Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(25)

<Um, Atticus, we’ve moved down the hall a bit. There’s another weird door ahead, like a full-body turnstile, and I think these things are one-way. Great big bears! The smell is awful now, and people on the other side of it are screaming and trying to get back to where we are, but they can’t. And the people on this side—Granuaile included—can’t wait to walk through to where the screaming is. This isn’t any fun, and I think you should get your money back.>

Can’t you stop her?

<I tried! She hit me, Atticus! On the nose!>

That didn’t sound like Granuaile at all. She loved Oberon every bit as much as I did. Only one thing could explain her behavior.

Oberon, she’s under a spell. These are demons at work. You have to stop her. Knock her down and sit on her if you have to.

Oberon weighed more than she did. He could keep her pinned.

<Demons? Why don’t I smell them?>

Normally demons smell so bad that it takes a herculean effort to keep your lunch down. I shot another look at the demon barker but saw no one violently ill in his vicinity. Neither the man at the entrance nor the girl at the exit had set my nose twitching.

They’ve sewn themselves up tight in human bodies. Have you got her?

<Not yet. She’s not the average human. You’ve been training her for six years.>

I’m going to dissolve your camouflage and hope the sight of you helps. You have to stop her, Oberon.

I dissolved his spell and then triggered camouflage for myself, which would allow me to slip past the imp at the door.

However, nothing happened.

“Oh, no, not now, Amber,” I said, and then reached through my tattoos to speak directly to the elemental of the central Great Plains. Speaking was a relative term; elementals don’t speak any human language but rather communicate via emotions and images. My recollections of such conversations are always approximations.

//Demons on earth Druid requires aid/

Amber replied immediately, not even pretending that she didn’t know I was around. //Query: Demon location? None sensed/

//Demons here// I replied. //My location Demons using wood to mask presence/

The bloody barker hadn’t been insecure about his height; he needed the stilts to make sure the earth never twigged to his presence.

Demons on the loose were usually the responsibility of their angelic opposites, but I’ve run into them more often than I would care to. The problem with them from a Druidic perspective was that they kept trying to hijack the earth’s power to open and maintain portals to hell, draining life in the process and endangering the elementals. Aenghus óg’s giant suckhole to the fifth circle, for example, had destroyed fifty square miles in Arizona. If there was a gateway underground here, Amber should have felt it.

//Query: Power drain in this area?// I asked.

//Yes Intermittent/

//Demons responsible// I said.

Amber’s judgment and sentence took no time at all. Her anger boiled through me as she said, //Slay them Full power restored/

//Gratitude Harmony/

//Harmony// Had I the time, I might have shed a tear at that—or celebrated with a shot of whiskey. It had been far too long since I’d shared a sense of harmony with Amber—because these were feelings, after all, not mere translated words, and it was impossible for either Amber or me to lie about feeling harmony. But I had an apprentice and a hound in danger of going through a mysterious unholy orifice, as well as another mystery to solve: Since the demons obviously had some kind of portal down there, how were they hiding it?

<Okay, Atticus, she’s down, but she’s hitting me and yelling, and that hurts.>

You’re a good hound. We are totally getting you some gourmet sausages for this. Keep her down. She’ll apologize later.

I cast camouflage successfully this time and melted from view. It didn’t make me completely invisible when I moved, but it was good enough; no one would be able to see me in time to react well.

Except perhaps the demon barker.

“You, sir! What do you think you’re doing?” He was staring right at me, even though I was camouflaged and still. Damn it. I didn’t have a weapon either. Since stealth didn’t seem to be an option, my only hope lay in speed and some martial arts. I bolted for the entrance and the barker shouted, “Gobnob—I mean George! Stop that man!”

The imp’s name was Gobnob?

“What man?” the hulk said as I whisked past him. Apparently only the demon could pierce my camouflage. Advantage: Druid.

Indiscreet shoving was necessary to get past the line of people and down the stairs. I heard lots of “heys” and “what the (bleep)s” as I endangered ankles and hips.

“Sorry,” I called. “It’s an emergency.”

<Aughh! Atticus, she got away from me! She’s heading for the second thingie!>

Grab her pants leg in your teeth and pull back hard. Don’t let her get traction!

<Fail! She’s through!>

Go after her and protect her!

The first bizarre “orifice” was ahead. An imp in a human suit was stationed there and charming people much the way the little girl imp was at the exit on the heaven side, except that this fellow was telling people, “You can’t wait to get through the next doorway after this one.” That’s why Granuaile and the rest of them kept going even when they heard and smelled something awful ahead.