Iron Druid.

Staked.

Kevin Hearne.

about the author.

Kevin Hearne has been known to frolic unreservedly with dogs. He is probably frolicking right now and posing to his dog such timeless rhetorical classics as "Who's a good boy?" and "Who wants a snack?" He hugs trees, rocks out to old-school heavy metal, and still reads comic books. He lives with his wife and daughter in Colorado.

kevinhearne.com.

For Nigel in Toronto.

PRONUNCIATION GUIDE.

Some o' the words in this book might not be immediately pronounceable for some readers because they have foreign origins. Heck, I needed help myself. But I like learning new words and how to say them, so I'm providing a wee guide here for a few names and such in case you're of a like mind and want to know how to say them out loud. No one is going to confiscate your cake if you say them wrong, but you might score a piece of cake if you say them right. You know what? You should just have a piece of cake anyway. You deserve cake.

CZECH.

Celetn = TSELL et NAH (A street in Prague).

Krlodvorsk = KRAH loh DVOR skah (A street in Prague).

Petn = PET shreen (A hill on the castle side of Prague).

Ulice = oo LEE tse (Means street, basically. Interesting fact: The word is the same in Polish but they place it in front of the name and the Czechs put it afterward. So if you were speaking of Main Street, in Polish that would be Ulice Main and in Czech it's Main Ulice.) Vltava = Vl TAH vah (Big ol' river that runs through Prague).

POLISH.

Agnieszka = ag nee ESH ka (One of the Polish coven).

Bydgoszcz = bid GOSH-CH (City in Poland. I straight up admit to choosing it just to cause panic in my audiobook narrator. To English-speaking eyes those four consonants at the end look alarming. But they are actually two distinct digraphs that linguistically represent a fricative followed by an affricative: sz and cz. The sz is going to get you something like sh and the cz gives you ch. But when you pronounce that it's all one syllable. Try it! GOSH-CH. Seriously fun.) Ewelina = ev eh LEE na (One of the Polish coven. The letter w is pronounced like v in Polish.) Miosz = ME wash (The white horse of witowit. That spiffy is pronounced as a w in Polish. And that o is pronounced like the a in wash, so there you have it.) Nocnica = nohts NEETS uh (Slavic nightmare creature; nocnice, pl.).

Patrycja = pa TREES ya (One of the Polish coven. Basically as in Patricia but with a long e sound and no sh.) Pole Mokotowskie = PO leh Mo ko TOV ski-eh (An expansive park in the city of Warsaw.).

Rado = Rah DOHSH-CH (Translates to joy. A neighborhood in one of Warsaw's districts, on the east side of the Wisa River.) witowit = SHVEN toe veet (That cool little indicates an n sound at the end of the vowel. Slavic god with four heads.) Weles = VEH les (Spelled as Veles in most other Slavic countries but the pronunciation is nearly universal. Slavic deity of the earth, enemy of Perun.) Wisa = Vee SWAH (River that runs right through the center of Warsaw.).

Wisawa Szymborska = Vee SWAH vah Shim BOR ska (Polish Nobel Prize winner for literature. Great poetry.).

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

This book begins in very different place from where Shattered left off; if you missed the novella A Prelude to War, you might wish to read it first to understand why the initial chapters are set where they are and some of the references to Loki and Mekera. You can find it in the mini-anthology Three Slices, available in ebook or audio. Or if you can't wait, you can just dive in to Staked!

I have many people to thank abroad for their help in getting the details right. Any mistakes you find are of course mine and not theirs.

Thanks to Jakob and Simon of Otherland Buchhandlung for the German bits and to Florian Specht for his help navigating Berlin; I'm grateful to Rob Durdle for helping me with French; turbo thanks to Grzegorz Zielinski for showing me around Warsaw and pinpointing the location of Malina Sokoowska's house, as well as the black poplar tree in Pole Mokotowskie; much gratitude to Adrian Tomczyk for his companionship and translation help in Pozna, and then helping with further language questions once I got home; cheers to my amazing Polish readers who greeted me at Pyrkon and were so very gracious; thanks to Tom Jirkovsk and Martin ust for good times in Prague and Brno; and I'm very grateful to Ester Scoditti for her guidance in Rome. Mega-turbo-gonzo thanks go to Nadine Kharabian for the tour of spooky places in her great city, where I finally figured out why you never want to be Nigel in Toronto. And gratitude to the fine people at the Royal Conservatory of Music on Bloor Street for enduring my questions about the Lady in Red.

