by Kevin Hearne
“No more than Mr. Benally here is a benevolent entrepreneur,” I said.
Frank chuckled as Coyote told me under his breath to shut up. That meant Frank must not know Coyote’s true nature—but he probably knew Coyote wasn’t normal either. “So what the hell is that out there?” the hataałii asked, pointing with a brief jut of his chin instead of his hand.
“I don’t know what it is. But it’s time I found out.”
The figure approaching on foot from the north looked like the widow MacDonagh, but I knew it wasn’t really her. I sprinted downhill to get my sword.
Chapter 5
After my return from Asgard, Oberon told me that the widow had died. Poor Mrs. MacDonagh had been fighting a long list of ailments before I left, and she succumbed to them during my absence, passing on in her sleep. But then Oberon told me that she rose from the dead, behaved strangely, never spoke and never ate. And she never had a single sip of whiskey. I knew at that instant she’d been possessed—though by whom or what, I wasn’t exactly sure. All I knew was that whoever had taken possession was waiting for me to come back and get my dog. It could have been the Hindu witch, Laksha Kulasekaran; she had the ability to do something like that. But I doubted Laksha would break her word to me so offensively and invite my displeasure, and the timing suggested to me that it was someone (or something) else more dangerous. And, on top of that, Jesus had told me during our conversation in Rúla Búla that my activities in Asgard would attract unwanted attention.
I retrieved Moralltach from Granuaile’s car, unsheathed it, and strode forward to meet the erstwhile Mrs. MacDonagh. Oberon, Granuaile, Coyote, and Frank Chischilly followed at what I hoped was a safe distance. Turning on my faerie specs, I saw that the widow no longer carried a human aura about her. There was a fairly humanoid shape to what I saw, but it bloated and pulsed and changed constantly, like one of those fractal screen savers, and it was rife with the white noise of magical power. Whatever possessed her was powerful; I strongly suspected it was a god.
What was left of the widow looked much the worse for wear. Her floral cotton dress was stained and unraveling at the hem. The light in her eyes was gone, and her face hung slack until I stopped ten yards away and lifted my sword.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
The stricken face stretched itself in a grisly imitation of a smile. The lips didn’t precisely fit properly around the skull anymore, and I saw more tissue than I should have. It didn’t reply in English; instead it spoke in Old Norse, and my worst fears were realized.
“I do not speak that tongue,” it said. The voice was not the kind lilt of Katie MacDonagh but rather a wheezing rasp of malevolence, as if someone had taken a fistful of sandpaper to her vocal cords. “If you are the hound’s owner, then I’m sure you understand me. Do you speak Old Norse?”
I nodded and replied in that language, which meant everyone else was out of the conversation. “Who are you?” I asked again. It couldn’t be an omniscient sort, or it wouldn’t have had to track me here using Oberon. That ruled out Odin, but it left almost everyone else as a possibility.
The creature in the widow’s body chuckled, or rather made a sound like ice cracking in the spring, while the body shook with merriment.
“Come, now. I rule the old and infirm, the diseased and palsied, all the slain unchosen by the Valkyries, all whom Freyja abandons outside her hall at Fólkvangr. This form I take is no disguise. Surely you can guess.”
With no little effort, I stifled a shudder. “Hel,” I breathed. The daughter of Loki, ruler of the dead in Niflheim.
The horrible smile yawned again. “Yessss.”
“Why are you in Midgard?”
“I am here because of you … What shall I call you?”
“You can call me … Roy.”
“That is not your true name.”
“Let it suffice for now. What happened to the widow?”
“The woman who wore this skin? She passed on to the Christian lands as she wished. Her soul was not mine to take, only the body.”
“The body isn’t yours to take either. It’s offensive that you should wear it. Release it and then we will talk.”
“Nonsense,” Hel replied. “I cannot walk around in my true form. People never wish to talk to me that way. They scream or gibber or vomit but never talk. However offensive you find me in this old woman’s skin, we can at least converse without you losing your sanity.”
