She hesitated, then grabbed one of the bottles from a very mundane-looking rack. It had no shimmer beyond the kind dreyri normally had.

  “Just fine,” she said. “Shall I bring a bottle for each of us?”

  “Just two bottles, I think,” she said. “Magda doesn’t imbibe.”

  Until her hostess had said so, Nika had not consciously realized that she had never seen Magda drinking dreyri. She sold it hand over fist and raked in the money for it the same way, but she never seemed to use it at all. Nika wondered how she kept herself fed.

  She brought the bottles up the stairs, and Natasha led her into the library, where crystal wine glasses had been set out around a silver wine bucket. She put the bottles into the container, which was filled with water and had a heating unit attached to the bottom.

  Natasha said, “I like my blood warm.”

  “So do I, honestly.”

  Her hostess uncorked the bottles and put them back into the water to heat. The aroma of the blood rose like perfume. “There are some who drink it over ice when the weather is hot,” Natasha said, making idle conversation. “I dislike that, because the blood begins to congeal. I do not enjoy the feeling of thick blood in my throat.”

  “I can certainly understand that.” She sat in a leather-upholstered wingback chair. “This is a lovely home.”

  “Thank you. I inherited it.”

  “From whom?” She hastened to add, “If I’m not prying.”

  “Not at all.” She settled onto a settee beside the table that held the wine bucket. “I inherited it from a lover. He was a very important man in the petroleum industry, and when he passed away, he left two of his houses to me - this one and a lovely dacha out in western Siberia.”

  Nika chuckled. “I’ve never heard ‘lovely’ and ‘Siberia’ in the same sentence before.”

  “That’s because you’re American and cursed with your country’s short sightedness,” she sniffed. “Siberia is a beautiful place. So many forests and rivers, good fishing and hunting. It’s the sort of place a person could go to get lost.”

  “I prefer to be found, personally,” Nika said, smiling.

  Natasha leaned back and crossed her long legs. She had removed her trench coat to reveal a shell-pink silk dress beneath, very ladylike and elegant, with a pleated skirt that fell around her legs attractively. “You don’t know about Magda’s history, do you?”

  “She hasn’t told me anything.”

  “It’s a painful story.”

  Nika hesitated. “Then maybe you should let her be the one to tell me.”

  Natasha smiled, but the effect was off putting. “She was a member of the Rus tribe here along the Neva. The Viking raiders came and burned her village, and they took all of the young women captive. Magda was made a body slave.”

  “That’s horrible!”

  “Indeed. Her master used her enthusiastically for many months until she conceived a child. The daughter was born when he was at sea, and when he returned, he beat her for having the temerity to bear a girl child when he wanted a son.”

  Nika huffed, “As if she could control that. That’s so barbaric.”

  “It was. He forced two more children from her, finally getting his sons when the second and third babes were born.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask, but what happened to the girls?”

  “She was raised by Magda and her master’s mother, of course.” She tilted her head. “Her master was cursed not long after the second son was born. When he returned, he forced Magda to take the blood, turning her against her will.”

  “That poor thing,” Nika said sadly. “What a horrible fate.”

  “Indeed.” She smiled again, and it was broader this time. She was clearly relishing what she was about to say. “Do you know who her master was?”

  She steeled herself, although Lars had prepared her to hear this news. “Erik,” she said.

  “Precisely. So your beloved Thorvald used to be a real son of a bitch.”

  Nika crossed her arms. “I know he was. I also know that he changed, and that he hasn’t done anything of the sort in hundreds of years. That’s not who he is any longer. If he’d still been that person, he wouldn’t have been made a vessel, or Veithimathr.”

  “That is the accepted version, yes.”

  “The accepted version?”

  “Yes. The reality is somewhat different.”

  Nika’s voice was hushed when she spoke again. “I don’t care what you say. I know that Erik was a changed man, and that he would never have done such a thing now. He was a product of his time.”

