I have had only one tutor for so long that having thirteen is like learning that ice cream comes in more flavors than plain vanilla or feeling the delicious chill of a swelling chorus that touches the soul where a solo voice cannot. There is richness and variety and a shared joy—they love to see me learn and I exult in their approval. Learning Polish not only from the words of Wisława Szymborska but from the Sisters of the Three Auroras and the many customers at the pub where I work now in Warszawa is so rewarding. I pretty much come home to Oregon and do little more than collapse, for which I feel guilty, but fortunately Atticus is a patient man who can take the long view. He has given me no grief over my hours spent abroad. He had me all to himself for twelve years, after all, and a little more besides, and he knows very well the importance of developing multiple headspaces.

I smile when I think of the concatenation of events that led me to bartending again. When I worked at Rúla Búla, it was a prelude to becoming a Druid. I wonder what grand adventure awaits me now at Browar Szóstej Dzielnicy?

The brewpub is busy and I have a good co-worker, Oliwia Żuraw, who’s bilingual and happy to help me improve my Polish when I need it. She spent some years in the UK, so her English is a delightful blend of Suffolk and Warszawa.

But the customers are equally happy to help. The men, especially, are eager to first correct me on my pronunciation and then, when I say it precisely the way I said it the first time, tell me I’m getting better. I field plenty of questions about my tattoos—tatuaże—and I’ve found it’s difficult to give an answer anyone will like.

If I say it’s just personal, they feel like I’m blowing them off. If I tell them the truth—that I’m a Druid and the tattoos bind me to Gaia—they kind of smile uncertainly, nod, and then very carefully order their next round from Oliwia. Same reaction if I tell them I got inked in prison—though one guy does ask what I did time for.

“I killed a man … with this thumb!” He doesn’t get the reference to Ratatouille. He thinks I’m being serious and squints at me.

“You were in for murder and you’re already out?”

“Shh. They didn’t let me go. I escaped. But don’t tell anyone, okay?”

He finally understands I’m kidding at that point but isn’t amused, and apparently he’s a regular. “Hey, Oliwia, who is this new girl?” he says.

“Just another American hiding from all the other Americans with guns,” she tells him, and he cracks a smile at that.

“Well, she kills people with her thumb!”

After that particular shift I head to Malina Sokołowska’s house, across the river in the Radość neighborhood, to continue my Polish-language studies with the coven. I work mostly with Anna, who enjoys Szymborska’s poetry so much, but I make a point of posing a question to Agnieszka, who’s very accomplished at wards and took the lead in cloaking me from divination.

“Do you think it would be possible to put some kind of cloak on my tattoos?” I ask. “People keep asking me about them at the brewery and it’s annoying.”

“This is merely a visual cloak, yes? Not something that would cloak the powers or the bindings in any way?”

“Right.”

“Hmm.” She taps her chin as she considers, and Roksana pokes her head around the corner to speak up, her curls spilling free for once instead of bound up behind her head.

“Not to eavesdrop, but I overheard your question. What if we did a reverse charm instead of a cloak?”

“What? Encourage the eye to look elsewhere instead of ‘look specifically here’? I’m afraid that would make people look away from her altogether. And what about the part of that charm that affects desire? If we reverse that, then we could be encouraging people to be revolted.”

“Well, obviously I don’t have it all figured out,” Roksana replies, blinking rapidly through her glasses. “I’m just offering a starting point.”

“Oh, yes, I understand. There’s certainly plenty to consider.” Agnieszka turns to me and asks, “Give us some time to think about it?”

“Of course.” It’s only a couple of days before they come back with something, and they try it only on my healing circle to make sure they don’t mess up anything on my forearm, which is what allows me to shift planes and go home.

“This isn’t going to be a charm or a reverse charm or anything,” Agnieszka explains. “It was a fascinating conversation and we might use some of the ideas elsewhere, but for you, we think we’ve come up with a cloak.”

Berta first smears a clear but smelly goo on my hand. “Cooked it up myself,” she says, though I’d already assumed as much. It wasn’t the sort of thing one finds at CVS.

I thought Berta just enjoyed cooking when I first met her but it turns out that she and Martyna are the coven’s experts at potions and ritual ingredients. They cook and bake in the mundane sense as a way to one-up each other and often make me judge the results.

“What is it?”

“That’s a binder for the cloak. The cloak will attach to that binder, not your tattoos, but then that binder is being absorbed into your skin, so the cloak should stay there and conceal your tattoos without affecting your actual binding to the earth.”

“In theory?”

“Yes, in theory.”

The rest of the coven arrives and Agnieszka leads them in attaching the cloak. It’s much faster than the ritual for shielding me from divination, and when they’re finished, the healing circle on my hand fades from view.

“Oh, that is wicked cool,” I say, grinning at them.

“But you need to test it,” Malina says, handing me a knife. “We need to know if you can still heal.”

“Right.” I give myself a small cut on my left forearm, just enough to start the blood flowing a wee bit, then command my body to knit up the skin. The cut closes and you’d never know there was a wound. It works.

“Victory! Fist bumps all around! And mandatory preening at this evidence of your awesome skills!”

Success confirmed, the coven cloaks my forearm too, but I leave the shape-shifting bands on my biceps alone. I really like those. I give everyone hugs and have to judge two celebratory chocolate cakes before my shift begins at the brewery.