I didn’t insist she drop the widow’s body now, because she might not be exaggerating. But neither did I like to think she would hold on to it. The widow’s family deserved some closure.
“We will talk, then. But you will return this body to the place you found it out of respect for the dead.”
The ice-crackle laugh returned. “What use could the dead possibly have for your respect? Perhaps I will grant you the favor, though. I suppose I could do it by way of thanking you for this sojourn through Midgard.”
“I had nothing to do with it.”
“Are you not he who slew the Norns and crippled Odin?”
“Yes.”
“It was they who kept me trapped in Niflheim. Now I may visit any plane connected to the World Tree, and I have you to thank for it.”
I lowered Moralltach slowly. She didn’t seem intent on attacking me quite yet. “You’ve come all this way just to thank me?”
“No. I’ve come because I’m curious. You wiped out the Norns and many of the Æsir, but I don’t know why. Did you hate them?”
“No. I was led into Asgard through a chain of obligations, and once it became a kill-or-be-killed situation, I survived. That is all.”
“That is all?” Hel looked bemused. “No vendettas? No quest for power or riches?”
“Not for me, no.” The vendetta had been Leif’s. And Gunnar Magnusson’s, but he’d paid for it with his life. As for riches, we couldn’t have cared less. We left Thor’s hammer and belt behind—they were Leif’s to claim, if anyone’s. No telling who had them now. I had taken Odin’s spear, Gungnir, by right of conquest, but it wasn’t as if I was going to sell it on eBay.
“You seek no seat in Asgard, no reward from Niflheim?”
“No. As I said, I was drawn into the conflict but did not seek it out.”
“Yet you have made it easier for me to achieve my goal,” Hel said.
“What would that be?”
“Ragnarok, of course! Now that the Norns are dead, along with Thor and Heimdall and others, true victory is possible for the sons and daughters of Loki. I can start my preparations in earnest. Who is left to oppose us? Midgard and the other planes will be remade as my father sees fit. I tend to think he will burn it all and start over. It is time to marshal my forces, and so I wonder: Would you like to join us? Do you want to be there, at that new beginning?”
I took a step backward as if she’d pushed me, because the question was that repulsive to me. I struggled to keep my face bland and seem thoughtful when I wanted to grimace in disgust, because offending a goddess of the dead is neither wise nor polite. Best to let her down easy. I cleared my throat. “A new beginning,” I said, nodding a bit as if the idea had appeal. “I’ve thought of it sometimes. I’ve wondered what it would be like if the people who abused the earth for personal gain were gone.” That was as far as I could go, and I waved such thoughts away. “But these are idle speculations, the basest form of wishful thinking. I cannot judge who deserves death. And there can be no new beginning without destroying much that is beautiful and innocent and worthy of praise. I cannot be a part of such destruction.”
The poor widow’s face fell slack, and Hel’s next words were frosty. “You will oppose us, then?”
“If you give me cause.”
Hel brought her hand—or, rather, the widow’s hand—up to the left side of her rib cage. It sank a bit into the fabric of her dress and clutched at something there, and then she gracefully drew out a large knife etched with runes. There was no scabbard that I could see; she had pulled
it straight from her substance somehow. I raised Moralltach to guard myself and heard a collective intake of breath from the spectators behind me.
Hel laughed at our reaction. “Your Fae sword has a name, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. Moralltach.”
“This is Famine,” Hel said, pointing it at me. “Perhaps no match for a sword. You are the better warrior, I am sure, in any case. I’m not famous for my dueling skills. But this knife will be the death of you, regardless.” It began to twitch in her hand. “You see? It is drinking in your scent. The next creature it wounds will hunger for your flesh, and no other food will satisfy it.”
Perhaps she expected me to quail in fear or beg her for mercy at this point. She seemed to anticipate some sort of reaction, so I remained still and alert for any attack, saying nothing. The daughter of Loki tilted her head quizzically.
“Do you doubt that I know of a creature to whom your sword means nothing?”
