Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six) (6 page)

I do look forward to a long life, if I can secure it. For one thing, I still want to memorize the works of T. S. Eliot in addition to those of Whitman—I need to keep adding new headspaces. And there are more languages to learn. Plenty of love to be made. And Gaia to protect with all of my skill.

Considering Atticus, though, I can see that eventually my giddiness will fade. I’m not sure that, having lived so long and seen so much, he has the ability to feel wonder anymore—well, except where I’m concerned. For some reason he thinks a freckly girl from Kansas is something new, and I confess that my vanity is content to let him think so without protest. He is a man unlike any other, and I love him. And I know without doubt that he loves me back. We are bound, he and I; I have seen it.

Yet he is still a mystery to me. If he feels the love from Gaia that I feel, as I know he must, then how can he maintain his laissez-faire attitude toward pollution and extinction? He only bestirs himself to outrage if a magical threat to the earth presents itself, but I think most of the mundane threats are every bit as horrific. If we can somehow outmaneuver the Olympians and our other
enemies, I will defend the earth from those who defile it. Fiercely. Starting with my stepfather’s oil company.

Atticus thinks I overreact to such things. Perhaps I am an extremist. Or perhaps he’s fallen prey to apathy like so many others, worn down and weary and too worried about who’s chasing him to muster any outrage at desecrations petty or grand.

He has a point. There is plenty to worry about now. But there is so much to cherish, too, like the smell of turf and the wind in my mane—I have a mane!—and the effortless way I can leap over fences. This run has been a salve for what Bacchus and Hel left raw; Atticus and I enjoyed a nice interlude in Mexico, but that was more about us than about my bond with Gaia. Now, touching a new patch of earth with every step and feeling the energy waiting there, I am beginning to understand the scope of my gift and the size of my new responsibility.

The number of obstacles and changes of direction required to stay hidden in Poland far exceeds anything we saw in Hungary or Slovakia. Granted, our route is taking us roughly parallel with E40, a major thoroughfare in the southern end of the country. It is no wonder that we find it more densely populated. But it has slowed us down a bit, and I’m sure our average speed has dropped as a result. We do not know how fast the huntresses are moving or even if they are still behind us. I keep thinking they will drop down from the sky and put an arrow through our chests and all our running will come to naught. But in the absence of information we must act on the vague instructions of the Morrigan.

We snuck into Katowice about an hour before sunrise, a bona fide metropolis of millions. Atticus worried about our disconnect with the earth the entire time, and I empathized completely but pretended it wasn’t that big a deal. Inside, I was all
ew
. I didn’t like the dead feeling of asphalt. Honestly, I didn’t know how he managed to
wear sandals on a regular basis when he didn’t strictly have to. I’d go barefoot all the time if I could.

But the sneaking was necessary. I needed some more throwing knives, since they had proven their efficacy so well; we had no other ranged weapons, short-range as the knives were. We found a sporting goods retailer by snatching the smartphone of a despondent clubber and conducting a search. Said clubber wore a gray suit and a forlorn expression. I think it was near dawn, like five-thirty, the hour when early risers are brewing coffee and making bacon, though the sun had yet to hint that it would be arriving soon. The clubber had yet to find a bed where he could get started gestating a legendary hangover. He was weaving uncertainly on the sidewalk and softly slurring his way through a song of self-pity. He must have struck out on his quest to score, because he was staggering through the streets alone with a half-empty bottle of Żubrówka—a favored drink in Poland that Atticus claims is a rather tasty vodka.

And thus I added the Polish drink of choice to my bucket list and learned that other people’s electronic devices can be a fugitive’s friend. Traffic was still light to nonexistent, consisting almost entirely of early-morning delivery vehicles. While the street was clear, Atticus put the phone back in the man’s pocket as I dispelled my invisibility for a few seconds in his full view, a finger resting provocatively on my lower lip, giving him a come-hither look under a streetlight. His jaw and the bottle of Żubrówka dropped at the same time. It shattered, drawing his eyes to the sidewalk, and I took the opportunity afforded by his distraction to disappear again.

Oberon said, watching the man look wildly around for me and pawing at his eyes as if to clear them.

Why?
I asked.
I’ve done him no harm
.

You’re haunted by someone flashing you on a street corner?

Oh, here we go
.

But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Kind of romantic? A vision of perfection you can treasure forever, unspoiled by reality
.

Look, Oberon, that man is lonely. He’s too skinny and sweaty, and I’m willing to bet you five cows that he’s socially awkward or he wouldn’t be staggering drunk at this hour. But now, for the rest of his life, he will remember the naked woman on the street who looked at him with desire. When people treat him like something untouchable, he will have that memory to comfort him
.

Then he’s misunderstood the nature of beauty. It doesn’t stay, except in our minds
.

We left the man and hurried to the sporting goods store, a place called Wojownika, which turned out to be only a few blocks away. I toyed with the idea of snagging some other weapons, but they were impractical in
this situation. We had no way to carry them, and cinching me up with saddlebags would be a terrible idea once I shape-shifted to anything else. Our best bet was to stay fast and unencumbered.

I didn’t like stealing, but I didn’t see an alternative. No one offers traveler’s checks for Druids on the run. I would prevail upon Atticus to send the targeted store an anonymous windfall later, if there was a later.

Oberon bellyached a bit about carrying knives in his mouth again—a pointless complaint since Gaia’s strength ensures our jaws never cramp or ache—but he has been uniformly delightful otherwise. I think his ability to live in the present keeps Atticus from panicking.

he said at one point.

