“I’m here about my friends? I’ve come to see . . .” Her voice trailed off when she spotted the empty throne chair. Hel was nowhere in sight.
A rush of panic flooded into her body. She wasn’t sure if it was a natural reaction to landing unexpectedly in the middle of a corpse battle in the underworld or if she was feeling a stronger connection to Thor’s distress.
She sensed the newly arrived draugar gathering at her back. They did not rush forward to join the desiccated scrum but seemed to be waiting for some signal or action from Sally. Ducking flailing limbs, she moved deeper into the room and tried not to step on anyone.
“I am the Rune Witch from Midgard!” Her voice thudded against the living walls, and the melee came to an abrupt halt. She scanned the throne room, looking for someone who might be in charge. She found no promising candidates. “I come to have my reckoning with the Queen of Helheim.”
She pretended that her stomach didn’t feel like sour jelly as she watched a dozen or so of Hel’s minions slither into the walls. Of those who remained, the ones who had legs rose to their feet and formed an uneasy half-circle in front of Sally. With the draugar from Midgard fanned out behind her, Sally was surrounded by the dead. She tried not to shiver.
The dead of Helheim and the dead of Midgard regarded each other with curiosity and suspicion. Sally wasn’t sure what that meant, and she was trying really hard not to freak out. She kept her brain busy by trying to figure out what to call them. “Minions” were yellow cartoon characters or slavering henchmen from bad horror movies. Were the draugar still draugar once they’d come to Helheim? Her limited knowledge suggested the walking Viking dead might be problematic only in the world of the living, but that didn’t mean they weren’t even more dangerous here.
A gap opened in the wall and several creatures slipped back through into the throne room, followed by Thor, Loki, and Hel. Sally almost laughed at the welcome sight of an embarrassed and irritated Thor.
He scowled at the assembled corpses and gave Sally a grim nod. “They’ve taken you, too, have they?”
Before Sally could ask what he meant, Hel loosed a triumphant cackle. “The young witch comes to take my place! Do with her what you will. Let her be your prisoner queen as I walk the green hills of Midgard.”
Hel moved to join Sally in the center of the room, but three of the dead grasped her arms and held her back.
“I’m guessing that’s a big fat no-go,” Thor said
Hel hissed nasty-sounding syllables and struggled with her captors, but none of the dead made a move to lay hands on Sally. She had a bad feeling about that.
Sally looked at Loki, and her heart caught in her throat when he met her eyes. He’d grown so wan and pale in the few hours since she’d last seen him. His face was an expressionless mask and he seemed barely able to stand as he leaned on Thor. Loki looked like death itself.
Sally took a moment to gauge her circumstances. Hel had lost her throne and her undead creatures were fighting each other. Thor and Loki looked to be captives, and Sally was surrounded by animated corpses. A heavy dread sank into Sally’s bones as she realized she might not be permitted to leave Helheim, dead or alive.
She couldn’t help her racing heart or anxious breathing. Her chest squeezed tight and she thought she might be on the verge of a proper panic attack. Her vision started to dim. Thor was saying something to her, shouting even, but she couldn’t make out his words. As her distress grew and overwhelmed her senses, she felt the painful surge of chaos static radiate out from her stomach into her fingers and toes.
The young witch didn’t mean to start a war—that’s what Thor told himself as he pushed into the heart of the skirmish. Sally’s fingers had started throwing off blue sparks rather spectacularly, and it was the perfect cover for Thor to make his move.
Thor had learned a few things about the fundamental unreliability of Helheim during his visit. This was a place where creepy chaos reigned, and it didn’t seem to matter much who was at the helm. With the Rune Witch generating magick beyond her control, she was quickly surrounded by a crackling vortex of electric current. It wasn’t a surprise that Hel’s former servants took that as a threat.
From there, literal hell broke loose.
Pale arms and decaying legs struck out in every direction, tangling together as Helheim corpses surged forward to collide with the draugar from Midgard. Thor couldn’t tell one putrid group from the other as they ripped at each other. There didn’t seem to be a leader on either side or even any goal to the violence—just a bunch of rotting bodies tearing at each other and growling noises Thor didn’t think a human body was capable of making.
