After about a block, I turned off the camouflage to preserve what little magic I had left. We heard honking that wasn’t the annoying sirens of approaching police. It was the sort of honking you hear from horns mounted on bicycles. We also heard bells. Whistles. Kids laughing. I also heard gasps and startled cries as I passed by, a half-melted madman with a sword accompanied by a pretty girl with a staff and a gun.
The source of the happy noises became clear at the intersection of Vizyis Street, where we almost ran right into a whole parade of clowns—evil dark elf clowns, grinning luridly under the streetlights. They were coming from a greenbelt that wound through the city; either purposefully or accidentally, they stood between the nearest source of magical power and us.
At the same time—or close enough as to make no difference—an explosion behind us meant someone had firebombed the sporting goods store with military-grade weaponry. I bet it was Leif, and he knew very well that I had already left the building. I doubted the manager or the security guard Leif had charmed had made it out. There might have even been some other employees and customers left inside, tucked into a corner somewhere.
Most eyes were drawn by the explosion. But some, especially those closest, couldn’t miss the burn-scarred man and the athletic woman running across the street. The man was carrying a sword, which was illegal in Greece, and the woman was carrying a firearm, which was turbo-illegal due to Europe’s profound lack of a second amendment.
Fingers pointed at us, and I urged Granuaile to keep going.
Some of the clowns peeled off and pursued us on elevated bicycles and unicycles and miniature scooters; some turned the other way, toward the sporting goods store and the approaching police.
The explosion and the dissolution of the clown parade had confused onlookers and pushed some of them toward the edge of panic. These people didn’t know precisely what was going on, but they knew the clowns weren’t smiling and it wasn’t fun for the whole family anymore.
A couple of clowns took out their black knives, and people started to scream after that—so many people think all clowns are evil anyway, and this only confirmed it. Once the screaming started, there was unbridled pandemonium.
“Pandemonium!” I said. “That’s what’s been going on.”
“Tell me about it,” Granuaile huffed beside me.
“I will if we can get out of this. We have to get to that greenbelt. Circle this block and head back.”
“Where have these guys been hiding?” Granuaile wondered aloud. “They didn’t travel directly here from the Norse plane, right? They had to have been staying here?”
“That’s a good point. Once the vampires found out where we were—”
“I don’t think they did, Atticus. I think it was the dark elves. Remember there were two clowns in the store from the beginning?”
“That’s right!” We turned left, heading northeast up Anatolikis Romylias, and a quick glance at our pursuit showed that we had five clowns chasing us. Perhaps more were following in mist form?
“So they must have made some calls, and arrangements got made on the fly.”
“That sounds plausible,” I agreed. “The vampire on the phone wanted me to think Leif had found us somehow, and that’s possible too. He can probably track me because he’s had so much of my blood.”
“That’s really disturbing.”
“Yeah. Take the lead; these guys following us can’t know yet that I’m immune to their magic knives. If we’re gonna get backstabbed, let me take it.”
Granuaile lengthened her stride and pulled ahead. I checked behind us when I heard metallic scrapes and crashing noises. The clown bikes and suits lay strewn at the corner of Atlantidos. They’d gone incorporeal and were chasing us now in smoke form. I’d learned enough about them by now to realize they didn’t do that unless they were ready to kill.
“Pour it on,” I said. “They’re catching up.”
We didn’t have breath enough to talk after that; we were off the earth’s magical grid and had to huff and puff up to Pylaiais, where we turned left, back toward Vizyis. I ran right behind Granuaile to shield her.
It was a wise precaution, for we weren’t a third of the way down the block before a wicked thrust plowed into my back and caused me to stumble. I tried to twist as I fell and take a swing at my six, but my injuries were truly debilitating and I couldn’t manage anything except a clumsy pratfall. “Granuaile! Go twirly girl!”
There was a proper Mandarin name for the sequence of movements she executed with her staff, but she’d never been able to master the sounds to my satisfaction. Out of frustration, she asked if we could rename the forms with English terms, and I agreed, since she was already working on three other languages. “Twirly girl” simply meant that she twirled her staff rapidly around her in a defensive whirlwind—front, back, both sides. It wasn’t impossible to penetrate, but it was damn difficult and would require time to study. I’d use that time to try something I should have tried earlier.
Granuaile halted and began to whip her staff around her so that I was just out of reach. The Svartálfar were bolder than they were wise; one of them tried to solidify and get in a quick strike at Granuaile from behind and got clocked in the head for his efforts. He fell unconscious, as the other four took shape around me and stabbed down quickly. I swiped at them desperately, and one was so surprised that his knife hadn’t penetrated that he didn’t go incorporeal in time to avoid the blade of Fragarach. The others became smoke, however, and that’s precisely what I wished.
Fragarach was blessed with three enchantments, two of which had to be cast; the third, the ability to cut through any armor, was always “on.” The first “castable” enchantment gave the sword its name, “the Answerer,” because it froze enemies and forced them to answer questions truthfully. The second enchantment, the ability to summon winds, simply didn’t have many practical applications, so I rarely used it or even thought of it; the last time I had used it was twelve years ago by Tony Cabin, when I’d blown Aenghus Óg off his feet. Of course, I hadn’t had access to Fragarach for much of the past twelve years. Now it would do me yeoman service. I cast the spell and pointed the sword down the street; winds gusted from behind me and blew the dark elves back fifty yards before they remembered they could solidify and stand against the wind. I howled because that had used up the last of my magic, and now I couldn’t help but feel every destroyed inch of my burned skin.
Granuaile realized what had happened and yanked me up by my unburned right arm.
“Come on, sensei,” she said. “You gave us a bit of a lead. Let’s not waste it.”
