Magic Gifts - Ilona Andrews

"Which way will you be coming?" Curran asked.
"The glade is north east from here." I pointed to a tall oak to the left.
Curran pulled me close.
Ghastek's vampire rolled his eyes.
"Remember the plan?" Curran said in my ear.
"Get in, get the information, and run like hell out of there."
"See you in a few hours."
I brushed his lips with mine. "See you."
I grabbed my backpack and headed up the path.
The mist grew thicker. Moisture hung in the air, tinted with the odor of rotting vegetation and fresh soil. Somewhere in the distance a bird screamed. No movement troubled the still
woods. No squirrels chattered in the canopy, no small game scurried away at our approach. Nothing except for vampires gliding alongside the path, their emaciated shapes flashing
between the trees.
The path veered right and opened into a small glade. Tall pines framed it, the enormous dark trunks scratching at the sky. A carpet of dark pines needles sheathed the ground. Here
and there rocks trust from the forest floor.
"Put the deer right there." I pointed to the center of the glade. The vampire unloaded the deer and hopped aside.
"I suppose we wait until the magic?" Ghastek inquired.
"You got it." I sat on a fallen pine.
The vampire's shoulders rose up and down. Ghastek must've sighed. "I suppose we might as well treat this seriously." The vampire raised his left forelimb. A long yellow claw pointed
at a tall birch on the left. "OP there." A claw moved to the right to a pine on the other side of the glade. "OP there. Give me a perimeter assessment."
Two purple vampires scattered took a running start and scrambled up the tree. The third dashed into the bushes. Only Ghastek and Tracy remained. His vampire sat on my right, her
vampire sat on my left. Peachy.
A minute passed. Another.
Ghastek's vamp lay down. "If half of the things they said about draugar were true, it would revolutionize necromantic science. According to legend, they're the spirits of warriors who
rise from the grave to guard their buried possessions. They see the future, they control the elements, they shapeshift into animals. They turn into smoke and become giants."
"Not at the same time," I told him.
"What?"
"You said they turn into smoke and become giants. Not at the same time. They're solid in giant form."
"You're still clinging to this fallacy?"
I leaned forward. "What would you have done if you had found a draugr in Norway, Ghastek?"
"I'd try to apprehend it, of course."
"Suppose you live in a small village in Norway and you know a draugr is nearby. You bring him live game once in a while and you hope to God he leaves you the hell alone. Now some
geeky hotshot foreigner shows up on your doorstep and explains to you how his going to go annoy this terrible creature for the sake of 'necromantic science'. You try to explain to him
that it's a not a good idea, but he treats you as if you're a childlike idiot."
"I never treat people like infantile idiots," Ghastek said.
I looked at him.
Tracy cleared her throat carefully.
"Go on," he said.
"Would you take this foreigner to this undead monster and risk pissing it off or would you steer him as far away from the draugr as possible and hope he'll go away eventually?"
"That's a sound theory, with one exception. I'm not that gullible."
Fine. "Bet me."
The vampire stared at me. "I'm sorry?"
"Bet me. If the draugr is a hoax, I'll owe you a favor."
"And if he's real?"
"Then you will bring me a quart of vampire blood."
"And why would you need vampire blood, Kate?"
Because I need it to experiment with making armor out of it, that's why. "I want to calibrate the lot of new scanners the Pack bought."
A hint of suspicion slid into Ghastek's voice. "And you need a quart of blood for that?"
"Yep."
The bloodsucker became utterly still as Ghastek mulled it over.
"If I win this silly game, you will tell me why Rowena came to see you after the Keepers affair."
Sucker. "Deal."
"Excellent." He put emphasis on the x and the word came out slightly sibilant.
"You need a fluffy white cat. That way you can stroke it when you say things like that."
Tracy's vamp made a small noise that might have been a clearing of a throat or a choked up laugh.
A purple vampire popped out of the bushes, dragging something behind it. The bloodsucker strained, tight muscle flexing across its back, and heaved what seemed like a large
collapsed leather tent into the open.
"We found human bones," the vampire reported.
"In the ravine?" I asked.
"Yes, ma'am."
I knew about the spot. Immokalee had described it to me this morning trying to scare me into not going. A few dozen yards to the north the ground dropped sharply into a narrow
fissure lined with human skeletons. Some still held their weapons. When a draugr sucked the flesh off your bones, he did it quick, like jerking a shirt off a body.
"We also found this." The vampire indicated the tent.
Ghastek's vampire raised the top edge, exposing a dark opening and vanished into it. The leather shifted, mirroring vampire's movement inside it. The bloodsucker emerged into the
clear air. "The design is ill-conceived. It is clearly too large for one person, but it has no structure or method of remaining upright as a tent, and besides this side is completely open to
the elements. Perhaps it's some sort of communal sleeping bag?"
"It's not a sleeping bag," I told him.
"Would you care to enlighten me?" Ghastek said.
"Look at it from above."
The purple vampire leapt onto the nearest tree and scurried up into the branches. A long moment passed and then it dropped on the ground next to me without a word.
"What is it?" Tracy asked.
The vampire's face was unreadable, like a blank wall. "It's a glove."
The wind stirred the tree branches. The world blinked, as the tech vanished, crushed under the onslaught of a magic wave. Cold froze the glade. The other vampire burst from the
bushes and came to rest by Tracy.
In the distance something wailed in inhuman voice, its forlorn cry rising high above the tree tops.
*** *** ***
Gloom claimed the clearing. It came slowly, like molasses, from the dark spaces deep between the roots, washing over trees, leaching color from the greenery, drenching it in
shadows, until the shrubs and foliage turned dark, almost grey. Behind the gloom, mist rose in thin wisps, tinted with an eerie bluish glow.
A crow cried overhead, its shrill caw impossibly distant.
"They are putting on quite a show," Ghastek said.
"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 here.
I moved along the edge of the clearing, sinking the sticks in at regular intervals.
"What is the purpose of this?" Ghastek asked.