Behind us Ascanio chortled.
The road curved, caught between dense, dark forest on the left and an open, low, grass-sheathed hill on the right. Outcroppings of pale rock marked the hills. Norse Heritage Hall sat on the west side of Gainesville, about fifty miles northeast of Atlanta. The massive spread of the Chattahoochee Forest had long ago swallowed Gainesville, turning it into an isolated town, like a small island in a sea of trees.
Kate was riding a dark, nasty-looking gray roan that looked like it couldn’t wait to stomp something to death.
“So, do you miss Marygold?”
Marygold used to be her Order mule.
“My aunt killed her,” Kate said.
Crap. “I’m so sorry.” She had really loved that mule.
Ahead, the top of the largest rock pile shifted. A thick humanoid body pushed from the crest. Its head was wide and equipped with dinosaur jaws armed with narrow teeth. Gray scales shielded its body, protruding from the flesh as if the creature had rolled in gravel. Long strands of emerald-green moss dripped from its back and shoulders. The sun tore through the clouds. A stray ray caught the creature’s side and the beast sparkled as if dipped in diamond dust.
“What the hell is that?”
“That’s a landvættir,” Kate said. “They’re land spirits that pop up around neo-Norse settlements. He won’t bother us unless we turn off the path.”
We rode past the creature.
Raphael urged his horse forward and rode up between the two of us. “Anapa. Powerful enough to snatch a child from the Keep.”
“Yes?” I murmured.
“And this is really important to him?”
“Yes?”
“Why doesn’t he do it himself?” Raphael grimaced. “Why doesn’t he help us? Why keep the Pack out of it?”
I had asked myself these same questions before, so I told him the only answer I could come up with. “I don’t know.”
He glanced at Kate. She shrugged. “Beats me.”
“I asked your volhv,” Raphael said to me.
My volhv, huh? “And what did the Russian sugar bear tell you?”
Kate made a strangled noise. Raphael clenched his jaw, then unclenched it.
“He said that Anapa is a god and gods are weird. What kind of a demented answer is that? Isn’t he supposed to be some sort of expert on this whole thing, which is why we’re bringing him along?”
Gods are vicious, selfish assholes. I shrugged. “Roman is an expert and he gave you his expert opinion. Gods are weird.”
“I can hear you,” Roman called from behind us. “I’m not deaf.”
Raphael shook his head and dropped back.
Anapa wasn’t just weird. No, he had a plan. And all his good humor and funny smiles were calculated. They masked his true essence the way soft fur covered a cat’s claws. And I would keep his plan to myself. If I told Raphael, he would do something rash to save me. If I told it to Kate, she would worry and try to fix it. There was no way to fix it. It was what it was.
The road turned, forking into two paths ahead. The larger road, marked by an old birch, curved up the hill. The smaller, less traveled path veered right, into some woods.
A man walked out from behind the tree and barred the path. Six and a half feet tall and hulking, he resembled a man-sized tank draped in chain mail. He wore a dramatic cloak of black fur and a polished war helm and carried an enormous single axe on a long wooden handle.
“Good to see you again, Gunnar,” Kate said. “We’re going to the glade.”
The bottom half of Gunnar’s face paled. “Again?”
Kate nodded.
“You’ve been once. You can’t go again.”
“I’ve got no choice.”
Gunnar rubbed his face. “He’s got your scent now. You know what happens to people who go to see him twice.”
“I know. I still have to go.”
He shook his head and stepped aside. “It’s been nice knowing you.”
Kate touched the reins and our small procession rolled on.
“What exactly happens to the people who go to see him twice?” I asked.
“He eats them,” Kate said.
The old road narrowed, slicing its way into the forest. Tall trees crowded the road, as if protesting its intrusion in their midst. The air smelled of forest: pine sap, the earthy odor of moist soil, the faint harshness of bobcat mark somewhere to the left, and the slightly oily squirrel musk. A bluish fog hung between the trees, obscuring the ground. Spooky.
We came to a stone arch made by tall pillars of gray stone, bound together by vines.
Kate hopped off her horse. “We hoof it now. Raphael, will you take the deer?”
“Sure.”
I took the tripod framework out of the cart and pulled it apart into a mount, sighting the path past the pillars. I planted the tripod into the ground and took my huge crossbow off the cart. Dark letters ran along the stock of the bow: THUNDERHAWK.
“This is new,” Kate said.
