Hexed_ The Iron Druid Chronicles - Kevin Hearne [78]
“His temper may be short,” the priest admitted, “but he was right to attack the wolf.”
“What wolf?”
“That man who entered the store was a werewolf. You cannot pretend you didn’t know this.”
I wondered how they knew so quickly Hal was a werewolf, but I suspected that challenging them on the righteousness of their actions would get me closer to information about who they were. “Well, so what if he was? He was in human form and he wanted to buy a book. That’s no reason to kill him.”
“Werewolves must be slain on sight!”
“Says who?”
The rabbi was thrashing about in his jacket, trying to get his arms free by pulling the whole cloth of the fabric over his head or … something. His hat fell off and his face was flushed, and his beard began to move again. I could have bound the bottom of his coat to the top of his pants and that would have stopped it, but his contortions were mildly entertaining, and I wanted to see what he would do if he worked himself free. I stayed behind my tea counter and made no threatening moves.
“Werewolves are abominations of nature. Nearly every religion acknowledges this.”
“Ah, now I see. Do you guys also have a thing about vampires?”
“If by a ‘thing’ you mean a predisposition to kill them, then, yes, we do.”
“How do you feel about witches?”
“We do not suffer them to live!” The priest flushed again, and I decided witches were a touchy subject with him.
“Right. You couldn’t possibly have said anything else. So what about me, then? What do you think you’ve been talking to?”
“You are a holy man, like us.”
That was a surprising answer. “Um, didn’t you just say a couple minutes ago that Jesus was going to rain fire down upon me?”
He answered me in one of those condescending this-is-for-your own-good voices. “There will be a reckoning for the time you have spent associating with infernal powers, but we recognize that you follow the old path of the Druids.”
My eyebrows shot up. They knew what I was after all. “And where does it say that Druids associate with infernal powers? Because we don’t.”
“It was Druidic magic that opened a portal to hell in the Superstition Mountains,” Father Gregory asserted. “And you were there.”
Bloody Aenghus Óg. “Yeah, and I killed most everything that came out of that portal. That was my only association with those powers, okay? I destroyed them.”
“And the demon at Skyline High School?”
“That was the fallen angel Basasael. Also slain by yours truly.”
The priest paled even faster than he blushed, demonstrating remarkable facility in cutaneous blood flow and its constriction. “You slew a fallen angel?” he nearly whispered.
“On ne takoi sil’ny!” Rabbi Yosef growled from underneath his jacket. He is not that strong. Well, I’m strong enough to make you look like an idiot, I thought. He looked close to getting himself free.
“Yes, I did, Father. So, look, I’m willing to let you guys walk out the door with nothing lost but a knife and a little bit of dignity, but I don’t want to see you again. You’re not welcome here, and I’m never going to show you my books. I don’t sell them to fanatics of any stripe. Let’s just live and let live. When it comes to hell, we’re on the same side, anyway. Can we agree to that?”
“I cannot speak for everyone,” Gregory said, casting a meaningful glance at the rabbi squirming in front of him. “But for my part I am satisfied.”
The rabbi finally got one arm free of his jacket, and the other quickly followed. He immediately began to chant in Hebrew and trace a pattern in the air with his hands. I flipped on my faerie specs to watch. As he spoke and moved his fingers, tiny points of light in various colors hovered and then connected themselves in a gossamer threadwork. I saw already that it would be a spell based on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, so I let him proceed. As soon as he finished and tried to execute it, the shop’s wards would recognize it and shut it down. The priest glanced at me nervously as his colleague chanted, wondering if I was going to do anything, but all he saw was my air of unconcern.