The Trap (15 page)

He pulled. And pulled. Straining his muscles.

Thor was fourteen feet tall. His sword was a good six feet—longer than Stefan was tall—and it was not made of some lightweight space-age polymer. This was old-fashioned steel and gold and bronze and other heavy things.

Stefan was strong. But he was not god-strong. He could draw the sword but, beyond that, all he could do was drag it across the floor.

“Huh,” Stefan remarked.

Fortunately Jarrah had something more intelligent to say. She said, “
Esk-ma belast!
”

And Stefan began to grow.

S
tefan began to grow. But it didn't happen very fast. What did happen fast was Fenrir and Thor untangling from each other. Xiao slipped out from under them unnoticed. Stefan pulling on Thor's sword had definitely stolen the spotlight.

Now Stefan was sort of dragging the sword across the floor. The point left a scratch.

Thor threw back his head and laughed. “Will you swing Thor's sword? I don't think so, little boy.”

Stefan was just getting close to six feet. So he was almost as tall as the sword now. But he was still a long way from going all ninja with it.

Thor wrapped his massive fist around Stefan's throat.

“Wait!” Mack yelled. “Wait! I thought you enjoyed battle. I thought that was the Asgard way.”

Thor looked at Stefan, now dangling with his feet off the floor and the sword still dragging. “Battle? With this child?”

Thor laughed again, and this time Fenrir joined in. One doesn't normally think of wolves laughing. And one would be right about that. What Fenrir did was a sort of huffing, snorting sound that could have been laughter but could also have been asthma.

“Look! He's growing!” Mack said. “If you don't kill him, he'll be big enough to take you on.”

Thor looked at Stefan. He weighed him in his hand and nodded thoughtfully. Stefan was definitely growing. As if to prove the point, Stefan lifted the sword up off the floor and made a feeble pendulum swing with it.

“Battle,” Thor said, relishing the word like a toddler with the word
candy
, or a parent with the word
sleep
.

Nott spoke up. “Would the thunder god show himself to be a coward in front of Hel?”

“Is she here?” Thor asked nervously.

“Not yet,” Nott said. “But just as Fenrir is not your dog, you are not hers. Or are you?”

“Do not provoke me,” Thor hissed. He set Stefan down. Actually Stefan had almost set himself down by virtue of continuing to grow. He was NBA sized now. And unlike the Lepercons, Stefan's muscles seemed to grow in proportion.

Stefan took a couple of staggering steps back, and now he managed to actually level the sword, point aimed at Thor's heart.

Thor smiled. “But I have no weapon,” Thor said. “Just my guitar.”

As Mack and the others stared helplessly, Thor's massive guitar began to change shape. The strings smoked and evaporated. The neck shortened and thickened. The body lost its bright-polished sheen and became dull gray stone. Plus it looked a lot more like a two-headed ax.

“Every guitar should have a name,” Thor said. “Do you know what my guitar is called?”

Mack shook his head.

But Dietmar nodded yes; he'd guessed. “Mjolnir,” Dietmar whispered.

“MJOLNIR!” Thor roared.

He grabbed the stone ax by its short handle and laughed like the crazy Viking god-warrior he was. “Mjolnir! The hammer of THOOOOOR!”

To emphasize his point, he held it over his head. Lightning shot from it in a dozen bolts, sizzling the remaining hanging tapestries and singeing Fenrir's fur.

“Flee, human! Flee from the wrath of mighty Thor!”

To which Stefan said, “No.”

Stefan—now only a few feet shorter than Thor, and very able to lift the sword—ran straight at Thor with the sword pointed like a lance.

Stone hit steel, and Thor batted the sword away with practiced ease. Thor hadn't become thunder god by not knowing how to fight.

But Stefan hadn't become King of All Bullies by being a wuss.

Stefan took the momentum and swung a 360, came around with his blade low and horizontal, aiming at Thor's legs. The sword bit. It sliced into Thor's leggings. But stopped there.

Stefan drew the sword back. There was blood on the blade.

For what felt like way too long a pause, Thor stared at the blood. So did Fenrir. And everyone else, too.

