“You’ve hounded me for centuries,” I growled. “And you might have hounded me for many more, but your petty jealousy of Brighid has brought you to this end.”

“Your end, you mean!” Aenghus roared, completely unhinged by my reducing all his elaborate schemes to a case of sibling rivalry. He lunged at me with a long diagonal hack, with all his strength behind it. But I knew how he fought now—the same old way. I saw it coming, and I knew I was faster, and stronger too. I parried his blade by sweeping mine in a rainbow move to my right, so that his sword was underneath mine when I brought it down and his sword arm was crossed in front of him. I stepped forward quickly and whipped Fragarach through his neck before he could regain his balance and try a backhand. His head tumbled backward, eyes wide in surprise, and wound up bouncing off his back as he fell to the ground.

“No, I meant your end,” I said.

Death laughed again and goaded his horse toward us. I stood aside as the rider reached down and scooped Aenghus Óg’s head from the ground, then began to tack his horse back around to the fire pit, laughing maniacally all the while.

The love god’s mouth did not move, but still I heard him protest, No! The Morrigan is supposed to take me! Not you! Morrigan! Take me to Tír na nÓg! Morrigaaaaan!

The pale horse of Death leapt with its rider and cargo into the fire pit and descended back to hell, and I was finally free of Aenghus Óg.

Chapter 25

"All right, that’s over. Now get me off this chain and buy me a steak," Oberon said.

You got it, buddy. Let me get the werewolf free first so the Pack doesn’t think I’m insulting them. You understand the need for diplomacy here, right?

"Yeah, but, jeez, they have such fragile egos. You wouldn’t think they’d be so sensitive."

The werewolves gave me some appreciative yips as I approached Hal and took the black bag off his head. His eyes were yellow and his wolf wanted out, but the silver wrapped around him was preventing it. His chest was heaving, and he was just barely able to hold on to his language faculties.

“Thanks … Atticus,” he managed. “Saw through pack link … you know red-haired woman … who warned about silver traps.”

“Yes, I do. That was Flidais.” I frowned as I bent to examine his chains. They were locked with a padlock, and I wasn’t a locksmith. Trying to dissolve the chains magically would take too much time. Someone had to have the key. “Why do you ask?”

“She was the one … who kidnapped us!”

“What? I thought that was Emily.”

“No.” He shook his head. “No. She drove car. Flidais talked us into … backseat.”

I looked over at Oberon. “Why didn’t you mention this before?” I asked aloud so all could hear.

"I was going to, but you haven’t exactly let me talk very much. Hush, Oberon, quiet, Oberon, not now, Oberon—"

“Fair enough,” I said. “Hal, I need a key. Any idea who has it?”

He jerked his chin in the direction of Radomila’s remains. “Dead witch.”

“Yuck. That’s going to be messy.” I walked over to the other side of the cabin where the cage was and grimaced at Laksha’s handiwork. Radomila had been wearing a fine leather jacket, and once I dragged her corpse to the edge of the cage where I could reach her pockets, I found several keys in her right one. There was a lock on the cage she was in, and I unlocked that first to go inside and retrieve the necklace for Laksha. It was a bloody mess—the phrase “o’ersized with coagulate gore” came to mind—but since she had caused it, I figured she couldn’t complain.

I went over to Hal next, who was panting heavily in anticipation. “Are you going to go wolf as soon as I unlock this?”

He nodded, too wound up to answer.

“All right. Tell the Pack this for me: If they see Flidais, leave her alone. She has promised to come back and help with your wounded. What I need you to do is go after Emily and bring me her head.”

That got his attention. “Her … head?”

“Yes, I need it. Do what you want with the rest. But don’t tear after her until we make sure those traps are disabled. Either Flidais can tell us or Laksha might be able to, when she gets here.”

“There is no need, Druid,” said the Morrigan, who had flown down and taken her human form beside me. She was na**d again—must be feeling randy after watching an ancient rival get decapitated. “The traps expired when that witch did,” she said, gesturing at Radomila’s leftovers. “They were not permanent enchantments.”

