Underworlds #2: When Monsters Escape

  Then it really got crazy.

  WHILE I HELD ON TO THE SHAKY WALKWAY, THE shaggy giant clawed at his neck like he couldn’t breathe. Jon clung to the rune as if it was a life preserver. The bald Cyclops stumbled away from the walkway, his face still wrapped in smoke. Dana hurled bricks at his knees while Sydney shoveled hot coals onto his feet.

  “Ahhh! No! I’ll get you!” he boomed.

  “The name is Nobody!” Syd yelled back. “Don’t forget it!”

  “Owen —” Jon screamed as he spun around and around the giant’s fat neck.

  I slammed the lyre with my palm, and the hairy Cyclops bellowed in pain, arching back into the wall next to me. I grabbed the necklace with both hands and pulled.

  SNAP! The necklace broke, sending sparks of electricity everywhere, and Jon fell back into me. The hairy giant howled, “My stone! Nobody stole my stone!” He wheeled angrily toward the walkway.

  Jon jumped to his feet. “What about the other rune? Don’t we need both?”

  The bald Cyclops shielded his neck and backed away.

  “We’ll have to make it work with one,” I said. “Now … run!”

  Flang! Flang! I tweaked out a solo as Jon and I raced down the squeaky stairs. “I hear Nobody!” the hairy giant yelled. “Stop, Nobody!”

  But we were on the ground, running as fast as our legs could carry us.

  “Into the passage,” said Dana. She sprinted into the darkness like an Olympic runner. After all, she had the most to lose if we failed. We rushed after her into a passage that was strangely cold. The floor was slippery, almost icy.

  “This is weird,” said Dana, sliding to a stop. “Why is it so icy? It’s almost like …” She paused. “The Draugs came in with snowy boots. Did anyone see that?”

  “I did,” I said.

  “What about it?” Sydney asked.

  Dana shook her head. “I don’t know yet. We’d better keep going or we’ll lose the Draugs.”

  “This stone tingles,” said Jon, hurrying behind me with the rune stone at arm’s length. “And not in a good way. It feels weird.”

  I thought about the odd sensation I felt when I played the lyre. Maybe that was the thing about magic — you paid a price for using it.

  Sydney edged forward in the icy passage and stopped at a turn. “There they are,” she whispered. We joined her in time to see the distant caravan of dead men, horses, and silver armor up ahead. “Just before my cell lost its signal, I found something out,” she said. “It’s not good. Everything I’ve seen about runic shape-changing magic says that you need a piece of the thing you want to change into.”

  “You mean something from a Draug?” said Dana, eyeing the forms ahead of us.

  We all looked at one another, then at the disgusting dead men, then at one another again. No one moved.

  “Seriously?” I muttered. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  Without thinking a whole lot, I sped quietly down the icy passage. I crept up behind the last dead Viking. The stench was almost overpowering. Holding my breath, I reached out … and the Draug stopped and turned.

  I flattened myself to the freezing cold ground just in time. The Viking swiveled his head back up the passage and peered into the gloom. That was my chance. I plucked a single thread from a rag dangling from his rotten boot. After what seemed like an eternity, the Draug turned back and caught up with the other dead guys. I stayed motionless on the ground for a minute before I slunk back to my friends. “Something like this?” I said, holding up the thread and finally letting out my breath.

  “Exactly like that,” said Sydney. Then she grinned. “By the way, you’re elected to do all the gross stuff from now on.”

  I didn’t laugh. I also didn’t like the idea of transforming into a Draug. But there wasn’t time to think it through. Between Syd’s dying cell phone and Dana’s scribbled notes, we came up with a few words that might make it happen. We all grabbed hold of the Draug thread and chanted strange runic names over and over. The rune stone turned from stony gray to silver.

  And our appearance began to change.

  We grew larger, wider, our faces oozed facial hair — even the girls’ — and our clothes turned gray and frayed. In moments, we resembled the dead Viking warriors, all bones and rotten skin, from our dented helmets to our rag-booted feet. We didn’t feel dead. We just looked like it.

  “How do I look?” asked Jon.

  “Pretty dead to me,” I said. “How about me?”

