Suburban Vampire Ragnarok

Chapter 29

Weems didn't call Scott back that day, and he passed another evening at work worrying about what she might find and about the possibility of Jeremiah finding out just how badly he screwed up. Scott also wondered how it was he still had a job. Al hadn't given him any further dressing-down, or even given him the time of day. As a matter of fact, Al was scarce again. Scott believed that Al was scared of him. He briefly felt bad, as he really didn't want Al to be afraid of him. Then he thought that since he was a vampire anyway, maybe Al should be afraid.

Scott's iPhone buzzed early the next morning, its annoying ring tone waking him from a deep slumber. Scott checked the caller ID on the Skype connection. It was Dr. Weems, finally calling back. Of course, he was eager to answer this call.

"Good morning, sunshine!" Kitty said. She was all too chipper for nine o'clock. "Oh, my, your hair is really scary!"

"Well, you did just wake me up!"

"Oh, I forget you're a creature of the night. My bad!"

"That's okay. What did you find out?"

"I found some pretty interesting stuff, but not a lot of it."

"Okay, what does that mean?"

"Well, let's start by telling you what I think you may have had in your house. It was something called the Box of Huginn and Muninn."

"The box of who and what?"

"Huginn and Muninn! Are you familiar with Norse mythology?"

"Somewhat, I guess. You mean, like Thor? Stuff like that?"

"Yeah, Thor. Not the comic book or the movie Thor, although Chris Hemsworth is absolutely ravishing, and those movies were so fun, and..."

"Weems? Please."

"Oh, sorry. Anyway, in Nordic myth, Huginn and Muninn were ravens that served the god Odin. They acted as messengers or information collectors for Odin, flying all over the world and bringing him news and intelligence. Sort of like the ancient Norse pantheon's World Wide Web, if you will. Huginn is Thought, and Muninn is Memory."

"Okay, that's interesting. But what about this box thing?"

"Well, the truth is, information on the Box is rather lacking, to tell you the truth."

"Rather lacking? I thought you guys had this killer library with everything about everything!"

"Apparently not. What I do know about the box is that it is magically sealed. Meaning, it will take some sort of spell or incantation to open it. What that is, I haven't been able to find out."

"And what's inside this box?"

"All I have are some pretty vague drawings, which are copies of copies, so I don't know how good they are. Here, let me show you..."

Weems lifted a Xeroxed copy from an old book, showing a vague illustration of something that looked like a rock, positioned between two nails. "The rock is apparently a kind of runestone. What kind of runestone, what kind of meaning or power it has, I haven't been able to find out. And I don't know what the nail-looking thingies are."

Scott sighed. He had learned so much, and yet there was obviously much more he had to learn. "So, that's it?"

"Actually, no, that's not it. The web gets even murkier. There is very little historical information to go on, that is, until about the Second World War."