I shrugged.
Hel hissed in frustration. “So be it. Roy.” The knife stopped twitching and she sank the “happy dagger” into its sheath—namely, her abdomen. Showing no ill effects from this, she turned and loped away to the north, in an extremely awkward and unsightly gait but at a surprisingly fast clip the widow never could have managed.
Not really. I’m in trouble.
Right. She’s running to find someone to kill me.
I suppose I should.
“Sensei? What happened?” Granuaile asked. I didn’t have time to explain if I wanted to catch Hel. Gods Below, listen to me—why would I want to catch Hel?
I gave chase anyway, eliciting cries of dismay from those behind me, who had no idea what was going on. I heard them pursue me, even as I pursued a wee Irish widow across the Colorado Plateau. I steeled myself to remember that the sweet little old lady was a malevolent goddess who didn’t belong on this plane of existence. And no matter how I wished it were otherwise, that goddess was skittering around here because of me.
I’d been warned that my actions in Asgard would have dire consequences. The Morrigan told me they would, and so did Jesus—but he’d also said that only I could prevent the worst cataclysms from happening. Those cataclysms, I saw now, had to be the coming of Ragnarok; my actions had made the Norse apocalypse more likely rather than less. The forces that were supposed to stymie the onset of Ragnarok were either dead or crippled, thanks to me—and now there was no one around to deal with Hel on earth save myself.
On top of that, there was that prophecy of the sirens of Odysseus: If I was interpreting events correctly, they had foretold that the world would burn thirteen years from now. Perhaps their prophecy coincided with the advent of Ragnarok? The sons of Muspellheim were supposed to set the world on fire, according to the old tales. Would Hel have her forces marshaled by then? Would it even take her that long? Regardless, I felt I had to stop Hel, if for no other reason than that she’d personally threatened me. I needed that knife—and I wanted the widow’s body back. It hurt to see her used as an avatar of death.
Drawing some power from the earth, I increased my speed and began to gain on her quickly. Hel heard me drawing closer and cast a glance over her shoulder. Seeing me there, she abruptly stopped, and the little-old-lady façade sloughed away like a summer dress around her ankles. I slammed on my brakes hard as a twelve-foot-tall horror erupted from the top of the widow’s head and roared at me. It could be nothing but Hel’s true form, and she was half hot, half rot. Her right side was lithe and supple and built to cause major traffic accidents on the Pacific Coast Highway, with a full half head of lustrous hair, an attractive eye, and other goodies. If I were a giant and looking to date half a woman, I’d ask her out. But her left side—split right down the middle, mind—was like a particularly purulent zombie corpse, with bones and muscle fibers showing and some writhing-maggot action. She was the embodiment of the old saw that beauty is only skin deep. I spied the scabbard for Famine lodged between her lowest ribs, the handle sticking out into the air. If the hot side smelled like coffee and cinnamon rolls, it didn’t get through the stench of putrefying flesh the rot side was throwing down. I took a breath to exclaim something profound like “Whoa, shit!” but the smell triggered my gag reflex and I staggered away from her, retching. Behind me, I heard similar startled cries choked off by heaves and juicy splashes of vomit spilling on the ground. Hel lurched a couple of steps my way and made as if to pull Famine out of its sheath, but when I raised Moralltach defensively, demonstrating that her smell hadn’t completely overwhelmed me, she thought better of it. She blasted me again with an unholy Balrog belch, then she shrank back into the widow’s skin, which resealed itself at the top of the head, and resumed her macabre flight north.
I was tempted to let her go, but then I reminded myself of the stakes.
In order to save the world, I would simply hold my breath next time I got close.
Hel lengthened her stride until she seemed to be executing a never-ending triple jump instead of running. I began to close the distance, with Colorado’s energy providing the assist. When Hel spied me behind her for the second time, she didn’t erupt again from the widow’s head in an attempt to intimidate me. Instead, she stopped, turned, lifted her dead left hand toward me, and said with an unfocused gaze, “Draugar.”