A couple of hours into it, around eight o’clock, a handsome man with a long-distance-runner’s physique approaches the bar, his cheeks falling away like the white cliffs of Dover and his jaw sharp as the edge of an anvil. Hair and clothes look like he has a date with a catalog photo shoot in a couple of hours. He’s crisp and clean and might not mind going shopping for a few hours. Pretty dreamy, if I’m being honest.

I ask him in Polish what I can get for him. His eyes flash down—not to my chest, which would be typical male behavior, but to my arms, which I have stretched out, leaning my weight on the bar. He’s looking in particular at my right arm.

“Is there an American working here, red hair like yours, but with tattoos on her forearm?” he asks. And the specific nature of that query creeps me out instantly. He’s come looking for me but is obviously a stranger, or else he would know that I’m the one he’s looking for. Someone told him to look for a redhead with tattoos; the cloak that the sisters put on them may have just saved me more than a minor annoyance at work.

“She’s not here yet but should be any minute,” I say, grabbing a bar napkin and placing it in front of him. “I can get you something while you wait.”

He looks uncertain, then lets loose with a sheepish snort and a grin. “I’m not much of a drinker.” His head turns to the man sitting at the bar next to him, enjoying a dessert that I wish I could find in the States. “What’s he having?”

“That’s beer pudding,” I tell him. “It’s outstanding. Shall I get you one?”

He shrugs a shoulder. “Sure,” he says, and pulls up a seat next to the other customer, whose name is Maciej. He’s become my first regular, a metalhead with a scraggly blond beard and a studded leather jacket. Occasionally his head will bob up and down in time to some sick riff he has looping in his head. He thinks I’m of his tribe because I know who Yngwie Malmsteen is and can even name a few of his songs.

“What’s it taste like?” I hear the newcomer ask as I turn to punch in the order on the computer.

Maciej pauses to answer. I’m sure he’s considering something epic, because he’s given to excess when it comes to description. I’m expecting him to say, “It tastes like the sweet desperate cries of your enemy as you burn down his house and then dive headfirst into a lake of his tears,” but apparently he’s decided the posh man wouldn’t appreciate it. “It’s plum pudding cooked in stout, so you get a little bit of that chocolate malty flavor mixed in with the plum. Very good.”

“That was a nice description, Maciej,” I say, flashing him a smile as I grab a glass of water for the newcomer. Maciej’s eyes look a bit worried when they meet mine. He’s getting a bad vibe off the new guy too, and he didn’t give me away when I lied about some other American girl with tattoos working here. Maciej had asked me where the tattoos went when he came in tonight, and I told him they were concealed because I was getting too much unwelcome attention from them. He hadn’t thought that would be possible—tattoos were a good thing!—but now he understands perfectly.

I use the noise of scooping ice to cover the fact that I’m casting magical sight under my breath. I don’t have a store of energy on me at the moment, but it’s not a high-energy binding, so I figure it’s worth taking the dip in my own reserves to figure out what I’m dealing with.

Maciej has a multicolored aura that suggests a preoccupation with sex and violence underneath a thick film of loneliness. Nothing surprising there. The handsome newcomer, however, has a dull gray aura with two pinpoints of red: one in his torso and one in his head. Which means he’s a vampire. And he has exactly one day to get out of Poland for good. The treaty we signed with Leif Helgarson in Rome states that starting tomorrow I can unbind any vampires I find in Poland on sight.

I place the water down in front of him, already knowing he won’t touch it or the beer pudding he ordered either. “What’s your name, sweetie?” I ask him.

“Bartosz.”

“I like it. Can I call you Bartosz with the Good Hair?”

He looks helpless at my question. He’s obviously not a Beyoncé fan, which means he’s out of step with most of the world. But I’ve seen that expression before: It’s exactly what Leif Helgarson looks like when he doesn’t understand what young people of today are talking about. Bartosz is from another era. “If you wish,” he says, waving slim fingers to dismiss something unimportant. “What did you say the name of your co-worker is?”

“I didn’t. What do you need from her, if you don’t even know her name?”

He reaches into his jacket and pulls out an envelope. “I am merely a messenger. I’m supposed to give this letter to the redheaded American with tattoos on her forearm.”

He places it on the bar: classy linen stationery in an ivory cream, not addressed to anyone. “Oh. Well,” I say, adopting what I hope is a casual, helpful tone, “I can give it to her if you want, no problem at all, if you’re in a hurry.”

“A kind offer. And what is your name?”

I don’t want to give him my real name or my current alias either, so I make one up: “I’m Delilah.”

“Delilah. Excellent. Delilah, please look at me.” I do, and he immediately uses eye contact to attempt to charm me. I know what he’s up to, because the cold iron talisman resting out of sight beneath my shirt presses against my chest, warding off this direct attack. And I do consider charms an attack, something I’ve discussed at length with the sisters: They’re a subversion of the will, a mental assault, no matter how benign they’re supposed to be.

“If I give this letter into your care, you will be sure to give it to your co-worker as soon as she arrives, won’t you?”

“Yes,” I say, and nod for good measure, doing my best to play along and sound dazed. But I mess up somehow, because he doesn’t believe me. His head tilts to the side and he frowns.

“Are you sure? You sound uncertain.”

