Erik met Gunnar in a parking lot halfway across town. His partner was pacing when he arrived, ready for some action. Gunnar climbed into the car with him and they drove toward the Draugr’s lair.
It was an old mansion on the outskirts of the city, standing on a steep hill and overlooking the town. The house had been some Victorian architect’s triumph, and it still wore a certain weathered grace. There was a garage – probably formerly a carriage house – and a gardener’s shed, a pond and a stable. Erik could smell the horses.
He stopped the car on the road, concealed from the house by a tall and unmanicured hedge. He and Gunnar conferred one last time.
“Hrothgar is standing over Hakon, but Magnus is already here. Rolf is inside, and he left the back door unlocked for us.” Gunnar pulled out a hastily-drawn floor plan of the house. “This is the back door. It goes into the kitchen here. There’s a mud room, with a landing that leads to stairs. Go up and you’re on the first floor. Go down and it’s the basement.”
“Where is the sword?”
He tapped one of the rooms on the upper floor. “This is Sigrunn’s room. Rolf says that she has it stowed in there.”
“She’s not carrying it anymore?”
“Apparently not. He said he saw her leave without it.”
Erik nodded and went to the trunk of the car. It was loaded with weapons, both modern and ancient. He selected a Remington semi-automatic pistol and loaded it with a magazine of silver bullets. He donned a gear strap and attached three more magazines to it. Last, he took up a double-headed axe.
Gunnar smiled. “Ingrid is coming out to play.”
“Stop naming my axes,” he grumbled.
His partner armed himself, too, and then they crept up the hill to the back door of the house.
The grounds were suspiciously quiet, and Erik noticed as they reached the door that the silence was from a lack of birds. There should have been sparrows, or starlings, or at least an ant or two on the ground, but there was nothing. It was as if all evidence of animal life had been chased away.
“This is no ordinary hörgr,” he told his partner in a whisper.
Gunnar nodded. “Hel.”
He sincerely hoped that was not the case. Of all the gods he would like to encounter, the queen of the underworld was not high on the list. The last he had heard, the soul that Hel was tied to had been reborn, but far away, and very recently. There was no way that she and her vessel could be here.
At least, he hoped that was the case.
He turned the knob on the back door slowly, as silently as he could. It opened without so much as a click. The lock had been padded with shredded toilet paper, keeping the lock from engaging; Rolf had done his job well.
With Gunnar bringing up the rear, Erik entered the house cautiously. As described on the floor plan, the back door opened up into a recessed mud room area. A staircase led down to the left, leading into darkness that smelled of mildew and rotting onions. On the right, three steps led up into the kitchen.
Gunnar pointed down, and Erik nodded. They needed to find the Rune Sword, yes, but they also needed to find that altar.
Slowly, quietly, they crept down into the basement.
****
Nika paced through the apartment, feeling caged and ridiculous. Despite Erik’s stories and his arch warning to stay behind closed doors, she was aching to go out. She felt as if she needed to be somewhere.
She sat on the sofa and held the Soul Stone in her hand. It was pretty, almost jade-green and smooth as glass. There were no flaws in the stone’s surface that her fingertips could detect. It slowly pulsed, the light ebbing and flowing like the tide. It was somehow hypnotic.
She stared into the stone, watching the slow strobe of its light, and her mind began to drift.
She saw a stone altar, standing in the middle of a stand of giant oaks, occupying the central grove. She was standing beside it, dressed in a shapeless white robe. The grove was ringed by figures in brown robes.
They were chanting. It was an invocation of some kind. She looked to a woman who stood at the foot of the altar, a tall blonde with sea-blue eyes. The woman nodded to her, and she climbed up onto the altar, lying down.
She looked up and saw the sky, hints of black and starlight peeking down around the crowns of the ancient trees. She lay on her back on the cold stone altar.
