Thor said they’d been setting fires and throwing bricks in Portland. Draugar weren’t like the zombies that were popular in movies. The longer they walked the Earth, the more cunning and dangerous they would become. Heimdall had no idea how to dispatch them to the underworld where they belonged. That was Hel’s department, and he didn’t expect she was feeling particularly charitable at the moment.
He and Maggie and Rod and Laika were probably safe inside, for now. Unless the draugar started using explosives.
Maggie cried out from the living room. Fearing the worst, Heimdall ran to find her. But no creature had yet come smashing through the skylight to accost her. She was sitting on the sofa by the hearth and pulling her hands through her hair.
“Are you okay?” Heimdall panted. “What’s wrong?”
Her face was streaked with tears. “I keep trying to remember something more. Something important. I’ve drunk a gallon of Freya’s Clarity Tea, hoping I could wring anything more out of that vision from the well. But the only thing it’s given me is heartburn.”
Heimdall laughed in momentary relief. “Keep trying. Anything you can think of that can defeat the draugar, or drive them away.”
Rod nailed boards into place over the door to the mudroom. Inhuman howls bled through the thick walls as the draugar kept pounding on the Lodge. Laika howled back in warning.
“Anything at all,” Heimdall said.
Maggie settled back into the cushions. She closed her eyes and took a ragged breath. Heimdall didn’t imagine it was easy to reach a sufficient trance state in the midst of this racket. Rod moved to the sliding doors that led to the outer balcony and started hammering and drilling boards into place over the glass. The thudding blows of attacking draugar were coming from all sides.
Laika leapt up onto the sofa and leaned her weight into Maggie, offering her own comfort and encouragement. Heimdall gave Laika a grateful nod.
There was no telling how long it would take Ted and the rest of the Valkyries to arrive, but at least they’d have boots on the ground outside. The Valkyries could go hand-to-hand with the draugar—while Heimdall shored himself up inside. Was this the right decision? He couldn’t go out there alone without being ripped to pieces and if he didn’t barricade every conceivable entrance, the Lodge itself could be lost.
But what exactly would the Valkyries face when they arrived? What kind of weapons could they use against an enemy that was already dead?
And what kind of leader cowered in relative safety while his soldiers did all of the fighting?
He dug his hands into his hair and paced in angry futility around the hearth. Just before Rod covered the last ground-floor window, Heimdall spied a pair of draugar shimmying up the supports to the upper balcony. His hands itched for a broadsword or a battle axe, even an old baseball bat—any weapon he could hold at the ready instead of standing around the fire with nothing to do but wait. But his weapons were outside in his truck.
An ear-splitting cry echoed down from above. Heimdall looked up as shadows passed over him. The draugar were on the roof now. They’d found the skylight. The thing was designed to withstand hailstorms and falling trees, but Heimdall didn’t know of any industrial rating to keep out the rampaging draugar.
Loki sat on the suspiciously sticky floor in the prison cell, a sprawling and humid place. He watched Thor grimace and groan and stomp around as he studied the gated door and occasionally yanked on it. The bars were made of living vines. Though they quivered at Thor’s touch, they were thick and unyielding.
“It won’t do any good.” Hel reclined on the damp floor beside her father. She appeared surprisingly detached for a recently deposed queen.
She had been cast into this dark holding room along with Loki and Thor, and Loki was still working out the details of how that had come to pass. As near as he could tell, Thor’s attempted attack on Hel had spurred her minions to mount their own coup, one that must have been brewing for centuries.
“Tell him to save his energy.” Hel jutted her chin in Thor’s direction. “Even if we did escape this cell, what would we do then?”
“Leave Helheim, perhaps?” Loki suggested.
Hel shook her head with a bitter laugh. “The dead are Helheim, father. I would think you would have figured that out for yourself.”
Which meant Helheim was encroaching on Midgard with every step the draugar took in Portland. Loki tried not to dwell on that.