I do a rapid calculation in my head: A letter delivered to a signee of a treaty banishing vampires from Poland on the eve of that provision taking effect cannot be anything positive. It’s not a fond farewell, a “So long, and thanks for all the blood!” It’s a challenge and a provocation. And if I don’t meet it immediately—if Bartosz decides to get physical—I’m not going to survive, because he’s seconds away from figuring out I’m not like other humans, not easily swayed and controlled and consumed. But I don’t have my staff with me, and there’s no easy access to the earth’s power either. I am a weak human at the moment, with only one advantage: the ability to unbind vampires. Well, maybe two other advantages: surprise, and the American talent for bullshitting.

I flash a grin at him and nod, maintaining eye contact as I switch my language to Old Irish, reciting the unbinding that will separate his component parts and turn him into a slurry of minerals and blood. His frown deepens, because he doesn’t recognize the language, and halfway through he tries to interrupt. “Wait, what? Speak Polish.” I keep going, and it dawns on him that regardless of what I’m saying, I’m not charmed, as he thought I would be, and in fact something very untoward might be in progress. He might have been warned to expect something like it. His eyes go wide as the thought registers that I’m chanting something, not really speaking, and then he hisses and pops his fangs, lunging out of his chair to grab me as I complete the unbinding.

Those fine chiseled features shift and melt as the bones lose their shape and get pushed around by the liquefying muscles inside. I sidestep quickly to avoid an anticipated gush of blood from his open mouth—it vomits forth and drenches the drink-prep containers of citrus wedges and maraschino cherries. He deflates for a moment like an emptying bladder and then the skin comes apart, letting all that liquefied mess spew where it will. It fairly erupts out of his neck along with some chunks of tissue and brain, raining down on poor Maciej and plopping wetly into his beer pudding.

A goodly number of screams tear through the bar at the sight of this—most people don’t see it all but catch the end, where a dude just appears to explode, and their fight-or-flight instinct takes over and there’s an exodus for the door. Maciej lets out a raw, panicked yell and cringes a bit but otherwise doesn’t move. He sees I’m still standing and the creepy guy is toast, and that’s good enough for him, though after a couple of deep breaths he does start to shout, “Fuck! Shit!” over and over. I use the chaos to dart forward, snatch the blood-soaked envelope off the bar, and absorb the worst of the gore with a bar towel before cramming it into my back pocket.

Oliwia comes over from her end of the bar and says, “Oh, my God, what happened?”

“I don’t know; that guy just exploded.”

“What do you mean, exploded?”

“I mean he exploded.”

Maciej stops his cursing, looks at his jacket, now all gules, and begins to laugh. “That! Was! So! Metallllll!” he shouts. I step away from Oliwia and lean over the bar to speak to him in low tones.

“When the police come, I need you to say nothing about why he was here or what he wanted. He just sat down, ordered pudding, and told us his name was Bartosz before he died.”

“Hell yes,” Maciej growls. “That is exactly what happened. I will say that I asked him about his job and he just exploded. Must have been a very stressful occupation.”

“Good, that’s good. I’ll say the same. Your tab is on me today. Order whatever you like. Need anything now?”

“A shot of Żubrówka and a beer. And maybe a bar towel.”

“Coming right up. And let me get that out of your way, because eww.” I reach for his pudding goblet, now ruined with a small pond of blood and bits of brain in it, but Maciej stops me.

“No, no, wait, I need to take a picture first,” he says, taking out his phone. “Blood pudding is the most metal pudding of all, ha ha!”

The manager emerges from the kitchen, takes a brief look at the scene, then says we’re comping everyone’s tab because it’s not good business to make people pay for their emotional trauma. He closes the pub until the police arrive, and then for hours I’m busy pouring drinks and answering questions—from my co-workers, the police, and even the press, though I insist on no photos or images of any kind.

When I’m finally released, Scáthmhaide, my staff, is waiting for me in the employee area behind the kitchen. As soon as I pick it up, I draw on the power stored in the silver end and feel better; those two small bindings had wiped me out.

With a sliver of privacy at hand, I take the bloody envelope out of my pocket and open it. I read it twice and then dial a stored number on my phone, more pissed than I’ve been since I last saw my stepfather.

“Hello, Granuaile. I expected a call from you tonight,” a cultured voice purrs in my ear.

“Fuck you, Leif. You knew he was coming?”

“I knew who …? Excuse me. Has something happened?”

“Yes, something’s happened! I had to unbind a vampire in my bar tonight!”

“Did you get his name?”

“Fucking Bartosz.”

“Hmm. I do not know a Fucking Bartosz, but I can consult my roster.”

“He’s not why I’m calling. Before I unmade his ass he gave me a letter, which I just found time to read. It’s signed by someone named Kacper Glowa. You recognize that name?”

“Oh, yes. Unfortunately. He is the reason why I expected your call—I heard a rumor he would not be leaving Poland as per the agreement.”

“That’s not a rumor. It’s a fact. Let me read you this shit verbatim.”

“Please do. I would like to hear what has made you so upset.”

“It reads: To the young Druid bitch and her upstart Viking boy: I will not be leaving Poland, and neither will my friends. We do not recognize your treaty or the leadership of Leif Helgarson and do not consider ourselves required to obey the demands of children. Instead, obey your elders: Leave Poland, and indeed leave Rome. You may think because you surprised some ancient ones grown stale in their thinking that you deserve to lead. That is not the case. You may both leave or die. That is all.”