“Thank you, Morrigan,” I said, and turned to Hal and began unlocking him. “There you go. Hunt well. I’ll wait here and take care of your wounded as best I can.”

The chains smoked a bit where they had come into contact with Hal’s flesh, peeling some of the skin away with them. He hissed and snarled and changed form as soon as the silver chains were off him, ripping right through his nice three-thousand-dollar suit, for which I had no doubt I would be billed. The Pack surrounded him and welcomed him back, then he took his place next to Gunnar as they ran to the spot where Emily had left the meadow, to begin their hunt.

“Did you ever find that bloodsucking demon, Morrigan?” I asked as I unlocked Oberon. He gave me some sloppy kisses and I hugged him.

“Found and destroyed,” she said. “Did you notice that my casting came true?”

“Aye, I noticed that,” I replied, smiling. “Though it applied to Aenghus Óg, as I’d rather hoped. May I ask you something?”

“Certainly.”

“Did you tell Aenghus Óg of our arrangement? That you would never take me?”

She slunk up next to me and overwhelmed my libido with that peculiar magic of hers, which my amulet could mute but not negate. She ran a fingernail down my bare chest and I forgot to breathe.

“Oh, but I  going to take you, Druid,” she said, “many times, when you have recovered your strength.” She snaked her tongue into my remaining ear.

"Aw, jeez, here we go again." Oberon mentally rolled his eyes.

“That’s not what I meant,” I managed to say, pulling away. I determinedly began to think of baseball. Randy Johnson pitching. Great player, but not sexy. No sex. Stay focused. “Did you tell him you would never come for me?”

She laughed throatily and latched on to my left side again, her breath tickling my neck, and I reddened.

“I mean, did you tell him that you’d never take my life?”

“Yessss,” she whispered in my ear, and I had to close my eyes. Two outs, nobody on, bottom of the first. Completely unsexy.

“Why?”

She dug her nails into my pecs and I gasped, remembering when they were talons.

“I wanted him to summon Death,” she said, “so that when you killed him, I would never have to see him again. I knew he would do it when I told him of our agreement, and he did. Thus I am eternally revenged for millennia of petty annoyances. He is now in a hell he never imagined for himself, denied his rest in Tír na nÓg. Am I not a fearsome enemy?”

“You frighten me primally.”

The Morrigan sighed and ground her pelvis against my leg. What do you know? She liked to be told she was scary. Kinky.

“Why did he want Fragarach so badly?” I wondered. “I never got to ask him.”

“There is a faction in Faerie—a rather large one—that thinks you should not wield it, since you are neither Fae nor of the Tuatha Dé Danann. They think Brighid has let too many of the old ways go, and allowing you to keep Fragarach is something they point to as evidence of their claims.”

“So I’m a political football in Tír na nÓg.”

“I don’t know what a football is,” she breathed in my ear. “But I know you are aroused.” Her left hand caressed the flat of my stomach and started to trail south to my jeans. “You cannot hide this from me.”

She abruptly whipped her head to the northeast, and fun time was over. “Flidais approaches. We will speak later. You have some power to return to me. Spend the night regenerating your own, and I will return in the morning.” The Morrigan turned back into a crow and flew off to the southwest even as Flidais entered the meadow from the opposite direction.

The goddess of the hunt gave me a cursory wave and ran over to Dr. Snorri Jodursson, who looked like a silver pincushion. Of the three other wolves who had fallen, two were turned back to human form, which meant they were dead. No wonder Hal and the Pack were so eager to catch up with Emily.

"I don’t know what to think about that red-haired lady," Oberon said, as I ran to help the other surviving werewolf. He loped easily alongside me, happy to stretch his legs. "She seemed so nice at first, but then she made me kill that guy and helped kidnap us—and now she’s trying to heal that poor wolf. Do you think maybe she has a split personality?"