Thor crouched down and examined the roots that sprang from the ground to twine with the vines and keep the cell’s occupants imprisoned. If anyone could engineer an escape by cunning or brute force, Loki had no doubt it would be Thor. But there was little he could be certain of in this place.
“They won’t allow anyone to leave until their Earth-bound brethren are given safe passage here.” Hel stretched her long, bony limbs. Her joints creaked and popped, and Loki watched in fascination as her flesh crawled and shivered under the dark silk of her gown. “Send a message to your witch. Tell her to lead them here.”
“Lead who here?” Thor turned and glared at Hel.
“The dead who are roaming the Earth.” Hel’s weary expression communicated clearly what she thought of Thor’s critical faculties.
“The ones you sent after us,” Thor replied.
“I sent no one!” Hel dismissed him with an impatient wave and a sharp turn of her head.
Thor went back to examining the gate.
“You sent Guldbrand,” Loki said.
“Who?” Hel asked.
“Guldbrand. Your emissary.”
“That ingrate? He’s one of the leaders of this ridiculous uprising.” She raised her voice to carry her words beyond the gate and into the murky passageway beyond. “My trusted and treasured servants! Whom I nurtured and provided for! The sorry, wretched creatures I clutched to my bosom and welcomed as subjects! I am queen and savior to these pitiful, mindless urchins, and this is how they repay me?!”
The bellowing roar of hundreds of disgruntled voices echoed down the passageway and drowned out Hel’s tirade. She laughed in response.
“It appears your leadership has left something to be desired,” Loki said.
“As if you’re a shining example of forthright magnanimity,” she spat back.
Loki rested his head back against the wall and tried not to wonder why it was wet. Even before her banishment, Hel held a grudge against him. He had been more genetic donor than father to her or any of his children, but that was his nature. Would Hel now be so resentful and malevolent if she hadn’t been banished? Maybe Odin had seen this darkness in her when Loki could not and sent her away for the good of all of them.
Hel leaned close and hissed in his ear. “You have created this mess for me, father, and you will get me out of it.”
Loki laughed out loud. There was no helping it. What did Hel possibly think he could do to improve his own situation, much less hers? He was imprisoned in Helheim, held at the whim of the unmourned dead who had some apparently deeply rooted resentment against their queen. That Thor and Loki were bystanders to this coup mattered little.
But then Loki’s laughter turned into a painful cough, and he held one hand tight to his ribs until the pain passed. It had been happening more frequently these past days and had become particularly troubling since his last visit to Helheim. His decline was accelerating at an alarming rate.
He studied his daughter’s face. Was Hel’s complexion dimming, too? It made sense that her strength would wane along with his. He hadn’t given much thought to what would become of his offspring when it was finally time for him to spread himself on the wind. Everything about his predicament came into sharp, sudden focus and he felt like an utter idiot for not having seen it before.
“Odin!” Thor bellowed through the gate into the passageway. “Frigga! Are you there?”
Hel cackled. “You dolt. The All-Father and his bride are not here.”
Loki shifted against the wall and tried to get comfortable. “I’m begi
nning to think they never were.”
Thor stared down at Hel, the threat obvious in his stance.
“No, they were here,” she said with a short sigh. “They passed through on their way to Valhalla. Not a single word of admonition or rebuke from either of them, if you can believe it. After so many years. How I’d schemed for their arrival! How I’d planned to hold and torture them. How I’d make them pay!”
Thor looked confused. “But you didn’t?”
“She couldn’t,” Loki replied, and Hel scowled at him. He scooted sideways to put a little distance between himself and his daughter. “It was a bluff, a play for relevance and resurgence. Her power has been waning as has my own. Now we’re both mouldering in this place of death and darkness. And when I die . . .”
“No!” Hel grabbed Loki by the front of his shirt. “The Keeper of the Realms is eternal! You will take me to Midgard. You will give me your strength. You will give me the Lodge. You will give me the Rune Witch’s magick as well as your own.”
