Chapter Seven

Harold pulled up to the valet parking and after getting out, handed the keys with a $20 bill to the young man attending the cars.  Normally he’d get an enthusiastic “Thank you sir!”, but Josephine had also got out the car and her looks had already took hold of the young men in the area and tied their tongues.   He knew this was normal for draug to get this sort of response, and it annoyed him like it always did.  Earðkin couldn’t help themselves and that more than anything else is how draugar gained their victims.  The fools  practically walked up and asked to be killed.

Harold pushed down the urge to cuff the attendant and looked at Josephine.  He wondered what people thought of the two of them as they walked to the mall.  He was dressed in old hiking boots, faded Levi’s, a t-shirt and an ill fitted canvas sports coat.  His beard was scruffy and his hair, while clean, looked like it hadn’t been brushed it so much as flattened it with a towel.  Harold would be considered good looking, so long as he wasn’t compared to someone like Brad Pitt.  Josephine was a dramatic contrast.  Dressed in new, and Harold had to admit, flattering designer clothes, she had the face and body of a model and to match it, the expression of a one on a catwalk.  Haughty, slightly bored and very aware she was what everyone wanted but couldn’t have.   

“Just a minute.” Harold stopped the attendant before he got into the driver’s seat.  Walking around to the back, Harold opened the boot door of the Escalade and unlocked a pouch on his kit bag.  Josephine walked round to see what was keeping him.   

“I need to accessorize.” Said Harold with a grin.  Taking off his jacket he put on his shoulder holster and then his gun along with two speed loaders.    

“What the Hell is that for?!?!” Josephine whispered and glared at Harold.  There was the draug behaviour Harold was used to.  “You planning to break your oath!?!!”

“Calm down.  This is standard equipment for all…” Harold was about to say ‘warriors’ but remembered he couldn’t anymore. “…ulfhedinn in the field.” He decided it wouldn’t hurt to have her think that all Ulfhednar walked around with hand cannons on them.  Josephine stepped out of the way as Harold closed the SUV back door.  She looked angry and confused for a second more, then restored her model on the catwalk expression.   

Waving to the attendant Harold started walking to the mall entrance.  Josephine walked next to him but didn’t look in his direction.  As soon as they were out of earshot of the attendant she said, “Is that what you call yourselves, ‘ulfhedinn’?”  

“It’s an old word dating back to our ancestors.  Sounds better than ‘dog’.” Harold had let Josephine’s insult go at the airport, but hadn’t forgotten it and wanted her to know that.    

Josephine glanced at him.  “Fine.  You call me and my kind ‘vampire’ and I’ll call you and your kind ‘Ulfhedinn’.  Agreed?”  

Harold didn’t answer.  The deal was acceptable to him, he just wanted her to wait for his answer.  Just before they got to the doors, Harold said, “Very well.  And it’s ‘ulfhedinn’ for one, ‘Ulfhednar’ for two or more.”  His tone sounded a little like a teacher correcting a student.  Josephine didn’t like the tone, but let it go.  Her curiosity was piqued.  

“Do you put ‘ar’ at the end of nouns to mean plural?  I noticed you did the same thing with the word you use for humans.”  

“Yes.  It’s a carryover from the grammatical rules my ancestors used.  Do you ‘vampires’ use words from the days of Lilith and Cain?” Josephine could hear the quotation marks he used as he said ‘vampires’.  She nearly said something about it, but decided that was better than ‘draug’.   

“What do you know of Lilith and Cain? And no, we don’t use words from our ancestors.  Although many do quote the Beriyt a lot.”  The mention of the Beriyt brought up a plethora of questions in Harold’s mind, but held his tongue.  He didn’t want to ask them directly, better to ease into them and so as to avoid scaring her off the subject.   

“It may surprise you to know I have a copy of the Beriyt in my home and a copy on my laptop for research.  I can even quote it for you, “"Blood is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Al-Alim knoweth, and ye know not."” Harold looked at Josephine for a reaction.  Her expression didn’t change.  Instead she simply said, “Nice try.”

Harold couldn’t help but chuckle.  Talking with someone that had no pheromones to tell him what was going on and having to rely solely on conversation was an amusing challenge.  Josephine looked at Harold and thought he saw a flicker of a smile on her lips.  

