Chaos Magic (Rune Witch Book 5)

by Jennifer Willis

  But it was too early in the evening, with people returning from work and children coming home from sports and theater practice, for the coyotes to be roaming. And it would be fun to scare a few of them off with some shouting and stomping.

  Magnus smiled up at his father and reached into the car for his toy hammer and shield. At the risk of dampening his son’s enthusiasm, Thor frowned at the plastic hammer. The thing was a pointless hunk of polymers and had already been disfigured by resting too near a heating vent.

  The boy tucked the handle into his vinyl belt and reached up to grasp three of his father’s fingers in his small hand. Thor felt the tug in his chest, and he smiled.

  “Let’s go.”

  They walked to the end of the street in a manner that was hardly surreptitious. It wasn’t easy to sneak up on even a pretend enemy with a small child in tow—Magnus was excited and kept giggling and stopping to pick up the hammer when it slipped out of his belt and clattered to the pavement. They stopped at the end of the block and pressed against a tall hedge, prepared to peek around the corner.

  “The element of surprise can sway the outcome of any battle in your favor,” Thor said in a low voice. He didn’t expect to spy any coyotes or raccoons around the corner. The animals had ample warning of their coming. But there was the sound of more bins being toppled, and of aluminum cans scattering and glass bottles rolling across asphalt.

  A cackling laugh was followed by grunts of encouragement. Halloween pranksters, then, not scavenging wildlife. Thor’s mood turned sour. He’d hoped for a bit of fun with Magnus, but chasing off a rowdy bunch of destructive teenagers would be an even better lesson. Thor tightened his grip on his son’s hand.

  “Some people don’t understand the value of community,” Thor muttered. “They don’t know the meaning of responsibility, to themselves or those around them. It may seem like a small thing, knocking over trash, but a wise man once said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

  Thor thought he had the quote right. He must have picked it up from Bonnie. Thor considered himself a good man, and he wanted to instill morality and fortitude in his son. He took a breath, pushed away from the hedge, and rounded the corner with a full head of steam. Magnus stumbled along behind him.

  “You kids need to clear out now!” Thor bellowed before he had his quarry in sight. A loud and confident display from someone in authority was frequently sufficient to disperse young troublemakers, and sometimes even to elicit genuine apologies and promises of reform.

  Thor planted his feet and lifted a fist in the air. “But first you’ll clean up everything you’ve strewn about! And then you’ll get back to your homes and do your homework!”

  He smiled. Bonnie would like that added admonishment. He thought Odin would have approved, too.

  But the miscreants ignored Thor and kicked over a couple of compost bins and two more trash cans. There were four of them in full costumes, their pale arms almost luminous in the light from the street lamps.

  Magnus laughed and waved his toy hammer in the air. “Daddy thump!”

  “I’m not fooling around!” Thor shouted. “You’re setting a terrible example for the youngsters. And I will bash your heads if I have to.”

  One of the rowdies turned his dark eyes on Thor, and the god of thunder felt a deep chill. He took an involuntary step backward and nearly stumbled over Magnus.

  “Draugar,” Thor muttered, a split-second before two of the overturned cans erupted in flames.

  Magnus squealed with delight, but Thor knew the danger. How had these creatures encroached on the living world? And in his neighborhood? He’d warned Heimdall about imminent peril, but this time he hated being proved right. He lifted Magnus into his arms and bolted toward his house.

  Sally clutched her stomach. She really was going to be sick this time.

  “What?” Her voice sounded like hot lead, and tasted about the same. “I’m supposed to do what?”

  She’d forgotten all about calm control and how she was expected to choose her words with care.

  “Sally,” Loki said, but she barely heard him.

  “I figured there might be some trick waiting down here.” As long as Sally kept talking, she figured she was less likely to vomit all over Hel’s throne room—though the emesis would probably enhance the mood and decor.

