Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(63)

“Okay, I need to try something,” I tell Leif. “I might be able to get a sense of the complex’s dimensions through the earth. The absence of living earth—the negative space, I guess—will sketch out the boundaries for me.”

“Good. Might you be able to sense the staircases as well, thereby establishing the locations of the other entry and exit points?”

“Hmm. Depends on how they constructed it, I suppose. If they built the staircases to drop straight down in flights or spiral from the foundation of the ground-level houses, I won’t be able to tell which houses are entry points other than the ones we already know. If they slope straight down, however, away from the foundations, in toward the center, I think I’d be able to pick them out.”

“I am confident you will find it to be so,” Leif says. “There is a saying along these lines …”

“Please don’t.”

“No, I assure you it is amusing! It is by way of asking a rhetorical question that the correct answer is rendered. Should you ask me if their staircases slope down at a forty-five-degree angle, I would reply, ‘Does a bear defecate in densely forested areas?’ Eh? You see? The answer is obviously yes.”

“Gods, Leif, no. You are incapable of blending in.”

“But still I labor, like Sisyphus.”

“Why are you so confident about this?”

“A straight narrow space offers nowhere to hide. Vampires are confident they will win any confrontation face-to-face.”

“Okay. Be still and let me see what I can see.”

There is a small stretch of turf nearby, a sad attempt at a greenbelt, and I kick off my sandals to communicate with the earth. With the elemental’s help I seek underground for the edges of Glowa’s bunker, and it indeed sprawls for blocks underneath us, far too much space for a single person, and judging by the stark straits leading to and from, it also features more escape routes than the two that the sisters identified. Leif was right: The staircases angle down from the surface houses to the secret complex.

“There are four more bolt-holes,” I tell him, and he gives a low whistle.

“Can you identify which houses?”

“Yes.”

“Let us investigate them and see how they are guarded.” We walk along the streets as if we had some club to visit or some coffee to inhale at a hip café.

I nod at each house as we pass, and they appear not to be guarded at all. Or at least not guarded by thralls.

“These houses contain no humans,” Leif says in low tones, after staring at each in turn. “Their defenses are either automatic or undead. That is useful information. Let us move out of the vicinity to discuss it further.”

“All right. Back to Stary Port?”

The vampire winces. “If we must. Though I find the atmosphere jarring, it should certainly provide us ample privacy.”

The earlier collection of jocund fellows has been replaced by another set, but they are no less loud and proud of their singing voices. I order a couple of grogs, and once they arrive, Leif leans over to plot with me.

“I think the compound is too big for us to handle alone. We cannot possibly cover six exits, to begin with.”

“Agreed.”

“So I suggest that I call in some mercenaries to clean out the nest during daylight hours.”

“Yewmen?” Though expensive, Atticus had used them to great effect.

“No, human mercenaries. I’ve employed them before and they are used to this work. They know what’s involved. Expendable and therefore perfect.”

“If this is during the day, where will you be?”

“Sleeping somewhere else.”

“While I will be expendable and perfect?”

“No. We send in the mercenaries through all the entrances but one. That will be their escape route. You wait for them to emerge. Thralls will either bring Kacper out, where you can dispatch them all, or he will die down there.”

“Unless he and his defenses mow down the mercenaries and run over their bodies to exit one of the other five ways.”

“Yes, unless that happens. But perhaps we can instruct the mercenaries to seal the exits behind them. Everyone must come out the one exit we wish or not at all.”

“That might work. Can you get the mercenaries here in the morning?”

Leif pulls out his cell phone. “If not, then certainly by the afternoon. This can be Kacper’s last moonrise.”

“All right. Let’s do it.”

I listen to him coldly arrange the arrival of a significant paramilitary strike force and then call Switzerland, rattling off bank-account numbers to pay for it all and get them mobilized. He has the kind of resources that Atticus used to have. We’re finished by midnight.

Twelve hours later I’m meeting the mercenaries at Stary Port with maps and objectives and warnings to look for booby traps and make sure no one gets out the way they came in.

“This ain’t the first nest we’ve cleared,” one guy says, probably the only American in the bunch. He bulges and glistens like an eighties’ steroid movie; all he’s missing is the stogie in his mouth, chewed up and tapered like a fresh dachshund turd. The rest of the mercenaries are square-jawed Euro lads who speak to one another in accented English.

“Fine. But it’s probably the biggest. Each squad leader has his breach address. You go in hot at thirteen hundred hours and either terminate all hostiles or push them to the single exit. Questions?”