“I’ve not lived through more than five hundred years of Europe’s most turbulent history only to die in a car crash.”

“Black Hawk could drive these roads wearing a blindfold,” Billy said.

“I’m sure he could, though why he would want to do something like that is beyond me.”

“Have you never done something purely for the thrill of it?” Black Hawk asked.

“No,” Machiavelli said. “Not for a long time.”

Black Hawk looked shocked. “But that seems like such a waste of immortality. I pity you,” he added.

“You pity me?”

“You are not living, you are surviving.”

Niccolò Machiavelli stared at the Native American immortal for a long time before he finally nodded and looked away. “You may be right,” he murmured.

The house was set back off the road.

At first glance it looked like a small, ordinary timber cottage, similar to so many others scattered across the United States. It was only when one approached closer that the truth was revealed: the house was enormous, much of it built into the side of the hill behind it.

Machiavelli felt his skin prickle and crawl the moment the car turned off the rough track onto a narrow rutted drive: the telltale signs of warding spells. There was old magic here, ancient eldritch power. He caught glimpses of arcane symbols cut into trees, spirals daubed on rocks, stick figures carved into fence posts. The track cut straight across a field of grass that grew as high as the car doors. The blades rasped and hissed against the metal, sounding like a thousand warning whispers. The Italian caught flickers of movement all around him, and glimpses of snakes, toads, and quick, scurrying lizards. A gangling misshapen scarecrow dominated the field on the left-hand side of the track. Its head was a huge gnarled dried pumpkin that had been carved in a round-eyed face with a protruding tongue.

The grassy field stopped abruptly, as if a line had been drawn in the earth, and the rest of the approach to the house was across perfectly flat land. Machiavelli nodded his approval: nothing could get through the field without setting off countless alarms or being attacked by a poisonous lurking guardian. Getting close to the house undetected would be impossible. An enormous lynx, bigger than any he had ever seen before, lay on the ground before the open front door, regarding the car impassively, only the tiny movements of its black-tufted ears betraying that it was real and not a carving.

Black Hawk pulled the jeep up in front of the house, but kept the engine running and made no move to climb out. “End of the road,” he said without a trace of a smile.