  “If you weren’t my best friend, I’d be scared,” he said.

  Dana gave a wry grin. “Then let’s mingle with the dead guys.”

  We moved as fast as we could to the end of the passage, and into the next one and the next, frantically trying to come up with a plan. The best we could do was based on something Dana found in her notes. Loki’s armor might be indestructible only if all of it was there. So we just had to snatch a piece of the armor and take off before anyone noticed. Somehow.

  How hard could that be?

  I knew we would find out really soon.

  My brain was screaming in my skull by the time we got to the end of the Draug force. Holding our breaths, we tried, slowly and casually, to make our way up through the ranks toward the coal car. But we couldn’t get close enough. The troop of dead men crowded around the car, so we had to keep marching deeper and farther into the passages.

  I can’t say how long we were trudging along, but it must have been miles. Finally the passage opened up, and we were suddenly outside, on a vast stretch of snow and ice.

  I didn’t like it. Home seemed a thousand miles away. Maybe it was.

  “Where are we?” Sydney whispered.

  In the distance was a range of snow-streaked black mountains. Behind them I could see the flattened cone of a gigantic volcano.

  “I don’t know,” Dana said softly, narrowing her eyes. “But it doesn’t look Greek. It looks very … Norse.”

  My heart stuck in my throat. No way. No. A second Underworld?

  A giant snowstorm whirled in the distance. The spinning snow roared like a jet engine, but as if it were nothing, the Draugs walked straight into the storm. So did the horses drawing the coal car.

  And so did we.

  The air was black and rushing inside the storm, but we didn’t blow away, and it didn’t last long. Beyond the spinning snow was a clearing in a stand of tall trees. It was shadowed and cold, but calm. The eye of the snowstorm.

  In front of us stood a cluster of tree trunks that came to a point overhead. It was pitch-black beneath the arch, almost like we were looking into a cave. At its mouth stood a cauldron, boiling with dark blue liquid.

  This wasn’t good.

  The horses and Draugs stopped in the clearing. A moment or two later, a voice came from the darkness under the arch of trees.

  The dead horses stopped pawing the icy ground.

  Everything hushed.

  “Have the giants-s-s done my bidding?” the voice hissed.

  The Draugs next to us bowed. We did, too.

  “And the armor is-s-s ready?”

  It was Loki’s voice, no doubt about it.

  “Then bring it,” Loki said. “Bring it to me … now!”

  LIKE FIREFIGHTERS HANDING WATER BUCKETS DOWN a line, a bunch of dead Vikings unloaded armor from the coal car and passed it along to the others, including Jon, Dana, Sydney, and me.

  I was tempted to steal a chunk of armor and bolt back through the storm. I’m sure we all were. But the dead eyes of the Draugs were everywhere and we were way outnumbered. If I could read my friends’ minds, I was sure they’d all say the same thing: “Remind me again why we’re doing this?” But we’d have to wait for another chance.

  Soon the coal car was empty. We stacked Loki’s heavy silver armor into a pile by the mouth of the cave. I could hear the sound of breath from within the darkness.

  When Loki stepped out of the shadows, I saw him up close for the first time. My insides twisted. The only other
time I had seen him, at the tower when we rescued Dana, was no more than a glimpse. He’d ridden on the back of Fenrir, his enormous red wolf. He’d been moving. There was smoke. We were afraid. We didn’t get a good look.

  But now, so close that I wanted to be anywhere else, I saw that Loki really had been horribly wounded.

  As he came toward us, he dragged his right leg behind him. His left arm hung limp at his side. Dangling lifelessly from it was a white, skeletal hand. The cloak over his shoulders hid a powerful frame that was bent and weakened.

  Worst of all was his face.

  It seemed like it was made of smoke — moving, changing, and dark, with a sense of evil about it. On top of his head were horns of twisted ice. And there was a scar. It traveled like a deep trench from his right eyebrow across his nose and cheek to his lips. The scar was what caused him to hiss.