“Ah,” Leif said. “Well. What is the modern parlance for that? Cheeky? Saucy? Clumsily stumbling over one’s own testicles? I think I have that right.”

“What? Do you mean ‘tripping balls’ or something? Gods, stop trying to sound hip, Leif. You’re even worse than Atticus led me to believe. What I want to know is why he called you a boy. Didn’t you tell us in Rome that you were the oldest vampire in the world now?”

“I believe I used the phrase as far as I know. I did not know at the time that Kacper was still walking the earth. I thought he was unmade in World War Two. Obviously I was in error.”

“So how old is he? I mean how much stronger is he than you are?”

“He is my elder by a hundred and thirty years, born into a tribe in the ninth century living near modern-day Krakow, before Poland became any sort of distinct political entity.”

“Which means his claim to leadership among other vampires is legit.”

“It is. He is a genuine threat. The vampires of Poland are certainly listening to him. Some have left, but I estimate that he has fifty to sixty more rallying to his banner, and perhaps others are coming in, urging him to contest my leadership.”

“Nobody rallies to banners anymore, Leif.”

“Old vampires do. His call to reject our treaty is reverberating around the globe, I assure you. I just learned of it myself today; he has picked his moment to emerge from obscurity. Tell me, has either Atticus or Owen received similar communication?”

“I don’t know yet. I need to check in with them. But I bet they haven’t, and you haven’t either, am I right?”

“You are correct.”

“I thought so. Because Kacper wouldn’t call Atticus and Owen anything demeaning, would he? Atticus is eight or nine hundred years older than he is, and while Owen hasn’t lived that long in subjective time, he was born before Atticus and wouldn’t stand for such language.”

“Surely you will not stand for it either?”

“Hell no, I’m going to unbind him just like his buddy Bartosz. As soon as I can find him. I don’t suppose you know where he might be?”

“My information on him predates the rise of Hitler. He used to hold properties in and around Krakow. He may have shifted his holdings elsewhere after the war, but I imagine he simply transferred ownership to a new alias unknown to me.”

“All right. I need you up here to help take care of this.”

“I could not agree more. This challenge must not go unanswered.”

“Call me when you’re in the country.”

I already had the next couple of days off, so that was fortunate. It might take more than that, however, to get the job done, and since the vampires were able to find me, my position at the brewery might be compromised. How were they able to do that? I wonder. I’ve only been here a couple of weeks and hadn’t done any obvious Druidic stuff in that time, and I’m protected from divination now. I should have been completely anonymous. Somebody at the brewery—either a customer or an employee—knows a vampire.

It’s late and I don’t feel like reviewing the story again to the coven, so I jog to the bound tree in Pole Mokotowskie, take off my shoes, and shift home to Oregon. The coven could hear about it in the morning.

My sweet hound, Orlaith, greets me with such happiness that her body shakes in all directions. <Granuaile! Guess what! Guess what!>

What is it, Orlaith? I reply through our mental link.

<You’re home and I’m happy! But guess what else!>

I can’t possibly. Tell me.

<Atticus said I have six puppies coming! He looked in my belly and said there were six auras. Can you believe it? That’s like five … plus one!>

You’re right, it is! Wow! That’s a lot of puppies!

<Oberon says it is because he is magnificent, but I think it’s because I’m magnificent. Who do you think is right?>

Can’t you both be magnificent?

<Well, yeah, that’s what Atticus said, but, come on, I’m doing all the work here. And I know that five plus one equals six.>

That’s an excellent point, Orlaith. Let us say, then, that you are magnificent and Oberon is kind of okay as far as dudes go. You can tell him I said so.

<Oh, that’s going to make him growl! Hee hee! You are the best human and I love you.>

You are the best hound and I love you too. Are Atticus and Oberon inside?

<Yes! And Starbuck too!>

Oh! Of course! I’m embarrassed to have left him out, but Starbuck is such a new addition to our home; he’s a Boston terrier that Atticus rescued in Portland and I’m still getting to know him.

<Atticus is preparing several chickens for our delight.>

He really said it just like that, didn’t he?

<He did!>

Let’s go see them. I take six happy steps, one for each puppy, before a message shoots up through the sole of my foot from the Willamette elemental. There is something that demands Druidic attention in Tasmania, and I hurry in to call Atticus outside so he can get the message as well.

After a quick hello and turning the stove down low, he joins me outside.

“Don’t give an answer yet,” I tell him. “We need to talk about what happened today.”

“Okay.”

We work it out so that he’ll go to Tasmania on the earth’s business, returning each night to make sure Orlaith and Starbuck are okay, and I’ll return to Poland to enforce the treaty.

“Don’t ever turn your back on Leif,” he tells me. “His allegiance is only to himself. You’re safe only so long as he believes you’re of more benefit to him alive. And watch out: The ones you’re after might be using infrared if they know you’re coming.”

He was referring to the single reliable way to penetrate camouflage—and, I assumed, the invisibility conferred by Scáthmhaide. The vampires had used it successfully against him in Germany. “Thanks for the reminder,” I say, and we leave it settled and enjoy the delightful chicken and, later, some private time together, with the hounds firmly instructed to leave us alone for a while. I sleep in until noon, local time, and wake to my phone buzzing. Atticus and Oberon are already gone.

