The Book of Doom (9 page)

“
HAT’S GOING ON?
What are you doing?” Zac demanded, stepping into the hall.

Only Odin’s eye moved. “Ah, young Zac. You are just in time.”

Zac looked at the axe, then down at the spot in front of the Allfather. Angelo was on his knees, his arms folded up his back by a brawny Viking with a thick black beard.

Tears were trickling down Angelo’s cheeks and dripping on to the cobbled floor. He was muttering incoherently below his breath, his body trembling with fear.

“Just in time for what?” asked Zac, stalling for time.

Odin’s laugh was a boom of delight. “I shall give ye three guesses,” he grinned. “And the first two don’t count.”

“Look, I know he can be irritating,” Zac said. “Really
incredibly
irritating, and I don’t know what he’s done to upset you, but don’t you think beheading him’s a bit... harsh? Can’t we talk about this?”

He flicked his gaze down to Angelo. The boy’s whole body was shaking uncontrollably now. The Viking holding him seemed to struggle for a moment. He grimaced as he forced the arms further up Angelo’s back.

“Do not worry, young Zac,” the Allfather said. “This is Valhalla. No Viking can ever truly die in Valhalla. He’ll be up and about again in no time.”

Zac heard Herya’s voice in his ear once again. “He’s not a Viking.”

“Yes, thank you, I know that,” Zac hissed. He took another step closer to the group. Behind Odin, the rest of the dead Viking horde watched on, barely able to contain their excitement. “He doesn’t belong here, though,” Zac said. “He’s not a Viking. Cut his head off and it won’t grow back. You’ll kill him.”

“Really?” asked Odin. For a moment, he seemed to have second thoughts, then his face lit up in a broad grin. “Ah well, not to worry!”

The Allfather’s muscles twitched and the axe began to swing. With a cry of panic, Angelo twisted and the Viking holding him was pulled into the weapon’s path. The blade cut the unlucky Norseman across the shoulder, splitting him from neck to ribcage.

The Viking looked down at his arm as it hit the flagstone floor with a damp
splat
. A fountain of blood erupted from a vein in his neck. “Oh...
come on
,” he tutted.

“Whoops,” said Odin. “Sorry about that.”

“No, no. My fault, Allfather, my fault,” said the Viking, smiling apologetically. He released what was left of his grip on Angelo and picked up his fallen arm. His blood continued to pump out in a wide arc. “Permission to fall unconscious, sir.”

Odin nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course. Do whatever you must, man.”

“Hail, Odin, most gracious giver of—” the Viking began. And then he blacked out on to the floor.

The Allfather turned to the other Vikings and flashed a
silly me
face. Then his expression darkened and he stabbed a finger towards Angelo. “Hold him!” he bellowed. “He will pay for what I just did to... um... what’s-his-face.”

Angelo twisted on to his back. He kicked out, scuttling across the floor as half a dozen Vikings moved to grab him. “Stop it, stop it,” he wailed. “Leave me alone, you... you...
big bullies
!”

Zac put himself between the boy and the men in the horned helmets. “I can’t let you do that,” he said. “I need him. And his head. Together.”

Odin’s eye widened with surprise. He flipped up his eyepatch, revealing a third one below. The cartoon eye drawn on it shared the surprise of the real one. “You dare defy a god?” he asked.

Zac held his gaze. “
Defy
is such a strong word. It’s just, you know, beheading a guest seems like bad manners.”

“What are you doing?” Herya hissed, but Zac didn’t reply.

Odin gave a curt nod, as if coming to a decision. “Very well,” he said. “You are indeed our honoured guests here in Valhalla. Both of you.”

With two fingers he gestured for more Vikings to step forward. “As such, we will kill you both. Together.”

Despite Zac’s lightning reactions, he couldn’t move quickly enough. Two of the Norsemen caught him by the arms and forced him down on to his knees. He watched helplessly as Odin let the axe clatter to the floor and wrapped his fingers round Angelo’s throat. The god lifted the boy smoothly into the air.

“Allfather, this is wrong!” protested Herya. “Let him go. In the name of Baldr, let them both go.”

“Do not defy me, Valkyrie,” the Allfather warned. “Lest you be punished too.”

There was the sound of applause from high in the rafters. It took a moment for Zac to realise he was listening to the beating of feathery wings. Eight Valkyries – larger and older than Herya – alighted around Odin and the Vikings.

“Herya,” growled the largest Valkyrie. “Know your place!”

“But,
Mother—
”

“Know your place!”

“But this is not right! They’re just travellers. They don’t know the rules.”

The head Valkyrie took two large paces forward. There was a noise, sharp and sudden like the cracking of a whip, as the back of her hand struck Herya’s cheek, sending the girl spinning to the floor.

“Apologies, Allfather,” the Valkyrie said, bowing respectfully. She lifted the squirming Herya with one hand. “My daughter shall be severely reprimanded for her insolence.”

Odin grunted and nodded. Zac struggled against the arms holding him, but he was pinned too tightly. He could only watch as Herya was dragged back up to the ceiling and devoured once more by the shadows.

