Trapped

“I think you’re speaking with the desperate voice of my libido right now,” I said. “So I’ll ignore that. I’m thinking our safest bet is to scamper off and wait this out.”

“There ye go again,” my archdruid said. “Using your colon instead of yer brain. Ye believe yer thinkin’ because yer workin’ hard, but all yer doin’ is squeezin’ out shit. What good would runnin’ do, me lad? It’d teach yer apprentice that yer not much of a fighter, for one thing, and that all ye have to do to defeat a Druid is to make his life inconvenient. And, apart from that, ye need to help out the Norse, like ye said ye would. Ye can’t go take a few months off to frolic in Mag Mell when ye got Loki runnin’ around ready to set the world aflame.”

“And what do you suggest I do instead?”

“Stomp on some nuts, boy! Go on the offensive! Find out what’s really going on!”

That was advice I couldn’t easily ignore. There was certainly more going on here than anyone in Tír na nÓg was willing to admit. Two Roman gods were colluding against me, and they might or might not be working with dark elves, vampires, and someone powerful amongst the Tuatha Dé Danann. Nobody was going to volunteer answers; we were going to have to apply some pressure of our own.

Chapter 15

One of the odd details about sporting goods stores is how incredibly full of steel and straight lines they are. The ambient atmosphere is harsh and fluorescent because, at some point in the planning stages, an executive said, “What, you want windows? Sunlight and moonlight? Fuck that noise.”

If nature were Little Red Riding Hood and a sporting goods store were the Big Bad Wolf, nature would observe, “My, what orderly rows of synthetic products you have,” and the store would say, “The better to dominate you with, my dear.”

People go into sporting goods stores ostensibly to prepare themselves to get closer to nature, but, in fact, every time they buy another plastic doodad, they’re doing just the opposite.

Still, if you’re wanting to go Bronze Age Rambo on some Bacchants and their principal deity, there’s some great stuff for booby traps in sporting goods stores. Rope. Twine. Nets. Sharp, pointy tools of all kinds, perfect for throwing and getting stabbity.

But to get the best selection, you have to be in a pretty big city, full of people who are desperate to buy things to get them closer to nature. That’s why Granuaile and I were in a store in Thessalonika, a large port city to the north of Olympus, browsing the selection of sharpened instruments designed to kill and gut all the animals people love. My theory was that someone out there had to make knives of bronze or other materials besides steel, and if we picked up enough of them, we’d be able to handle a few Bacchants. We’d emerged from the Olympian wilderness near the tiny village of Petra and hired a car from there to drive us all the way to Thessalonika.

We arrived near dinnertime and got a hotel room, primarily to clean up. I trimmed my beard, which was getting a bit scraggly after weeks of neglect, and felt better without all the hair on my neck. A bit of channel surfing found a station that played old American movies, and Oberon was happy. We left him stretched out on the king bed, watching When Harry Met Sally.

You’ll love it, I told him before we closed the door. It will reaffirm your contention that human mating habits are stupid.

<I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming, Atticus. It’s more than a contention; it’s an axiom. I could construct proofs with it.>

Is that a fact?

<You watch. Someday I’ll have puppies, and I’ll sit them down, or sit on them, and I’ll say, “Given: Atticus and Clever Girl are humans. Given: Humans have mating habits. Prove: Human mating habits are stupid. Proof: Watch them mate. Q.E.D.”>

I think your logic broke down there at the end, buddy, but you keep working on it.

The apprentice and I shared an awkward supper, the unsaid words from the cave remaining unsaid yet hanging in the air between us like little comic book balloons that someone had erased. I cannot speak for her, but my feeling was that our personal drama would have to wait until we had a safe soap opera setting in which to emote. We’d been interrupted twice in getting her bound to the earth, and it was a good bet we’d be interrupted again while those who wanted us dead had a general fix on our location. We needed a change of venue, and she agreed. The only way to do that was to figure out how the Olympians—or Bacchus anyway—had rigged such a trap for us and then dismantle it. We had to go back once more.

To that end, Granuaile and I received a few stares once we visited the sporting goods store. I had Fragarach strapped on but camouflaged, she had her “walking stick” with her, and we were buying more tent stakes and exotic bladed weapons than one could reasonably expect to use on a camping trip.

All the knives were under glass, so we had to have a salesperson help us. Niko—the name on his tag—was a youngish lad in his mid-twenties, handsome enough, and extremely friendly with Granuaile and anxious to help, since I kept quiet. His huge mistake was assuming that Granuaile didn’t know anything about knives. Well, maybe that’s ungenerous of me. Perhaps he was simply trying to appear competent when he spoke to her about balance and throwing weights and the like, but it came across as patronizing, and I was irritated even though he wasn’t talking to me. In truth, Granuaile had surpassed me in throwing a good while back; her aim was naturally better than mine, and she’d been practicing steadily for twelve years.

Evidence that Granuaile found his tone irritating as well came soon enough. She hefted a knife, did a little flourish with it that looked far more complicated than it really was, spun around to the right, and tossed it into the bull’s-eye of a dartboard behind Niko’s head.

Niko didn’t try to explain anything after that.

I turned away, partly to hide my amusement and partly to conduct a routine check of my surroundings. Shoppers in thick-toed boots were milling around. There was a whole lot more flannel on display than you’d see in most places, both on the mannequins and on the shoppers. No one seemed to think this was odd or a bad idea.

There was a pair of clowns in pasty white makeup and bulbous red noses having an animated discussion over two different coils of rope. Their serious expressions didn’t match the lurid grins painted on their faces or the enormous colored wigs on their heads. I wasn’t sure what they could be discussing. Were some ropes inherently funnier than others?

Their presence was odd too, but it seemed as if Granuaile and I were getting more stares than the clowns were. I could take the Johnny Bravo route and assume we just looked really good in our jeans, but my suspicious nature still thought there was something strange about this crowd. I interrupted Granuaile’s perusal to tell her in Old Irish to tap the stored magic in my bear charm if she wished. I formed the binding and showed her how to draw upon it.

“Thanks, sensei.” She smiled and touched my arm briefly. I got one of those little sensations where you feel like you need to shiver but in truth you’re flushing and damn it why had the Diamondbacks’ catchers been so abysmal at the plate last year? Oh, yeah. I had it bad.

Granuaile returned to browsing Niko’s wares, and I resumed my attitude of watchfulness. A flash of white near the entrance drew my eye. It was a white flag—depending on the situation, a symbol of peace, parley, or surrender. My eyes trailed down from the flag to a pale hand and from thence to a black sports coat and a pale face framed by straight blond hair, so blond that it was nearly white.

It was Leif Helgarson, hale and whole and healthy as ever a dead guy could be.

I immediately became a twitching bundle of WTF and drew Fragarach right there in the store, dispelling the camouflage on it so that my erstwhile attorney could see it. Granuaile heard this and whirled, staff in her left and a knife in her right.

“Atticus, what—oh, shit.”

Shit, indeed. Niko had keenly observed that our body language had abruptly switched from customers to combatants, and he squalled for help. I felt a tiny draw on the magic in my bear charm as Granuaile spoke the words for magical sight.

The last time I’d laid eyes on the vampire Leif Helgarson, he was looking smug because he’d just forced me