Staked (Iron Druid Chronicles) (39 page)

“Shit. Hey, wait: They think there’s only one of us. I’ll be the bait down there on the steps and let them come after me. You guys stay here and pick off all you can.”

Their protests followed after me as I dashed down the stairs. “If ye cock this up, you’ll be dead!” Owen pointed out helpfully.

When I plowed through the front door, the first thing I did was slip on the icy steps and fall on my ass. An inauspicious beginning to battle. But I got up and noticed that the Hammers of God and their tonsured opponents had fallen to hand-to-hand—or rather to beards vs. scalp squids. Both formations were broken up now, and it was a brutal hairy mêlée that I might have enjoyed watching under other circumstances. But there were many speedy vampires spreading out over the piazza and I needed to get myself in position to lure them, hoping that Theophilus himself would come out to play eventually. Beginning to draw on the reserves of my bear charm, I increased my speed and drew out my stake, keeping Fragarach sheathed. Then I chose a vamp as I ran over to the bottom of the Spanish Steps and kept my eyes on him as I mouthed the words of unbinding. He was circling around toward the Keats-Shelley House on the other side of the steps from Babington’s, and just as I completed the unbinding, he realized that I wasn’t admiring Bernini’s fountain like a tourist. His mouth formed a tiny
o
of surprise, and then he turned into mobile slush.

“He’s there, at the steps!” that same stentorian voice called from the terra-cotta building.

The vampires began to converge from all sides—some had moved fast enough to run to the top of the steps and cut off escape to the road that snaked beneath the Trinità dei Monti church. Not that I wished to escape.

I scooted over to the large block pillar of marble at one end of the steps and put myself on the other side of it, facing the stairs, in case they decided to direct sniper fire in my direction from those buildings. Unlike the Hammers, I had no kinetic ward. I’d handle the vampires coming from above and behind Babington’s and trust Granuaile and Owen to take care of threats coming at me from the piazza.

It was an excellent plan for about ninety seconds. A lot can happen in ninety seconds. I unbound just as many vampires as I did in Berlin, probably more—all their fine clothing ruined by the juicy sounds of their owners’ elements being forcibly separated. Splortches and splashes and gushes ahead of me, even more behind me. So much blood on the steps, splashes of black and sometimes red in the white snow, if the vampire had fed recently. A few vampires got past Owen and Granuaile and rounded the pillar on me, but I staked them and wondered how many Theophilus had brought with him. He was sacrificing a lot of soldiers to get to me. Did he have the guts to fight himself, I wondered? Had he emerged from the warded building, or was he still coldly issuing directions from the safety of his darkened room?

The vampires figured out that Granuaile and Owen were doing most of the damage, and they sent a few of their soldiers over the rooftops to land on Babington’s and deal with them. Not that I saw that happening from down on the steps—I pieced that together later. The first I realized that something was wrong was when I heard Granuaile cry out in surprise. I looked up at the Babington’s rooftop and saw her twist in midair and just barely catch the tiled edge with her hands. She and Owen had been facing in my direction and leaning out the wide window of the pavilion to target the vampires coming my way, so they hadn’t seen the ones sneaking up behind them, and Granuaile got defenestrated. To keep from falling, she’d had to drop Scáthmhaide—the only source of energy available to her. A vampire danced down the slope of the roof to finish her off, while Owen made the inexplicable decision to shape-shift into a bear to fight the remaining two in the room. He couldn’t unbind any vampires that way, either by unbinding or by stake. I targeted the one coming after Granuaile and spoke two whole words of Old Irish before an unseen fist slammed into the side of my jaw, both breaking and dislocating it and causing me to bite off the tip of my tongue. It spun me around and I tried to face my attacker, but my balance was a mess, my ears were ringing, and the pain was occupying all my headspaces until I could get it shunted into a tidy screaming box. The result was that I slipped on the icy steps and fell on my ass again. I let go of the bloodied stake in my left hand when a booted heel stomped down on my fingers and broke most of them. The stake got kicked away, and I blinked furiously and triggered my healing charm, trying to focus enough to have a chance at saving my life. A ball of dough sitting atop a pickle laughed at me, and I blinked again. Now it was a pale, bloodless face laughing at me, and the torso was dressed in a hunter green turtleneck underneath a long olive trench coat. Dark eyes and a douchelord’s haircut up top, clean shaven, and a scar that began on his upper lip and continued underneath the bottom one.

“Thfff.”

He cupped his right ear and mocked me. “I’m sorry, what was that? Theophilus? Yes. We meet at last, Mr. O’Sullivan. For a very brief time, at the end of your life. You were better than all the rest of the Druids, at least—congratulations on presenting a genuine challenge. Thought I should say farewell in person.”

I scrambled back and up in a crabwalk to put some distance between us. Pointless, really, when he could close it very quickly. I stole a glance at Granuaile. She was still hanging from the roof, and a vampire was trying to stomp on her hands to make her fall. It wasn’t necessarily a fatal drop—three stories—but there was nothing save unforgiving stone waiting below.

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 most 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—