That word brought me up short. It was the plural form of draugr, and those weren’t the sort of creatures you wanted two or more of. Even the singular would ruin most anyone’s day. I waited a moment for something heinous to appear. Nothing did. The unholy grin split the widow’s face one last time, and as Hel cackled at me I heard an alarmed squeal from the rear. It was Granuaile.
I stole a glance back and saw three corpses with dark blue skin between me and my friends, advancing toward them with a fair bit of menace—the corpses’outstretched arms weren’t pleading for hugs. Apparently Hel could summon draugar at will. Already large and overmuscled for corpses, they were growing, their arms swelling like Peeps in the microwave. I didn’t want to turn my back on Hel, but I didn’t see what choice I had. My dog and my apprentice—not to mention Frank and maybe Coyote—were in danger.
But Hel didn’t want to jump on my back. She just wanted me off hers. She turned and ran again to the north, leaving me to fend off three insanely strong zombies—not the George Romero kind that hungered for braaaains, but juiced-up Norse ones capable of magic in some tales. Oberon was barking, his hackles raised as the draugar approached them.
Don’t bother barking. They can’t feel fear. Harry them from behind or the flanks. See if you can knock them down, but don’t let them grab you, I told Oberon as I sprinted to help.
Why don’t high school math teachers ever come up with cool problems like this? If a 150-pound Irish wolfhound launches himself at seventeen miles per hour at a 250-pound draugr, will that dead motherfucker go down? The answer is Hel yes. Oberon actually scored a twofer, because the draugr he rode down to the ground clipped the knee of a second blue boogeyman. My hound nimbly leapt away from the clumsy attempt to grab him and circled back around to place himself between the draugar and Granuaile.
“Run!” I shouted at her, now that I was in range. “Just go!” Without any weapons or training, Granuaile wouldn’t stand a chance against these lads, and thankfully she obeyed. The advice should have held true for Frank Chischilly. He wasn’t a young man, and he was breathing hard already from trying to keep up with us this far. Coyote was urging him to bail. But he had pulled out a wee jish from his back pocket, and he was untying the rawhide knots as he backpedaled away from the third draugr. Coyote
looked like he was trying to convince Frank to stop, but I couldn’t tell what was being said, because they spoke in Navajo. The last thing I saw was that Frank had worked the knots loose and dumped the contents of the jish on his head. Said contents appeared to be nothing more than various colors of herbs and pollen and sand.
Then I had to concentrate my attention on the first two draugar that Oberon had knocked down. After a few moments of disorientation, they did not lumber to their feet so much as dissolve into mist and re-form again—except that when they re-formed, they were standing up instead of lying prone. I was still behind them and gaining fast.
Let’s see if they can go all misty on a sword blade, I said. Iron hurt them but wasn’t always fatal, from what I’d heard. This was the first time I’d ever run into draugar. Though I’m sure Hel had other forces at her command, draugar would be the bulk of her army. They wore heavy helmets with chain ventails to protect their necks; it was low-cost stuff but enough to prevent easy decapitation. Otherwise they wore nothing but the ragged remnants of tunics and breeches that they had died in long ago. White bone shone through here and there where the blue necrotized flesh had torn or rotted away.
I came in from behind and hacked at the arm of the draugr on the right, expecting the blade to shear through fairly easily, but it sank into flesh and bone and got stuck as if it was lodged in soft wood. Caught by surprise, the draugr jerked away, and suddenly I was disarmed, Moralltach dangling impotently from the arm of this corpse. The Fae magic began to work, the blue flesh turning black, but it only made the creature shudder. Its flesh was already necrotic, the creature already dead, so the enchantment was unable to kill it again.
“I miss Fragarach,” I said, as both draugar turned to face me. Empty eye sockets and gaping skeletal smiles grimaced at me as they lurched forward. The one I’d hacked at made no effort to wrench the sword out of its arm. The arm was swelling, sealing the blade in if anything.
