Staked

by Kevin Hearne

  Theophilus followed my gaze and didn’t like what he saw any more than I did. “Karl!” he shouted. “Hurry up and help Hans with the other one!” Karl turned his head to confirm that, yes, Hans was still having difficulty subduing Owen in the little rooftop pavilion. And that’s when Granuaile lunged up, grabbed Karl’s pant leg, and yanked mightily to pull him off his feet. He hit the edge of the tiles with his ass next to her handhold, she latched on to his torso, and then they were locked in a horrible embrace and fighting as they fell, tumbling so that when they disappeared behind the raised blocks of stone partitioning the steps, they were falling horizontally, the vampire’s back to me and Granuaile almost invisible except for the trailing flame of her hair. The crunch of their impact and their joint, choked cry of pain caused Theophilus to wince.

  “Ouch,” he said, and my inarticulate attempt at shouting Granuaile’s name sounded as if I were trying to talk through duct tape. I reached behind my right shoulder and drew out Fragarach, pointing it in the general direction of Theophilus. His eyes returned to me and he snorted. “What do you think you’re going to accomplish with that? Steel won’t do anything except make me hungry later for any blood you manage to spill with it now.”

  He was right. Steel wouldn’t do anything significant to him unless I could manage to decapitate him. But Fragarach was more than simple steel. It could cut through any armor, or make people tell the truth, or summon winds. Down the steps to the west, past the fountain and beyond the plaza, the narrow Via dei Condotti descended in a straight line to the Tiber River, which I’d be able to see on a clear day. But it was all dark and gloomy now. It was a long shot, but I had to try. Summoning wind didn’t require a verbal command, just an effort of will and a source of energy. I pointed Fragarach down the Via dei Condotti and gave it all the juice remaining in my bear charm and a little bit of me as well. I groaned from the effort, drained, and fell back against the steps.

  “What the hell was that?” Theophilus said. I gave a little bit more of myself to target him and trigger my unbinding charm. He clutched his chest and said, “Hrrk,” so I hit him with it again. He took a step back, but that was all I had left. I listened to Owen bellow upstairs, out of my sight, heard people finally screaming about the blood-soaked snow, and realized that the Hammers of God must have either suffered mightily and their cloak was no more or at some point the carnage became too great to ignore under any spell. I heard nothing from Granuaile. And Theophilus, when he recovered, finally looked annoyed. If nothing else, I’d defeated his smug expression. And maybe I’d get a small result for my efforts after all. The dirty-dishwater clouds in the west swirled and tore apart as Theophilus said, “I think that’s enough,” and a few weak rays of late-afternoon sun pierced the snowfall and set his head to smoking as he lunged for me. He felt the burn and halted, turned, and shot away into the plaza, behind the buildings, where there was plenty of shade. His entire face sizzled and vented steam, and now he looked satisfactorily pissed.

  I heard a scream from up at the top of Babington’s and saw a human form engulfed in flames, flailing in the pavilion. Owen’s troublesome opponent had caught much more of the sun up there. Pointing at me, Theophilus turned his head to call over his shoulder, “Marko! Shoot him!”

  The steel barrel of a rifle peeked out a window in the terra-cotta building, and I scrambled to hide myself behind the stone pillar. A bullet cracked off the steps and shattered some marble quarried hundreds of years ago. I was effectively pinned down now, unable to speak any more unbindings through my broken jaw, and my stake was nearby but in the line of sight of a sniper. I couldn’t bind it to my palm without the ability to craft the binding. At least the sun had placed me in a no-vamp land. Any vampire who wanted to get to me would have to get through the sun first.

  I allowed myself a tiny sniff of hope: I’d figure something out in the next minute or so. A minute without someone in your face was all you needed sometimes. And then the lovely yellow patches of light on the steps faded as the storm clouds boiled back together in the absence of continued influence from Fragarach.

