This time it was my turn to smile as Loki flinched, betraying the reason he’d holed up in this cave with all its runes. He, along with Fenrir, was hiding—avoiding the fulfillment of the prophecy that would doom the Norse to the end of times. That’s why he wanted Odin distracted; with his own grandsons on the warpath the Allfather couldn’t hunt Fenrir down, which meant a rebellion from within was just what the Trickster ordered.
“So, and correct me if I’m wrong, it sounds like I’m doin’ ye quite the favor. Only that’s not how t’ings work down here, is it?” I folded my arms across my chest. “What will ye give me for it?”
“It?”
“The death of the bastard responsible for those creatures and the return of your daughter to the throne.”
“Ah, a negotiation,” Loki said, rubbing at his cheek, his half-mad smile spreading wide as his thoughts churned. “What do you want?”
“I want Odin’s eyepatch.”
Loki’s smile disappeared and his jaw dropped. Indeed, for a moment, he reminded me of a guppy; his mouth opened and closed with such regularity I thought I might have broken him. Eventually, however, he shook his head.
“Why in the Nine Worlds would you want the Allfather’s eyepatch?”
“Can ye get it, or not?”
“I...maybe.”
“Ah, so ye have a way to get close to him that he doesn’t know about.”
Loki’s expression flipped from perplexed to furious, the flames at his side roaring with such ferocity that they caught his rocking chair on fire. Not that he seemed to care; the god of mischief sat amidst the flames like some infernal demon, pinning me with his eyes.
“You...tricked me.”
“And here I thought you’d be impressed.”
“I ought to kill you.”
“But ye won’t,” I replied, sounding more confident than I felt. “Ye need me to do somethin’ ye can’t, and I already know how far you’ll go to keep your children safe.” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder, clearly referencing Fenrir. “Which means right now I’m more valuable to ye alive than dead.”
“Assuming you aren’t the walking dead already,” Loki replied, his eyes dancing. “Whatever you’ve done to get yourself down here is wearing off, you know. I could see it in Valhalla. The dead aren’t supposed to wield such power. Of course, if you’re still here when it does, you won’t ever leave. But I’m sure you knew that already.”
Guess I should’ve read the fine print.
I stored that bit of trivia for later, knowing I’d have plenty of time to worry about the efficacy of Circe’s potion once this conversation was over. Until then, I couldn’t afford to show weakness. Loki’s power, from what I could tell, hinged upon how he could make others feel, or what he could provoke them to do. Having to lift a finger to kill me wasn’t in his nature. If he wanted me dead, he might arrange it, but he’d never pull the trigger.
Which meant—at this moment—I had all the leverage.
“I’ll need an escort to Helheim,” I said, at last. “To keep the beasts from attackin’ me. Send Fenrir with me, and I’ll consider us even.”
“You want Fenrir to keep you safe?” Loki asked, his voice laced with incredulity.
“He’d have to shadow me. I can’t risk his scent gettin’ on me, or I’ll run into the same issue ye did and we’ll both be up the River Styx without a paddle.”
“Do you have any idea what you’re asking? Fenrir is not the sort to take orders. Getting him to keep a low profile requires every ounce of cunning and patience that I have. And I’m his father.”
“That may very well be. But technically I’m not askin’ Fenrir to help me, at all. I’m askin’ a big brother to help save his baby sister. Granted, I may not know a whole lot about how ye Norse bastards do t’ings, but I do know that when a family member is in trouble, sacrifices can, and will, be made. The question is whether Fenrir is prepared to do his part.”
“You were right,” Loki said after a long period of hesitation, during which he rose and paced the room like a convict doing laps in his jail cell.
“Which time?” I asked, flippantly.
“Funny.” Loki cocked his head. “I have to admit, I am impressed.”
“That’s sweet, but don’t get any ideas.” I held up a finger. “I also want ye to promise not to get all backstabby once I leave. I have enough on me plate without addin’ your carcass to it.”
Loki’s eyes narrowed to slits, but he didn’t argue.
“Very well, you have a deal.”
