Shattered: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Seven (38 page)

It hurts everywhere, and my body squirms to get away from the discomfort, but there’s no way to escape, since each contraction sets off a new complaint. Gritting my teeth, I slide my left hand to my jeans pocket—a slow operation and one that requires me to breathe in and out quickly, but at least my limb functions well enough. I wiggle my fingers in there and succeed in pulling out my cell phone, only to discover that its touch screen is completely crazed, shattered by the pressure and therefore useless. I think of trying voice commands, but it won’t turn on. So much for calling Atticus.

Testing my abs, I try to sit up, and they surprise me, letting me raise myself with only a mild complaint. Searching for the remains of the dabāva, I see nothing but a curled pile of black ribbon, like a discarded streamer or a massive accident with a cassette
tape, resting on the ground near my ankle. Could that have been it? Was that the thing that had shrouded the light and tried to pop me like a wine grape?

I gasp when I look down at myself. My arms are swollen and purple, and I’m sure the rest of me, including my face and neck, is one massive bruise as well.

Sitting up turns out to be the only halfway easy thing I can do. Everything hurts so much and I feel so brittle that each movement is slow and triggers a wince. It takes me most of the remaining daylight to zombie crawl twenty feet away and relieve myself, then return to lie down again. It taxes me more than I would have thought possible.

Utterly exhausted, I reestablish the pain block and we sleep through the night, and upon waking we are vastly thirsty. I ask Kaveri to create a small basin for us in the floor and allow water to seep through. It is cool and clear and delicious. I scoop out a few cold mouthfuls before Orlaith comes over to lap up her fill, which produces considerable noise that I might normally find annoying but in this situation is strangely welcome.

Orlaith asks once she finishes.

We could use some, couldn’t we? I don’t think I’m up to it, though. I still need a long while to heal. My bones aren’t strong yet. Would you like to hunt? I don’t know if this is an ideal area for it
.

Stay away from people. Don’t let them see you if you can help it. Run back here if they chase you
.

I can’t, Orlaith. But I should be safe here. You go see if you can find something and don’t worry about me
.

With reluctance, Orlaith leaves and stays out for a couple hours. She returns with a bit of blood on her muzzle and lies down next to me, and we while away the time with language lessons for her. Thus I spend Sunday allowing my body to mend and my stomach to growl, trying to keep my Zen even though I am impatient to get out.

When the sun slices down through the trench once more it’s Samhain, and Atticus is probably wondering where I am. Or he will, when he wakes; I have to remind myself of the twelve-hour difference between India and Colorado. While I think I might be able to join him, I don’t think I want to just yet. He’d hug me and snap my collarbone again. And he would see that I’ve had my ass properly kicked—I’m still purple all over—and I’d have to explain. And there’s the very real problem of Loki’s mark to consider. Concealment from divination is, I have to admit, a great gift; I wouldn’t have been able to achieve it myself without binding my amulet to my aura, and Atticus says there’s no shortcut to that. It took him years to do it. But this gift of Loki’s wasn’t freely given—I’d firmly believe that even if he hadn’t said as much. The price is that Loki can track me wherever I go. So if I go back to Colorado now, I’ll potentially lead him directly to Atticus on a day when his guard is down, and Loki made no secret of the fact that he’d like to kill Atticus. It occurs to me that I might not be able to go home at all. If I want to keep Atticus safe, I might have to avoid him altogether. Or get rid of the mark.

Feeling more confident in my movements than I did before, I remove the cold iron amulet from my neck and press it against the set of runes branded into my flesh. They’re red and puckered, but I can’t feel them burning anymore. I reach out to the elemental for help.

//Kaveri / Query: Heal burn?//

//Query: What burn?//

I try to direct the elemental’s attention to Loki’s brand or mark or whatever it is, but Kaveri doesn’t recognize that there is anything wrong with me now except deep-tissue damage. Examining it in the magical spectrum, I spy a soft white glow of magic within the circle but nothing I can tease at or unbind. The repeated application of cold iron to the mark has no discernible effect. What the hell had he done?

My frustration wants to have a good scream, but I bite it back. I haven’t tried everything yet. Perhaps a cup of Immortali-Tea
would restore me to a state where the mark couldn’t cling to me. Or maybe Atticus would be able to think of something when I finally saw him.

I give some thought to the realities of travel. Loki would no doubt like to have a shot at destroying Tír na nÓg, but shifting there through tethered trees would be impossible for him since he is not bound to Gaia. I could still use them all I wished. But I could never use an Old Way again, or it would give him a path to follow. I don’t imagine he can track me in Tír na nÓg, it being a plane entirely outside his purview, but he’d probably assume I was there if I wasn’t to be found on earth.

My stomach growls in agreement. “Yeah, I think we can get out of here now. We’ll have to stick to the bare earth at all times, though, because I need to keep healing.”

I pick up Scáthmhaide, moving slowly. Even though I have the pain locked down, I can feel the tightness in my muscles. Now that my bones are in shape to carry my weight for a while, it’s time to get everything loosened up.
Ready to get out of here?

Taking one last look around, I see nothing but the blackened spool of thick ribbon that must be the remains of the dabāva. I see no head. No limbs. No tail. No true way to associate its physical form with the thing that nearly crushed me to death. It is simply the darkness that lives in the closet or under the bed, amplified and malevolent and much better off dead.

It takes me some time and effort to climb the stairs; I have to lean forward and half-crawl, a ladder-climbing motion, to manage it. I’m sweating and Orlaith is panting by the time we emerge into the sunlight. Kaveri obliges me by filling in the room and closing up the trench behind us, and when it’s nothing more than an undistinguished patch of a paddy, I say, “Good riddance.”