Tricia Narwani continues to be an editing genius and I'm astoundingly fortunate to work with her and the entire Del Rey team.

And deepest thanks to my readers for saying hi online and in person, having fun with Iron Druid cosplay, naming their puppies Oberon and Orlaith, and all the other unbearably awesome things you do. You all deserve a sausage. With gravy.

In a Denver coffee shop, August 2015.

IRON DRUID CHRONICLES.

The Story So Far.

Atticus O'Sullivan, born in 83 B.C.E. as Siodhachan Suileabhin, has spent much of his long life as a Druid on the run from Aenghus g, one of the Tuatha De Danann. Aenghus g seeks the return of Fragarach, a magical sword that Atticus stole in the second century, and the fact that Atticus has learned how to keep himself young and won't simply die annoys the heck out of Aenghus g.

When Aenghus g finds Atticus hiding in Tempe, Arizona, Atticus makes the fateful decision to fight instead of run, unwittingly setting off a chain of consequences that snowball on him despite his efforts to lie low.

In Hounded, he gains an apprentice, Granuaile MacTiernan, retrieves a necklace that serves as a focus for Laksha Kulasekaran, an Indian witch, and discovers that his cold iron aura is proof against hellfire. He defeats Aenghus g with an assist from the Morrigan, Brighid, and the local pack of werewolves. However, he also severely cripples a witches' coven that wasn't exactly benevolent but was protecting the Phoenix metro area from more-menacing groups of predators.

Hexed, book two, forces Atticus to deal with that, as a rival and much more deadly coven tries to take over the territory of the Sisters of the Three Auroras, and a group of Bacchants tries to establish a foothold in Scottsdale. Atticus cuts deals with Laksha Kulasekaran and Leif Helgarson, a vampire, to earn their help and rid the city of the threats.

In book three, Hammered, the bills come due for those deals. Both Laksha and Leif want Atticus to go to Asgard and beard the Norse in their mead halls. Putting together a team of badasses, Atticus raids Asgard twice, despite warnings from the Morrigan and Jesus Christ that this would be a terrible idea and it might be best not to keep his word. The carnage is epic, with heavy losses among the sir, including the Norns, Thor, and a crippled Odin. The death of the Norns, an aspect of Fate, means the old prophecies regarding Ragnarok are now unchained, and Hel can begin to work with very little opposition from the sir. However, a strange coincidence with the Finnish hero Vinminen reminds Atticus of a different prophecy, one spoken by the sirens to Odysseus long ago, and he worries that thirteen years hence, the world will burn-perhaps in some altered form of Ragnarok.

Feeling the heat for his shenanigans and needing time to train his apprentice, Atticus fakes his own death with the help of Coyote in book four, Tricked. Hel does indeed make an appearance, thinking Atticus might like to join her on the dark side since he'd killed so many sir, but she is brutally rebuffed. Atticus is betrayed by Leif Helgarson and narrowly escapes death at the hands of an ancient vampire named Zdenik but ends the book with a modicum of assurance that he will be able to train Granuaile in anonymity.

In the novella Two Ravens and One Crow, Odin awakens from his long sleep and forges a truce of sorts with Atticus, enlisting the Druid to take on Thor's role in Ragnarok, should it come to pass, and perhaps take care of another few things along the way.

After twelve years of training, Granuaile is ready to be bound to the earth, but in book five, Trapped, it seems as if the Druid's enemies have been waiting for him to emerge. Atticus must deal with vampires, dark elves, faeries, and the Roman god Bacchus, and messing with one of the Olympians draws the attention of one of the world's oldest and most powerful pantheons.

