Page 90 of The Fanged One

Where the coils gaped, there was no living thing under them. There was a husk of skin gone to gray parchment stretched over bone, lips shrunk off the teeth, hair brittle and colorless across the stone. Whatever had once been Loki had dried down to almost nothing inside its cage of serpents.

"Oh, shit, that's not good." Layla stopped next to Linnea. "That's a crumbling mummy, not a god."

"For fuck’s sake, we are too late," Ciara said, already pissed off.

"He doesn't look fit to blow his own nose, let alone blow half a realm away," Tor added. "A stiff wind would end him completely."

"Shut up, all of you! Have some respect." Von pushed past them to the edge of the slab and stared down at the husk. "He's not gone, or there wouldn't be this much magic getting up in my business right now. We need to get the snakes off him."

Linnea moved up to the slab and took Fenris's hand.

"It was always going to be us," she said slowly, staring at the snakes. "The whole of this fiasco was made for us. Think about it. The last trial was the two of us facing the worst thing in our own heads and no one else's. The monsters in the dark let go the second we stopped being afraid of ourselves and our mating bond. This door opened while we were still in that room. None of it was ever a quest that just anyone could walk. It was cut for you and me. Our wyrd. Our fate. Our sacrifice. It has our names on it."

"Wait, wait, you fucking like bunnies opened the door?" Layla snickered.

"Sex magic," Arne whispered.

"Shut up, both of you." Von's breath hissed out through his teeth. "Of course. Blood binds and blood unbinds, and the Norse never once in their history met a problem they didn't bleed on for good luck. It wants the blood of the two it was made for. Both of you."

"It's worth a try, though blood magic was never my father's style."

Fenris looked at Linnea, who had already drawn the knife from her belt. She opened her palm before giving him the blade so he could do the same. They laced their bleeding hands together, letting it drip down between their fingers and onto the green and gold scales.

The serpents slithered, opening their mouths, to catch the blood on their fangs.

"That's disturbing as shit," whispered Layla.

The serpents lit up from the inside and suddenly unwound into ribbons of colored light that spiraled up from the slab and were gone, leaving the husk bare on the stone.

Nothing happened.

The dried thing didn't so much as twitch. It lay shrunken and empty, and the whole chamber held its breath.

Fenris looked down at the corpse of his father, and something old and familiar moved in him. He knew this feeling. He had been on the wrong end of it his entire childhood.

"Stop fucking about, Father. You've had your joke. The bit is over. Time to get the fuck up," Fenris growled.

For a moment, there was only silence, and then out of the shrunken mouth came a dry, dusty cough of a laugh, delighted and horrible.

Everyone scrambled back a step from the slab except for Fenris and Von, who leaned in closer to get a better look.

The corpse kept laughing as the gray parchment skin flushed and filled. The brittle hair drank in color until it ran long and shining across the stone, red as blood. The shrunken frame lengthened and settled into the long lean lines of a living man, and the lips softened off the teeth into a mouth already, unmistakably, grinning like a maniac.

His eyes finally opened. Brilliant green, clever, and ancient.

They focused on Von, hanging over him with his golden hair loose and his face wide open in undisguised wonder.

Loki smiled, sleepy and seductive.

"My savior," he purred. "Please tell me you aren't into bondage."

44

The air at the foot of the slab folded in on itself, and Hel stepped out of a portal of darkness. "It's about bloody time."

Loki had gotten himself as far as sitting up, one hand still wrapped around Von's forearm like he was a well-placed railing. Hel threw her arms around him without a word.

The trickster's clever face softened. "Hello, little death. I've missed you."