Confessions of a Vampire's Girlfriend (35 page)

“That's awfully nice of you,” I said, touching the valknut. “But how are we going to do that?”

“It's very simple,” she said, pushing past me to leave the RV. Ramon and I followed. “You know about the Valkyries, yes?”

“Yes,” I said, though I was far from an expert on Norse mythology. “Kind of. Ben told me the other night that they're warrior maidens who swoop down on horses and pick out dead warriors to take to heaven, which is called Valhalla.”

“Close enough. Queen of the Valkyries is Freya, goddess of love.”

“Oh?” I wondered what the goddess of love had to do with dead Vikings.

“Yes. So there's our answer.” She ran up the steps to her RV, quickly returning with a tapestry bag. She hurried around the front of the trailer, toward the stretch of woods in which I found Ben. “Come on, we don't have long before our act is on again.”

I looked at Ramon. He took my arm and hustled me after Mikaela.

“There's our answer? What answer?” I asked, stumbling over an unseen root. “You don't mean—”

“Yes,” Mikaela said, spreading out a cloth and laying out a bowl, candle, and small bouquet of flowers. “We're going to summon Freya and ask her help.”

“I was at a party!”

“A very nice party!”

“In Venice! The city of love! And there were four lovely mortal men practically
drooling
on me with desire!”

I peeked through the fingers I'd slapped over my eyes when Freya, goddess of love, warrior queen, and evidently Venetian partygoer started her hissy fit. The tinkling sound came from the crystal goblet Mikaela had set out as part of the summoning equipment. Freya crushed the goblet between her hands and sprinkled the glass shards on the grass at Mikaela's feet. I had to give Mikaela credit—it took guts to stand up to a really pissed-off goddess (even if she did look like she belonged on the E! channel modeling the latest fashions), but Mikaela didn't budge an inch when Freya got mad at her for being summoned.

“Goddess Freya, I am sorry for disturbing you—”

“And you, you mortal priestess of Ashtar, you think nothing of summoning me from
the
party of the year? Did I mention Elton John was there?”

Mikaela flinched slightly when Freya shredded her invocation cloth. “I'm very sorry, goddess, but this is an emergency.”

Freya threw down the cloth, spinning around to glare at Ramon, who stood a few feet away from Mikaela. “You! You are a priest?”

“Yes.” Ramon looked like his usual implacable (and silent) self. He didn't even blink when Freya marched over to him.

I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea that first of all, all those Norse gods like Odin and Thor and Freya really existed, and second, that they would look like fashion models. Then again, maybe it was just Freya—beautiful, raven-haired, elegant Freya—who looked like a model. Maybe the rest looked all wispy, and had big beards and wore horned helmets and things.

“Hrmph. Not worth my time.” Freya dismissed Ramon and turned to consider me. I thought about clamping my fingers together again so I wouldn't have to see through them, but decided that was too cowardly. Instead I dropped my hands and tried to smile at the irate goddess.

“Hi. I'm Fran,” I said politely as she stalked over to me. “I'm not a priestess or anything.”

Her eyes narrowed as she examined me from head to foot. “You are something. You are mortal, but you have been touched by an immortal being.”

“Well . . . my boyfriend is a vampire,” I told her, praying she didn't call down lightning to smite us, or any of the other godlike things that I'd read about a few years back in a mythology class.

“You are a Beloved? You do not look like a Beloved.”

“We're not to that point yet,” I said with a kind of cheesey smile. “We haven't even gone on a real date yet, although we're going to do that tomorrow.”

She looked interested. “Ah, a first date! I am the goddess of love and romance—you seek my advice, naturally.”

“Well—”

“Let me see, a first date . . . “ She tapped a finger to her chin while she thought. “Ah, yes! You must seek many lovers.”

“Uh . . .” I snapped my mouth shut as soon as I realized it was hanging open. “I must?”

“Yes. As many as you can find. For how else will you know that this Dark One is truly meant to be your soul mate? I made the mistake of marrying young, and without sampling as many men as I could. Luckily, Od left and I was able to see what I was missing, but I would not have you make that same mistake. ‘Try before you buy' is one of your mortal sayings, is it not? You must try as many men as you can before you settle for just one.”

She looked pleased with herself as I stood in stunned silence, not knowing what I was supposed to say to that. Evidently nothing was expected because she started toward Mikaela, but stopped, looking back at me. “Why do I feel power from you? Nordic power?”

I chewed my lip for a moment before figuring out what was probably bothering her. I pulled the chain around my neck up, displaying the valknut. “Maybe it's from this?”

She hissed and took a couple of steps back.
“Vikingahärta!”

“Yeah. Is it bad or something? I raised a group of Viking ghosts with it, which is kind of annoying, but it didn't do anything evil or anything like that.”

“It is not bad in itself.” She tossed her head and her hair, long, wavy, and black, swung backward to lie in perfection along her silver cocktail dress. The dress itself was studded with crystals (or diamonds—I couldn't tell, although I wouldn't have been surprised to find out they were real diamonds), as were her ankle-strap silver stilettos. “It's the source rather than the pendant itself I would prefer to avoid.”

“Fran inadvertently used the
Vikingahärta
to raise a dozen warriors,” Mikaela said carefully. “We desire them to be sent to Valhalla, but are unable to do so. We hoped you would help us.”

“Bah,” Freya said, using Mikaela's mirrored scrying bowl to check her reflection.

“Er . . . if you don't mind, what is the source of the necklace?” I had to ask the question, although I was a bit worried she'd start breaking things again.

