Trapped

Chapter 16

Despite Manannan’s warning that the dark elves were after me and the confession of the faery assassin that dark elves had hired his band of rogues, I never thought I’d get to see them in the flesh. I guess if you’d like the dark elves to pay you a visit on good ol’ Midgard, spend fifteen centuries blaming them for everything; they’ll hear about it eventually.

The dark elves had good reason to bring me some karmic payback. I’d brought them grief with the blame game on my first trip to Asgard twelve years ago. I’d slung some lies in an attempt to distract the Norse pantheon from my true goals, and as a result Odin had briefly believed that the Svartálfar were infiltrating Asgard and were partially responsible for the death of the Norns. I learned later that Odin hadn’t been gentle with his rebuke, so the dark elves were justified in seeking to share some of that violence with me.

Too bad they didn’t count on my apprentice. While the elves focused on me being all shouty, Granuaile threw three knives, shik-shik-shik, and three Svartálfar went down before they even realized the fight was on. I charged to my right, which was also Granuaile’s three o’clock, and swung Fragarach at the clown standing there. As expected, he went incorporeal and his clown costume fell to the floor, along with a mess of white face paint and the colorful wig. I didn’t stick around to wonder when or where he’d turn solid again but turned clockwise and kept going at full speed.

I felt a draw on my bear charm and shot a glance at Granuaile before I lost sight of her around the partition. I saw that she was taking my advice to heart and moving. She had leapt up on top of the glass display case with her staff in one hand and a knife in the other, and she followed me to the other side of the partition by launching herself backward and flipping over it.

My first thought was, oh, gods, where is she going to land? But then I saw it was a necessary move. She had a whole lot of smoke boiling her way. Empty clown suits competed with flannel for attention on the sales floor.

Granuaile’s leap drew the eyes of the Svartálfar creeping around behind the partition; they’d been planning on going smoky and stabbing us from behind. Since one of them was looking at Granuaile instead of me when I turned the corner, he didn’t see Fragarach coming and was very solid when I stabbed up through the place where his kidney should be. His death scream attracted the attention of the clown closing in on Granuaile, allowing her to land clumsily but safely between the racks of loud camouflage suits.

“Keep going!” I called. “Flank and ambush!”

I wasn’t the only one yelling. The managerial type at the front of the store was no longer trying to control his requests with a tense whisper; he was shouting into the phone for immediate police support, as if gunfire had broken out at Nakatomi Plaza. He needed help now, God damn it, now!

I charged the clown who was closest to Granuaile even as smoke began to pour over the partition after her. Granuaile fled to the back of the store, out of my sight—especially since I tripped and did a face-plant in the aisle.

I’d been slide-tackled from behind by the clown I’d first swished my sword through; he’d re-formed and pursued me. Now that I was down, he leapt on top of me and plunged his knife into my back—or so he thought. It felt like a rather painful punch, but his black smoky knife was apparently magical, and my cold iron aura refused it entry. Still, I yelled as if I’d been stabbed, then flipped over, bringing Fragarach around as I did so, left to right. He stabbed me again, this time in the gut, and grinned wickedly as he remained solid, clearly willing to take one for the team to ensure that I died. I took his head off instead.

The clown I’d been charging was now trying to slit my throat. In the thespian spirit, I gurgled dramatically and clutched my neck with my left hand, then took a blind swipe over my right shoulder with Fragarach. It connected, and I was rewarded with a tiny gasp. I kicked off the dark elf corpse astride me before it could turn to tar and rose to confront the clown I’d just stabbed. He clutched his arm and hadn’t yet turned to mist. He was wincing through face paint already designed to make him look woebegone.

“Aw. Sad clown is sad,” I said. Behind him, the boiling clouds of elves were beginning to move off in pursuit of Granuaile. I heard glass shattering in the back of the store and hoped she was all right. I flourished my sword and lunged at the sad clown, expecting him to shift to mist, but he tried to dodge instead and became entangled in a rack of camo suits. I stabbed into his heart easily, somewhat bemused. They must not be able to take their smoke forms when wounded.

This execution earned the especial ire of the Svartálfar who’d been after Granuaile. Three of them solidified out of the coal-black dust and hissed, brandishing their knives. That was fine with me. The more they chased me, the safer Granuaile would be. She didn’t have the same magical immunities I did.

