Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six) by Kevin Hearne Page A

his attention on the grills otherwise. The two servers spent more time out in the dining area than they did in the kitchen.
    The cook eventually put up four plates, two with pork chops and eggs and two with pancakes and bacon. Oberon would be grateful for any of that. But a place like this might serve prime rib sandwiches for lunch. If so, they had to put the slow-cooking prime rib in the oven in the morning. That meant it was available for breakfast if you liked it ultra-rare, which Oberon did.
    The oven was behind the serving area but also behind the wood-fire grill’s stone walls, which allowed me to tiptoe back there and open the oven without being seen. The large hunk of meat that greeted me elicited a smile, because I knew how happy Oberon would be. I removed it and rested the prime rib on a prep area next to the oven. I found a couple of carving knives and a plate and sliced off a generous hunk of bloody beef for my friend. Granuaile snagged the pork chop plates and stole the bacon sides from the pancakes while the waiters were out of the kitchen, and the cook never noticed. The pancakes she left behind utterly failed to raise the alarm.
    I felt sorry about the inevitable argument that would erupt when our theft was discovered—especially sorry to give the waitress an excuse to yell at the cook—but we were hungry and in a hurry and nobody’s lives were at stake but ours.
    Try to chew it slowly and enjoy it
, I said, putting the plate down for Oberon.
     he said as he laid into it. He gave a soft whine of appreciation.
    Glad you like it, buddy. There’s no shortage of bacon here. In fact, you can have mine
.
    with a side of bacon?
I love you, Atticus. If I ever have puppies, I’m going to tell them stories about this food. It’s legendary.>
    A heated exchange of Polish boiled through the screen door, and my pork chops tasted of guilt sauce. We had to chow down anyway. Any meal at this point could be our last. The waitress and the cook eventually broke it off and she exited the kitchen, no doubt to inform her customers that their breakfasts would take a bit longer.
    We were just about finished when two large ravens descended with thunderous backwings that sounded like chopper blades. Each of them had a familiar white gleam in one eye. They landed on the woodpile and squawked at me.
    “Hugin and Munin,” I said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” One raven—I couldn’t tell them apart—squawked and shoved his beak in my direction, then squawked again while pointing with his beak to the other raven.
    “You want me to talk to that one? Hi there. Oh! I see.” It wanted me to mentally bond with the other raven. Activating my charm for magical sight, I had to blink a little bit at the intensity of white magic emanating from the two birds. But once I could focus, I found the consciousness of the indicated raven and reached out to it. Images slammed into my head, aerial views of Artemis and Diana racing across the Polish border nearDukla, each of them in a fancy new chariot pulled by four golden-horned stags. They were running side by side, following our trail across a familiar alfalfa field, when the earth gave out from under them and they fell into our pit trap. They tried to leap out of the chariots and make it back to solid ground but weren’t in time; they’d been moving quickly, and the stags pulled those floating chariots down. A grind house of gore and screaming ensued. Though I felt