“Dude, what the hell?” Iron Maiden squealed in a voice a couple of octaves above his prior register.
“I don’t know, man,” Meat Loaf said, “but my chubby is gone. I’m bailin’.” They tripped over each other in their haste to get out.
The Morrigan watched them go with predatory interest, and I kept silent as her head tracked their flight even through the walls. Finally she turned to me and said, “They are polluted creatures. They have defiled themselves.”
I nodded. “Aye, but they are unlikely to provide you much sport.” I was not about to defend them or beg for a stay of execution; the best I could do was imply that they were not worth the trouble.
“That is true,” she said. “They are pathetic shadows of true men. But they will die tonight nevertheless. I have sworn it.” Oh well, I sighed inwardly. I had tried.
The Morrigan calmed herself and returned her attention to me. “The defenses you have here are surprisingly subtle and unusually strong,” she said, and I nodded my thanks. “But they will not serve you well against the Tuatha De Danann. I counsel you to leave immediately.”
I pressed my lips together and took a moment to choose my words carefully. “I appreciate your counsel and I am eternally grateful for your interest in my survival,” I replied, “but I cannot think of a better place to defend myself. I have been running for two millennia, Morrigan, and I am tired. If Aenghus truly means to come for me, then let him come. He will be as weak here as anywhere on earth. It is time we settled this.”
The Morrigan tilted her head at me. “You would truly offer arms against him on this plane?”
“Aye, I am resolved.” I wasn’t. But the Morrigan is not renowned for her bullshit detection. She is more renowned for whimsical slaughter and recreational torture.
The Morrigan sighed. “I think it smacks of foolishness more than courage, but so be it. Let me see this amulet, then, your so-called defense.”
“Gladly. Would you mind clothing yourself, however, so that we may avoid any further shocks to mortal eyes?”
The Morrigan smirked. She was not only built like a Victoria’s Secret model, but the sun streaming through the windows lit up her smooth, flawless skin, which was white as confectioner’s sugar. “It is only this prudish age that makes a vice of nudity. But perhaps it is wiser to bow to local custom for now.” She made a gesture, and a black robe materialized to cloak her form. I smiled my gratitude and picked up my amulet from the counter.
It would perhaps be more accurate to describe it as a charm necklace-not charms like you will find on a Tiffany bracelet, but charms that will quickly execute spells for me that otherwise would take a long time to cast. It took me 750 years to complete the necklace, because it was built around a cold iron amulet in the center designed to protect me against the Fae and other magic users. Aenghus Og’s constant attempts to kill me had made it necessary. I had bound the amulet to my aura, an excruciating process of my own devising but worth every second in the end. To any of the lesser Fae, it made me an invincible badass, because as beings of pure magic, they cannot abide iron in any form: Iron is the antithesis of magic, which is why magic largely died on this world with the advent of the Iron Age. It had taken me 300 years to bind the amulet to my aura, providing me with tremendous protection and a literal Fist of Death whenever I touched one of the Fae; the remaining 450 were spent constructing the charms and finding a way to make my magic work in such close proximity to the iron and my newly tainted aura.
The problem with the Tuatha De Danann was that they were not beings of pure magic, like their descendants born in the land of Faerie: They were beings of this world, who merely used magic better than anyone else, and the Irish had long ago elevated them to gods. So the iron bars around my shop would not bother the Morrigan or any of her kin, and neither would my aura do them any damage. All the iron did was even the odds a bit so that their magic would not overwhelm me: They had to stoop to physical attack if they wished to do me any harm.
That, more than anything else, was the reason I was still breathing. The Morrigan aside, the Tuatha De Danann were loath to subject themselves to physical combat, because they were as vulnerable as I to a well-timed sword thrust. Through magic they had prolonged their lives for millennia (just as I had staved off the ravages of aging), but violence could bring an end to them, as it had to Lugh and Nuada and others of their kind. It made them prone to use assassins and poisons and other forms of cowardly attack when their magic would not suffice, and Aenghus Og had tried most of them already on me.
“Remarkable,” the Morrigan said, fingering the amulet and shaking her head.
“It’s not a universal defense,” I pointed out, “but it’s pretty good, if I do say so myself.”
She looked up at me. “How did you do it?”
I shrugged. “Mostly patience. Iron can be bent to your will, if your will is stronger than the iron. But it is a slow, laborious process of centuries, and you need the help of an elemental.”
“What happens to it when you change your shape?”
“It shrinks or grows to an appropriate size. It was the first thing I learned how to do with it.”
“I have never seen its like.” The Morrigan frowned. “Who taught you this magic?”
“No one. It is my own original craft.”
“Then you will teach me this craft, Druid.” It was not a request.
I did not respond right away but rather looked down at the necklace and grasped a single one of the charms. It was a silver square stamped in bas relief with the likeness of a sea otter, and I held it up for the Morrigan’s inspection.
“This charm, when activated, allows me to breathe underwater and swim like I was native unto the element. It works in conjunction with the iron amulet here in the center, which protects me from the wiles of selkies, sirens, and the like. It makes me second only to Manannan Mac Lir in the sea, and it took me more than two hundred years to perfect it. And that is just one of the many valuable charms on this necklace. What do you offer me in exchange for this knowledge?”
“Your continued existence,” the Morrigan spat.
I thought she would say something like that. The Morrigan has never been noted for her diplomacy.
“That is a good beginning for negotiations,” I replied. “Shall we formalize it? I will teach you this new Druidry, painstakingly formulated over centuries of trial and error, in exchange for your eternal ignorance of my mortality-in other words, you will not take me, ever.”
“You are asking for true immortality.”
“And for this you receive magic that will make you supreme amongst the Tuatha De Danann.”
“I am already supreme, Druid,” she growled.
“Some of your cousins may beg to differ,” I replied, thinking of the goddess Brighid, who currently ruled in Tir na nOg as First among the Fae. “In any case, regardless of your decision, you have my word, freely given, that I will not teach this magic to any of them under any inducement.”
“Fairly spoken,” she said after a pause, and I began breathing again. “Very well. You will teach me how each charm on this necklace was achieved under the terms you described and how you bound the iron to your aura, and I will let you live forever.”
Smiling, I told her to find a lump of cold iron to use as her amulet and then we could begin.
“You should still fly from here now,” she told me when we had sealed the bargain. “Just because I will never take you does not mean you are safe from other gods of death. If Aenghus defeats you, one of them will come eventually.”
“Let me worry about Aenghus,” I said. Worrying about him was my specialty. If love and hate were two sides of the same coin, Aenghus spent an awful lot of time on the hate side for a god of love-especially where I was concerned. I also had to worry about the effects of aging, and if I lost a limb, it wasn’t going to grow back. Being immortal did not make me invincible. Look at what the Bacchants did to that poor Orpheus fella.
“Done,” the Morrigan replied. “But beware the agency of humans first. Working at the behest of Aenghus, one of them found you on some sort of new device called the Internet. Do you know of it?”
“I use it every day,” I said, nodding. If it was less than a century old, then it qualified as new to the Morrigan.
“Based on the word of this human, Aenghus Og is sending some Fir Bolgs here to confirm that Atticus O’Sullivan is the ancient Druid Siodhachan O Suileabhain. You should have used a different name.”
“I’m a stupid git, and no doubt about it,” I said, shaking my head, piecing together how they must have found me.
The Morrigan’s expression softened and she grasped my chin in her fingers, pulling my mouth to hers. Her