“I’m in Krakow,” Leif says. “It is eight in the evening here.”

“Okay. I am shifting into Las Wolski forest above Old Town in a half hour. Where will you be?”

“At Stary Port, a sailor-themed establishment where they serve grog and sing sea shanties. The address is Straszewskiego twenty-seven. Please hurry. The singing is already intolerable.”

“I will be there soon after I shift, depending on how long it takes to run there from the bound tree.”

A quick shower and some kisses to Orlaith’s belly, some scritches for Starbuck, and a snack for them both, and I’m off. I shift into a forest on a hilltop above Krakow and descend, well rested and Scáthmhaide in hand, and give Malina a call to catch her up.

“Basically anything you can tell us about where Kacper Glowa or his alias might be would be helpful. We want to make Poland free of vampires as promised but could use some intel.”

“And where is Mr. O’Sullivan?” Malina asks. “He’s the one who made the promise.”

“He’s been called by Gaia to attend to something in Tasmania. I’m going to handle this with Leif Helgarson. He has a vested interest in making sure this gets done, and once it is, he’ll be out of Poland too.”

“And if Kacper Glowa is not in Krakow?”

“Then we’ll go wherever he is, if you can give us a lead.”

“The undead defy divination, so we’ll try to divine his thralls. I’ll call as soon as I have something.”

Stary Port, I find, more than lives up to its nautical theme. Dark wooden tables with thin tapering candles in the center of them line the walls, and the place is generally decorated in warm tones. Portraits of old-timey ships in gold frames beckon to drinkers, like Tennyson’s Ulysses, that “ ’tis not too late to seek a newer world.” Leif Helgarson has seated himself upon a square-topped stool, delicately crossing one leg over the other in a place that practically shouts he should be manspreading. He looks intensely uncomfortable as a group of red-faced drunken men shout their way through a raucous Polish sea shanty about rope burns, with what I think might have been a double entendre on the word rope.

“I am so grateful you are here,” Leif says as I take a seat. “They keep looking at me to join in. Do you know where Kacper is?”

“Not yet. Waiting for a clue from Malina.”

“So it may be a while.”

“Yeah. We should order something.”

“Please get two of whatever you wish and then you may have mine as well.”

“Have you, uh … eaten?”

He nods but provides no details, for which I’m thankful. I order two grogs with clove, cinnamon, and orange, and we pass the time reviewing what little Leif has been able to learn about Kacper and his Polish cronies.

I’ve started on the second grog when my phone beeps: It’s Malina.

“He’s in the Nowa Huta district, which got developed after World War Two,” she says. “He owns several homes that look like humble abodes built by the Communists on the outside, but they really serve as entrances and exits to an extensive underground complex. We’ve located two of the houses that contain thralls and can tell you where the hidden staircases are, but we doubt that those are all of them.”

“Okay, give me the addresses.”

What follows is a scouting mission where we take care not to be seen by anyone in the two houses Malina points us to: The Polish vampires themselves, never mind their human thralls, could be prowling about.

I notice that the houses, both dreary and in need of paint, are fully three blocks apart from each other, putting the complex underneath them at three blocks at minimum. They don’t look like anything much; a couple of decrepit cars with rusted fenders rest in the driveways, providing a disguise. No one rich or powerful could be living there.

“Okay, I need to try something,” I tell Leif. “I might be able to get a sense of the complex’s dimensions through the earth. The absence of living earth—the negative space, I guess—will sketch out the boundaries for me.”

“Good. Might you be able to sense the staircases as well, thereby establishing the locations of the other entry and exit points?”

“Hmm. Depends on how they constructed it, I suppose. If they built the staircases to drop straight down in flights or spiral from the foundation of the ground-level houses, I won’t be able to tell which houses are entry points other than the ones we already know. If they slope straight down, however, away from the foundations, in toward the center, I think I’d be able to pick them out.”

“I am confident you will find it to be so,” Leif says. “There is a saying along these lines …”

“Please don’t.”

“No, I assure you it is amusing! It is by way of asking a rhetorical question that the correct answer is rendered. Should you ask me if their staircases slope down at a forty-five-degree angle, I would reply, ‘Does a bear defecate in densely forested areas?’ Eh? You see? The answer is obviously yes.”

“Gods, Leif, no. You are incapable of blending in.”

“But still I labor, like Sisyphus.”

“Why are you so confident about this?”

“A straight narrow space offers nowhere to hide. Vampires are confident they will win any confrontation face-to-face.”

“Okay. Be still and let me see what I can see.”

There is a small stretch of turf nearby, a sad attempt at a greenbelt, and I kick off my sandals to communicate with the earth. With the elemental’s help I seek underground for the edges of Glowa’s bunker, and it indeed sprawls for blocks underneath us, far too much space for a single person, and judging by the stark straits leading to and from, it also features more escape routes than the two that the sisters identified. Leif was right: The staircases angle down from the surface houses to the secret complex.

“There are four more bolt-holes,” I tell him, and he gives a low whistle.

“Can you identify which houses?”

“Yes.”

“Let us investigate them and see how they are guarded.” We walk along the streets as if we had some club to visit or some coffee to inhale at a hip café.

