Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(87)
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.
CHAPTER 24
It 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 fa?ade, 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.