He grabbed his hammer from the grip of one of the ghouls who had been guarding him and directed Sally, Loki, and even Hel back to the prison cell for their own safety. He ignored the unsettling sounds of ripping flesh and crunching bones and tried not to think about the slippery gore and unidentified fluids splashing over the tops of his boots.
Thor was cracking skulls and femurs and collarbones and generally trying to disarm—sometimes literally—the creatures that clawed and bludgeoned him. It was a disorganized mess that felt more like an overeager bar fight except that no matter how many teeth or eyes or actual limbs any of the combatants lost, they got back up again. They reassembled their bodies, sometimes attaching arms where legs should have been, and rejoined the violence.
“Come on you!” Thor shouted into the fray. He was trying to address the draugar force that had followed Sally into Helheim, but he couldn’t distinguish one corpse from another. “Fall in line! Take the throne! Freedom for Helheim!”
He had no intention of taking the throne of Helheim, but it was the first rallying cause that sprang to his mind and he thought it was a good one.
But there was no mobilizing cry or cheers of encouragement or solidarity. No one fell in behind Thor as their leader. The growling throng of decaying bodies continued to rip at each other. They kept howling and hissing and scattering their dismembered parts across the floor.
Beyond the throne room, the blood-curdling baying of Hel’s hounds mingled with shrieks of elated pain. Thor hoped Sally had locked the cell door behind her.
Thor pulverized at least a dozen bare skulls, but the fighting only escalated. There wasn’t time to stew about Hel’s deception or for relief that his parents weren’t imprisoned here. He was surrounded by oozing, active death and was stepping on bodies and faces and even getting bitten a few times.
One limbless wretch, screaming without arms or legs and in possession of a single eye, heaved itself forward to chomp down on any available chunk of flesh. Thor brought his hammer down on the creature’s head and dragged its mutilated body across the dirt as he tried to pull his weapon free. But the dead thing wouldn’t die. It kept snapping at Thor’s boots with crumbling teeth between vile curses about Thor’s farming skills.
Thor kicked the creature away. Even with its skull caved in and dark gore leaking into and out of open eye sockets, the corpse wriggled toward the scrum and latched onto the rotting calf of another combatant.
Pushed toward the outskirts of the action, Thor could see the melee for what it was. Even a civil war in Helheim would have been more organized. Judging by the howling cries from outside the chamber, the violence had spread beyond the throne room. Wounds healed and warriors regenerated. The dead would not stop. This was a fight without an ending, and Thor and his friends were trapped in the middle of it.
18
Sally stood with her back to the wall, her palms flat against the damp rock. She focused on the gated door, watching for any sign that the fighting was coming their way. Her whole body was shaking with stress and fright and from the thunderous howls that vibrated through all of Helheim.
Loki slumped on the ground beside her. She leaned down and gripped his shoulder to reassure him as much as herself.
“Does this kind of thing happen often?” Sally shouted. She tried to laugh but stopped when it started to turn in
to a sob.
Loki didn’t answer.
“Loki?”
Hel hovered over him, one hand pushing so forcefully against his chest that his ribs had to be ready to snap. Her other hand was reaching for Sally.
“Get off! Get off him!” Sally knocked Hel’s arm aside and tried to pull her off of Loki, but the skeletal goddess was stronger than she looked. In an instant, Sally found herself on her knees with Hel’s bony fingers wrapped around her neck. Hel started to squeeze.
“You will give me your power,” Hel hissed into Sally’s face, her sharp, stained teeth on full display. “Your power and his. Now!”
Sally clawed at the fingers around her neck, but Hel had a grip of steel and was slowly choking the life out of her. Sally tried to scream out for Thor or to spit in Hel’s face, but she couldn’t take a breath. Tiny squeaks came out of her mouth instead of curses. Black spots swam in Sally’s vision and her arms and legs started to go numb.
Hel whispered in Sally’s ear. “I will have your power one way or another. It’s your choice whether you die in the process.”
