Gunmetal Magic(168)

“It’s not a sleeping bag,” I told him.

“Would you care to enlighten me?” Ghastek said.

“Look at it from above.”

The purple vampire leaped onto the nearest tree and scurried up into the branches. A long moment passed and then it dropped on the ground next to me without a word.

“What is it?” Tracy asked.

The vampire’s face was unreadable, like a blank wall. “It’s a glove.”

The wind stirred the tree branches. The world blinked, as the tech vanished, crushed under the onslaught of a magic wave. Cold froze the glade. The other vampire burst from the bushes and came to rest by Tracy.

In the distance something wailed in an inhuman voice, its forlorn cry rising high above the treetops.



Gloom claimed the clearing. It came slowly, like molasses, from the dark spaces deep between the roots, washing over trees, leaching color from the greenery, drenching it in shadows, until the shrubs and foliage turned dark, almost gray. Behind the gloom, mist rose in thin wisps, tinted with an eerie bluish glow.

A crow cried overhead, its shrill caw impossibly distant.

“They are putting on quite a show,” Ghastek said.

“Yep.” I nodded. “Going all out. Viking special effects are out of this world.”

I pulled a canvas bundle out of my backpack and untied the cord securing it. Four sharpened sticks lay inside, each three feet long. I picked up a rock and hammered the first of the sticks into the ground at the mouth of the path. That was the way I’d run when it came time to get the hell out of there.

I moved along the edge of the clearing, sinking the sticks in at regular intervals.

“What is the purpose of this?” Ghastek asked.

“Protection.”

“Have I given you a reason to doubt my competence, Kate?”

“No.” I pulled a black box out of my backpack, took a black cloth out of it, and unfolded the cloth to extract an old pipe. The medicine woman had already packed it with tobacco.

“What is this?”

“A pipe.” I struck a match, puffed to get the pipe going, and got a mouthful of smoke for my trouble. The pungent tobacco scraped the inside of my throat. I coughed and started to circle the clearing, blowing smoke as I went.

“What sort of magic is this?” one of the journeymen asked.

“Cherokee. Very old.” If life was perfect, I’d have Immokalee herself do the ritual. It took years of training for the medicine woman to reach her power, but none of the Cherokees would go near the draugr. Unlike me, they had common sense. All the chants over the sticks and the pipe had been said already. All I had to do was follow the ritual and hope Immokalee’s magic was potent enough to work when an incompetent like me activated it.

I finished the circle, put the pipe away, and sat back on the log.

A pair of tiny eyes ignited by the roots of an oak to the left. No iris was visible—the entire eye was an almond-shaped slit of pale yellow glow.

“Left,” Tracy said. Her voice was perfectly calm.

“I see it,” Ghastek said.

Another pair sparked to the right, about a foot off the ground. Then another, and another. All around us the eyes fluoresced, clustered around tree trunks, staring from the underbrush, peering from behind rocks.

“What are they?” Tracy asked.

“Uldra,” Ghastek said. “They’re nature spirits from Lapland. They live mostly underground. I wouldn’t provoke them. Stay in the clearing.”

The eyes stared at us, unblinking.

A blast of icy cold ripped through the clearing. The uldra vanished as one. On the ground, the deer moaned, coming up out of its drugged state.

Here we go.

I reached into my backpack and pulled out a small leather satchel, a small plastic bear full of honey, and a canteen. No turning back now. I got up off the log and walked over to the center of the glade where a large stone waited. Ghastek’s and Tracy’s vampires trailed me.

I brushed the leaves from the stone. The inside of the rock had been hollowed out into a stone basin, large enough to hold about three gallons of liquid.

“When the draugr appears, don’t talk to him,” I said. “The longer we talk, the more time he has to lock onto our scent. We’ll have to fight to get clear anyway. No need to make things harder.”

No response.

“Ghastek? Do you understand me?”

“Of course,” he said.

“The Cherokee have set protective wards on the mountain. If we make it to the pillars by the road, we’re safe.”

“You said this before,” Ghastek informed me.

“I’m just reminding you.” This wouldn’t go well.

I set the canteen on the ground and loosened the drawstring cord securing the pouch. It opened into a square of leather in the palm of my hand. Inside lay six rune stones chiseled from bone, and a handful of beat-up silver coins: two etched with a sword and hammer and four with the Viking raven.