Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six)

and they made very tidy torsos. The Morrigan’s prescience about Herne’s ability to help us was well warranted; I doubted I would have fared so well had he not been there, even with Flidais around. Artemis most likely would have locked her legs around my neck while I was unconscious and snapped it. I thanked Herne for his assistance, and he nodded but said nothing. He and Flidais helped me haul the pieces of Artemis over to where Diana lay and spread them out so that they were only a few feet apart.
    I stood between the two bodies and the goddesses glowered up at me. I didn’t mock them or rub my victory in their faces. I kept my expression dispassionate as I set my plan in motion. //Druid ready for storage// I sent to Albion. //Ten pieces / My position / Leave large pieces for last//
    The earth’s magic cannot be used to harm animals of a certain biological complexity. I can use it all I want to give myself an advantage in battle—speed and strength and camouflage and so on—but I can’t use it directlyagainst an enemy or a critter that wants to eat me. It’s an immutable law and tattooed directly into my skin. But the immortal nature of the Olympians, I realized earlier, provided me with an interesting loophole. They couldn’t truly be harmed in any permanent sense by the earth; even when decapitated, their heads retained consciousness without oxygen, so I—or, rather, Albion—could do some things to them we’d never be able to do to any other creature.
    Underneath the arms and legs of the huntresses, the forest floor began to bubble and shift. Gooey globs of what geologists call London Clay rose up and encased their limbs in a dark-brown slurry with little fossils sprinkled throughout. This was then coated with a layer of chalk and topped with gravel, which Albion bound together and then smoothed into solid rock.
    “What is this?” Diana asked, swiveling her head from side to side, watching the process unfold.
    “Your fate,” I said. “You will be interred in the earth until you agree to cease hunting me and my friends. No earthquake from Poseidon or Neptune will cough you out of the ground. You will remain in darkness, unheard and undying, until I decide to release you. You’d better hope I don’t perish in the meantime.”
    The clay began to ooze over their torsos, and, once they felt it, their expressions lost much of their vinegar.
    “I will cease hunting you and your friends,” Artemis said.
    My eyebrows shot up at the quick capitulation. “You have my thanks. Diana?”
    Her defiance returned. She tried to spit at me and missed. “I will never stop seeking your head,” she snarled.
    I sucked in air past my teeth. “Wow, never is a
very
long time. Artemis, thank you very much for offering, but I hope you will forgive me if I don’t quite believe youyet. I will be more inclined to do so a bit later, perhaps. You and I will speak again soon.”
    The clay had moved past their shoulders now and was creeping up the columns of their necks. Diana continued to glare at me while Artemis rolled her eyes down for a nervous look. “I am in earnest, Druid. I will swear it.”
    “Again, I thank you, but you lack credibility at the moment.” And there was no way I was letting either of them loose right after they’d shot Granuaile and tried to kill me too. “We’ve defeated you three times now,” I reminded them. “Once in the Netherlands, once in the English Channel, and now here. It didn’t have to be this way. You might wish to consider while you’re underground if all this was worth it for the god of drunken assholes and five dryads who were perfectly healthy when last I saw them. Save for the past few days of self-defense, I have never assaulted you directly and have strived to amend my trespasses. Can you say the same?”
    //Finish now// I sent to Albion, and the clay flowed to envelop the heads of the two huntresses, who screamed curses at me until the gunk cut them off. Once they sank out of sight—mute hunks of rock, safe from any attempt to retrieve them—I looked up in response to a small flutter of wings above. Hugin and Munin stared down at me from the branch of an elm.
    “Yeah, I thought you’d show up now. Tell the Einherjar who bet against us to pound sand, Odin. We survived.” The ravens squawked but said nothing intelligible.
    Laughter bubbled up from the throat of Flidais. “That was amusing, Atticus. And well done. How fares Granuaile?” I wondered why she had