Hexed tidc-2, Page 2

  I slowly shook my head. “No, Leif, I’m sorry. One reason I’m still alive is that I’ve never gone toe-to-toe with a thunder god. It’s a good survival strategy, and I’m going to stick with it. But if you’re going to do something like that, I recommend avoiding Loki. He’ll pretend to be on your side, but he’ll spill his guts to Odin first chance he gets, and then you’ll have that entire pantheon coming after you with a wooden stake.”

  “That might be preferable to me, at this point, than continuing to coexist with him. I want revenge.”

  “Revenge for what, exactly?” Normally I don’t pry into vampiric psychology, because it’s so predictable: The only things they tend to get exercised about are power and territory. They enjoy being asked questions, though, so that they can ignore you and appear mysterious when they don’t answer.

  Leif never got the chance to answer me, though he looked ready enough to do so for a half second. As he opened his mouth to speak, his eyes flicked down to the base of my throat where my cold iron amulet rested, just as I began to feel the space between my clavicles heat up—even burn.

  “Um,” Leif said in perhaps his most inarticulate moment ever, “why is your amulet glowing?”

  I felt the heat surge like mercury on an August morning, sweat popped out on my scalp, and the sickening sound of sizzling in my ears was a little piece of me frying like bacon. And even though I instinctively wanted to peel off the necklace and chuck it onto the lawn, I fought back the urge, because the smoldering lump of cold iron—the antithesis of magic—was the only thing keeping me alive.

  “I’m under magical attack!” I hissed through clenched teeth as I clutched the chair arms, white-knuckled and concentrating on blocking the pain. I wasn’t working on that only to silence my screaming nerves; if I let the pain get to me, I was finished. Pain is the fastest way to stir up the reptilian brain, and once awakened, it tends to shut off the higher functions of the cerebral cortex, leaving one witless and unable to function beyond the instinctive fight-or-flight level—and that would have left me unable to communicate coherently and connect the dots for Leif, in case he was missing out on the salient point: “Someone’s trying to kill me!”

  Chapter 2

  Leif’s fangs popped out and he launched himself from his chair to the edge of my front lawn, scanning the darkness for assailants with all his senses. Oberon likewise leapt to his feet and growled at the night, threatening whoever was out there with all the menace he could muster.

  I knew already that they would find nothing. Someone was doing this from afar.

  “Witches!” I spat as my amulet continued to cook my upper chest. The spell itself had ceased and the red glow was beginning to fade, but the smell of grilled me was still wafting up to my nose. The effort of shutting down the pain and trying to restore my melted skin was quickly draining my reserves, so I struggled to my feet and hobbled gingerly down the steps to the lawn, where I could kick off my sandals and draw power from the earth. I bent over and rested my hands on my knees, intending to let the amulet dangle from my neck away from my skin, but it remained where it was—fused to my flesh. Not good.

  “I would agree that you are a victim of witchcraft, but I sense no one nearby but the usual residents,” Leif said as he continued to search for trouble. “However, now that you have delicately broached the subject—”

  “Is that what I just did?” I said, tension straining my voice. “Delicately broach the subject of witches? Because I thought I was doing something else entirely, like getting my ass flame-broiled by witches.”

  “I beg your pardon. I was flailing about for a segue and utterly failed to find a facile one. My professional reason for visiting you tonight was to tell you that Malina Sokolowski has agreed to your latest terms without revisions or amendments. She’s ready to sign the nonaggression treaty as soon as you are.”

  “Yes, well.” I winced as I pulled on the amulet’s silver chain, peeling it off my chest and taking some blackened skin with it. “This kind of puts her nonaggression to the lie, doesn’t it?”

  “No.” Leif shook his head. “She would not do this so close to settling a peace between you.”

  “Maybe it’s the perfect time to take a shot at me. We haven’t signed anything yet, so that puts her high on my list of suspects.” Malina was the new leader of a coven of Polish witches who called themselves the Sisters of the Three Auroras, and they had claimed the East Valley—the local sobriquet for the cities of Tempe, Mesa, Scottsdale, Chandler, and Gilbert—as their territory since the eighties, long before I arrived. When I rolled into town in the late nineties, they pretty much ignored me; I was only one guy, after all, and I displayed zero aggression and not much in the way of power beyond a talent for herbal remedies. We’d been content to live and let live until our interests diverged: They were interested in helping out a god who wanted to kill me (in exchange for what I originally thought was passage through Tír na nÓg, but turned out to be an estate in Mag Mell), and I was interested in staying alive. That was the point where they discovered they had epically underestimated me. There used to be thirteen of them, but six of them died while trying to kill me, and despite all Malina’s noises about doves and olive branches, I still believed she would take any chance she got to avenge them.

  “I do hope you will not suggest that I pay her a visit,” Leif said in a stuffy voice.

  “No, no, I’ll call on her myself.”

  “You relieve me excessively. Your inquisitive neighbor, by the way, is taking an interest in us.”

  “You mean Mr. Semerdjian?”

