Free Staked (Iron Druid Chronicles) by Kevin Hearne Page A

theatre.
    “Farewell,” I whispered, hoping that wherever she went she would find the real Nigel waiting for her.
    Werner Drasche’s screams wound down to moans and eventually whimpers in German, and I might have let loose a moan or two of my own. When Ferris finished with the lifeleech, he thanked me before leaving.
    //Delicious// he said.
    //Thanks for your help earlier// I replied, since he could do nothing else for me, and he melted away, leaving me to shiver in silent pain and hope I didn’t bleed out before help arrived. Or that Drasche wouldn’t summon the strength to grab one of his guns and crawl down here to finish me off. Apart from getting shot, it had been a couple of good days in Toronto—though to be truthful almost any day would be good in comparison to getting shot. Still, I had enlisted the Hammers of God in the world’s biggest vampire hunt, stripped Werner Drasche of his powers, and sent a long-suffering ghost to her rest. It would be a good story to tell Oberon—oh, gods below, Oberon! He was still in the hotel room, and I wouldn’t be getting back to him anytime soon. He was also much too far away for me to reach via our mental bond, so he’d be worried. I thought of calling Hal, since I didn’t know where Granuaile was, but didn’t want to remind Drasche that I was still alive. I silenced the phone and texted him instead:
    Shot in Toronto. Need someone to take care of Oberon in hotel. Send Owen maybe?
    I added the hotel info and sent it. In a few seconds I got a glorious if terse reply:
    On it.
    “O’Sullivan,” Drasche’s voice grated. “What did you do to me?”
    I made no answer and tried to breathe as quietly as possible. The lack of damage to my lungs kept me from coughing, at least.
    The acoustics of the theatre allowed me to hear the rasping of cloth on carpet as Drasche dragged himself down the aisle and a wet hand slapping against the metal of a gun. “Going to make
verdammt
sure you are dead,” he growled.
    There was nothing I could do. I had all the mobility and martial capability of a soggy sponge and the same magical ability as he did—that is, none whatsoever. He must have picked up only one of his guns, because I heard him begin to crawl in my direction and the gun made a clacking noise at odd intervals when his hand came down. He grew closer and closer, and the sound reminded me of that final sequence of
The Terminator
where the robot dragged itself after Sarah Connor. Except that she could move a little bit and had some handy machinery around to crush her pursuer.
    “Ahh, there you are!” I stretched my neck, looked to the end of the aisle, and saw Werner Drasche peering back at me. His eyeballs gleamed abnormally white and mad in a puffy red face with little pinpricks of blood dotting it and plenty more smeared around where he had tried to shoo Ferris away. The ink of the alchemical tattoos still remained, but the magic infused with them was gone and he still didn’t realize it. He knew from experience that he couldn’t leech any energy from me, so he truly didn’t know what had been done to him except that it had hurt. “Lying defenseless in a pool of your own blood. I kept telling Theophilus that gunning you down was the simplest solution. How delightful to be proven right.”
    “That’s not his real name, is it?” I asked. “Theophilus. That’s some kind of nickname he thinks is clever.”
    Werner Drasche laughed at me. “You think I would ever tell you that? I would—”
    He cut off abruptly as a squad of shouty, armed men burst into the theatre and demanded that he drop the gun
now
. He looked back over his left shoulder, but since he was flat on the floor the result was that I saw the very top of his head for the first time. He had a Rose Cross there instead of an alchemical symbol. Strange.
    “Ah, sustenance!” Drasche said, grinning as he twisted to face the officers. He didn’t move his right hand with the gun but rolled a bit onto his right