The Junkyard Druid Box Set 1 Page 4
He slammed a fist against the wall so hard, I heard a bone crack. “Damn it, boy, how many times do I have to tell you that it wasn’t you who killed her, but the ríastrad? If I hadn’t crossed that evil old crone so many years ago, she might never have cursed you in the first place.”
I calmly continued wiping down his badly battered face. “I’ve told you before, I know what I’m doing when I’m under the curse. And the part of me that takes over? It likes the killing and the destruction. I’m the only one to blame, and that’s a sin I’ll carry to my grave.”
“Aye, boy, but your sins are not your own. That blood is on my hands, and I’ll atone for it as I see fit.”
I tossed the rag in the sink. It dripped watered-down blood that traced pinkish tracks into the rust-stained porcelain. “Fine, keep punishing yourself by numbing the pain with a needle. See if I care.”
I turned to leave, but his bony fingers latched onto my hand to stop me. The old man’s eyes filled with tears as he looked up at me. “Will you ever forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” I lied. “Now go get some sleep.”
I reflected on the current nature of our relationship as I trudged back to my room. Finn was my mentor, and I loved him, but I could never forgive him for putting Jesse and I in that old witch’s crosshairs. And while he had to live with the consequences of his actions, I was the one who truly had Jesse’s blood on my hands.
That was my cross to bear, damn it. And no amount of Finn’s self-loathing behavior would change that fact.
Journal Entry—Eight Months, Twelve Days A.J.
So, Fúamnach. Ugh. Alright, let’s talk evil bitches.
After centuries of being foiled by Finnegas’ magic, which basically cancelled hers out, Fúamnach decided that the best way to get at Finn this time around was to curse his top student, that being yours truly. And she hit me with a whammy, that’s for sure. That witch saddled me with the curse of Cú Chulainn, which if you know anything about Irish mythology is a real bitch of a curse. Cú Chulainn was probably the greatest hero of Irish legend, but he was also one screwed up dude. When he got really mad, he’d go into a berserker rage and killed everyone and everything around him, friend or foe. To be honest Cú Chulainn was a bit of a sociopath, and he was known to be the type to stab first and talk later. The guy was more or less a mass murderer, even without going into a berserker rage.
Character flaws of Cú Chulainn aside, that’s the curse that Fúamnach laid on me, unbeknownst to any of us. And when we ended up facing the dragon Caoránach, the mother of all demons (another enemy that was passed down to me from my ancestor Fionn MacCumhaill), in the heat of battle the curse was triggered and I laid waste to everything and everyone around me.
Did I kill the dragon? Sure, with my bare hands, apparently. But I also killed a bunch of innocent people, including my best friend and love of my life, Jesse.
Damn it, I can’t do this right now. I’ll come back to it later.
-McC
Austin, Texas—Present Day
The next morning, I got up early to do some work around the junkyard. I mostly worked in trade for room and board, and part of that involved letting the boss know which vehicles were good candidates to flip, and which were better off as inventory. It was really supposed to be Finn’s job, but lately he’d been too messed up to bother, which meant I had to cover for him. I slipped on my coveralls, pulled on a pair of work boots, and headed out into the yard with Rufus and Roscoe on my heels.
Most small animals were afraid of me, but not the dogs. Finn said it was because predators recognized an alpha when they saw one. Apparently, the dogs sensed that “other” side of me, and respected its presence. The flip side of that was everything in the animal kingdom that might be considered prey fled from me on sight. Frightening squirrels, moles, and pigeons hadn’t exactly been on my list of career goals when I signed up to be druid-trained, but at least it kept the mice and rats out of the warehouse.
The yard smelled like brake fluid, freshly mown grass, and motor oil, which meant we’d just gotten a delivery of wrecked vehicles in from the auction house. Most were cars and trucks that had been totaled by the last owner’s insurance company, who sold them to body shops, used car lots, and junkyards to be salvaged or restored and sold at a profit. Other cars had no apparent damage, but had mechanical or electrical problems that were deemed too difficult or expensive to repair. That’s where I came in, because lost causes were my specialty.
