There was a large fire pit giving off quite a bit of light in front of the cabin, but none of that light came from burning wood. It was orange and white and swirled around the pit in a torus like a hellish Creamsicle. It lit up the meadow fairly well, so I paused in the darkness about twenty yards north of Snorri’s prone form and scouted the scenario.
The werewolves had already taken out three of the witches and dropped a fourth even as I watched, but they had taken some casualties as well; I saw three werewolves bleeding on the ground near the bodies of the witches. They were alive but in very bad shape. The witches were awfully fast with those knives, perhaps using the speed spell that Malina had offered to use on me. There were only two witches left—Emily and Radomila. (Malina and the other witches were nowhere in sight, which meant that she had been telling the truth on the phone.) Radomila would indeed prove a challenge to the werewolves: She was chanting a spell from within a cage settled on the opposite side of the cabin from the prisoners, the bars of which were no doubt lined with silver. The werewolves wouldn’t be able to touch her.
Emily, however, had no such protection, and I saw her Barbie-doll eyes grow even wider than usual as she realized she was next up to become a chew toy. She was on the far side of the meadow, just visible between the sycamores next to the cabin, and she did not seem likely to stand her ground and die fighting like her sisters. Even as I thought this, she turned and ran into the woods, which would only encourage the werewolves to pursue her, frenzied as they were.
But then I saw it was cleverness as much as cowardice; she would lead them out to the perimeter of traps, which was still active, and the werewolves would trigger it again. Gunnar, whose wolf form was leading the chase, apparently realized this just in time, and he pulled up and commanded the Pack to stop too. They stood and snarled at the darkness Emily had disappeared into, frustrated to be denied her flesh but reluctant to leave the meadow when they were so close to freeing their pack mate.
It was time for me to act. There was nothing more they could do—I sincerely doubted they would be able to take on Aenghus Óg and last long. I doubted I could either, but I had some hope.
My nemesis was standing in the orange glow of that hellish fire he had summoned, facing the west, armored head to toe in silver plate. That wasn’t for my benefit: He knew that if I could get past his guard, Fragarach would slice through the armor as if it were tissue paper. It was proof against the werewolves, in case they got past the witches—which they practically had, with Emily run off into the woods and Radomila still chanting something but having no visible effect.
Aenghus wore a Greek Corinthian helmet, so it was all of one piece and required no visor plate. It afforded him maximum visibility and breathability, but it would be extraordinarily difficult for a werewolf to get a lucky claw in there or underneath the long cheek guards to get at his throat. Even if one did, his neck was well protected with a solid gorget over silver chain, and he also had a chain skirt falling past his knees; there would be no quick swipes at his hamstrings from behind. Ankles are usually tough to protect from a rear attack, but he knew that if he was dealing with a pack of werewolves, they’d go after his Achilles tendon, so in a surreal mash-up of medieval armor and American spaghetti westerns, he actually wore silver spurs, and there were spikes thrusting from the backs of his calves.
Given all of this, it was clear he’d never expected me to arrive alone, and neither had the witches. He’d planned to involve the Tempe Pack all along—for many months, it would seem, because that suit of armor had to be a fairly recent commission. Werewolves were never a problem in Tír na nÓg, and one doesn’t find custom suits of silver armor on Blue Light Special at Kmart. It spoke to me of a level of connivance that chilled the marrow of my bones—when he found out where I was, he had known I would involve the Pack through my lawyers—and I shuddered as I crouched behind the trunk of a cottonwood. It seemed to me as if we were playing a game of chess and he had thought many more moves ahead than I had. He had outplayed me with the witches from the beginning, had two different police departments playing fetch for him, and had anticipated or even counted on a pack of werewolves showing up tonight: What else had he thought of ahead of time? What was he doing with that fire pit, and what was Radomila up to? What would happen once I stepped out there and revealed myself?
As if in answer to my thoughts, something began to coalesce out of the fire pit and take shape to the right of Aenghus Óg. It remained somewhat insubstantial, with just enough translucence to show me the outlines of the cabin behind it, but its physical presence was undeniable: It was a tall, hooded figure on a pale horse, and its name was Death.
