I didn’t have the strength to break free. When he lifted his hand away I wouldn’t be able to block his blow in time, or even if I did manage to get in the way it would be an utterly feeble attempt. So I drained my own energy to trigger the unbinding charm on my necklace once more, having no other weapons at my disposal. I nearly blacked out at the drain, but he did let go of my left arm to clutch at his precious turtleneck. He hissed, and then when the pain faded he raised his fist high and said, “Good night—hunh!”
His eyes bulged and he looked down at his right side, where a familiar stake had embedded itself underneath his arm. He dropped his fist to pull it out, but the unbinding had already begun, shredding him from the center out. The world’s oldest vampire gave a wet gurgling scream before he liquefied and splurted out through his fine clothing. The turtleneck didn’t save me from an overdose of gules but perhaps made it look like I had died too. I followed the path of where that stake must have come from and saw Granuaile standing off to the left, behind the pillar opposite mine, leaning heavily on her staff. Her clothes were covered in gore and she was favoring her left side, but apart from either deep bruising or perhaps some small fractures, she was all right. She gave me a lopsided grin. “Hey. You look like I feel. Don’t let me forget: We need to buy Luchta, like, all the beer for giving us those stakes.”
I wanted to shout at her to beware of the sniper, but I think she knew about him anyway, judging by the fact that she was already behind cover. I, however, wasn’t.
But the disadvantage to peering through one of those scopes is the very small field of vision. The sniper hadn’t seen Granuaile coming, and now he had taken his sights off me to search for who had just killed the boss. Or at least I surmised as much by the fact that I didn’t immediately die of a bullet to the brain. Flailing for a second in ancient vampire goo, I sat up with an effort and crawled back behind the pillar.
Owen wasn’t finished making a ruckus. Babington’s rooftop pavilion was on fire now—presumably ignited by the smoking corpses of the vampires caught in the brief rays of sunlight—and he used his brass-covered claws to burst through the wall as a bear and slide to the edge of the roof, where he shape-shifted to a red kite. I followed his progress as he arrowed across the piazza to a window in the terra-cotta building where Marko’s rifle muzzle poked out. He didn’t get there before Marko fired but rather just as he fired, knocking the muzzle down with his talons so that the bullet went spaff into Bernini’s fountain. I don’t know if Marko was aiming at Granuaile or me. He didn’t get a chance to shoot again after that. Owen disappeared into the building and I presume he took out all the gun-wielding lads one way or another, because he eventually emerged from the front entrance, dressed in one of their suits.
In the meantime, authorities were pouring into the piazza, trying to reestablish order as a precursor to figuring out what had happened. The wail of sirens heralded the arrival of firemen and paramedics. Granuaile and I had no difficulty pretending to be traumatized victims, and neither did the Rabbi Yosef Bialik. Only five of the Hammers of God survived, but they had defeated the Hermetic Qabalists completely, and their beards looked like normal facial hair again. I noticed that all the silver knives had been removed from the body of the first Rosicrucian the Hammers had taken out. The rabbi floated the idea that maybe we should blame everything on the guys with the funny haircuts, and I nodded my approval.
“I have lost good friends tonight, but this was a true triumph over evil, yes? We will talk later. When you can talk.” Yes, we would. I owed him some Immortali-Tea for sure.
When Owen emerged from the building, he still had enough juice left in his brass knuckles to cast camouflage on the three of us and get us out of there. His jaw, I noticed, was misshapen, as I’d suspected. It was dislocated for sure and possibly broken like mine. We limped and grunted our way back to the grounds of the Villa Borghese and fell onto the grass once we felt Gaia’s presence again. I numbed the pain first so I could keep my head clear, then set about getting my jaw back into place and the bones and teeth bound together like old friends. Owen’s jaw was merely dislocated, and once he popped it back into place with an audible crunch, a river of profanity that had been dammed up all during the fight spewed forth. Granuaile likewise worked on her wounds, and once Owen wound down, we rested in silence and healed. After an hour I could talk again, albeit with a thick slur.
“Yay team,” I said.
“Damn,” Owen said. “I knew it wouldn’t last forever. But it was right peaceful there for a while, not having to listen to your yapping.”
CHAPTER 27
Fishing out my burner phone, I made a call and spoke past my bloodied lips and tongue. “Meet ush now at the Antico Caffè Greco by the piazza.” I thumbed off the call once I got an affirmative response.
“Who was that?” Granuaile asked.
“The ansher to what happensh next. Hungry?”
“Not while covered in blood. Maybe afterward.”