Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)

by Kevin Hearne

“Rabbi Yosef Bialik,” I said. “What are you doing here?” “Sharing breakfast, I hope,” he replied. “I assure you that I have no wish to fight. Our past quarrels can remain in the past.” “You’re alone?” I asked, scanning my surroundings for other figures in black with weaponized beards.

“Well, don’t let it go to your head! The truth is, your smarts are better hidden than a pair of snake nuts.”

“I’ll find a way to make it up to you,” I promised. “Oh, no, we’ll think up something ourselves,” Ty countered.

and I will be finishing him off out of necessity. You can’t put your fist through a man’s wood and expect him to forgive and forget.

“It’s a math problem,” I replied, leaving out the exhaustion and the beating I’d suffered. <Oh. I can’t help with that. If you need something peed on, though, or a cat’s day ruined, I’m your hound. Or maybe you have a sausage on you that you’d like to get rid of?>

but the Hammers of God wanted to disrupt them before they completed anything. So Rabbi Yosef Bialik’s beard got unleashed like some hairy nightmare elder god, puffing and expanding and then twisting into thick tentacles, three on either side of his chin. They began to stretch out for the point man of the other formation, and Granuaile gasped while Owen pointed a shaky finger at him. “What kind of extra-special batshite is that right there? Gods below, Siodhachan, if Brighid was here I’d tell her to kill it with fire!”