Once Granuaile is a full Druid, Atticus must run across Europe to avoid the bows of Diana and Artemis, who took exception to his treatment of Bacchus and the dryads of Olympus in book five. The Morrigan sacrifices herself to give Atticus a head start, and he is Hunted in book six. Running and fighting his way past a coordinated attempt to bring him down, he makes it to England, where he can enlist the help of Herne the Hunter and Flidais, the Irish goddess of the hunt. There he is able to defeat the Olympians and negotiate a fragile alliance against Hel and Loki. At the end of this volume he discovers that his archdruid was frozen in time in Tr na ng, and when he retrieves him, his old mentor is in as foul a mood as ever.

In Shattered, book seven, archdruid Owen Kennedy finds a place among the Tempe Pack and assists Atticus and Granuaile in thwarting a coup attempt in Tr na ng against Brighid. Granuaile is sorely tested by Loki in India and is forever changed, and an emissary of the ancient vampire Theophilus strikes down one of Atticus's oldest friends.

In the novella A Prelude to War, Atticus consults a tyromancer in Ethiopia to discover how best to strike back at the vampires, while Granuaile meets Loki for the second time-but this time she's the one laying the ambush.

Also, along the way, there may have been some talk of poodles and sausages.

CHAPTER 1.

I didn't have time to pull off the heist with a proper sense of theatre. I didn't even have a cool pair of shades. All I had was a soundtrack curated by Tarantino playing in my head, one of those songs with horns and a fat bass track and a guitar going waka-chaka-waka-chaka as I padded on asphalt with the uncomfortable feeling that someone was enjoying a voyeuristic close-up of my feet.

My plan wasn't masterful either. I was just going to wing it with an iron elemental named Ferris who was ready to do anything I asked, because he knew I'd feed him magic for it down the road. A faery snack, perhaps, or an enchanted doodad of some kind. Ferris thought such things were sweet-magic might even give him something akin to a sugar rush. Before making my run, I contacted him through the earth in a park and filled him in on the plan. He'd have to filter through the dead foundations of Toronto to follow me until it was time for him to act, but this was easier for him than it would be for most elementals. Lots of concrete got reinforced with iron rebar these days, and he's so strong at this point that he can afford to push through the lifeless underbelly of modern cities.

I dropped off Oberon and my shoes in a shaded alley and cast camouflage on myself before emerging into the busy intersection of Front and York Streets in Toronto, where cameras from many sources might otherwise track me, not only the ones from the Royal Bank of Canada. But into the bank I strode at opening time, ducking in the doors behind someone else. Ferris followed underneath the street; I felt him buzzing through the sole of my bare right foot.

Security dudes were present in the lobby but utterly unarmed. They were not there so much to stop people from committing a crime as to witness those crimes and provide polite but damning testimony later. The Canadians would rather track down and confront robbers when they were all alone than endanger citizens in a bank lobby. Some people might suggest you didn't need security if they were just going to stand there, but that's not the case. Cameras didn't catch everything. In memories they sometimes didn't work at all, because you were clever and had a snarky anarchist hacker in your crew with some kind of oral fixation on lollipops or whatever. But even if the cameras stayed on and recorded the whole crime, security guards would notice things the cameras might not-voices, eye color, details about clothing, and so on.

Off to the right of the teller windows, the vault door remained closed. No one had asked to visit the safety deposit boxes yet. I'd wait and sneak in with someone except that I could be waiting for far longer than my camouflage would hold out. And the clock was ticking on my target's usefulness; the sooner I got hold of it, the more damage I'd be able to do. So I showed Ferris that vault door and asked him to take it apart. Let the alarms begin.