29
I left at a trot, headed in the direction Loki had indicated as we emerged from the cave, confident of the arrangement we’d come to. The god of mischief had already gone and spoken to Fenrir. I, naturally, had opted to stay inside and hang out with the remains rather than join them. I spotted the jötunn wolf some fifty yards to my left as I took off, his bestial frame rising above the nearest trees, his breath steaming into the air as if from the mouth of a chimney, his muzzle slathered with gobs of drool. To me, he looked both pissed off and...hungry. But he hadn’t met me at the cave mouth and gobbled me up like a post-dinner breath mint, so I could only assume Loki had told me the truth when he claimed his son was on board.
Thank Dog.
The instant I hit my stride, the cacophony I’d become accustomed to while in Niflheim resumed as a veritable horde of dread beasts came out to play. I saw the grotesque snake with its chittering legs weaving across the ground, the misshapen birds circling high overhead, a bear with porcupine quills protruding from its back, and a dozen other shadows lurking in the distance. Of course, if I could see them, that meant so could Fenrir.
Soon, the sounds of torn flesh and splintered bone were all that followed me; even the birds fled lest Fenrir leap into the sky and drag them down by their tail feathers. I had to admit there was something reassuring about having a guardian hellhound at my back, even if he was a crazed monster destined to kick off the end of days. Of course, it was also possible I was feeling nostalgic; for a good while there, I’d had Cathal at my side for moments like these. Of course, he’d have been bitching about how much we humans sucked or how shitty the dread beasts tasted.
I found myself grinning as I finally reached the path that led to Helheim, charmed by the conjurings of my imagination. But my smile only grew wider once I spotted the fuzzy outline of Helheim’s walls and realized this leg of the journey, at least, was nearly over.
Not that I was getting cocky, of course.
I still had no idea how I was going to defeat Frankenstein, especially if Ryan was standing between us. My strategy—though far less comprehensive than I’d have liked—had always been to separate the two at first opportunity. To divide and conquer. The way I figured it, once I got him outside the mad doctor’s influence, my odds of knocking some sense into my old friend went way up. Maybe then I could make him see that what he was doing—what he’d done—wasn’t really him. Then we could take on Frankenstein as a team, find Max, briefly confront the Temples, and get the hell out of Hell before Circe’s potion wore off—assuming Loki hadn’t lied about that.
Unfortunately, that was beginning to feel like an overly simplistic, highly idealized approach. What if Frankenstein’s hold was too strong and Ryan didn’t want to leave the dark side? Worse, what happened if I never got a chance to talk some sense into him, at all? Having seen Ryan’s power firsthand in the Titan Realm, I doubted my armor would be enough to save me. Unless my inner goddess took the reins, Ryan could turn me into a popsicle and keep me around as a decorative ice sculpture for all eternity if he felt so inclined. Indeed, for some reason, all I could picture was Darth Vader beheading Luke before he could spout his do-gooder rhetoric.
Bye bye, Skywalker dynasty.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t worry about any of that, yet. First, I had to sneak into Helheim. Which—I found out very quickly as I closed in on Hel’s realm—came with its own less-than-ideal challenges.
Like getting past Fenrir�
�s meathead stunt double.
I froze on the path, staring past the black river surrounding Helheim’s towering stone walls—the sound of its gurgle eerily like the murmurings of a deranged maniac. Past the narrow bridge that rose over said river to end at the foot of Helheim’s gates. Past the gates themselves, to look with awe upon the beast which lay between them, a hound unlike any I’d seen before. With russet fur so short he appeared nearly hairless and more muscles than should have been anatomically possible, Garmr would have looked like a pitbull on steroids without being as big as a house. As it was, I suddenly understood Loki’s unwillingness to risk sneaking past, even for his daughter’s sake.
Too bad that’s exactly what I’d come here to do.
I slid my helm from my hip and dismissed the illusion covering my armor in one smooth motion, donning the beaked headpiece with a murmured prayer to whoever might be listening—even if that was Loki. For simplicity’s sake, I kept my message both ambiguous and direct.
To whomever god it may concern.
Please let this work.
Despite knowing it made no difference, I stepped onto the bridge thinking Valkyrie thoughts as hard as I could. I told myself I was there on business, even concocted some ridiculous backstory in case I ended up stopped and questioned—just an innocent Valkyrie stopping in for the bimillennial inspection, nothing to see here, folks. Of course, the instant I realized Garmr’s fur was actually khaki-colored, and that what I’d mistaken for a russet coat was in fact dried blood, all rational thought went out the window.