Thor began to breathe hard. His face grew red. His eyes bulged. The veins and tendons on his thick neck all stood out. His grip on the hammer tightened so much you could hear something snapping—probably his sinews, but maybe the actual granite.

“Berserker!” Nott cried. “Run! Run away! He is going berserk!”

Thor took Mjolnir, screamed something incoherent, and threw it with all his might straight at Stefan. Stefan fortunately was not one of those big muscle-bound guys who are slow and clumsy. Stefan was quick as a snake. He bent back, and the massive hammer went flying past his chest—so close that it ripped his shirt.

Mack was almost knocked over by the wind of the hammer's passing. The tapestries flapped like laundry on a line in a gale. Nott's gown whipped. Fenrir's fur ruffled.

Mjolnir flew all the way down the hall. It smashed into the distant wall—
crash!
—with a sound like a freeway pileup. And then, impossibly, it came flying straight back to Thor's high-held hand.

“Huh,” Stefan remarked. “Excellent.”

Stefan grabbed the front of his lacerated shirt, yanked it off, and tossed it aside. He was about twelve feet tall now, a giant with glistening muscles.

“Oh yeah, that'll do,” Jarrah said admiringly. Then added, “I meant he's big enough now to fight.”

“Muscles are not so important,” Dietmar muttered through pursed lips.

Thor wasn't waiting around for Stefan to get any bigger. With a bellow that literally shook the walls, he leaped at Stefan.

Stefan slashed. Thor swung. Both missed.

They whirled past each other, came back around face-to-face, and Stefan raised the sword high and brought it down hard. It missed Thor's skull but hacked off a few inches of hair. The blow threw Thor off balance so he couldn't wield his hammer, but even falling away, he could kick. His boot caught Stefan in the chest and knocked him flying.

“Stefan!” Jarrah cried.

Stefan skidded halfway down the hallway on his back. His bare back skin made a squeegee sound.

“AAAAAAAAH!” Thor cried in loud triumph.

It had to be said that both Thor and Stefan seemed to be having a very good time.

But when Stefan got up, he had grown another several feet. He banged his head against the high, arched ceiling. He frowned, reached to one of the chandeliers, and pulled out what looked like a dark blue cloth.

“Someone want this?”

“My scarf!” Nott said. “So that's where it was.”

Stefan had to squeeze to get his head around the chandelier and get back into the fight.

“He's getting too big,” Mack said.

“I know. What's the Vargran for ‘Stop growing'?”

“Like I know?” He felt Nott's disk in his pocket. The disk that supposedly could be combined with another to unlock Vargran power words. Why a stone disk? Did none of these people understand the concept of a computer file?

“I don't know ‘stop.' I only know ‘larger' and ‘smaller.'”

Thor charged with a roar.

Stefan handled the sword like a toy now. He whipped it around in a circle of steel, like a lawn-mower blade.

Thor stopped charging. He drew back mighty Mjolnir, and there was no way he could possibly miss now. Not with Stefan basically filling the entire hallway.

“
Esk-ma pateet!
” Jarrah yelled.

Mjolnir flew.

A bright turquoise-and-gold serpentine creature smacked into the hammer in midair. Mjolnir went flying harmlessly past Stefan, but knocked Xiao into a wall with a sickening crunch.

“Hey!” Stefan yelled. “I promised to get her back safe!”

He charged Thor—who was still waiting on Mjolnir to return—and stabbed him with the sword.

The sword went into Thor's side and opened him up like a gutted trout. . . . Well, it would have gone straight into Thor's side and opened him up like a gutted trout except that Stefan was shrinking. And he was shrinking even faster than he had grown. So instead of the trout-gutting move, it was a thigh-stabbing move.

Blood sprayed. It sprayed like a fire hose because there's no such thing as a berserker without high blood pressure.

“AAAARRGH!” Thor cried.

“Yeah, try that on,” Stefan said. But it was less than effective as a triumphant gloat because he was getting a bit of a chipmunk sound in his voice as he shriveled like cashmere in a hot dryer.

Thor was yelling and dancing around in pain, holding the wound in his thigh. It was a good thing he was distracted, because Stefan was now just about hobbit sized, and that whole scene where the hobbit stabs the king of the Nazgûl in the foot is fine in a book or a movie, but this was real life.

