I supposed I was free now, too, but, unlike the Morrigan, I didn’t want to be. Ridiculous as it seemed, I wanted to see her eyes flash red at me again and tell me I was doomed. I wanted to see another baseball game with her and train her in the hallowed yet disgusting art of chewing sunflower seeds.
And, admittedly, I wanted to feel protected again. She’d been the only one looking out for me. Without the Morrigan’s aegis, I was once again vulnerable to violent death. That had been the case for the vast majority of my long life, of course, but I knew I would miss the last twelve years of relative security. The frequency of attempts on my life had increased dramatically since I’d decided to stop running from Aenghus Óg, and having a goddess in my corner had been a comfort. Her aid had been sporadic and never free of pain, but without it I would certainly already be dead. With her gone now and two immortals on my trail, perhaps the sand in my hourglass was finally running out.
We quickly discovered that all three of us running in concealment was impractical. We lost one another and spread out unintentionally or even bumped into each other. I remained visible, since a stag running through fields was not all that remarkable and decidedly no cause for alarm. Someone might try to round up Granuaile as a horse, however, and Oberon might be reported as a stray. It was easiest for Granuaile to remain completely invisible and Oberon camouflaged, and in such a fashion they followed my lead.
Unaided, we were pretty fast critters; each of us could reach thirty miles an hour and maintain that for perhaps a mile or three before we had to rest. But with Gaia’s help, we could push that to forty to forty-five miles an hour and keep it up indefinitely, replenishing spent muscles and preventing oxygen debt.
The eastern half of Slovakia is largely rural and we had an easy time of it, especially after everyone had gone home for the evening. We slowed down to cross the occasional road or vault a low fence but otherwise stayed in a zone and ran without speaking, hopefully developing a gap that the huntresses would never be able to close. Our first trouble waited for us to the north of a lake called Vel’ká Domaša.
Domaša was oriented north to south, formed by a dam on the Ondava River. It was about eight miles long, and its surface, silvered with reflected moonlight, had slid by on our left as we ran through the forested hills on its eastern side. It was one of those mature forests that give humans a sense of security, because the undergrowth had been either choked out or taught to mind its manners and couldn’t hide large, man-eating predators. People hiked through it and preyed on wild mushrooms instead.
We slipped down from the hills after we’d cleared a wee town on its northeastern shore, a village of maybe five hundred people that I later learned was called Turany nad Ondavou. At that point, Oberon’s nose picked up something and so did mine.
<Hey, Atticus. Either something’s dead or there’s a vampire around here somewhere.>
<I smell it too,> I replied.
<Clever Girl says she smells it.>
<Okay, let’s just chill here a second, and tell her not to shift. If she switches to human, the vampire will sense her.>
<Doesn’t he sense us now?>
<We’re harmless animals now, and he’s probably looking for humans.>
There was a road ahead of us that led to a border crossing—and thus a pass through the Carpathians. The plan was to follow roughly along its eastern side. I saw nothing on the road heading north, but, scanning to the south, back toward the town, I saw four figures—two on either side of the road. They were all looking south and clearly waiting for something. They wore jeans and hoodies with the hoods pulled up, hands jammed into their pockets.
Triggering magical sight, I saw that one had the telltale gray aura of a vampire. The other three were far more dangerous, in my view. <Dark elves,> I said.
<Granuaile says she wants to set them on fire.>
I gave a sort of mental snort. The dark elves wouldn’t remain solid long enough to burn. <I should probably quip here that revenge is a dish best served cold.>
<You need to explain that saying sometime. You say it like it’s a bad thing, but to me it suggests ice cream, because that’s also best served cold. I think more people would seek revenge if it were served with ice cream. Or maybe gelato or frozen yogurt, but not the kind with fruit mixed in—>
<Oberon.>
<Yeah?>
<Ask Granuaile seriously if she wants to take them out or keep running.>
There was a pause before the answer came. <She says yes. She doesn’t want them joining up with the goddesses and ganging up on us. But we need to do it quick if we’re going to do it.>
She was right about that. The huntresses would be coming along and we couldn’t delay. It occurred to me that perhaps the elves’ sole function was to delay us.
The last time we’d encountered dark elves was in Thessalonika, and we barely escaped. There were fewer of them here, however, and Granuaile was now a full Druid with powers they probably did not expect.
Did the vampire know what we could do to him? He might be a young one and somewhat out of the loop regarding Druids. But I saw his utility to the group: He was a sensor array. We would not be able to sneak up on them unawares. He’d smell us or hear us far in advance.
<I’ll unbind the vampire first and charge from here in plain view. Granuaile should stay invisible and flank the dark elves. If she uses magical sight, she should be able to keep track of them in the dark when they turn to smoke.>
Granuaile shifted but remained invisible and evidently had a complaint when she asked Oberon for her throwing knives, for I heard my hound say, <Slobber is just one of the many fine services I provide for free.>
<Oberon, please stay here. There’s nothing you can bite down there.>
<Okay, that’s fine with me. I’ve been meaning to do some serious maintenance of the undercarriage, if you know what I mean, and you guys always freak out when I go downtown.>
<Tell Granuaile she can go. I’m going to unbind the vampire now.>
I shifted to human and focused on the vampire, speaking the words that would separate him into nothing more than carbon, water, and trace elements. With him gone, the dark elves would have to rely on their more limited senses. I heard Granuaile’s footsteps fade as she ran down the slope toward the road. She would flank them to the north while I would be charging in from the northeast.
Alerted by something he either smelled or heard, the vampire turned and pointed in my direction, but he crumpled inside his clothing once I energized the binding, and his jeans dropped to the ground with a sort of red sludge spilling out the legs. I dropped my camouflage, drew Fragarach, and charged, naked and howling, just like we Celts used to do in the good old days.
For their part, the dark elves dropped all pretense of being human. Upon the vampire’s demise, they pulled out page one of their playbook from Sigr af Reykr, the martial art that means Victory from Smoke, and turned incorporeal to avoid getting stabbed or shot or otherwise ambushed. It would have been a fabulous tactic against someone who couldn’t view them in the magical spectrum; they would have melted into the night and been untraceable. But I could see them plainly as clouds of white energy, and, furthermore, I knew they could maintain their smoke forms for only five seconds. They could spend as little as one second in corporeal form before turning to smoke again, but for that one second they would be vulnerable, and if I was right, once they were wounded, they couldn’t go smoky again until they healed.