I nod at each house as we pass, and they appear not to be guarded at all. Or at least not guarded by thralls.

“These houses contain no humans,” Leif says in low tones, after staring at each in turn. “Their defenses are either automatic or undead. That is useful information. Let us move out of the vicinity to discuss it further.”

“All right. Back to Stary Port?”

The vampire winces. “If we must. Though I find the atmosphere jarring, it should certainly provide us ample privacy.”

The earlier collection of jocund fellows has been replaced by another set, but they are no less loud and proud of their singing voices. I order a couple of grogs, and once they arrive, Leif leans over to plot with me.

“I think the compound is too big for us to handle alone. We cannot possibly cover six exits, to begin with.”

“Agreed.”

“So I suggest that I call in some mercenaries to clean out the nest during daylight hours.”

“Yewmen?” Though expensive, Atticus had used them to great effect.

“No, human mercenaries. I’ve employed them before and they are used to this work. They know what’s involved. Expendable and therefore perfect.”

“If this is during the day, where will you be?”

“Sleeping somewhere else.”

“While I will be expendable and perfect?”

“No. We send in the mercenaries through all the entrances but one. That will be their escape route. You wait for them to emerge. Thralls will either bring Kacper out, where you can dispatch them all, or he will die down there.”

“Unless he and his defenses mow down the mercenaries and run over their bodies to exit one of the other five ways.”

“Yes, unless that happens. But perhaps we can instruct the mercenaries to seal the exits behind them. Everyone must come out the one exit we wish or not at all.”

“That might work. Can you get the mercenaries here in the morning?”

Leif pulls out his cell phone. “If not, then certainly by the afternoon. This can be Kacper’s last moonrise.”

“All right. Let’s do it.”

I listen to him coldly arrange the arrival of a significant paramilitary strike force and then call Switzerland, rattling off bank-account numbers to pay for it all and get them mobilized. He has the kind of resources that Atticus used to have. We’re finished by midnight.

Twelve hours later I’m meeting the mercenaries at Stary Port with maps and objectives and warnings to look for booby traps and make sure no one gets out the way they came in.

“This ain’t the first nest we’ve cleared,” one guy says, probably the only American in the bunch. He bulges and glistens like an eighties’ steroid movie; all he’s missing is the stogie in his mouth, chewed up and tapered like a fresh dachshund turd. The rest of the mercenaries are square-jawed Euro lads who speak to one another in accented English.

“Fine. But it’s probably the biggest. Each squad leader has his breach address. You go in hot at thirteen hundred hours and either terminate all hostiles or push them to the single exit. Questions?”

There are none. They really have done it before, and they act like the paid professionals they are. They move out to their appointed positions and gear up. I get a nifty Bluetooth headset thingie so that I can hear what’s happening with Squad A. I just stroll into the front yard of the one house we’re leaving open, trigger the invisibility binding on Scáthmhaide, and hunker down near the door, out of sight of any windows. The silver reservoir of my staff is all filled up with energy, and the front lawn will provide all I need in real time.

The chatter of the mercenaries in my headset increases as one o’clock approaches. They copy and roger a lot of stuff and tell one another that everything’s five by five.

None of the other entry houses is in my line of sight, so I don’t see anything but a quiet working-class neighborhood, but I hear plenty through my earpiece when the breach happens. Commands to get hands up, knees down. Shouts of surprise, defiance, and a few quick bursts of gunfire, then shouts of “Clear!” as each room is inspected for hostiles.

Squad A waits for the other houses to report clear, and then they check for booby traps or security measures around the staircases—all accessed through the back of a closet in one of the bedrooms.

Once they’re satisfied, the second coordinated breach begins. They open the doors and descend those staircases, and the firefight starts early. There’s screaming and hissing and some dying going on, but I can’t tell who’s producing the death screams. I don’t know how well the other squads are doing, but the A team sounds like they are making progress.

Squad A finds at least two occupied coffins in one room and stakes the vampires sleeping inside them. They meet up with Squad C and proceed. No word on the others.

But the strategy is effective. I hear some cursing and noise from within the house. Thumps and the squeak of rubber soles on the floors, a heavy thud. Someone or perhaps many someones have come through the trapdoor. Silent and empty before, the house suddenly has loud tenants, cursing creatively in Polish and shouting at one another.

Panicked thralls. Lugging something awkward.

Clanking. The hollow rushing of hard plastic wheels on tile. “Go! Go!” someone shouts. The wheels whir toward the door, and I tighten my grip on Scáthmhaide in my left hand and draw out a throwing knife in my right.

The lock clicks, the door opens, and a gun barrel pokes out past my head. A pale human thrall steps out, quivering on adrenaline, eyes darting up and down the street but not on me, invisible behind him and to the right. I let him go. He turns and signals to the others that it’s clear.

A gurney rolls out with a damn heavy coffin resting on it and four anxious dudes guiding it with sweaty hands. They’re heading for a huge black SUV parked on the street. Behind them trails the rearguard, armed and keeping an eye on any pursuit from the mercenaries. I first throw the knife into the back of the vanguard, then attack the rearguard with my staff. A sharp whip against his wrists disarms him and maybe breaks a bone, and then I clock his jaw and he goes down with a squawk as the first fella cries out and tries in vain to reach the knife in his back.