Evidently she'd worked through the worst of her anger, though. She stopped primping in the bowl and tossed it at Mikaela. “That is Loki's valknut. The power comes from him. And because you used it rather than a pendant made in my image, I cannot help you with your warriors.”

“But you're the queen of the Valkyries, right?” I asked.

She brushed a speck of something off her dress. “Yes. I am returning to my party now, and if even one of those delicious mortal men who were swooning over me has left, I shall make plain my anger.”

“But—but I really do need help with the Vikings,” I said, stepping forward to block her as she started to walk past Mikaela. Her eyes widened like she couldn't believe I was obstructing her (she wasn't the only one—my stomach was doing flip-flops at the thought of pissing her off any more). “I understand you can't do anything about the raising of them since it was with this Loki guy's necklace, but you are the queen of the Valkyries, so it seems to me you could help me get them into Valhalla.”

“I don't do that sort of thing now,” she said, waving a hand at me. A big puff of air suddenly swept up and pushed me aside. “The mortal world offers so much more than the immortal one—television, movies, Hollywood, fashion houses—I spend little time in Valhalla anymore. No one there has been on
CSI: Miami
!”

“But—”

“Remember, seek as many lovers as you can find! You will be much happier for that. And you—do not summon me again, priestess,” she warned Mikaela, and without another word, she was gone in a sunburst of light.

“Oh great. Now what am I going to do?” I asked, plopping down onto a tree stump. “I don't even know this Loki person. Now I have to hit him up for help, too?”

“Loki?” Eirik and a couple of the Vikings emerged from the woods. Eirik was wearing a sleeveless black mesh muscle shirt, and pair of tight leather pants. Gils had on a red T-shirt with the word SEX made up by lizards shaped like letters, and Ljot evidently wanted to go swimming, because he wore a pair of speedos, flip-flops, swimming goggles . . . and nothing else. “You are summoning Loki? It is Freya you want. She is the queen of the Valkyries.”

I gestured toward Mikaela and Ramon, who were on their knees collecting the debris from Freya's hissy fit. “She was just here. She told us she doesn't go to Valhalla anymore because there are no
CSI
guys there, and that we'd have to ask Loki for help.”

“
CSI
?” Ljot asked, adjusting his swim goggles.

“TV show.”

“Why did the goddess Freya tell you to summon Loki? ” Eirik asked, slapping at a mosquito. I don't know why, but the thought of a ghost with a mosquito bite had me giggling to myself.

“Because this is evidently his. Or was his. Or has his power or something,” I answered, standing up to show him the valknut. “So I'll have to try to get him to help, whoever he is.”

“You do not know Loki, god of mischief?” Gils asked, disbelief plastered all over his face.

“Nope. I'm not really hip to all the gods. Who is he? And why didn't Freya like him?”

“That would be because of Asgard. Sit, and I will tell you the story of Loki and Freya,” Eirik said, making himself comfortable on a fallen log next to me. Ljot and Gils sat on the grass, putting on comfortable “about to hear a story” faces. Mikaela rolled her eyes as she dumped all the debris into a cloth bag, but she and Ramon sat cuddled on her casting blanket to listen.

“Who's Asgard?” I asked, taking my seat again on the tree stump.

“Asgard is a place, not a person. It is where the gods live. Loki was at first a god of much mischief, always pulling jokes on the others, using his powers of transformation to get himself out of trouble. One day, when the gods were constructing Asgard, they found they needed more money to build the wall around it. Loki had the idea of hiring a giant to do the work, and thought up a plan to have the giant work without paying him. He offered the giant the goddess Freya if the wall was completed on time. At first the gods were skeptical, but Loki assured him that he would make sure that the giant did not complete the task on time, so that the gods would not have to pay him for his work.”

“What a creep,” I said before realizing I was talking about a god. “Er . . . nice creep, of course.”

“No, he was not nice,” Ljot said grimly, shaking his head.

“The giant had a stallion to help him build the wall. Three days before it was to be finished, the giant was almost done, and the goddess Freya was beside herself with anger at Loki. With the gods behind her, Loki had no choice but to transform himself into a mare, and entice the giant's stallion away. The giant missed the deadline, and was furious. He tried to take Freya anyway, but Thor stopped him. Freya never forgave Loki for using her in such a way.”

“Ouch. It was nasty of him to set that up, knowing the giant was going to do all the work and not get paid. I don't blame Freya for being ticked at him.” I was about to add that he'd get sued up the ying-yang if he tried something like that now, but remembered in time that we were talking about stuff that happened probably thousands of years ago. Now you see why my brain had such a hard time coping with the fact that all these Norse gods were real people. So much for mythology. “Well, I don't look forward to having to ask him for help, but if there's no other way to get you guys to Valhalla, I'll just have to gird my loins and tighten my belt and grit my teeth, and all that stuff.”

I stood up and stretched. Even though it wasn't yet midnight, I was tired.

“We will help you,” Eirik said, standing and carefully brushing off the seat of his pants. “Since you will need Loki's goodwill, tonight we will offer a sacrifice in his name to make sure that he views your request for help with favor.”

“That would be a nice change,” I said, stifling another yawn. “But what sort of sacrifice are you talking about? More mead like Tibolt used?”

“Traditionally we sacrifice a slave,” Ljot said, peering through the goggles as if he expected a slave to pop out of the woods and volunteer.

“But you have decreed we not kill anyone,” Eirik said quickly when I turned around to yell at him. “So we will, instead, offer a smaller sacrifice.”