Page 49

Widening the width and breadth of her Magic, she used Einn’s mental fingerprint, an exact copy of her identical twin’s, and quickly searched the island.Noting several rather large areas of contained Enchantment, Hel asked Carys,“Can you check those out while I find out what the hell Einn is up to?I just need to be prepared.We haven’t seen her or Tveir in so long and still have no clue who their mother is.In other words, this is all a crap shoot with our collective asses on the line.Ya’ know what I mean?”

“I do, and I’m already on it.Go get ‘em, girl.”

Turning the full strength of her focus back to Einn, Hel acted as if Twin Numero Uno hadn’t just threatened her life but rather merely mentioned what she was having for dinner and slowly nodded.“Oh, okay.So, before you kill me, can I ask…?”

“No.”Einn’s answer was short and curt.Hel knew it was meant to piss her off and force her to act.Well, fat chance.She’d come up against bigger and badder and come out the victor on more occasions than she cared to recount.She’d been called everything from a freak to names she’d didn’t care to remember.She had thick skin-at least on her live side.There was no way she was about to endanger the life of one of her best friends simply because a sister she hadn’t seen in centuries had a wild hair up her ass.She’d find out what Einn was up to and send the little brat back where she belonged with a bruised ego and second thoughts about ever showing her face on Earth again.

Opening her mouth to continue her questioning, Hel didn’t even get to so much as utter a word.For at that very moment, something super creepy, really wrong, and more disturbing than how Einn looked pretty much every day of her life, was developing right before her eyes.

Her sister was acting weird.Well, weirder than usual–andthatwas saying something.She was suddenly having a conversation with herself under her breath, shifting from one flat foot to the other and waving her left hand around like she was air traffic control at DFW or the flagman at the Indy 500.Worse than that, she was whipping her head from side to side and basically acting crazier than her untamable orange hair or her extremely puffy purple lips suggested.

A flash of something dark and ominous was the only warning Hel got before just plain padded cell weird turned to batshit absurdity.Sorcery, twisted and warped, filled the air and right before the goddess’s very eyes, her sister’s body started to contort, warp, and morph.

Einn’s gray, mottled skin bubbled and sizzled as her frame stretched taller and then wider, and taller and then wider over and over again.It reminded Hel of those Stretch Armstrong dolls she’d seen human children playing with the seventies only her sister was not made of rubber and sand, was five-foot-nine, and most definitely bigger than a breadbox.

As if that wasn’t freaky enough, the grotesquely weird factor got kicked up to a million when Einn’s face started the same creepy transformation as the rest of her physique.Her long, thin, pointed-with-a-hook-on-the-end nose projected outward as if pulled by an invisible string then sprung back over and over.Her lips inflated and deflated at least four times in quick succession, and her bulbous eyes grew like beach balls attached to an electric pump, squishing out of their sockets then retracting with a squishy boing that made Hel’s stomach turn.

As if that wasn’t enough, copious amounts of dirty nasty Sorcery filled the air, creating a misty fog that stunk to the high Heavens.It pricked at the inside of Hel’s nose, poked at her eyes, and made her skin itchy, scratchy and just a little too tight.It felt like a million mosquitos had found their way underneath the thick Black Iron of her Death Armor and were jabbing her flesh, sucking her blood, and injecting her with their nasty venom.Next came a wave an even more offensive stench that made the goddess’s stomach literally roll one way then the other.The horrific odor was ancient, noxious, and had a decomposing quality that stuck to the back of her throat and made her want to gag.

Stepping to the side which any other time should’ve looked decisive, Einn’s movements were instead jerky and more uncoordinated than Hel could have ever imagined.Of course, neither of the twins were the picture of grace and poise, but what the goddess was witnessing was downright creepy and almost robotic.

Einn would speed up, then slow down, then speed up again.Throughout all the stretching and squishing her muscles were doing, she shuddered and trembled as if she’d stuck her finger in a light socket.Had her muscles forgotten how to function?Had her brain stopped sending clear signals or was it misfiring in some random, out of sync order?

Hel had absolutely no idea and wasn’t going to take the time to find out.Things were happening almost faster than her eyes could take in and her mind could comprehend-and there was no end in sight.

Einn’s more-than-usual oddly shaped head snapped from side-to-side, up and down and in circles like a demented, possessed bobblehead toy on the dashboard of a Jeep going a hundred miles an hour over every hill and dale in seven countries.Her bulging, globular eyes flashed from their bottomless black to deep, blood red over and over while her wider, but still rounded and droopy shoulders popped up and down in an opposing rhythm that any other time would’ve resembled the Hokey Pokey.

Taking one slow, deliberate step forward after another, Einn almost hit the ground three separate times.Her balance and coordination were literally nowhere to be found.She was so wrong, so clumsy, and absolutely, without a doubt so discombobulated in every way possible that the only thing keeping her up were her outstretched arms whipping around like the blades of a windmill.

Slowly, weaving from side to side, Einn moved ever closer, but Hel refused to step back.Instead, she stood taller, held her Nightsword with more authority and never once blinked or looked away from her sister’s menacing gaze.

“Does she really think she’s intimidating?”Liv asked using their private mental link.“I mean, I’m working really hard not to laugh out loud and ask her what the hell is wrong.If maybe she got a bad batch of Dionysus’s hooch.”

“Yeah, I hear ya’,”Hel offhandedly responded.“But… Don’t you feel like something else is at play here?Like this whole morphing, transforming…”

“It’s called Shifting,”Carys chuckled.

Snickering, glad that the Dragoness with whom she shared her soul had been careful not to let the Valkyrie hear her, Hel replied,“Oh, yeah, that.”

Then to Liv, she continued,“…Shifting was just as much a surprise to her as it is to us.”

“You really think she’s not controlling this?”Liv didn’t sound convinced.“I mean, trying to control it, or at the very least attempting to give into whatever…”

Then Hel saw it.During one of the flashes, one of the times Einn’s eyes changed color and her head made a crazy circle, she caught sight of something truly bizarre.There was something-or someone-inside Einn and that thing was trying to take control.

Long, slithering antennae sat atop a small, rounded, bumpy head that housed two, distended, muddy green, compound eyes.There was no nose, just holes, teardrop-shaped black caverns leading to a mouth with snapping mandibles sporting pointed teeth and distended fangs.All of that was covered in silvery-gray scales that should’ve been pretty but were not even close to appealing in any way, shape, or form.

And there was more.So much more that Hel couldn’t look away.She had to see it all.Had to knoweverything.

Eyes moving downward of their own accord, she refused to react to the fact that there was no neck at all.None.Not even a hint of one.The head simply sat upon a flat and elongated carrot-shaped body with two short arms at the very top and two more jutting from each side of its torso.Not to mention that all four arms had massive, oversized claws at the end with jagged, sharp edges and they were opening and closing, clicking and clacking, reaching for Hel with more hate and revulsion that she had ever witnessed.

Then came the bottom half and the goddess wasn’t sure if she should laugh or throw up-or both.

The lower part of its body narrowed and rounded into a point, however before that protrusion came multi-jointed, backward kneed legs that were long, more muscular copies of the arms–but her feet didn’t match.It was as if the transformation had stopped short.Just decided not to go all the way to the bottom.

There was absolutely nothing buggy about those feet.They were all Einn’s.They were flat as flat could be, long, thin, and mottled gray with lengthy toes at the end that had swollen, knobby joints topped with cracked and jagged, purplish gray nails.

“Holy shit!”Liv spat.“Your sister is possessed.”