Siodhachan’s father when I inquire at the front desk about him. The nice lady informs me that he’s in something called the Intensive Care Ward, recovering from surgery, but says I can’t go any further wearing a sword.

  Well, balls to that. I tell her I’ll go put it in my car, find a corner to duck around, and cast camouflage on meself, telling the hound to stay out of the way and I’ll return soon with Siodhachan. I walk back in, follow the signs to Intensive Care, and eventually find Siodhachan’s room. He’s unconscious or asleep, in a bed with metal rails on the sides, and he’s got all manner of tubes and things in his nose and his arm. There are beeping noises and loud breathing, and none of it sounds natural. He’s wearing a flimsy piece of cloth, and I don’t see his regular clothes around. It’s like they dressed him to look fragile. I don’t think I should throw him over me shoulder in his condition. Somebody really did kick his arse.

  I reach out to Oberon with me mind. He might know what to do better than I.

  Oberon? Can ye hear me?

 

  Aye, but he’s unconscious and has all these tubes in him. He’s not walking out with me right now.

 

  What’s a wheelchair?

 

  That takes a bit more time than I would like, but the hound is right; one eventually comes along. A nurse wheels an old man into a room near Siodhachan’s and helps him into bed. He looks like he’s about the age I was before I drank that tea Siodhachan made for me, and his skin is dry and papery. He’s asleep before the nurse is finished pulling up the sheets over his thin frame. I wait for her to leave and then I cast camouflage on the wheelchair and steal it. A few minutes after that, I’ve stolen me a Druid and I’m out of the hospital with a camouflaged Siodhachan in the chair. I drop the camouflage on meself and the hound as we walk away but keep it going on me old apprentice. The hound gets more and more worried when Siodhachan doesn’t respond to him—apparently he’s never had his food reviews ignored before, and the discovery of poutine should have roused Siodhachan right away.

  Eventually I get Siodhachan to Queen’s Park and stop the chair right next to the bound tree I used to shift in. Looking around to make sure no one’s watching, I drop his camouflage, then I squat down and pull his right foot off the little metal shelf so that his heel can touch the earth again. Oberon thinks he should wake up immediately on contact.

  he asks.

  “Well, yes, but there’s no telling how bad he is or what they did to him in there. Greta was telling me about modern medicine. Lots of drugs involved, and lots of it is synthetic shite they cook up somewhere. They may have knocked him out on purpose.”

 

  “What he needs is a good long soak in the healing pools of Mag Mell. But I don’t think I can shift ye there meself.”

 

  “I don’t know either of ye well enough to carry you along. I used to know Siodhachan, but he’s got two thousand years on me. I’d worry about containing him. And, besides, I don’t have the headspaces for it. I only have one extra, and Siodhachan has, what, three?”

 

  “See, that’s one fecking impressive brain there. We get him awake, and he can shift both of us.”

  The corner of Siodhachan’s mouth tugs upward and his eyelids twitch a wee bit. “Aw, Owen,” he says, though his voice is slow and slurred. “You’re sho shweet.”

  “You’re awake?”

  “Just in time to hear you shay shumthing nice about me.”

  “Well, don’t let it go to your head! The truth is, your smarts are better hidden than a pair of snake nuts.”

 

  “I’m deffy … definitely not okay, Oberon. Sho tired. Groggy.”

  “They have you pumped full of drugs, lad,” I says.

 

  “We need to get you to Mag Mell,” I says. “When do you think you’ll be clear enough to shift?”

  “Need to break down kam … chemical. Sss. Chemicals first.”

  It’s a long couple of hours of the hound talking about food and his favorite entertainments after that. People passing by give us curious stares every so often, but they mind their own business and I admire them for it. I shift away quickly to get the fancy stake Luchta made for Siodhachan, and he doesn’t even notice. When the sun goes down, it starts to get cold quickly, and that, along with the cleansing he’s been doing, finally allows Siodhachan to announce that he’s ready.

  I have to help him up and he winces—his right leg is shredded—but he shifts us all to Tír na nÓg, leaving a mystery wheelchair behind, and then to the plane of Mag Mell, where I carry most of his weight over to the healing pools and he sinks into one with a happy sigh, tossing away that cloth he calls a hospital gown.

  “What day is it?” he asks, all the slurring gone from his voice.

  “Same day, lad. What happened
?”

  We trade stories, and it makes me cringe to think of what these modern weapons can do to a body. It’s a problem I’ll have to consider, because he’s right—his sword is no use against weapons like that, and neither are me shiny new knuckles.

  “Those are impressive, though,” he says. “If you can shatter rock with them I wonder if they’d stop a bullet. Wouldn’t want to try catching one though. What are you going to name them?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  I take off his sword and place it next to his hand by the side of the pool, then give him the stake from Luchta as well.

  “Look, lad, keep that vampire war as far away from me and Flagstaff as possible. I’ll have a bunch of wee kids to look after soon.”

  “Hal said as much. I’ll try, but you should be aware that they may come after you to get to me. Or to retaliate against something I do. Just ward and be wary.”

  “I will.”

  “And … Owen?” His face is all scrunched up as if he’s expecting a beating for what he’s going to say next.

  “What is it?”

  “Maybe go a bit easier on them than you did on me.”

  It feels like ice water in me pants to hear him say that. I gasp and everything retracts. But then I say, “Aye, lad, I will.” There’s silence for a few beats and then I add, “Greta would tear me up if I said a rude word to those kids. And their parents would join in, no doubt. I’ll try not to repeat me cock-ups.”

  His face relaxes and he smiles. “Fair enough. I’ll try to keep mine to a minimum as well.”

  “Good, good. Speaking of Greta, I’d best be getting back to her. Going to visit Brighid for a moment and then head home. You’ll be all right now?”

  “Yes. I appreciate you taking the trouble to bring me here.” He says farewell and the hound thanks me for the poutine. I can tell he won’t shut up about it for days, but it’s Siodhachan who will have to listen to it, so I figure that stopping for food was a win for me in every way.

  The Fae Court in Tír na nÓg doesn’t operate on Canadian time, so it’s hopping like a rabbit warren during humping season when I get there. There are quite a few of the dodgy sorts of Fae around, far more than I had seen before, and I wonder why that is. I hang back and listen, ask a couple questions, and learn that Brighid has granted amnesty to a lot of Fae and other old creatures that had either been imprisoned or exiled for a long time.