Page 91 of Soul of Shadow
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All the sensations that oozed out of her, unbidden, were like molten lava leaking from the rim of a long-dormant volcano. Charlie spun around to tell the others to run, but it was too late—shadowy cords slithered into view, wrapping around her arms and legs. She fell to the ground with a grunt. Moments later, she heard four more bodies hit the floor, along with a squeak and a much softerthunk. When she craned her neck, she saw Mason, Abigail, Vidar, Bjorn, and the vätte struggling against their bonds.
“What in the—” Mason started.
“You can’t do this,” Vidar growled. “I’ll bust open these bonds, and—”
“You’ll get used to it.” Elias appeared over their bodies, grinning down at them with his empty smile. “And now to reel in my catch.” He held out a hand, and six more shadowy cords appeared, this time wrapping themselves around the captives’ ankles. The cords stayed connected to Elias’s hand. He wrapped his fingers around them, turned around, and dragged all of them into the chamber beyond.
As her body bumped and scraped along the ground, Charlieswiveled her neck to take in the new space. They were entering a cavern with high ceilings and round walls. Like the tunnel, everything was built from stone blocks; the construction was smooth, well-worn. In between the stone blocks, where normal buildings would have mortar or putty, green light shone outward, creating a zigzagging web that illuminated the chamber in an eerie glow. At the center of the room was a raised platform, just large enough for two or three people to stand upon, with a small circle cut out of the middle. To the left of the platform stood Lou, her dress smudged with dirt and her eyes empty as she stared forward, hands tucked behind her back. And far to the right, deep in the shadows—
The Fenrir.
Charlie had to hold back a gasp. The beast was curled up in the corner of the chamber, like a dragon at rest. He was twice as large as she remembered, his head the size of her car, his body as long as a school bus. His pitch-black fur looked soft, but the claws on his feet could behead a man with one swipe. Beady red eyes stared directly at Charlie and the other captives, but his mouth remained shut. She could only imagine the horror of the fangs hiding within.
“Great news for you, Fenny,” said Elias, coming to a stop and yanking at the cords that he’d used to pull their bodies inside. They withdrew, spooling back into his hand like fishing wire. “I brought you five more sacrifices.” He tilted his head, inspecting the vätte. “Five and a half, if Surtur has a taste for garden gnome blood.”
The vätte growled threateningly.
Elias placed a hand on his heart. “I’m terrified.”
“Let us out now,” Vidar demanded. “We are warriors ofAsgard, and Odin will come down upon you with his full wrath if—”
With the wave of a hand, Elias conjured more cords to gag both Vikings. “Odin’s blood, Charlie—where did you find these two?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to the Fenrir. “Well? Do we have a deal?”
The Fenrir blinked his glowing red eyes. His gaze swept over the scene: the six captives on the floor, Lou standing like a zombie, Elias so relaxed it didn’t seem possible he was facing down a beast the size of a small house. The beast’s expression was unreadable. Was he pleased with what he saw? Angry with them for intruding? Hungry?
Sweat beaded on Charlie’s neck. She didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to face down this creature. She’d charged into this situation without thinking, focused only on saving her best friend. She hadn’t considered what it would be like to face down the Fenrir. And now she was here and—even with two huge warriors by her side—she was so severely unprepared it was almost laughable.
She wished, not for the first time since this all began, that she could go back to the way things were before Elias showed up. Maybe she had been sad and lost. Maybe her life had lacked adventure. But at least she—and the people she loved—had beensafe.
The vätte had been wrong about her bravery. So very, very wrong.
Slowly, the Fenrir untangled his legs and rose to his full height—a good fifteen or twenty feet. The tops of his ears grazed the cavern ceiling. He prowled slowly forward, machete-lengthclaws clicking on the stone floor with every step. Coming to a halt just before the platform, he stared down at Elias.
“You’re a brave boy,” the Fenrir said at last. His voice was like the rumble of thunder, the crash of stones down a jagged mountainside. “Seeking me out here, when you know I could end you before you even got a word out.”
“Not really.” Elias shrugged one shoulder. “I’m sort of invincible. You know”—he held out a hand, letting flames of black lick at the air—“body of shadow and all.”
“No one is invincible,” the Fenrir said. “Not even the gods.”
As they spoke, Charlie squirmed inside her bindings. The Valkyrie blade was still in her hand, and as far as she knew, Elias still believed it to be nothing more than a kitchen knife. Perhaps he was right, and his shadows were impenetrable. But she couldn’t shake Sophie’s words from the night before:
This knife can cut through anything.
It was a long shot. Charlie knew it was a long shot. But it was the only chance they had.
“Your inability to kill me aside,” Elias said, and as he spoke, Charlie struggled to flip the blade around without making loud scratching noises on the floor, “you know why I’m here.”
“Yes,” said the Fenrir, eyes trained on Elias. “Word has reached my father of what I learned during my time chained to that godsforsaken mountain. And you’re here on his behalf.”
“That more or less sums it up.” Elias strolled over to the wall of the chamber and leaned casually against it. “But it’s not me you want to give that information to, is it?”
The Fenrir blinked but didn’t disagree.
“I think,” said Elias, “it’s no coincidence that you made yourhideaway this cavern: the only place in the Midwest connected to Helheim.”
Charlie paused in trying to turn the knife. Her eyes flew to Elias, then the platform.
