Or perhaps she was worried about Loki, with good cause. I’d already known that Loki had found her at our cabin in Colorado, but over last night’s campfire she told Owen and me for the first time the details of what had happened there. Inside the fire ward we’d placed around our cabin, she had beaten him up, put a tomahawk in his back, and pronounced that he was now living under the death sentence of a Druid. There was no doubt that the reverse was also true—he would kill her on sight, if he could. And the same was probably true for us.
I’m sure he had something to do with her worry. When she first asked to become my apprentice, I did all I could to warn her: Magic users sometimes lived very long lives, but they very often died violent deaths. And I showed her that stinking carnage at Tony Cabin, had her look upon the chewed-up head of Emily the corrupt sister, all of which was more powerful than simply telling her, and she still chose to be a Druid. But even being shown rather than told about violence is nothing compared to experiencing it yourself, and I think she was changed by her encounter with Loki in India. How could she not be? I hoped that striking back at him, coupled with the protection of her divination cloak, gave her a measure of therapeutic satisfaction. But the insouciance she possessed when she was first bound and flush with the wonder of Gaia—that might have been crushed like her bones, and she couldn’t bind those feelings together again.
“Before we get into this today,” I said to her, “we should probably think of where to keep the hounds safe. This place is nice, but there isn’t much in the way of fresh water or game. Pretty much a desert up on top of those cliffs.”
“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: <Poutine!>
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.”