"I know a good place," she said. "Foothills of the Andes. Mild temperatures right now. Nice freshwater lake. Fat, slow llamas nearby if they get hungry."

"We should feed them first, but, yes, that sounds good."

When we asked the hounds what they wanted to eat, Oberon had an immediate answer:

We got them both to Toronto, where it was just past midnight, but Poutini's House of Poutine on Queen Street West was open late and we scored some huge containers of the good stuff. Then we took them to the spot in Ecuador that Granuaile knew about. Even though they'd slept all night in Angola, they assured us that they would have no trouble sleeping some more after the glories of a full belly.

The bitter cold of Rome contrasted starkly with the warmth of the Southern Hemisphere, and Owen noted aloud he was thankful for his coat.

"Me tits would be all in an uproar if I didn't have it," he said.

We all filled up our reservoirs of energy before we left the Villa Borghese. Rome was one of the oldest and most continuously paved cities in the world. Even beneath the pavement there is more pavement, a city built on centuries of older cities. We wouldn't have endless energy to spend against the vampires should it come to a fight. Our best hope was to break through their wards and take them out before nightfall.

"'Tis a dead, frigid hellscape for a Druid, an' that's no lie," Owen commented as soon as he hit the city proper and the touch of Gaia was lost.

"It's really unusual, though, for it to be this cold here," I said. It was midmorning, and the city was covered by the sort of low dark clouds one would expect to boil out of Mordor. "Looks like it might snow, and that happens maybe once every twenty years. I bet you the Romans will freak out and stay at home."

"Good," Granuaile said. "The fewer people we have to worry about, the better."

Tourist traffic in the Piazza di Spagna was almost nil. Even the vendors selling selfie sticks and other nonsense had written the day off and stayed home. We'd told the rabbi to meet us in Babington's, a decision that at least kept us cozy while we waited.

He in turn spread the word to the other Hammers, and we saw them begin to trickle in after noon. We didn't hail them and invite them to pull up a table but rather let them find each other and wait for Rabbi Yosef. I was worried that some of them might possess the extremist views that Yosef had in his youth, and I'd rather wait for him to arrive before introducing ourselves to devout monotheists as pagans adept in the practice of magic.

Rabbi Yosef arrived last, in the midafternoon, since he had the farthest to travel. He first greeted his comrades with hugs and a wide smile, then he spied us in the far corner and waved us over. He introduced us as the fine individuals who allowed the Hammers to do such wonderful work in the Western Hemisphere recently, and now, Lord willing, we would help strike another mighty blow against the oldest of evil's minions on earth.

We got polite nods but no names from the rest of the Hammers. They were not anxious to make our acquaintance. We were to be useful creatures rather than friends.

"Shall we look at our target, then?" I asked. We settled our bills and bundled up against the chill outside. A few hardy tourists determined to get their money's worth for their air tickets to Rome tried to look cheerful in the gloom. The surface of Bernini's fountain, I noticed, had a thin coating of ice at the edges.

Once in front of the buildings in question, Rabbi Yosef Bialik squinted at the wards and muttered in Hebrew to his companions. They nodded and exchanged some words, and then he addressed us. "You are right. These are interlocking trees of the Hermetic Qabalah. But they are collapsible triggers."

"What do you mean?"

"Upon any tree being dispelled with cold iron-or anything else-the rest are able to isolate themselves and remain intact. You cannot dispel the entire ward, in other words, only the portion of it you walk through with your cold iron. The remaining trees are supposed to note the absence of any around them and trigger a response."

"What response?" Granuaile asked.

"That I do not know. It could be an attack. Or it could merely be an alarm, letting the casters know that the ward has been broken."

"Normal folks pass in and out without consequence, then," I said. "Clever."

"I'm normal folks," Owen said. "No cold iron on me."

"They will, however, like us, be able to detect the use of magic nearby," Yosef said. "If you were to use any magic at all, they would know it."

"Fair enough. I should be able to take a look inside, though, to scout. Or any of you lot could do it."

"You go," I said. "But keep your right hand in your pocket so no one spots your tattoos."

Owen scanned the three buildings and chose the yellow cream one on the right, with Dolce & Gabbana on the bottom floors.

"I like that it has a green door," he said, explaining his choice.