  She waved a hand in the general direction of Hel’s throne and tried not to register how much delight the goddess took in her continued outburst. “I assumed she would be up to something and that I’d need to watch myself. Especially after your zombies tried to burn me and Saga alive in my apartment.”

  Hel’s predatory smile shifted to confusion. It was momentary, but Sally caught it. Whatever Loki had planned, Sally decided she was going to try something different. She was playing fast and loose, and she hoped Loki could keep up. It was his own fault for not reading her in. She turned sharply toward him.

  “But you!” She saw the spittle leave her lips and land on his face. She would apologize later. “You want to give your power to this creepy crawly? What in the Nine Realms are you even trying to accomplish here?”

  Loki looked horror-struck by Sally’s challenge, but she detected the glimmer of a smile. He was a decent actor.

  “The terms of the agreement have been finalized.” Loki sounded like he was speaking through five layers of folded cotton.

  “I didn’t agree to anything.” Sally crossed her arms over her chest and turned her back on both Loki and Hel.

  “Your presence indicates otherwise.” Hel’s words slithered over Sally’s skin like garden snakes, and Sally brushed at her arms. “If you prefer to void the agreement and forfeit your prize, arrangements can be made for the souls of the All-Father and his bride to—”

  “Daughter, you misunderstand,” Loki cut in. “The Rune Witch means no disrespect, nor does she intend to be uncooperative.”

  “The hell I don’t,” Sally muttered under her breath. And then she giggled, just for a second, at the context.

  “She is young and hasn’t been properly prepared for the exchange that has been negotiated,” Loki said. “If I had a moment with my protégé, we might mend any misunderstanding.”

  “You have the space of twenty breaths,” Hel replied.

  The curtain of willow branches fell without a sound, and Hel was gone. Sally startled at the touch of Loki’s hand on her shoulder.

  “That whatever she is has a voice like razor blades scraping concrete,” Sally said.

  “The walls do literally have ears,” Loki replied.

  Sally shivered at the thought of dead, sentient trees. She plastered a fake smile on her face and turned to face him. “Then I’d say it’s going awfully well so far, wouldn’t you?”

  Loki took Sally’s hands into his, and the solemnity in his eyes chilled any further facetiousness right out of her. “This is the only way. I wouldn’t ask this of you if we weren’t at a dead end, as it were.”

  He attempted a humorous smile but it looked sad and small instead.

  “There’s no time for discussion,” he said. “I have promised a portion of my strength and magick to Hel, in exchange for Odin and Frigga.”

  There was a low hiss from the walls, and Sally took a half-step closer to Loki. “You’re not trying to bring them back again, are you? Because I really don’t know how I feel about that. I haven’t had time to study and I don’t know what the rules are when it comes to life and death.” She looked around the empty throne room and its dull palette of murky, rotted greens. “And everything in between.”

  Loki’s voice contained a frantic edge. “All you need to do is to act as a conduit—”

  “I don’t know how to do that!” Sally noted the alarm in Loki’s eyes, and she lowered her voice. “I didn’t even know such a thing was possible, transferring power or magick or whatever like that.”

  “Iduna did it,” Loki replied. “With her dying breath.”

  Sally gri
pped his hands tight. “What are you telling me?”

  “Nothing as dire as that.” Loki smiled, but Sally read the truth on his face.

  “Loki! I’m not helping you die. Especially not here. I just barely got through witnessing for Odin and Frigga, and I’m not keen on repeating the experience with you.” The walls groaned again, but Sally ignored the sound. Her heart pounded in her ears and she felt a squeeze in her chest. “You can’t make me.”

  Loki leaned closer, until their noses were practically touching. “This is not a request, Sally. I am your mentor, and your keeper. You will do this, without question and without explanation, in a manner keeping with my tutelage and example. You can moan and whinge all you want after the deed is done, but not before, and definitely not in this place.”

  Sally felt herself trembling. Loki had never yelled at her, and he hadn’t raised his voice now. But his tone left no room for dissent. She looked at the fading bruise across his cheeks and recalled her bratty arrogance just two nights earlier. She felt instantly small and undeserving.

