Chapter 27
Wind whipped through the dead pines around them, yet the mist at Linnea's knees clung there, unnervingly still and keeping the path obscured.
That's not creepy at all. To keep her mind off it, she focused on the back of Fenris's coat in front of her and stayed within arm's reach of him. As long as she kept him in sight, she would be okay.
Linnea didn't look at the shapes moving through the trees for a moment.
Nope. Nothing to see there. Definitely not pale, person shapes standing in the corners of her eyes.
They never came closer but kept them surrounded at all times. The base of Linnea's skull crawled every time she caught a flicker of movement, and there was more dead magic in the fog than she had ever stood among in Midgard.
Don't like it, her wolf muttered, hackles bristling.
Me neither. Fenris is Hel's brother. She will make sure he and his friends are okay.
You hope.
Fenris led them through the weird forest, never slowing or looking to the side. Tor, Arne, and Von held the rear, quiet and alert. Von wasn't talking, which was the biggest red flag of them all. He only ever did that when he was really concerned or hyper-focused on something.
Ciara kept one hand loose near a blade. Layla had her bow off her shoulder. Linnea walked among the women, a defensive galdr half-formed behind her teeth.
Time didn't seem to exist, and it was only the slow thinning of the trees and growing of a milky light that told Linnea they were reaching the end of the forest.
"Now this looks like my kind of vacation spot," Von declared moments later, and Linnea saw a long Viking hall built into the side of the hill. She could have sworn it hadn’t been there a second ago.
The whole front face of the black and silver hall was carved end to end with knotwork, serpents, and running wolves. Smoke curled from a hole in the roof, and it was the only normal-looking thing in the whole frozen country. Linnea was torn between wanting to sprint toward it and back away.
Fenris smiled at their solemn faces. "It's intimidating on purpose, but my sister will be happy to see us."
"If she's not, I'll kick your ass," Linnea replied, and his grin only widened like he would enjoy watching her try.
The great doors swung open before they reached the steps. Linnea's heart climbed into her throat, and Ciara's blade came an inch out of its sheath.
A woman walked out of the gloom of the hall.
She was tall and wore a black dress with deep red accents at its collar, cuffs, and underskirt.
Her dark hair was braided in a crown around her head, and she had patterns of strange runes tattooed on her hands.
Her face was as beautiful as carved stone with patient, unyielding gray eyes that weighed your soul in a single glance.
Fenris had always seemed powerful but approachable to Linnea. It was easy for her to forget he was a god. Hel had an aura that made sure you never forgot who or what she was.
"You took your fucking time, big brother," Hel said, and her cool face cracked into a massive smile.
She crossed the distance in four strides, planted both hands flat on Fenris's chest, and shoved him hard enough to rock him back a step before she threw her arms around his neck.
"You ass. I thought you were never going to wake up. "
"Me too," Fenris said, laughing as he caught his sister around the waist and lifted her clean off her feet. The goddess of the underworld let him spin her about in a circle, boots swinging, and giggling like a mad thing.
Her eyes found Linnea over the top of Fenris's shoulder, and the grin got wider.
"Oh, brother," Hel said, slow and delighted. "I see you have developed an excellent taste in women."
Heat shot up Linnea's neck. She opened her mouth to deflect, and nothing came out. She didn't know how the goddess knew that she was fooling around with her brother, but Hel was grinning like a damn fiend.
She approves of us. I like her, her wolf said with zero shame about it.
Fenris set Hel back on her feet, his ears red. "Behave yourself, little sister."
"Never. Forgive my brother's bad manners. He's been asleep a while and has forgotten how to make introductions." She turned and looked the rest of them over, head to boots, the way a butcher considers a good delivery. "You all look so nervous. Is it the dead people?"
She tipped her head at the silent shapes, which had stopped at the edge of the forest. "Don't mind them. They're curious, that's all. We so rarely get visitors with a pulse."
"There's, um…" Layla's voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. "There are a lot of them."
"There's a lot of everyone, eventually." Hel smiled.
Von made a strangled sound of pure joy, unable to contain it. "This is surreal."
Tor, eyes locked on Hel as if she might lunge, said what they were all thinking. "The stories say you're half dead and that you rule down here because you're, ah...half rotted."
"Tor!" Ciara and Layla hissed at the same time.
"Oh, I suppose this is what you were expecting.
Well, I might as well show you." Hel's smile fell, and the flesh began to slide off the left side of her face.
The skin of her cheek grayed, split, and peeled back off the bone in wet gray ribbons and splattered on the ground, until half of her beautiful face was a grinning skull with a lidless eye rolling in the socket.
Layla screamed, clutching onto Arne. Ciara's blade came all the way out as Tor threw himself in front of her.
Hel doubled over, her skull face laughing in wet and delighted uproar. The flesh came flooding back up over the bone as she wheezed, cheek and lip and lidded eye knitting themselves back around a grin so wide it looked painful.
"If only you could see your faces!" she gasped, gripping Fenris's arm to stay upright. "It never gets old."
"You absolute monster," Von breathed. "I think I just fell in love you."
"Humans! Still repeating that half-dead nonsense as if you've never met a metaphor in your lives.
" Hel straightened and smoothed the front of her dress.
"I'm not half a corpse, you sweet, literal-minded creatures.
I'm a necromancer. The dead are my beloveds, and when I call, they come, and not because I keep one foot in the dirt for show.
" She made a very unladylike snort. "Half living, half dead.
It's bad poetry. Skalds! What can you do? "
"That was the single most upsetting thing I have ever seen," Layla said, an excited laugh escaping her. "That's it. We're keeping her."
