Loki's Wolves

by K. L. Armstrong

  Matt said nothing, but he shifted his path to walk toward the twins.

  The twins, however, seemed completely unconcerned with the attention that they were getting. Maybe they were used to being watched, because they weren’t uncomfortable about it. Then again, they hadn’t faced wolves, Valkyries, or trolls. Laurie reminded herself that she probably ought not to mention any of those details just yet. The twins continued their studious not-paying-attention while Laurie and the boys continued walking through the hilly cemetery toward them.

  She wanted to hurry. The cemetery bothered her more than she’d expected; as they passed graves of people long dead, she shivered. Maybe it was just the cold, or it was that she just now realized that they could die. Fen almost did die—and according to the mythology, Matt would die. The thought of either of them dying made her feel sick. She hadn’t known Matt that well before the tornado, and what she thought she knew about him wasn’t entirely accurate. After facing a few monsters at his side, they were becoming friends. They can’t die. They won’t. She was going to do everything possible to keep that from happening.

  And that started with convincing the twins to cooperate.

  She walked faster.

  Matt sped up to keep pace with her. His voice was a low whisper as he asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Talking to them,” she said resolutely.

  “You’re just going to go up and tell them they need to help us fight a big snake and stop the end of the world?” Matt asked incredulously. He wasn’t whispering this time, but he was still too quiet for the twins to hear. “This isn’t Blackwell. They might not even know who Thor and Loki are.”

  “So we ask what they do know,” Laurie said.

  Matt looked at Fen for help, but Fen just shrugged. Her cousin might not like her plan, but she knew he’d side with her. Fen always took her side. Okay, almost always. He would side with Matt if he thought it would keep her safe. She knew that. She also knew he’d pound anyone who was rude to her. He’d made that pretty obvious as far back as kindergarten. And maybe it made her a little braver knowing that, she admitted.

  In another few moments, they reached the gravestone where the twins were and stopped. This close, Laurie could see that they both had short black fingernails and both wore black eyeliner. The twins still acted like Laurie and the boys weren’t there. They didn’t even glance at any of the three of them.

  “Hi,” Laurie said.

  Neither twin replied.

  “My cousin is talking to you,” Fen said.

  “And my brother and I aren’t interested in talking to her… or you,” said the standing twin, who, now that she’d spoken, Laurie could tell was the sister.

  Fen growled.

  The twin on the ground stood and moved so he was shoulder-to-shoulder with his sister. He said nothing, just glanced at her, a little uncertain.

  “Look,” the girl continued. “We don’t know you, don’t want to know you, and really don’t care about whatever you want. Ray and I are busy.” She turned her back on them and flicked her hand at her side as if to shoo them away. “Now go away.”

  Fen growled again.

  “Fen,” Matt started.

  “I got strangled by a troll to find Goth Ken and Barbie here, so I’m not going to ‘go away’ so they can play with chalk or go do each other’s makeup.” Fen’s eyes actually flashed yellow, and Laurie wondered briefly if he’d hidden a lot more of himself from her than she’d realized or if he was just exhausted.

  “Excuse me?” the girl said in a tone that made it sound more like a challenge than a question.

  “Reyna…” her brother said under his breath.

  She ignored him and turned back around to face Fen. “Don’t think our eyeliner means we can’t kick your scrawny butt. Ask anyone in town. And trolls? Seriously. Go back to your video games.”

  “Whoa! Both of you, stop. We’re not here to fight.” Matt stepped between Ray and Fen. “We just want to talk to you. We’re tired, and some of us”—he glanced at Fen—“have had a rough trip. We don’t care about the, ummm, makeup.”

  “Really? He’s wearing nail polish and guyliner,” Fen grumbled.

  “Stop it, Fen.” Laurie put her hand flat on Fen’s chest, and then she looked at Reyna and Ray. “Please? Just let us explain.”

  They all stood in an awkward standoff for several moments until Reyna said, “Fine. Say whatever you need to say and then leave.” She linked her arm through her twin’s at the elbow.

