<Fangs? They’re called canines. Duh!>
“It’s Shakespeare, Oberon.”
<Oh, so that makes it okay? Of course it does. He could call a wolfhound a kitten and you’d make excuses for him.>
There was no postscript. Nothing written on the back. Nothing else in the envelope.
“He expresses himself with economy.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Thinking aloud. Unwisely.” The clue was in the quote: Vampires ahead. The last time I saw him, back in Thessalonika, Leif Helgarson had told me that he would try to warn me with Shakespeare when Theophilus was getting close. Theophilus was the old vampire who’d set the Romans after the ancient Druids and had, until recently, thought we were all dead. Now that he knew we were alive he wanted to finish the job. But it wasn’t quite dark yet on our second day of running: That meant if Leif had left this note for me, he had to have left it before dawn, while we were still chugging through Poland. That spoke of an uncomfortable prescience regarding the route I was taking, even if someone in Tír na nÓg was doing the divining. The wind was behind us and I was sure he wouldn’t be able to tell, but I asked my hound anyway:
Oberon, do you smell the dead? Vampires?
My hound paused to sniff the air. <Nope. You smell kind of rank, but not dead.>
Smell this envelope. Any trace of the dead on it?
<Huh. Maybe a little. Smells more like a regular dude. But, wait—let me see the note. Yes. The paper smells like a dead guy.>
So Leif had written the note, but someone human had left it here, most likely at his instruction. Oberon confirmed this after snuffling around a bit at the base of the tree.
<There was a guy here who smelled like cabbage and milk. He came from that direction,> he said, pointing a paw south, <and left the same way.>
“Well, there are some kind of bad guys ahead,” I told Granuaile, “if this note is to be believed. It suggests vampires, but they still have a while to sleep.”
“Let’s go around.”
“Around where? We don’t know how far away they are or anything else. This note may be intended to make us change our course. If we go south, in the direction of the mysterious note delivery man, we’ll be in the Harz Mountains, and that won’t be fun. If we go north we risk getting pushed into the sea before we’re ready. What we do know are two things: There are two huntresses on our tail, who are gaining ground while we talk, and heading due west is the fastest route through this piece of country since it presents the fewest obstacles.”
“I’m sure the vampires know that too,” she said. “We should go around.”
“It’s just now dusk,” I pointed out. “They can’t all be up and waiting for us yet.”
“It’s not worth the risk,” she responded. “Let’s swing a single mile to the north and then turn west again. We’ll avoid whatever’s waiting ahead and lose no more than a few minutes.”
“All right. But let’s go as humans so our weapons will be ready. Oberon and I in camouflage, you in full invisibility. Oberon, if you smell anybody but us, you let us know.”
Granuaile disappeared from my sight and her disembodied voice said, “After you.”
I cast camouflage on my hound, and he shook as if he’d just gotten out of the bath. <That spell always tickles.>
Are you going to giggle? We can market an invisible plush doll of you and call it the Tickle Me Oberon.
<Who wants an invisible plush doll? You always want to be able to see what you’re cuddling. Besides, giggling isn’t my thing. Now, if you came out with a Feed Me Oberon or a Hump Me Oberon, that would sell like nothing else. Especially to people with poodles. Poodles would demand a Hump Me Oberon.>
I laughed and cast camouflage on myself. “Let’s go,” I said aloud, so that Granuaile would hear as well. I headed north and continued the silly discussion in hopes that it would help me relax.
How would poodles even know about it? They haven’t learned language like you have.
<Love is the universal language, Atticus. Put the Hump Me Oberon in those pet stores where they let dogs inside and they’ll figure it out.>
You mean put your toy in the aisle with all the other plushies?
<Exactly. Except the Hump Me Oberon isn’t a toy. Oh, no, it’s not for puppies! It’s for grown-up poodles, know what I’m sayin’?>
Ha! Oh, my gods, Oberon, the imagery…
We had gone about three hundred yards when we found ourselves at a wooded lakeshore. The water looked inhospitable; we would fight both submerged plants and scum on the surface should we attempt to swim it. If we wanted to continue north, we’d have to go around. If we circled east we’d be heading back toward the huntresses; if we went west it would be toward whatever nameless threat waited for us.
“Bugger. Boxed in and we didn’t even know it,” I said. “You okay with turning west, Granuaile?”
Her voice answered from my right. “We don’t have too far to go. It doesn’t look like a long lake. We can swing back north on the other side of it. If vampires are waiting for us, I’d rather get past them if we can before they rise.”
“Good call.”
After clearing the lakeshore and turning north, we broke into an odd-shaped field that might have been natural at one time but had clearly been cultivated in the past. Now it lay fallow, with random weeds and grasses sprouting out of it. It was the sort of place one expected to find deer and the like, but no whitetails bounded away from us. No birds chirped either. Despite being in camouflage, I felt exposed. When moving quickly like this, I wasn’t exactly invisible; the camouflage couldn’t keep up with the constantly shifting background and I could be seen as a distinct blur, especially since there was still a bit of sunlight left.
Oberon, do you smell anything?
<No, but the wind behind us isn’t helping. All I can smell is stuff we’ve already passed.>
I don’t like this meadow. There’s something out—
Chapter 10
When the blurred shape of Atticus fell in front of me, at first I thought he’d simply tripped and I almost laughed, because pratfalls have been amusing since the Stone Age. Then I heard the belated crack of a rifle to the south and Oberon’s startled cry: <Atticus!>
Stay with him, I said, as the training kicked in and I turned toward the direction of the shot. I’m on the threat. There was nothing I could do for Atticus that he couldn’t do for himself, except address the sniper. And by address I meant destroy him, no shriving time allowed. My scruples regarding the taking of life evaporate when people try to kill us.
<Atticus? Atticus! Clever Girl, he’s not answering me!> Oberon said. He sounded truly panicked and it began to worry me. But I had to worry about the sniper first. Especially after I felt a bullet whip by my ear and then heard the report right afterward.
I was still invisible, but that was way too close for a random shot—especially since he’d obviously hit Atticus while he was in camouflage. Logic dictated that the sniper must be able to see us—probably using an infrared scope. Our spells did wonders in the visible spectrum but did nothing to mask our heat signatures.
Though I was reluctant to do it, I dropped my staff and said goodbye to my invisibility. Atticus had taught me that superior fighters sometimes lose because of a failure to adapt to a shift in the enemy’s tactics. The enemy had clearly come prepared to fight against camouflage and invisibility, so it was time to mix it up. Sniper rifles are usually mounted on stands or pods and are ill suited to taking out fast-moving aerial targets. So I shifted to a peregrine falcon and flew as fast as I could. I still wasn’t terribly good at flying, but I figured it would get me above the canopy in one piece. Once I was above the trees, he’d have more trouble finding me than I would have finding him.