Page 88 of Soul of Shadow
“What is it?” asked Vidar. “Are we supposed to see something here?”
“Charlie—” Abigail started, but Charlie ignored her, kicking up bursts of sand. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t have been. Not when Lou’s life was on the line. Not when every second that ticked past led Lou closer to death.
“The Fenrir’s hiding place has to be here,” Charlie said, wading into a patch of beach grass. “It wassupposedto be here. It—”
Her foot landed on something hard that gave a hollowthunk.
Charlie froze. She looked slowly down as the others rushed to her side. Together, they bent over, Charlie dropping to her knees and pushing aside the tall grass. Abigail and Mason brushed away the thin layer of sand on the ground, only to find—
A hatch.
It was not like the hatch Charlie and Mason had at home—the one carved into the ceiling on the second floor that led to the attic, made of wood and plaster with a metal ring into which a hook attached to a long pole could be slipped, enabling them to open it. No. This hatch was made of stone. It had no discernible latch or handle, no obvious way to pull it open. Its edges were so perfectly fitted to the sand and earth surrounding it that there was no way they could slip their fingers under a crack in its side. It looked impenetrable.
Carved into its surface was a shallow depiction of two snakes wound around each other, making the loose approximation of the letterS. Charlie recognized the symbol from her research; it belonged to the god Loki.
“It’s magic,” Mason said at once, sounding excited. “That must be it. You need magic to open the hatch.”
“Idiot.” Abigail pointed at the hatch. “How are we supposedto open something that requires magic whennone of us have any?”
They were right. You probablydidneed magic to open the door. Elias, in his mare form, would have had no problem getting through and then opening it from the other side for Lou. As humans, Charlie and her friends had no such ability, but the Vikings…
“Don’t look at us,” said Bjorn. “We have no magic but our abilities with the sword.”
“Speaking of which—” Vidar raised his sword high and brought it down on the hatch. The metal bounced uselessly off the stone, not even leaving a scratch.
“Wait,” said Charlie, stilling Vidar’s arm before he could strike again. Her companions turned to look at her. “I know what to do.”
“You do?” Vidar asked.
Charlie looked over at Sophie’s knife, which was still stuck tip down in the sand. The knife that could cut through anything. She sent up a silent thank-you to Sophie, wherever she was, then ran over and grabbed the knife. She hurried back over to the hatch and, grasping with two hands, raised the blade high above her head. In one smooth movement, she drove it down into the hatch.
She needn’t have used so much force; the knife slid through the stone as easily as a soft pat of butter. It sunk straight down to its hilt.
“Damn,” said Mason, staring with wide eyes. “What kind of Jedi-lightsaber knifeisthat?”
Guilt twisted her stomach. She wanted to tell Mason the truth—that the knife was a weapon of the Valkyries, that itbelonged to Sophie, that Sophie wasalive, miraculously alive, blessed by the gods, thriving in ways they could never have imagined. But she couldn’t. Not now. Not when they needed to stay focused on getting into this hatch and rescuing Lou.
But she would tell him. Eventually, she would.
“The kind that’s going to help us get your homecoming date back,” said Charlie with a quick grin to her brother. She straightened up and sawed the knife up and down. It sliced cleanly through the rock. She moved it in a slow, wide circle, making sure there would be more than enough room for them to squeeze through. Eventually, the stone rumbled and shook, and as the circle was completed, with one final groan, the stone gave way and dropped.
Half a second later, a great, beach-shakingcrunchresounded from below the hatch.
The six of them leaned forward, peering down into the hole. Inside, they could see only darkness—and a small patch of stone floor illuminated by the moonlight. Within that patch, they also spied the hatch: now shattered into three large chunks.
“Well,” said Mason cheerfully, looking up at the others, “if they didn’t know we were coming before, they certainly do now.”
The hatch led to a long tunnel, built entirely of smooth stone blocks. It glowed orange from the torches lining its walls and steadily sloped downward. From the way Charlie’s ears started to pop—she could only assume it was leading them beneath the lake.
“How does no one know that this place exists?” whispered Abigail as they walked, trying to keep their footsteps soft. It was a losing battle, given that the huge Vikings’ feet were about asquiet as those of a rhinoceros. “It looks ancient. Surely someone would have stumbled upon it at some point.”
“Most humans don’t even make it past that fence,” Charlie whispered. The vätte scampered along beside her feet, barely able to keep up with their quick pace. “If this place is as important as it looks, I would bet there are additional spells beyond the ones that protect Elias’s house.”
“Like what?”
“I mean, think about it.” Charlie looked over her shoulder to check on the Vikings. Their huge bodies took up nearly the entire tunnel; she thought Bjorn might even be stooping slightly. She turned back to Abigail and asked, “In the past, whenever we toyed with the idea of crossing the fence, what happened?”
“My good sense got the better of everyone,” Abigail said.
