Thor's Serpents (19 page)

Astrid told Matt exactly what he expected. That she was as much a victim of circumstance as he was. As much a victim of birthright. Like him, though, she’d risen to the challenge. She’d done as she’d been told by his grandfather. That’s whose orders she’d been following. Not her grandmother’s, because her grandmother was no longer really her grandmother—she was the Midgard Serpent.

Astrid explained that the last time she’d seen her grandmother as a human, she’d been too young to remember her.
Her grandmother had volunteered for the role because she’d been dying of cancer. To become the serpent was, as Astrid explained, a kind of death. Instead of being able to shift from human to serpent, she sacrificed herself to be reborn a serpent.

“If I was to see her, I’d run the other way before she killed me,” Astrid said. “She wouldn’t recognize me. My real grandmother is dead. She volunteered so no one would have to.”

“But for the purposes of Ragnarök, you’re the serpent,” Matt said. “Right?”

“My people are fair, whatever you might think of us. I’m supposed to take her place to level the playing field. I’m…” A wry smile. “A little smaller than her, as you’ll see.”

“But once you take her role,
are
you her? The serpent? If you survive, can you shift back?”

“No one expects me to survive, Matt. Certainly not your grandfather. If you think, for one second, that he’s on my side, you’re wrong. He’s told me I can’t defeat you. That it’ll end as it does in the myth—we both die. The world will be born anew. The Thorsens and the Brekkes and the Raiders and the serpent-shifters will survive and thrive together. That’s his dream.” She looked at him. “If someone honestly believed the myth couldn’t be avoided, like he does, it’s not a bad dream. Unless you’re the ones who have to die to make this happen.”

“So how do we avoid that?” Reyna asked.

“Well, originally, I hoped to convince Matt to switch sides. He jumps to ours and helps us, and that would mess everything up.”

“Except for the ‘monsters win’ part?” Matt said.

“There is that.” She sighed. “Not all of us are monsters, but I came to realize that didn’t matter. You’d never help the Midgard Serpent and jötnar and the trolls and the rest of us defeat your friends. So there’s only one other option. I’m the one who flips.”

“Seems the obvious choice,” Reyna said.

“Does it?” Astrid looked at her. “That means I turn on my family. You might not think much of the Raiders, but I have friends there. I will betray my entire family and all my friends. That’s not simple. Not one bit.”

Reyna nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Tell us what you have in mind.”

Matt was still talking when a voice said, “Hey, sis, still bugging poor Matt?” They both turned. Then Reyna leaped up and ran to Ray, throwing her arms around him. Matt started to lead Astrid away, to give the twins time to reunite, but Ray called, “Hold up. I need to talk to you, Matt.”

Matt turned.

Ray walked over. He hesitated a second, on seeing Astrid, but someone must have explained it to him, because he didn’t ask about her, just said, “I found a few things in my
research in Blackwell that might help Reyna and me in our battle. But I’m not the mythology expert. Can I run them by you? Get your input?”

Matt glanced at Astrid. Reyna caught his look and said, “Astrid? Why don’t you come with me,” and as they left, Matt turned to Ray. “Let’s find someplace private and talk.”

Ray had indeed dug up a few things to help his Ragnarök battle. Matt was impressed. He might not be much of a fighter, but he definitely had a good head on his shoulders. He helped Matt adjust his plan with Astrid, too, though the scheme was incredibly simple.

When Gullinkambi crowed, Laurie would open a portal to their chosen battlefield. They’d go through… and Astrid would join them. She would walk onto that field as their ally, not their enemy. She’d forfeit her battle with Matt. While that wouldn’t let him walk off the field, he had no intention of doing so even if the chance was offered. He’d fight alongside whichever descendant needed him most, as would Astrid.

At Ray’s suggestion, they didn’t tell Astrid where the battlefield would be, just in case she was still trying to trick them. That meant she couldn’t zip off and warn the others. Nor did they share martial strategy. The only possible way to trick Matt would be to pretend to fight alongside him and
then turn on him. As Ray pointed out, that was a problem easily solved. Matt wouldn’t take his eyes off her. He’d stay behind her, at all times. She understood that and agreed to his terms.

