Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(62)

<Atticus is preparing several chickens for our delight.>

He really said it just like that, didn’t he?

<He did!>

Let’s go see them. I take six happy steps, one for each puppy, before a message shoots up through the sole of my foot from the Willamette elemental. There is something that demands Druidic attention in Tasmania, and I hurry in to call Atticus outside so he can get the message as well.

After a quick hello and turning the stove down low, he joins me outside.

“Don’t give an answer yet,” I tell him. “We need to talk about what happened today.”

“Okay.”

We work it out so that he’ll go to Tasmania on the earth’s business, returning each night to make sure Orlaith and Starbuck are okay, and I’ll return to Poland to enforce the treaty.

“Don’t ever turn your back on Leif,” he tells me. “His allegiance is only to himself. You’re safe only so long as he believes you’re of more benefit to him alive. And watch out: The ones you’re after might be using infrared if they know you’re coming.”

He was referring to the single reliable way to penetrate camouflage—and, I assumed, the invisibility conferred by Scáthmhaide. The vampires had used it successfully against him in Germany. “Thanks for the reminder,” I say, and we leave it settled and enjoy the delightful chicken and, later, some private time together, with the hounds firmly instructed to leave us alone for a while. I sleep in until noon, local time, and wake to my phone buzzing. Atticus and Oberon are already gone.

“I’m in Krakow,” Leif says. “It is eight in the evening here.”

“Okay. I am shifting into Las Wolski forest above Old Town in a half hour. Where will you be?”

“At Stary Port, a sailor-themed establishment where they serve grog and sing sea shanties. The address is Straszewskiego twenty-seven. Please hurry. The singing is already intolerable.”

“I will be there soon after I shift, depending on how long it takes to run there from the bound tree.”

A quick shower and some kisses to Orlaith’s belly, some scritches for Starbuck, and a snack for them both, and I’m off. I shift into a forest on a hilltop above Krakow and descend, well rested and Scáthmhaide in hand, and give Malina a call to catch her up.

“Basically anything you can tell us about where Kacper Glowa or his alias might be would be helpful. We want to make Poland free of vampires as promised but could use some intel.”

“And where is Mr. O’Sullivan?” Malina asks. “He’s the one who made the promise.”

“He’s been called by Gaia to attend to something in Tasmania. I’m going to handle this with Leif Helgarson. He has a vested interest in making sure this gets done, and once it is, he’ll be out of Poland too.”

“And if Kacper Glowa is not in Krakow?”

“Then we’ll go wherever he is, if you can give us a lead.”

“The undead defy divination, so we’ll try to divine his thralls. I’ll call as soon as I have something.”

Stary Port, I find, more than lives up to its nautical theme. Dark wooden tables with thin tapering candles in the center of them line the walls, and the place is generally decorated in warm tones. Portraits of old-timey ships in gold frames beckon to drinkers, like Tennyson’s Ulysses, that “ ’tis not too late to seek a newer world.” Leif Helgarson has seated himself upon a square-topped stool, delicately crossing one leg over the other in a place that practically shouts he should be manspreading. He looks intensely uncomfortable as a group of red-faced drunken men shout their way through a raucous Polish sea shanty about rope burns, with what I think might have been a double entendre on the word rope.

“I am so grateful you are here,” Leif says as I take a seat. “They keep looking at me to join in. Do you know where Kacper is?”

“Not yet. Waiting for a clue from Malina.”

“So it may be a while.”

“Yeah. We should order something.”

“Please get two of whatever you wish and then you may have mine as well.”

“Have you, uh … eaten?”

He nods but provides no details, for which I’m thankful. I order two grogs with clove, cinnamon, and orange, and we pass the time reviewing what little Leif has been able to learn about Kacper and his Polish cronies.

I’ve started on the second grog when my phone beeps: It’s Malina.

“He’s in the Nowa Huta district, which got developed after World War Two,” she says. “He owns several homes that look like humble abodes built by the Communists on the outside, but they really serve as entrances and exits to an extensive underground complex. We’ve located two of the houses that contain thralls and can tell you where the hidden staircases are, but we doubt that those are all of them.”

“Okay, give me the addresses.”

What follows is a scouting mission where we take care not to be seen by anyone in the two houses Malina points us to: The Polish vampires themselves, never mind their human thralls, could be prowling about.

I notice that the houses, both dreary and in need of paint, are fully three blocks apart from each other, putting the complex underneath them at three blocks at minimum. They don’t look like anything much; a couple of decrepit cars with rusted fenders rest in the driveways, providing a disguise. No one rich or powerful could be living there.