“Even if he jerks it, he’ll hit, trust me,” Kate said. “He’ll have a large target.”

“Don’t listen to her, she can’t shoot an elephant from ten feet away. She would bash him with her bow and then try to cut his throat with her sword.”

Kate chuckled.

“Your turn.” I nodded at the bow.

“Aim, sight, flip lever, squeeze the trigger slowly,” Ascanio said. “Try not to panic and cry like a little girl.”

“Good man.” We followed Kate single file up the path, leaving him at the cart.

The forest grew grimmer, the trees growing darker, more twisted, still full of leaves but somehow dead, as if frozen in time. The fog thickened into soup. The usual scents faded. Not even squirrels ventured here, as if life itself was forbidden. These were some screwed-up woods.

I smelled carrion. Strong and recent, butter-sweet.

We came to a clearing—a small stretch of mossy ground slightly larger than a basketball court, bordered by massive trees. In the center of the clearing rose a big stone, tall and flat like a table. A hollowed-out space had been carved into the stone and stained with red. I sniffed. Blood. Only a couple of days old.

“The deer goes on the rock,” Kate said.

“So what brought you here the first time?” I asked.

“A dying child,” Kate said. “It was me, Curran, and some vampires. He and I were the only ones to get out in one piece. Still time to leave.”

“Leave?” Roman rubbed his hands together. “And miss this? Are you fucking crazy?”

He wasn’t swearing because he was freaked. He was swearing because he was excited. Wow. For once, I had no words.

“Are you sure about this?” Kate asked me.

I had the most important job in this awesome plan of ours. “Will you get on with it already?”

“She will be fine,” Raphael said. “She’s the fastest.”

To the left some creature screeched, loud and desperate. Another joined it. I fought a shiver.

“The draugr was once a Viking named Håkon from Vinland,” Kate said. “The Vikings living there traded with local tribes, who told them that Cherokees were soft. They said that the Southern tribes were farmers, not warriors, and had a lot of gold. So Håkon sailed down on two ships to rape, plunder, and pillage. Except that the Cherokees had good arrows and strong magic. He died in the skirmish. Nobody stopped to bury him, and he was so pissed off by that, that he rose from the dead as a draugr, chased down his remaining men, and ate them.”

“Literally?” Roman asked.

Kate nodded. “The Cherokees found him gnawing on their bones. He was too powerful and they couldn’t kill him, so they locked him on this hill with their wards to keep him from running loose.”

The light gained an odd bluish tint. Somehow the forest had gotten darker.