She saw a robed man take a gem much like the Soul Stone and put it into a mortar. He ground it into powder while the other people continued their chant. When he was finished, he brought it to the woman, who poured an amber liquid into the bowl. They stirred the mixture with a sprig of mistletoe, and then the man came forward and bade her drink.
She took the cup and looked up into his eyes, looking beneath the hood of his robe.
It was Erik.
A sudden pounding sound shattered the vision, and she jumped back with a gasp, her hands flying down to grip the sofa cushions. The Soul Stone fell to the floor and skipped away beneath the couch.
The pounding came again, and she realized that someone was knocking.
The sound wasn’t coming from the door.
Slowly, afraid of what she would see, Nika turned toward the window.
A man was standing there, the flat of his hand beating against the window frame. He saw her. She knew he saw her. He made eye contact with her and smiled.
He pounded on the window again. The glass pane shivered in the frame, but somehow it held.
Another sudden pounding erupted from the bedroom window, and she whirled to look. Through the open door, she could see the window beside her bed. Another man was standing there, grinning at her. When he saw her looking, he licked his lips obscenely.
They could not have been standing at her windows. She was on the fourth floor.
She ran to the window in the living room and pulled the curtain, as if that would make him go away. Another vampire appeared at the next window, and the next, until every window had a leering Draugr beating on the frame. She raced from window to window, pulling the shades and closing the curtains. At the last window, the Draugr laughed at her.
The pounding stopped, and a pregnant silence filled the room. She grabbed her purse and found the can of mace that she carried. She clung to it, although in truth she didn’t know what good it would do her against a vampire. She backed into the bathroom, which had no windows, and closed the door.
The knocking resumed, deafening, shaking the building to its foundations. She could feel the floor vibrate with every beat of their impromptu drum. The Draugr were beating against the windows in unison, not just with each other, but with her heartbeat. They were showing her that she could hide, but they could still hear her pulse.
They were the hunters. She was the prey.
Nika dug through her purse and pulled out her cell phone, prepared to hit the pre-programmed panic button that would call 911. She hesitated just before she could send out the call. What was she supposed to tell them? That vampires were stalking her, please bring silver? They would send an ambulance to take her to the psychiatric hospital, not a cruiser full of officers prepared to do battle with the undead.
She hadn’t gotten Erik’s number, which had been a mistake on both of their parts. She could think of no one else to call.
Desperately, she pulled out Astrid Sigurdsdottir’s business card and dialed her cellphone number. The phone rang twice, and then the other woman’s voice came on the line, cool and collected.
“Hello?”
Nika fairly screamed, “You’ve got to help me! They’re here. They’re surrounding my apartment and they’re trying to get in.”
“Who is trying to get in?” Astrid asked. There was amusement in her tone.
“The Draugr!”
There was silence for a moment on the other end of the line. “What did you say?”
“I know. Erik told me everything. They’re trying to get in.” The pounding intensified. “Please, help me!”
This time when she spoke, any hint of mirth was gone. “Where is your apartment?” Astrid asked. “Quickly.”
She rattled off the address and begged, “Hurry. Please, please hurry!”
“I’ll be right there. Are you safe?”
“I’m locked into the bathroom,” she said. “Please, I don’t know what to do.”
She could plainly hear the echoes of Astrid’s heels on the museum floor. “Shall I come in when I get there?”
Nika nodded, “Yes. Yes, come in. Help me fight these things off!”
The phone went dead, and the pounding at the windows reached a frightful crescendo. Nika curled up in a fetal position in the shower, her arms covering her head.
***
Gunnar and Erik made their careful way down the stairs into the basement. There were no lights, but they were Veithimathr, so light was not all that necessary. The could see well enough without it.
Erik held his gun in front of him, carefully pointing the way, ready to open fire if any of the Draugr were to leap out at him. The musty smell was deeper here at the bottom of the stairs, and immediately ahead of him, a weathered wooden door stood closed. He pushed it open.