“Make him grow again!” Mack cried.

“You can't repeat a spell in less than twenty-four hours!”

“Huh,” Stefan said in an adorable little voice.

“Plan B:
ruuuun!
” Mack cried.

Xiao had recovered. She swooped low, snatched tiny Stefan up, and they all pelted past Thor, who was really being kind of a big baby about the wound in his thigh.

Mack, Jarrah, and Dietmar raced after her. Nott swept in behind them, providing a sort of shield from whatever Thor might throw their way next.

The observatory was just ahead. What exactly that meant for Mack, he wasn't sure.

NOT VERY LONG AGO . . .

P
addy “Nine Iron” Trout grew old in the service of the Nafia and the Pale Queen. The world changed around him, going from bad to worse. Then back to bad. Then worse again.

He lived through wars and plagues and many terrible hard times. He survived them all. He even survived the departure of Simon Cowell from
American Idol
.

After long, long lives, his parents died.

First his father, who drank himself to death. No, not whiskey: sow's milk. It was the sow's milk of August. Never drink sow's milk in August. Sh! You don't need to know why: just don't.

Then, at the age of 121, Paddy's mother died of a broken hearth.

As you know, a hearth is a fireplace. And in County Grind all the cooking was done in the hearth. Mother Trout was getting quite old, and a little forgetful. She had prepared oat-stuffed bladder a thousand times before. But this time—who knows what may have distracted the poor dear—she forgot to pierce the bladder. In the heat of the hearth the bladder swelled, swelled, bigger and bigger, and with no way for the oat vapor to be released, it exploded. The hearth blew apart, killing Mother Trout instantly.

Paddy came to her funeral.

Well, actually he was on the way to kill a guy over in County Toyle and he thought, You know, while I'm here, I could finally kill Liam. That would have been a twofer.

But when he arrived at the old house, he saw the terrible damage done, and in his heart he knew he couldn't kill Liam. Because with the house all destroyed, the farm was worthless. The last thing Paddy wanted to do was inherit a worthless farm. Far better to let Liam live out his miserable, impoverished days on a run-down oat farm.

So, actually, it was just coincidence that Paddy happened to arrive on the day of Mother Trout's funeral.

It was a solemn affair with all due ceremony.

Afterward Liam came over to Paddy and said, “So, what have you been up to this last nearly-a-century, little brother?”

“I've been working to enslave the human race and ensure the triumph of evil,” Paddy said.

“Ah, so you're a mortgage broker. Did you never marry?”

“None of your concern, you dull-witted oat farmer,” Paddy snapped.

But as he turned and walked away from County Grind, never to return, he remembered when he first met Ereskigal and had his heart broken as thoroughly as Mother Trout's hearth.

Paddy knew he would never know happiness. And over the years he had begun to wonder if he would even live long enough to see the rise of the Pale Queen—the monster who could have been his mother-in-law if only things had worked out differently.

It was then, at a low point in Paddy's life, with old age and disappointment crowding around him, with his health failing, with his almost entirely green wardrobe no longer in fashion, that she, the princess Ereskigal, appeared to him again—unchanged by the years, except for her hairstyle—and told him that he had one last great task to perform.

“There is a second Twelve, Paddy,” Risky said.

“Twenty-four?” he guessed.

“No, you doddering, gasping, wrinkled old fool, a new Magnifica, a second Twelve of Twelves. They mean to stop us.”

Paddy's rheumy eyes glittered. His clotted lungs wheezed. “Has the first of the Twelve been revealed?”

Risky smiled her alluring yet not exactly warm smile and said, “His name is Mack.”

She slipped her business card into his hand. It read, “Ereskigal. Evil Princess.” And her email. But in pen she had written Mack's address and a description that was heavy on the use of the word
medium
.

“Kill him,” Risky said. And for just a fleeting second as he took the card, his aged, arthritic, papery-skinned old fingers touched her hand and sent a shudder of disgust through her. “Kill him for Mom and me, Paddy.”

With more energy and purpose than he had known in many, many (many) years, Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout turned on his heel and marched sloooowly away to kill once more for his only love.