If I fell tonight, Death would come for me without delay. Somehow, Aenghus Óg knew of my bargain with the Morrigan. The simplest explanation, of course, was that she had told him. She would not betray her word to me—she’d never take my life—but I had never required her to keep our bargain secret. I had stupidly assumed she would keep it to herself so that Brighid would never know, but now it occurred to me that perhaps the Morrigan had decided to ally herself with Aenghus Óg, since Brighid had pointedly not asked for her help. If victorious, she would eliminate her biggest rival amongst the Tuatha Dé Danann and rid herself of a troublesome Druid who had lived long past his expiration date.
Something else disturbed me: Flidais had not been joking when she said Aenghus was drawing large amounts of power. It was dangerously high—so high that he was flirting with killing the earth for miles around, creating a blighted zone. If he went much further, it would take years of coaxing and care from a grove of Druids to bring it back to life again.
That sincerely chapped my hide and pulled me out of the whirlpool of doubt in which I had been flailing. Up to the point where I realized the threat he represented to the earth, I could have turned around and run. I could have gone to Greenland, where nothing was green, and hidden for a century or two. But now I could not. Aenghus Óg could betray me all he wanted, kidnap and even kill my beloved wolfhound, kill the whole Tempe Pack, even usurp Brighid’s throne to become First among the Fae, and I could have chalked it all up to the steep price one pays sometimes for living another day. But killing the earth, to which he himself was bound with the same tattoos I wore, bespoke an evil I could not countenance—it was solid proof that his priorities had widely diverged from the old faith, and he had bound himself to darkness. That’s what made me stand up and draw Fragarach from its sheath and charge into the circle of hellish light, leaping over the whimpering form of Dr. Jodursson. If I were to die tonight, then it would be a death any Druid would be proud of—not fighting on behalf of some petty Irish king’s wounded pride or his yearning for power over a small island in the great wide world, but fighting on behalf of the earth, from which all our power derives and from which all our blessings spring.
I made no battle cry as I charged. Battle cries are for intimidation, and I could not intimidate Aenghus Óg. I thought instead I could surprise him. But drawing Fragarach from its sheath was apparently what they were waiting for, because Radomila’s eyes snapped open and she cried from her silver cage, “He comes!”
If I could have paused again, I would have taken the opportunity. Why would Radomila know of my approach once I drew Fragarach from its sheath? But I was committed: I had to press on.
Oberon spied me instantly once I charged into the light, and he howled his relief and anxiety in my mind.
"ATTICUS!" he cried.
I’m coming, buddy. I love you. But hush and let me concentrate. Dear lad that he was, I heard nothing more from him.
What I heard instead was an unholy screech as Aenghus Óg waved at the fire pit and caused it to erupt with demons.
Chapter 24
People in this part of the world like to envision demons as fiery red creatures with horns sprouting from their foreheads and barbed, whiplike tails. If they really want to vent their spleens about the evil of heck and sin, they add on goats’ legs and invariably point out the cloven hooves, in case you missed them. I’m not sure who came up with that—I think it was some feverish, sex-starved monk in Europe during the Crusades, and I tried to miss as much of that as I could by passing the time in Asia—but it’s obviously been an enduring and compelling image for several centuries. I saw quite a few of them coming out of the hell pit, because it was nearly a contractual obligation by now that some of them appear in that form. But most of them were nightmares out of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, or maybe Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Some of them flew on leathery wings into the desert night air, with fingerlike talons outstretched to rip into something soft; some of them bubbled across the ground in uneven gaits, owing to the uneven number of legs they had and differing lengths of their limbs; a few of them galloped on those infamous cloven hooves; but all of them, without exception, had lots of sharp, pointy parts, and they stank like ass.
Aenghus Óg didn’t waste time with introductions or even a respectable archvillain laugh. He didn’t taunt me or inform me I was about to die; he just pointed at me and uttered the Irish equivalent of “Sic ’im, boys!”
Almost all of them did, but a couple of the bigger ones didn’t—I distinctly saw one of the cloven-hoofed lads take off for the hills, and the largest thing on wings disappeared into the sky somewhere.
