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  “If they do mind, I can take care of it with a sigil,” I said.

  “You can?”

  “Sure. Not a problem.”

  Normally I would inconvenience myself rather than use a Sigil of Certain Authority on someone else, but there was no reason that the dogs should suffer outside in the heat when they didn’t need to.

  He opened the lobby door and the dogs trotted in, tongues dangling, nails clacking on the floor, and they purposely veered to the left and tried to sit under some chairs out of the way as soon as they were in the bar area. The wolfhound had difficulty getting underneath anything but curled himself into a corner and wagged his tail agreeably.

  “The wolfhound is Oberon,” Connor said. “He can understand everything you say and answer you, if need be, through me. He says hello to you all and wishes you happiness and sausage.”

  I grinned at the hound and noticed that sections of his coat were patchy and, in some places, missing, pink skin showing through.

  “Hello, Oberon. Are you okay, pal?” I asked. The hound whuffed softly in reply, but Connor provided a full answer.

  “Oh, yes. We just came from the east coast, where there were some fires in the Blue Mountains. Ran into a fallen angel there. Oberon saved us, but he got a little toasted. He’ll be good as new soon enough.”

  “Fires, ye say?” Buck asked. When Connor nodded in response, the hobgoblin’s eyes shifted to me. “So ye weren’t just winding me up with that. Good tae know.”

  The bartender came over. “Sir? I’m very sorry, but we can’t have the dogs in here. It’s against health codes.” I pulled out my official ID, the piece of goatskin parchment that had three sigils on it. One of them—the Sigil of Porous Mind—might mess with his memory, so I covered it with a finger, leaving only the Sigil of Certain Authority and the Sigil of Quick Compliance visible. It would make him assume that I was an authority figure whose word should be obeyed.

  “It’s okay for him to have the dogs in here a short while. It’s hot outside.”

  The bartender blinked a few times, then smiled and relaxed. “Of course. Not a problem. Can I get you something to drink, sir?”

  “Whatever whisky they’re having would be perfect, thanks,” Connor said.

  We returned to our seats at the long wooden high-top, which had room for six people. Connor sat on one end and Buck purposely chose the seat farthest away and on the other side, standing on the stool and holding his rocks glass protectively in front of him. Ya-ping and I also sat across from the Druid, and I got out my phone to make sure I didn’t trigger my curse.

  “The Boston terrier is Starbuck,” Connor continued, “and he can also understand most everything but is still acquiring language. He also says hello and says you smell like good humans. Except for you, Buck. He says you smell like dead leaves, but I think it’s meant as a compliment. You smell like autumn to him, and he likes that.”

  We all paused to say hello to the dogs and welcome them, and Buck was gracious, telling them they were “good dugs” and he’d steal them something to eat when he could.

  [You got here faster than I expected,] I typed into my app, and Connor nodded.

  “I was already on my way to this general area when Coriander found me. The local elemental for this part of Gaia felt that something odd was going on around here and thought I should check it out. Since they also felt ‘something odd’ was going on where we found the fallen angel, I knew it was absolutely necessary to follow up. The elemental’s not as sharp as they should be and has trouble being specific; the fires and the extinctions from climate change are seriously affecting their senses. But then Coriander found me on the way here.”

  [In your taxi?]

  “No, we’d stopped to take a break. The dogs needed to say hello to some trees and I just wanted to reconnect to the earth. When I did, I got Coriander’s message and he showed up soon afterward, explained to me that you have a situation here and you’d requested my help.”

  [How’d you know we were at this hotel, though?]

  Connor flicked a finger at Buck. “Coriander’s watching him.”

  Buck flinched. “Wot? Coriander is tracking me? Why, that gorgeous luxuriant bastard! I’d kick him in his golden junk if he weren’t warded nine ways tae Nancy. I still don’t know who Nancy is or why there are nine ways tae her, but ye get ma meaning.”

  “So you’ll help us find Sifu Lin?” Ya-ping asked.

  “Sifu…? Forgive me, because I don’t wish to assume, Ya-ping, but would you be comfortable catching me up in Mandarin on what’s happening?”