My theory is that Oberon might be a master of Tao. He always sees what we filter out. The wind and the grass and something in the sky, sun or moon, shining on our backs as we run: They are gifts that humans toss away like socks on Christmas morning, because we see them every day and don’t think of them as gifts anymore. But new socks are always better than old socks. And the wind and grass and sky, I think, are better seen with new eyes than jaded ones. I hope my eyes will never grow old.

I really wish castles had never become passé. I didn’t shed a tear at the passing of the feudal system or the chamber pot, but I’ve always loved the castles themselves. They’re so much fun to invade and take down from within, and they often have secret passages and catacombs and a tower, ivory or not, in which Someone Important usually lives and rarely comes down. Sometimes they have libraries with old tomes written in a crabbed Latin script full of alchemical recipes or musings on the mysteries of magical arts, complete with idiosyncratic spellings. I get nostalgic for the old days whenever I see European architecture that evokes the age of castles, and Poland is liberally peppered with those sorts of buildings. Perhaps it was nostalgia, along with a gnawing rumble of hunger, that encouraged me to stray from the fields and enter a small town in search of food. Well, that and the insistence of my hound. Aside from a side trip into Katowice to snag some knives for Granuaile, we had run all through the night, and Malina’s coven—presumably with Loki—was more than two hundred miles behind us. Around midmorning, my hound snapped us out of the running zone we were in.

Oberon said.

I immediately felt guilty. With Gaia replenishing our
strength and with so much else on my mind, I hadn’t thought much of food. Our ability to snag three squares a day had been destroyed. We had become opportunists, snatching melons or whatever we could along the way, and once we scarfed it down, even though it was never enough, we kept thinking we’d run across something else soon. Too often we didn’t.

After a moment he added, obviously speaking to Granuaile, like
horseradish? Well, I guess you have a good excuse, being a horse, but that doesn’t explain why anybody else likes it.>

We were about fifteen miles southwest of Wrocław, crossing more farmland, when we came across a road marked E67. Looking south along the road, we saw some buildings; it was one of the many wee villages scattered throughout the country.

I said. A couple of minutes brought us into a hamlet called Pustków Wilczkowski, and there we found an interesting rural hotel with a restaurant attached called Gołciniec pod Furą. It was a white building with black boards accenting it in diagonal slashes, Tudor style, which was a surprise in itself. Wagon wheels braced the sign, so I guessed the name of the place had something
to do with wagons. Red and pink flowers in hanging pots dangled from the eaves, and the property thrived with burgeoning hedgerows and cultured gardens. We went around to the back, where the garbage and the woodshed were, and spied the kitchen door. It was open to let out some of the heat from the grill fire, only a screen door present to keep out insects, and through it we could hear sizzling and the clack of a pair of tongs by a chef waiting to flip a breakfast steak. The breakfast grill looked shoehorned into the layout of the kitchen, a clear afterthought and a recent addition. Since it was the only restaurant in town, demand for breakfast must have eventually convinced the owners to supply it.

A waiter called out an order, but it was lost on me: I still needed to learn Polish. Granuaile and I shifted to human and leaned our weapons against the back wall, leaving Oberon to guard them. We camouflaged ourselves, and Granuaile drew on my bear charm to keep her spell powered, since she didn’t have her own charm yet.

Interesting fact: It is really fun to sneak into a restaurant kitchen stark naked. I nearly collided with a stern-looking waitress, who would have no doubt kicked me in the package if she saw me. She had a severe beauty that was probably softened by a smile in the dining area or when surrounded with good company, but out of sight of the customers—customers who may decide not to tip well—her face was taut and unforgiving. There was one other waiter, a younger man who clearly feared the waitress and made way for her, and a chubby, jolly cook in an apron and sweatband working two grills: one was a wood fire for steaks and pork chops, and the other was the flat metal kind for scrambling some eggs and frying bacon. I liked him instantly because of the faint smile on his face as he worked. Maybe he was just thinking about a funny joke or the smile on his lover’s
face, but my intuition was that he was a soul at peace with the artistry of his job.

A few minutes’ observation revealed that he never turned around to face the server area unless he had a plate to deliver or a ticket to look at. He kept his attention on the grills otherwise. The two servers spent more time out in the dining area than they did in the kitchen.

The cook eventually put up four plates, two with pork chops and eggs and two with pancakes and bacon. Oberon would be grateful for any of that. But a place like this might serve prime rib sandwiches for lunch. If so, they had to put the slow-cooking prime rib in the oven in the morning. That meant it was available for breakfast if you liked it ultra-rare, which Oberon did.

The oven was behind the serving area but also behind the wood-fire grill’s stone walls, which allowed me to tiptoe back there and open the oven without being seen. The large hunk of meat that greeted me elicited a smile, because I knew how happy Oberon would be. I removed it and rested the prime rib on a prep area next to the oven. I found a couple of carving knives and a plate and sliced off a generous hunk of bloody beef for my friend. Granuaile snagged the pork chop plates and stole the bacon sides from the pancakes while the waiters were out of the kitchen, and the cook never noticed. The pancakes she left behind utterly failed to raise the alarm.

I felt sorry about the inevitable argument that would erupt when our theft was discovered—especially sorry to give the waitress an excuse to yell at the cook—but we were hungry and in a hurry and nobody’s lives were at stake but ours.