Sally closed her eyes. She couldn’t help the tears spilling down her cheeks. Her body was fighting, but she couldn’t feel it. She heard the slow crunch of her esophagus and thought about how she had failed.
She had failed Loki, and Thor. She’d failed her friends in the world of the living. Were they being overrun by more draugar that very minute, or had all the dead followed her here? She’d never know. She’d failed Heimdall and Maggie and Freya and the Lodge—everyone who had put their trust and faith in her, even reluctantly. She’d failed Portland and Opal and her parents and Baron the cat, and she’d never get the chance to tell them how sorry she was. She’d failed Odin and Frigga and the traditions of magick. She’d failed in her quest to set everything right, and now this underworld bitch would have her way. Sally was going to die in Helheim, and Hel was going to win.
Sally clicked her teeth together, trying to utter one last curse that probably wouldn’t do anything. She groaned and creaked and couldn’t form a single word.
“What’s that, little one?” Hel’s voice was light and cheerful. It was the creepiest thing Sally had ever heard.
“Get off me, you rancid eel!” Sally hissed, or tried to. Her last words, which probably no one heard, echoed in her skull. A sharp heat flared in Sally’s stomach and spiraled outward with blazing fury. This is what it felt like to die. Her heart thudded and her brain screamed for oxygen, but the heat shot painfully into her limbs. Sally whimpered like a newborn kitten. Over the slowing throb of her pulse in her ears, Sally heard Hel laugh. And then Hel screamed.
Suddenly, Sally could breathe. Cool air rushed into her lungs and stabbed her awake. Her hands went to her throat and there was no one holding her. She looked around the cell as her vision came back, and she spotted Hel splayed against the cell’s gate, her back arching as she tried to free herself.
“Release me!” Hel shrieked. She struggled to tear herself from the gate but she was held fast against it, her feet not even touching the ground. Bands of blue energy cuffed her wrists and ankles. “You mortal wastrel!”
Sally laughed and coughed in wild relief. “Loki! You did it!”
But Loki sat in a heap on the floor. He tilted his head up to look at her. “All you, Sally.”
He dropped his chin and heaved a deep breath. As Hel shrieked from her perch on the gate, Sally crouched beside Loki and held his face between her hands. His eyes fluttered open but didn’t quite focus.
“I’m getting you out of here,” Sally said with determination. “I’m getting us all out of here.”
The trouble was, she had no idea how to keep that promise.
“Give me your power, little witch, and I will preserve your life,” Hel cackled.
Sally gaped at her. Hel’s yellow eyes were wide as she struggled against her sparking bonds, but her lips opened into a sharklike grin. Her skull showed through her paper-thin flesh, but light glowed behind Hel’s eyes as her sharp gaze bored into Sally’s. Her words became a hypnotic chant, and Sally felt her limbs grow heavy.
“Yes, little witch. Come to me. Come to me, little witch,” Hel sang in a voice that was both soothing and demanding. “Come closer and release me and we shall form our pact. Come closer, little witch. Closer. Do it now, and I will keep you safe. Come close and be safe. Yes. Yes. Come to me. Come closer. Come to me now, little witch, and be safe.”
Sally felt the strong tug of Hel’s cadence, but a broad smile spread across her face as she stood her ground and listened. She would not be compelled forward.
Little witch. Hel couldn’t have known how Sally hated that particular diminutive. Was that the only thing that kept her from falling under Hel’s spell?
Sally planted her fists on her hips, and Frigga’s bracelet shifted in her pocket. Sally smiled.
“Hel, daughter of Loki!” Sally’s voice was hoarse and barely competed with the shrieks and screams and flesh-crunching of violent battle coming from the next chamber. “Former queen of the dead.”
Sally enjoyed the flare of indignation in Hel’s eyes.
“I am indeed young. I don’t have centuries of experience like pretty much everyone else here.” Sally cleared her throat and grimaced at the pain. She would be sporting the bruises of Hel’s fingers on her throat for days. She ignored the taste of blood in her mouth.
