“You were brilliant back there, by the way,” I said. “Thank you.”
She swallowed audibly before answering. “Welcome.” Her voice was quiet.
“How many did you get?”
“Eight. Not that I’m, you know, keeping score or anything.”
“I got three. Were there only eleven, or were there twelve?”
She winced. “I thought there were twelve.”
“Me too. So that means either the last one got blown up in the firebombing of the store, or it didn’t …”
“And that means it’s either following us or reporting back to its superiors on our skills and tactics.”
“It’s not following us,” I said. “Leif wouldn’t have spoken so frankly to us if there were anyone around from the other side to hear it.”
“So next time we meet them, they’re going to use conventional weapons on us,” Granuaile said.
“Yep. And they won’t let you flank them again.”
She nodded, accepting this, then swallowed again. I realized she was trying to keep from crying. “I didn’t get there in time. Are you going to be okay?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah.” I tried to smile and realized that, the way my face looked now, it probably wasn’t the most reassuring expression I could have made. “I know it looks bad, but I’ll be okay given time.”
“All right.”
“Theophilus and Leif expect us to keep to these woods—maybe the dark elves do too—but I don’t see the upside. You can’t cast camouflage or unbind vampires yet. I could cast camouflage on you, but if we get attacked by more than one vampire at a time, it’s going to be extremely risky. We don’t need to fight this battle. The situation’s changed. We don’t have to go back to Olympus armed to the teeth to make inquiries. We can go back now, as we are, because I know what’s happening.”
“So just call a cab and go grab Oberon?” she asked.
“Yeah, go ahead. I’ll unbind the remains of this vampire first and Theophilus can suck on that.”
Granuaile grinned and rose. She jogged the short distance back to the street, put her fingers between her teeth, and whistled.
Chapter 18
“We are about to start some shit we may not be able to finish,” I warned Granuaile. “Though we can argue that this is all Bacchus’s fault, in order to get around him we’re going to have to risk bringing the Greek pantheon into this too. They’re probably not going to care who started it.”
Oberon said, "Sort of like an NFL referee, then." He’d taken my injuries in stride once I’d reassured him that I would be good as new eventually.
“I’m not sure what you mean, sensei.” We were speaking in the back of a limousine on our way to Olympus. We needed the privacy and the nice bucket full of ice in which to soak my burned left arm. The driver was accommodating and willing to pull over every so often so I could “get some fresh air,” but it was really so I could replenish my bear charm and continue healing as we drove. I also didn’t mind the luxury after the exertions of Thessalonika.
“We don’t have to snag a Bacchant and interrogate her anymore. I know precisely what’s going on—what’s been going on. You heard Bacchus talking outside the cave, right? He said Faunus couldn’t keep us trapped there forever.”
“Right. Except we weren’t trapped. We got away.”
“The trap is Olympus itself. It’s the only place we can bind you right now, and twice we’ve had to interrupt the ritual because of it. We’ve been operating on Lord Grundlebeard’s theory that the entire Eurasian plate was disrupted because Perun’s plane got burned up by Loki. I never really bought it—the trembling in North America faded right away and we were able to shift just fine, so why would the trembling last so much longer in Europe?—but I didn’t have a better theory to offer. Now I do. It’s been a month and a half. If the burning of Perun’s plane was the source of the disturbance, wouldn’t there have been some fluctuations throughout Europe? Wouldn’t the severity of the disturbance vary, being stronger in Russia and less so in Spain and Italy and so on, and shouldn’t it have tapered off a bit by now? But it’s still going strong. Something is producing the disruption consistently, and it’s purposely leaving Olympus alone.”
“I thought you agreed the Olympians were protecting their turf.”
“They are. But they’re also responsible for jacking up everything else, and it’s all to catch us in their net. It’s Faunus, Granuaile. Faunus and that worthless sot, Bacchus.”
“How are they responsible?”
“Pandemonium, you see.”
“No, I don’t see.”
“I didn’t see either, because I was thinking of the Roman god’s name and not the original Greek. Pandemonium is the disruption of order—it’s chaos, in other words. That’s what’s disrupting all the forests on the Eurasian plate so that we can’t shift anywhere else. This is a power that both Pan and Faunus possess—it’s explicitly stated in the mythology, and of course it’s inherent in the etymology of the word. And none of the Tuatha Dé Danann or the Fae recognize it for what it is. It probably hasn’t been used since truly ancient times, and even then it was never on this scale. This might be the first time it’s been used outside Greece, so that’s why the Fae are fumbling for explanations.”
Granuaile got a crinkle between her eyes. “Why would the Olympians have a power that specifically prevents Druids from shifting?”
“That wasn’t its original purpose—it’s just the purpose they’re using it for now, because it’s a side effect that gives them an advantage. Originally Pan was a way for people to get in touch with all that’s primal in nature and within themselves. He was a great big yang to all the yin of the other gods and the order of Olympus and civilization. Pan wanted to party and f**k and make a lot of noise—and once the monotheists came along and got a load of him—”
"Ha! You said load."
“—he became the very devil himself. He messes with the order of everything. I bet if we took time to pick up a newspaper and look at what’s going on in Europe right now, we’d see more than the usual ruckus. And that’s because Pan’s Roman doppelgänger, Faunus, is screwing up the entire continent. Our tethers to Tír na nÓg are Druidic order laid on top of nature, and he’s disrupting them.”
“So how do we get to him?”
“If Faunus is out in the world messing with all the forests except around Olympus, we need him to return to Olympus and stay there so we can have all the rest of the forests to work with in the meantime. The way I see it, only one thing will make him come running back.”
“What’s that?”
“We take away his sex toys.”
