Hexed_ The Iron Druid Chronicles - Kevin Hearne [84]
A flicker of movement in my peripheral vision drew my head to the right, and I caught a glimpse of a slim woman drenched in hellish juju fleeing around the corner toward Mitchell Park. If I hadn’t been using my faerie specs, I wouldn’t have seen her at all; she was probably cloaked or camouflaged in the normal spectrum, and she was definitely one of them—and now I had a name for an old enemy that I’d longed to meet again since the early 1940s. There was not a doubt in my mind that the witches who’d attacked me and my charges during World War II were the same ones attacking me now, and they called themselves die Töchter des dritten Hauses.
Chapter 18
There was no time to waste. I released the binding on Granuaile’s vision, restoring her own sight, and shouted to her as I ran down the street, “Get back in the house and stay there!” She’d be safe inside from further attacks. I lengthened my stride and sprinted, hoping I’d be able to catch up to the witch who had just tried to assassinate me and my apprentice.
As I came around the corner of 11th to Judd Street, I spied her turning right onto 10th Street. That would take her in short order to Mitchell Drive, where I imagined she would turn north and head for the park—or possibly University Drive—in a bid to escape. Yet when I arrived at Mitchell Drive, the sound of her soles clapping on the asphalt drew my gaze to the south instead. I was in time to see her disappear around the corner of 10th Place, a brief afterthought of a road with absolutely no residential frontage. It was an outlet that would take her to Roosevelt Street, where again I presumed she would turn north—and the thought turned me cold inside.
That would lead her past the widow MacDonagh’s house.
Did she know the widow was my friend? The widow had no protection; she was completely vulnerable, and she was probably sitting on her porch that very instant, open to attack, if the witch had not already paid her a visit.
I used to try to protect all my friends in the early days, but gradually I realized that the very process of protecting them often painted them as targets—or pointed the way to where I was hiding. It became counterproductive to keeping my location secret, so I long ago fell out of the habit. Running after the witch now, I realized that the situation had changed and I’d failed to see it: I was no longer hiding, so my friends might as well be wearing sandwich boards that said, Hurt me to hurt the Druid.
I redoubled my efforts and considered drawing on my depleted store of magic to accelerate my progress, but then I caught sight of her and understood that she was hoping I’d do just that. She was purposely running in the middle of the road, which meant she knew I got my power from the earth. She was not about to run anywhere near someone’s landscaping, where I could draw power and never tire; if I wanted to attack her magically, I’d have to remove myself from the earth and risk draining my power entirely.
That smelled like a trap.
My options were somewhat limited. I had enough magic left in my bear charm for a spell or two, three if I was lucky; most of it had been burned up creating Granuaile’s talisman and binding her sight to mine.
I had shoes on, so I couldn’t draw power without stopping to take them off. I couldn’t shape-shift to a hound