  And completely trapped.

  The curtain of willow lifted in a silent shiver, revealing Hel on her throne as if there had been no interruption. “Everything settled?”

  Loki kept his eyes on Sally. “Is everything settled?”

  Sally nodded. Loki released her hands and turned to face Hel.

  “We are ready to begin,” he said.

  Sally had no otherworldly clue how to get the power transfer started. She didn’t know where to stand or what to say or what rune sigils to cast or what to look for as signs of success or failure.

  “Very well.” Hel sat up tall on her throne and gripped the armrests with her bony fingers.

  Sally stepped forward and positioned herself between Loki and the throne. She didn’t like being this close to Hel. She expected a strong odor of rot or decay but the only smell coming off the goddess was a strong mustiness, like old newspapers in a dry attic.

  She turned her body so Loki was on her left and Hel on her right, and she planted her feet on the dirt floor.

  Okay, genius. Now what? An inquiring glance to Loki yielded no hint as to what he expected her to do next. She thought about tapping into the energy beneath her feet, but she knew so very little about Helheim. Was there a bedrock of granite, which might explode, or something more pervious and brittle like pumice? Maybe it was just layers and layers of rotting corpses, or something altogether different that would grab at her power and hold her in place. She didn’t want to risk accidentally binding herself to this place or taking a piece of it home with her.

  Her mouth was suddenly sour with bile.

  Did she have any tools available? Her smartphone was of no use—unless she wanted commemorative photos of her time in Helheim. She reached into her pocket and her fingers wrapped around the point of black and white obsidian.

  She pulled it out and let the pendulum hang freely on its silver chain. It was a gift from Loki on the occasion of her first Jul with the Lodge community. Despite her waxing and waning trust and affection for Loki, the obsidian had come in handy on several occasions.

  Now she used it as a focal point to prevent her from unintentionally interlacing herself with Helheim. At least the pendulum made her feel more confident about working without a reference.

  Sally concentrated on the fractures of white in the ink-black stone. The pendulum turned on its chain one way and then the other before coming to rest.

  The pendulum could be a vessel for power. She could store what she pulled from Loki before she connected to Hel. She shuddered at the thought of the corpse queen gaining anything from Sally’s visit, but would Hel even know what to do with so much fresh chaos flowing through her?

  Sally reached toward Loki without touching him. She thought about how bizarrely wrong so much of her spellworking had gone, before she understood her alignment with the Norse trickster and her own essence of chaos. Her breath caught as Loki’s power began to trickle through her body and into the pendulum. It felt orange and red and black, with threads of gold and silver. She sensed the intensity of Hel’s eyes on her and felt the goddess’s curiosity and expectation. But Hel couldn’t feel or see anything Sally was doing. Not yet.

  Sally replayed Loki’s words. You will do this without question, and without explanation, in a manner keeping with my tutelage and example.

  With a tilt of her head, Sally stopped the flow of Loki’s energy into the pendulum. She felt his confusion and then his consternation as she visualized herself reaching into the pendulum to redirect most of his magick back toward him. But she held onto a fistful of orange chaos and pulled it deep into her solar plexus. She cautiously extended her senses down into the foundations of Helheim. It felt porous and permeable. Her mind flashed on the lecture slides of sandstone from her geology class as she delved deeper. She found her handhold and grabbed on tight.

  It was hard not to smile and give herself away. Loki wasn’t the only trickster in this hall, and there was nothing he could do to stop her.

  The ground shook beneath Loki’s feet as Hel let out a shrieking wail that pierced his ears and set the walls quaking. Her half-rotten minions slithered out of the shadows and writhed on the floor in agony. Their putrid limbs entwined and contorted as their howls rose to match the bellowing scream of their mistress.