Moving was no fun at all. Neither was staying still; everything hurt. Long after the flames were out, my skin was still cooking and dying, and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. That magic had been the only thing keeping me functioning.
“Move!” Granuaile said, pulling at me, and I staggered after her, much slower than before. The dark elves would have no trouble catching up, I could tell, and they’d have us at their mercy long before we got to that greenbelt.
At least my aura was proof against their knives. Granuaile didn’t have any defense against them.
“You go ahead, fast as you can,” I said.
“No.”
“Get to the trees, buff up your speed, and then you can take them out when they solidify.”
“You’re coming with me. Let’s go, sensei!”
“They can’t hurt me,” I explained, still unable to manage much more than a rolling stagger. The faint breeze this generated against my skin was unspeakably abrasive. “They have nothing but their stupid black knives, and I’m immune. You go and I’ll catch up. We’ll take them together.”
Granuaile was on the verge of objecting again when a gurgling cry behind us demanded our attention. She was quicker to process what was happening than I was.
“Shit. It’s him!”
Him again. Leif Helgarson had caught one of our pursuers in the second he turned solid, and then the vampire had simply torn the creature in two. Two seconds later, even as we watched, another dark elf became solid, Leif blurred, and a startled cry was all the death song the Svartálf could manage before one half of his body was forcibly shorn from the other. We stopped trying to run and faced Leif. He waved cheerfully, then tore apart our final tail. I wondered if any of the street’s residents were watching this from their windows. Perhaps it was a really good night for Greek television. Leif called to me while standing between still-twitching halves of his last victim.
“May we speak for a spell, Atticus, or will you destroy me now?”
“You know you’re safe,” I rasped. “I’m out of magic.”
“Even so,” he said. “I always suspect that you are holding something back.”
“That’s reasonable,” I replied. “Come closer and we won’t have to shout.”
I turned to walk toward Vizyis. By the time Granuaile spun around to keep pace, Leif had zipped up to walk on my left. He glanced at my ruined features.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I did not think they would manage to do you any harm.”
“Eleven or twelve smoky bastards against two and you thought we’d walk out without a scratch?”
Leif shrugged a shoulder. “I have seen you lay waste to fields of opponents.”
“Field is the key word there. There was no field in that store and therefore no magic.”
“It is magic I have come to warn you about. You are heading for the greenbelt, yes?”
“Of course.”
“Theophilus has seeded it with vampires who are searching for a human with unusual blood.”
“Beware the puppet master, eh?”
“Yes, but Theophilus is not the puppet master. He is more of a skilled apprentice, if you wish to extend a metaphor.”
“Then who’s pulling his strings?”
“Someone from your world.”
“Ireland?”
“No. The other one. Tír na nÓg.”
“The Fae are behind all this? Someone there is giving orders both to dark elves and vampires?”
“As far as I can tell, yes.”
It was no more than I had already suspected, but to have it confirmed was a bit of a shock. But maybe it wasn’t confirmed after all. I couldn’t trust anything he said.
“I know what you’re up to,” I growled.
Leif’s lips turned up at the corners. “I would be intensely disappointed if you did not.”
“You’re playing both sides and setting your own odds in Vegas, you conniving bastard. You probably have some Machiavellian shit going down on other planets. Are you expecting me to make a deal with you? An alliance?”
The vampire shrugged again, hands in pockets. “None is needed. For now our interests are the same. That will serve as well as anything else.”
“I will never forgive you for using me. For hurting Oberon.”
Leif smirked at me. “How fortunate, then, that I do not seek your forgiveness. I will go ahead and dispatch the two at the edge of the greenbelt. After that, you will be on your own. What is it that the young Americans say now? ‘Peace out, brah’?”
“No,” I said, “not unless they want to get their balls booted into their stomachs,” but Leif had already raced ahead, his amused chuckle hanging in the air and fading with distance.
The night settled about us, and for thirty seconds there was no sound except our footfalls, the muffled noise of family arguments, and the wail of emergency vehicles converging on the sporting-goods store.
Granuaile finally asked a question into what passes for silence in the city: “Do vampires have balls?”
“I don’t know.”
Chapter 17
Once we reached the greenbelt, the elemental of Thessalonika, Macedonia, restored my magic and allowed Granuaile to tap her own. She cast night vision and sped herself up immediately, even though we were crouched underneath a tree. Under the tree behind us, nearest the street, rested the gray corpse of a vampire, courtesy of Leif, head torn from its neck and held between its hands on top of its stomach. Leif had mentioned two, but we didn’t see another.
For my part, I filled my bear charm and gave succor to my screaming skin. Now that I had a clear head and plenty of help from Macedonia, I could assess the burn damage and apply my skills to healing it in earnest.
Left alone, I’d wind up looking like Two-Face, because I had deep burns down the majority of my left side and in a few months those would turn into red hypertrophic scars, all the suppleness gone and my ability to scare children increased geometrically. But skin, fortunately, is not that difficult to regenerate. The secret is all in the dermis; maintain a healthy dermis, and cosmetically your epidermis will look just fine. Regenerating the dermis would take more time than the epidermis, of course, but it wasn’t going to be like growing bone or muscle tissue either. And if I could get hold of the right herbs, I could even make my special brew for skin health, Elastici-Tea. I’d be a bit scary-looking for a while but hopefully normal-ish in a few weeks; the underlying healing would be finished in three or four days, but the cosmetic side of things would take longer to sort itself out as the dead cells sloughed away and got replaced by fresh ones. I was well aware that I was damn lucky to be here, considering the past hour. The first battle between dark elves and Druids had yielded surprises to both parties, and foremost among them had to be that I had managed to escape. I doubted that I would have if it weren’t for Granuaile.