  They immediately switched to Mandarin and relieved me of having to follow the conversation. Rumor had it the Iron Druid spent more than a century in China during the Tang dynasty and picked up the language there.

  As Ya-ping was between us, Buck caught my attention and leaned backward so we could have a conversation without intruding on her thing with the Iron Druid.

  “Are we gonnay be leaving soon, then?” he asked. I nodded at him, and he spun a finger around in a circle. “Leaving with all of those iron creatures over there? In the wizard van?” I nodded again. “Awright, then. I call shotgun. Let them sit in the back, away from me.” I gave him a thumbs-up, because it was honestly the best solution considering the space we had. We did need to give the Iron Druid plenty of room to make sure there was no incidental contact. The cold iron suffusing his very aura made any contact with him deadly to the Fae. It made him eternally hated by almost every creature in the nine Fae planes, but it also eternally protected him from their magic—and from mine. I hadn’t actually tried it yet—and had no plans to try anything—but I was fairly certain my sigils wouldn’t work against him. The iron protected him from magic and also divination, so that gods and other magic users couldn’t find him. He was, for the most part, magically invulnerable and invisible, and it had kept him from dying by violence. A potion he brewed and called “Immortali-Tea” kept him from dying of age.

  Which was not to say he was invincible. His vulnerability was exposed during Ragnarok a bit over a year ago and resulted in the loss of his arm.

  “Right, so where’s this trail?” Connor said, switching abruptly back to English.

  “The trailhead’s less than fifteen minutes from here,” Ya-ping said. “We have to go the Donnelly Weir picnic area, where the trailhead is. There’s a car park there for the van.”

  Connor raised his nonexistent brows—and I don’t mean that in the sense that they were difficult to see in the way that many redheads’ eyebrows are, I mean that in the sense that the hair had all been singed off in the fires he’d been fighting in the east. “The van?” he said.

  “The wizard van!” Buck exclaimed, raising his fist in the air. “Yeah!”

  [Is there anything left to do to make it appropriate for guests?] I asked him. The hobgoblin’s eyes widened.

  “Oh, bollocks. It’s still no ready. Give me ten minutes!” Then he popped from sight.

  We were soon on the road, after settling the bar tab. Ya-ping sat next to Connor on the loveseat and chatted as the dogs spread themselves out on the floor. The rear portion of the van was now transformed from an electrician’s efficient workspace to a sybaritic lounge lined with black velvet and craft spirits. The overturned bistro table had been righted and furnished with bracketed cupholders for rocks glasses. The walls were draped with black velvet, and the one opposite the loveseat was given over entirely to mounted brackets for displaying whisky—mostly labels from Scotland, though a recently stolen bottle of Limeburners held the central position right above the bistro table. Three battery-operated mini-spotlights were also on the table and pointed in three directions at the bottles, giving the amber liquids a chance to shine and lending the place a rudimentary lighting concept.

  Above the loveseat was a framed painting of Nadia’s giant wizard lizard, the saddled one from th
e side of her van, looking somewhat bored without a battle to ride into. How Buck had managed to create that—and indeed the painting on the outside of the van—represented another business opportunity, because art was also an excellent vehicle for money laundering.

  Connor spent some time showering Buck with praise for his efforts, and Starbuck asked permission to get up on the loveseat so that Ya-ping could pet him, which Buck allowed and for which he received even more appreciation. The Iron Druid was wise; a hobgoblin who couldn’t touch him did not equal a hobgoblin who couldn’t mess with him, and reducing Buck’s impulse to cause mischief was a good call.

  I thought the hobgoblin’s mood improved measurably after the flattery. Or maybe it was the salubrious effects of the countryside we were driving through, for despite being rather hot, it was beautiful. We took Donnellys Weir Road, which was little more than a one-lane dirt track through a pastoral landscape quilted with small green pastures and rustic barns.

  “Feast yer eyes on all this nature, MacBharrais,” Buck breathed in wonder. “It’s bucolic as fuck, as they say.”