  Loki’s knees buckled. He caught himself on his palms on the dirt floor, but he couldn’t get back up again. Sally had pushed back a good portion of his strength, but he felt the void of what she’d taken as though his heart had been ripped from his body and put back in pieces. But he still breathed, and he had a pulse. He checked both to be sure.

  He looked up at Sally through the shimmering veil of his dimming vision. She was out of focus, her figure duplicated and flowing in colorful afterimages that contrasted with the muted tones of Hel’s chamber.

  Hel was still screaming.

  He could barely make out the individual syllables as Hel shouted and cursed, but her meaning was clear. Hel swore oaths of revenge and destruction against the Rune Witch, and Sally patiently anchored thick tendrils of Hel’s life-force into the core of Helheim. He didn’t know how she was managing it or where she’d gotten the idea.

  “Sally.” His voice was a dry whisper. Pain shot through his body like an electric spark, rising and falling with his breathing. He stared at the ground and at the ribbons of dull green and black and gray that Sally was weaving into the dirt before attaching them to the energetic strands she’d tugged out of Hel’s body. He steadied himself with shallow breaths until the pain wasn’t quite so sharp.

  “Sally,” Loki said again. “Sally, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  His vision cleared enough for him to see the Rune Witch turn to him and smile. He was struck by the look of calculation and—malice?—behind her eyes. He tried again to climb to his feet and slid back to the floor.

  “You will rue the moment you ever set foot in Helheim, Rune Witch!” Hel roared as she came to the end of her curse. Loki couldn’t be sure, but he thought Hel hadn’t used Sally’s full name when swearing her vengeance. It was a small blessing.

  Resigning himself to the floor, Loki watched Sally. Her hands worked together in the air, tying a series of intricate knots with the threads she had pulled from Hel. She stretched each strand nearly to its limit before looping and twisting them together with energetic strips of dark slime she pulled up from the ground. Loki saw a thick ribbon of gold and black emanating from his own solar plexus and rolling up into Sally’s left hand.

  Even if Hel had caught his smirk, it couldn’t have made the situation worse. Hel had uttered her curse, and it would stand. It would fester and boil until it was finally satisfied. It might take an hour or a day or a handful of centuries, but as long as Hel held her throne her curse would be fulfilled. In spite of that, Loki grinned and admired Sally’s work.

  Technically, the Rune Witch had done as she was ordered. The old Sally, the inexperienced and insecure
witch who had fallen into Managarm’s merciless grasp and had her power abused—that Sally would have gritted her teeth and made the power transfer from father to daughter without thinking to look for a loophole. But this Rune Witch of conscious chaos had other ideas. She drew magick from Loki and gave it to Hel in a manner unlike anything he or Hel had anticipated. She had twisted Hel’s own bargain into a thwarting opportunity.

  Loki couldn’t have been more proud.

  “My hounds!” Hel shrieked with what sounded like the desperate last of her unbound strength. “My hounds!”

  Loki heaved himself to his feet. Neither he nor Sally had a moment to lose. “Sally!”

  “I’m almost finished.” Sweat trickled from her brow and her flesh flushed pink with concentration. “One last series of knots, a threefold triad to bind it off.”

  Loki lunged forward and grabbed her arm. The pain in his midsection seared like a hot knife with every step but when he yanked her away from her work, he felt his own power snap back so forcefully that it nearly knocked him off his feet again.

  “No!” Sally struggled against him and tried to complete her work, but he wouldn’t let her go.

  “There’s no time!” He leaned all of his weight onto one foot and then the other to drag Sally with him, staggering away from Hel’s throne. He didn’t spare a backward glance for his daughter. He knew her outrage too well. Any trace of living beauty would have vanished from her face to be replaced by a blinding savagery of yellow and scarlet light.

  “My hounds!” Hel screeched again as her minions wailed and seized at the base of her throne. “Release them! Release the Hounds of Hel!”

  10

  Sally didn’t know if Loki was dragging her through the woods or if she was dragging him. They clung to each other as they scrambled along the forested path away from the Hall of Helheim.