  A strange tickle crept over Laurie, as if she had pins and needles all over. Whatever god powers these two had, they were stronger when they were connected. Apparently, Matt could feel monsters, and she could sense descendants? And what? Trouble? Threats? She wasn’t sure, but there was something going on here and it increased when the twins touched.

  “Right,” Laurie started. “Do you want to sit down or walk or—”

  “No. We don’t,” Reyna said. Apparently, she spoke for both of them. Ray stood silently at her side, more like an extension of her than an actual person.

  “Fine.” Laurie took a deep breath, but she didn’t know how to start. She looked at Matt. “Ummm?”

  He stepped in and said, “The end of the world is coming. We need your help to stop it.”

  Reyna took a step backward, pulling Ray with her.

  Matt hurried on. “There’s more, of course. That’s the short version. I can tell you the rest if you just give us a few—”

  “Come on, Ray.” Reyna crouched down and started gathering up their stuff with one hand. Her other hand was still holding Ray’s elbow. Ray stood staring at Matt.

  “There’s something different about you, something you can do that most people can’t,” Laurie blurted out. “It’s because you’re like us.”

  “We’re nothing like you.” Reyna released her hold on her brother and folded her arms over her chest. “We’re—”

  “Descendants of the Norse gods. You have some sort of power. I know you do,” Matt said evenly.

  “Or you will soon,” Laurie added.

  The twins exchanged a look, and then Ray murmured, “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  In the next minute, the twins had scooped up their art supplies and they all but ran away from the three of them. They were walking so quickly that if they went a single step faster, they would be jogging.

  “That went well,” Fen deadpanned.

  After the walk to Deadwood from Lead and then up the hill to the cemetery—and after their failure with the twins—the walk into downtown Deadwood felt like punishment. It had been an awfully long couple of days, and Laurie was tired. She wanted a bath, her own bed, and to curl up on her own living room sofa with a book—or maybe to watch a movie with Fen and Matt. What she didn’t want was to try to figure out how to convince the twins, who were obviously hiding something, to join them in a fight to save the world. In all honestly, she didn’t want to sign up to save the world, either, but it didn’t seem right to know that there was something that important at stake and not help out. Sure, she wasn’t one of the people destined to be in the fight, but her cousin was and her friend was, and she was helping them get there. She had tricked the troll, and she knew she was right about the twins—at least that’s what she told herself.

  “What if I was wrong about them?” she asked.

  Matt stopped and looked directly into her eyes. “Do you think you were?”

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know.” She jumped as she heard a man yell something about “calling the law.”

  Suddenly, as they stood there on the sidewalk along the streets of Deadwood, two men were yelling at each other and aiming guns. For a brief moment, Laurie wanted to get involved, to protect… one of them. In that split second, she wasn’t sure which one to help, but she was trying to figure it out. One of them was dressed in a suit and tall hat, and the other wore a brown fringed leather jacket, dirty trousers, and a battered cowboy hat. A blink later, she realized that this
was a sort of theater. These were actors, reenacting some of Deadwood’s Wild West history.

  “Wild Bill wasn’t killed in the street,” Matt muttered.

  “What?” Fen asked.

  “I don’t think that guy’s supposed to be Wild Bill. He might be the most famous person here, but he wasn’t the only gunslinger,” Laurie said.

  She and Matt had both stepped forward to watch the show.

  “Seriously? We’re going to stand here? I’m bored.” Fen stepped between her and Matt.

  Laurie stepped closer to her cousin. He had always been a little bit of a jerk when she paid attention to anyone other than him. Her mom had told her that she only encouraged him to do it more by giving in, but someone had to encourage Fen, and in her family, the only two people who had in years were her and her dad. “Come on, Fen. I think it would’ve been cool to live here then. You don’t?” she teased. “I thought you were a Brekke.”

  He was quiet for a minute while they watched the two men face off in their pretend fight. “Maybe a little cool, but these are just people pretending.”

