I never got to enjoy that last whiskey, because that’s when Gunnar Magnusson, alpha male of the Tempe Pack, came barging into Rúla Búla with most of his werewolves behind him—including Dr. Snorri Jodursson.
“Where’s Hal?” he snarled at me.
“He left almost an hour ago,” I said.
“Something’s wrong,” Magnusson said. “Have you checked your phone lately?”
“No,” I admitted, then remembered it beeping at me in the middle of my conversation with Laksha. I pulled it out of my pocket and checked the display. It was from Emily, the youngest of the Sisters of the Three Auroras. The text read, “I have your lawyer and your little dog, too! Bring the sword to me or they both die. Emily.”
It had been a long time since I’d felt any desire to truly inflict pain upon another person. I tend to take the long view on dealing with irritating people—as in, I’m going to outlive whoever irritates me, so the problem will eventually go away. I had privately changed “This, too, shall pass” into “You, too, shall die,” and it helped me avoid all sorts of conflict. I can honestly say I had not felt such anger thrumming in my bones since World War II, but that text managed to bring all the old rage rushing back.
She dognaps my friend, holds him for ransom, and makes Wizard of Oz jokes?
Gods Below, I hate witches.
Chapter 21
I showed the text to Magnusson, unable to summon anything coherent to say. He grunted at the message, and passed the phone back to me. I could see the other werewolves bristle as he communicated the message to them through their mental link.
“Will you call her for me, please,” Magnusson said, struggling mightily to control his anger, “and discover where they are holding Hal? He was unconscious for a time, and now he’s awake but they have him blindfolded and he cannot say where he is.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Please remain quiet during the call so she will not know you are listening.” Werewolves would have no trouble hearing everything she said.
Magnusson confined himself to a curt nod, and I punched in the number indicated from the text.
“It took you long enough,” Emily purred at me after a single ring. “Maybe your dog doesn’t mean as much to you as we thought.”
“Prove to me he is still alive,” I ground out. “I will not talk to you any further without that.”
“I will have your lawyer confirm it,” she said. “Hold on.” There was a pause, some rustling and snarling, and then I heard Emily telling Hal to tell me he was okay.
“Atticus,” he gasped at me, strain evident in his voice. “I see half the coven in the woods somewhere.” There was a thud and a snarl, and I heard Emily in the distance shouting at him to just tell me the dog was fine, nothing more. “We’re tied up to trees. Silver chains. Oberon is unharmed so far.”
“That’s enough!” Emily yelled. She returned the phone to her mouth and I heard a couple of whines from Oberon. He was still alive.
“In the eastern Superstition Mountains, take the Haunted Canyon trail to Tony Cabin,” she said. “On some maps it’s called Tony Ranch—same thing. Come alone after dark. Bring the sword. We will bring the dog and the wolf.”
“If either of them is harmed, I will bring the sword into contact with your neck, and damn the consequences,” my voice rasped into the phone. “Do you understand me, witch? You are bound to me by your own blood. If you kill them, you can be sure that I—along with Hal’s pack—will hunt you down. You have no idea what is coming after you now.”
“Don’t I? I suppose I will just have to ask my friend Aenghus Óg. I’m sure he’ll let me know what manner of worm you are.”
“Ask yourself this, witch: If I am a worm to him, why hasn’t he crushed me in the last two thousand years? And why does he feel the need to ally himself with your coven if I am so easily dealt with?”
“Two thousand years?” Emily said.
“Two thousand years?” Magnusson said.
Whoops! This is why I don’t like to get angry. It makes you reveal things you would rather keep secret. Still, I couldn’t let Emily know that she had scored any kind of coup by getting a fairly accurate estimate of my age, so I used it as a hammer.
“That’s right, lassie, you’re completely f**ked. The only chance you have of surviving this night is bringing me my friends healthy and happy.” I hung up before she could reply.
“You’re not going out there alone,” Magnusson said immediately. He had of course heard every word.
“I was rather counting on you to come along,” I replied.
“They’ve put the sack back over his head,” Magnusson said, “but we saw six witches through the link before they did. Your hound is with them. And Hal smelled someone else there too, but didn’t see who it was.”
“What did it smell like?”
Magnusson’s eyes rolled up as he recalled it and put words to it. “Oak and bear fur and … wet feathers. Some kind of bird.”
“That would be a swan,” I said. “It’s one of Aenghus Óg’s animal forms.”
“Who is this Aenghus Óg?”
“Long story,” I said. “The short version is this: He’s a god, and he’ll have some demons with him on top of the witches. I’ll tell you more on the drive out there. Bottom line is we’re in for one hell of a scrap. But we might be able to bring along someone they’re not expecting.”
“Who?”
I turned my head to find the redheaded siren pulling a pint of Guinness for an older gentleman down the bar. “Granuaile!” I called as I pulled out my wallet to pay the bill. “I will accept you as my apprentice if you will have me as your master. Do you still wish to become an initiate?”
“Very much!” She nodded and grinned at me as she placed the pint in front of the customer.
“Then tell your manager you quit, effective immediately,” I said. “I will be your employer from now on. We need to leave now, though, so make it quick.”
Her eyes flicked to the werewolves standing around behind me, crowded into the foyer of the pub.
“Something has happened, hasn’t it?”
“Yes, it has, and we need your friend right away,” I said, tapping the side of my head to make it clear I was speaking of Laksha. “This is both her chance and yours, but we have to go now.”
“Okay,” she said, beaming as she jogged back to the kitchen entrance to slap open the swinging door. “Hey, Liam! I quit!” Then she vaulted herself onto the bar, swung her legs around, and hopped off between a couple of stools.
“Attagirl,” an elderly gentleman said, raising his pint in salute.
We left the place en masse before Liam, whoever he was, could properly register that he had just lost a damn fine bartender.
