Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(62)
We continue from there, much more paranoid than before, but nothing else attacks on the way into Warsaw. I lead Mi?osz and our escorts to the same bound poplar tree in Pole Mokotowskie, where I assume I’ll find the coven, but it’s only Malina herself.
“An hour before dawn is a hell of a time to return victorious, Granuaile,” she says, shivering in the cold. “I couldn’t believe the divination when I saw it. But since it is victory, I’ll forgive you.” She grins in wonder at Mi?osz. “Wow. The white horse of ?wi?towit. Did you have any trouble? Oh!” Her eyes drop to my bloodstained shirt. “I see that you did.”
“Yes, plenty. But I’ll be all right eventually.” Getting slammed to the ground by the nocnica had not done my injuries any favors. I would be an utter wreck without Gaia’s continuing aid.
“And these gentlemen are?” Malina asks, looking at Shango and Perun. I’m not sure that I should introduce them as such.
“Hired muscle,” I say, and hope the lie isn’t utterly obvious on my face. I suppose it might be technically true in Shango’s case. He’d said something about Odin wanting him to help me give Loki the finger on this one, and maybe he paid in the currency of his favor. Not that Shango would give a damn about favors from Odin. Regardless, they’re keeping their distance, signaling that they feel no need to be introduced, and I respect that. “They don’t talk much, and they’ll leave once the horse is safe.”
“Right. We should get going, then. We’ll take him to my place. The house and all the land surrounding it is warded.”
“Warded how, if I may ask? I mean, against what?”
“Well, fire, of course. Loki will not be burning everything around him like he did in that onion field.”
“What about demons and spirits?”
Malina smirks. “No problem. If they get past our wards, we have hellwhips for those. You can relax. We channel the powers of the Zoryas and they are protective goddesses. We know how to protect our homes.”
I figure that must be true. If Odin is fine with Mi?osz staying with the sisters, it must be as safe as any place he could find in Asgard.
Malina had seen we’d be arriving on foot, of course, so she rode her bike to the park. “We have to cross the river, so it will be a few more kilometers. I suppose your early arrival is good for something—we’ll have the streets practically to ourselves.”
She leads the way, blond hair resting on a red coat, and we follow through a city getting its last few minutes of sleep. It’s slower going, since so much of it is paved and I have to run without any juice from the earth. The sun isn’t above the horizon, but the eastern sky has lightened from pitch to merely gloomy by the time we cross the Wis?a River. There’s a genuine ray of sunshine announcing the dawn when we turn onto Ulice Lipkowksa in the Rado?? neighborhood of Warsaw. It’s quite nearly bucolic—fenced properties on an acre or two, mixed in with wooded areas. Pines grow there, since the soil is somewhat sandy on that side of the river and the pines send their roots deep enough to hold on. Once in the canopy of the neighborhood, the urban hum fades and you don’t think that you’re only five minutes away from a city of two million people getting ready for Christmas or assorted pagan good times.
Perun and Shango take their leave at the gate to Malina’s property. They summon winds and lift up into the skies, and once they’re clear of trees, Shango flies south and Perun heads north. It blows their cover pretty spectacularly.
“Hired muscle, eh?” Malina says, her tone drier than a week-old bagel.
“Yeah! But also thunder gods. Forgot to mention it, sorry. I thought you would know already.”
“I only divined your arrival with the horse,” she says, opening the padlock on the gate. It looks like a perfectly normal lock, but a quick flip to the magical spectrum confirms that there is a whole bunch of hoodoo surrounding it. There are also layers of protections ringing the entire fence and arcing over the property in various shades of purple, from lavender to deep violet. I’m sure that while I lived in the same building as the sisters in Tempe, their floor of the tower looked like this, pulsing with warning.
Malina Soko?owska’s funky white house sits behind a brown slatted wood fence that encloses the whole acre and a half, and the architecture is old school—I can tell by the popped-out windows with triangular tiled hats on the second story, and the giant casements for the first-floor windows are a giveaway too. I’m guessing it was built in the 1930s. There’s moss growing on the wide stone steps leading up to the main house, and a smaller set leads to the door of what must be either attached servants’ or guest quarters. Most of the coven is outside waiting for us on the steps, bundled up in coats and purple scarves, sipping thermos cups of tea or coffee held in their gloved hands. Their smiles are wide and genuine when they see Orlaith and me. Berta bounces up and gives me a hug and then asks if I would like some cake. “I knew you were coming,” she says, “so I baked you one.”
“That would be great,” I tell her, “but I’d like to make sure that ?wi?towit’s horse is happy first.” To the wider group, I announce, “His name is Mi?osz.”
A couple more witches emerge from the house and then the entire coven steps forward, grins on their faces, for introductions to the horse. He shies a tiny bit at the crowding, but I send soothing thoughts to him and explain that these women will be taking care of him now and protecting him from the god who branded him. There will be apples and oats and he’ll be able to take walks in the woods and enjoy the sky from now on.