Staked (Iron Druid Chronicles) (35 page)

“We’ll see what we find first once we get to Rome: a deli or Atticus and Oberon.”

F
unerals are a bit fancy now, I notice, since everyone dresses in the best black clothing they have. In me own day ye had one set of clothes, two if ye were doing well, and ye washed them when ye got tired of the dirt and the bugs on your balls, not because somebody died. But Greta gets me some proper mourning clothes, because that’s a sign of respect, she says, so I go along because Hal fecking deserves all the respect I can give—Nergüi too, of course, who entrusted his family to me.

It’s really a hastily arranged memorial service instead of a funeral. Hal left instructions to be buried in Iceland, and Nergüi is to be returned to Mongolia. But the idea is the same: Ye remember the fallen and share why they were important to ye and give what comfort ye can to the family, even if it’s fecking useless and your words can’t possibly mend the hole torn open in their world and the yawning abyss of the future without their loved one. People still need to know that ye would fix everything if ye could.

Since Greta came back, she hasn’t said very much beyond “We’ll talk later” and a few grunts. I don’t have to cast wands to guess that it won’t be a pleasant talk, and I admit me guts are in a twist about it. Since I got pulled back into this time, the only thing that’s kept me from throwing shite at people is Greta. I know that when ye think o’ love you’re supposed to think o’ kissy faces and scented soap and hummin’ happy songs together, but there’s another vital part to it that people rarely admit to themselves: We want somebody to rescue us from other people. From talking to them, I mean, or from the burden of giving a damn about what they say. We don’t want to be polite and stifle our farts, now, do we? We want to let ’em rip and we want to be with someone who won’t care if we do, who will love us regardless and fart right back besides. I’m thinkin’ that maybe Greta could be that person for me. Or she could have been, until the fecking vampires showed up.

The entire Tempe Pack has driven up for the memorial on Greta’s land, and I think the plan is they’re going to do a run in the mountains later tonight for Hal, with most if not all the Flagstaff Pack joining them for Nergüi, and the next full moon will be dedicated to them as well. I hear dark mutterings that the vampires will be paying for this.

Meg and Tuya are going to stay, which surprises me. Nergüi and Meg both wanted their daughter to be a Druid, and Meg hasn’t changed her mind about it. They’re going to take care of things in Mongolia for a while and then they’ll be back.

I keep me face shut during the memorial; I didn’t know Hal or Nergüi half so well as the rest, and this is a pack thing if anything is. There are some interesting noises made at werewolf memorials: half barks and yips and growls, plus faces sliding around as they fight to keep hold of their emotions and their human forms. Nobody completely loses it, though. Afterward, Greta crooks a finger at me and we walk off some distance into the trees before she speaks. She has a black veil over her eyes, but the cold blue of them still seizes me when she looks up. Her voice is tight and controlled and distant. She’s wearing a man’s suit and tie in silver, which has some kind of symbolism to the pack. Out of the inside jacket pocket she withdraws the plastic bag that Hal brought with Siodhachan’s new documents in it. She tosses it to me and then spits to the side.

“I want you to find him and tell him he’s not welcome here anymore. He’s not welcome among any members of the Tempe or Flagstaff packs, and, yes, I speak for Sam and Ty in this.”

She waits for me to say something, but if she’s expecting an argument she’s going to be disappointed. “Okay,” I says.

“I wouldn’t ask you to never speak to him again. But I cannot stress how much we are tired of his shit. No, no—
tired
isn’t the word. Furious, enraged, ready to destroy him—that’s closer. We do not want our pack to be collateral damage in his endless series of crises. So henceforth we will have no association with him whatsoever.”

I don’t know what
collateral damage
is, so I just nod and look it up later. Greta takes that as her cue to continue. “If you wish to meet with him, do so far away from here. How he gets in touch with you must be mundane as well. No Fae messengers. He needs to use either mail or social media. I will help you with that if you need it.”

“All right.” I’m so relieved that she’s not sending me packing over this that I can’t manage anything else.

“No favors. No more IDs. His legal relationship with Magnusson and Hauk is terminated, and they will serve papers to that effect. No watching his hound or his sword—which Sam and Ty brought to the service, by the way, and you’re to take with you. It’s waiting in the house, on the dining room table. So nothing from now on. He may live in peace outside our territory, but if he is stupid enough to enter it again, we will do whatever we can to end his very long life. Is that clear?”

“Absolutely.”

Tension drains out of her shoulders, and she exhales slowly and closes her eyes. She’d said what she wanted to say.

“Good. Do you have any questions?”

“I don’t suppose maybe the law firm has any idea where he is? Maybe I can get this over with quickly.”

She shakes her head. “My guess would be Rome, but I don’t know. Can’t the Fae find him?”

“Nah, he made sure the Fae couldn’t find him a long time ago. Why Rome?”

“If he’s truly trying to break the vampires, then that’s where he’ll be. He might have done something there already, and that’s why we got hit.”

“All right, Rome it is. Worth a look. Any place specific in Rome?”

“Wherever the rich people are living now. Prestige, wealth, power—the old vampires like to let everyone know they have it.”

“Right. I’ll get a couple things together and go.” I think about kissing her goodbye, but I’m not sure she would welcome it. I give her a tight nod instead and turn back to the house. After a few steps I hear her move, and it’s fast. I don’t get to turn around before her arms are around me, hugging me from behind. I stay still and she rests her head between me shoulder blades.

“Thank you, Owen,” she says.