The lot of us piled into various souped-up werewolf cars parked across from the light rail station, and then we drove south on Mill to University. We took a right, and from there took a left on Roosevelt, winding up in front of the widow’s house.
I promptly set them all, except Granuaile and Gunnar, to trimming the widow’s grapefruit tree and weeding her flower bed. Since the Tempe police were still staking out my house and I had a pack of werewolves on the verge of going all hairy, it seemed like the best way to keep my promise to the widow and keep the Pack walking around on two legs.
While the widow was happily occupied admiring impossibly fit men and women grooming her landscape, I retired to the backyard with Gunnar and Granuaile.
“Please have Laksha remove the cloak on this now,” I said to Granuaile as I placed Fragarach in her hands and dispelled the binding that kept it close to me. “And you,” I said to Gunnar, “make sure she doesn’t take off with my sword.”
Granuaile’s eyes bugged. “You think Laksha would do that?”
“No,” I said. “But I’ve been wrong before, and I’m just paranoid, okay?”
The alpha male scowled at me. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to get something out of my house,” I said. “I’ll probably be back in less than ten minutes. If I’m not, send someone to check.”
Magnusson nodded, and I began stripping off my clothes.
“What are you doing?” Granuaile asked uncertainly.
“Same thing you’ll be able to do in about twenty years or so,” I said, pulling my keys out of my pocket and carefully laying them down on top of my jeans.
“You mean get na**d? I can do that now. Wow,” she sniggered, “you need to get some sun.”
“Shut up. I’m Irish.” I drew power from the earth through my tattoos and enjoyed Granuaile’s gasp of astonishment as I turned into a great horned owl. I snapped up my key ring in my beak before launching myself into the sky on silent wings.
“Show-off,” Gunnar called after me. He was just jealous. People don’t gasp appreciatively when he changes form in front of them; they scream.
It was less than a minute’s flight, as the owl flies, to my house from the widow’s. The police sitting in the patrol car outside my house looked supremely bored. I spiraled down into my backyard for a landing and took a nice long look around before changing back into human form. My wards were still in place, and no one was watching, so I grew myself some opposable thumbs and entered through my back door. The slip of paper with Radomila’s blood on it was still locked up in my bookcase, precisely where I had left it. I punched a hole through one corner and threaded it onto my key ring, then returned to my backyard. There I bound myself back to an owl, picked up the keys in my beak, and enjoyed the short flight back to the widow’s house.
Granuaile was seated in the lotus position inside a circle she had traced in the dirt, Fragarach laying across her lap, cradled at either end by her hands. She was chanting something in Tamil, so I was fairly certain that Laksha was in charge.
Gunnar Magnusson was still in human form, but his hackles were up, if you know what I mean. He looked mightily relieved to see me.
“How long has she been at it?” I asked in a low voice once I had the use of my vocal cords again. My clothes were still laying where I had left them, but I didn’t feel especially anxious to put them back on yet. Switching forms so quickly left me feeling a bit twitchy and sensitive, and I didn’t want the abrasion or confinement until I absolutely had to have it. The widow rarely came out to her backyard, and I could see no reason why she would with all of that fine beefcake parading before her.
“Only a couple of minutes,” Magnusson grumbled, almost a whisper. “But it feels like an eternity. That witch creeps me out, Atticus. Do you trust her?”
“No, I never trust witches,” I said. “But I do trust her to do this job. It’s an ego trip, or rather a professional pride sort of thing. If she can undo the cloak Radomila set on my sword, she proves she’s better than Radomila.”
“Do you need her to prove that, or is this just for her?”
“It’s for me,” I replied. “Radomila, not Emily, is the witch who’s really holding Hal and Oberon. If we’re going to take on her whole coven, we’re going to need a serious witch of our own who’s at least the equal of Radomila.”
“Is that the entire point of this exercise? Didn’t you want that cloak on there?”
I shook my head. “Not anymore. Yesterday Radomila proved that she still has a connection to this sword that she can use against me; she was able to show Aenghus Óg how to bind Detective Fagles in such a way that he could sense the cloak, and thus see my sword, even through my camouflage spell. What if she could do more to the sword through that link? Turn it against me as I wield it, perhaps? I cannot take that risk.”
“No, you can’t,” Magnusson agreed.
“Besides, the entire reason I was cloaking it was to keep it hidden from Aenghus Óg and his allies. Since he knows where I am now and Brighid told me she wants me to keep it, there’s no more reason to hide. It’s actually going to help having its magic in the open, Gunnar. Because that means Aenghus Óg and the coven will be focused on me and the threat I represent. They won’t be worrying about you and the Pack circling around behind them …”
Magnusson allowed himself a feral grin.
“… but they will know you are most likely coming,” I continued. “They would be stupid not to prepare themselves. So you, in turn, must be prepared. They will have silver, Gunnar. Guaranteed.”
The alpha male’s grin melted into a snarl, and his features began to ripple as his eyes flashed bright yellow.
“Whoa, whoa! Calm yourself. Now is not the time, my friend.” I placed a steadying hand on his shoulder and continued to make reassuring noises until his face stopped running like hot wax and the lights in his eyes faded to their normal brown. I heard some howls and barking in the front yard, though. Not all the Pack members had as much control as Gunnar, and he had almost lost it as the alpha.
“I am sorry,” he gasped, short of breath and sweating. “But we have been provoked past all endurance.”
“I know. But tell the ones who changed in the front to come back here and leave the widow alone.”
“It is done,” he said. Shortly thereafter, three agitated werewolves were circling the two of us but studiously keeping their eyes lowered.
I moved carefully to my clothes and started putting them on, explaining as I did so. “The widow is going to need to see a familiar face at this point,” I said, “because she just watched three of your pack make the change, if I’m not mistaken.”