“Flidais? Flidais. Let’s talk in the back, okay? Come on.”
Nope. Too late. The bouncer has come over to bounce Flidais, and she drops him even harder since he’s fairly skilled and able to get at least a single punch through her drunken defenses.
“Okay, really now, let’s talk. We need to go before the police get here.”
“The modern police? The ones with guns?”
“Yes. Your shenanigans will bring them for sure.”
“Very well. I’m finished drinking anyway.”
She half-staggers around as I raise the bar flip-top and let her pass through into the back. Maciej is at the door, staring wide-eyed through the glass pane set in the middle of it, and he mouths a thank-you to me for saving him. I give him a salute and follow Flidais into the kitchen area. I guide her to the back, where the employee lockers are and a sign hanging on the walls says in Polish: DAYS SINCE A WORKPLACE ACCIDENT. It has the number 173 underneath it, but I pointedly change it to 0.
“Half a year since the last fracas, Flidais, and you ruined it.”
“I dishagree.” Flidais sways as she hooks a thumb over her shoulder. “Man ruined it.”
“Your speech is deteriorating. Will you please heal yourself of alcohol poisoning? We’re going to need clear heads to get out of this.”
Flidais delivers a spluttery sigh, like an impatient horse. “Ffffine.”
Piotr Skrobiszewski, the manager of the pub, storms into the kitchen at that point, shouting in Polish. “Where is she? Where the hell is she?”
“Pardon me,” I tell Flidais. I dart around her, find the manager, and sweep his legs. He knows English, so I pounce on top of him, pin his arms, and shout in his face, “Hi! I quit! I’m leaving in two minutes. The woman who knocked out three men in the bar will kill anyone, including you, without a second thought. I’m trying to get her out of here before anyone actually dies. So just let us go and you’ll all see the sunrise, okay?” I slap his face companionably a couple of times. “Thanks for letting me work here a while, Piotr. You’re a good guy.”
I launch myself off my stunned former employer and wave at the slack-jawed line cook as I return to the goddess of the hunt.
“Feeling better yet?” I ask her as I move to my locker and spin the combination on my padlock.
“Yes. A moment,” she replies, her eyes closed.
The tumblers click, I yank open the door, unbind my staff from the back of the locker, and pluck it out. “Let’s go, please. We really can’t stay.”
Thank the gods of all the pantheons, she follows me out the back door into a dank alleyway. We hear sirens approaching and I lead Flidais to Pole Mokotowskie, the large park in the center of Warsaw where we can find plenty of privacy and a bound tree if necessary. She laughs when we hit the turf of it, feeling safe again with the earth underneath her feet.
“That was not a fair fight,” she admits, “but I do feel better somehow.”
“I hope you have an excellent reason for coming into my bar and getting me fired.”
“Fired? You quit. I heard you.”
“I had to quit because of what you did.”
“Oh. Why were you working there anyway?”
“For many reasons. To learn Polish. To make money. To lure vampires in so that I may unbind them.”
“Vampires?”
“That’s what I said, yes. They made a treaty with us and were supposed to be out of Poland by now. But they have refused to leave because of one Kacper Glowa.”
“He is also a vampire?”
“Yes.”
“You should hunt him down and unbind him.”
“I agree. I would love to do that. I’m not very good at the hunting bit, though, which is why I was working in the pub, hoping he or one of his associates would show up. One of them had appeared there before.”
“I will hunt him for you. Where was he last seen?”
“I’ve never seen him, but I can take you to one of his nests. May I ask what brought you to my bar tonight? Something about a message from Brighid?”
Flidias waves that away. “Later. Let’s hunt a vampire.”
“He may be many miles away.”
“I could use a good hunt.”
There’s a bound black poplar tree in the park that we use to shift to a wooded hill above Krakow, and I feel a grin spread across my face as the two of us jog to one of Kacper Glowa’s safe houses. There were four of them scattered around a block, each one with a concealed stairway leading to an impressive subterranean complex. There is nothing dull about being a Druid. The study period is long and intense, but the payoff is tremendous: Earlier I was pouring beers, and now I’m hunting vampires with a goddess.
We break into the abandoned house, step past the bloodstains to the staircase, and descend into the dark. At the bottom I find a light switch on the wall and flick it on, gratified to see the electricity still works.
“There were twelve of them down here?” Flidais asks.
“Yes. Thralls too, and room for more. Glowa owns all this but wasn’t here himself when we raided it.”
“All right. We need to pick up his trace somehow. Let us see what can be found.”
I follow her through the complex, moving from room to room, some of them riddled with bullet holes or smeared with blood on the walls. Flidais grunts periodically but says nothing as she inspects it all. Finally she unslings her bow and removes her quiver, placing them carefully on the ground.
“Normally I have my own hounds to help me with this,” she says, pulling off her vest, “but in this case I will have to do the thing itself.”
She strips to the skin and shifts her shape into her predator form, the tattoo for which looks similar to Atticus’s but turns out to be a breed of hound that doesn’t properly exist anymore. Hounds have changed quite a bit since Flidais was first bound to Gaia; she’s not far away from a red wolf, and if I had to settle on a species, that’s what I’d call her since her coat is somewhat tawny.
The huntress takes another circuit of the compound, her nose down and snuffling as she goes. She has to sneeze several times. I imagine the dusty skin cells of the undead have to be irritating to the nose. I certainly do not want to shift to a jaguar to find out.
She spends an inordinately long time in one particular room, which serves as a library. Dark cherrywood bookcases line the walls, some of them now splattered with blood. Rich leather upholstered armchairs squat next to varnished tables. They used to have vintage Tiffany lamps on them, but these are now shattered on the floor, colorful shards of the past. I do appreciate the smell of the room with my unenhanced human senses: pipe tobacco and old paper.
I check some of the titles they have on the shelves, and it’s not long before my jaw drops. They have first editions of Poland’s finest. I hesitate to touch the four-volume Chłopi by Władysław Reymont, who won the Nobel Prize in 1924, but not for too long: I can’t resist. And once I flip to the title page of volume one and see that it’s signed, my head swims with the treasure and I’m overcome with the temptation to steal it. An old Jane’s Addiction tune starts playing in my head.
“Do you think anyone would notice if I took this?” I ask, turning to Flidais. She looks up briefly, nods her wolf head slowly and deliberately, then trots out of the room, keeping eye contact with me. She expects me to follow, so I do after returning the book to its shelf, all the way to the spot where she left her clothes. She shifts back to human, puts a finger to her lips, and shakes her head to make doubly sure I know not to speak. I nod my understanding and plant myself in the hallway as she dresses, watching our trail from the library. There would be no reason to be quiet if someone were not here. No one comes, however, and I hear nothing.
Flidais collects her bow and quiver and gestures that we should return upstairs. She wants me to go first, however; she nocks an arrow in her bow and backs slowly up the stairs, watching our six. That gives me a shiver.
We emerge from the stairs and I say, “What—” but Flidais draws her hand across her throat to cut me off.
“Not yet,” she whispers. I follow her outside and she takes us all the way down the block before she halts, kneels, and speaks in very low tones in Old Irish.