Page 55 of Soul of Shadow #1

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 softer thunk .

When she craned her neck, she saw Mason, Abigail, Vidar, Bjorn, and the v?tte 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, Charlie swiveled 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 v?tte.

“Five and a half, if Surtur has a taste for garden gnome blood.”

The v?tte growled threateningly.

Elias placed a hand on his heart. “I’m terrified.”

“Let us out now,” Vidar demanded. “We are warriors of Asgard, 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 been safe .

The v?tte 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-length claws 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 your hideaway 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.

“Oh yes,” said Elias, noticing her alarm. “That’s what this chamber is. One of only a few places where one can travel from Asgard to the underworld, and vice versa.”

No , thought Charlie. This was worse than she could have imagined. Not only had she brought her friends and brother to face a mare and an enormous wolf beast, they were also standing right on Loki’s doorstep.

“You’re correct,” the Fenrir said at last. “I do have information on the location of the Seal. And I did make my home this cave with the intention of contacting Loki. Only, after a week of trying, I’m still no closer to figuring out how to reach him.

” He turned his giant head to look over at the cavern’s entrance.

“The creatures of the forest were of no help to me. They hid inside their rocks and trees, too terrified to even speak with me.” He spat on the floor, the saliva thick and dripping. “Pathetic things.”

“Well, they know what you’re after,” Elias said. “The destruction of their realm.”

“I am after the destruction of the gods ,” the Fenrir snarled. “The same gods who tortured me, chained me to that rock, left me to suffer for all of eternity. The destruction of their puny realm is merely collateral damage.”

At last, Charlie managed to touch the knife’s blade to the cords wrapped around her wrists.

Just as she was about to press it farther, making an actual incision in the shadows, she hesitated.

Was this a good idea? She didn’t know exactly how Elias’s shadows worked.

Would he feel the pain of one of them being sliced through?

Even one that was fully detached from his body?

She could only hope the answer was no.

Breath held, she pressed the knife’s edge to the bonds, and—

Felt the cords pop loose.

She wanted to sag with relief. It worked .

The Fenrir was right; Elias wasn’t invincible.

Valkyrie steel could cut through his shadows.

This was a huge revelation, and she wanted to celebrate it as such.

But she couldn’t. Not yet. She waited, frozen, for Elias to whip around, having felt the knife’s incision.

One, one thousand.

Two, one thousand.

Three, one thousand …

“And just where do you plan to go once Asgard is destroyed?” Elias asked. “The dwarves’ realm? The elves’? These creatures fear you as greatly as the gods do. You really think they’ll protect you?”

He was still engaged in conversation with the Fenrir. He hadn’t felt a thing.

Thank every god in all eight realms.

“I am doing what is right for me,” the Fenrir said. “Revenge is what I seek, and Ragnarok is how I will obtain that revenge.”

“And what are you hoping to get in return?” Elias asked. “From your father, in exchange for the Seal’s location.”

“Protection,” the Fenrir said at once. “His assurance that the gods will never be able to entrap me again.”

Sophie was right . Charlie remembered the pouch of feathers still tucked into one of her pockets. If she could just take out Elias, she could offer the feathers to the Fenrir in exchange for everyone’s freedom.

It would work. It had to work .

As quietly as she could, Charlie inched her legs toward the hand holding the Valkyrie knife. If she could just free her legs and catch Elias by surprise…

“And if Loki gives you protection,” Elias asked, “you will cease your contact with Surtur? Cease trying to bring about the end of Asgard?”

The Fenrir bared his long, shining teeth. “Wolf’s honor.”

Liar , thought Charlie. She would never trust this beast. Not with anything. But the longer he kept Elias engaged, the more time she had to make her escape. Her knees were nearly close enough now, the shadowy cords only an inch away from the knife’s tip.

As Charlie slid the blade toward her knees, Elias studied the Fenrir, considering his promise. She wondered what he was thinking. Whether he truly couldn’t see the lie in the beast’s eyes, or if he was just pretending not to for the sake of some larger game.

The Valkyrie blade sliced into the first cord right as Elias nodded and said, “Very well.”

The Fenrir’s smile grew.

Elias pushed himself off the wall, skirted around Lou’s body, and stepped up onto the platform. At that height, he was nearly level with the chin of the Fenrir, his head well within chomping distance. He kept his eyes on the beast, watching for any sign of trickery.

With one last shift of her wrist, Charlie cut through the final cord around her legs.

She was free.

A scratch sounded to her right. She glanced over at Abigail, who was looking at her legs with huge eyes.

Charlie shook her head once, an indication that Abigail should stay silent.

Tur ning to look at Elias, she kept her legs carefully positioned to appear bound but shifted her weight, preparing to leap up at the first chance.

“The reason you haven’t been able to contact Loki,” Elias said, sticking his hand straight inside his stomach—a bizarre act to watch, even though she knew he was technically intangible—and pulling out a large, bright emerald crystal that winked under the green lights, “is that you don’t have one of these. ”

“What is that?” the Fenrir asked.

“This”—Elias tossed the stone up into the air and caught it, revealing the mark of Loki carved into one side—“is the dodssten . The death stone.” He turned it around, its surface refracted the light.

“It can be mined only in Helheim and is the key to traveling between the underworld and the seven other realms.”

The Fenrir lowered his snout, cavernous nostrils sniffing at the gemstone. “How does it work?”

Bending over, Elias set the stone in the indentation in the platform, where it flashed brighter once. “You place it here,” he said, “and then—”

Charlie was up.

She took off at a run, sprinting across the chamber. Elias whipped his head around, yanking the stone out of the platform. Charlie pushed herself faster, heading straight for them.