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“Hanna,” Vellamo says in a low voice, slowly getting to her feet.

I look over my shoulder to see what she’s looking at in such astonishment, and my whole world turns to shining, blinding white light.

“Hanna, your mother is here.”

Chapter 25

Death

The Tunnel

For the second time in a very short period, I came close to dying.

Unlike the first time, though, I didn’t actually die, but it was pretty damn close. Well, as close as it can be when you’re stuck in a world where death has taken a vacation.

Worst vacation I’ve ever had.

The cave system collapsed on us. I had a feeling it might once I learned that Noora and Eero couldn’t be killed. I figured they would try their magic to bring it all down on us as a last resort, which is one of the many reasons why we needed to make it through the portal while we could.

Part of the cave struck my shoulder and then took out Torben, and the last thing I saw before it buried us was that Hanna had made it through the Veil, swimming in the sea.

I can only hope and pray that Vellamo or one of the mermaids down there find her and bring her up to the surface, or that her Goddess mother has been watching over her this whole time. It’s possible that Hanna really does possess the ability to breathe underwater like I do; it’s just never been put to the test before.

I refuse to think of any other scenario. If I do, I might never recover.

“Tuoni,” Torben says from beside me. “My daughter.”

I reach over and brush the dirt from his beard. Luckily for me, I can see just fine in the dark. “She’ll be fine,” I tell him. “She made it to the sea.”

“But she could drown.”

“She’ll be fine,” I tell him again adamantly. “We have to work on getting ourselves out of here first. Can you try to dig through the rubble behind you?”

I watch as he tries, but he immediately gives up. “There’s pure rock behind it. I can’t lift it up.”

The ground shakes again at that, more dirt falling from the ceiling.

“Come on,” I tell him. “We won’t be safe until we do something about the Shamans.”

“What the hell can we do about them if they won’t die?” he says.

“I’ll chop them up into many different pieces,” I tell him, “and scatter them in the woods. They aren’t zombies; they can’t come back together again. They’ll just be alive in different bits.”

“That’s diabolical,” he says with a gasp.

“That’s the only way we’ll be able to survive this and get to Hanna. You don’t want to give up on your daughter, do you?”

“Of course not, but what can we do?”

“We take care of the first problem at hand before we take on the second one and then the third. First, let’s see if we can make our way back to the surface. We don’t know if the whole tunnel collapsed or just here, where it counted. Then, I dismember the Shamans, and then, we get back to Tuonela and Hanna.”

He stares at me, clearly not believing anything I’m saying.

“I am a god, Torben,” I remind him. “I have advantages mortals don’t, and I don’t give up easily. Now, come on.”

I turn around and start digging my way through the dirt and rocks that come up to my waist, trying to clear a path for Torben to follow through. It’s slow going, with some boulders hard to squeeze past, but eventually, we make our way out of the rubble and back into the regular tunnel.

“From now on, we’ll be as quiet as possible,” I tell him in a hush, brushing the excess dirt from my body. I reach down and pull out the knife from my boot, the very one I used to stab Noora’s eyes out. If we’re correct in thinking no one can die while I’m here, then we’re about to get a very unpleasant surprise once we make it to the surface.