He walked through the ward without trouble, disappeared into the building, and returned not five minutes later.

"There's a hallway that goes back a ways. No place to hide. Elevator and stairs at the back with a man there asking if I was a resident. Both the elevator and the stairs are fecking narrow and I wouldn't want to go up either one. Anyone at the top would have one hell of an advantage."

"What was the man like?" Granuaile asked.

"Big bastard. Had one of those modern suits and a curly thing coming out of his ear. Clearly security. But there was someone else too. Not a guard exactly, and he said nothing, but he looked at me closely. He was sitting on the stairs, had these loose white clothes on him and an orange sash with symbols sewn on it in gold. And the weirdest hair I've ever fecking seen."

"How so?"

"Shaved on the top and above the ears except for a greasy strip all the way around, like a hairy ring."

"A tonsure?" I asked.

"If I knew what a tonsure was, maybe I could fecking answer ye."

"So we have bodyguards and spooky cultist types," Granuaile said.

"Any other wards inside, Owen?"

"I'm sure there's plenty more upstairs, but I didn't get there. Didn't want to start a fight without knowing the odds."

I turned to the rabbi. "If you have kinetic wards, I'd start with that. If they're expecting me, then they might come out with guns blazing. Or they'll use something else mundane that cold iron can't dispel."

"Of course. And then a cloak of indifference. Innocent people will not care about what we're doing. Not that there are many people out here on a day like this."

"All right. We're going to withdraw out of sight, and then we'll swoop in if needed."

The rabbi had no problem with this and immediately resumed his conversation in Hebrew with the other Hammers of God. Owen, however, had an objection.

"Why are we hiding? Let's kick some arses already and go home."

"We need to draw them out first," I said. "The Hammers can ward themselves on the dead land, and their ward moves with them. We can't do either, and we also can't afford the energy. If we stay in the open when this begins, the most likely result is we'll get shot. If we charge in there, the likelihood of getting shot is even higher-that guy with the crinkly thing in his ear probably had a gun underneath his jacket, and there are, without doubt, many more men like him upstairs. You taught me yourself, Owen: Never give the enemy what he wants. They want Druids to walk into that trap, so we'll give them Kabbalists instead."

Owen bared his teeth and growled in frustration. He hated it when I was right.

With a little bravado and a little luck, we ascended to the rooftop room in Babington's with a view of the piazza. It was almost like a picnic pavilion, with a low wall, wide-open windows, and fantastic views. Down to our left and proceeding up behind us, the Spanish Steps rose to the church at the top. The piazza in front of us showed the ten Hammers of God aligning themselves in a Tree of Life formation, with Rabbi Yosef at the top, facing the green door near the entrance to Dolce & Gabbana.

"You're in for a show," I said to Granuaile and Owen. "You've never seen this kind of magic before. Those beards are going to throw down at some point."

"What? Their actual beards?" Granuaile said.

"You'll see."

The Hammers of God began to chant and move in ritualistic sequence. We didn't see all of it very well, since we were above and behind them to the left, but we had an excellent view of the three warded buildings. I was watching them more than the Kabbalists, to see what sort of reaction they provoked.

Part of me wanted to watch in the magical spectrum, but I didn't want to waste the energy. Within a minute of the Hammers' chanting, a couple of windows in the buildings flew open and pale, white-clad men with tonsures leaned out to lay eyes on the Kabbalists. They watched for a moment and withdrew, closing the shutters behind them.

"Okay, they're aware of the Hammers. Response should come soon."

Two men appeared on the rooftop garden of the terra-cotta building and pointed guns down at the Hammers of God. They had large, bulky silencers or mufflers or whatever screwed on to the end of the barrels. I am not a munitions expert. They popped off a few rounds, which ricocheted off the Hammers' kinetic ward, taking out a window to the north in one case but otherwise embedding themselves in the ancient brick and plaster of the buildings surrounding the piazza. The Kabbalists continued whatever they were doing. And, remarkably, so did the sparse dozen or so tourists in the piazza, who gave no sign that they had heard gunfire. The would-be assassins looked at each other and shrugged, then one held a finger to his earpiece and spoke, obviously reporting to someone via Bluetooth that guns weren't going to work. They disappeared after a moment.

