Thor's Serpents (13 page)

“I don’t want to hurt you, but you can’t stay here,” she called.

It seemed to stare down at her.

“They watched your Aunt Helen the same way,” Baldwin said.

Maybe it would listen to her! She was Loki’s champion. In as stern of a voice as she could muster, Laurie said, “You need to go away. Go home or whatever.”

It didn’t move.

“Do you think it understands you?” Baldwin asked.

“Bow up,” Owen suggested. “It understood that.”

With a reluctant sigh, she did as he suggested.

“Fire,” Owen ordered.

She let a volley of arrows fly.

The Jotunn roared again, and this time it took several steps toward them. It wasn’t a full-out run, but it was charging toward them.

“Run!” Owen yelled.

The three of them ran toward the direction she’d thought the lake was. The Jotunn pursued them, letting out growls and roars as it did.

The angrier it got, the more it sounded like an inferno. There wasn’t a forest nearby, but she could swear she smelled burning wood and heard the crackle of trees falling. She wanted to turn and look, but the heat behind her made it
pretty clear that the Jotunn was closing the distance between them.

If it got too close, it would be a lot more than phantom trees that would be burning.

They ran until they reached Lake Mitchell and skidded to a stop.

“Now what?” Baldwin gasped.

This was the part of the plan they hadn’t thought about: if they got into the water and it followed, they’d boil to death like vegetables in a soup. If they didn’t keep moving, there was no reason for the Jotunn to get into the water.

“Get it in there.” She gestured.

“How?”

“I don’t know!”

They were only moments from being cornered by the tower of fire that they’d angered.

“Tell it to get in the water or something,” Baldwin suggested.

“In the water!” she yelled, pointing at the lake, waving both arms toward it like she could shoo it in.

It didn’t seem to understand or react. It didn’t even look at her.

“I’ll go in,” Baldwin suggested. “It can’t hurt me.”

She hated that idea, but she didn’t have a better one—and it didn’t matter if she did: before she could say anything, Baldwin turned and jumped into the lake.

Quickly she jerked Owen with her and pulled him down behind a shrub.

Baldwin splashed and yelled, “Hey, you with the flames!” He smacked both arms on the water. “You’re not nearly as intimidating as the ones in Hel, you know?”

The Jotunn charged toward the lake, and then all she could see was steam. The air was one giant white cloud as the fire hit water. The hiss was intense, like the largest snake in the world was hiding in that white cloud of steam.

The light of the Jotunn’s fire dimmed.

“Baldwin?” Laurie called. “Are you okay?”

“I’m wet, but fine,” he called back from somewhere she couldn’t see.

“Owen.”

“Soggy, but fine. I wasn’t expecting a steam bath,” Owen said from her side.

“Okay then…” She looked for Baldwin, but she couldn’t see him without the light of the Jotunn—and with the blanket of steam all around them.

Then the steam seemed to start to glow. As she watched, the Jotunn’s fire sparked back to life and the warm orange glow of the creature made everything look eerie.

Uncharacteristically, Owen bit off a curse word.

“What he said,” Baldwin muttered. “I wish Helen were here. They listen to her.”

“That’s it!” Laurie whispered. She raised her voice and called, “Stay back.”

The Jotunn pulled itself out of the lake and moved toward her.

The idea of the towering, flaming Jotunn going through her via the portal was scary, but she had run out of ideas. This was it. She opened the largest portal she ever had, and then she braced herself as the Jotunn charged into it.

The heat from the Jotunn crossing through her portal was intense, but its fire didn’t burn her. It lumbered toward the glittering air in front of her, and in a snap, it started to be sucked through the panel.

“I hope Aunt Helen doesn’t mind surprise visitors,” Laurie muttered as the portal blinked closed.

After the last spark vanished, Laurie dropped to her knees, shaking. She hadn’t been sure whether she’d get burned,
and
she’d never created such a massive portal. The combination of fear and excitement made her unsteady.

She looked up at Baldwin and Owen standing at her side again.

“Are you okay?” Owen asked. His hand came down on her shoulder.

“Not sure yet,” she whispered.