  “If you insist.” She sighed. “My dear, the first thing you will have to learn as a Valtaeigr is that men are not to be trusted. They will always turn on you. The only people you can really trust are your sisters.”

  Magda came into the room, her face unreadable. She sat beside Natasha. “You’re telling her the story,” she said.

  “I am. She deserves to know.”

  “I’m sorry if your privacy has been invaded by me knowing these things,” Nika told her.

  “No matter. It’s important that you know what your Erik Thorvald was really like. I know you mourn him, but I personally celebrate his demise. He has done much to wrong me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Nika said. “But I’m confident that he was a different man now.”

  “Really?” Magda smiled at her, and her expression and the angle of her head were exact mirrors of Natasha. “That’s cute.”

  Nika narrowed her eyes. “That’s condescending.”

  Natasha put a hand on Magda’s knee, silencing her. “You’ll have to forgive her. She’s raw right now. I’m certain she doesn’t mean what she’s saying. Isn’t that right, dear?”

  They looked at one another, and then Magda acquiesced. “That’s right. Sorry, Nika.”

  “No harm done.” She lifted one of the bottles of dreyri. “Shall we drink?”

  Her hostess picked up one of the crystal glasses. “Let’s.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Ingrid set up one of her kitchen chairs on a tarp in her garden and brought Erik outside. “Sit here,” she coached.

  He sat where she bid him to, craning his neck to see what she was doing. Ingrid picked up a shallow bowl and dumped a tiny piece of charcoal into it and set it alight, then blew out the flame until only smoke remained.

  “Oh, no,” he objected. “No more smoke.”

  “Hush. Do you want to be freed of her influence or don’t you?”

  He scowled, feeling surly. “How do I even know that there is an influence? I don’t feel anything.”

  “The name of the girl who enspelled you was Mia.”

  “Yes.”

  “She is powerful and well-trained. She’s one of Natasha’s girls, a Dark Sister. Natasha is their high priestess.”

  He shook his head. “Should that mean anything to me?”

  She chuckled and sprinkled the smoldering charcoal with a powder that smelled of old blood. “Natasha is a very powerful and ancient shamaness of the Rus people. She’s one of the earliest of the Valtaeigr, and she takes her immortality from magic, not from the gods. She is Magda’s mother.”

  His jaw dropped. “Her mother?”

  “Yes. I’ll bet you thought you killed her mother, eh?” She brought the smoking tray closer and set it on the ground underneath his chair. “Sit still.”

  He thought back to the raid when they had taken Magda and her village, something he rarely allowed himself to do, and said, “Yes. I thought we killed all of the adults.”

  “Your raid killed her aunts and uncles, and her grandparents, but her mother was elsewhere when you came. Lucky for her, not so lucky for you.”

  She repeated her earlier procedure with another dish and charcoal, and then picked up a fan made from a bird’s wing. She circled Erik, directing the smoke toward him. He coughed lightly, more from annoyance than from any actual difficulty with the smoke.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Sit still and be quiet,” she answered. “You can be such a pain in the ass.”

  He couldn’t dispute that. Ingrid began to chant, and the words delved into his brain, making it vibrate. He shuddered against the feeling and gripped the edges of the seat, as if the chair would pitch him off at any moment. He closed his eyes. Images of the troll raid, of Mia washing the blood from his chest, of the face of the Huldra when he’d held her for Halvar… his guilt made manifest rolled through his head like a river of filth. He was ashamed.

  On the heels of the shame came anger, and an urge for violence. His grip on the chair became less steadying and angrier, and he warred with himself as the impulse to beat Ingrid’s brains out rose in him like bile. He was shaking with the effort of resisting it.

  She seemed to sense the danger, but she did not change her spell. The chanting continued at the same pace as before, and the smoke still rolled into his face and down his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut against the daylight and against the vision of the witch who was helping him. If he’d seen her face, he could not have prevented himself from smashing it with a fist.