  The literal dimming of my prospects gave me new and very serious doubts about whether any of us would survive this. I had a painful and debilitating injury, no juice left, and no way to get any more. I hadn’t seen Granuaile get up from where she’d fallen, and as soon as the sun disappeared, more vampires leapt onto Babington’s roof to bait Owen’s great big bear. A stolen peek into the plaza allowed me a glimpse of the Hammers of God still battling the twisted Rosicrucians. There were fewer of them on both sides now, attrition taking its toll, but the vampires were leaving them alone, focusing on eliminating the Druids instead. They were coming; Theophilus was coming. I wasn’t going to get that minute to think.

  Maybe, instead, a quick observation: Theophilus had used only two methods of attack so far, and, unless I was mistaken, he had rarely deviated from them his entire life. He either ambushed victims or sent overwhelming numbers at them. And I can’t fault either strategy, because both are likely to lead to victory, and victory is what it’s all about. Winning is the difference between old guys and dead guys.

  But when your opponent knows you’ll try to ambush him, some of your advantage disappears. Theophilus had already sucker-punched me once, and if his sniper could get a clear shot he’d take it. So his move would be to have his lads rush my position and flush me from cover. He wouldn’t square off against me except as a last resort. I’d be willing to bet that he was a terrible fighter. Fast and strong and invulnerable to most attacks, but untrained. Which meant that Leif could probably take him, despite being younger and relatively weaker. Which meant that I could probably take him. If I had any access to Gaia’s energy, that is.

  Drawing on old knowledge that these European vampires would never have bothered to acquire themselves, I set myself in a crouching stance behind the pillar, right foot forward, still sheltered from sniper fire. And then I began a series of forms with Fragarach that I had learned in China; when combined at speed, they formed a whirling defensive guard about my head and torso. I didn’t know from which direction the attack would come, so I had to give myself some chance of slowing them down, since they would be coming with a significant speed advantage.

  The first one came from behind the pillar on my right and led with his face, fangs bared. He expected to find a stationary target, not a steel blade whipping through the air that he wasn’t breathing. Fragarach sliced through his head from top to bottom in front of his ears. His body’s momentum carried into me and knocked me a bit to the left, and I was already thrusting in that direction, expecting another vampire to appear from there, the old one-two. And, sure enough, one did. He ran right onto Fragarach’s point, which missed his heart and punctured the lung he didn’t need. Still, it hurt, and he stopped, though he hissed and hit me with his dead-body breath. Feeling exposed, I twisted the blade and darted back behind the pillar, yanking Fragarach and the vampire with me. It was therefore his head instead of mine that got exploded by sniper fire from Marko.

  I re-centered myself between the bodies and resumed my defensive forms. Neither vampire was completely toast, but they were down for now, until they could be unbound. In the meantime, I needed to be ready for the second wave. It would be any second now—I was sure I’d feel the impact before I saw anything coming.

  But no more undead minions materialized. I just got a good workout when I was already exhausted and in pain. Maybe that was the plan: Wait until I couldn’t maintain my defenses and then swoop in. As soon as I considered it, though, I realized Theophilus didn’t really have that luxury; when and if Owen dispatched the vampires that currently occupied him, he’d be able to unbind any that were left, provided he could talk. I was starting to think that perhaps he had shape-shifted because of a similar injury to mine. If his jaw had also been broken—a tactical move on the vampires’ part—then bulking up as a bear and fighting it out would make sense for him.

  Maybe we had truly fought through mo
st of the vampires. Or maybe there was some other skullduggery going on—time being taken to reevaluate strategy, given that I had demonstrated you can take out a vampire with a sword, albeit not permanently.

  A blur zipped past me to the left up the central flight of the steps and then stilled well out of reach of my sword. It was Theophilus, face crispy and wizened and bereft of the smug confidence he’d displayed earlier. I kept my eye on him but didn’t stop moving Fragarach through my defensive forms; his appearance was most likely intended as a distraction and I’d be hit from the sides or even up top—

  Flicking my eyes upward, I saw a dark shape descending from over the top of the pillar, and I pivoted to my right and hacked through it, splitting the body in two. But the gambit served its purpose. During that crucial second or so, Theophilus moved with blinding speed and bowled me over, tackling me to the cobbled plaza stones and trapping my sword arm against my body. As soon as we hit the ground on my left side, he reared back, grabbed Fragarach by the blade, and ripped it out of my hand, uncaring about the deep cuts he received as a result. He tossed it away onto the steps of the Keats-Shelley House. I was unarmed, drained of energy, and unable to speak—he had me and he knew it. He grinned, feeling confident again, and held me down with a grip stronger than any iron bands I’ve seen.

