Two punches to the chest and another lower down drop me like a lunch lady’s mashed potatoes on a sad cafeteria tray. But I lever up one end of Scáthmhaide from the ground, mostly by reflex, as he keeps coming, determined to run right over me into the house.
He runs onto Scáthmhaide instead. His fragile papery skin, already on fire and melting, allows the wood to punch right through his flesh, and his shirt is drawn into the wound, surrounding it like a prophylactic. He’s skewered underneath the ribs and stuck, and he shrieks as his strength fades and the sun’s fire consumes him all the quicker. He crumbles to ash in an orgasm of flame, and the weight is gone as he blows away, leaving only some scorched clothing behind, which is good because my strength is fading fast too. I drop Scáthmhaide and become visible as Squads A and C stomp up the stairs inside the house. They drag me out of the doorway and over to the lawn, where I can draw on the earth easily to heal; my breath comes in short gasps as I try to lock down the pain and then address the wounds. Nothing passed through. They were hollow points and had expanded, tearing up my left side underneath the collarbone but high up on my breast. The lower one on my side just missed a kidney but nicked a renal artery, which I mend first. Removing the bullets is going to suck.
The mercs start hauling the unconscious or moaning thralls inside to hopefully prevent a call from a neighbor. I’m hoping no one saw or heard much; all it takes is one curious retiree to bring the authorities.
Realizing that a bleeding woman on a lawn might also cause comment, I cast camouflage while I heal.
Once the front yard is clear, I hear more mercs coming up from the compound. The over-muscled one—the Glistening American Hulk, who is now chewing the stogie he was missing earlier—comes out the front door, looking for me.
“Hey, Red. Where are ya?”
“Name’s Granuaile,” I say, after dismissing camouflage.
He gives me a manly toss of the chin to say hello. “I’m Dirk.”
“Of course you are.”
“You gonna be all right or do we need a medic?”
“I’ll be fine. Are your men okay?”
“Mine are. But we lost two from Squad B, and somebody in C got wounded. One of the suckers was awake in the dark. So, hey, I’m supposed to ask if we got Casper.”
“You mean Kacper?”
“That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”
It wasn’t, but I suppose he didn’t hear the slight difference in pronunciation. “I don’t know if we got him. I took a picture of the one that cooked, before he disintegrated. We’ll have to check with the money man.”
Dirk grunted and shifted his nasty stogie to the other side of his mouth. “He’ll have plenty more money after this.”
“How is that?”
“We kill ’em and he takes all their stuff. That’s how it works.”
“You mean they have vaults of cash down there or something?”
“Nah. They have computers, though, and a habit of writing down their passwords where we can find them. He gives them to his circuit jockeys, and it gets him money or intel or both.”
His voice sounds awfully bored and it makes me wonder. “How many nests have you taken down now for him?”
“I think this gets us to twenty-one.”
“Twenty-one? All this year?”
“Well, in the past three or four months. Wouldn’t want to do this forever—risk is too high—but if I make it another couple of months at this rate, I can retire to an island somewhere and drown in rum.”
I frown, wondering if Atticus knows about this. Perhaps Leif was inspired by the use of yewmen to take out nests in Rome but decided to add a profit angle. He profits doubly doing it this way: Every nest of older vampires taken down increases his power as well as his wealth.
“So what are you anyway?” he asks. “Some kind of witch?”
“I’m a Druid.”
“And that means you can take some bullets and not need a medic.”
“Sometimes, yeah.”
“That’s badass. How do you become a Druid?”
“Twelve years of study in languages and martial arts and memorizing poetry until you’re magically bound to the earth in an excruciating three-month ritual.”
“Oh, shit. Fuck that, then.”
“Dirk!” a voice calls from inside. “Report.”
“Duty calls,” he says, and this time I get a full nod of respect from him rather than a mere chin toss before he clomps back into the house, sunlight gleaming on the acreage of his triceps.
I’m blissfully forgotten and left to the unpleasant task of removing the bullets. I go for the one down low first; it caused the most damage. They’re jacketed rounds, meaning they’re composed mainly of lead and copper, and I won’t have trouble binding because of iron content.
Since they mushroomed inside me, they’ll tear me up even more on the way out if I leave them as is when I bind them, so I first take the time to reshape the bullet into a smooth, thin cylinder of an even-narrower diameter than its original manufacture. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel it as I bind the back of the round to my palm, but it does mean I’m not tearing myself any new holes. After it’s out, I bind up the skin and let the tissue healing commence.
I repeat the process with the other two bullets. It takes me an hour to get them out, sweating and weakening all the while, but I feel better immediately afterward. And ridiculously thirsty. I holler at the house and convince Dirk, when he emerges, to bring me some juice or whatever’s available. He leaves and returns fifteen minutes later with an entire liter of OJ.
“What’re you doing after this?” he asks, squatting down on his haunches beside me.
“You mean after I’m done healing up?”
“Well, yeah. After this gig.”
“I’m memorizing the collected works of Wis?awa Szymborska. How about you?”
“Maybe some Netflix. But a documentary! Animals or something. You wanna…?”
“You’re seriously giving me the Netflix-and-chill line?”
He doesn’t look particularly embarrassed to be called out on it; a tiny shrug and a smirk are all I get by way of apology. “That’s about as subtle as I get, unfortunately.”
Hmm. Aside from the stogie, he is handsome, and I think perhaps the acronym for Glistening American Hulk—GAH!—is appropriate when considering the fun we could have. It’s not as if Atticus and I have an exclusive arrangement; the desire for variety is hardwired into our genetic code, and monogamy is a patriarchal construct anyway, so I’m inclined to disregard it. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have high standards.
“I’ll give you a chance, Dirk. Recite some poetry for me right now. And I’m not talking about a dirty limerick or something you read on the bathroom wall. I mean a poem by a real poet. Go.”
“What?”
“Ah, sorry. That’s not a poem.”
“Well, wait, I can learn some—”
“I’m sure you can, but that’s not the point. I wasn’t asking for poetry as a stepping-stone to my pants. I wanted to see if your mind was as well rounded as your biceps. Turns out it’s not.”
He bristles. “What does that have to do with sex?”
“Quite a bit. I will have poetry in my life, Dirk. Poetry and asskicking. You can have both, you know. There’s a certain poetry to violence, don’t you find?”