  He had not been violent to a woman in a millennium. Whatever Mia and Bjorn’s group had done to him, they had done it well.

  The volume of her chanting rose, and with it the pitch, and soon she was standing in front of him, arms raised high, screaming her words into the sky. He felt himself vibrating like a crystal about to shatter, and he cried out from the pain and pressure of it.

  Then, with a snap, it was gone, and he felt his soul recoil, shrinking back into himself like a tendon shrinks when it’s cut. He trembled and opened his eyes, gasping for air. Ingrid was kneeling in front of him, a sword in her hand, the point pressed against his chest.

  “What are you doing, old woman?” he demanded. The words came out in Old Norse, and for a moment, he was back in his mortal village, in his mortal self. His mind was disjointed, scattered.

  “Saving you,” she responded in the same tongue, just before she ran him through.

  He howled in agony as the sword point pierced his chest, just below his heart. The sword pressed all the way through him and pinned him to the chair, where he thrashed in agony. His blood rushed out over the blade. It was darker and thicker than it should have been.

  Ingrid chanted something further, then abruptly went silent and pulled the sword free. He toppled out of the chair and landed face-down on the ground, bleeding and unconscious.

  ***

  Nika gasped as a sharp, sudden pain struck her in the chest. She pressed her hand to her sternum and stared at Natasha, wide-eyed, thinking at first that the older Valtaeigr had done something to her. The confusion on Natasha’s face, mirrored by Magda, reassured her on that point. The pain was gone as quickly as it had come. In her mind’s eye, she saw Erik’s face. He was lying on a patch of dirt, sunlight on his skin. She shook her head, and the vision vanished.

  “What was that?” Natasha asked, concerned.

  “There was so much power!” Magda exclaimed.

  Nika could not speak. She shook her head and held out her hand, warning them to stay back. In her mind’s eye, she saw a slender golden thread extending to her out of darkness, writhing and whipping. She grasped it.

  The moment she touched that invisible cord, the sense of Erik exploded in her heart, and she could suddenly feel him again. It was the Chosen bond, and it had somehow been recreated. She tugged on it, and it was solid on the other end, anchored in the soul of her beloved, which could only mean one thing.

  Erik was alive.

  She glared at Magda. “You said he was dead. You said the First killed him.”

  Magda gaped at her. “You re-created the bond.”

  Natasha frowned. “That’s impossible.”

  Nika could feel all of Erik’s ancient power rushing into her, filling her soul. She was drunk on it and overwhelmed by sheer impact. He was so much more powerful than she had ever known. He hid so much. She didn’t know how someone could carry so much magic and seem so normal. She buzzed with it. She began to levitate.

  Natasha shouted something to Magda, and the two began to try to physically restrain her. Natasha began chanting in a language Nika had never heard, and the words jangled unpleasantly in her ears. She pulled the power of her own rune magic up and around her, forming a golden shell that encased her and protected her from anything the two of them tried to do.

  She tilted in the air until she was upright, and then she lowered to the floor. Her feet were still an inch above the carpet. The power she had somehow inherited from Erik filled her and pulled her out of the room and toward the door.

  Natasha ran past her and slammed the door shut while Magda grabbed a rifle from a closet. Nika was unconcerned. She gestured, and the door exploded into a thousand shards, opening the way for her. The force of the blast knocked Natasha from her feet. Nika smiled to herself and floated toward the door.

  Magda shot her in the back. The bullet struck her golden shield and bounced off harmlessly. Nika turned and faced her, and the look of fear that Magda wore was almost comical. She laughed and shot rune fire at her, knocking the rifle out of her grip and sending her sprawling across the carpet.

  She did not stay to see the rest of their reactions. Turning toward the sky, she used Erik’s power and took flight.

  ***

  Ingrid turned Erik onto his back and wiped the black blood of his enchantment away. His wound was already healing, as she had known it would, powered by his ancient Draugr blood and his renewed connection to Nika. What she had done had more or less drained his infection and released him from the evil that Mia and her concoctions had put into him.