“Please, please let this work,” I muttered.
Garmr’s ears flicked and his eyes opened. They were tinted a shade of lavender—and would have been gorgeous, really, if they’d belonged to a domesticated pooch as opposed to a monstrous guard dog. He yawned, his pinkish tongue lolling like a rogue wave between canines I couldn’t have comfortably wrapped my arms around. I, meanwhile, kept right on walking, my feet moving inexorably forward despite every instinct in my body screaming for me to turn and run away.
I was halfway along the bridge when Garmr clambered to all fours and poked his head out, thrusting his muzzle between the gates, scenting the wind. His eyes found me a moment later, and that’s when his expression changed; wrinkles curled along the hound’s snout as his hackles rose. He snarled, the sound alone enough to make the stones tremble beneath my feet.
Or maybe that was just my legs giving out.
“Good doggie,” I said, holding up both hands as though I could talk him down.
Garmr lunged forward, snapping his jaws and barking his head off as he thrust the gates open wide with his massive, blocky head. Mercifully, his shoulders met the walls on either side, refusing to budge, otherwise the hound would have rushed out onto the bridge and rent me to pieces—assuming he didn’t swallow me whole.
I cursed, pissed to learn that neither Freya’s blessing nor my Valkyrie armor had really paid off down the stretch; I might just as well have rubbed grease all over my naked body and gone running through Niflheim like a slice of bacon with legs for all the good they’d done me. But complaining wouldn’t help now. What I needed was to find another way in, or to distract the bastard long enough to sneak by without him noticing. I scoured the landscape, studied Helheims’s walls for handholds or holes big enough for me to slip through, but saw nothing I could use.
Fortunately, I wouldn’t have to.
Fenrir, my deadly shadow and willing accomplice, appeared along the furthest bend of Helheim’s walls, his hulking body suddenly at least as large as Garmr’s as he emerged like a shaggy mountain from a distant tree line—maybe even bigger if you took into consideration all that fur. As I watched, Loki’s son plopped his monstrous ass down, raised his muzzle to the sky, and howled, hurling his challenge to the heavens.
And it worked.
Garmr’s eyes popped open so wide I could see his lavender irises swimming in a sea of white. I, meanwhile, pressed my hands to either side of my helmet, trying to block out the primal howl before it made my ears bleed. Then, before you could so much as spell “t-r-e-a-t,” the hound backpedaled and shot off towards the sound of Fenrir’s cry, barking his godsdamned head off.
Realizing it was now or never, I waved in gratitude to the jötunn wolf and sprinted for the gates, which had already begun to swing closed on their hinges without Garmr’s thick neck to stop them. Every breath came fast and hard as I raced forward, the sound of my boots on the cobblestones like shotgun blasts in my oversensitized ears. Realizing I wasn’t going to make it, I leapt, diving for that slim divide…and crashed into Helheim, forced to pull my legs in before the gates could slam shut and cut me in two. I thrust a fist in the air, panting, and sent out a thank you prayer.
So, I had officially broken into Helheim.
Now the question was, would I ever make it out?
30
Helheim was not at all how I’d pictured it. In my mind, I’d anticipated an icy wasteland full of wandering souls dragging their feet in the snow, their faces locked in expressions of numb horror as they waited for eternity to end. The reality was somehow both better, and worse. Instead of a frozen tundra full of restless spirits, I found a city seething with life, its denizens milling about the streets in their thousands as though they all had places to be and people to see.
Except no one spoke.
Indeed, the only sound came from the tolling of bells that hung like streetlights from a series of stone arches that led towards the city’s epicenter. And it was there—in the space dominated by a single dark tower looming over the city in the shape of a twisted tree, its limbs protruding like jutting parapets upon which knelt dozens of pious souls—that I knew I must go. It wasn’t merely the faint miasma of evil I sensed lurking about the place, but the way the spirits below averted their eyes, refusing to look up at the Helspire for fear that they, too, would be called forth to worship whoever or whatever lay inside.
