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.”