  Just to make that smile disappear again, I wanted to tell him Werner Drasche was dead, but I couldn’t.

  “Well done, sir, well done,” he cooed at me. “Not good enough, but definitely a fine challenge. A worthy opponent. When the world’s nests hear that you killed so many but failed to kill me—even with the sun!—that will only add to my prestige. You’ve done me a favor in a way. But that doesn’t mean I won’t ram my fist through your skull right now.”

  I didn’t have the strength to break free. When he lifted his hand away I wouldn’t be able to block his blow in time, or even if I did manage to get in the way it would be an utterly feeble attempt. So I drained my own energy to trigger the unbinding charm on my necklace once more, having no other weapons at my disposal. I nearly blacked out at the drain, but he did let go of my left arm to clutch at his precious turtleneck. He hissed, and then when the pain faded he raised his fist high and said, “Good night—hunh!”

  His eyes bulged and he looked down at his right side, where a familiar stake had embedded itself underneath his arm. He dropped his fist to pull it out, but the unbinding had already begun, shredding him from the center out. The world’s oldest vampire gave a wet gurgling scream before he liquefied and splurted out through his fine clothing. The turtleneck didn’t save me from an overdose of gules but perhaps made it look like I had died too. I followed the path of where that stake must have come from and saw Granuaile standing off to the left, behind the pillar opposite mine, leaning heavily on her staff. Her clothes were covered in gore and she was favoring her left side, but apart from either deep bruising or perhaps some small fractures, she was all right. She gave me a lopsided grin. “Hey. You look like I feel. Don’t let me forget: We need to buy Luchta, like, all the beer for giving us those stakes.”

  I wanted to shout at her to beware of the sniper, but I think she knew about him anyway, judging by the fact that she was already behind cover. I, however, wasn’t.

  But the disadvantage to peering through one of those scopes is the very small field of vision. The sniper hadn’t seen Granuaile coming, and now he had taken his sights off me to search for who had just killed the boss. Or at least I surmised as much by the fact that I didn’t immediately die of a bullet to the brain. Flailing for a second in ancient vampire goo, I sat up with an effort and crawled back behind the pillar.

  Owen wasn’t finished making a ruckus. Babington’s rooftop pavilion was on fire now—presumably ignited by the smoking corpses of the vampires caught in the brief rays of sunlight—and he used his brass-covered claws to burst through the wall as a bear and slide to the edge of the roof, where he shape-shifted to a red kite. I followed his progress as he arrowed across the piazza to a window in the terra-cotta building where Marko’s rifle muzzle poked out. He didn’t get there before Marko fired but rather just as he fired, knocking the muzzle down with his talons so that the bullet went spaff into Bernini’s fountain. I don’t know if Marko was aiming at Granuaile or me. He didn’t get a chance to shoot again after that. Owen disappeared into the building and I presume he took out all the gun-wielding lads one way or another, because he eventually emerged from the front entrance, dressed in one of their suits.

  In the meantime, authorities were pouring into the piazza, trying to reestablish order as a precursor to figuring out what had happened. The wail of sirens heralded the arrival of firemen and paramedics. Granuaile and I had no difficulty pretending to be traumatized victims, and neither did the Rabbi Yosef Bialik. Only five of the Hammers of God survived, but they had defeated the Hermetic Qabalists completely, and their beards looked like normal facial hair again. I noticed that all the silver knives had been removed from the body of the first Rosicrucian the Hammers had taken out. The rabbi floated the idea that maybe we should blame everything on the guys with the funny haircuts, and I nodded my approval.

  “I have lost good friends tonight, but this was a true triumph over evil, yes? We will talk later. When you can talk.” Yes, we would. I owed him some Immortali-Tea for sure.

