“Don’t go. Wait for your backup,” I said.
“Shut up, damn it! That’s my partner in there!”
Not anymore. His partner was already in pieces. “Well, use your baton, then! Your gun won’t work!”
“Just shut up and stay there! I’ll be right back.”
I sighed. No, he wouldn’t. There weren’t any more people coming out of the building. The clubbers were all scrambling for their cars and trying to get the hell out of there, honking horns and telling everyone else to get out of their way. I struggled to my feet and staggered to the back of the parking lot, hoping I wouldn’t get run over by a turbocharged Audi. Fragarach obediently trailed five feet behind me, since I couldn’t pick it up.
More shots rang out from the club, but Eric didn’t get as many off as Frank did before his screaming began, then ended. Sirens wailed in the night, all converging on the club, and I knew I didn’t have much time to make myself scarce.
There was a thin strip of landscaping between the sidewalk and the parking lot, where a couple of palo verdes grew alongside some blue agave plants. As soon as I reached it, I drew power to dampen the throbbing pain in my fingers and start knitting the bones back together. Then I cast camouflage again and started to recharge my bear charm. The handcuffs were next. Concentrating on the molecular bonds in two of the links between the cuffs, I weakened them until I could pull the cuffs apart, grateful that they were still made of natural ores from the earth. The parking lot was quickly emptying and the sirens were getting louder. Laksha was nowhere in sight; her end of the bargain finished, she was probably on her way to the airport in a taxi.
As I slung Fragarach across my back once again, I saw the last of the Bacchants emerge from Satyrn. Her white sheath was stained almost completely red with the blood of the police officers and who knew how many other victims, and she carried her thyrsus in her right hand. I had no practical weapon to use against her except my sheathed sword, so it would have to be hand-to-hand martial arts, with one of mine already broken.
She wasn’t interested in fighting, though. She walked straight toward me after taking a deep breath of the night air. I smelled another storm coming, but she apparently smelled me, and accurately enough that I might as well have not been wearing camouflage. She stopped about ten yards away as I crouched into a defensive stance.
“What are you?” she hissed. “I know you are there. I smell magic. Are you a witch? One of the Polish ones?” She was taller than the other Bacchants and built for pleasure. When she wasn’t covered in gore, I’m sure she was quite fetching-as long as she didn’t show her pointy teeth.
“Nope,” I said. “Two more guesses.”
“Are you the vampire Helgarson?” Now, that was an interesting guess. Besides revealing that she knew who Leif was, she must have thought him capable of something approaching invisibility and capable of caring whether some Bacchants partied in Scottsdale or not.
“Nope. I can still walk in the sunshine.”
“Then you are the Druid O’Sullivan.”
She could have knocked me over with a marshmallow, I was so surprised. But I couldn’t let her know that.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said politely, then ruined it by saying, “But not really.”
“Lord Bacchus must hear of this,” she muttered, and then she turned and sprinted inhumanly fast toward the club. She didn’t go back in but ducked up an alley on the side of the building.
“Oh, bugger,” I breathed. There was nothing I could do. No roots to tie her up with in a parking lot. No earth to hold her fast. And I couldn’t hope to match her speed, pumped up with power as she was right now and as depleted as I was.
I spat thickly on the sidewalk, delivering my self-evaluation for the evening. I’d managed to make a bollocks out of the whole situation. Most of the Bacchants were dead, true, but the one who got away would bring more, and perhaps Bacchus himself, to get revenge. Two cops were dead, as were at least two civilians I’d seen outside and who knew how many more in the club. This would be major news. It might even go national.
Malina was going to be pissed, and she had every right to be. Fights in the paranormal community were not supposed to be seen by the general public. If this did go national, anyone who knew how things really worked would read between the lines and see that the East Valley was dangerously unstable.
Police cars and fire trucks screeched to a halt nearby, and one of them blocked the exit from the parking lot, corralling the last few witnesses. I wouldn’t have time to conduct my own investigation inside the club; all I could do was remove my fingerprints from the bats by unbinding the oils, go home, and recuperate.
I jogged wearily south, leaving the carnage behind, and got rained on again when I reached Shea Boulevard. There was a commercial center there on the southeast corner, and I called a taxi from Oregano’s Pizza Bistro to take me home.
The driver looked doubtfully at my sword and the cuffs on my wrists, but I paid him cash up front so he didn’t say anything. Just to be safe in case the police questioned him later, I had him drop me off near Starbucks on Mill Avenue, then cast camouflage again and jogged the rest of the way home in the rain.
I left Fragarach on my bedroom dresser after drying it off and dissolving the bond to my body. I bound it to the dresser instead. I had a whole lot of mending to do overnight, whether it was raining or not, so I shucked off my clothes and stretched myself out in the backyard to heal properly, tattoos in touch with the earth, with a sheet of oilskin thrown over me as a makeshift shelter. I contacted the iron elemental who lurked around my shop to come eat away the cuffs on my wrists, and after the rain finally quit, my mind found rest on Lethe’s shore.
Chapter 13
I confess to feeling a sense of entitlement at times. After living for so long-after earning my senior citizen’s discount many times over-I feel I should be able to wake up in peace and enjoy a few simple pleasures. Oberon’s tail thumping a greeting, for example. Sunlight in the kitchen as I make coffee. Some classical guitar playing softly as I whip up an omelet and some sausages. And when I have to wake up from spending a cold night on the wet earth, a hot shower would be lovely. If the day wants to turn to shit after that, then that’s all right, but give me a few minutes’ harmony at the outset so I can remember what it was like to be at peace. When my eyes blink open at the dawn, don’t greet me with a giant bloody crow that’s forever branded in my cultural memory as a harbinger of death.
“Caw!” it barked at me, right in my face, and I startled backward and probably made an undignified squealing noise as I rolled away frantically from that sharp beak, leaving the oilskin behind, getting cold dew and wet grass all over me.
The crow threw back its head and laughed at me. Not avian laughter, but human laughter, a throaty contralto coming out of a bloody bird’s throat. “Lugh’s golden stones, Druid,” the crow said, “have you been lying here all this time? I left you here weeks ago, and it’s like nothing’s changed.”
“Good morning, Morrigan,” I said sourly as I heaved myself up off the ground and brushed some grass off my torso. Before it got any worse, I ameliorated my tone. “And no, I haven’t been lying here all this time. It’s just that yesterday was particularly taxing. If you’ll give me a few moments to clean up, I’ll be able to receive you properly.”
“Of course. Take your time, Siodhachan,” she said, calling me by my original Irish name. She flapped noisily over to my patio table, where rested a small black leather pouch closed with a drawstring of rawhide. She probably wanted me to ask her about it, but I wasn’t going to start talking until I’d cleaned up. I strode right past it as if it weren’t there.
‹Atticus, did I hear you talking to someone?› Oberon asked sleepily from the couch as I came in through the back door.
“Yeah, that giant crow in the backyard,” I replied, waving my hand at the window. “Don’t mess with it-that’s the Morrigan.”
‹Oh. I think I’ll stay inside.›
“Good call.”
I shook my head and sighed as I turned on the shower, waiting a minute for the water to heat up. If the Morrigan had come to warn me about another one of her auguries, I’d have a hard time containing my scorn. But