She pressed her hands against his chest as though she could will his remaining power out of his body and into her fingers. When that didn’t yield the results she wanted, she started slapping at him, her desperate sobs growing with every blow.
Loki caught her hands and forced her to stop.
“The seams of magick as we knew it are unraveling, daughter,” Loki said. “It’s my fault that Helheim is restless. My fault that your authority has been undermined. But only because it’s the natural order of things.”
“No! It can’t be!” Hel struggled free of Loki’s grasp—not a difficult feat when his every breath brought new pain. She curled her skeletal legs beneath her and stared at Loki in frightened horror.
“We’ve been on a fool’s errand, trying to restore our old friends to Midgard.” Loki looked up at Thor. “The draugar are trying to come home. I should have foreseen that having Sally open the passage to Helheim for the living would close the way to the dead.”
“That’s why they’re growing in number,” Thor replied. “All those not previously at rest, all the newly dead. And we’re stuck in here in this sticky cell, powerless to stop them? To the fires of Muspellheim with that.”
Thor grasped the vines of the gate with his big hands. He pulled with all his might, groaning and straining until his face flushed scarlet. Hel rose from the floor and joined him in the effort. Thor eyed her with suspicion as she kicked and yanked at the roots and vines that imprisoned them, and he winced every time she screeched in frustration.
Loki remained on the floor and observed their futility. The coughing came upon him again, and he flinched with every spasm. Pain stabbed and spread through his lungs and ribs, threatening to seize his heart. He tasted blood in his mouth.
17
“This is the spot.” Sally took a breath and warned Saga to stand back. She stood in the center of the clearing in the woods where she’d cast that spurious spell for Loki, and where they’d later crossed from one world into the next. But Sally wasn’t sure she could travel to Helheim on her own, or what she might find there once she arrived.
It hadn’t been easy to sneak out of the house and have Saga drive her here. Avoiding the draugar was bad enough, but slipping away from Bonnie and Opal and Zach and everybody else was even worse. How was she not abandoning them?
But she’d thrown a ball of chaos static into the street at the front of the house to distract the draugar, and then she and Saga hustled out the kitchen door and through a gate in the yard. Everyone in the house was too busy holding off the assailants to notice.
Saga stepped out of the way and stood among the trees, her hands in her jacket pockets. A light rain started to fall.
Sally planted her feet with purpose. She felt the wind begin to stir around her, just as it had on her first trip to the underworld. At least Saga had stopped arguing with Sally about traveling alone, because there wasn’t anyone to spare to go with her. Heimdall had his hands full protecting the Lodge, and Bonnie would need Saga back at the house.
The dark tunnel opened beneath Sally’s feet like a growing shadow. Before the passage fully materialized, Sally scared up one last bit of chaos—a firestorm of sparky discharge. She was careful to direct the zapping energy away from the trees and the dry tinder on the ground. But the air smoked with sulfur and ozone with each pop of electric static from her fingertips.
“To draw the draugar here!” Sally called over the wind as a mini-cyclone rose up from the ground, centered on her and the passage between the realms. Her hair whipped around her face and some of it landed in her mouth. “They might leave the rest of you alone if they think they can find me here.”
The gambit was a long shot, but it made her feel a little better about leaving her friends to fend for themselves. But this was her problem to fix. She’d awakened the draugar, and she’d enraged Hel with her poorly executed deception. All in a day’s work for a budding chaos witch.
Maybe the draugar would even follow her through to Helheim. She wasn’t thrilled by the idea of having to face them in their own realm, far away from the assistance of the Lodge. She might not be able to count on Thor and Loki, either. But then Portland might be safe—or safer, assuming Sally could defeat Hel and her minions.
Sally felt the silver charm bracelet in her pocket and was heartened. She hoped what she was doing now would have made Frigga proud, and that it wouldn’t be a complete disaster.