  When Owen emerged from the building, he still had enough juice left in his brass knuckles to cast camouflage on the three of us and get us out of there. His jaw, I noticed, was misshapen, as I’d suspected. It was dislocated for sure and possibly broken like mine. We limped and grunted our way back to the grounds of the Villa Borghese and fell onto the grass once we felt Gaia’s presence again. I numbed the pain first so I could keep my head clear, then set about getting my jaw back into place and the bones and teeth bound together like old friends. Owen’s jaw was merely dislocated, and once he popped it back into place with an audible crunch, a river of profanity that had been dammed up all during the fight spewed forth. Granuaile likewise worked on her wounds, and once Owen wound down, we rested in silence and healed. After an hour I could talk again, albeit with a thick slur.

  “Yay team,” I said.

  “Damn,” Owen said. “I knew it wouldn’t last forever. But it was right peaceful there for a while, not having to listen to your yapping.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Fishing out my burner phone, I made a call and spoke past my bloodied lips and tongue. “Meet ush now at the Antico Caffè Greco by the piazza.” I thumbed off the call once I got an affirmative response.

  “Who was that?” Granuaile asked.

  “The ansher to what happensh next. Hungry?”

  “Not while covered in blood. Maybe afterward.”

  “I’m sure they will have a washroom.”

  Charged up again, we camouflaged ourselves and walked back through the piazza, ignoring the barriers and surveying the damage. Babington’s suffered damage only to the rooftop pavilion; someone got up there with a fire extinguisher and saved the building. There was nothing but oily stains and empty clothes to mark the final deaths of the vampires—Owen confirmed that we had gotten them all. He hadn’t killed all the thralls but left them broken and, in one case, naked. He’d lost his stake on top of Babington’s somewhere and would have to look for it later. Mine had been found by the police on the steps and was being bagged as evidence. As soon as the officer put it down, I snatched it up, unseen, and shoved it underneath my jacket.

  Normally there would be something of a wait to get into Caffè Greco, the legendary establishment where Keats and Shelley and many other artists and poets dined over the centuries. Its red and gold interior with vaulted ceilings fairly teemed with the ghosts of creative minds, and people lined up to park their buttocks where famous buttocks had lounged in days of yore. But on a freezing, snowy evening in Rome, it was almost deserted. We kept the camouflage on when we entered and shambled past the maître d’ to the restrooms where we could attempt to clean ourselves up somewhat.
We could get our faces and hair clean, and Owen had stolen his clothing so he was in good shape there, but my clothes weren’t going to look decent again before they had gone a few rounds with industrial-sized containers of bleach. Better to unbind them and let them feed the earth.

  “Ye look like ye killed a bus full o’ people, lad,” Owen said.

  “Yesh, I do. But it’ll be okay. I think.”

  We walked out together in camouflage, dropped it, then walked right back in again, entirely visible. Granuaile didn’t look bad at all, having managed to either clean or conceal most of the blood on her. I was the one who had to talk my way in. I explained in broken Italian to the alarmed maître d’ that my clothes weren’t stained with actual blood; it was corn syrup and food dye, thrown upon me by some damn animal-rights activists who’d targeted me for my leather jacket. I gave him fifty euros, courtesy of the pickpockets I’d run into yesterday, and we were seated with alacrity at a table for four.

  “Our friend will be joining us shortly,” I explained.

  We ordered espressos and sat in silence. We were exhausted, cut off from Gaia, and quietly trying to manage our pain. There was little else to say until our guest showed up.

  When he did, Owen was the first to spot him. “Fecking hell?” he said, then he began to speak the unbinding for vampires. I saw that a tall, pale Viking with straight blond hair approached, dressed in a modern Italian suit.

  “No, no!” I said, clapping a hand over his mouth. “Thash who we’re waiting for!”

  Leif Helgarson halted, because he’d heard what I said, and held up his hands to show that he was harmless, but Owen slapped my hand away and growled, “Gerroff me, ye poxy cock!”

  “All right, jush lisshen to him. He’sh gonna keep your Grove shafe.”

  “Fine. But give me your stake just in case,” he said. “He’d better fecking behave.” I handed it over, and he laid it on the table in plain view as a warning.