Convincing the others was easier than he expected. Reyna drilled Astrid and found her answers satisfactory. Same for Laurie. Matt gave everyone the chance to ask whatever they wanted and make whatever stipulations they wanted. Even after all that, he still didn’t trust Astrid, but he agreed, as Reyna said, that this was their only chance to avoid the unthinkable. They had to take it. Eyes wide open, but take the deal.

They’d barely finished when Gullinkambi arrived. It perched on a dead tree and crowed to the night sky and that was it. The battle horn had been sounded. There was nothing left to do. Nothing left to say.

It was time for war.

W
hile Matt and Reyna were off talking to Astrid, Laurie had to return her cousin to the enemy. She hated that Fen had to leave, but she knew he had to go back to lead the Raiders. Part of her wanted to insist he ignore the magic that made him need to return to his pack, but the rest of her knew that trying to stop Fen
and
overcome magic wasn’t realistic. Plus, of course, the Raiders were kids like them. Maybe Fen could save them somehow. He
was
a hero in her opinion.

I just wish we weren’t on opposite sides.

“I don’t like this,” she mumbled.

Fen, in a surprising moment, grabbed her tightly and
hugged as hard as he could. “I don’t, either. I wish I could tell you to go home to Blackwell, but you’re Loki’s champion. You can do this. You can defeat…” His words faded because the forces she needed to defeat included him now.

“I won’t fight you,” she whispered. “No matter what. I won’t.”

“I’m going to delay arriving as long as I can,” Fen promised. “It’s the best I can do.… Then I guess I’ll fight the goats or something. I don’t think I can fight you or Baldwin
or
Matt.” He grinned. “I wouldn’t mind taking a swing at Owen, though.”

“You wouldn’t hurt him, either.”

“Looking for a silver lining,” he said with a forced lightness.

Laurie sniffled against his shoulder. “Jerk,” she said, knowing Fen heard what she really meant: I love you.

“Be safe,” he ordered her. He pulled away and looked at her. “All you need is to be safe. If Thorsen wins, it’s all good, and… if he doesn’t, you’ll come with my pack. Either way, you’ll be okay after the fight. I swear it. You just need to get through the battle, okay?”

She didn’t bother arguing that there was no way she would live with the monsters if Matt lost.

“The myths aren’t always right,” Fen reminded her. “You
will
be okay.”

“You too,” she half ordered, half asked. She knew that
Loki and the wolf Fenrir both died in the great battle of Ragnarök. They’d focused so much on Matt and the Midgard Serpent, but Fenrir was ripped apart by Odin’s son and Loki was killed by Heimdall, another of the gods. Laurie figured that they all knew that. Ragnarök wasn’t only about that one battle. The word itself literally meant “twilight of the gods.” It was the story of how the gods died. Obviously, it wasn’t completely accurate, because the gods themselves were already long dead.

“Stupid gods, leaving us to fight these battles,” she muttered.

Fen laughed. “Call Aunt Helen when the battle starts. Stay by her side.”

“Loki led the monsters, and you fight for the monsters, so…”

Fen gestured to Laurie’s bow. “She gave this to the one she will help: Loki’s daughter, not me.”

There was nothing left to say then, so Laurie opened a portal to the Raiders’ camp and Fen stepped through it. She stood there alone for a moment, and then she straightened her shoulders and headed to the others. The descendants picked the battleground, and when they arrived, the fight would begin.

She wasn’t ready. Honestly, she didn’t think she’d ever be ready, but it was time. The Berserkers were going to arrive there, although they couldn’t enter the actual field;
Ray was back with that group. Owen was here. Everyone was ready, even the Midgard Serpent—who was currently watching Matt like she was a lost puppy, not a world-ending monster.

Laurie met Matt’s eyes and nodded.

Then silently, she opened a portal into the Badlands. It was the right place and time to do this. Helen’s monsters could fight better on familiar terrain, and nowhere on earth looked as much like Helen’s domain as the strangely beautiful and frightening Badlands.

“Owen first,” Matt said.

One by one, the descendants and the dragon-girl went through the portal until it was only Laurie and Matt standing in Mitchell.

