The Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne

Author:Kevin Hearne [Hearne, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780804180764
Google: MZBoBAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00K5190J6
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2014-09-29T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

“Okay, Coy—Mr. Benally, I mean—what the fuck just happened?”

“I should ask you the same thing, Mr. Collins!” Coyote snarled. “Who was that lady and what were those things?”

“Tell me about Frank first. Is he going to be okay?”

“Yeah, he’ll be all right,” Coyote said, the anger in his voice modulating to regret. Frank’s chest was still moving up and down. “Wished he hadn’t of done that, though. He ain’t gonna get another shot, and I was kinda countin’ on him to use it on somethin’ else.”

“What’d he do?”

“He called Changing Woman and told her we had monsters here. Let himself be a vessel, see? So she sent her son, Monster Slayer, to help us out, a onetime limited engagement.” So that had been a god inside him. An aptly named one.

Granuaile’s footsteps approached from the south. “I’m assuming it’s safe now? Ugh,” she said, looking at the headless corpses. “What are those things?”

“They’re sort of like zombies on Red Bull with a little bit of ghost mixed in,” I said.

Frank moaned and his eyes snapped open. Then he closed them again and raised a hand to his head, saying something in Navajo that made Coyote laugh. He must have a killer headache. Coyote helped him up to a sitting position and patted him companionably on the back.

“All right, Mr. Collins,” Coyote said. “It’s your turn. Who was that lady?”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “I nearly crapped my pants.”

“That was Hel,” I said, “the Norse goddess of death.”

Frank turned to Coyote to see if he was buying it. “He’s not bullshitting?”

“Naw, this guy don’t usually tell stretchers about gods,” he answered. Then he asked me, “What did she want with you?”

“She, um, wanted my help, I guess.”

“Help with what?” Granuaile said, her lip curled. “Personal hygiene?”

“Um … destroying the world.” I tossed Moralltach aside and sat down heavily in the red dust next to Frank, executing a double face-palm. Saying that out loud took quite a bit out of me. What had I done when figures like Hel approached me as a potential ally? My primary reason for going through with the Asgard trip had been to preserve my honor by keeping my word. But I saw no honor in an unstained name now. If Ragnarok began because of me, no one would remember or care that I followed through on my promises. There would be no kind historians to write apologetics for me.

Usually I try to suppress any emotions that savor of regret, because they are invariably aperitifs to a main course of depression, and for the long-lived, that’s a recipe for suicide. But that doesn’t mean they can’t sneak up on me sometimes.

And, like, gang-tackle me.

I felt a slight spell of vertigo as the enormity of what I’d done hit me. I wept silently behind my hands for Mrs. MacDonagh, for Leif, for Gunnar, for Väinämöinen, for the Norse, and for the untold suffering to come because of my bad decisions. Druids were supposed to be forces of preservation, not

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