Hunted

Chapter 4

I don’t think people today fully understand the genius of The X-Files, a sci-fi show that dominated much of the nineties. It had a way of getting into your head. At least, it got into mine in ways that I didn’t realize until later. Smoking men in suits now fill me with existential dread, for example. Whatever I’m doing when I see one calmly sucking hundreds of toxins into his lungs, I feel somehow that the smoking man manipulated me into doing it. I then have to flee and do something random in order to feel that I am not a pawn in his master plan. And let’s just not talk about bees, okay?

Mostly the series taught me to fear silhouettes in open spaces backlit by strange lights. That’s why a thrill of fear shot down my spine when I saw thirteen figures waiting in an onion field to the west of Jasło. Maybe they had Mulder’s sister. Maybe we wouldn’t be able to kill them unless we stabbed a shiv into the base of their skulls. Maybe they were dark elves.

The light providing the silhouettes wasn’t coming from behind them, I saw as I drew closer, but rather surrounded them in various shades of purple. They seemed like silhouettes because they wore black, but the lights swirling around them were familiar and lit up some faces I knew. They were wards I recognized; these were the Sisters of the Three Auroras, the Polish coven led by Malina Sokolowski, with whom I had signed a nonaggression treaty years ago.

Malina was in front, her wards the most colorful and undoubtedly the strongest, and her long blond hair was still breathtakingly beautiful. She hadn’t aged a day in twelve years, and neither had I. But circumstances had certainly changed. The other members of her coven that I recognized—Roksana, Klaudia, Kazimiera, and Berta—were grouped close to Malina.

She had eight new members of the coven who had never signed the treaty, and I had Granuaile, who hadn’t signed it either. If Malina wanted to get nasty, she technically could, via her proxies. Granuaile wasn’t protected from spells, as I was, but she could get nasty too.

Through Oberon I communicated to Granuaile that we should shift back to human and slow down. She shifted simultaneously with me and we approached at a slow jog, weapons in hand. “They fight with silver knives,” I muttered to her before we came into hailing distance. “Faster than human.”

“Got it.”

“And don’t stare at their parts. They use alluring charms to control people.”

“How lovely.”

Malina sounded surprised when she addressed me, though it might have been an affectation. “Mr. O’Sullivan? What are you doing here?” She did not add, “naked, in an onion field,” but it was in her expression.

“Miss Sokolowski. I could ask you the same.”

“It’s Sokołowska in Poland. There are genitive endings on names here that I didn’t bother with in America.”

“Ah. Thank you. I really do need to learn Polish. It seems congratulations are in order. Your coven is strong again.”

“Yes, we are. And it appears there is another Druid in the world.”

“Indeed. Malina, this is Granuaile.”

The two of them exchanged pleasantries, and then Malina, as was her habit, got straight to business, ignoring our nudity.

“We divined some great cataclysm to come. Might you know anything about that?”

“Well, yeah. It’s Ragnarok.”

She thought I was being flippant. “I’m serious, Mr. O’Sullivan.”

“So am I. The last time we met, at Four Peaks Brewery in Tempe, I was about to screw everything up for everybody. I’m fairly certain I succeeded. Now I’m trying to do what I can to delay its coming or soften the blow if I can’t stop it. I think we have a year left before it all goes pear-shaped.”

“Why a year?”

“Well, Loki is free from his long imprisonment, and Hel has a massive army to deploy against the nine realms. They could have started it already, you see, but they haven’t because we’ve distracted them and wounded their confidence. And I’m counting on a prophecy, which pointed to next year.”

Malina scoffed. “Whose prophecy?”

“The sirens who tempted Odysseus.”

Malina exchanged a look with Klaudia, the waifish witch who always looked like she’d just completed erotic exercises. She managed to wear her clothes in such a way that you were certain she hadn’t been wearing them a minute ago. “The sirens told Odysseus that Ragnarok would begin next year?”

I shrugged. “Not in so many words, but the evidence does point that way. They said the world would burn. Loki is quite the pyromaniac, and I have no doubt that, once Surtr leaves Muspellheim, there will be much aflame. But, honestly, I don’t know what the prophecy truly means. Maybe they’re talking about lots of forest fires during an especially hot summer.”

“I doubt that. The sirens did not speak idly to heroes of insignificant events.”

“Ah, so you’ve heard about their accuracy?”

“Indeed. Is there something we can do? Because our divination suggested some sort of fire would be started here.”

“It did?”

“Yes. You know I do not joke about such things.”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t know why a fire would start—what?” Granuaile had tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention. Once she had it, she pointed up. “Oh,” I said. “Now it makes sense. Incoming!”

A large ball of fire was headed straight for us, arcing out of the western sky. We gave ground, and a palpable shock wave buffeted us when the fireball hit the earth. A twelve-foot-tall madman cackled in the midst of it while clasping his hands together in glee.

“There!” Loki said, his face intensely pleased. “Fff-fff-fffound you!”