“Neither am I, but we can’t go yet. We don’t have any money to pay for this fabulous food we’re not eating.”
<I would eat it if you’d let me lick it off your plate.>
Granuaile said, “We’ll feed you, Oberon, but in depressingly human-sized bites.”
The waiter stopped by to make sure everything was satisfactory, seeing that my monkfish remained undisturbed.
“Très délicieux,” I told him. He removed himself from our sight, only to be replaced by a large man in a black beret with hyper-aggressive muttonchops. They were imperial expansionist chops, threatening to leap from his face onto mine and colonize it for the glory of a fill-in-the-blank god and monarch.
“Monsieur O’Sullivan?” he growled.
“Oui.”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a large roll of euros. He dropped it onto the table and hauled his muttonchops away before they could execute an airdrop and establish a beachhead on my jaw. Apparently that was all the welcome I would receive from the local pack.
“Hmm,” I said. “Taciturn.”
“Aloof,” Granuaile said.
<Or starving.>
“He was also in a hurry to leave, and that was a hint in itself. Let’s go.”
“Yes, let’s.”
<But … the food!>
Granuaile abandoned her earlier promise to feed him tiny bites and put her plate on the chair next to her for Oberon’s easy access. I peeled off some bills and left them on the table as Oberon hoovered up the turbot.
We picked up our camouflaged weapons and the belts and exited, Oberon lamenting the waste of my monkfish. <There are starving puppies in Iowa who’d be grateful for that food,> he said, <but I could be grateful on their behalf.> Privately, I mourned with him; dinner had not gone as I’d planned. I’d rather hoped to do my best to be a communicative male and verbalize a feeling or three to Granuaile, demonstrating that I, at least, had evolved beyond grunting, but circumstances had stolen my opportunity. I hoped I would have another soon.
The Strait of Dover—or, from the French perspective, the Pas-de-Calais—beckoned to us in the dark. The Morrigan had promised us a way out if we could make it to Herne’s forest on the other side. Crossing the strait would leave us at our most vulnerable, and I seriously doubted Oberon’s ability to swim twenty-one miles unaided.
We waded out a short distance into the cold surf, where Granuaile gave me Scáthmhaide, stripped, and donated her clothing to the tide. After a quick kiss—truly quick this time—she shifted to a sea lion.
I cast night vision. “All right, let’s see what we can cook up. No matter what we do, we’re going to increase your drag. But if we try to hook up something lengthwise, that’s going to mess up your swimming motion. I think we’re best off hooking you up bandolier style.”
I asked Oberon to hold on to our weapons for us on the beach while I got Granuaile rigged. It would not do to lose them in the surf.
Using two of the belts, I slung them diagonally so that they passed over a flipper on one side and under it on the other, forming an X. I buckled them on her back and asked her to roll over. She did, presenting her belly. I fetched Scáthmhaide from Oberon first and laid it crossways near the top of the X, just above her flippers—the theory being that she would not need to twist and flex right there as much as she would on her neck or her tail. At the two contact points with the belts, I bound the wood to the leather so that there was no possibility of detaching. I admired again the craftsmanship of Creidhne and the cleverness of Flidais: The bindings on Scáthmhaide were carved in and “solid-state,” immune to my cold iron aura. I didn’t know if Fragarach was like that or not, but I had always avoided touching the blade for fear of ruining the enchantments that made it so powerful. “Give that a try,” I said. “Can you swim okay like that?”
She heaved her bulk forward a bit awkwardly with the staff riding high on her chest and then dove into the waves. She disappeared for a full minute but then exploded out of the surf in front of me and soaked me in salt water.
“Very funny,” I said. Granuaile laughed, but as a sea lion it sounded like braying, and that made me laugh too and eased a bit of the tension I felt.
“All right. Let’s add on Fragarach and see what happens.” I hadn’t truly prepared it for a sea journey, but if we ever got to dry land again, I would pay plenty of attention to the blade and have Goibhniu give it some love. If nothing else, a gentle request to Ferris, the iron elemental, would allow me to pinpoint any problem areas and prevent developing rust.
I was just taking Fragarach from Oberon when his ears pricked up and he looked to the south. <Somebody’s coming, Atticus. You might want to hold on to it.>
I followed his gaze and saw a slim silhouette approaching. I triggered my magical sight and saw that the figure had an odd, churning aura in green and orange. He had magical power of some kind, but there wasn’t enough white in it to mark him as a god.
“Stay here,” I said. “Be ready to go.”
<Granuaile says we should bail and see if he can swim, whoever it is.>
Examining his clothing, I saw that it was composed of natural materials—cotton and silk, mostly. “Nah, I got this,” I said.
As I padded across the beach, I crafted a binding between the back of his suit jacket and the sand but didn’t energize it. I let it hang there, waiting for completion.
I dispelled magical sight to get a clear look at him. The moon conspired with the ambient light of Calais to provide some decent illumination, and night vision did the rest. He had on some of those slick ankle boots like Leif had been wearing, the kind with extra-long pointy toes. Not exactly beachwear. His suit was gray with a gray paisley waistcoat, and a silk cravat in an alarming soda-pop orange writhed around his neck, seemingly aware of its own hideousness.
It could be no other than Werner Drasche. I had to admit that Leif was right—he dressed like a dandy. But I think perhaps the idea behind the cravat was to distract from his face. His cheeks were entirely tattooed with alchemical symbols, the sort of squiggly signs that are reminiscent of astrology but based in elemental magic. They didn’t cross his nose or mouth, but they continued above his brow and onto his shaven scalp. I didn’t have time to examine them closely, but I’m sure they weren’t a random configuration; they were equations. Formulae. And they represented a binding to the elements of life, the way my tattoos were a binding to the earth. Leif had called them “odd cosmetic decisions,” but that was either an understatement or a failure to understand what they represented. Probably the latter: A vampire would have no need to understand alchemy.
I did not bother introducing myself. He knew who I was already. “Why are you looking for me?” I called while he was still twenty yards away.
He answered me in German. “Manche Leute muss man einfach umbringen,” he said, and then reached into his suit and pulled a Glock 20 from a shoulder holster. I energized the binding I’d made and watched him spread out his arms in a futile attempt to regain balance as he was yanked backward onto the beach and held there by his suit jacket. He held on to the gun, but he was spread-eagled now and unable to point it at me.
I was a little bit stunned at his stone-cold attitude; he’d simply announced his intention to kill me and pulled a gun.
If Leif had been telling the truth, this was the lad who’d arranged to have me shot. Whether or not it was true, he’d just tried to kill me himself. And he was trying again, albeit in a different way. Raising his bald head from the sand and baring his teeth, he tried to drain me. I felt the hit on my cold iron amulet; it pulled away from my chest as if someone were tugging on it.