We avoided trying to salvage totaled cars, because no matter how much work you did to them they’d never drive the same again, and we weren’t in the business of ripping people off. But the lost cause cars were often only lacking someone who could diagnose the problem and make the repairs. Cars could be tricky to figure out sometimes, and newer cars even trickier, due to all their electronics. But many times it was something as simple as a frayed wire causing a short, or a bad part missed by the mechanic. Other times it could be something expensive like a bad engine control unit or burned out clutch. My job was to lay hands on the vehicles that came in and use my magic to figure out what was wrong… and how to fix it.
Sure, living in a junkyard sucked, but I wasn’t complaining. Money was hard to come by these days, as I had zero job skills and no work history to speak of, and my one source of income—hunting monsters—was no longer an option. I suppose it was fortunate that my druid training came in handy for things other than killing monsters, since I couldn’t really put “apprentice level sorcerer and medieval weapons expert” on a resume. So, in a weird way, the years I’d spent learning druid magic hadn’t been wasted after all.
I walked up to the first vehicle and put my hands on the hood, shifting my senses to the magical spectrum and reaching out with my magic to “talk” to the car. Cars didn’t have a spirit, per se, but they did have a sort of psychometric energy that could be read if you knew what to look for and how to look. And while a car’s onboard computer could spit out a trouble code that let you know which system was malfunctioning, a mechanic might still spend hours tracking down the problem and trying to fix it.
My way was a hell of a lot faster, and cheaper in labor costs too, because all I had to do was let my magic tell me what was broken. The first three cars were a bust, which was a drag, but we’d still make our money back on them eventually in parts sales. But the last one, a 2005 Honda minivan that looked to have been well cared for, turned out to be a winner. The van’s only issues were a malfunctioning fuel pump and a short in the wiring harness—two easy, cheap fixes. It’d make a good, reliable vehicle for a family in need. I marked it for repairs and left a note regarding what to fix in grease pen on the windshield.
After I finished with the van, my phone started vibrating to let me know I had a text. Only a few people had my number, so it was either Mom asking when I was coming home to visit, Sabine texting me to see what I was doing later, or Belladonna sexting with me for the umpteenth time. I wasn’t eager to deal with Mom or Belladonna at the moment, but if it was Sabine I didn’t want her to think I was ignoring her. She was really sensitive about stuff like that, so I took great care to make sure I didn’t hurt her feelings.
Sabine was a half-glaistig I’d met one day while leaving Dr. Larsen’s office. The day we’d met she’d been wearing a long-sleeve shirt in the middle of summer in Austin, and I could smell fresh blood on her that carried just the slightest tang of fae. I recognized the signs and knew immediately that she was a cutter, and one of Dr. Larsen’s patients.
There’s a weird sort of unspoken agreement between therapy patients that you don’t make eye contact or chat when you run into another patient on the way in or out of your therapy session. Even so, it was easy for me to recognize another person in pain, so I smiled at her as we passed. In response, she barely lifted her hand in a shy little wave, right before she scurried off into Dr. Larsen’s waiting room.
I ran into her a few times after that, and it was always the same. I’d smile and
hold the door, and she’d wave shyly before scampering off like a scared mouse. Which I thought was kind of amusing, since she was just about the most stunning female I’d ever laid eyes on since I lost Jesse. It made sense, though; Sabine was wearing a permanent glamour to make her not look attractive or noticeable… at all.
In fact, her glamour made her look like a mousy, painfully thin, extremely frumped out college aged girl. She wore birth control glasses, baggy clothes, and sported a wild, frizzy blonde hairdo that did a great job of hiding her face when she stared at the ground—which she did most of the time. Combine that with the see-me-not spell she’d cast on herself, and she was practically invisible.
Of course, I could see right through her glamour, because druid skilz and what-not. And what she looked like under all that magic very nearly took my breath away the first time I saw her. Not only that, but it was readily apparent why she was hiding from the world, and what made her hate herself so much.