He should have predicted the whining of the hinges, the haunted-house sound effect that ripped the air around them. Gunnar froze, looking up the stairs toward the rest of the house. There was no sound of footsteps, and no indication of anyone approaching. Emboldened, Erik pushed the door open further and proceeded.
He stepped through the doorway and into a scene that took his breath away. Here in the basement of this modern house, in a room that took up the entire foundation, the Draugr had recreated the sacred grove at Uppsala. The hörgr stood in the center of a circle of papier-maché trees, molded in the form of giant oaks thickly hung with mistletoe and holly. The heavy branches, as false as the trunks, reached out over the altar and formed a protective canopy.
Between the trees, statutes stood, carved from real oak wood. The one in the center was Thor, the mighty god, his hammer in his hand. Flanking him were representations of Odin, his missing eye covered by a swath of homespun cloth. On the other side stood Freyr, god of joy. All three had been colored black with a combination of pitch and animal blood.
The smell of the blood was like a drug in their noses. Both men approached slowly, their weapons forgotten. Erik held out a hand and pressed it against Freyr’s side. It came away coated with gore.
He smelled the blood on his hand. “Dogs and horses,” he told Gunnar, speaking in their ancient native tongue.
“Then they have already begun the sacrifices.” His partner sounded both awestruck and afraid. “What is the moon phase?”
He didn’t need to look to know. He always knew. “Waning.”
Behind Thor stood a stylized version of the World Tree, Yggdrasil. The bodies of the sacrificed animals hung from its branches, draining into vats beneath them.
“How long?”
He meant until the new moon, until the time for the darkest magic to be performed. “Three days.”
Gunnar growled in his throat, and his voice was thick. “We need to desecrate this shrine. We need to stop them.”
“First we need to find the Sword,” Erik reminded him. “It isn’t down here. Let’s keep looking.”
They abandoned the shrine and the echoes of the lives they’d led so long ago and so far away. Erik could not say that he didn’t feel a little homesick. He also felt thirst, real vampire thirst, and he struggled to push it away. The sooner he left this blood-soaked room, the easier that would be.
***
The pounding outside Nika’s apartment stopped abruptly, and the sudden silence was almost more unnerving than the noise had been. She clung to her mace and tried to stay hidden in the shower.
Someone knocked on her front door loudly, twice. “Miss Graves?”
It was Astrid. Nearly weeping in relief, Nika abandoned her hiding place and ran to the door, opening the locks and flinging it open wide.
The Valtaeigr looked concerned on the other side of the threshold. “Miss Graves!” She exclaimed. “I’m so grateful you aren’t hurt!”
Nika grabbed her arm and pulled her inside, then slammed and locked the door again. “Are they gone? They were at every window…”
“They’ve gone.” Astrid put her hands on the red-haired woman’s shoulders. “Breathe. You’re safe now. They’ve fled.”
“Are you sure? Did you see them leave?”
“Calm down!”
The rattled woman hurried from window to window, looking out for signs of her unwelcome guests. They were nowhere to be found. Astrid watched her scurry for a while, then went to her, a gentle hand on her back.
“You are so terrified! I would not have expected someone of your bloodline to be so fearful.”
She felt insulted. “They were going to kill me.”
“No, they weren’t.” She pulled Nika to sit beside her on the couch. Beneath the furniture, the Soul Stone flickered once and went silent.
Nika felt the change in the jewel, and she looked from Astrid to the door. It was slowly dawning on her that she may have done a very bad thing.
“I asked you in,” she breathed, more to herself than to Astrid.
The other woman smiled broadly, her long Draugr teeth descending into the light. “Yes, she nodded. You did.”
She grabbed Nika’s throat in one hand and squeezed. Nika struggled against the grip, kicking and clawing, but Astrid’s strength was unbreakable. Astrid never stopped smiling.
She could not breathe, and her vision was darkening from the edges inward, sparkling with stars. She held on as long as she could, crying out in her mind for help, until finally the darkness overtook her and she fell still.