  “That’s the one.” I cast my eyes sideways across the street, moving my head only a smidge. I could see one pair of blinds in the house opposite mine parted fractionally wider than the rest, and in the dark space between them no doubt lurked the darker eyes of my poisonous neighbor.

  “You don’t, uh, smell anything different about him, do you?” I asked Leif.

  “Different in what way?” my attorney asked.

  “No whiff of the Fae about him? No whiff of demons?”

  Leif chuckled wryly and shook his head. “The world will never plumb the depths of your paranoia.”

  “I hope not, because then it might catch me unprepared for something. What does he smell like?”

  Leif wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Like a chili dog with mustard and cheap light beer. His blood courses with grease and alcohol.”

  Oberon said.

  “All this sniffing of blood reminds me that I have yet to drink tonight,” Leif said, “so I think I will leave you to your healing and your own personal witch hunt, now that my duty is done. But, ere I go, will you at least consider joining me and others in an alliance against Thor? Dwell on its benefits for a time, as a personal favor to me.”

  “All right, as a favor to you,” I said, “I will consider it. But, honestly, Leif, I do not wish to give you any false hope here. Killing Thor is an honor I dream not of.”

  Icy glares from vampires are far icier than icy glares from people. And when the vampire giving you an icy glare is originally from Iceland, you are confronted with the archetypal origin of the term, and you shouldn’t be surprised if your core body temperature drops a few degrees. Leif threw one such glare at me for a few seconds, then said quietly, “Are you mocking me? When you quote Shakespeare, it is often to mock someone or to point out their folly.”

  Oberon said.

  “No, Leif, I’m just under a bit of stress here,” I said, gesturing at my sweating face and the still-steaming amulet dangling from my neck.

  “I think you are lying.”

  “Come on, Leif—”

  “Forgive me, but our association has allowed me some small knowledge about the way you think. You quoted Juliet just now. Are you suggesting I am something like Romeo here, Fortune’s fool, perhaps, driven to a rash and ill-considered confrontation with Tybalt out of revenge for Mercutio’s de
ath? And you think perhaps I will end tragically, like Romeo, if I pursue this course of action against Thor?”

  “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all,” I said, “but if that were my intent, I would have chosen to speak as Benvolio rather than Juliet: ‘Part, fools! You know not what you do.’ ”

  Leif stared at me, utterly still, the way only vampires and pet rocks can manage. “I’ve always preferred Hamlet,” he finally said. “ ‘Now could I drink hot blood, and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on.’ ” He spun on his heel and moved quickly—perhaps a bit too quickly for a normal human—to the door of his sleek black Jaguar XK convertible parked in the street, where he muttered a sulky “Fare thee well” before leaping in, gunning the engine, and screeching off in an un-dead hissy fit.

 

  I know. But I slipped in some T. S. Eliot and he didn’t catch it. Hopefully next time I won’t be recovering from an assassination attempt, and then I’ll do better. I was still hunched over awkwardly, trying to prevent the amulet from falling back to my chest, and I needed to do something about it—but I didn’t want to do anything in front of Mr. Semerdjian, who was doubtless still watching me.

  Oberon, I want you to go across the street and park yourself on the edge of his lawn, sort of off to one side, and stare at him.

 

  That’s it. I need you to distract him, is all. Ever since you left him a present that one time, he’s been terrified you’ll do it again. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

  It was a shame that Mr. Semerdjian and I didn’t get along. A slightly pudgy Lebanese gentleman on the wrong side of sixty, he tended to get excited quickly and loudly and would probably have been great fun to watch a baseball game with. We might have gotten along famously if he hadn’t been such a jerk from the moment I moved in—which is kind of like saying the drowning victim might have lived if only he had been able to breathe water.

 

  Deal. We’re still going for that run too.

  Oberon was referring to an unfortunate incident during which a park ranger had died and Mr. Semerdjian had tried to lay the blame at our door.

  Nope. Leif took care of all that with his patented vampiric mindwipe. That thought led me to reflect that having a vampire around was pretty handy sometimes; I hoped Leif wouldn’t remain angry with me for long.

  Oberon trotted across the street, and the space between the blinds abruptly widened as Mr. Semerdjian abandoned all attempts at subterfuge.

  While the two of them were engaged in an ocular tête-à-tête, I drew power from the earth and summoned a thick but very localized fog. Arizona is legendary for its dry air, but in the first week of November with a storm rolling in, it’s not that hard to find some water vapor to bind. While that took time to condense, I shifted my concentration to healing my burned skin and made better progress now that the amulet wasn’t cooking it faster than I could heal.

  Since the amulet was still far too hot, I walked hunched over to my garden hose and turned it on, checking to see if the fog had rolled in properly before continuing. I could still see Oberon, who was sitting underneath a streetlight, but not the windows of Mr. Semerdjian’s house, so that was good enough. I held one hand up in front of my face to protect it from steam, then turned the hose on the amulet.

  It hissed and spat and the expected steam geysered up, but after a few seconds it noticeably began to cool.

  Oberon called.

  That’s fine. Just stay still and stare at him. Wag your tail if you can manage.