The gurney guides whirl around, looking for who’s doing all the damage, but never see the knotted wood that smashes their noses and lays out three of them. The last guy runs and I let him, deciding to chase down the vanguard with the gun instead and make sure he doesn’t use it. I smash his elbow and his hand drops the gun as he screams, but I do pull out the knife for him before slapping the backs of his knees and putting him on the ground. He’ll be fine eventually.

That’s not the case for the slumbering occupant of the coffin. It’s a lovely clear day with full sun. I sheathe the knife and pull out my cell phone, thumbing the camera app. I open the coffin lid and snap a quick picture of the milk-white face before the sun starts to fry him and he wakes up to the sound of his own sizzling cheeks.

He screeches and sits up and I swing full force at him, taking him in the throat and knocking him back into the coffin. He can’t really die of a crushed larynx, but the hit does stun him for a few seconds more, letting the sun work its justice upon him. I back up, stepping over the thralls’ bodies, and block the door. The vampire vaults out a moment later and heads straight for me, visibly aflame and desperate for shelter. I think it’s going to be a simple matter of batting him away again, but he stops, picks up the gun of the rearguard, and points it right at me. He knows where I am; he can hear me or smell me if he can’t see me. And he pulls that trigger fast.

Two punches to the chest and another lower down drop me like a lunch lady’s mashed potatoes on a sad cafeteria tray. But I lever up one end of Scáthmhaide from the ground, mostly by reflex, as he keeps coming, determined to run right over me into the house.

He runs onto Scáthmhaide instead. His fragile papery skin, already on fire and melting, allows the wood to punch right through his flesh, and his shirt is drawn into the wound, surrounding it like a prophylactic. He’s skewered underneath the ribs and stuck, and he shrieks as his strength fades and the sun’s fire consumes him all the quicker. He crumbles to ash in an orgasm of flame, and the weight is gone as he blows away, leaving only some scorched clothing behind, which is good because my strength is fading fast too. I drop Scáthmhaide and become visible as Squads A and C stomp up the stairs inside the house. They drag me out of the doorway and over to the lawn, where I can draw on the earth easily to heal; my breath comes in short gasps as I try to lock down the pain and then address the wounds. Nothing passed through. They were hollow points and had expanded, tearing up my left side underneath the collarbone but high up on my breast. The lower one on my side just missed a kidney but nicked a renal artery, which I mend first. Removing the bullets is going to suck.

The mercs start hauling the unconscious or moaning thralls inside to hopefully prevent a call from a neighbor. I’m hoping no one saw or heard much; all it takes is one curious retiree to bring the authorities.

Realizing that a bleeding woman on a lawn might also cause comment, I cast camouflage while I heal.

Once the front yard is clear, I hear more mercs coming up from the compound. The over-muscled one—the Glistening American Hulk, who is now chewing the stogie he was missing earlier—comes out the front door, looking for me.

“Hey, Red. Where are ya?”

“Name’s Granuaile,” I say, after dismissing camouflage.

He gives me a manly toss of the chin to say hello. “I’m Dirk.”

“Of course you are.”

“You gonna be all right or do we need a medic?”

“I’ll be fine. Are your men okay?”

“Mine are. But we lost two from Squad B, and somebody in C got wounded. One of the suckers was awake in the dark. So, hey, I’m supposed to ask if we got Casper.”

“You mean Kacper?”

“That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t, but I suppose he didn’t hear the slight difference in pronunciation. “I don’t know if we got him. I took a picture of the one that cooked, before he disintegrated. We’ll have to check with the money man.”

Dirk grunted and shifted his nasty stogie to the other side of his mouth. “He’ll have plenty more money after this.”

“How is that?”

“We kill ’em and he takes all their stuff. That’s how it works.”

“You mean they have vaults of cash down there or something?”

“Nah. They have computers, though, and a habit of writing down their passwords where we can find them. He gives them to his circuit jockeys, and it gets him money or intel or both.”

His voice sounds awfully bored and it makes me wonder. “How many nests have you taken down now for him?”

“I think this gets us to twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one? All this year?”

“Well, in the past three or four months. Wouldn’t want to do this forever—risk is too high—but if I make it another couple of months at this rate, I can retire to an island somewhere and drown in rum.”

I frown, wondering if Atticus knows about this. Perhaps Leif was inspired by the use of yewmen to take out nests in Rome but decided to add a profit angle. He profits doubly doing it this way: Every nest of older vampires taken down increases his power as well as his wealth.

“So what are you anyway?” he asks. “Some kind of witch?”

“I’m a Druid.”

“And that means you can take some bullets and not need a medic.”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

“That’s badass. How do you become a Druid?”

“Twelve years of study in languages and martial arts and memorizing poetry until you’re magically bound to the earth in an excruciating three-month ritual.”

“Oh, shit. Fuck that, then.”

“Dirk!” a voice calls from inside. “Report.”

“Duty calls,” he says, and this time I get a full nod of respect from him rather than a mere chin toss before he clomps back into the house, sunlight gleaming on the acreage of his triceps.

I’m blissfully forgotten and left to the unpleasant task of removing the bullets. I go for the one down low first; it caused the most damage. They’re jacketed rounds, meaning they’re composed mainly of lead and copper, and I won’t have trouble binding because of iron content.

