Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(77)

“Hi, Starbuck. I’m very happy to see you. That’s how you greet someone. Can you say that back to me? Say ‘Hi, Atticus’?”

<Yes hi Atticus happy play! No squirrel!>

“That’s much better. You’re learning very fast. Hi, Orlaith.”

<Hello, Atticus! I am so full of puppies now! They are hungry, though. And me too, of course.>

“They’ll be running around here soon before you know it,” I said, giving her some scritches. “Shall we go for a run in the woods to work up an appetite, and then maybe some sausage?”

The hounds all agreed, and I ran into the house to shed my clothes and sword and everything before shifting to a hound and leading the charge into the forest. We scared up some deer and a couple of wild turkeys and annoyed the everloving hell out of some squirrels, which automatically counted as a Glorious Outing in the minds of the hounds.

But I did note that Orlaith was close to delivering and shouldn’t be shifting anymore. I had to get back to Tasmania, and Granuaile would be occupied in Poland for a while enforcing the treaty we signed with Leif Helgarson: All vampires were supposed to be out now, yet some were being stubborn about it and staying, challenging both Leif’s leadership and us. We really needed someone to stay at the cabin and look after Orlaith and, eventually, her puppies while we took care of business abroad. We didn’t have any solid friends in the area, but I did think of a potential lead: Earnest Goggins-Smythe, the owner of Jack, the purloined poodle Oberon and I had tracked down and returned during the same caper that resulted in us adopting Starbuck. He was a British expat who lived in Eugene, but that wasn’t so far away as to make it inconvenient.

I gave him a call once we got back to the cabin and I had dressed and put some burgers on the grill.

“Hey, Earnest. Connor Molloy here,” I said, using my current alias. “How’s Jack?”

“Oh, he’s brilliant!” I almost laughed aloud because I’d forgotten how hoity and toity Earnest’s British accent sounded. “How is Oberon?”

His question perfectly summed up why Earnest was an excellent choice: He didn’t give a damn about me, but he couldn’t wait to hear how my hound was doing.

“Very well, but hoping I could ask you for a favor. The well-paid kind.”

“Training Oberon for the circuit?”

“Oh, no. I’m not interested in showing him. But I do need another wolfhound and a Boston looked after for a while. I wondered if you’d like to come out to the cabin and watch over everyone. Jack’s welcome too, of course, and your boxer, Algy. Plenty of room for them to run around out here, and you can even work from here like you do at home.”

“I can?”

“Well, we have great Wi-Fi.” Earnest wrote code and only left the house for groceries and trips to the dog park.

“That’s very tempting, and in theory it’s possible,” he said. “I’d need some more details, though.” We talked those through, and since I’d recovered quite the hoard of gold from Arizona recently, I was able to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He showed up in the morning with his dogs, and they got on famously with Orlaith and Starbuck once the compulsory round of polite ass-sniffing had been observed. I gave him the keys, showed him around, and he was engaged for an indefinite time. I hoped I’d be back before Orlaith’s litter dropped, but if not, she and her puppies would be looked after until either Granuaile or I could return.

Orlaith and Starbuck were so distracted by the two new hounds and a kind human who was ready to feed them that they hardly noticed when Oberon and I shifted back to Tasmania.

Nine days into our healing project and more than two hundred devils cured of facial tumor disease, the Morrigan visited me in my dreams. It tore me away from a nightmare where I was trying to teach high school science to a room full of creationists, so I was mightily relieved to see the Chooser of the Slain.

“Your idyll is almost at an end, Siodhachan,” she said, a tiny smirk on her blood-red lips. If she was amused, it meant I was in for some pain.

“Huh? What idyll? I was trying to explain to my students that they were all going to believe in evolution when an antibacterial-resistant supermicrobe infected their spleens, and it wasn’t going well.” I looked around at my new surroundings. The Morrigan and I were sitting across from each other in the healing pools of Mag Mell. Birds chirped in hedges, and nymphs frolicked and giggled close by. We were neither of us clothed. “I think this is much more idyllic,” I concluded.

“This idyll is almost at an end as well. I am paying you a courtesy by informing you that Loki will cease his scheming soon. He’s going to act.”

“Act? As in begin Ragnarok?”

“Yes. He has just left the hell of Christians after speaking with Lucifer. Since I know you have numerous affairs, I thought you might like to put them in order. I can’t protect you as I once did. I’ll see you soon, Siodhachan.”

“Wait, Morrigan—”

My protest did me no good. I woke up under a canopy of swamp gum trees with a shout, and Oberon leapt straight out of his slumber, ready to fight.

<What is it, Atticus? Cybermen? Borgs? Frakkin’ toasters?>

“No, it was the Morrigan.”

<So I wasn’t even close.>

“Not even. What were you dreaming about there—The Matrix?”