Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six)

were on the receiving end, if you recall. A small matter involving Thor.>
    I recalled. It was not my finest hour.
    I suppose you won’t be helping us, then
.
    
    The link broke and the ravens’ wings blatted into the morning sky like fat motorcycle engines.
    The Morrigan’s assertion that we had to run the whole way made a bit more sense now. The gods had decided Europe was their Colosseum and we were the gladiators.
    “No rest for the Druids,” I said. “Come on, let’s go.”

Chapter 8
    So much for my theory about faery tails. We were being watched constantly through divination, and Granuaile was the antenna. What Odin could do, others could do just as well, so Odin’s point that there were other interested parties was well taken. The reason we had a vampire and dark elves waiting for us near the Slovakian border was because someone in Tír na nÓg was coolly divining Granuaile’s location, quite correctly assuming I’d be nearby, and then dispatching assorted evil minions to slay us. They’d done this repeatedly in Greece while we were trying to get Granuaile bound to the earth; we’d shaken them for a while in the French Pyrenees, perhaps because we were spending nights inside a mountain and the scryer could not figure out where we were, but eventually they must have zeroed in on us. We’d left just ahead of an oncoming horde of vampires, if Oberon’s nose could be trusted, and it usually could.
    After we raided Hel and killed Fenris, Granuaile and I had been left alone in Mexico for a couple of blissful weeks—why was that? I’m sure her presence there would have been as easy to divine as anywhere else, and I was most certainly very close to her during that time. It must have been because the puppet master, whoever itwas, couldn’t get minions out to us in Mexico. If that was correct, then that told me quite a bit.
    I had bound Mexico to Tír na nÓg long ago, back when the Maya were still running around and building future tourist sites. The Fae could have shifted and found us in short order if they wished. And Mexico certainly had its share of vampires; if they had wanted to find us, there would be no reason for it to take two days to locate us, much less two weeks. So this mysterious person was not using local vampires and wasn’t shifting minions around using tethered trees. Instead, he or she was using a specific set of vampires—perhaps a specific set of Fae and dark elves too—and shifting them around using the Old Ways in Europe. That meant Mexico was safe territory. The whole New World was safe territory. And now that I knew that, Faunus had made sure that safe territory was unreachable.
    It also meant that there was something important about the Old Ways that I was missing.
    
    
    
     A few moments passed and then Oberon said,
    
    
    
    
    
    Eastern Germany had an Old Way to Tír na nÓg—several, in fact, hidden among the river valleys of the Ore Mountains, which divided Saxony from Bohemia. But the nearest was a wee bit southwest of the city of Hoyerswerda in Dubringer Moor, a wetland populated around the edges with birch, pine, and alder, spreading their roots in its marshy soil. Unlike the vast majority of the Old Ways, it wasn’t in a cave. A few, like this one, were open-air mazes without walls. Walk through the birches in a certain pattern, end at a particular alder tree and circle it thrice, and you’d be in Tír na nÓg. It wasn’t the sort of Old Way that you could collapse with an earthquake. You could clear-cut the trees or set fire to the landscape, and perhaps we would find something like that had happened, but it was more likely to be guarded.
    Or not. How do you guard a place that’s open to the air—and open to the public—without generating some