NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In the fourth novel of the Iron Druid Chronicles, two-thousand-year-old Druid Atticus O’Sullivan must pay his debts to cunning trickster god Coyote, a task that includes battling undead creatures of the night as well as a relentless hound of Hel and the goddess of death who commands it. “[Kevin] Hearne is a terrific storyteller with a great snarky wit. . . . Neil Gaiman’s American Gods meets Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden.”— SFFWorld Cutting a deal with a trickster god rarely goes well for any human brave or foolish enough to try it, but Atticus doesn’t feel like he has a choice. With members of the Norse pantheon out for his blood, he can’t train his apprentice in peace, so he asks Coyote to help him fake his own death. The cost, however, might wind up being every bit as high as if he’d made no deal at all. There are things hiding in the Arizona desert that don’t want any company, and Coyote makes sure they know Atticus has arrived. And then there's the hound of Hel, Garm, who’s terribly difficult to shake and not at all convinced that Atticus is dead. Being tricked by a trickster is par for the course. But it’s the betrayal from someone he thought was a friend that shakes Atticus to the core and places his life in jeopardy. The real trick, he discovers, might be surviving his own faked death. Includes Kevin Hearne’s novella “Two Ravens and One Crow” Don’t miss any of The Iron Druid Chronicles: HOUNDED
HEXED
HAMMERED
TRICKED
TRAPPED
HUNTED
SHATTERED
STAKED
SCOURGED
BESIEGED Praise for The Iron Druid Chronicles “[Kevin] Hearne is a terrific storyteller with a great snarky wit. . . . Neil Gaiman’s American Gods meets Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden.” — SFFWorld “[The Iron Druid books] are clever, fast-paced and a good escape.” — Boing Boing “Hearne understands the two main necessities of good fantasy stories: for all the wisecracks and action, he never loses sight of delivering a sense of wonder to his readers, and he understands that magic use always comes with a price. Highly recommended.” — The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction “Superb . . . plenty of quips and zap-pow-bang fighting.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Celtic mythology and an ancient Druid with modern attitude mix it up in the Arizona desert in this witty new fantasy series.” —Kelly Meding, author of Chimera “[Atticus is] a strong modern hero with a long history and the wit to survive in the twenty-first century. . . . A snappy narrative voice . . . a savvy urban fantasy adventure.” — Library Journal “A page-turning and often laugh-out-loud funny caper through a mix of the modern and the mythic.” —Ari Marmell, author of The Warlord’s Legacy “Outrageously fun.” — The Plain Dealer “Kevin Hearne breathes new life into old myths, creating a world both eerily familiar and startlingly original.” —Nicole Peeler, author of Tempest Rising Kevin Hearne hugs trees, pets doggies, and rocks out to heavy metal. He also thinks tacos are a pretty nifty idea. He is the New York Times bestselling author of The Iron Druid Chronicles, the Ink & Sigil series, and the Seven Kennings series, and is co-author of The Tales of Pell with Delilah S. Dawson. Chapter 1 The best trick I ever pulled off was watching myself die. I did a respectable job of it too—the dying, I mean, not the watching. The key to dying well is to make a final verbal ejaculation that is full of rage and pain but not tainted in the least by squeals of terror or pleas for mercy. This was my father’s wisdom—about the only shred of it that has managed to lodge firmly in my mind all these years. He died while trying to steal somebody else’s cows. It would be an ignominious end today, but before the common era in Ireland, it was honorable and manly to die in a cattle raid, as such theft was called. Before he left to meet his doom, my father must have had some dark premonition about it, because he shared with me all his opinions about dying properly, and I will never forget his final words: “A man’s supposed to shit himself after he dies, son, not before. Try to remember that, lad, so that when your time comes, you won’t make a right girly mess of it. Now f*** off and go play in the bog.” Like many silly codes of bravery and manliness, the meat of my father’s instruction on how to die well can be distilled to a simple slogan: Die angry at maximum volume. (Dying silently is out of the question; the world’s last Druid should not go gentle into that good night.) During infrequent spates of morbidity, I used to speculate on my eventual manner of death. I figured it would happen on a city street somewhere, cut off from the power of the earth, unable to summon a magical mulligan that would let me see the sunrise. But at the same time, I hoped it would be in a cool city with a bitchin’ name, like Kathmandu or Bangkok or maybe Climax, Michigan. I never thought it would be in a dried-up place called Tuba City
HEXED
HAMMERED
TRICKED
TRAPPED
HUNTED
SHATTERED
STAKED
SCOURGED
BESIEGED Praise for The Iron Druid Chronicles “[Kevin] Hearne is a terrific storyteller with a great snarky wit. . . . Neil Gaiman’s American Gods meets Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden.” — SFFWorld “[The Iron Druid books] are clever, fast-paced and a good escape.” — Boing Boing “Hearne understands the two main necessities of good fantasy stories: for all the wisecracks and action, he never loses sight of delivering a sense of wonder to his readers, and he understands that magic use always comes with a price. Highly recommended.” — The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction “Superb . . . plenty of quips and zap-pow-bang fighting.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Celtic mythology and an ancient Druid with modern attitude mix it up in the Arizona desert in this witty new fantasy series.” —Kelly Meding, author of Chimera “[Atticus is] a strong modern hero with a long history and the wit to survive in the twenty-first century. . . . A snappy narrative voice . . . a savvy urban fantasy adventure.” — Library Journal “A page-turning and often laugh-out-loud funny caper through a mix of the modern and the mythic.” —Ari Marmell, author of The Warlord’s Legacy “Outrageously fun.” — The Plain Dealer “Kevin Hearne breathes new life into old myths, creating a world both eerily familiar and startlingly original.” —Nicole Peeler, author of Tempest Rising Kevin Hearne hugs trees, pets doggies, and rocks out to heavy metal. He also thinks tacos are a pretty nifty idea. He is the New York Times bestselling author of The Iron Druid Chronicles, the Ink & Sigil series, and the Seven Kennings series, and is co-author of The Tales of Pell with Delilah S. Dawson. Chapter 1 The best trick I ever pulled off was watching myself die. I did a respectable job of it too—the dying, I mean, not the watching. The key to dying well is to make a final verbal ejaculation that is full of rage and pain but not tainted in the least by squeals of terror or pleas for mercy. This was my father’s wisdom—about the only shred of it that has managed to lodge firmly in my mind all these years. He died while trying to steal somebody else’s cows. It would be an ignominious end today, but before the common era in Ireland, it was honorable and manly to die in a cattle raid, as such theft was called. Before he left to meet his doom, my father must have had some dark premonition about it, because he shared with me all his opinions about dying properly, and I will never forget his final words: “A man’s supposed to shit himself after he dies, son, not before. Try to remember that, lad, so that when your time comes, you won’t make a right girly mess of it. Now f*** off and go play in the bog.” Like many silly codes of bravery and manliness, the meat of my father’s instruction on how to die well can be distilled to a simple slogan: Die angry at maximum volume. (Dying silently is out of the question; the world’s last Druid should not go gentle into that good night.) During infrequent spates of morbidity, I used to speculate on my eventual manner of death. I figured it would happen on a city street somewhere, cut off from the power of the earth, unable to summon a magical mulligan that would let me see the sunrise. But at the same time, I hoped it would be in a cool city with a bitchin’ name, like Kathmandu or Bangkok or maybe Climax, Michigan. I never thought it would be in a dried-up place called Tuba City