“Yes. My village was destroyed by a mudslide about a hundred and fifty years ago. We were all trapped there until Pia rescued us.”
“Is Pia your master?”
He looked appalled. “No! Pia is the Zorya who was sent to take us to Ostri, our heaven. But then she met Kristoff, and he didn’t like us much, especially Ragnor, who admittedly bit him once or twice, but when the reapers tried to kill Kristoff, I was left behind, and so the Ilargi got me.”
“It’s kind of sad when my life needs a glossary,” I said to no one in particular, then recalled where I was, and what I was doing, and held out my hand. “Could I have my Vikingahärta, please?”
He looked at my gloves. I
“That’s not from the Vikingahärta. It’s from touching a table you touched,” I told him, noting absently that the saffron was already starting to fade. “Which reminds me—if you could keep from touching my hands, I’d be grateful.”
He withdrew the small gold velvet bag from the box, carefully undoing the strings, and just as carefully upending it over my open hand. The Vikingahärta hit my hand with a warm glow of familiarity. I smiled at it, holding it up to admire the runes so delicately carved into the three linked triangles that the old Norsemen referred to as a valknut. “Hello, Vikingahärta. Do you know what a valknut is, Ulfur?”
He shook his head, not looking particularly interested. “My father would know, but he is in Ostri now.”
I felt so adrift in the things he had told me, I figured it wouldn’t hurt if he saw that I knew a few things, too, and traced along the three heavy gold triangles. “A valknut is the knot of the slain, a symbol of the afterlife. It has nine points, which represent the three Norns, who, centuries ago, the people in Scandinavia believed were weavers of fate. This one belonged to Loki, and is imbued with his power, but it’s mine now.”
“I can see that it is.” He gave me an odd considering look for a moment, then added, “My master may well destroy me when he finds out what I’ve done, but I will let you take it if you promise to do something for me.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know anything about liches or their masters, so I wouldn’t begin to know how to free you from him—”
“No, it’s not that,” he interrupted. “Or rather it is, but I don’t expect you to help me. The Zorya I mentioned, Pia, will help me. If you could get word to her and her Dark One, Kristoff, I would be very grateful.”
“You know a Dark One?” I asked, surprised for some reason. “I didn’t realize that liches and vampires mixed.”
“So far as I know, they don’t, but this is a special case. My master knows that I was under Pia’s protection for a while, and he’s forbidden me to have any contact with them. But you could tell them where I am, and explain what happened to me.”
The lost look in his eyes tugged at my heart. I was silent for a minute, trying to sort through my thoughts. “I’ll do what I can,” I said at last.
“Goddess!” Eirik protested. “You are going to help the lich? You won’t let us gut him if you want to help him!”
“I wasn’t going to let you gut him in the first place. Honestly, Eirik, you’d think by now you would realize that I’m not going to just let you run around killing whoever you want to kill. From this moment on, you can assume that I’m not going to let you kill anyone. Got that?”
As the words left my lips, the door opened and a man walked in, but the acrid stench that clung to him told me that this was no mortal man. He was slight and dark, and the moment his eyes lit on me, they glittered with unholy light. “A Beloved? For me? How thoughtful of you! I haven’t had a Beloved sacrificed to me in . . . oh, forever. I will enjoy ripping out her soul.”
Eirik shot me a look.
“Fine,” I said, glaring at the demon. “You can gut him. But no one else.”
The Vikings were on the demon before it had time to do much damage to them. I moved back out of the way as they jumped the demon, blades slashing, black blood flying, and various oaths and demonic screeches piercing the still air of the room. The Vikings were whooping it up as well, and so far as I could tell, having the time of their lives pounding the demon to a pulp. After a good minute and a half of that, all that remained was a blob on the floor that disappeared in a blast of nasty, oily black smoke that stained the floor and covered the Vikings in a fine black ash.
“Don’t tell me—your master keeps demons, too?” I asked Ulfur.
He shook his head, looking with curiosity at the spot on the sage carpet. “No. That was Verin, a demon in Asmodeus’s legions. He was acting as courier between his demon lord and my master.”
I pursed my lips. “Whops. The demon was just sent back to Asmodeus, right? Because you can’t destroy a demon, just his form?”
“Correct.” Ulfur looked a bit worried, which in turn made me think we’d overstayed our welcome and wonder if his master would seek retribution.
“That’s all I need—someone else after my blood,” I said on a sigh. “This necromancer master of yours . . . is he likely to be peeved to find out the courier was temporarily destroyed?”
“De Marco isn’t a necromancer,” Ulfur said, prodding at the black stain with the tip of his shoe. “He’s an Ilargi.”
“Ah.” I tried to remember what it was that Imogen had told me about them. “Those are the guys who steal souls. So, what—” I paused, something Ulfur said chiming a warning bell in my head. “What did you say your master’s name is?”
“De Marco. Alphonse de Marco.”
My jaw dropped a tiny bit. I actually stood there blinking with my mouth hanging open in surprise. “Are you sure?” I asked, immediately realizing how idiotic that sounded.
“Quite sure.”
I shook my head, trying to clear the confusion that clogged up my brain like so much sticky spiderweb. “It can’t be the same person. It just can’t be. It’s coincidence, nothing more. You don’t happen to know his birth date, do you? Or whether he was ever married, or had a daughter named Petra?”
Ulfur looked as confused as I felt. “I don’t know his birth date or whether he was married, although I don’t believe he was. He did have a daughter, but she was stolen from him when she was a baby.”
“Stolen by who?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Gypsies.”
“Oh, come on, that’s a cliché! Real Gypsies don’t do things like that,” I protested.
He shrugged. “That’s what de Marco told me. He has long sought to find his daughter, but says she’s been hidden well. He did say something odd about her, though. . . .”
“I don’t know what could be much odder than being stolen by Gypsies,” I said, feeling more and more like Alice in a really deranged version of Wonderland.
“He said that so long as he had her horn, the baby couldn’t be used against him.”
I just looked at him for a few seconds. His mild gray eyes held my gaze. “You know, I think it’s going to be better for my sanity if I just move along, both figuratively and literally. If your master wants to have a hissy on my butt about destroying the demon’s form, he can. Otherwise, it’s time to leave. Where can I find your friend Pia and her vampire?”
He gave me the names of a couple of towns where he thought they might live, and escorted us to the door. The Vikings were still riding high on their adrenaline rush caused by destroying the demon’s form, and were quite happy to walk the quarter mile into the town proper, reliving the (in their minds glorious) fight blow by blow.
Chapter 15
Ben was nowhere to be found when we made it back to the Faire. I considered calling him on my mental cell phone (it seemed so much easier than using a real one), but decided I wasn’t such a wimp that I needed to keep tabs on him every second of the day. He was a big boy—I could trust him to go off and do things on his own without knowing exactly what it was he was doing.