As it so happened, Sabine had been born with all the right equipment. A bit too much of it, in fact. To put it bluntly, Sabine had rather large breasts. And knowing what I knew about middle school and high school boys, I was certain that she had been harassed mercilessly from the time she began to develop as a woman. Having been cruelly teased throughout the latter part of grade school and all through middle school for having moobs, I could relate to her pain (I could still hear the kids in the locker room chanting “Colin McBoobs.” Not cool).
Moreover, if you know anything about glaistigs, you know that they are not naturally top-heavy. Your average glaistig, like most fae, will lean more toward the tall, nimble, Scandinavian model-looking type. Obviously, the poor girl had inherited her bra size from the human side of the family. So, Sabine was teased for her looks both among humans and by her mother’s kind as well.
Naturally, I made it my mission to become her friend. One underdog to another, I started rooting for her from the moment we met. It took me a while, because she was damned skittish, but finally I coaxed her into joining me for coffee at La Crème. Since I had a supernatural ability to look women in the eye no matter what they looked like or how low their neckline is—a skill drilled into me by my very traditional Irish mother and refined by the very tough and traditionally feminist love of my life—I was able to keep up the charade that I couldn’t see through her glamour for the next several weeks.
By which time, I might add, we’d become fast friends. I found her to be smart, charming, and absolutely hilarious. Sabine had a rapier wit, and when she chose to reveal it she could cut even the most arrogant and self-important asshole down to size. At first she was angry with me for not telling her that I was immune to her glamour, but then she realized that I didn’t care what she looked like one bit. I liked her for who she was, not what she was, and I think that realization kept her from bolting for the door when she found me out.
So, Sabine became my supernatural confidante, one of the few people in my life I could talk to about supernatural matters without being asked if I was off my meds. Mom had never been clued in, so I couldn’t talk to her, and I wasn’t really on speaking terms with Finn. All Belladonna ever wanted to do was speak in double-entendres, with the occasional interlude to describe her latest assignment, so no dice there. Anyway, for the most part I tried to stay away from Bells, not just because I was trying to stay out of supernatural affairs, but also because I just wasn’t ready for a relationship of any kind.
That was the other benefit to having a bestie who was actually a drop-dead gorgeous fae. Belladonna, who could also see through Sabine’s glamour, just assumed we were sleeping together and that the reverse glamour was my idea as a jealous boyfriend—and for my part I did nothing to dissuade her from that assumption. And Belladonna, while being a very liberated, modern woman, was nothing if not honorable. So, while she respected the boundaries of my supposed relationship with Sabine, I got a break from Belladonna’s full court press. All-in-all, it was a rather neat arrangement. And Sabine, being Sabine, was absolutely clueless regarding the whole deal.
Yeah, it was messed up. But then again, so was my life.
*
Sure enough, the text was from Sabine.
1st day of class. Don’t b l8.
According to my phone, I still had time to stop by La Crème on the way. It was too late to head out back to shower, because I could already hear the early crew moving around in the warehouse. I grabbed my shaving kit and ducked into the bathroom, settling for a sponge bath, a quick shave, and a rather thorough round of dental hygiene. I put on a pair of nearly clean jeans, a fresh t-shirt, my leather jacket, and some kicks. Finally, I grabbed my Craneskin Bag out of the only warded space in the room, my foot locker, and slung it over my shoulder before heading out.
Before leaving my room, I picked up Jesse’s photo from the shelf by the door and kissed it lightly. “First day of school, babe. Wish me luck.”
As I headed out to the parking lot to hop on my vintage, slightly beat up Vespa, my mom’s cousin Ed yelled at me from the office. Ed owned the place, and he was the reason I wasn’t living in my mom’s basement at the moment. I jogged up to the door to see what he wanted.
Ed sat behind his desk, as usual. He was a rather rotund man, balding, with a mustache that looked like a fuzzy caterpillar had taken up residence on his upper lip. A nearly constant pissed off demeanor served as his happy mode. You only had to worry about Ed when he stopped yelling and screaming at people.