I snapped the crossbow into the top of the mount, took a canvas bundle from the cart, and unrolled it. Crossbow bolts, tipped with the Galahad warheads.
“This is my baby.” I petted the stock.
“You have a strange relationship with your weapons,” Roman said.
“You have no idea,” Raphael told him.
“This from a man with a living staff and a man who once drove four hours both ways for a sword he then put on his wall,” I murmured.
“It was an Angus Trim,” Raphael said.
“It’s a sharpened strip of metal.”
“You have an Angus Trim sword?” Kate’s eyes lit up.
“Bought it at an estate auction,” Raphael said. “If we get out of this alive, you are invited to come to my house and play with it.”
It was good that Curran wasn’t here and I was secure in our relationship, because that totally could be taken the wrong way.
I grabbed my backpack. Raphael slung the deer over his shoulder. Kate pulled a leather bundle from the cart. It had a bead pattern along the side that looked very familiar. I’d seen similar designs before on an Oklahoma Cherokee reservation—it was Indian scrollwork.
“Is that a Cherokee design?”
Kate nodded. “I bought this from the Cherokee medicine woman.”
I motioned Ascanio over. “Aim like this.” I swiveled the tripod, moving the bow. “Sight through here. To fire, flip this lever and squeeze the trigger. Slowly. Don’t jerk it.”
“Even if he jerks it, he’ll hit, trust me,” Kate said. “He’ll have a large target.”
“Don’t listen to her, she can’t shoot an elephant from ten feet away. She would bash him with her bow and then try to cut his throat with her sword.”
Kate chuckled.
“Your turn.” I nodded at the bow.
“Aim, sight, flip lever, squeeze the trigger slowly,” Ascanio said. “Try not to panic and cry like a little girl.”
“Good man.” We followed Kate single file up the path, leaving him at the cart.
The forest grew grimmer, the trees growing darker, more twisted, still full of leaves but somehow dead, as if frozen in time. The fog thickened into soup. The usual scents faded. Not even squirrels ventured here, as if life itself was forbidden. These were some screwed-up woods.
I smelled carrion. Strong and recent, butter-sweet.
We came to a clearing—a small stretch of mossy ground slightly larger than a basketball court, bordered by massive trees. In the center of the clearing rose a big stone, tall and flat like a table. A hollowed-out space had been carved into the stone and stained with red. I sniffed. Blood. Only a couple of days old.
“The deer goes on the rock,” Kate said.
“So what brought you here the first time?” I asked.
“A dying child,” Kate said. “It was me, Curran, and some vampires. He and I were the only ones to get out in one piece. Still time to leave.”
“Leave?” Roman rubbed his hands together. “And miss this? Are you fucking crazy?”
He wasn’t swearing because he was freaked. He was swearing because he was excited. Wow. For once, I had no words.
“Are you sure about this?” Kate asked me.
I had the most important job in this awesome plan of ours. “Will you get on with it already?”
“She will be fine,” Raphael said. “She’s the fastest.”
To the left some creature screeched, loud and desperate. Another joined it. I fought a shiver.
“The draugr was once a Viking named Håkon from Vinland,” Kate said. “The Vikings living there traded with local tribes, who told them that Cherokees were soft. They said that the Southern tribes were farmers, not warriors, and had a lot of gold. So Håkon sailed down on two ships to rape, plunder, and pillage. Except that the Cherokees had good arrows and strong magic. He died in the skirmish. Nobody stopped to bury him, and he was so pissed off by that, that he rose from the dead as a draugr, chased down his remaining men, and ate them.”
“Literally?” Roman asked.
Kate nodded. “The Cherokees found him gnawing on their bones. He was too powerful and they couldn’t kill him, so they locked him on this hill with their wards to keep him from running loose.”
The light gained an odd bluish tint. Somehow the forest had gotten darker.
“This is a bad place,” the black volhv said. “We shouldn’t be here. Well, I should. But you shouldn’t. You see, my god holds dominion over dead things, but this creature belongs to a different pantheon, so I have some protection here, but not too much. Not enough to kill the draugr. Just enough to bind him and survive.”
“You’re doing wonders for my confidence,” I told him.
Kate put the bundle with the Cherokee beadwork on the ground, knelt by it, and untied its cord. Inside lay four sharpened sticks, each about three feet long. She picked the first one up, found a rock and pounded it into the ground by the beginning of the path. That was the way I’d run when it came time to get the hell out of there. The second stick went to the left side of the clearing, the third to the right, and the final exactly opposite the first.