A chill wind blew past, fluttering hair and fur alike as I waded among the silent phantoms, their flesh not unlike mine—if a bit paler, which was remarkable in and of itself. It was their movements, however, which gave them away; they shuffled about like automatons, miming actions that made no sense. I watched a mother rock a nonexistent child as she crossed the street, a man with no axe strike an invisible tree, and dozens of other behaviors I couldn’t account for. It was like these souls had been displaced, removed from the everyday toil of their afterlives.
I grabbed at the arm of the nearest woman, an elderly lady wrapped in a thick, woolen shawl, hoping to ask if she knew what was going on here. But the second I touched her, I felt my hand go numb, then my wrist, then my forearm. I jerked back with a hiss, flinging my arm about to get the blood back into it. The old woman stopped, tilted her head, and stared up at me with rheumy eyes.
“Sten, is that you?”
Her voice was a gravelly whisper.
“No, me name is Quinn, I—”
“Do not dally with that girl, Sten. Her brother will kill you in your sleep, and you will never reach Valhalla.” She reached for me, her fingers splayed like claws. “Do not make the mistake your grandfather did, or you will end up old and alone. Sail east with your cousins. See the world, Sten, or—”
I turned to avoid her touch and bumped into another spirit, a man with a limp this time. Despite my armor, my shoulder went instantly numb, and I was forced to dance away from both specters.
“I should have joined the shield wall!” The man spoke with more passion than his ruddy face would have suggested as he turned to me. “Why did I run? I should have fought, and maybe the arrow would never have taken me in the knee and Erik wouldn’t have slept with my wife...”
More voices began chiming in as I whirled, angling to avoid the meandering spirits before any could brush up against me. The lost souls, seeming to sense my presence, called out to me like dementia patients at a nursery home, declaring their regrets, citing their failures, and lamenting their cowardice. Was it because I w
as likely the first warm body they’d encountered in centuries, or maybe some side effect of being a Valkyrie? Or was this Frankenstein’s handiwork? I couldn’t be sure, but the effect was alarming. Soon, everywhere I went I was followed by reaching hands and pitiable faces, by tales of woe and loss that made Schindler’s List seem like The Sound of Music.
Mercifully, once I cleared the third archway and its tolling bell, the spirits began to thin out, almost as though they were avoiding the base of the Helspire, leaving me to walk the last hundred feet or so in relative silence. Surprisingly, there didn’t appear to be any guards stationed outside, nor any other forms of security as far as I could see. Perhaps Garmr was considered deterrent enough, I thought. Or perhaps there was simply nothing to fear from spirits like these. Either way, I was glad; the less they suspected an intruder, the easier it would be for me to slip in undetected.
And yet, as I closed in on the tower, I found myself dragging my feet, blissfully unaware of the chill that had nipped at me only moments earlier. I sighed as warmth flooded my chest, then yawned with exhaustion I hadn’t realized I’d been staving off. My thoughts became sluggish, then plodding. What was I doing here? Why was I walking when I could be lying down?
Why bother doing anything?
I felt a burning sensation in the center of my breast and looked down to find a sigil shining beneath my chainmail, its white-hot light bringing tears to my eyes. The discomfort brought me back to my senses, and I frowned to realize I’d hesitated a mere foot away from the base of the Helspire, my hand inches from the open doorway. The rune on my chest faded to a dull glow but didn’t dim entirely. I pressed a gauntleted hand to it and made a closed fist, extremely grateful for the assist.
Dagaz.
Hope.
I supposed I could do a lot worse than to have a little of that on my side.
31
For as dark as the Helspire was on the outside, it was equally light on the inside. Diamond and quartz spanned the walls of winding corridors, while the floors seemed made of glass and cast long reflections in either direction depending on the location of the nearest brazier. As far as I could tell, there were no stairs, and every hallway led to the top; my calves ached from the steady incline. The hallways were also completely deserted, which gave the eeriest impression of walking alone through some sort of living dreamscape—like those surreal scenes set in a room full of funhouse mirrors that no one actually finds fun anymore.
Brimstone Kiss: Phantom Queen Book 10 - A Temple Verse Series (The Phantom Queen Diaries) Page 15