“This is it,” she whispered as she looked at him.

“We can do it,” he assured her. “We have a plan.”

Then he went through the gateway to the battle that would either save or doom them all. She tried to believe that they’d win as she fell through the portal, letting it close behind her. It felt far more
final
than any other portal, but she clung to Matt’s words:
We have a plan.
She chanted the words in her head like they’d make the hope into a fact:
We have a plan. We have a plan. We have a plan.

Of course, it took all of five minutes for that plan to fall apart.

Laurie looked around at the group that stood at the edge of the Badlands: Matt, Baldwin, Owen, Reyna, Ray… and no one else. Astrid wasn’t there.

“Where is she?” Reyna asked, looking around for the dragon girl who was nowhere to be seen. “I knew—”

“Astrid came through,” Laurie interrupted, meeting Matt’s eyes. “She did. I saw her step in, and I
felt
her go through the gateway.”

“There is an order to be upheld,” Owen said.

They all turned to look at him, but he seemed unperturbed by their collective stares. He simply shrugged. “I told you that there were things that could and could not change. It’s why I stayed away so long.” He met Laurie’s eyes briefly. “It’s why I didn’t tell you that Fenrir would defect. Astrid is bound by the same things we all are: there are only so many things we can change.”

“Says who?” Laurie challenged. “We aren’t mindless players in Ragnarök. We
will
change it. We
will
win. We
will
live through this.”

“I hope you’re right,” Owen said.

Astrid was supposed to be the one Matt would fight. She was the version of the Midgard Serpent who was to take the field, but now Astrid was missing.

The thunder of hooves rattled the ground so intensely that Laurie thought the buffalo were stampeding again.
They did roam the Badlands, but not the part where the descendants of the North now stood. Here, on the edges of valleys and eerie-looking rocks, there were no buffalo.

Instead, there were mythic warrior women on enormous horses bearing down on them. Fortunately, the Valkyries were on the same side as the descendants. The horses came to a sudden stop, dust and dirt kicking up around them. Hildar, the one who seemed to speak for them, looked down at the kids and nodded.

“It is time,” she pronounced. “Son of Thor, come.”

Laurie expected to hear a low whisper at the oddity of her ordering Matt to heel like a house pet, but Fen wasn’t there to crack a joke.
What if I never see him again? What if he dies? Or I die?

“Where is Astrid?” Matt asked.

“Not here,” Hildar replied, as if that part weren’t already obvious. “I believe Odin’s child explained.” She nodded toward Owen. “He is the one closest to the Norns and their insistence on rules.”

Hildar didn’t
quite
say she was irritated by the Norns, but Laurie was getting good at reading between the lines when it came to mythical creatures. The Valkyrie wasn’t entirely pleased by the Norns’ apparent interference.

“Freya’s daughter, you and your sibling will come as well.” Hildar’s stern expression seemed to soften ever so slightly as she met Laurie’s gaze. “I wish you good battle, daughter
of Loki. I am pleased that you fight with the right side in Ragnarök.”

Laurie lifted her chin a little higher. “There was never any doubt.”

Hildar smiled. “You remind me of Loki’s… better traits.” The moment passed, and she looked at Matt again. “Come,” she repeated.

Matt and the twins were swept away with the Valkyries, leaving Laurie, Owen, and Baldwin alone. She’d known that they wouldn’t all be hip to hip in the great fight, but that didn’t make the moment of separation any less scary.

“Laurie?” Owen said quietly from her side.

She turned and glanced at him. He looked ready to bolt: hands clenched, lips pursed. Silently he inclined his head, and she looked to where he was now staring.

Baldwin whistled.

“Seriously?” she asked no one in particular. Laurie wasn’t as up on mythology as a lot of people, but she knew enough to know that the towering creature headed their way was a
hrímthursar
, a frost giant. Like the towering monsters made of fire that they’d faced in Hel and in Mitchell, this was a Jotunn… but of frost and ice. It was one of the creatures that she remembered far too well from the stories her father told her when she was a little girl.

“Is that actually a
hrímthursar
?” Owen murmured from her side.

She couldn’t tear her eyes away from it. “Uh-huh.”