I backed up warily and stepped into the remains of the first elf I’d slain.

“Euughh,” I said. “Your buddy just turned me into a tar heel.”

One of them cursed at me in Old Norse—he called me the dwarf-dicked spawn of Hel’s half-dead twat, and I privately gave him props, so few people take the trouble to curse creatively anymore—then they came after me. I turned and ran for the front of the store, back the way I’d come. Once around the partition, I was near the knives and the aisles devoted to outdoor food prep—coolers, hibachi grills, meat smokers, and the occasional flannel-clad mannequin flipping a burger. So intent was I in searching for dark elves at eye level that I didn’t see the rope tied between two racks until after it tripped me. I sprawled facedown in front of the charcoal and lighter fluid but held on to Fragarach. The three who’d been pursuing me immediately fell on my back, discovering for themselves that their knives would do nothing more than irritate me.

They were quick, efficient killers, and it wasn’t lost on me that if I hadn’t been immune to their smoky knives, I would already have died several times. Since we were so close to a rather large supply of standard steel knives, I was in favor of a quick exit.

My escape, however, was not high on their agenda. I struggled to break free, but they redoubled their efforts to weigh me down, not trying to stab me now or do anything much except keep me in place. That meant they were planning something else. I managed to turn my head to see two more Svartálfar behaving oddly down the aisle with the hibachis. One—a female, I noticed—had torn the cap off a tin of lighter fluid and was now pouring it all over her naked partner. As she shook the last few drops onto his shoulders, she gave the drenched dark elf a lighter and told him in Old Norse he was ready.

Ready for what?

The answer was made horribly clear to me in the next few moments. Wearing one of those wicked grins that you never believe can exist outside comics until you see one, the gassed-up dark elf ran straight at me and set himself aflame. The fire didn’t get a chance to fully spread across his body, but that was never part of the plan anyway. The plan was to charge me and turn to mist at the last possible instant, showering me with liquid fire. That’s precisely what he did, and the bastards holding me down didn’t turn into mist until they were sure it had hit me. Oh, and the girl who’d hosed him down in the first place? She followed behind him with a couple more cans of lighter fluid and squirted them at me as if I was her personal barbecue.

Druid’s Log, July 15: Dark elves are not only quick and efficient killers but creative and pyrotechnically inclined ones.

During my younger days, some people occasionally got ideas about burning me at the stake—there was a time when tattoos meant you had made a “compack widda debbil”—but I never stuck around long enough for them to try it. I had witnessed a few burnings though. It was usually not a witch at all but some poor person who’d committed no other crime than being born gay or with a third nipple or a birthmark of some kind—and the screams were terrible, unlike any other pain I’ve heard. This is truth: “Burning alive” is a wholly inadequate phrase to communicate the agony involved in the process. It’s every nerve in your skin screaming about the apocalypse, and there’s no way you can block that out and find a happy place. This wasn’t hellfire or magical in any way; it was simple chemistry, and, as such, my cold iron amulet afforded me no protection.

I rolled onto my right side to smother the flames along my tattoos. I couldn’t let my skin melt there or I’d be unable to use magic. I activated my healing charm to start repairing and replacing cells already caving in like Styrofoam; my face and torso were on fire, not my legs. I spat out the words to unbind my shirt even as the elf with lighter fluid poured on more fuel. The whooshing sound a grill makes when the flames are goaded isn’t so pleasant when your rib cage is serving as the grill.

I lost my ability to track what was happening. I knew there were four other elves and they would probably finish me, but I couldn’t think of anything but putting out the fire. And maybe getting my next breath. The fire on my face was sucking away all available oxygen, and I was gasping for relief.

I wondered if this could be it—surviving nearly 2,100 years, only to be torched by bloody dark elves in a sporting goods store. Nerves screamed despite my efforts to block them, and my left side was entirely aflame; still, I pushed myself up and let the remainder of my shirt fall away. Some of the flames fell with it—but that Svartálf with the lighter fluid kept spraying me down to keep everything alight. A growling noise I’d been hearing for a while was coming from my own throat.

Five closely spaced pops sounded in my ears, and the elves dropped—well, four of them did. The last one managed to go smoky before Granuaile could take him out, but the standard knife he’d been holding clattered to the floor.