In a sense. She serves two masters.

"Really? Who?"

Herself and Brighid.

"So the nice half of her personality must be when she serves Brighid! I liked Brighid. She called me impressive, which showed great judgment, and she also gave me a belly rub. If you see her again, remember she likes milk and honey in her tea."

I smiled. I missed you, Oberon. Let’s see what we can do for this werewolf.

It was a female I didn’t recognize. She growled and snarled when she first saw us come into view, but she subsided abruptly after she recalled we had been with the Pack. She had been stabbed under the left front leg and had a gash across the tendons of her right. They didn’t look life-threatening, but she couldn’t walk and the wounds wouldn’t heal because of the silver traces in them.

My magic wouldn’t work on her—werewolf immunity—but if I could get her wounds cleaned up she would heal herself. Easier said than done.

“Oberon, do you smell water anywhere nearby?”

He raised his snout to the air and took a few good long snuffles—he sneezed a couple of times—but he sounded sorry when he replied, "I can’t smell anything over the blood and demon stench. Why don’t you just bring some up from the earth? I’ve seen you do it before."

“Aenghus Óg killed the land here. It won’t obey me now.”

“Do not trouble yourself, Druid,” Flidais said from twenty yards and closing, running over to help. “I can clean the wounds without water and get her healing started.”

“You can? You’re already finished with Snorri?” I looked over at Snorri, who was still lying on the ground as before but without all the needles in him.

“I am. He is healing now. And soon this one will do the same,” she said, kneeling down on her haunches and placing her tattooed hand on the werewolf’s cut leg. “Her name is Greta.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I told you I would come back to heal the Pack.”

“But you were the one who kidnapped Hal and Oberon and put them in a position to be harmed.”

Flidais hissed with impatience. “I did so only at the instruction of Brighid.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. “What?”

“Do not pretend you cannot follow me,” she snapped. “You know us well, and we know you even better. Admit it, Druid: Without your friends being held hostage, there was a significant chance you would have simply fled the confrontation. Brighid did not want that to happen, so I provided Aenghus Óg with a lever to make sure you showed up to be attacked. Thus Brighid got what she wanted—the removal of a rival—and Aenghus got what he deserved.”

During this conversation, I missed what exactly Flidais did to remove the silver—I wanted to learn the trick, because it could come in handy later—but when I looked back down, the werewolf’s wounds were already beginning to close, and the last thing I wanted was to be in Flidais’s debt. I supposed I would have to find a lever against her.

I was flabbergasted by the extent to which I had been manipulated by various members of the Tuatha Dé Danann. I had indeed been a pawn for Brighid, Flidais, and the Morrigan—a pawn who took down two very troublesome gods. Still, there were clear blessings to be thankful for: I was still alive, and my worst enemy was in hell instead of angling to become First among the Fae. I could think of nothing else to say to Flidais that would not get me in trouble, so I took refuge in good manners.

“Thank you for healing the Pack, Flidais.”

“It was my pleasure,” she said, rising. “And now I get an even greater pleasure. Did you see that one of the large demon rams escaped?”

“Yes, I saw that. Big lad, he was.”

“I’m going after him now.” She grinned. “He’s had a decent head start. Rams like him are casters, you know. It’s going to be a fine chase, a finer battle, and he’ll be a choice trophy on the wall of my lodge.”

“Happy hunting.”

“Fare you well, Druid,” she said, and then she sprinted toward Haunted Canyon, using who knew what for energy in this wasted land. The Tuatha Dé Danann obviously had access to a power source that I did not—but I could see now that they had labored for millennia to preserve the fiction that they were as limited as Druids were. Perhaps it did not matter anymore to keep it a secret: Who was I going to tell?

"You know what she’s like, Atticus?"

What’s that, buddy?

"A piece of steak you get caught in your teeth and you can’t get out. I love me some steak, you know, but sometimes it can be supremely annoying and then I don’t want steak again for a while."