Since they mushroomed inside me, they’ll tear me up even more on the way out if I leave them as is when I bind them, so I first take the time to reshape the bullet into a smooth, thin cylinder of an even-narrower diameter than its original manufacture. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel it as I bind the back of the round to my palm, but it does mean I’m not tearing myself any new holes. After it’s out, I bind up the skin and let the tissue healing commence.

I repeat the process with the other two bullets. It takes me an hour to get them out, sweating and weakening all the while, but I feel better immediately afterward. And ridiculously thirsty. I holler at the house and convince Dirk, when he emerges, to bring me some juice or whatever’s available. He leaves and returns fifteen minutes later with an entire liter of OJ.

“What’re you doing after this?” he asks, squatting down on his haunches beside me.

“You mean after I’m done healing up?”

“Well, yeah. After this gig.”

“I’m memorizing the collected works of Wisława Szymborska. How about you?”

“Maybe some Netflix. But a documentary! Animals or something. You wanna …?”

“You’re seriously giving me the Netflix-and-chill line?”

He doesn’t look particularly embarrassed to be called out on it; a tiny shrug and a smirk are all I get by way of apology. “That’s about as subtle as I get, unfortunately.”

Hmm. Aside from the stogie, he is handsome, and I think perhaps the acronym for Glistening American Hulk—GAH!—is appropriate when considering the fun we could have. It’s not as if Atticus and I have an exclusive arrangement; the desire for variety is hardwired into our genetic code, and monogamy is a patriarchal construct anyway, so I’m inclined to disregard it. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have high standards.

“I’ll give you a chance, Dirk. Recite some poetry for me right now. And I’m not talking about a dirty limerick or something you read on the bathroom wall. I mean a poem by a real poet. Go.”

“What?”

“Ah, sorry. That’s not a poem.”

“Well, wait, I can learn some—”

“I’m sure you can, but that’s not the point. I wasn’t asking for poetry as a stepping-stone to my pants. I wanted to see if your mind was as well rounded as your biceps. Turns out it’s not.”

He bristles. “What does that have to do with sex?”

“Quite a bit. I will have poetry in my life, Dirk. Poetry and asskicking. You can have both, you know. There’s a certain poetry to violence, don’t you find?”

He shrugs and agrees in case it will get him somewhere. “I guess.”

I caught his gaze and held it. “There’s a certain violence to sex too. Penetration. Screaming. You know.”

He licks his lips, realizing that there’s a whole lot he’s been missing. “Jesus, at least let me have your phone number. I’ll work on it and get back to you.”

That earns him a laugh. “Attaboy. But you should know I have a boyfriend. He’s a Druid too. He got shot in the head once, but he’s fine now and can recite the complete works of William Shakespeare from memory. He kills gods on Saturdays.”

“Holy shit. For reals?”

“Yep.” I give him the same tiny shrug and smirk he gave me. “That’s about as far as you’re gonna get with me, unfortunately. Thanks for the juice, Dirk.”

“Yeah, no problem.” He shakes his head before he gets to his feet and mutters, “Damn.”

Leif arrives after sundown, in a sharp tailored suit, and I’m still sitting on the ground, weary but feeling as if I can move again.

“Good evening, Granuaile. I trust all went well?”

“A couple of your perfectly expendable mercenaries died, but the nest is toast.”

“Excellent.” He’s carrying a pad and pulls it out, showing me a checklist of names. Kacper Glowa is at the top. “Shall we see who we have?”

“Let’s start with this guy,” I say, pulling out my cell phone to show him the photo I took. “I gave him to the sun and he shot me.”

“Hmm. That is not Kacper, unfortunately. That’s Arkadiusz Koziol. Six hundred years old, very powerful, and on my list.” He taps his screen and a check mark appears next to the dead vampire’s name. “But not someone who would ever challenge me on his own. Let’s see who’s inside.”

He offers me a hand and I take it, wincing as I get to my feet for the first time since being shot. It’s tender in there, but my legs work just fine.

The thralls are lined up against the wall. They’ve been given first aid by the mercs, but they could use more help. Leif isn’t going to give them any. He descends upon them and charms each in turn, forcing him to reveal who else was in the nest and whatever they know about passwords or hidden intel or even the location of other nests. He checks off names, but I can hear just as well as he can: Kacper Glowa wasn’t there, though most of his thralls were.

“I will confirm the kills and see if there is anyone they missed or simply did not know about,” Leif says, “but it appears Kacper sent his thralls here to help defend the nest, without occupying it himself.”

“He knew we could divine his thralls but not him.”

“I suspected he would prove to be a challenge. But we shall not have to face him tonight anyway. You should go home and get some rest. We eliminated twelve vampires here in accordance with the treaty. That is fine progress and should send a clear message that the treaty will be enforced. I may be able to find out the locations of other nests once I search their files. I will contact you when I know more.”

I have no will to argue. I want a shower and some sack time more than anything else. I still have another day off from the pub, and I might as well use it to recuperate.

Halfway through my hike up to the bound tree above Krakow, I snort to myself. I guess I now know what my grand adventure will be as a bartender at Browar Szóstej Dzielnicy: I’ll be a vampire hunter. And a student of Szymborska.

Honestly, that suits me perfectly: I do not see a path I can walk on the earth that is not strewn with beauty and horror in equal measure. My road ahead is poetry and blood, and after today, I know I’m prepared to walk it.