Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six)

something was breathing softly nearby. Perhaps more than one something. Icouldn’t locate it; the acoustics were bizarre, and the noise seemed to echo faintly from all sides. The chamber I was in might be stone and rather large.
    Slick quarried stone or tile lay underneath my feet, so I was cut off from magic here. I’d have to rely on my bear charm, and it was already draining because I’d never dispelled my camouflage. I let it go, along with magical sight, because the darkness was camouflage enough and I might need the magic for something else—and besides, the magical sight wasn’t showing me what waited there. The night vision I left active in hopes that I’d find a minuscule light source to help me survey my surroundings. Not for the first time, I wished I had some way to summon light, or even fire, the way some witches and wizards could. I’d wrap my shirt around Fragarach and use it as a torch if I could. As it was, I had no choice but to explore by touch and hope I didn’t wake whatever slumbered in the dark. Or stumble into a trap. I felt like the Inquisition victim in Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.”
    Stretching out with my left foot and feeling with my toes to make sure there was something solid underneath them, I took a slow step forward. Nothing happened, but there was progress. But when I lifted my right leg to take another step, I must have triggered a magical motion sensor, for a loud
fwoosh
announced the sudden lighting of candles all along a high shelf that circled the room—which was, in fact, circular, once I was able to focus. Though candlelight is generally quite soft, so many lighting at one time in total darkness while I had night vision on blinded me for a few moments. I dispelled the night vision and saw that I had lots of company in the room. The light also woke—and blinded—the many, many small creatures that had been sleeping on another shelf below the candles, about waist high.
    They were tiny pale-green winged humanoids withflat black eyes and mouths out of proportion to the rest of the head. Hairless and sleek, they had stumpy legs and thick, overlong arms with large, three-fingered hands. In the middle of each palm—though I couldn’t see them yet—they had another mouth. I recognized these guys. I didn’t know what their proper name was, but I called them pieholes, because they didn’t really care what they shoved into the three they had. Goibhniu claimed that these were the original tooth faeries, but I didn’t know how humanity could have possibly transformed these things into stories of kind critters that gave a damn about children’s teeth. These could never be mistaken for anything but what they were—the ravenous, swarming bastard spawn of the Dagda and something he humped one day.
    I supposed many pantheons had some incurably horny figures in them, viewed by their adherents with everything from amusement to fear. For the Greeks it was Zeus and Pan; in Vedic tradition it was Indra; and for the Irish, it was the Dagda, whose reputation, like that of many pagan deities, suffered somewhat at the hands of Christian scribes. He was sometimes depicted as a rather oafish sort with an abnormally large reproductive organ. It wasn’t because he was freakishly gifted in truth; it was merely to mock and stigmatize his sexuality. To the Irish he was unequivocally good, gifted with vast powers, and his carnal proclivities represented his urge to create life rather than an aberrant personality. Sometimes the life he created was a son or daughter of extraordinary magical talent—namely, Aenghus Óg, Midhir, and Brighid. But sometimes the life he created was bloody dangerous, and over the years a vast menagerie of magical self-sustaining horrors was born. Pieholes were one of the worst, and I thought they’d been wiped out centuries ago for everyone’s safety.
    Unfortunately, once they blinked a few times, the pieholesrecognized me as well: I was food and they were hungry. That bitter-almond smell was their collected shit, which ringed the base of the walls in discolored chalky mounds like mine tailings. Their wings snapped up from their backs, and their yawning mouths grumbled with a low rolling sound between a drone and a growl.
    “Guys. Wait,” I said, foolishly thinking they’d listen. The warning growl stopped in unison and there was a half second of silence before they screeched and launched themselves at me, hundreds of them from all directions, hands