  It was hard to tell which one they should be cheering for. She watched as the man in the suit drew his gun and the man in the cowboy hat drew his and twirled it around so fast it looked like a magic trick. She hadn’t been paying attention to what they were saying, so she still had no idea which one was the one they were to cheer for. It would be easier—in plays and real life—if things were as simple as good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains, but right and wrong weren’t always clear. She glanced up at Fen. What was clear was that her cousin was going to be a hero. She’d been right about him.

  “Bet there were Brekkes here then, and”—Fen glanced at Matt—“Thorsens arresting them for every little thing.”

  Matt shrugged.

  “Be nice,” Laurie chastised Fen. “Not all Thorsens are the same, just like not all Brekkes are. Matt was running from the cops with us, and you jumped in to fight with him.”

  Both boys shrugged, and both looked uncomfortable.

  Matt’s interest in the pretend gunslingers seemed to vanish. “We should eat, and then figure out how to convince the twins to join us,” he said.

  “And find somewhere to sleep tonight,” Fen added. “We don’t have sleeping bags, and unless you want to break into a hotel room, we don’t have rooms anywhere.”

  They started walking down Main Street, looking for a place to eat. To be safe, they stopped in a tourist shop and bought a hat, which Matt wore pulled down low. After their run-in with the police in Lead, a little extra precaution was in order. With their police situation and their age, getting anywhere comfortable to sleep wasn’t likely. Trying to steal some sleeping bags wasn’t a great idea, either. They’d left theirs hidden back at Mount Rushmore, first in order not to attract attention at the monument, and then they couldn’t bring them on the bus. Laurie sighed. The thought of sleeping on the cold ground again was far from appealing, but she knew hotels didn’t rent rooms to kids, and she wasn’t sure they should spend their little bit of money on a hotel room even if they could get someone to rent it for them.

  Her family members usually had pretty good luck with cons; she felt strangely proud now that she knew about her ancestry: her family’s con and luck skills were because of Loki. In a way, her mom was right: she was just like her dad. But maybe that wasn’t a bad thing, despite the way it sounded when her mom said it. Admittedly, her mom said it after there had been a call from the principal’s office, but sometimes Laurie thought that her mother forgot the good things about her father. Being lucky—or clever—wasn’t all bad.

  “Maybe the twins would let us stay at their house,” Laurie suggested, thinking about the possibility of convincing them through a mix of luck and tricks.

  Fen laughed. “They don’t even want to talk to us, and you think they’re going to invite us to their house?”

  “Maybe,” she hedged. If it was just Fen, she’d tell him why she thought so, but she suspected that even though they were all friends of a sort, Matt still wasn’t going to be too much in favor of trickery.

  “I hate to agree with Fen, but he’s right on this one. They ran off pretty fast.” Matt paused. “When we brought up gifts, they spooked.”

  “Are we sure that they’re on our side?” Fen asked. He rubbed his hands on his face like he was trying to wake up, and his words all sort of started to tumble out. “I mean, how much of the myth stuff is supposed to be what happens? If I could switch, they could, too. Could they be on the snake’s side? And also, aren’t people going to notice a big monster snake and do something about it? I get that in whenever it was, big snakes were probably hard to kill so call in the gods, but today, there are tanks, bombs, and all sorts of stuff.”

  Laurie didn’t say anything beyond, “Fen has a point… or points, or whatever. He’s right. We don’t know what we’re doing or where to go.” She paused and then said, “And I’m tired and hungry.”

  Fen’s burst of frustration seemed to vanish. “We’ll eat. We’ll figure it out.”

  He gently bumped his shoulder into hers.

  Matt was silent as they walked. He stayed that way while they ate at a little diner. Then, as they left the diner, he looked at Laurie and casually asked, “Which way are the twins?”

  Without thinking, she pointed to the left.

  Fen and Matt both grinned at her, and once she realized what she’d done, she smiled, too. “I can find them,” she said. “It is them, and I can find them.”

  “We can do this,” Matt said. “The three of us, and then we’ll convince the others. We’re a good team.”