“Drop and roll, sensei! We have a few seconds.” She ran toward me with a semiautomatic in one hand and her staff in the other. The shattering glass I’d heard earlier had to be my apprentice securing the firearm. Dark elves littered the ground; she’d pulled off a fantastic ambush. I rolled around on the industrial carpet and discovered it wasn’t very smothery. It worked to some extent, but I couldn’t put out my face and hair, and it hurt so badly I couldn’t think what to do about it. Probably because my brain was rather concerned with cerebral hypoxia at the moment. Granuaile fired a couple more times, presumably at the elf she’d missed, and then flannel began to rain from the sky. That smothered the flames admirably, and I realized that Granuaile must have disrobed mannequins to help me put out the fire on my head. I would never scoff at flannel again. Able to suck in a glorious breath or two, I took advantage and tried to return my nervous system to manual control rather than the autopilot of instinct.

“Did we get them all?” I gave a muffled shout through a red-and-black shirt.

“I don’t know, still scanning,” Granuaile replied. “I did get that one I missed earlier when he became solid.”

With the flames extinguished, I could mute the pain enough to think somewhat clearly. “We need to go,” I said, tearing the shirt from my head. It felt as if some skin probably came off with it. “Tar stains. Security footage of nonhumans. You know what’s going to happen to the building.”

Granuaile’s eyes widened. “Oh! We need to go.” The distant wail of sirens emphasized the necessity.

“Indeed,” I said. “Help me up.” I extended my right hand and she grabbed it, hauling me to my feet.

“Oh, gods, Atticus, your face …” The horror of her expression informed me that I wasn’t handsome anymore.

“If it looks half as bad as it feels, I don’t want to know. We’ll have to find a place where I can replenish.”

Turning to the apoplectic manager, I called, “Run for your life!” in Greek. “And don’t forget that guard in the corner of the store!” It was now up to him to heed or ignore my warning.

As we moved toward the door, my skin still palpably cooking and every available pore sweating, I said, “I’m running low on magic. I can cast camouflage on us both to get out of the door safely, but I won’t try to maintain it. I need to keep healing if I want to come out of this without scarring.”

Sirens honked obnoxiously through the streets; the manager’s backup was coming, and he’d be giving them a detailed description of us, no doubt. And the security cameras would have the whole thing on tape. The question was whether Theophilus (or Leif) had any intention of letting the police have access to either.

Actually, that wasn’t the only question. Why were dark elves working with vampires? The dark elves were supposedly behind the Fae assassination attempt earlier, so did that mean that vampires were also in league with the Fae? And who amongst the dark elves had thought it was a good idea to disguise themselves in Midgard as a bunch of clowns?

These mysteries would have to be solved later. I cast camouflage on us both, and the stored magic in my charm fell to near empty; I kept my pain suppression on but couldn’t afford any more magic to heal. The manager squawked when we disappeared.

We motored through the door, flashes of movement with uncertain shapes, and turned left down Kaisareias Street, heading south by southeast, dodging around people who couldn’t see us and made no room. Some of them sensed movement—the air went shimmery for a second—and stopped in their tracks, but most were unaware that they were obstacles in a street slalom course. I was running very awkwardly; my left side didn’t want to move.

After about a block, I turned off the camouflage to preserve what little magic I had left. We heard honking that wasn’t the annoying sirens of approaching police. It was the sort of honking you hear from horns mounted on bicycles. We also heard bells. Whistles. Kids laughing. I also heard gasps and startled cries as I passed by, a half-melted madman with a sword accompanied by a pretty girl with a staff and a gun.

The source of the happy noises became clear at the intersection of Vizyis Street, where we almost ran right into a whole parade of clowns—evil dark elf clowns, grinning luridly under the streetlights. They were coming from a greenbelt that wound through the city; either purposefully or accidentally, they stood between the nearest source of magical power and us.

At the same time—or close enough as to make no difference—an explosion behind us meant someone had firebombed the sporting goods store with military-grade weaponry. I bet it was Leif, and he knew very well that I had already left the building. I doubted the manager or the security guard Leif had charmed had made it out. There might have even been some other employees and customers left inside, tucked into a corner somewhere.

Most eyes were drawn by the explosion. But some, especially those closest, couldn’t miss the burn-scarred man and the athletic woman running across the street. The man was carrying a sword, which was illegal in Greece, and the woman was carrying a firearm, which was turbo-illegal due to Europe’s profound lack of a second amendment.