But, in truth, I’m well aware that I won’t ever be rid of that dark hole in the ground. It will be the Colossal Bungle I replay in my mind for centuries hence, should I be fortunate to live so long. And if I should ever be proud enough to think someone
else stupid, this will be a flagon of humility ready to be poured on my head.

Of course, I didn’t choose to fail. Failure is rarely a conscious decision and it’s often out of our control, determined by things like physics and circumstance and other people. What we can always control, however, is our reaction to failure.

I shamble in jerky movements on semi-rural roads back to the hotel, where I need to retrieve my laptop and things and check out. We disturb the hell out of everyone who sees us. Most of them give me a wide berth and try not to make eye contact. One man in particular, however, takes issue with me walking around in such a condition all by myself. Or something. I honestly don’t know why he’s upset, because I don’t understand a word he says. Maybe he doesn’t like the fact that Orlaith is not on a leash. Maybe he recognizes me from somewhere. It’s conceivable that he saw me with Laksha at one point during the night we were freeing people from rakshasas, and now I’m a witch in his eyes.

His tone grows more aggressive when I don’t respond to him, and he blocks my path and gets in my face a little bit, earning a growl from Orlaith. I think he interprets that as a threat I instigated, or perhaps an insult, instead of realizing that maybe he’s the one being a dick. When I try to walk around him, he reaches out to grab me.

I don’t even think about it: Scáthmhaide whips around and clocks him on the side of the head. There’s no strength behind it and he’s not seriously hurt, but now I’ve picked a fight, and he’s the type who thinks he has to put me in my place. I’m in no shape to deal with him gracefully, so I poke him in the gut with the staff when he lunges at me, forcing him to step back, then employ a trick of Atticus’s and bind the fabric covering his knees to the earth. He’s forced to a kneeling position and stuck there, and now I won’t have to injure him. His rage face is pretty funny, though, and I laugh and flip him the bird before turning invisible and camouflaging Orlaith. We leave him shouting in the dust as people begin to draw closer out of curiosity. All he’s doing is ensuring that there will be an audience when he eventually has
to surrender his pants. If I wasn’t a witch to him before, I definitely am now. The one who got away. Whatever he was trying to accomplish, he failed. I can tell already that his reaction will not result in any personal growth.

We sneak past the doorman at the hotel because I imagine he might try to refuse me entrance looking as I do. Once I make it to the room and drop my invisibility, I spy myself in the mirror and catch my breath in shock. Heck,
I
would have tried to refuse me entrance. An interesting fact, however, is that my neck is fairly free of bruises in the front. The cold iron amulet in the hollow of my throat protected that part of me. Had it been bound to my aura like Atticus, I might have been immune to the dabāva. I’m still bruised around the side of my neck and the dabāva had restricted my breathing, but the amulet had saved my windpipe from being crushed even as my bones were breaking.

I gather up my things and call down to the front desk, telling them that I’m checking out and to charge me. Lacking the juice to turn invisible again and camouflage Orlaith too, we walk out in plain sight. The hotel staff is horrified by our appearance in the lobby but only too happy to let us leave. I rest my left hand on Orlaith’s back as we walk past a gauntlet of naked stares or consciously averted eyes, and my movements are noticeably smoother if not quicker once we leave the tiled lobby and my toes find the spongy kept lawn outside, a welcome balm to my discomfort. Energy renewed by the earth, I camouflage us to avoid attention, since my experience thus far has shown that extensively bruised women are either shunned or accosted instead of helped.

Finding something palatable for Orlaith proves tougher than I thought it would be, because I’d forgotten that this region is largely vegetarian. Eventually I’m forced to admit that it would be easier to shift elsewhere to get something to eat. In fact, we could shift to many other places. So many that Loki wouldn’t know which one was significant. Spend ten minutes to a half hour in each place, and then when I eventually hit Colorado, I
would spend a similar amount of time there, long enough to let Atticus know the situation and move on. He could move on with me. We could solve the problem of Loki’s mark together and not endanger our home.

I tweak the plan and try to factor in time. I’d take the rest of Samhain to heal and recover my strength, but we’d also jump around the globe before settling on someplace to spend the night. We’d choose a place outdoors where dawn would come a few hours before it did in Colorado, and then we’d be up and shifting around again until we arrived at the cabin on the morning of November 1, around breakfast time.

We fill the void of our bellies in Argentina, and after we are finished shifting around for the day, we spend the night of Samhain together in the Appalachian Mountains, far from all the jack-o’-lanterns and bags of candy. Upon waking, I feel significantly better. I can move without limping, albeit slowly, and the pain is endurable, like the soreness one feels the day after a strenuous workout. Gaia is so very good to me.

We flit around the globe for an hour, providing a masking pattern in case Loki is watching, until I decide we have delayed the shift home long enough. Bracing myself for the questions and the mad dash to get some supplies for a longer absence, I pull us through to the trees above Ouray.

Oberon practically shouts in my head. He faces the tree as I shift in, almost as if he were waiting for me, and it’s somewhat startling.

“What?”

The Book of Five Meats. Delicacies await those who perform their labors well
, it says—or it will say that when it’s finished. And Atticus said my labor was to tell you to read that note right away.>

I have no idea what book he’s talking about, but Atticus clearly impressed upon him the importance of delivering that message, so I say, “All right, Oberon,” in hopes that he’ll relax. “I guess he’s not here, then?”

Orlaith says, her tail wagging.

“You two have fun.”

“I’ll be fine, Oberon. Thanks for noticing.”

“Yes, I do.” The two hounds collide with joy and tumble in the leaves as I head for the cabin door, and I’m actually relieved that Atticus isn’t here to see me like this. Tomorrow I might look only mildly horrific instead of like a walking corpse. The relief flies away once I read the note he left.