Confessions of a Vampire's Girlfriend (26 page)

Nothing,
I said, trying to pinpoint what it was that felt different.

I went to sit at the spot my mother indicated. Ben paused a minute when she pointed out to him a spot across the circle from me, but he went when I gave him a mental push.
Nothing. It's just this midnight sun thing, I think. It always throws me off. It's just weird being able to see everything in the middle of the night.

You will tell me if you are unhappy about something
, he said in his bossy voice.

I rolled my eyes at him.
I might have said I want to do the girlfriend thing with you, but that does not give you the right to push me around.

OK, I admit—I went a bit girly at that. Not at his bossiness—that annoyed the crap out of me, and was something we had argued about a lot before he disappeared and we came to Sweden—but at the fact that Ben really did want to keep me safe from things. I would have argued that fact now, but my mother pulled out a handful of dried lavender branches, and started sweeping the circle.

This is a cleansing ritual,
I told Ben as she moved along the circle, pausing to touch each person's feet with the lavender.
It's supposed to clean the circle of bad influences.

“We will now begin the invocation to the God and Goddess,” my mother announced, having completed the cleansing. “Normally I would now call the quarters, but because our Asatru brothers and sisters are holding a
blot
a short distance away, we do not wish to disturb their forces by drawing their attention away. Thus, we will content ourselves with inviting the Goddess and the God to join our circle.”

Here comes the invocation part,
I told Ben
. Inviting the Goddess into the circle is called “drawing down the moon.” Doing the same for the male God is called “drawing down the sun.”

My mother stood in the center of the circle, her eyes closed, her arms spread out as she spoke the invocation to the Goddess.

“Air, Water, Earth, Fire,

Elements of the stars conspire.

Goddess, mother of all, come to us!

Into the circle, right next to the bus.”

I blinked in surprised. That wasn't the normal invocation. Evidently Mom realized something was wrong too because she opened her eyes and squinted at a nearby school bus that had been converted into a trailer for Desdemona. She shook her head, closed her eyes again, and centered herself.

“Keep us safe from curse or threat,

Just like a deodorant that guards from sweat.”

Someone snickered. Mom had her eyes open again, frowning at nothing.

Er . . . that seems a rather incongruous invocation,
Ben noted.

It's not right. Those aren't the correct words. For some reason, she's not saying it right
, I answered.
Crapbeans. I wonder what's going on?

“My apologies, sisters. Er, and brother,” Mom said, shooting Ben a quick look. “I seem to be a bit . . . off tonight. I beg your indulgence.”

“Of course, you have it,” Desdemona said. She sat near me, which was good in one respect (I didn't like the way she kept shooting little glances at Ben), but for some reason, tonight her nearness made me feel edgy. I scooted a bit away from her, hoping no one would notice. Wiccans were very big on maintaining contact in a circle. To back away from someone was an insult.

Mom took a deep breath and gave it another shot.

“From sea and mountain, desert and trees,

By staff and sword and a mangy dog's fleas,

Heed our plea!”

Silence fell on the circle.

“Oh, dear,” Navy said, leaning over to talk to one of the local Wiccans. “That's not right, is it?”

“Earth, Fire, Water, Air,” Mom said grimly, her hands fisted as she started the invocation to the God.

“Elements of the stars conspire,

God, father of all, come to us!

Don't worry about being male, we'll make no fuss.

Guard us within from all threats beyond

I wonder if there are leeches in yonder pond?

By wand and cup and ball and bat

I just know these pants make my butt look fat.

Heed our plea!”

Desdemona burst out into laughter at the invocation. I wanted to giggle as well, but one look at the horror on my mother's face killed all thoughts of that. Clearly something was up to throw my mother so far off the track. I couldn't ask her what was wrong, though, because right at that moment, things got
really
weird.

“Goddess above—is that what I think it is?” Mikaela asked, pointing at me.

“Huh?” I asked, looking down at myself to see if I'd spilled something on me. Ben stood up, staring past me. I turned around to look and saw a thin, pretty woman with lots of long blond hair in the shadow of the tent behind me.

“It's a
huldra,
” one of the local Wiccans said, her voice all hushed with awe. Or something.

“Is that a
tail
?” I asked as the stranger bent down to pick up something from the ground. I could have sworn there was a cow's tail popping out from under her long skirt.

“Yes, huldra have tails,” Mikaela said, also getting to her feet. “They are spirits of the wood. A type of nymph, actually. They are supposedly harbingers of disaster, appearing briefly to warn of impending danger, then disappearing just as quickly—”

“Hey!” I yelled, jumping up as the woman snatched up the purse I'd set down in order to join the circle. “That's mine!”

“Franny, no! Do not break the circle—”

I knew it was bad to leave a circle before it had been formally unmade, but I couldn't just let the woman—spirit, nymph, whatever she was!—run off with my purse. It had all my money in it, for one thing, and for another, I just don't like people stealing from me. So I bolted after her as she raced past the main tent, heading straight for a small clump of scraggy trees that marked the boundary of the archaelogical dig.

You should never run after a being you do not know,
Ben chastised, his dark shape leaping past me after the blond huldra.