The queasiness from opening several portals one right after the other was back—and this time, it had brought its friends: headache and chills. Her whole body felt
wrong
. It
was like the awful case of the flu she’d had a couple of years ago. Then, she curled up in bed and switched between reading a stack of books, sleeping, and playing video games with Fen, who’d visited as much as her mother allowed him to. Now? None of that was possible. She was kneeling in the street in Mitchell, and the only light around her was from all of the things the Jotunn had set on fire.

“So far, Ragnarök sucks,” she told Owen and Baldwin.

Baldwin nodded. “Died.”

“Lost an eye,” Owen added.

“Lost Fen,” she whispered. She felt guilty. Dying or losing an eye was worse. She knew that, but losing Fen was a lot like she figured it would feel if she lost her arm or her lungs. She needed her cousin more than ever. The world was ending. The sky was black, and the buildings were on fire. She couldn’t fix any of that, but she was going to try to fix the problem of Fen’s loss. Thanks to her encounter with the Jotunn, she even had a plan.

She could open portals.

She could go anywhere.

Laurie wasn’t used to thinking about her gifts for anything other than fighting monsters, rescuing friends, or chasing artifacts, but that wasn’t all they could be used to do.

Resolved, she put her hands on the pavement in front of her and pushed herself to her feet.

“I need a Raider,” she announced. “Catch one.”

“You want us to… catch a wolf?” Owen asked.

“Human. Wolves don’t talk.”

Baldwin started, “Well, they sort of do. It’s not English, but—”

“Human Raider,” Laurie interrupted. She scanned the street. There had been a few Raiders lurking in the dark during the fight with the Jotunn. Surely there was one still around here now.

The street was mostly empty of people. Laurie wasn’t sure if they’d fled this part of town or they were all hiding inside. A towering giant made of fire seemed to clear the area of everyone but the people who weren’t surprised that monsters were real.

“Why do you want to talk to a wolf?” Owen asked from her side.

“Raider,” she corrected. “I want to talk to a Raider.”

Owen put a hand on her forearm. “There is an order to things, Laurie. You and Fenrir are both representatives of Loki. He was a god with two faces, a trickster, too complicated to be contained by only one descendant.”

Laurie spun and faced Owen. She met his calm expression with fury. “You
knew
this?”

“Yes.”

She wished she were the sort to punch people, because right now her temper was boiling up. She folded her arms
and snapped, “So you’re saying I’m Loki’s heroic side, and Fen is the villainous one? Bull!”

“He’s not like y—”

“Shut it, Owen.” Laurie shuddered at the temper that filled her. She
liked
Owen. He was her friend. He was the first boy who had kissed her. He’d taught her how to use the bow now clutched in her hand. None of that changed the fact that he didn’t understand that Fen was necessary to her—or that keeping huge secrets wasn’t cool. Everyone was so focused on the fight, the shield, the hammer, the monsters, the serpent. She was, too, but right now, the lack of Fen in her life was more important than all of that.

“Next time you keep a secret like that, we’ll find out how much of Loki’s bad side I have, too,” she warned Owen. “Fen and I both should’ve been told this as soon as you met us!”

Owen said nothing. He opened his mouth like he was going to speak, but then closed it without uttering a word.

While Laurie and Owen stared at each other, Baldwin had been concentrating on Laurie’s order. With a mighty yell, he went hurtling across the street to the flickering shadows of a building with the front glass windows all smashed out.

Laurie followed him, grabbing Owen’s hand and tugging him with her as she ran. She might be angry with him, but he was still her friend. She squeezed his hand and hoped
he knew that was her way of saying “we’ll be okay.” Even though she was a girl, she was still a Brekke—and not as comfortable with words as with actions.

Inside the wreckage of the shop, they found charred and crushed shoes surrounded by shards of glass from the broken windows. Nothing was currently burning, but the smell of burned leather and plastic made her cough.

Standing in the middle of the destroyed shoe store was Baldwin, who had captured a Raider. The captive boy’s arms were pinned behind his body by Baldwin’s grip, but he still struggled to escape.

“I don’t want to knock you down into all that glass,” Baldwin said as Laurie walked closer. “But I will if I have to, so can you please stop trying to get free?”

