Page 93 of Soul of Shadow
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. Turning 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 thedödssten. 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.
40
Elias thrust out a hand. Black cords shot from his palm, but Charlie swiped up with her knife, cutting them in midair. The cords evaporated like mist.
Baffled, Elias let out an enraged bellow and shot out another cord, this time aiming for the hand holding the knife. Charlie dove out of the way, slicing through the cord as she went. It evaporated just as she crashed into Lou’s body, causing her friend to stumble to one side. Charlie fell to the stone floor, rolling sideways before pushing back up onto her feet below the platform. Elias reached out, as if to grab her with his bare hands, but it was too late; staying low, Charlie slashed out with the Valkyrie knife.
Right through Elias’s kneecaps.
She heard muffled victorious cries that she thought came from Bjorn and Vidar.
Elias let out a roar, arms wheeling as he struggled to stay standing. She saw the dödssten flash inside his fist. Though clearly taken by surprise, he didn’t appear to be in any pain, as if the knife had done nothing but pass straight through his legs. As Charlie fell to the floor and scrambled backward, she was afraid she had failed. That the knife had done nothing.
“Impossible,” Elias whispered.
Then, like a statue sawed apart, the top of his body slid slowly off his kneecaps and toppled sideways.
As his body hit the ground, his shins, ankles, and feet evaporated, like the cords had. For a long, silent moment, she and Elias both stared at the place where his lower legs used to be.
She did it.
She actuallydidit.
She should have been overwhelmed with joy. Should have wanted to whoop, to dance around the cavern. At last, a small victory in an impossible situation.
Why, then, as she stared at his sliced-up body, was a pit slowly yawning open within her?
“Well done, Charlotte,” said Elias, voice oozing with black sarcasm. He lounged in a relaxed position, propped up on his elbows, half legs sprawled before him. He stuck his right hand back into his stomach, storing the dödssten within him. “A Valkyrie knife. I recognize the design. Seems I have a weakness after all.” He tilted his head, studying the blade. “And it looks like your sister is smarter than I realized.”
Charlie’s stomach dropped twenty floors.
“What?” said Mason. It was the first word out of his mouth since they’d entered the chamber, and it came out strangled.
Shit, Charlie thought.Shit, shit, shit. This isn’t how he was supposed to find out. I was supposed to havetime, to be able to sit him down, and—
Mason was still speaking. “What is he talking about, Charlie? What’s—” but his sentence was cut off with a yelp.
Charlie spun around.No.For the last thirty seconds, she’d been so focused on attacking Elias that she’d neglected thepresence of the Fenrir. Now, the beast had scooped her brother up with one paw, sliding his claws through the shadowy ropes around his ankles and was holding them up by the ceiling, Mason dangling in the air upside down. Her brother whimpered. Charlie could only pray that the wolf’s claws hadn’t gone through Mason’s skin, too.
“Silence,” snarled the Fenrir. “You are here to be sacrificed. Nothing more.”
Mason shut his mouth, shooting his sister a pleading look.