“I’ll take care of Zach.” Saga was barely audible over the crackling magick and wind. “Nothing more will happen to him. I promise.”
The passageway gaped open beneath Sally, and she fell through. She landed on her feet almost instantly and found herself inside the same dark tunnel she’d traveled before. The walls were dripping wet, and the gravel crunched soundlessly beneath her feet. But this time she was alone. She ran her fingers along the rock walls to guide her and hoped she hadn’t opened up the wrong portal.
With only the sound of her own breathing in her ears, Sally kept her pace steady. After a few minutes there was a strange tingling at her back, a shivering cold that told her someone or something was behind her.
She glanced over her shoulder, but there was no one there. She could see barely two feet in front of her so she couldn’t be entirely sure she was alone. She continued forward and picked up her pace. The sooner she was out of the passageway, the sooner she’d be done with this hastily planned quest.
She tried counting her breaths to keep her brain occupied, but she quickly got that count mixed up with the steps she was taking. A FitBit would have been a handy distraction, but would a step counter work between worlds? She stumbled over some larger stones in the path and wished she could see the ground beneath her feet. She was careful not to curse.
It could have been hours or minutes that passed. She kept having that crawling feeling on the back of her neck and shoulders that someone was directly behind her. She breathed more easily when she saw light ahead, and she nearly slipped on the gravel as she sprinted toward the exit.
She shot out of the cave and stopped, giving herself a moment to catch her breath. The landscape was as dull as ever, but it was no longer quiet. Bursts of shrieking alarm rolled toward her from the distant lake, and a humming chant rose up from the boggy area far to her right. She didn’t want to stick around to find out the source of either sound.
At least there was no evidence of hounds nearby.
Rolling her shoulders back to adopt an attitude of confidence she didn’t feel, Sally marched toward the woods. Just before she passed beneath the archway, she stole another glance behind her and nearly shouted in unwelcome surprise when she saw a column of draugar trailing after her.
The creatures formed two neat rows, their pallid faces and dirty rags looking even more dull in the diffuse light. Their bearing was intent but not threatening. They weren’t pursuing Sally. They were following her.
The lead pair came to rest a few yards away, and the others lined up behind. She counted a coupl
e dozen of them and hoped that meant the threat to the Lodge and to Bonnie’s house was ended. Back at the passage entrance, four more draugar stumbled out of the tunnel and headed Sally’s way.
Sally nearly laughed. Had they simply been looking for a way to the underworld this whole time? Is that why they weren’t chasing her now? She hadn’t meant to amass her own undead army, but her chaos storm in the woods had obviously gotten their attention.
Should she say something to them? She had no words of courage to offer, and this was hardly St. Crispin’s Day in Helheim. She wasn’t leading anyone into battle, was she? For now, the draugar weren’t so much following her home as moving toward the next way station on their journey. But they’d been plenty destructive back in Portland. She didn’t want to risk making a false move or saying the wrong thing and turning them suddenly against her.
She turned and headed into the woods, not knowing if she felt more or less safe with a battalion of draugar at her back. She stumbled over roots and ducked beneath bare branches and kept glancing over her shoulder. The draugar followed silently. At least the trees weren’t ripping at her clothing.
Sally came to the entrance to Hel’s Hall. The archway looked smaller now that Sally was in decidedly less awe of the realm. She turned to face the dead waiting quietly behind her.
“Here goes nothing.”
She pushed her way inside. Her mouth dropped open when she found herself in the midst of boisterous chaos. Half-rotted corpses hissed and argued with one another, while others slimed angrily across the floor to swipe at each other’s heels. Some engaged in outright fistfights, their disintegrating clothing and flesh falling away with each pummeling blow.
But Loki and Thor were close. She could feel them.
“Um, excuse me? Hello?” Sally’s voice was dry in her throat. None of the writhing, belligerent corpses took any notice of her.
Chaos Magic (Rune Witch Book 5) Page 20