Laurie shook her head. No one else could be so nice while they were holding someone prisoner. She lifted her bow and aimed it at the boy’s leg. She wasn’t really going to shoot him, but he didn’t know that. “I need your help.”

“No.” He met her eyes and glared at her. “I’m not a traitor.”

“Good,” she said. “Because I’m not asking you to be a traitor.”

He scowled in confusion, but he stopped trying to squirm out of Baldwin’s grip.

“I need to see my cousin.”

Owen started to ask, “Are you sure that’s a good—”

Laurie cut him off. “I need to see Fen. I need to talk to him.” She stepped a little closer to the Raider. “And you need to take me to him.”

For a moment, no one spoke, but then the Raider nodded once. He told her, “The camp is out toward the Badlands.”

Laurie opened a portal and nodded toward Baldwin. The grinning boy and the captive Raider stepped into the portal, and Laurie looked at Owen briefly. “You stay here, and tell Matt I’ll be back.”

She felt a surge of guilt at the hurt look on his face, but someone needed to tell Matt—and Owen wasn’t a fan of Fen, or her plan, anyhow. Quickly, she added, “Trust me.”

Owen sighed, but he nodded.

And Laurie stepped through the portal to find her missing cousin.

B
y the time Matt and Reyna made their way back to the others, the second Jotunn had been defeated. And according to Owen, Laurie and Baldwin were gone, having opened a portal to Fen.

Would Fen be ready to listen to his cousin and come back? Or would he try to persuade her to stay there? Matt had no doubt Laurie wouldn’t stay, but what if the Raiders took her and Baldwin hostage? Matt had to trust that Laurie knew what she was doing.

“Off to find your uncle,” Reyna said. “Finally. You know where he lives, right?”

“I have an address.”

“But you’ve been there? He’s your uncle, isn’t he? Wait, Jake said something about not having seen him since you were a baby. How come?”

“There’s… a family situation. With my grandfather.”

“Shocking.”

“The address?” Owen cut in.

Matt rattled it off. “I know the general area, too. Jake told me. But I’ve never been there.”

“We’ll find it,” Owen said. “Just point us the right way.”

They passed one smoldering building after another, but things seemed quiet. Everyone must have evacuated the city center. It looked like something out of a postapocalyptic movie. A kid’s lunchbox dropped in the middle of one empty road. A nylon jacket caught on a signpost, flapping in the wind. Dumped trash and recycling bins, spilled contents on fire, tongues of flame licking out. The sizzle and pop of wooden building trim, embers glowing in the near-dark. And smoke. A fog of smoke, settled low but refusing to dissipate, the stink everywhere. Smoke and fire and destruction.

If this looks postapocalyptic, what would it look like post-Ragnarök?

The streets were eerily silent except for the crackle of smoldering wood and the snap of that abandoned jacket. A sudden yowl from up ahead had them all starting. A small
tree smoked on one side, the faint glow of fire darting from a burning patch of dead foliage. The yowl came again. Matt hurried over and peered up the tree to see a calico cat, its green eyes staring down, as if in accusation.

“No,” Reyna said, stopping beside him. “We are not rescuing the cat.”

“But the tree—”

“—is on fire. I see that. Have you ever owned a cat? If they can go up, they can come down. Guaranteed.”

Matt eyed the feline. It eyed him back, then yowled, as if to say
Well, hurry it up.

“It might be too scared to come down,” he said.

“It’s a
cat
,” Reyna said. “They don’t get scared—just annoyed, which I’m going to get if you insist on playing hero and rescuing that faker.” She scowled at the cat. “Yes, I mean you. Faker.”

The cat sniffed, then turned to Matt, clearly sensing the softer touch.

Owen stepped forward. “If you’ll feel better rescuing the cat, Matt, then go ahead. We aren’t on a tight schedule.”

Reyna waved her arms around the smoking street. “Um, Ragnarök?”

“And the longer you two bicker…”

“Fine,” Reyna said. “I’ve got this.” Before Matt could protest, she walked to the base of the tree, grabbed the lowest branch, and swung up. “Rodeo girl, remember? Also, five years of gymnastics, which my mother thought would make me more graceful and feminine. Her mistake.”