Chapter 19
Literally and figuratively, the goat-footed god has always been a horny lad. The ancient Greeks provided him with plenty of nymphs and dryads to play with in the forest so he wouldn’t be tempted to wander into the cities and f**k around. Fucking around was all well and good to the Greeks, of course, but, you know: “Moderation in all things.” The Greeks were trying to lay the foundations for Western civilization as well as one another, so Pan and his worshippers were required to do their unchained frolicking in the woods.
Pan liked a good chase most days. It replaced foreplay. Nymphs were great for providing a chase. But sometimes he felt a bit lazy, so he hunted up dryads on those days, because dryads couldn’t run very far from their trees. Dryads who spent more than a couple of days separated from their trees tended to wither and die—and the same was true for the trees. The connection between them was not only symbiotic, it was vital.
I fully planned to take advantage of that to buy Granuaile and me the time we needed. What was true for Pan was also true for his Roman clone, Faunus.
“You know what’s cool about a dryad’s tree?” I said. We had paid off the limo driver to the south of Olympus and walked into the foothills with nothing but a couple bottles of water and our weapons. I was shirtless because I couldn’t stand the feel of fabric on my crispy skin.
“Well, it’s an oak tree with an immortal nymph attached. That’s pretty cool.”
“Agreed. But what’s also cool is that a dryad’s tree is exactly the same on three planes. It’s not only here, but it’s on the Roman and Greek planes too, every branch and leaf.”
“Each tree is a trinity, then. I dig it.” Granuaile was nodding and smiling, but this faded as a question occurred to her. “There aren’t three different dryads, are there?”
“No, just one. Pan and Faunus share them, and Artemis and Diana also divide their attentions between them.”
“Oh! Right. Dryads are kind of special to the huntresses. Um.” Her eyebrows drew together and she frowned, clearly disturbed.
“Yes?”
“Are you sure you want to mess with the dryads?”
“Are you sure you want to be a Druid?”
“Well, of course I am, but isn’t there any other way?”
“Sure. We could seek out the Olympians and ask them nicely to stop. But direct confrontation with true immortals will probably not work out in our favor.”
“I concur, sensei, which is why I’m questioning the wisdom of pursuing this.”
“Would you rather we continue as we have been, knowing that the Bacchants will track us down and interrupt the binding who knows how many more times? There are only so many places around Olympus where we can perform the ritual. No, it’s time to act boldly. Better to ask forgiveness than permission and to answer their shenanigans with even better shenanigans. We won’t hurt them.”
“The Olympians are not renowned for their forgiveness,” Granuaile pointed out.
“Well, I’m tired of playing defense. We’ve been lucky so far in that we’ve been able to move faster than them, but strategically we’ve been playing not to lose, if you see what I mean. And the two of us—”
"Hey! Three! Hounds count!"
“—Sorry. The three of us against the world’s vampires, the Fae, and the Svartálfar in a confined area are awfully long odds.”
“Exactly. So why risk antagonizing more Olympians?”
“It’s not about antagonizing anyone; it’s about giving us options and restoring our mobility. And shenanigans. But I’m willing to entertain alternatives. Do you have any?”
Granuaile sighed. “No.”
"I have an alternative. How about a hundred pounds of quality from Jody Maroni’s Sausage Kingdom? A variety pack with the Tequila Chicken, the Toulouse Garlic, and the succulent Polish sausage? I’d forgive anything for a gift like that."
Not everyone can be bribed with meat, Oberon.
"They can’t? Oh! You mean they’re vegetarian."
No, they eat meat. It simply doesn’t sway their decision-making process.
"Well, that … that’s just wrong, Atticus! Are they monsters? It’s like they have no moral center!"
“All right. So we need to look for oak trees that are bound to dryads. It’s easy. The heart of the tree will be white.”
“So it’s okay to use magic now?”
“Well, it’s not exactly safe. We’re taking the calculated risk that we can get this done before the Bacchants or anyone else zeroes in on us. We had a couple of weeks or more to work with the first two times. It’s probably okay to scurry around for a few hours.”
"Heh! That’s what the squirrel said."
We hiked a quarter mile up the gentle lower slopes of Olympus, until we found a tree with a bright white center in the magical spectrum. Having explained the plan to Granuaile on the way, I created a tether to Tír na nÓg first, and we shifted there to scout a suitable location for our shenanigans along the river of time.
“That will do nicely,” I said, pointing to an unoccupied island pretty far upstream. “Time moves so slowly there that they’ll spend a century saying, ‘Wait,’ when they’re trying to say, ‘Wait, don’t leave me here!’ ”
“How do you use the islands?”
“See the obelisk at the edge of the shore with the Ogham script on it? That’s its address. Using that, you open portals to it wherever you are and shove stuff through. We have to use portals instead of trees because we don’t want to teleport ourselves into that timestream.”
“Nice thinking.”
“We learned from someone else’s mistake. I think the first person who used a tree on an island to shift is still stuck there. But word is he ought to be able to shift himself out of there in another decade or so.”
"So he’s been there for centuries?"
He’s been there longer than I’ve been alive.
"Wow. He’s missed out on a lot. Where do you think he’ll stand on the Kirk vs. Picard question?"
I memorized the Ogham address, and we shifted back to the oak tree with the white center—except we shifted to the one growing on the Roman plane. The dryad was nowhere in sight.
“Where is she?” Granuaile asked as she turned around, scanning the area.
I shrugged. “Nearby. Or maybe on the Greek plane. She’ll let us know where she’s at once we start to unbind her from the tree.”
“Are you sure this won’t hurt her?”
“It’ll hurt a little bit. She has to feel it. But it won’t be life-threatening the way we’re doing it.”