Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(57)



“So ornery! If you hadn’t already had your ass kicked, I’d kick it for you.”

“I know. Sorry, love. I’m just worried about Fand, and I want to see if I can find out where that troll came from.”

“You have the apprentices to teach this morning.”

“Aye, but I don’t think it’s safe to roam around the property yet until I shut down that troll’s path to me Grove. Will ye take a walk with me into the woods to look for it after I focus a bit on me shoulder?”

“Sure.”

Once we’re back at the house I take time to reconnect with the earth, bind those tiny fractures together, and make sure the muscles are attached properly. They’ll need time to rebuild before I can use the arm, but once I’m satisfied that the foundation is set, I use that trick Siodhachan taught me to ease the pain and let the healing continue on its own as I walk. I slip me knuckles on as a precaution. No telling what we might find up there in the ponderosa pines.

We don’t have many evergreens in Ireland, and the smell is still something new to me nose. I like this forest and the crunch of the needles underfoot, the skittering noise of a kicked pinecone, and the chattering of squirrels. Greta’s walking on me right side, her breath steaming the air, and it’s a bracing winter morn—or near enough. It’ll be solstice before we know it. She grins at me and feels lovey enough to grab me hand and squeeze it.

“Feeling better?” she asks.

“A bit,” I have to admit. “Trees are always the cure for your modern bollocks.”

“How do we find where the troll arrived?”

“We can either track it by smell, because by all the drunken gods that lad had a powerful scent, or I might get lucky and be able to spot the path in the magical spectrum.”

“Smell would probably be faster,” she says.

“Aye. When we find where the trail ends, that’s where he emerged, and then I can either untether the tree or figure how to destroy the Old Way.”

“How are they different?”

“Eh. Kind of like the difference between a private and a public road. Only Druids can use tethered trees freely, because we’re bound to Gaia. Lesser Fae can use some of them but have trouble bringing other people along. Old Ways, though, built by the Tuatha Dé Danann, are like your highways. Anyone can travel them, no magical ability required except maybe having some way to see the path. That’s what I think we’re looking for. Trolls can’t use the tethers to Tír na nóg unless a Druid shifts with them. Good thing too. Last thing we need are trolls swinging their cocks all around the world.”

“Well, you can’t follow a scent trail the way you are, and if you shape-shift you’re liable to mess up your shoulder even worse, aren’t you? So that means I should probably play the bloodhound.” She sheds her jacket and drops it to the forest floor.

“What? No, ye don’t have to go through that. I’ll shape-shift and it’ll be fine. I’ll walk on three legs, keep healing and everything.”

Greta spins in a circle, scanning the area. “It’s no trouble, Owen. Look, we’re already deep enough into the trees that no one from the house will see anything.” Her hands cross over her stomach, grab the bottom of her shirt, and pull it over her head in a fluid motion.

“I don’t give a loud juicy shite if anyone sees ye.” I begin to unbutton my shirt as fast as I can with one hand. “I don’t want ye to have to go through the pain of the shift when ye don’t have to.”

“That’s sweet, Owen,” she says, tossing her shirt to the ground on top of her jacket and reaching for the fly of her jeans, “but I stopped fearing the pain a long time ago. It can’t be avoided, so I just accept it as part of my day.”

“But this can be avoided, Greta. I told ye I’d do it—”

“No. Shh!” She puts a finger to her lips and then points uphill, her eyes focused on something over me left shoulder. I turn and see a blue-skinned troll stepping from behind a pine onto the hill. He hasn’t seen us yet; he’s motioning to someone unseen, who becomes seen shortly thereafter: another troll, this one with brown leathery skin, stepping from behind a tree that’s not wide enough to hide their bulk. It’s the anchored end point of an Old Way. They’re coming through from one of the Irish planes.

I start tearing at my clothes now. “Fecking stew me bollocks in the queen’s own cup o’ tea, the bastard had friends! I’ll keep ’em busy while you’re making the change,” I say, since her shift takes much longer than mine. Two more trolls step through. “And if you can call anyone else to help through your pack link, we could probably use it.”

She nods and continues undressing. As soon as I’m free of me clothes, I shift to a bear and charge up the knuckles. Greta’s bones start to slide and pop, and that draws the trolls’ attention. There are six of them bunched together now, and I roar as I head uphill to face them in an awkward three-legged lope. Two of them have actual weapons, and the other four scurry about to find some—which means they pull up trees. One wraps his arms around the tree anchoring the Old Way, and another slaps him in the back of the head before he can uproot it. “No, not that one! We need it!”

“Urgh. Too big anyway,” he says, and by that time I am closing fast on the first blue troll. Unlike the bog troll from yesterday, he has his package securely wrapped, bless him, but has instead decided to adorn himself with the skulls of his smaller victims and the teeth of larger ones. These are strung on ropes about his neck, and so he makes hollow clacking noises when he moves. All about showing off, this one. Has a fancy club that looks carved instead of simply pulled out of the earth. I watch him hold it over his shoulder, wait for the swing, and then, when it comes around to clock me, I rear up and meet it with me brass-coated claws. They punch through the wood and shatter it into splinters, leaving the troll with a handful of toothpicks but no injuries. The leather-brown troll steps in and aims a kick at me from the left side, and of course he tags me in the lame shoulder and sends me tumbling across the hill in a new explosion of pain that pierces right through me nerve blocks and tears apart all the work I’d done to bind it together. Damn but trolls are unfairly strong. I can almost hear Dr. Sudarga saying, “I told you we should have immobilized it.”

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