“Hey, Colin, anything happen last night? The dogs were acting weird when I came in, and there was some blood on the floor in the warehouse.”
I shook my head. “Nothing major, Ed. Finn got messed up again, and fell and cut himself coming over the fence. I cleaned him up in the bathroom and got him settled into his van. No biggie.”
As evidence of how big-hearted Ed actually was, he put up with letting Finn sleep in a junked van in the back of the yard. Truth was, Finn could be handy with getting old cars to run, when he wasn’t messed up on smack. So Ed let him stay, in exchange for helping us flip used cars. But Ed also knew about Finn’s habits, and chose to look the other way so long as he didn’t bring any drugs on the premises.
Ed frowned and shook his head. “I know he’s related to you by your dad and all, but that old man’s going to get himself killed one of these days. You ought to see about getting him some help, before—you know.”
“I know. Believe me, I know. But he’s just not ready to get cleaned up yet. I’ll keep trying, Ed—I owe him that.”
Ed waved with the back of his hand and sighed through his nose. “Damned shame. He’s good with a wrench, and I could use him around here full-time if he was clean. Speaking of which—”
He pulled an envelope from the desk and tossed it to me frisbee-style. I snatched it out of the air. “That’s pay for this period.”
“Ed, it’s not payday yet.”
He waved again and tried to look like a hard-ass. “Yeah, but I know you got school starting, and you need books and stuff. So I figured I’d give you an advance.” Then, with a stern look, he pointed a single fat finger at me. “But don’t think you aren’t going to work it off this week.”
It went without saying. “Thanks, Ed. Speaking of which, the Odyssey is the only one from the latest bunch that’s worth wrenching on—the rest are all going to be parts cars.”
“Alright, I’ll let the crew know. Now, get out of here and go learn something, so you don’t have to work for me for the rest of your life.”
He gave me a dismissive wave and turned his attention to his computer monitor. I smiled and tucked the check into my back pocket, and headed off to get some coffee before class.
Journal Entry—Eight Months, Fourteen Days A.J.
It’s Valentine’s Day. God, I miss her so much.
-McC
Austin, Texas—Present Day
My friend Luther’s coffee shop was a kind of frou-frou, upscale cafe located right at the edge of SoCo and downtown, where the loc
al jet-setting movers and shakers who inhabited the expensive downtown district liked to slum it up with the people who made up the true heart of Austin; the hippies, artists, musicians, and hipsters who did a damned fine job of keeping Austin weird.
La Crème was a favorite hangout for grad students who lived off-campus, for office workers who needed a few minutes away from their daily bustle, for decision-makers and power-brokers who tried to look chic while they closed on multi-million dollar deals, and for all the struggling writers, musicians, and artists who could barely afford to live in Austin proper anymore because of the property tax hikes the wealthy people in Austin voted for each election cycle.
Oh, and it was a favorite hangout for folks who were read in on the world beneath. I knew I was supposed to be staying away from that sort of thing. But Luther poured a mean cold-brew and he always saved me a cup, even when they sold out. Plus, Luther was a vampire, and the de facto leader of the vampires in Austin. He was also a fixture in the local LGBTQ community, so La Crème was pretty much a place where everyone was welcome to hang out.
Luther was a very old vampire, and like a lot of older vamps he might have swung either way, depending on which century it was. When you’re nearly immortal you tend to try new things, which meant a lot of older vamps were pretty accepting of so-called alternate lifestyles. And, like most of vampire society in Austin, Luther had become heavily involved in the gay and lesbian community in the last several decades.
And just why would a three-hundred-year-old vampire choose to blend in among the LGBTQ community? Well, to put it in Luther’s words, “Honey, nobody screws with the Velvet Mafia. No one. I’m a gay black man, and a vampire. That gets me a lot of enemies. But for the first time in history I can live a public life, and not have to worry about being singled out for being gay or found out for being a vamp. So hooray for strength in numbers.”