“This is a bad place,” the black volhv said. “We shouldn’t be here. Well, I should. But you shouldn’t. You see, my god holds dominion over dead things, but this creature belongs to a different pantheon, so I have some protection here, but not too much. Not enough to kill the draugr. Just enough to bind him and survive.”

“You’re doing wonders for my confidence,” I told him.

Kate put the bundle with the Cherokee beadwork on the ground, knelt by it, and untied its cord. Inside lay four sharpened sticks, each about three feet long. She picked the first one up, found a rock and pounded it into the ground by the beginning of the path. That was the way I’d run when it came time to get the hell out of there. The second stick went to the left side of the clearing, the third to the right, and the final exactly opposite the first.

“These are our defenses. They will delay him a little bit. Don’t fight him. Just run.”

Kate got a pipe out of a box and began smoking it. The tobacco hit her and she coughed.

“Lightweight.”

“Whatever.” She circled the clearing, waving her pipe around.

“I’ve never seen this before,” Roman said. “It’s very difficult to witness Native American rituals these days. So much has been lost due to assimilation and lack of written records. Exciting stuff!”

“Well, so glad we could indulge your intellectual curiosity, Professor,” Raphael told him.

“I’m probably making a hash job of it, but the tribe refuses to approach this hill, so I’m all you’ve got,” Kate said.

She completed the circle, sat down, and started pulling things out of her bag: a plastic honey bear, a metal canteen, and a little bag.

I blinked and the forest was full of eyes. Elongated, solid yellow, they peeked at us from under the boulders, from the darkness by the roots of the trees, from the branches…

I bared my teeth. “What are these?”

“I’m not sure.” Kate kept her voice low. “They came out last time, too. I think they might be uldra. Ghastek said they’re nature spirits from Lapland. They didn’t attack us the last time.”

To my right, one of the uldra crawled up on the end of the fallen tree trunk, just feet away. An inch or two over a foot tall, it perched on the tree bark, gripping it with avian feet. Dense dark fur covered its humanoid body. Its face vaguely resembled a baboon.

The uldra found its spot, moving with slothlike slowness, and froze, oversized hands with long, large-knuckled fingers folded in front of it. Its mouth gaped open, displaying a forest of long, deep-water fish teeth.

“It’s just some small nechist,” Roman said next to me.

“Nechist?” I asked.