It's magnificent, watching a vault door disintegrate and people lose their shit over it in real time. The soundtrack in my head kicked into high gear as I stepped over the melted slag to tackle the next obstacle: a locked glass door that showed me the safety deposit boxes beyond. It was bulletproof to small arms but lacked the thickness to stop heavy-caliber rounds. Ferris couldn't help in taking apart the entire door like the vault, but that wasn't necessary; the locking mechanism was metal and he could melt that quickly, and he did. I pushed open the door and began searching for Box 517, the number I'd been given. I found it on the left and near the floor. It was a wide, shallow, flat one, with one lock for the customer's key and one lock for the bank's. With another assist from Ferris, both locks were dispatched and I opened it, snatched out the slim three-ring binder inside, and shoved it into my camouflaged pack before anyone even stepped inside the vault. I kicked the box closed just as a couple of guards finally appeared at the melted vault door, peeking through and seeing the open glass door. One of them was a doughy dude, tall and pillowy, and the other was a hard, cut Latino.

"Hello?" the puffy one said. "Anyone in there?"

The fit guard assumed that someone was. "You're on camera wherever you go in here. You can't hide."

Wrong.

"Why would he care about that?" Doughboy said. "Are you telling him to stop because he's being surveilled?"

Hardbody scowled and hissed at his co-worker, "I've got to say something, don't I? What would you say?"

"If you surrender to us now," Doughboy called into the vault, "we won't shoot you. Run away and they send the guys with guns."

"You're a twat, Gary," Hardbody muttered.

Gary-a much better name than Doughboy-blinked. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"I said you're right, Gary. That's what I should have said to the robber we can't see." Gary didn't look convinced that he'd heard him incorrectly the first time, but the cut guard didn't give him time to pursue it. He stepped past the threshold of the vault and said, "Maybe he's in the private room in the back."

I turned around to see what he was talking about and spotted another door in the rear of the vault. Normally when customers removed their safety deposit boxes, they would step into that private room and fondle their deposits in safety until they were ready to return it. Hardbody was heading for that door, and I pressed myself against the row of boxes to let him pass by. Gary followed only to the glass doorway. He stood there, blocking my exit, and frowned at the dissolved lock.

"Somebody's got to be here," he said. "This doesn't just happen by itself."

Hardbody tried the door to the private room and found it secure. He punched in a code on a mounted keypad and peered inside once it opened.

"Anything there, Chuy?" Gary asked, finally giving me a better name for him.

"Nah."

"Well, what the hell is going on? Is this guy a ninja or something?"

Oberon would have loved to hear that, and I nearly made a noise that would have given me away had they the sense to turn off the alarm and listen. As it was, the electronic shriek gave me cover to sneak right up to Gary. Since I was fueling my camouflage on the limited battery of my bear charm, I couldn't stick around for much longer and wait for him to clear out of my way. Proper police would be around soon, and I didn't want to have to deal with them too.

I reached out with both hands and shoved Gary hard through the threshold and to the left, leaving me a clear path to the vault door.

"Chuy called you a twat, Gary," I said as I ran past. "I heard him." It made me laugh, because Gary would have to report what Chuy called him since the perpetrator had said it.

Much cursing and outrage followed in my wake from both of the guards. A manager type was just outside the vault on a cell phone, talking to police. "Yes, sorry. There's something a bit odd going on here at the bank. Our door has been melted. Sorry."

The front doors to the bank had been automatically locked as part of the security protocols once the alarm went off, but Ferris gave me one more assist and I was out in the street. Whatever movement the cameras caught was fine; they would never get enough to identify me.

I thanked Ferris for his help and asked him to remain in the area for his reward. I'd have to scrounge up something suitably delicious for him before leaving.

Oberon said through our mental link when I dropped my camouflage in the alley and chucked him under the chin. "Fair enough."

I knew that it's standard procedure to hole up in a nondescript warehouse or garage after robbing a bank, but I walked to Tim Hortons instead-affectionately known as Timmie's-because I felt like having something hot and coffee-like and I didn't have a big bag of money in a burlap sack to mark me as a dastardly villain. Instead, I had a backpack and an Irish wolfhound on a leash, so I looked like a local student instead of the mysterious thief who slipped past the security of the Royal Bank of Canada in downtown Toronto.

The Timmie's on York Street sported a garish green-and-yellow-striped awning, a fire hydrant out front in case of donut grease fire, and a convenient signpost pointing the way to public parking. "What kind of ungodly breakfast meat do you want from here?" I asked Oberon as I tied him up to the sign.