“Yep.” I nodded. “Going all out. Viking special effects are out of this world.”

I pulled a canvas bundle out of my backpack and untied the cord securing it. Four sharpened sticks lay inside, each three feet long. I picked up a rock and hammered the first of the sticks into the ground at the mouth of the path. That was the way I’d run when it came time to get the hell out of there.

I moved along the edge of the clearing, sinking the sticks in at regular intervals.

“What is the purpose of this?” Ghastek asked.

“Protection.”

“Have I given you a reason to doubt my competence, Kate?”

“No.” I pulled a black box out of my backpack, took a black cloth out of it, and unfolded the cloth to extract an old pipe. The medicine woman had already packed it with tobacco.

“What is this?”

“A pipe.” I struck a match, puffed to get the pipe going, and got a mouthful of smoke for my trouble. The pungent tobacco scraped the inside of my throat. I coughed and started to circle the clearing, blowing smoke as I went.

“What sort of magic is this?” one of the journeymen asked.

“Cherokee. Very old.” If life was perfect, I’d have Immokalee herself do the ritual. It took years of training for the medicine woman to reach her power, but none of the Cherokees would go near the draugr. Unlike me, they had common sense. All the chants over the sticks and the pipe had been said already. All I had to do was follow the ritual and hope Immokalee’s magic was potent enough to work when an incompetent like me activated it.

I finished the circle, put the pipe away, and sat back on the log.

A pair of tiny eyes ignited by the roots of an oak to the left. No iris was visible—the entire eye was an almond-shaped slit of pale yellow glow.

“Left,” Tracy said. Her voice was perfectly calm.

“I see it,” Ghastek said.

Another pair sparked to the right, about a foot off the ground. Then another, and another. All around us the eyes fluoresced, clustered around tree trunks, staring from the underbrush, peering from behind rocks.

“What are they?” Tracy asked.

“Uldra,” Ghastek said. “They’re nature spirits from Lapland. They live mostly underground. I wouldn’t provoke them. Stay in the clearing.”

The eyes stared at us, unblinking.

A blast of icy cold ripped through the clearing. The uldra vanished as one. On the ground, the deer moaned, coming up out of its drugged state.

Here we go.

I reached into my backpack and pulled out a small leather satchel, a small plastic bear full of honey, and a canteen. No turning back now. I got up off the log and walked over to the center of the glade where a large stone waited. Ghastek’s and Tracy’s vampires trailed me.