Fingers pointed at us, and I urged Granuaile to keep going.

Some of the clowns peeled off and pursued us on elevated bicycles and unicycles and miniature scooters; some turned the other way, toward the sporting goods store and the approaching police.

The explosion and the dissolution of the clown parade had confused onlookers and pushed some of them toward the edge of panic. These people didn’t know precisely what was going on, but they knew the clowns weren’t smiling and it wasn’t fun for the whole family anymore.

A couple of clowns took out their black knives, and people started to scream after that—so many people think all clowns are evil anyway, and this only confirmed it. Once the screaming started, there was unbridled pandemonium.

“Pandemonium!” I said. “That’s what’s been going on.”

“Tell me about it,” Granuaile huffed beside me.

“I will if we can get out of this. We have to get to that greenbelt. Circle this block and head back.”

“Where have these guys been hiding?” Granuaile wondered aloud. “They didn’t travel directly here from the Norse plane, right? They had to have been staying here?”

“That’s a good point. Once the vampires found out where we were—”

“I don’t think they did, Atticus. I think it was the dark elves. Remember there were two clowns in the store from the beginning?”

“That’s right!” We turned left, heading northeast up Anatolikis Romylias, and a quick glance at our pursuit showed that we had five clowns chasing us. Perhaps more were following in mist form?

“So they must have made some calls, and arrangements got made on the fly.”

“That sounds plausible,” I agreed. “The vampire on the phone wanted me to think Leif had found us somehow, and that’s possible too. He can probably track me because he’s had so much of my blood.”

“That’s really disturbing.”

“Yeah. Take the lead; these guys following us can’t know yet that I’m immune to their magic knives. If we’re gonna get backstabbed, let me take it.”

Granuaile lengthened her stride and pulled ahead. I checked behind us when I heard metallic scrapes and crashing noises. The clown bikes and suits lay strewn at the corner of Atlantidos. They’d gone incorporeal and were chasing us now in smoke form. I’d learned enough about them by now to realize they didn’t do that unless they were ready to kill.

“Pour it on,” I said. “They’re catching up.”

We didn’t have breath enough to talk after that; we were off the earth’s magical grid and had to huff and puff up to Pylaiais, where we turned left, back toward Vizyis. I ran right behind Granuaile to shield her.

It was a wise precaution, for we weren’t a third of the way down the block before a wicked thrust plowed into my back and caused me to stumble. I tried to twist as I fell and take a swing at my six, but my injuries were truly debilitating and I couldn’t manage anything except a clumsy pratfall. “Granuaile! Go twirly girl!”

There was a proper Mandarin name for the sequence of movements she executed with her staff, but she’d never been able to master the sounds to my satisfaction. Out of frustration, she asked if we could rename the forms with English terms, and I agreed, since she was already working on three other languages. “Twirly girl” simply meant that she twirled her staff rapidly around her in a defensive whirlwind—front, back, both sides. It wasn’t impossible to penetrate, but it was damn difficult and would require time to study. I’d use that time to try something I should have tried earlier.

Granuaile halted and began to whip her staff around her so that I was just out of reach. The Svartálfar were bolder than they were wise; one of them tried to solidify and get in a quick strike at Granuaile from behind and got clocked in the head for his efforts. He fell unconscious, as the other four took shape around me and stabbed down quickly. I swiped at them desperately, and one was so surprised that his knife hadn’t penetrated that he didn’t go incorporeal in time to avoid the blade of Fragarach. The others became smoke, however, and that’s precisely what I wished.

Fragarach was blessed with three enchantments, two of which had to be cast; the third, the ability to cut through any armor, was always “on.” The first “castable” enchantment gave the sword its name, “the Answerer,” because it froze enemies and forced them to answer questions truthfully. The second enchantment, the ability to summon winds, simply didn’t have many practical applications, so I rarely used it or even thought of it; the last time I had used it was twelve years ago by Tony Cabin, when I’d blown Aenghus Óg off his feet. Of course, I hadn’t had access to Fragarach for much of the past twelve years. Now it would do me yeoman service. I cast the spell and pointed the sword down the street; winds gusted from behind me and blew the dark elves back fifty yards before they remembered they could solidify and stand against the wind. I howled because that had used up the last of my magic, and now I couldn’t help but feel every destroyed inch of my burned skin.