“No need for thanks,” I reply. “I want the new Grove protected every bit as much as you want to protect the pack. And the solution is the same: Keep Siodhachan the feck away from here.”

She doesn’t respond to this except to squeeze a little harder.

“This could be fast, but it could also be days or weeks before I catch up with him. And I’m pretty sure I’ll have to help him with the vampires if he has an endgame. So explain to the kids and the parents, will ye, why I’m gone and that I’ll be back when it’s finished. I don’t want this to happen again.”

“No. We definitely do not want that.” She lets go, only to spin me around to face her and bring her hand up to the side of me face. Those eyes hold mine through the veil. “Be ruthless and thorough and don’t worry about us. We’ll be here.”

“Good.” I nod, she lets me go, and I return to the house. Greta stays in the trees. I grab me knuckles and Fragarach from the dining room table, and I also pick up those stakes that Luchta made for us—one for me and one for Granuaile, in case I find her with Siodhachan.

I don’t know how the pack stands in regards to her, and I don’t want to bring it up until it’s necessary. Better to let her decide if she wants to have a separate status from Siodhachan or throw in her lot with him.

I know what I want: Greta and Owen’s Grove, allowed to live in peace. There’s harmony there to be found, and I’ll fight for it, and damn the paradox of fighting for peace.

I
t feels a bit like parachuting behind enemy lines, shifting into Rome. Here, Theophilus and his old nest of vampires manipulated Julius Caesar and the others that followed him into attacking the continental Druids, and their campaigns, combined with the spread of Christianity, effectively wiped us out. He thought he’d won. I suppose he did: When you wait two thousand years before launching a counterattack, you cannot truly say you’re fighting the same war.

My visits to Rome throughout the centuries had always been brief affairs for art appreciation, just day trips, when the vampires would be asleep. But I made sure that I always kept the tether updated. It’s located on the northern edge of Rome, in Villa Borghese, a large estate that was home to an old family with close ties to several popes. Today it’s partially public land, with a zoo and expansive parks. It will be a reliable gateway to Rome for a long time to come, and it’s conveniently located close to the Piazza di Spagna, where Leif suggested to me that I might find Theophilus.

“He had a flat right on the piazza, and so did several others of the leadership. Bought them for a song centuries ago, bequeathed them to their new identities once a generation, as you have no doubt done with your own assets, and now they are worth millions of euros each because the location has become so desirable.”

“It wasn’t always so?” I asked.

“No. When Keats and Shelley lived there, it was mocked as the ‘English Ghetto’—so cheap that poor foreign poets could afford a room. I know for a fact that your Fae assassins dispatched a couple of the vampire leadership there. Theophilus will want to reclaim those flats for symbolic reasons.”

“You mean he’ll buy them?”

“Eventually. He and his entourage will charm their way in for the short term while they work on making everything legal. If they want a flat and find it occupied, they can kill the owner and make it available.”

“He has the money to pay for these?”

“Oh, most certainly. Remember, in addition to his own considerable wealth, thanks to Werner Drasche he has all your money to play with now. He’ll spend it quickly just to spite you.”

When I arrived at the Piazza di Spagna—so named for its proximity to the Spanish embassy, not because the Spanish had anything to do with building or designing the plaza—it was not so crowded as one finds during the high tourist season. The unusually cold weather encouraged tourists to spend their time indoors at museums or churches. I walked with Oberon to the boat-shaped fountain designed by Bernini at the bottom of the Spanish Steps, enjoyed the beauty of it for a while, and thought seriously about going into Babington’s Tea Rooms on the left side of the steps for some tea that would be ridiculously overpriced but would at least have the benefit of being hot. Bereft of euros, though, I’d have to wait.

First I wanted to test Leif’s assertion that Theophilus and company had taken up residence in the flats ringing the piazza. The giveaway would be armed thralls standing guard outside the residences with firearms in shoulder holsters and earpieces in their ears. But I didn’t want to announce my presence any earlier than necessary. I began with a casual scan of the buildings in the magical spectrum to see if anything jumped out at me. I expected nothing, but something most definitely jumped up and down for my attention.

Three buildings opposite Babington’s were sheathed in wards of some kind. Those weren’t something a vampire could do, so they must have been put in place by a paid magical contractor, and that contractor might well remain nearby.

They were all five or six stories high, with the bottom two floors devoted to high-end retail and the upper stories divided into flats. From left to right, they housed shopfronts for Pucci, Casadei, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and Dolce & Gabbana, though a large doorway allowed access to interior stairwells and elevators. To get to them I’d have to cross the threshold of those wards, and I wasn’t ready to do that. Above the fashion shops, rows of windows checkered the façade, most of them shuttered closed but a few thrown open to let in the weak winter sun. The open windows provided a big clue to where the vampires were not. Looking up, I could see the green umbrellas of boxed trees and hints of rooftop gardens—lofty aeries for the obscenely rich to gaze down upon the hoi polloi.

Keeping my magical sight active, I urged Oberon to take a circuit of the block with me. I wanted to know if the wards protected all sides of the buildings. While the structures all shared walls, with no alleys between them, they were easily identifiable by the paint jobs. The Pucci building was a sort of sun-washed mauve, Casadei occupied a terra-cotta building, and the third and largest was a yellow cream color. And a circuit of the block down narrow cobbled streets confirmed that they were, in fact, warded on all sides. I was careful not to break the boundary of the wards or let Oberon stray too close. They were of unfamiliar origin and I wasn’t sure what they would do. I shouldn’t let my eagerness to slay Theophilus lead me into a foolish mistake.