You're so cute,
I thought at him, puffing just a little as I jumped over a fallen tree trunk. Ben was faster than me (he had longer legs plus that whole immortal thing going for him), but I wasn't going to just stand around and let him be Mr. Manly and get my purse back. Anyone who had to the nerve to steal from me had to deal with
me
, not my boyfriend.

The archaeological dig was at the far edge of the island. It didn't look like much—a bunch of deep trenches and areas where square blocks of stone had been dug out and revealed, but evidently it was hot stuff archaeologically speaking. Right in the center of the dig, in a ragged rectangular spot framed with bits of stone that Imogen had told me was the long house (the main living place of the Vikings who built this area), Tibolt and his gang were having their
blot,
also in a circle. Because the trees surrounding the area made it dark, they'd lit a few torches and stuck them in the ground, the light cast by them making odd little flickering shadows on everyone as they did whatever it was they did during a
blot
.

I stopped for a minute to survey the situation. Imogen was there, as I knew she would be, looking like a goddess in a shimmering gold-and-white dress as she stood next to Tibolt. He was dressed in some sort of long black robe, I guess his mage wear. I didn't pay too much attention to what was going on in the
blot
circle because beyond them, the huldra dashed out from behind a tree, and went racing across the dig site toward an unpassable rocky area.

Fran, let me catch her
, Ben said as his shadow flickered in and out amongst the trees. He was following the path the huldra made, but I could tell he wasn't going to catch her before she got to the rock cliff. I sprinted to my right, along the outer edge of the
blot
, hoping to intercept her.

“Fran!” Tibolt yelled, startling me for a second. “No, you must not be here!”

“Don't worry. I know better than to intrude on a circle,” I answered him, flinging myself forward to scramble onto a loose pile of earth that had been excavated from one of the nearby pits. The huldra was heading straight for me, too busy watching Ben over her shoulder to notice me about to tackle her.

“No, Fran, you must leave—”

Suddenly, the huldra whipped her head around just as I was getting ready to spring and veered to avoid my tackle. Instead, she jumped up onto the dirt mound with me, my purse clutched in one hand, the other outstretched like she was going to push me backward into the cleared area. The ground beneath my feet evidently objected to having two people on it, because it simply gave away beneath us, sending both the huldra and me falling backward into the excavation—and the
blot
circle.

My body broke the circle and I hit the ground hard, right at Imogen's feet. The huldra landed next to me. The impact had knocked the air out of both of us. A loud noise shook the ground like an earthquake. I ignored it as I threw myself on the huldra, yanking my purse from her hand. She snarled something at me in Swedish that I was willing to bet wasn't polite at all.

“Luspudlar!”
I shot at her, the worst thing I'd learned to say so far (it meant lice-ridden poodle). I spat out a bit of earth, pushing my hair back from my eyes so I could add a glare that would teach her to mess with me. “No, son of a
luspudel
. . . holy bullfrogs!”

Around us, silence fell. Not a normal silence, the kind you get when a dozen or so people all decked out in robes and fringed dresses stand around the middle of the night sacrificing mead, but a heavy silence. A stunned silence. A silence that pretty much says, “Hey now! Something is seriously wrong here!”

Are you all right?
Ben asked, sticking out a hand to pull me up.

To the left, Tibolt sank to the ground, his head in his hands as he moaned something unintelligble.

That depends,
Ben answered, his fingers tightening around mine. The huldra shrieked and ran off into the night. No one paid her any attention.
Are you talking about the
blot,
the fact that you scraped your wrist on a rock when you fell, or the Viking ghosts that just materialized around us?

“
I
t is the valknut,” Tibolt moaned as we all stood around, stunned. The
blot
people—about five of them—had broken the circular formation and were now huddled together in a group. Surrounding all of us were about a dozen men, all wearing basically nothing but leather and cloth leggings, each one carrying a really big sword. None had on a silly horned helmet (Mikaela told me later real Vikings didn't wear them), but I knew without anyone saying anything that we were looking at real Vikings—or rather,
dead
real Vikings. Viking ghosts, probably the guys who had died at this site.

To be honest, they looked as surprised to see us as we were to see them.

“I told you it had the power to raise the dead. That is why I gave it to you to wear tonight—to keep it from the power of the
blot
.”

“Oh, the pendant?” I pulled it out of my shirt, absently noticing that it felt three times heavier than normal. “You said it had something to do with the Fates, not that it was going to do a Viking zombie sort of thing.” The nearest Viking strolled over and peered at the pendant. Ben moved to stand next to me, a protective gesture that simultaneously warmed my heart and annoyed me. “Ah.
Vikingahärta
,” the Viking said, nodding, then turned to his fellow ghosts and yelled something that had them all screaming like banshees.

“What the heck is that?” I asked, scooching closer to Ben. He wrapped an arm around my waist. I didn't protest at all, not with a dozen screaming Viking ghosts standing around.

“I think it's their war cry,” Ben answered.

“They are happy to be resurrected,” Tibolt said, finally looking up. “They are calling to Tyr, the god of war. It's all over now.”

“All over? What is all over?” Imogen asked, looking worried. “I don't understand what has happened here. Why are there ghosts? What has Fran's necklace to do with it? And why are they shouting ‘
holle, holle'
at her?”