  I had never heard anyone say that, ever, but nodded agreeably.

  “We’ve got our share of bucolic scenes in Scotland—there’s nothing like a flock of sheep in the Highlands tae turn the bucolic dial up tae eleven—but I’m liking this sunny southern version. Wot’s that smell in the air, hey? Kinda minty but no, clears out the sinuses?”

  Ya-ping answered from the back. “That’s probably eucalyptus.”

  “The bollocks ye find in cough drops? Aye, that makes sense, then.”

  We crossed a ford in a creek and continued on until we reached a dirt car park, a rectangle of brown earth surrounded by green. Beyond was a lush space: The ground was covered in moss and grass and low-slung feathery ferns, while tree ferns stood above them like adolescents in a family photo. The adults in this flora portrait were eucalypts and gums mixed in with conifers.

  We parked and climbed out of the wizard van, and I noted that there were probably ten cars there with room for ten more, so it wasn’t deserted but not crowded either.

  As we dragged out our packs full of water, food, and single tents, I noticed that the Iron Druid’s hatchet had a Sigil of Cold Fire drawn on it, which would destroy most demons, regardless of size, a few seconds after it touched them. I was about to ask him if he’d drawn that himself, when he relayed a message from the hounds.

  “The dogs smell something bad in the wind. Not like dead-body bad, but something weird. Something unnatural.”

  [Sulfur? As in demons?]

  “A bit different. Unsavory, certainly, but not precisely infernal.” He scanned the area for danger, but all appeared quiet at the moment. There were some metal posts and a dark-green-painted gate blocking the trail off to motor traffic, but there were walk-throughs for people to get by easily. There were also handy signs with maps on them, pointing out that we’d have a bit of a walk to get to the actual picnic area and weir and, oh, by the way, dogs weren’t allowed.

  “Not sure what you do to prepare for a scrap, but you might want to have your weapons in easy reach.”

  I hefted my cane, the end of which was a carbon-steel alloy, and selected a Sigil of Agile Grace from my bush jacket. A chorus of distant screams alerted us that something was indeed amiss.

  “I think we should come back for the packs,” Connor said, removing his hatchet and returning his pack to the back of the van. We quickly tossed our packs on top of his. “That’s the trailhead there?”

  Ya-ping nodded. “Yes, where the screams came from.” She withdrew her sai and checked her pockets for sigils; once satisfied, she began drifting toward the trailhead.

  “I’ll cast camouflage on myself and the dogs and come up on the flank,” Connor said, and after speaking a few words in Old Irish, he and his hounds melted from view, taking on the pigments of their surroundings.

  “I’ll take the other side,” Ya-ping called over her shoulder, leaving Buck and me to go up the middle.

  We heard more screaming as I reached the trailhead. If it had been just birds chirping—a laughing kookaburra or a pied currawong—it would have been a magical place to meditate and enjoy the wonders of nature. The path from here to the picnic area was easily six feet wide or more, having been bulldozed, I imagined, decades in the past, but it had settled into a comfortable track of pine needles and old leaves and grasses. On either side, messmates, manna gums, and silver wattle trees stood proudly among a medley of cedars and firs. The path curved around to the right and disappeared after a couple hundred meters, and the picnic area and weir waited beyond. The forest around the area was filled with possums, sugar gliders, owls, cockatoos, parrots, and the occasional wallaby. And also, at the moment, pants-ruining terror.

  A pair of white women, both blond and splattered with blood, appeared around the bend, crying for help. One of them had a significant limp but was not letting it slow her down; she just moved awkwardly, and I was convinced she’d run on a bloody stump if she had to. Neither carried a pack, which made me wonder if they had gone hiking without one or if they had ditched them back at the picnic area.

  “Get out of here!” the lead one said, waving her arms to get my attention as if I simply hadn’t seen her yet. Perhaps she thought I was distracted by something else, since I wasn’t doing the sensible thing and running away.

  She was dressed in those slick fitness tights that had become popular in recent years and wore brightly colored running shoes instead of hiking boots. Her wounded companion was dressed similarly but in a different color palette.