  Then Loki spoke at the cauldron in a raspy voice. “Come forth, my northern friend!” At once, the blue liquid spat more fiercely. A form grew out of the steam rising from the cauldron — the face of a woman. She was hideous, blue-skinned, with black lips, dark holes for eyes, and hair like a mass of writhing blue snakes. I felt Jon quiver beside me. I nudged him as if to say, Yeah, I’m terrified, too.

  “You move quickly,” the woman said to Loki. Her voice sounded like an echo returning from far away.

  Loki turned back to the shadows and hissed a brief command. Fenrir appeared from the blackness, wearing a spiked collar. A pair of reins ran from the collar to a long sledge on rails, made of oak timbers. As Fenrir dragged the sledge over the ice, we saw that its planks were carved with strange symbols.

  Runes. I glanced over at Sydney and Dana. They had noticed them, too.

  Loki smiled. “I control many things with my magical stones. They are how I managed the Cyclopes’ es-s-scape. They are how I race from world to world.”

  “Why do you call the ancient oracle from her sleep?” the woman said.

  “To s-s-secure the future of my plans,” Loki hissed, his eyes flashing. “Watch closely.”

  Loki pulled a large piece of silver armor from the pile — a breastplate. It was three feet wide at least. Loki swung his cloak back to attach the massive thing, and I swear I caught a glimpse of rib bone where his chest should be. I tried not to lose my lunch. Then he took another piece and strapped it onto his wounded leg.

  As we watched silently, Loki became an armored man.

  “Impressive,” said the blue-faced oracle.

  Loki’s scarred lips pursed into a cold smile. “My war begins. The world above will be the battlefield. Now that I am armed, I can proceed. But tell me of the Crystal Rune….”

  “The key to Asgard?” the woman said.

  I tried not to show my surprise. Asgard. The home of the Norse gods. The court of Odin.

  “The two humans are close on the rune’s trail in Iceland,” she said.

  Dana let out a quiet gasp. “Nooooo …”

  I brushed against her shoulder. I knew. The two humans the oracle mentioned might be Dana’s parents. That couldn’t be good.

  “One day more and they will have that which you seek,” the woman intoned.

  Great. What was that supposed to mean? Couldn’t these people speak normally?

  Loki scoffed. “Then this very hour, I shall release my … creatures. They shall s-s-stop the meddlers. The Crystal Rune will be mine.”

  I shall release my creatures. Stop the meddlers. If he was talking about Dana’s parents, I couldn’t imagine what was going through her mind right then.

  Raising his one good hand, Loki turned to Fenrir. The wolf leaned to its master, its yellow fangs dripping liquid that hissed on the icy ground between its front paws. I couldn’t hear what Loki said, but then he raised his head and turned to the oracle.

  “I take a journey soon,” he said. “But in two days’ time, I will have everything I need.”

  The oracle smiled. “There are others against you. The three children and the girl they rescued. I sense them close to you now.”

  I shivered from head to toe.

  “No human in history has visited more than one of the Underworlds,” Loki said.

  The words struck me. We had rescued Dana from the Greek Underworld. Were we in the Norse one now? Had we done something no one had done before?

  All at once, Loki swung his head around to us. I almost screamed.

  “You, Draugs!” he snapped. “You shall remain behind. Destroy the children. Capture the girl. I can use her. But destroy the other three!”

  It felt really wrong to bow in agreement, but we had to.

  Loki turned again to the oracle. “Before I dismiss-s-s you and s-s-secure the final piece of my puzzle, conjure me a vision of the days-s-s to come —”

  Smoke blossomed around the face of the blue woman. Hideous creatures took shape in the haze. Monsters — spiked, clawed, fire-breathing — crawled and slithered and flew across miles of golden sand, destroying everything they touched.

  That scene merged into the next, where those same monsters raced through our world. I saw towns, villages, cities turned to ashes. The water tower in Pinewood Bluffs toppled in flames. The buildings on Main Avenue, including our school, were piles of smoking rubble. My knees felt weak. It was horrible. But I couldn’t look away.

  This scene melted into another, showing the same creatures attacking a giant wooden hall nestled in mountains of ice and snow.

  I guessed it was Asgard, the home of the Norse gods. Odin’s house.

