Staked

“Granuaile!” Orlaith shouts in my head as I try to think of some way to affect this strange spirit. Its bony fingers are right on top of my cold iron amulet and it doesn’t care. “Let me help!”

No, wait—I project to her, but Orlaith has already pounced on top of the nocnica. I expect her to simply fall through it on top of me, but instead she lands palpably on its back, her teeth tear into its substance, and the whispery laugh becomes a hoarse cry of surprise and slides into a scream. Orlaith pulls it off me, teeth embedded deeply, and shakes her head back and forth like she would with a chew toy, the instinctive attempt to snap the neck. I don’t think the nocnica has a spine in the traditional sense, but Orlaith’s move shakes the creature apart into clumps of dirty vapor, and the scratchy wail fades and the bulbous eyes wink out.

Good hound! Thank you! Can you do that again, to the ones on Shango and Perun?

Orlaith hacks once and says, “Yes. But they taste horrible.”

As she bounds over to help the gods, I check the position of the fireball, which hasn’t moved, and then look around for Miłosz. He’s perhaps forty yards distant, pacing and snorting in nervous agitation. I wonder again why Loki doesn’t use the special weapons he’s acquired from me—where are Vayu’s arrows or the whirling blade, Fuilteach? Perhaps neither would survive the journey in flame and he’s saving them for a special target—Odin would be my guess, and perhaps Freyja.

Orlaith dispatches the two other nocnice, thus becoming the first wolfhound to rescue a couple of thunder gods, and as they get to their feet I say, “Eyes to the sky, guys. It’s Loki.”

They look up, spy the fireball, and snarl. In tandem they raise their weapons to the sky, and the weather takes a decided turn for the worse. Loki can survive their lightning strikes, I think—he had no difficulty with Perun the first time we met him, in a field near Flagstaff. But the Asgardian decides against escalating and moves off to the north. The thunder gods don’t pursue, since they’re supposed to protect the horse instead of chase Loki down, but they mutter about him being a coward. I privately disagree: He’s bold enough when it suits him. He simply plays the odds. Were any of us alone, he’d probably dive right in, but facing two thunder gods plus a Druid who can wink out of sight and clock him upside the head is not an ideal scenario. Maybe it’s because he’s still healing from the tomahawk I put in his back: I sure hope so. After he’s out of sight I promise Orlaith a deer hunt soon and go to soothe Miłosz, while Shango asks Perun what the hell those things were. I listen in because I want to know as well.

“Nocnice are nightmares,” he says in English. “Damned souls who choke peoples as they sleep, leave no trace. Not usual to attack like this.”

“Why couldn’t we touch them?” Shango asks.

Perun shrugs. “Is way of nightmares, yes? They get you in clutches and you cannot fight back. Only wake. Except we already awake, so no escape for us.”

“Then why could Orlaith take them out?” I say.

“Any dog, even small ones, can do this to nocnice. They guardian against many spirits. They bark at night sometimes and you think, what you barking for? Stop that. Sometimes dogs hearing and seeing things we do not, and they scare them away, protect us. Roosters do this too, but nobody like roosters except hens. Good thing you like dogs.”

Orlaith, is this true? Do you bark at spirits sometimes?

“Maybe. I never saw one before now. But sometimes I feel something bad coming, and I bark until the bad feeling goes away. Oberon does this too.”

Well, thank you.

“That was not the kind of fight I hoped for,” Shango says.

“Loki rarely gives you that,” I reply. “You have to find a way to surprise him.”

We continue from there, much more paranoid than before, but nothing else attacks on the way into Warsaw. I lead Miłosz 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 Miłosz. “Wow. The white horse of Świętowit. 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 Miłosz 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 Wisła River. There’s a genuine ray of sunshine announcing the dawn when we turn onto Ulice Lipkowksa in the Radość 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.