  “Whoa—what happened?” I asked. She only slowed down minimally to answer.

  “This thing, this creature, this monster—it killed Scott and Keith! It’s coming! We have to go, come on! Run!”

  I nearly told them to go, but if they had seen an actual monster and there were dead bodies ahead, I needed to contain the situation. I flashed my official ID at them, giving them the full force of its three sigils. “Go get in your car but do not leave the scene. I’ll be by shortly to take your statements,” I said, and they both nodded and said they’d wait for me, and then they were past.

  Something large lumbered into view down the trail, coming around the curve. It was about the size of an elephant but not anything like the shape of one. Buck squinted.

  “What in the name of sweet and salty sunburnt bollocks is that? A giant tortoise? Naw—it’s got way too many legs.”

  It did indeed. And, I suspected, it would feature heavily in my nightmares in the coming months.

  The thing approaching and picking up speed was a chimera in the classical sense that it was composed of the body parts of several creatures, but the combination of creatures was not classic at all. It was as if someone had grafted the head of a Komodo dragon and the forelegs of a praying mantis onto the chassis of a giant tarantula, except that the abdomen was covered in the armor of a tortoiseshell. All of it was far larger than any of the individual animals would be in nature.

  The mantis limbs and the scaly dragon lips were clearly stained with human blood.

  I opened that Sigil of Agile Grace and followed up with a Sigil of Muscular Brawn. To my left, perhaps twenty meters away next to a tree fern, Ya-ping was doing the same. The Iron Druid, I assumed, was also busy doing something, though I couldn’t see him at all. There was no way to coordinate a strike, so I set myself and provided a target and hoped that Ya-ping and Connor would take advantage and attack from the sides.

  “Are we just gonnay stand here like snack food on the shelf?” Buck said.

  I chucked my chin at the thing, letting him know he could attack whenever he wanted.

  “Ye know I’m still completely exhausted from decorating the wizard van, right? And I’m above the legal blood-alcohol limit besides. I havenae got the oomph for fancy shenanigans. Ye’re lucky I’m even here for moral suppo
rt.”

  In other words, he would be worthless in this fight, and I sighed.

  “The van looks great though, eh? And so does yer mustache. Awright, that’s all I have time for, good luck!”

  The syncopated footfalls of eight legs coupled with louder hissing was unnerving, to say the least. And an additional vocalization erupted once a hatchet materialized on the right and lodged itself in the tortoiseshell. It didn’t sink very deep, but it made a satisfying thunk and the creature felt it, giving rise to a tortured ululation and a pivot in that direction to meet the unseen threat. Connor and his hounds, however, wisely chose to remain unseen. Though I couldn’t figure out why the shell had been the Iron Druid’s choice of target.

  But the distraction allowed Ya-ping to approach from the other side unobserved, and perhaps that had been the point. The way she moved made it clear she had been fairly modest about her training, and she was far, far faster than I was. Ah, to be young again!

  Her running start and boosted strength allowed her to leap, action-heroine style, at the monstrosity’s neck, behind the cocked mantis foreleg. She had the sai blade in her right hand tucked defensively along her forearm, but the left was poised to strike, and she struck, right at the base of the neck, plunging it in as deeply as she could from the side and leaving it there. The creature screamed and shuddered, staggering away from the hit, and before it could turn and locate her, Ya-ping wisely flipped away in another feat of acrobatic prowess. When the creature did turn, it failed to see her at all. But it sure saw me and figured I was eligible to receive all the blame for the pain it was feeling, along with all its wrath and vengeance. It thundered forward, its forelegs ready to strike.

  “This is the worst job in the world,” Buck muttered behind me, but did absolutely nothing to help.

  The dragon head hissed. If it was anything like a real Komodo dragon, the globs of bacteria-filled spittle flying from its mouth would be incredibly dangerous stuff that killed more slowly but no less effectively than venom. If the wounded woman had been bitten at all, she’d need some powerful antibiotics soon.