  Laurie half expected Fen to flinch away at Matt’s words, but he just looked at her and said, “Lead on.”

  They walked away from the tourist-filled, casino-filled heart of Deadwood to the streets they’d skirted on the way from Mount Moriah to downtown. She didn’t speak and neither did the boys as she followed the instinct that told her where the twins were—until she realized that they were headed back to the cemetery. That was weird.

  Matt must’ve figured out the same thing, because he was frowning.

  “Wait, maybe I’m wrong.” She glanced at the boys. “I was so sure this feeling was leading us to them.”

  “Maybe the people we needed are still in the cemetery, and we just missed them,” Matt suggested helpfully.

  The frustration and fear that she was leading them on another long, pointless walk made her let out a small scream of frustration.

  Fen squeezed her hand. “It’s cool.”

  “Not really.” She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. The same sensation was there, urging her, telling her which way to go. She turned away from the cemetery, but the directions remained unchanged.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe they went back there, or maybe it is someone else we’re supposed to be looking for.”

  With the boys behind her, she continued walking, but the trail ended a few moments later—not at Mount Moriah, but on Madison Street. She felt the end so strongly that it was as if she could see a trail dead-ending on the ground. The house in front of her was a sprawling mess. It looked like the owners had bought several houses on the street, demolished them all, and constructed one of those garish oversized houses that screamed “more money than we need.” Laurie gestured toward the house and said, “I think they’re inside there.”

  “Well, then.” Fen snorted. “Looks like Goth Barbie and Ken are loaded, too.”

  Matt shook his head. “We walk in there and they get nervous again, we’ll end up needing to deal with police. I’m guessing if they’re looking for me in Lead, they’ll be looking here, too.”

  Fen gave Matt an appraising look. “Not a bad point, Thorsen. So now what?”

  With surprise, Laurie realized that Fen was still looking to her to lead them. “I don’t know.”

  After a moment, Fen suggested, “We need to move away before someone reports us for loitering.”

&nbs
p; The house was near the cemetery, and the twins were obviously fond of it, so the three of them decided that the best thing to do was tuck in there and wait. Either the twins would come back, or when they went somewhere else in Deadwood, Laurie could find them. It didn’t help with the convince-them-to-join-the-fight part, but convincing them meant finding them first.

  SIXTEEN

  MATT

  “UNMARKED GRAVES”

  When they got back to the cemetery, Matt couldn’t resist the chance to take a look around, so he said they should walk through and make sure the twins weren’t already there. Fen grumbled that the twins had been right up front last time and Laurie’s hound-dogging had led to their house, but Matt insisted. Finally, Fen bought it and followed him inside.

  They passed through the black gate. Matt walked into the cemetery proper, moving at a decent speed, but after the fourth time Matt stopped to read a sign, Fen growled.

  “What?” Fen said. “Are you prepping for a history paper, Thorsen? Those twins aren’t hiding in that sign.”

  “There are almost four thousand marked graves in here,” Matt said, reading. “And that’s only a third of them. Lots more are unmarked.”

  “They’re not hiding in one of those, either,” Fen drawled.

  “I’m just saying it’s interesting.”

  “Interesting?” Fen scowled. “It’s a cemetery.”

  “In Deadwood.” Matt swept a hand across the hills, dotted with graves. “Think how many of these guys died in gunfights at high noon. Isn’t that cool?”

  Laurie laughed softly. “I don’t think it’d be too cool if you were the one dying.”

  “You know what I mean,” Matt said. “It’s a cemetery from the Wild West. That’s cool.”

  He looked down the hill toward the town of Deadwood at the base. Trees blocked enough of it that if Matt squinted he could picture it the way it should be, with saloons instead of coffee shops and gambling dens instead of casinos. He was relaxing now, for the first time since leaving Lead. He’d messed up there. Really messed up, and he’d been sure Fen and Laurie would figure out he wasn’t the leader they needed. But they’d just carried on. So now he was relaxing, feeling more like himself. Even kind of feeling like he was around friends.