“Now, where were we?” the Allfather asked. “Oh, yes, I was about to tear your head off.” He chuckled merrily. “Any last words?”

Angelo was fighting for breath, digging his fingers in between his throat and Odin’s hand. His legs kicked uselessly, as if he were riding an invisible bicycle that was going nowhere.

“Well?” Odin demanded. “Anything you would like to say?”

With some effort, Angelo managed a nod. The assembled Vikings leaned in to listen. This was the best entertainment they’d had in centuries, and they didn’t want to miss a moment.

Angelo’s voice was little more than a wheeze. Zac groaned when he heard the boy’s words.

“P-please d-don’t make m-me angry,” he said. “You w-wouldn’t like me when I’m a-angry.”

There was silence for a moment, and then the room was filled with the raucous laughter of a hundred dead Vikings and one Viking god.

“Good one!” cried Odin, when he was finally able to compose himself. He wiped away a tear with the back of his hand, still chuckling. “You are bolder than you look, Umangelo,” he said. A flicker of discomfort crossed his face. “Heavier too,” he said more quietly.

All eyes were on Odin and Angelo now. Zac tried to stand, but the Vikings pushed him back down.

A fit gripped Angelo and his whole body started to shudder and convulse. His arms dropped to his sides, shaking wildly along with the rest of him.

Odin’s arm hadn’t lowered at all, but the tips of Angelo’s toes were now scuffing against the floor. The Allfather’s face was turning red, as if the effort of holding the boy aloft was taking all his strength. The soles of Angelo’s feet touched the ground, although Odin still hadn’t moved a muscle.

That was when Zac realised – he was growing. Angelo was growing. In that moment, something inside Zac’s head went
click
.

Jekyll & Hyde.
A whole shelf full of
Jekyll & Hyde
. Gabriel had said Angelo was only half angel.

But he never said the other half was human.

Zac shuffled a few centimetres backwards on his knees, until he could retreat no further.

One of the Vikings beside Odin pointed at Angelo’s face. He laughed, but the sound was nervous and uncertain. “He’s going an awfully funny colour, Allfather,” he said.

“Is anyone hot in here all of a sudden?” asked another of the Norsemen.

And at that, all Hell broke loose.

NGELO’S FINGERS BALLED
into tight fists, then opened again suddenly. Smoke trailed from his blackened nails.

The T-shirt he was wearing split down the back as the boy’s frame filled out. A jagged row of blood-red spikes tore through his skin along the length of his spine. He hurled back his head and screamed, spewing fire in a mushroom cloud above him.

As one, the Vikings shuffled back. Odin tried to maintain his grip, but Angelo was growing exponentially, and soon his neck was too broad for the Allfather to hold on to.

There was another
rip
as the sleeves of the shirt surrendered to Angelo’s bulging biceps. His toes distended, sprouting curved black claws. The plastic straps of his flip-flops snapped as his feet rapidly outgrew them.

His skin too was changing. It wasn’t just the colour – now a reddish-brown, like dry desert mud – it was the texture too. Rough, coarse scales covered his flesh, like a fish with a bad case of psoriasis.

Odin’s eye swivelled up and down as he examined the creature that now towered above him. “A dragon!” he announced.

“A demon,” Zac corrected. The Vikings holding him had loosened their grip. He pulled free and jumped to his feet, but they were too startled to try to catch him.

At the sound of Zac’s voice, the Angelo-demon whipped round. Fire burned in the hollows of his eyes, and Zac knew in that instant that Angelo wasn’t at home any more.

“A challenge!” Odin bellowed. He stooped to retrieve his axe. “How long have I waited for a moment such as this? I say we battle. What say you, dragon?”

Angelo’s jaws opened, revealing several hundred needle-like teeth. He let out a deep, guttural roar, and a blast of flame hit Odin in the face.

The Allfather blinked. “Right, then,” he mumbled, patting down the embers in his smouldering beard. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

The thing that had been Angelo was still transforming. The spikes down his spine now continued along a twisting tail. It tore through the back of Angelo’s trousers – which miraculously were still more or less in one piece – and flattened into an arrowhead point at the end. The tail gave a faint
boing
as it reached its full impressive length.

Odin, who had mere moments ago seemed enormous, was now dwarfed by the demon. Angelo’s head hung low and his broad, scaly shoulders were stooped, but even hunched over he was at least four metres tall. Taller, if you included the horns jutting up like elephant tusks from the top of his head. His ears were pointed and elf-like. His nose was flat, spread across his face like a clumsy boxer’s.

“Right, then, Dragon!” Odin bellowed. “What say we—?”

The sole of the Angelo-demon’s foot slammed against Odin’s armour. Vikings were scattered like skittles as the flailing form of the Allfather cannoned backwards across the hall. Those still on their feet watched as Odin was driven clean through the wall and into the snowy wilderness beyond.

For a moment, there was no sound, save the falling of plaster and the swirling of wind through the newly formed hole. Then, from somewhere in the crowd, there came a battle cry. It was hesitant and uncertain, but it was a battle cry all the same. Others soon followed.

“Slay the dragon!”

“Cut off its head!”