Aenghus had the gall to be surprised at their defection—he actually shouted at them to come back, and I supposed he must have been counting on them to finish me off after the smaller ones roughed me up a bit. I saw the Pack move to protect Hal and Oberon, who were chained up and unable to defend themselves from rogues or run away, and that gave me a brief moment’s relief.
“What did you expect, Aenghus?” I mocked him as I beheaded the vanguard. “They’re bloody ” And then there was no time for me to talk, because they were upon me and all I could do was concentrate on what to kill next and on keeping down the contents of my stomach.
After about three seconds it occurred to me that I would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers or violent illness. An awful lot of the buggers had come out of that pit, and they were still coming. Luckily they were still in front of me—they hadn’t had time to try flanking me—so I drew a little of the remaining precious power from the earth, pointed at them with my index finger off the hilt, and shouted, “Dóigh!” as Brighid had instructed, hoping that would take care of a few of them and bracing for the wave of weakness she warned me about.
It turns out you can’t brace for that kind of weakness. There was a thing with stork legs propelling a huge mouth full of teeth coming at my throat from my left, what looked like the Iron Maiden mascot coming at me from the center, and a horrific cross between a California girl and a Komodo dragon on my right. Every single one of them overshot me and even tripped over me as I abruptly dropped to the ground like a baby giraffe, my muscles utterly unable to function.
Aenghus Óg crowed in victory and yelled to Radomila, “I’m closing the portal now! He’s dropped the sword! Do it!”
Oh yes. The sword. The one my fingers were incapable of holding now. The one that was keeping me from becoming demon food. I needed power, and I tried to draw some, but when I reached for it, it went dead beneath me. Aenghus Óg had drained it all to bring hell on earth. There was no telling how far I would have to go to draw enough strength to stand again; as it was, I could not move an inch. My night vision faded, and all I had to see by was the orange light of the fire pit. The skinless Iron Maiden demon scrambled back quickly and took the opportunity to snack on my ear, and the pain was unspeakable, worse than reading the collected works of Edith Wharton, but I couldn’t muster the strength to pull away or even say ouch. Likewise for the armored mosquito the size of a schnauzer that landed on my chest and stuck its proboscis into my shoulder: I wanted to swat him, but I couldn’t. Something with blue scales and a steroid habit hauled me up by my leg high into the air, and I saw a giant mouth of gleaming teeth and assumed I would be heading in there momentarily. The bloodsucking schnauzer–mosquito assumed that as well, because it pulled out with a wet pop and flew away. But then I was dropped unceremoniously to the ground, breaking my left wrist in the fall. I had fallen facing the hell pit, so I had a view of the horde and of Aenghus Óg berating Death.
“Well, he’s obviously dead by now, so what are you waiting for?”
Not dead yet, Aenghus. Dead in short order, perhaps, like the wasted land beneath me, but perhaps not. The horde of demons wailed and gnashed their teeth from an epic case of fiery (yet somehow cold) heartburn, forgetting about me, for the most part. The flying ones hadn’t been affected by the Cold Fire, so the giant mosquito found me again and began to suck me dry. Unlike normal mosquitoes, it didn’t inject a local anesthetic to deaden the pain when it stabbed me. But I bet its saliva would leave a much nastier mark afterward—if I lived to deal with it.
The demons I’d hit expired in several ways from the Cold Fire: Some of them melted into a puddle of goo, some of them exploded, and some of them flamed up briefly before scattering as ashes. The one who had eaten my ear ended that way—I’d never hear from him again, nor would I ever be able to appreciate Iron Maiden properly.
“What’s happening?” Aenghus asked rhetorically, then answered it like the insufferable ass he was. “Oh, I see. Cold Fire. But that means he must be weak as a kitten. Where is the sword, Radomila?” Buried under demon goo a few yards away from me. Why would she know anything about that? And what was it he had commanded her to do earlier? And hey, Aenghus, are you going to do anything about the rest of the demons that didn’t get hit with Cold Fire, like the flying one on my chest and the ones that came out of the pit after I used the spell but before you closed it? He’d probably let them all go, and they’d wind up blending in with the population of Apache Junction.