Granuaile realized what had happened and yanked me up by my unburned right arm.

“Come on, sensei,” she said. “You gave us a bit of a lead. Let’s not waste it.”

Moving was no fun at all. Neither was staying still; everything hurt. Long after the flames were out, my skin was still cooking and dying, and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. That magic had been the only thing keeping me functioning.

“Move!” Granuaile said, pulling at me, and I staggered after her, much slower than before. The dark elves would have no trouble catching up, I could tell, and they’d have us at their mercy long before we got to that greenbelt.

At least my aura was proof against their knives. Granuaile didn’t have any defense against them.

“You go ahead, fast as you can,” I said.

“No.”

“Get to the trees, buff up your speed, and then you can take them out when they solidify.”

“You’re coming with me. Let’s go, sensei!”

“They can’t hurt me,” I explained, still unable to manage much more than a rolling stagger. The faint breeze this generated against my skin was unspeakably abrasive. “They have nothing but their stupid black knives, and I’m immune. You go and I’ll catch up. We’ll take them together.”

Granuaile was on the verge of objecting again when a gurgling cry behind us demanded our attention. She was quicker to process what was happening than I was.

“Shit. It’s him!”

Him again. Leif Helgarson had caught one of our pursuers in the second he turned solid, and then the vampire had simply torn the creature in two. Two seconds later, even as we watched, another dark elf became solid, Leif blurred, and a startled cry was all the death song the Svartálf could manage before one half of his body was forcibly shorn from the other. We stopped trying to run and faced Leif. He waved cheerfully, then tore apart our final tail. I wondered if any of the street’s residents were watching this from their windows. Perhaps it was a really good night for Greek television. Leif called to me while standing between still-twitching halves of his last victim.

“May we speak for a spell, Atticus, or will you destroy me now?”

“You know you’re safe,” I rasped. “I’m out of magic.”

“Even so,” he said. “I always suspect that you are holding something back.”

“That’s reasonable,” I replied. “Come closer and we won’t have to shout.”

I turned to walk toward Vizyis. By the time Granuaile spun around to keep pace, Leif had zipped up to walk on my left. He glanced at my ruined features.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I did not think they would manage to do you any harm.”

“Eleven or twelve smoky bastards against two and you thought we’d walk out without a scratch?”

Leif shrugged a shoulder. “I have seen you lay waste to fields of opponents.”

“Field is the key word there. There was no field in that store and therefore no magic.”

“It is magic I have come to warn you about. You are heading for the greenbelt, yes?”

“Of course.”

“Theophilus has seeded it with vampires who are searching for a human with unusual blood.”

“Beware the puppet master, eh?”

“Yes, but Theophilus is not the puppet master. He is more of a skilled apprentice, if you wish to extend a metaphor.”

“Then who’s pulling his strings?”

“Someone from your world.”

“Ireland?”

“No. The other one. Tír na nÓg.”

“The Fae are behind all this? Someone there is giving orders both to dark elves and vampires?”

“As far as I can tell, yes.”

It was no more than I had already suspected, but to have it confirmed was a bit of a shock. But maybe it wasn’t confirmed after all. I couldn’t trust anything he said.

“I know what you’re up to,” I growled.

Leif’s lips turned up at the corners. “I would be intensely disappointed if you did not.”

“You’re playing both sides and setting your own odds in Vegas, you conniving bastard. You probably have some Machiavellian shit going down on other planets. Are you expecting me to make a deal with you? An alliance?”

The vampire shrugged again, hands in pockets. “None is needed. For now our interests are the same. That will serve as well as anything else.”

“I will never forgive you for using me. For hurting Oberon.”

Leif smirked at me. “How fortunate, then, that I do not seek your forgiveness. I will go ahead and dispatch the two at the edge of the greenbelt. After that, you will be on your own. What is it that the young Americans say now? ‘Peace out, brah’?”

“No,” I said, “not unless they want to get their balls booted into their stomachs,” but Leif had already raced ahead, his amused chuckle hanging in the air and fading with distance.

The night settled about us, and for thirty seconds there was no sound except our footfalls, the muffled noise of family arguments, and the wail of emergency vehicles converging on the sporting-goods store.

Granuaile finally asked a question into what passes for silence in the city: “Do vampires have balls?”

“I don’t know.”