They walked up to a kiosk showing where all the shops were located and listing the different goods available.  “Well Josephine, what do you need to purchase?”  Harold thought it was a perfectly innocent question, but when he asked it, Josephine looked at him like she did at the bar at SeaTac.  She stopped breathing and stared at him.  Josephine stayed like that for a while and then inhaled, “Clothing appropriate to spending time in the country.”  

Acting as if her behaviour was normal Harold looked at the shops listed on the kiosk and said, “The country? Hmm…well there’s Escape Outdoors.  That sounds likely. Shall we start there?”

“Yes.”  Josephine’s brow wrinkled ever so slightly and then smoothed to its usual china doll smoothness.   

As they walked through the mall Harold sifted through the smells around him.  It was early in the day and there were few people so there was little to sort through.  He didn’t expect to detect any other draugar aside from the one he was walking next to but out of habit he checked anyway.   

Harold was also sorting through the questions in his mind and trying to determine how much he should divulge to Josephine.  Harold knew she was curious about him and his mission and would be unwilling to give anything to him without getting something in return.  Also, what would her reaction be if she found out he was the one who tried to shoot her in Coventry?  Harold was fairly certain she wouldn’t accept the “I was just doing my job” explanation.  

Josephine walked into Escape Outdoors and immediately the three sales people were attending to her.  Harold felt like a fifth wheel, they paid him almost no attention.  He did his best not to scowl at their fawning behaviour.  It occurred to Harold that this may be one of the reasons draug considered themselves superior to earðkin, they behaved as if draug were superior.  Something to ask his new source of information on all things draug related.  

Josephine walked around the store picking out various items and piling them onto the sales clerks.  With two of them loaded up and the manager having exhausted all the racks she could show Josephine, Josephine headed to the dressing room.   

“Josephine.” She turned and looked at him as if he were another sales clerk with more to show her, “Yes?”  

Harold was angered by the inflection of her ‘Yes’ and the way her eyebrows raised slightly.  The tone of his answer reflected that. “You’ll need something to put all that in.  Pick out a backpack.” This wasn’t a suggestion, it was a command.  Josephine’s face became the expressionless mask he’d seen earlier.  Turning to the collection of backpacks on the wall she pointed at one and said in a monotone and flat voice, “The red and black one.” The manager quickly walked over and took it down,  

“A very good choice and one of our more popular backpacks” she said for what must have been the twentieth time since they had walked in.  Turning back to the dressing room Josephine walked faster than the clerks could keep up.  The manager turned and looked at Harold as she approached the dressing room.  Her expression went from an almost puppy dog smile to one of fear.  Harold turned away and walked to the cash register to wait for Josephine.  He kept his back to the dressing room so the manager and sales clerks couldn’t see the anger on his face.  Josephine was a killer of earðkin.  She’d apparently renounced the killing of them, but had in the past.  He was a protector of earðkin and yet here he was the scary one.  Harold fingered his amulet of Mjölnir around his neck and tried to calm down.   

Harold heard Josephine come out of the dressing room and turned.  Her expression surprised him.  She looked contrite, even ashamed.  As the store manager came around the counter Josephine’s smile returned but the haughtiness was gone.  As the manager started ringing up the clothes, the clerks pulled out bags to start packaging them.  

“That’s OK.  Put it all in the backpack.” Josephine said with a smile that seemed a little sweeter than it needed to be.  The sales manager finished totaling the cost, “That will be $3,452.97.  Will you be using credit or debit?”  

“Cash”.  Josephine reached into her small travel backpack and pulled out an envelope and started counting out $100 dollar bills.  Harold watched the sales manager and sales clerks look at each other.   He could smell fear on them mix with the pheromones of sexual attraction and envy they had been emitting since Harold and Josephine had walked in.   Harold realized if he was going to be associating with Josephine, he was going to have to coach her on how to behave in a more discrete manner.  

As they walked out Josephine turned her head slightly to look at Harold, “It’s morning.  Do your kind eat breakfast?” She tried to sound pleasant but there was still a hint of contrition in her voice.   

Harold returned the look, “Yes.”  

“I’ll buy you breakfast.  We’ll talk.” She said as her face assumed its normal professional model expression.