I swam back to awareness with my face mere inches from the bumper of a car. A rusty bumper. I stood up, blinking in the sunlight, my legs weak and wobbly beneath me.

  Around me were the metal corpses of hundreds of once-fine German automobiles. An autobahn. They looked like they had been destroyed during the evacuation of a doomed city back in the early days of the Resurgence. Skeletons moldered still in the interiors of most of them, the remains of frightened people killed in an apocalypse that they barely had time to grasp or understand. In the years since someone had pushed enough of the destroyed vehicles aside to create a path just wide enough for the passage of other cars and carts, provided that they traveled in single file.

  I heard the rumble of a single engine behind me. I turned to see the same Volkswagen van that had carried me to Nuremberg pick its way down the narrow path between the wrecks. One of the elves inside saw me watch them leave and flipped me a jaunty salute just as the van disappeared around a curve in the road. The world swam and faded in front of my eyes and my rubbery legs collapsed beneath me.

  Once the world had stabilized a bit I gingerly touched the massive lump behind my left ear and cursed wearily when my hand encountered hair that was still damp with leaking blood. I slumped against the ruined BMW and tried to ignore the spinning world and the wave of nausea that accompanied it.

  “Concussion,” I slurred, hoping that it was a good sign that I was not so far gone that I couldn’t diagnose myself.

  Life is not like the movies. Getting hit hard enough to get knocked unconscious usually came with a bruised and swelling brain. A bad concussion meant that my brain would crush itself to death against my own skull and even a light one would keep me sick and dizzy for days. I would not be shrugging off that blow like that anytime soon. If my concussion was truly bad there was literally nothing that I could do about it.

  I patted myself down to see if the elves had left me anything at all besides my increasingly ragged clothes. My wandering hands encountered nothing. Those pointy eared bastards had been thorough before letting me see their goddess. They hadn’t left me so much as a toothpick. Maybe I shouldn’t have spent so much time insulting them?

  “Jerks”, I muttered impotently before slumping back against the car. A little part of me was telling me to stay awake, that someone suffering a concussion should remain awake or perhaps never wake up again. Yet blackness still beat at the edges of my vision and I could feel myself beginning that long slide into a perhaps eternal night.

  “You got me Eulenspiegel,” I said in a barely audible whisper. “Come and get me, you midget bastard. I’ll agree to whatever you want.”

  My eyes closed but before awareness could fully flee back into the black ocean of unconsciousness I heard a chipper voice in my ear. “Now, now, those are a words, that I have been waiting to hear.” It took all my remaining energy to crack open an eyelid and look at the diminutive Fey standing in front of me.

  “You got me… if you… save Kris… you better…” my words trailed off into meaningless slurs.

  “What?” Eulenspiegel gave me a perplexed look before realizing what was happening to me. “Oh yes. Cannot have that. Cannot have that at all.” The Fey snapped his fingers and suddenly cognizance came flooding back to me and all traces of a headache or concussion vanished. “My apologies, my apologies, I forget how fragile you mortals can be.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” I growled back sourly as I clambered to my feet. I was relatively certain that the Fey had just saved my life, and that meant I was in his debt whether I liked it or not. The little bastard certainly had a smug look on his face and I dearly wished that I had an ensorcelled shotgun to wipe it away. Instead, I took a moment to collect myself. “Let’s deal. I want you to transport me to Washington DC.”

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  “That is simply impossible, impossible. I cannot do that.” The Fey’s face pulled into an expression that seemed genuinely regretful, but for amusement still lurked in his black eyes. I kind of figured that’s what his answer would be. “I could perhaps help you in other ways.”

  “And Kris, is she even alive?”

  “She is alive, the captain of Frau Wyrd’s elven guard is keeping her as a pet. He finds her outrage at her small size deeply amusing.”

  “Can you get her out of there?”

  “It is a small matter. Frau Wyrd does not concern herself with her retainer’s pets.”

  “Great. Then I want you to return her to her original size and transport both of us to a location on the northern coast of my choosing.”

  “I’m afraid I cannot do that either.”

  “Why not? You just said you could get me to the coast.”

  “I said that I could get you to the coast. You. Your companion would require more effort, as would unshrinking her…”

  “But you’re the one who shrunk her in the first place!” I protested.

  “Nevertheless, nevertheless, it still requires more effort on my behalf.”

  “Fine. You unshrink her and transport both of us to…” I tried to think of a good place to go that Eulenspiegel would agree to, “…Cologne.”

  “No. No, I cannot without greatly inconveniencing myself get you to Cologne. I believe you had originally planned to go through Munich. I can get you there.”

  “What about Stuttgart? That has to be about as far away from here as Munich.”

  “But, but, I prefer Munich to Stuttgart,” the little man had a little smirk. He had me over a barrel and he knew it.”

  “Shit,” I growled, Munich was better than wherever I was, but it was still a long way from where I needed to go. “Ok, you get myself and full sized Kris to Munich. But if you are going to take us there rather than Stuttgart I want you to give us some supplies and weapons and I want you to tell me what the hell is going on.”

  “I will gladly tell you all I can once we have an accord.”

  “But we haven’t negotiated your price yet.”

  “Because there is no negotiation. My price is my price.”

  “Which is…” I said leadingly.

  “…something I will reveal once we have an agreement.”

  “Fine,” I snarled and suppressed the urge to punt the little being right off the autobahn.

  “Do we have an accord, Thomas Winter?” Till Eulenspiegel extended a pale, spidery hand towards me.

  “To be clear,” I held my hand just out of his grasp. “You will restore Kris to her original size, instantly transport both of us to the same place within Munich, give us supplies and weapons and tell me about this ‘Destiny’, about why the Old Gods are so interested in me. You do all this for a price to be named once the agreement is complete.” All of the literature agreed that if you must make an agreement with a creature like the Fey then make it precise.

  “Yes, yes,” he said impatiently. “Do we have an accord?” his hand thrust a little further forward until it was a mere inch from my own.

  I hesitated for just a second before grasping the Fey’s unnatural digits within my own. I knew that somehow the little imp was going to screw me but I also didn’t see how I had any other choice.

  Shaking hands with Till Eulenspiegel was more involved than just taking each other’s hands and then pumping them up and down. The Fey was not a man even though he tried to look it. When I grabbed his hand it was like reaching into a dark hole and grasping some wriggling thing with far too many legs, something that managed to be slimy and scaly at the same time. I instinctually wanted to let go but could not. Our flesh was welded together for several seconds as energy passed between us as the pact we had just made was magically sealed. In that moment, I saw Eulenspiegel not as a dapper, little almost-man but instead as a dark sprite that prowled the forest of ancient Germany afflicting those unlucky enough to cross its path. An ancient being that had chosen a more recent guise from German folklore because it suited him. I knew right then that I had made a terrible mistake.

  Our hands parted with a snap of released energy and I staggered back against the BMW. My hand was numb and nerveless and my mouth dry.

  “There, there, that was not so bad, was it?” clucked Eulenspiegel as he watched me stagger. “We are bound now. I will deliver as I had promised as will you deliver upon your promise.”

  “I still don’t know what that is,” I grated over the rising terror in my breast. “What do you want from me?”

  “What do I want? What do I want?” he said musingly before his smile quickly crossed the line from mischievous to diabolical. “What I require; is that in return for my aid you must kill someone.”

  “Who?” I growled, tired of his games and trying to force aside images of myself gunning down my parents or the President.

  “A god,” crowed Eulenspigel as the jaws of his trap closed. “I want you to kill a god.”