 

  I heard Mr. Semerdjian explode out of the house in high dudgeon. “Get out of here, you filthy mutt! Shoo! Go away!”

 

  If he comes at you with it, growl at him.

  I heard Oberon growl menacingly, and Mr. Semerdjian’s peremptory commands abruptly changed to shrill pleas a couple of octaves higher.

  “Ahhh! Nice doggie! Stay! Good dog!”

 

  Go for it. The amulet was cooling down rapidly now; a few more seconds would allow it to rest on my chest again without doing further damage. Oberon barked viciously, and Mr. Semerdjian’s panicked voice immediately leapt to Mariah Carey territory.

  “O’Sullivan! Call off your dog, damn you! O’Sullivan! Get over here! Where did this fucking fog come from?”

  Satisfied, I turned off the hose and stood up, letting the amulet fall back against my chest. It wasn’t fully healed, but it was getting better and I had the pain firmly under control. I walked leisurely across the street to where Oberon was still sitting.

  “Here now,” I said calmly as I coalesced out of the mist into a wan column of light next to my hound. “What’s all the fuss, Mr. Semerdjian? My dog is simply sitting here, offering you no violence whatsoever.”

  “He’s off his leash!” he spluttered.

  “So are you,” I observed. “If you hadn’t advanced upon him in a threatening manner, he never would have growled at you, much less barked.”

  “Never mind that!” Semerdjian spat. “He’s not supposed to be running around loose! And he definitely shouldn’t be on my property! I should call the police!”

  “I believe the last time you called the police on me, you got cited for falsely calling 911, did you not?”

  Semerdjian’s face purpled and he shouted, “Just get off my property! Both of you!”

  Step backward into the street with me until we disappear from his view, I told Oberon. Now. We retreated, keeping our eyes on Mr. Semerdjian as we let the mist envelop us, and I imagined what it must look like to my neighbor: He watched a man and his dog walk backward in tandem without the man giving the dog any audible command, until they vanished like spectres into vapor.

  That should creep him out pretty good, I told Oberon. Sure enough, Mr. Semerdjian called after us as we turned up the street.

  “You’re a spooky bastard, O’Sullivan!” he yelled, and I stifled a laugh at the irony of his insult. “You and your dog had better stay away from me!”

  Oberon chuffed.

  A prank, I said, beginning to jog as Oberon trotted beside me. I released the binding on the water vapor, letting the fog disperse. We are like the Merry Pranksters of 1964, giving Mr. Semerdjian his own customized Acid Test without the benefit of any acid.

 

  Well, I’ll tell you all about it when we get home. Since you are apparently a filthy mutt—

 

  —you need a bath, and while you’re in the bath I’ll tell you all about the Merry Pranksters and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. But now let’s run to the market and get you your promised sausage.

 

  You mind if I make a call? I need to call Malina and let her know her spell didn’t work. I pulled out my cell phone and began to look up Malina’s number.

 

  How so? I frowned.

 

  That was three weeks ago, not four days, but yes, I remember.

  merdjian didn’t smell like demon, but he kind of did. He still does, actually. Shape-shift into a hound if you don’t believe me; that lame human nose isn’t doing you any favors.>

  Wait. Hold up, I said, stopping in the middle of the street. Oberon pulled up after a few steps and looked back at me, tongue lolling out. We were still on 11th Street, just over a block away from my house; streetlamps periodically cast cones of light like yellow party hats in the darkness. You still smell demon even though we’re all the way down the street?

 

  Oh, no, that’s not good, Oberon, I said, putting my cell phone back in my pocket. We need to go back to the house. I need to get my sword. A block ahead of us, something shifted in the shadows. It moved unnaturally above the ground, the size of a small Volkswagen, and then I discerned what was moving it: grotesquely long insectile legs, supporting a bulk that vaguely resembled a grasshopper. Insect size is supposed to be restricted to six inches or so, due to the limits of their tracheal systems, but apparently this demon didn’t get the memo.

  Run home, Oberon! Now! I pivoted and sprinted at top speed for my front yard and immediately heard the demon leap into pursuit, its legs drumming out a chitinous clacking on the black asphalt. We weren’t leaving it behind; if anything, it was gaining on us. There would be no time for me to get my sword.

  Chapter 3

  Demons smell like ass—nasty ass that slithers down your throat, finds your gag reflex, and sits on it with authority. I got an overdose when Aenghus Óg unleashed a horde of them on this plane with the command to kill me, and now I finally caught a whiff of this one. It wasn’t a fragrance that Gold Canyon candles would be offering anytime soon.

  Some of the demons had been strong enough to resist Aenghus Óg’s binding at first and run for the hills to work their own mischief. Though Flidais—the Celtic goddess of the hunt—had tracked most of them down, I knew a few must still be out there and they’d eventually come looking for me. Despite Aenghus’s demise, his binding was the sole reason they were on this plane, and until they obeyed its commands they’d never be truly free; the binding would just keep tugging at them until they lost the will to resist. I had killed most of the horde with Cold Fire, but this one must have gotten out of range pretty fast, and only now had it tracked me down in obeisance to the binding.