Page 15 of Monsters of Mayhem

It didn’t take us long to walk across the village square to where a large two-story wooden building stood. The place was raucous and noisy and it looked like this was clearly where a lot of the frost giants spent their evenings. They played darts and threw axes, challenging each other to drinks and arm-wrestling competitions.

“I don’t need a drink,” I said. “I need a portal to get home.”

“You need to see this,” Hurgud insisted, pushing through the crowds of giants milling around the pub and bringing me up to the bartender who stood there covered in tattoos. He was shirtless just like the rest of the frost giants, wearing nothing but a loin cloth. He was bulky as all fuck. Definitely not the guy you’d want to get into a fight with, Suddenly I realized how frail and small Hurgud looked compared to the other giants. When we had just been alone, she had looked old but like a giant. Now I could see how she had a slight bend in her shoulders and her long fingers were delicate and frail compared to the massive meaty hands of the bartender as he put a beer in front of me.

“Drink,” he commanded.

I wasn’t used to taking orders from anybody ever, but in this case, I decided to relent and have a drink. I was far outnumbered and outsized in a bar like this. I could take a sip of the drink and not have to have an argument with the bartender.

“Jaq, show him what you found last week,” Hurgud said to the bartender.

“It was just before the rift opened,” Jaq said. “I was out hunting in the area of the river looking for snow leopards and seals, and I saw a man in the distance. He wasn’t really a man; it was a monster. He was more a monster like you. He wasn’t some faceless demon beast coming from another dimension. He was definitely part human,”

“Another monster like me?” I said. “That’s impossible.”

“It’s not entirely impossible,” Hurgud said. “You can’t be the only half monster around. Plenty of intelligent monsters come across the rift and you know what human women are like. They go crazy for anything out of the ordinary. So, it’s not hard to imagine another half being was born.”

“Did you chase him down?” I asked. “Did you catch him? Did you figure anything out?”

Jaq bent over and grabbed something from under the counter, slamming it onto the bench in front of me. A large chunk of ice.

“I found this,” he said triumphantly. The ice was like a tablet with rune markings carved into it, but they weren’t the Viking runes of the frost giants; they were something entirely different.

“Do you recognize it?” Jaq asked.

“Yes,” I said, my voice quiet in the noisy bar. I recognized it all right, but it was the last thing I really wanted to see. It was all the proof I needed that the monster drama was definitely being run by a monster of some sort. Runes of my father Typhon were carved into the ice. They would have helped open the rift to a greater extent.

There was no doubt in my mind there was a monster on the loose trying to destroy mankind.

Chapter 10

A loud knocking on the door startled us from staring at the tarot cards on the table. I glanced toward the wooden door through the large stained-glass panel. Traces of the people outside showed through.

“Satyrs,” I murmured. They seemed like perfectly nice guys and I felt bad about the one who had died, but they were working for Ryder and the last thing in the world I wanted was for them to find me and take me back to the tower.

“I don’t want to go with them.” I looked hopefully at Eunice. “Is there some way you can help me?”

“I can’t create a portal, if that’s what you’re thinking about. I’m a witch.”

“I know. I was thinking maybe you just had a closet I could hide in.” I looked around, but the tiny shop didn’t seem like it had any hidden alcoves where one could avoid running into a satyr.

The knocking on the door came louder. “Eunice.” I could hear Tony Furlan’s voice call out from the other side of the door. How the hell was I going to avoid being caught by the satyrs?

“The back door.” Eunice nodded toward it.

“I can’t outrun them,” I said. “Bale kills them. I don’t want to kill any of them.” The hellhound looked up at me with a big grin on his face, as if he’d love nothing more than to kill another satyr.

“It’s the only other way out of here,” Eunice said.

I studied her closely. “If they find me in here, they’re going to lock me back in the tower and they’re going to send Bale back to Hell.”

“It looks like you have a choice to make,” Eunice said, her eyes shifting toward the chariot card on the tarot table.

“What can you do?” I asked.

“I can turn things into wood,” Eunice explained.

“Wood?” My stomach churned at the thought of being turned into a piece of wood. “I don’t want to be turned into a piece of wood.”

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