  So, first the Underworlds. Then our world. Then the throne of Odin.

  Loki would attack them all.

  When the vision finally faded, Loki took one of the last pieces of armor from the dwindling pile — the helmet. He slid it over his head. It clicked into place. It was magnificent and horrible at the same time, a helmet of silver bands that wove around and between the icy horns on his head.

  “I venture now to a far land,” he said. “When I return, no one shall keep me from sitting on Odin’s throne.” His voice was clear and deep. He no longer hissed his words.

  We watched Loki produce a stone from inside his cloak. It was carved with shape-shifting runes. He fitted it into a notch on his breastplate, then picked up the last piece of armor. It was the left-hand glove I had seen being forged, the one for his lifeless hand. It shimmered in the firelight.

  “With this final fragment of armor,” he said, “I become whole once more.”

  Dana leaned close to my ear. “He’ll be unstoppable. We have to do something —”

  Suddenly, the snowstorm parted and the bald Cyclops stumbled among us, half his giant size, rubbing his eyes and groaning with each step.

  “They — escaped!” he exclaimed.

  “Who escaped?” Loki demanded.

  I could see the giant thinking hard. Then he brightened. “Nobody! I remember. Nobody escaped!”

  “Fool!” Loki shouted at the giant. “Don’t you read your own myths?” He whipped his one gloved hand at the Cyclops, and a bolt of light blasted out.

  Just then, the blue woman shot up from the smoke and thrust a blue finger at the four of us. “The children!” she screamed, vanishing into the freezing air.

  All at once our disguises fell to the ice. The filthy shrouds bunched around our ankles, and we were suddenly ourselves again.

  “Uh-oh,” Jon said.

  “Time to run!” yelled Sydney.

  Which I thought was a really good idea, but Dana broke away from the rest of us. “We’re not leaving empty-handed!” She leaped over to Loki. “You creep! Leave my parents alone —”

  And before Loki could react, she slammed into him, which didn’t budge him an inch. He flung her away with a flick of his wrist, but when Dana fell to the ground, she was holding a single silver glove as if it were a hot potato.

  “Now we get out of here!” she cried, and leaped right past the startled dead men.

  “DRAUGS!” CRIED LOKI. “TAKE HER. DESTROY THE others!”


  As the ghost warriors hurled themselves at us, I whipped out the lyre and thumbed the lowest string. Thoommmm! Time slowed for an instant, but it was all the distraction we needed.

  “Hold hands!” I shouted. The four of us plunged into the whirling wall of snow.

  Furious, Loki burst through the storm, sending fire bolts slicing across the air and exploding at our heads. At the same time, he touched the rune on his breastplate. The entire suit of armor began to move, growing into his body and turning him silver from head to toe.

  “Whoa …” I breathed.

  The helmet wove bands of silver over his face. The horns on his head stuck out of the helmet and writhed as if alive. His smoky face was half visible through the crisscrossing bands — and so was his deep, long scar.

  Over it all, we could hear Loki scream out his runic magic.

  Dana’s face was tight with pain and fear. Clutching her with one hand and Sydney (who held on to Jon) with the other, I plowed deep into the icy passages that led back to the power plant. We hurried through the tunnels, barely staying ahead of Loki and the Draugs.

  We were escaping … until Dana fell behind.

  “Dana, what is it?” I said.

  She suddenly crumpled to the passage floor and cried out, “My hand!”

  I bent to help her up, then stopped. Loki’s armored glove was forming around her hand. It melted over her wrist and palm and fingers like liquid silver.

  “It burns so much!” she said.

  “Get it off of her!” Sydney cried. But as soon as she grasped Dana’s arm, she jerked her fingers back. “It’s freezing!”

  Dana sucked in a breath. Her eyes rolled up into her head. We heard the clatter of the Draugs and dead horses behind us.

  “Dana,” I whispered, “we need to —”

  “I know!” she snapped, jumping to her feet. The silver still moved over her fingers, growing from her elbow to her fingertips like molten silver.

  “That glove is alive,” said Jon in awe. “Like the rest of Loki’s armor.”

  The thunder of horses’ hooves rang through the passage.