"You can't keep me. I have a realm and the forgotten dead to care for." Hel's grin sharpened to a point. "Some seem to be more restless than others today."
Suddenly, the earth split beside them, and a hand shot out, spraying dirt. Linnea clambered up Fenris's back with a yelp. "What the fuck!"
The earth beside them heaved again as a second hand, all bone and flaking mail, clawed its way through the frost-rimed soil.
It was followed by a helmet, rusted to the color of old blood, with a skull tilting inside its cavernous dark.
The thing wrenched itself free with a sound of grinding stone and the shriek of corroded metal.
Linnea's fingers dug into Fenris's shoulders as a low growl vibrated through his chest. Ice and clods of grave-dirt slid from a cage of bone as the creature stood, towering a full head over Tor.
Its jaw, webbed with sinew, cranked open.
A double-headed axe was locked in one gauntlet, fused by a century of rust and grave dirt.
"Oh, for crying out loud, this guy," Hel sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Knut! We have guests. Must you be so dramatic every time?"
The skeleton threw its head back, and a dry, rattling roar echoed from its empty chest. The rusted axe swung high, carving a deadly arc against the pale sky.
"Kill it! Kill it!" Von shrieked, pulling Arne in front of him as a human shield.
"Stand down, Knut!" Hel commanded the warrior. "They're not enemies. It's just my brother and his companions."
The skeleton grumbled in old Norse as it lowered the axe, turned on its heel like a soldier dismissed, and walked back into the hole it had crawled from. The ground sealed over it and went smooth and frozen again, as if nothing had ever broken it.
"It's okay. He's just a curious one." Hel started laughing at them again. "You're all scared? Priceless. I could do this all night."
"Please don't," Ciara begged. "I think I just peed a little."
"Sorry. The living are too gullible not to fuck with," Hel replied with a wink.
"You've had your fun, little sister, and we have things to discuss. It's okay, Linnea. She will keep the skeletons in the ground," Fenris said and patted the legs that were still wrapped around his waist. Linnea forced her limbs to unlock and slid off his back, face burning.
"If something comes to eat me, you'd better fight it," she whispered to him.
Fenris raised a brow and whispered back. "What if it's me?"
"Oh…you…" Linnea stammered. "This is not the time for flirting."
"Sure it is," he replied.
Hel was chatting happily with the others as they finally introduced themselves.
She lifted Ciara's blade out of her hand before Ciara could stop her, turned it to the light, and made an appreciative noise at the runes cut into it.
"Oh, this is a nasty piece of work. Whoever forged this is a pure master.
How many souls have you created with it? "
"It's fae-made. The body count is fifty-six and change," Ciara said with a smile. "I've been busy recently."
"A woman after my own heart." Hel passed it back hilt-first and moved on to Von. Her eyes lit up. "What are you? You smell like a shaman, but not a boring one. You learned magic a different way."
"Call me anything you like, my lady, but never boring," Von replied with a slight bow. "May I compliment you on your grand entrance? I swear I don't know whether to be horny or terrified right now."
"If you enjoyed that, I can't wait until you meet Dad. You're so cute!" She squished his cheeks between her tattooed hands. "A fascinating creature. I'm going to enjoy your company enormously. I just know it."
She poked Tor once in the center of his chest, hard, before she leaned past him to waggle her brows at Ciara. "This one's yours? Big. Solid. Good bones. Nice one."
"I thought so too," Ciara said with a laugh.
"Hey, don't objectify me," Tor told his mate.
"Why not? You're very pretty," Hel said, already moving to Arne. "Ohhh, a prince!"
She took his hand in both of hers, bent over it, and pressed a dramatic kiss to his knuckles like he was a blushing maiden at a feast. Arne, confused and flattered, inclined his head and said, "My lady, it is an honor to be a visitor in your lands."
"He's polite, unlike you, Fen," Hel declared gleefully. She pinched Lalya's cheek. "And he has a pretty mate to keep him in line. Wherever did you dig these specimens up?"
"They found me," Fenris replied, his eyes on Linnea, full of so much affection that she wanted to pull her sweater up over her goofy, smiling face.
"Aww." Hel's smile softened for half a beat before she buried it and clapped her hands. "Inside, all of you. Before something worse than Knut decides to come and gnaw on your bones, and I have to explain to Lady Freya why I returned you with bite marks."
She swept one arm at the open doors of her hall and the gold light pouring out of them. "Welcome to éljúenir. Food and freshly made beds are waiting for you. Everything else can wait until you have eaten because you look like something the draugr dragged in."
"We had to see the Norns before we came here," Fenris said.
"Ah, that explains it," Hel replied with a knowing sigh. "Visiting them always is a drain. Come, we need a drink."
Linnea stepped through the doors, and a deep gold heat rolled through her coat and dried the damp that had settled in her hair.
Long tables were set up in the middle of the hall next to roaring hearth fires.
The smell of roasting meat, bread, and something sweet baking hit her so hard her stomach growled loudly.
Warm, her wolf sighed, every hackle gone. Safe. Pack. Food.
Hel hooked her arm through Fenris's, and he leaned down to talk low and fast with her in the Old Tongue. Whatever she said pulled a laugh out of him again, quieter this time, only for her.
"Tonight you're my guests, and you are safe here," the goddess said over her shoulder to them.
Something ancient and powerful moved through her gaze, making the group stop mid-step.
"Rest up because tomorrow, my little mortals, the real games begin, and believe me, I built every door between here and my father to be a real bitch.
" The smile the goddess gave them was the least reassuring thing Linnea had ever seen.