“Stop talking about it!” roared one of the Norsemen. “And just kill the thing!”

He and some of the Vikings nearer the back of the crowd began to push forward. They shoved with an enthusiasm reserved for those who know full well that there are several dozen other people between them and anything dangerous.

Those Vikings who were unfortunate enough to be near the front were much less gung-ho. They had seen the full horror of the creature, they had felt the searing heat of its breath and they had decided that while they might already be dead, this thing could almost certainly make them deader.

The crowd heaved, half of it pushing forward, the other half pushing back. Those pushing forward had managed to seize the element of surprise, though, and the throngs quickly began to tighten round Angelo.

With an inhuman screech, he swung a scaly arm, batting half a dozen Vikings into the air. Even before they landed, he was sweeping his other arm out in a wide arc. Ten, twenty, thirty Norsemen crunched down across the room.

Those pushing from the back did some quick mental calculations and realised they didn’t have nearly the number of human shields they’d had a moment ago. They hesitated, their swords no longer waving so enthusiastically, their shouting now barely audible over the cries of their kinsmen.

Roaring, Angelo smashed both enormous fists down on to the floor. The ground quaked, yet more Vikings fell, and for the first time since they had been erected, the walls of Valhalla began to tremble.

Over the sounds of the screaming and the roaring, Zac heard another sound. It was a high-pitched whistling, like something slicing through air. He looked up to see one of the shields from the ceiling zipping towards him, and leaped sideways in time to avoid being sliced cleanly in two.

With a metallic
ba-doing
, the shield embedded itself several centimetres into the stone floor. It was a decorative piece, too large for even Odin to wield in battle, and as Zac looked up he thought he saw Herya scuttling away from the space where the shield had been hanging.

Cupping his hands round his mouth, he shouted to the Valkyrie lurking somewhere above. “Oi, watch out! That nearly hit me!”

Another shield began to fall. It flipped over, mid-plunge, and landed face down on the stone right beside Zac. The
clang
rang out like the tolling of a church bell. The echo lapped the hall half a dozen times, before fading away.

“And again!” Zac shouted. “What are you doing? Trying to kill me?”

Zac felt a gust of warm breath breeze over him. Angelo had turned away from the Vikings and now stood glaring down at him, shoulders hunched, fists clenched.

“Oh... hi,” Zac offered as brightly as he could. The fire danced higher in the demon’s hollow eye sockets. It opened its wide jaws, and Zac saw something spark at the back of the cavernous maw.

He swore then, loudly and creatively, but the words were drowned out by the crackling of the flames from Angelo’s throat. Zac dived and tucked himself in behind the upright shield just as the inferno hit. He felt the metal go red-hot; coughed as his lungs filled with the tang of fire and brimstone.

There was a hiss from the floor. Zac looked down to see drops of molten gold pooling together on the cool stone. He looked up. The flames were still licking over the top and round the edges of the shield, melting his defences away.

“Stop!” he wheezed. “Angelo, stop.”

But Angelo was no longer listening, because Angelo was no longer there. Only the demon remained, scaly and sizzling and – Zac hated to use the word –
hulking
.

Gold flowed in rivers round his feet. The shield was little more than a gleaming wafer now. Zac’s time was up.

“
DRAGON!
”

The word raced round Valhalla, deep and booming and oh-so-very angry. With a
whoosh
of inrushing air, the fire stopped.

A moment later, what was left of the shield became a shimmering sludge on the floor, and Zac saw a demon turn to face a god.

Odin was standing at the far end of the long wooden table, axe in hand, several centimetres of snow piled up on top of his helmet. His white beard was dark with soot, but his expression was darker still. He flipped up the patch with the surprised eye drawn on, revealing a fourth and final patch beneath. The eye drawn on this one scowled furiously, with flecks of red painted at the centre of the pupil.

With one hand he swung the axe down on the table. The wood split along its entire length, and the two halves fell neatly in opposite directions. Odin began a slow march along the newly formed path, and with each step the god took, Zac felt his ears go
pop
.

“I welcomed thee into my home, Dragon, and you repay me thus?” Odin growled. He ground his teeth together and tiny blue sparks spat from his mouth. “You attack my Viking brothers. You destroy the Great Table.”

“Um, actually, I think that was you, Allfather,” whimpered a voice from somewhere beneath a pile of groaning Vikings. “To be fair.”

“And you defy the all-powerful Odin,” continued the god, ignoring the interruption. “Here in Valhalla. Here in
Asgard
, you defy
me
!”

Odin was halfway to the demon now. The handle of the axe creaked as he tightened both hands round it. “I, who have slain giants in my sleep. I, who created all of Midgard from the blood, bones and flesh of my fallen enemies.”

He stopped just a few metres away from the monster. “I, who has a dirty great axe and a very short temper.”

The few Vikings who were still intact and fully operational gave a cheer at that, but it was a cautious one, as if they weren’t completely sure that Odin was going to win. The last thing they wanted was to get any further into the demon’s bad books.

“Thou hast put a right bloody dampener on an otherwise fine afternoon, Dragon. And for that thou shalt die!”