“Any idea how we’re to fight it?”

Laurie shook her head. “When will the Berserkers arrive?”

“Soon,” Owen promised. “I’ve sent the ravens to summon them.”

Soon might not be fast enough. She didn’t know what to do. The last giant had only been handled by sending it to see her Aunt Helen, and Laurie wasn’t sure how well that had gone over. She didn’t want to risk angering the ruler of Hel by sending a flood of monsters to her domain. In the myth, Helen fought on the side of the monsters. Laurie really wanted to avoid that part. That meant coming up with a plan to get rid of a frost giant.

Right, piece of cake
, she thought.

Portaling it would work, but she needed a location she could visualize or a descendant she could zero in on. If not, she’d be portaling it blindly, and she wasn’t going to send it somewhere where it could kill people. She couldn’t think of any volcanos, and Hel was out. That left stopping a
hrímthursar
on her own.

Admittedly, Matt was going to face a dragon, but Laurie was facing a
frost giant
and who knew what else—and she felt exceptionally under-armed. Matt had the Valkyries, the goats, the shield, and Mjölnir. She had a one-eyed boy with his currently absent acrobatic fighters, another who was
impervious to harm, and a bow made of bone. Somehow, every fight she’d been in up to this moment seemed easy in comparison.

The battle hadn’t even properly begun, but there was a mammoth creature of ice and frost stalking toward her. Who knew what else would be coming? The world was teetering on the edge of its own destruction. That certainly didn’t bode well for anyone’s ability to have an easy time of it.

“Does anyone else think it’s strange that we can
see
in the total darkness?” Baldwin asked, pulling her attention from her building terrors and self-doubts. “I mean, the sky is black, but I can see just fine.”

“Me too… well, with the eye that still works,” Owen added.

“Hey, guys?” Baldwin pointed. “The frost giant is bringing friends.”

Following at a great distance behind the
hrímthursar
were trolls, mara, and wolves. They couldn’t move as quickly as the towering creature, but they were coming. That alone was enough to make Laurie want to run screaming in the other direction. She could fire endless arrows from her bone bow, open portals, and apparently turn into a fish. Owen would have Berserkers who could catapult into fights and ravens who would spy. Baldwin simply couldn’t be hurt. None of that seemed to be anywhere near enough when she thought
they were facing
one
monster. How could it be possible to fight a battalion of them?

“Plan?” Owen asked her.

“What’s the myth again?” Even though she’d heard it earlier that day and several times before this in their various conversations, she wanted to hear it
now.
There had to be something she wasn’t thinking of, and that meant hearing it from someone else, hopefully so as to trigger her memory or theirs.

Owen started, “Thor and Odin are separated. Loki fights Heimdall; Odin fights Fenrir; Thor fights the serpent. We all die.” His voice was calm, even as they all watched the horde of monsters approaching. “Does that help?”

“Maybe we could avoid the death part,” Baldwin interjected.

“Anything
useful
in that myth?” Laurie asked, looking at the enemy troops. They were maybe fifteen minutes away.

Owen grabbed Laurie’s arm and tugged. “Do you think we could keep recounting the myth somewhere a little less in their line of sight?”

The three of them started toward a fissure in the nearest rock formation.

“What about thermite?” Baldwin asked as they crouched behind a rock.

“Thermite?” she echoed.

“You need to watch
MythBusters
. The source of all useful
knowledge… well, at least the sort my parents won’t let me have.” Baldwin grinned. “If you mix rust, aluminum oxide, and a sparkler, it makes a sort of modern Greek fire. Completely and utterly inappropriate for us—or even most adults—to make
or
use.”

“Where would we get
any
of that?” Owen asked as Laurie eased out of the fissure to see how far away the monsters were.

The frost giant was still ahead of the other monsters, and none of them seemed to be in a hurry. “Ten minutes, tops,” she told the boys as she moved back to their sides. “It’ll see us in
maybe
ten minutes. We need to hurry.”

Baldwin opened his bag from Hel and dug around inside it. “I have sparklers.” He tossed them to Laurie and kept digging in his bag. “Now I need one of those Etch A Sketch things.”