“Oh …” I try to think of something to say, some nice platitude or cliché about not seeing what’s right before our eyes, but I can’t. All I can think about is the future, so I blurt, “Can you please not cause the apocalypse?”
For a second he just stares at me. Then he throws his head back and laughs. The booms of it shake the floor. Frank laughs too, but I’m not sure he actually knows what he’s laughing about. His pixie minions smile. Astley’s eyes are closed, like it is all too much to deal with.
When the laughter ends, Loki puts a hand on his wife’s head, strokes her hair, but keeps his eyes on me and addresses me directly. “It was inspired of them to say that I would be the inciting force for Ragnarok, but, alas, that is untrue, little human. I do not incite.”
“Zara,” I tell him, unclenching my fists. “My name is Zara.”
“Zara … princess.” He takes in this new information.
I need to understand. “So, you aren’t going to fight against Odin when the apocalypse comes?”
“Oh, that I shall, I don’t doubt. But I do not cause the apocalypse.”
“You don’t?” I ask. “Everything I’ve read says that you do.”
“No. It is wrong.”
“Then who does?”
He points at Astley and Frank. “They do. The pixies.”
NCIC TELETYPE
Attention All Bedford County Area Agencies: Please contact the Emergency Management Services immediately about sending all available personnel to assist in an event currently occurring in Bedford. See below for details.
Finding out that he is responsible for the beginning of the apocalypse seems to absolutely make Frank’s day. He and Astley pretty much prance around the cavern, smacking each other on the back and bowing to their pixie minion types, who appropriately salute them and wipe the sweat off of their brows. It’s really ridiculously hot in here, too hot to be cavorting, and there is a battle going on, and Nick is still injured in the outer cavern, and … I need to get out of here.
I am terrified of Loki, but I touch his arm. “Can you help my friend? Can you get us out of here?”
He looks at me, expressionless.
There’s probably a protocol for asking this sort of thing of a Norse god, but I honestly don’t have the time or means to google it at the moment, so instead I try to give him the pleading-eye look that always used to work on Nick.
“She can’t leave!” Frank hisses.
Loki puts out his arm, but doesn’t even look at them.
“Inconsequential little slugs,” he murmurs, and then they freeze—all of them—Frank, Astley, their little groupies. Loki cocks his head a tiny bit and says, “I am still weak. You should hurry.”
“Nick?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I do not have the power to heal.”
“Okay.” I start to rush across the thin sheet of hot water toward the cavern opening but then think better of it. “Are you going to be okay?”
His eyebrows raise almost all the way up to his hairline. “You truly are a compassionate one, princess. Perhaps that aspect of the prophecy was true.”
He hasn’t answered my question, I notice. I hesitate one more time and then beg, “Please don’t go on a killing spree. At least not with humans. Please … I don’t want to be responsible.”
Slowly he nods, and his wife moves to hug him fully again. He hugs her back and whispers, “I promise. I hold no ill will toward your kind. Hurry.”
I have no idea if I should trust him, but right now I have no choice. So I run. Nick’s on the floor, a wolf, barely breathing. Two pixies stand over him, frozen, but with lit cigarettes in their hands. They’ve tied up his limbs. There are burn marks in his fur and it smells of pain, burned flesh. I swear at them, and bend down and start yanking Nick backward, dragging him across the floor, but he’s heavy … so heavy, and I am just human. It’s just like when he died, I couldn’t move him quickly enough, couldn’t save him.
“Not this time,” I mutter. The ground shudders beneath me. I turn and there is Loki and his wife. He’s a wolf now, giant and huge. With one swipe he knocks down the wall. His wife rides on his back.
She reaches down. “Hand up your wolf. We will get him to safety.”
“Promise me?” I say, struggling to lift Nick. I can’t do it.
“I promise you. It is the least we can do for you.” She reaches lower, but I still can’t raise him up.
“I’m too weak,” I complain.
Loki growls and turns. He reaches down and takes Nick in his mouth, gently, carrying him by the scruff of Nick’s neck, as if Nick were a puppy.
“You are strong, Zara White. So strong. You should know that now.” She shakes her head at me. “Af kvöl er friðr. From suffering, peace.”
And then they are gone, leaping out of the room and down the hall. I text Issie and hope she has time to read it: Do not kill giant wolf. Good guy.
And then I have two choices. I can rush after Loki and his wife while Frank and Astley and the rest are still frozen or I can go back and try to stop them for good.
There is no choice, really.
I grab a sword off one of the frozen cigarette-holding pixies and head back down the tunnel and into the second cavern room. Astley and Frank stand where I left them. Astley’s eyes reveal a near panic, and his back is hunched a little bit. I should kill him right now, drive the sword right through his heart, and then do the same to Frank. Raising the sword, my hand starts to shake. I believed in him. I believed in him so much.
The air smells like sulfur. It shimmers. It’s like the entire world twitches, and I panic, scoot backward, and hide behind a giant rock formation. I don’t have time to do any more because the world just starts again. Loki’s power wasn’t strong enough to keep the bad guys still. Frank laughs with joy.
He hugs Astley to him. “We did it! We did it!”
“There is no mouth to Hel,” Astley says, deadpan. “I hardly see what you have achieved.”
I flatten myself against the wall, hide partially behind an outcropping.
“I achieve it now,” Frank says, raising up a sword and chanting something fast and crazy sounding. His eyes flash red and then glow a pretty sort of silver color that spreads around him like a ball of magic. A silver aura emanates from Frank and then spreads throughout the entire room, sounding with a pop. Black ooze creeps around his feet.