"Okay, we're going to get a different sort of attack next," I said. That's when it began to snow in Rome. Big fat snowflakes eager to blanket the Eternal City and paralyze it.

Tonsured men of assorted backgrounds, dressed in the billowy white clothing Owen had described, with an orange sash crossing from their right shoulders to their left hips, streamed out of the three buildings. They were heading for a spot opposite the Hammers of God, presumably to form their own Tree of Life. Seeing this, the Hammers of God formation flattened into two lines, staggered so that the line in back could see between the shoulders of the front line, and then in sync they drew silver knives out of their coats and threw them at a single target. Some missed, but most didn't. The targeted man went down with seven knives buried in his torso and one in his throat.

"Holy shite!" Owen said. "Why did they go after that one?"

"Align yourself with the forces of hell and you're fair game in their eyes," I said.

"No, I mean, why that one particular man?"

I shrugged. "Random target of opportunity. It was smart, because they disrupted their formation before it got started. The Hammers didn't want them to get their own kinetic ward, or anything else, going. They need ten dudes to do anything major."

"Well, I think they have ten anyway," Granuaile said. "Another one just appeared-yep. That's ten. They might have more waiting."

"Oh, damn." The Hammers didn't have additional guys in reserve. If one or more of them went down, they could maintain what they'd already cast but not do anything in addition. Their strength in formation was impressive, but their weakness was needing to maintain that formation.

Their cloak of indifference-or whatever they were using to distract passersby-worked astoundingly well. A woman in heels clicked across the piazza, right by the body of the dead Qabalist-who was an obvious murder victim and could not be mistaken for a sleeping vagrant-and walked into Dolce & Gabbana as if she had seen nothing amiss. I wondered what its range was because while Granuaile and I had the protection of cold iron, Owen did not and he had clearly seen that man sprout steel in his body and go down.

The Hermetic Qabalists began their own chanting and synchronized moves, 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!"

"Haha. Told you."

"I'm gonna have nightmares." He pawed at his face. "I need to shave."

The Hermetic Qabalist had a response to the hairy cables coming his way: His tonsure came alive in much the same way, and a halo of tentacles formed around his skull before rushing to meet the rabbi's.

"Oh, yuck!" Granuaile said. The two sets of hairy ropes met in the middle, struggled to get past each other, failed, then entwined and tore at the enemy in an attempt to pull the other out of formation.

"Are you kidding? This is awesome," I said.

"Since I've become a Druid, I've seen some pretty weird shit, Atticus," Granuaile said, "but Beardy Baggins there squaring off against Squid Head McGee in the snow might be the weirdest."

"Hold up, now, who's that lad coming out of the building on the left?" Owen pointed to a slim, pale figure wearing sunglasses and a bespoke Italian suit. I recognized him from Berlin; he was one of the gang that got away.

"That's a vampire."

"How? It's not night yet," Granuaile said.

"Might as well be. No sun's getting through that cloud cover except the weakest kind."

"Easy way to find out," Owen said, and he began to roll out the words for unbinding. Meanwhile, the vampire moved briskly-not running, just a late-for-a-meeting walk-to position himself behind the rearmost Hammer of God. He was moving too slowly to trigger the kinetic ward, and so he encountered no difficulty. He reached over the shoulder with one hand to grab the Hammer's bearded chin, placed the other on top of the head, and twisted savagely, snapping his neck. The Hammer's body went slack and he tumbled to the cobblestones. Just as the rest of the Hammers were becoming aware that their formation had been disrupted and the vampire was moving to take out yet another of them, Owen completed his unbinding, and the contents of that fine Italian suit popped like a swollen tick before collapsing into a dark red puddle on the piazza.

This caused one of the boys in white to cry out in Italian, "A Druid is here!"

A window in the terra-cotta building flew open and a voice boomed, "Do not let him escape." More windows flew open-probably half of the total available flats-and vampires leapt out of them, regardless of how high off the ground they were. This was far more than the eleven who'd escaped in Berlin. I honestly could not count them all because they kept coming. They began to fan out around the plaza to find me, and using camouflage wouldn't matter. They'd locate me via smell, because my blood and presumably Owen's were two-thousand-year-old vintages.

"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 mlee 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 Trinit 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 Scthmhaide-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.