She stepped closer to Hel and shielded Loki from the goddess’s sight. Hel yanked hard against the restraints at her wrists, but the bonds held.
“But I am not a child. I have passed every test and every trial by fire that’s been flung at me. I have survived, and I have learned. Your scheming and your civil war aren’t any different. I’m getting out of here, and I’m taking my friends with me.”
Hel started to laugh, derision practically dripping from her lips. But Sally was tired and battered and bruised, and she’d had enough of Hel’s morose malarkey.
The static rose in her body like a million electric pinpricks in quick succession. She lifted her hands and smiled at the blue light that crackled in her palms.
Hel stopped struggling. She watched Sally with fearful curiosity.
“You want my power? Here’s some for you.” Sally threw the energy at Hel as hard as she could, then stumbled in astonishment as Hel’s body burst backward through the gated door and the wall beyond it. Hel was flung into her throne room and through the battling dead. She landed squarely in the center of the raging scrum.
Sally allowed herself a quick fist pump, but Loki remained nearly motionless on the far side of the cell. And if Sally had hoped to stop the fighting by throwing Hel directly into the middle of it, she had made a grave error.
Hel’s body was tossed from one warrior corpse to the next. Bony fingers tore chunks of flesh from her body. Hel screamed and called to Sally for help before she disappeared into the sea of battle and decay.
Thor charged toward Sally through the hole in the wall. Panting heavily, he used his broad body to fill the gap in the cell gate. If any of the dead wanted in, they’d have to come through Thor first.
“Whatever you’re going to do, do it fast!” Thor shouted.
“I don’t know what to do!” Sally dropped to the ground beside Loki. She reached for his hands and almost laughed in relief when he opened his eyes. “Tell me how to get us out of here.”
Loki blinked drowsily at her and she feared he was beyond comprehension. Slowly, he worked his mouth. His voice was barely audible over the shrieking and fighting.
“Finish it.”
“Finish what?” Sally took a breath and got her wits about her. The dead of Helheim were ripping each other to pieces in the next room and across the realm, and were possibly pulverizing their own queen in the process. Loki, god of chaos and her friend and mentor, was dying. Thor was growling and the wet walls and the strangely gummy floor were thrumming with unrest. The howling of blood-thirsty hounds echoed in her ears. It wasn’t the first time she’d been a
t the center of the maelstrom. She squeezed Loki’s hands and nodded.
“Finish it.” Loki closed his eyes.
Sally moved quickly to the center of the cell. She knelt and looked up at Thor. “My pendulum.”
“That hunk of rock on a chain?” He dug into his pocket and tossed the pendulum to Sally.
She wrapped the silver chain around her fingers and cradled the obsidian point in her right palm. She glanced at Loki. The last time she’d tried this, she’d done him a deep injury from which he wasn’t recovering. On top of whatever damage Hel had done to him, too, Sally worried she might kill him.
Loki made a feeble gesture with his hand, urging Sally to get on with it.
“You can do it,” Thor said. “I know you can.”
Sally flattened her hands against the ground and felt the energy of Helheim flowing through the obsidian point and pouring into her palms. A chorus of jubilant cheering rose up to mix with battle cries from the throne room.
Sally reached toward Loki with her left hand, but she stopped before she pulled any energy from him. He looked like he didn’t have a breath to spare.
“Do it.” His voice was thin and weak.
“Loki.” Sally willed herself not to cry.
Loki pushed himself to sit up tall. He looked her in the eye. “I am Loki. I am the Keeper of the Realms. I command you to complete your work.”
His voice was stronger, and every one of his words vibrated with magick as they hit her in the chest. He was putting on a show of strength but there remained a trace of real power in his command.
Sally closed her eyes and worked her binding quickly. Shutting out the sounds of battle, she drew Loki’s energy through her left hand and sorted through the tangle of etheric knots connecting him to the vines of current she pulled up from the ground. She tugged on a thick, black-red cord and heard Hel shriek in response.
“Sally.” Loki’s voice was a rough whisper, but she heard the warning loud and clear.
Chaos Magic (Rune Witch Book 5) Page 21