  She poured cool water over his chest and rinsed him clean. The black blood slid off onto the plastic sheet on which she had placed him, where it could be safely contained without contaminating her herbs. She would be unable to move him on her own, so she waited for him to wake up.

  He was out for a long time, but finally his blue eyes flickered open, and he stared up at her in disbelief. “You stabbed me,” he complained.

  “Sorry. It was the only way. They created a black bag around your heart and I had to drain it.”

  He sat up slowly. “That doesn’t seem very anatomically likely.”

  “Neither do disappearing fangs or flying without wings,” she retorted. “Get up and strip.”

  Erik raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. Those clothes are contaminated. You have to discard them.”

  He gave her a sour look, but he obeyed, peeling off his blood-soaked clothing and tossing it onto the tarp. He stood fully naked before her and opened his arms to the side, displaying everything he could display. “Happy?”

  She laughed. “Let me hose you down to get the last of it off.”

  He stood and let her spray him lightly with the garden hose, turning so that she could access all sides of him. When she was done, she beckoned him off of the tarp, and he stepped off onto the flagstone path that led to the house.

  She rolled up the tarp very carefully, making certain that nothing escaped the sides. Once she was certain she had the offending contamination cocooned, she tied the tarp and set fire to it. Although everything should have been too wet to burn from the blood and water, the bundle went up like flash paper.

  Erik looked at her, uncertain what to do next. He was out of his depth. Ingrid smiled and retrieved a bathrobe for him, which he put on and tied shut.

  “Come in and get some more dreyri,” she told him. “You need your strength up, and you’ll be having a visitor soon.”

  “A visitor?” He shook his head. “I don’t think I want any visitors.”

  “This one, you’ll want to see.”

  They went inside, and he sat at the kitchen table. “I feel like I’m flying.”

  Ingrid’s only answer was to laugh.

  ***

  Mia went to Bjorn and shook him out of his inebriate haze. A bottle of troll dreyri lay empty beside his bed. When he finally opened his eyes, she told him, “Thorvald is with Ingrid.”

  “How do you know?” he asked, bleary.

  “Because she just broke the last tendril of my control over him,” she said. “I know it was her.”

  He pushed her aside and stood up, wobbly. “She’s Valtaeigr.”

  “She is, but she never became Draugr. She’s a witch. She used to be one of the Dark Sisters, but she left us years ago.”

  He ran a hand over his beard. “A traitor to the witches like Thorvald is a traitor to us.” He dropped his hand. “Fine. We’ll kill her.” Mia laughed, startling him. He peered at her. “What’s so funny?”

  “She’s the vessel of Frig and the most powerful Valtaeigr in the world,” Mia said. “Not even my mother would dare to stand against her.”

  “Your mother is just a whore with a supply chain,” he bit. “She’s too much of a coward to do anything but hide and count her money.”

  “You call it being a coward. I call it being shrewd. After all, who is getting rich, and who is doing the dirty work?” She leaned closer. “My mother will never be blamed in this, and Thorvald knows you are involved. He will come for all of you.”

  He pushed her against the wall, his hand on her throat. She struggled as he lifted her from her feet. “Do not use your prophesy against me, little witch. I can still use you like the Huldra. Witch blood makes good dreyri, too.”

  She spat in his face, and he dropped her to the floor. She staggered once, then quickly put distance between them. “You’re a fool,” she told him. “A brutal, short-sighted and stupid fool.”

  Bjorn turned on her. “You’re in my bedroom, and I’m between the door and you,” he told her. “I’m an ancient Draugr, one of the First, and you’re just a Valtaeigr witch. I don’t like your chances right now.”

  She held out her hand, and a sword made of black light appeared, surrounded by shadows that writhed around the blade. Her eyes began to glow brilliant red. “I like them very much.”

  He waved his hand at her dismissively. “Parlor games,” he spat. “I’m not some child you can impress with your smoke and mirrors.”