And there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it.
If I tried to get away, Preston would stab me with his sword. If I held still, Vivian would gut me with the dagger. Either way, I was dead, dead, dead.
Vivian stopped in front of me, a cold, satisfied look on her face. How had I ever thought her sweet and shy? As I watched her, that red spark already flickering in the depths of her gaze began to burn brighter and brighter until her eyes gleamed with the same crimson fire as the torches.
"Hold out her hand," Vivian said.
My hand? What did she want with my hand? Why wasn't she going for my heart?
Preston forced my hand open and shoved it in front of me. Vivian slashed down with the dagger, opening up a deep cut on my right palm. I hissed with pain, but Vivian sawed the dagger deeper and deeper into my skin, until I thought she was going to cut my hand in half. I bit back a scream and tried not to vomit.
Blood poured out of my palm, coating the dagger in a sticky glaze. For a few seconds, nothing happened, but then, a red spark flared to life in the eye-shaped ruby set into the dagger's hilt-a hot, eerie, crimson light that I knew all too well.
"No," I whispered. "No, no, no."
Vivian shoved the dagger back into the cut, turning it over and over until it was completely covered in my blood. She pulled back, and I realized that instead of blood dripping off the end, the dagger was actually absorbing my blood, sucking it up like a vacuum cleaner. The last drop of blood vanished into the stone, and the eerie crimson light spread out from the ruby. In seconds, the whole weapon was burning the same blistering red as Vivian's eyes.
Vivian carefully placed the dagger in a slot in the middle of the stone circle, right in the center of the hand holding the balanced scales, piercing it in the same place where she'd cut my palm. She stepped back to the edge of the circle, and Preston and the other man hauled me over there as well, Preston's sword still pressing into my side.
As I watched, the Helheim Dagger started to burn even brighter, giving off wisps of acrid black smoke, before it just ... melted into the stone. One second the dagger was whole and solid; the next it was gone. The instant the hilt of the dagger disappeared, the ground started trembling, as if we were standing at the epicenter of the most violent earthquake ever. One by one, the torches went out before abruptly flaming to life again. The black stone under our feet began to buck and heave, like someone was pounding at it from below with a giant fist.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
A few seconds later, the stone Garm gate gave way to whatever was hammering at it, and the circle splintered down the middle. The stone heaved again and split the other way, forming a giant X. A crimson cloud of smoke erupted from the giant fissure and spewed up like lava, burning even brighter and hotter than the torches, until it scalded my face with its intense heat. An acrid stench filled the air, like sulfur mixed with some sort of flowery perfume.
Then, as suddenly as it had all started, the trembling and the shaking stopped, and the smoke vanished. I blinked, trying to get my bearings, and that's when I realized that a figure had appeared in the middle of the stone circle right beside the center of the X.
He wore a long black robe, and he huddled on his knees. His body was cramped and twisted, his chest almost touching the ground, his neck cocked to the point of breaking, his right arm flung up at an awkward angle behind the rest of him. He clutched the Helheim Dagger in his right hand, the point turned up, like he'd used the weapon to stab through the stone above him.
I could just see the edge of his face, but it seemed sleek and shiny, like it was made of wax. Even more than that, I could feel the anger rolling off him in waves-anger, rage, and the absolute blackest sort of hate.
"Loki," I whispered in fear.
Chapter 23
The Norse god of chaos stayed still and frozen in the middle of the stone circle. Slowly, his fingers twitched, and his muscles spasmed, as though he'd been trapped in that one, agonizing position for a long, long time and was having trouble getting to his feet. His arm came down, his neck twisted back into the appropriate place, and his chest lifted as he got to his feet. His bones cracked and popped with every movement, matching the crackle of the torches. Each and every sound made me grind my teeth together and cower a little more in fear. I'd been face-to-face with a god before. Nike had come to me twice now, but this-this was different.
Because this was Loki, and he radiated pure evil.
Finally, the god straightened up to his full height-almost seven feet tall. He had his back to me, but his head pivoted left, then right, his bones snapping into place as he stared at the circle of Reapers in front of him. Then, the god lifted his hands into the air and let out a scream-a wild, wild scream full of all the hate and rage that had sustained him over the centuries he'd been trapped. A scream full of all the bloody chaos and harsh promises of death his Reapers had whispered about over the years.
It was the most awful sound I'd ever heard.
Just the faintest whisper of it would have been enough to make my head pound. Hearing the full force of it caused hot tears to slide down my cheeks and my whole body to ache, as though the god's scream was enough to peel my flesh from my bones. Maybe it was. Either way, I didn't think things could get any worse-until the god turned around and I got my first good look at him.
It was-he was-horrible.
Loki was the most horrible thing I'd ever seen and worse than anything I could have ever imagined. I'd seen drawings of him in my myth-history books, but they'd failed to show the god's true self. A piercing blue eye, a strong chin, a great cheekbone, an aquiline nose, alabaster skin. Half of his face was perfect, beautiful, gorgeous even, like he was one of the marble statues in the Library of Antiquities come to life. His hair flowed down like a river of gold, just brushing the top of his right shoulder.
But the left side of the god's face was just-melted. Like hot candle wax that had run together and mushed all the original, clean, straight lines of his features into something dark, ugly, and utterly twisted. Instead of being blue, the god's eye on that side of his face was red-Reaper red. His cheekbone was nothing more than a smushed piece of putty, and his nose looked like a hooked beak that was trying to dig its way into his chin. The part of his skin that wasn't smooth and shiny was pitted with pockmarks, and the hair on that side of his head was black, with crimson strands glinting among the thin, matted, singed locks.
Loki was the most horrific thing I'd ever seen, and now, the god was finally free of his prison. And it was my fault-all my fault. People were going to die, and it was all my fault for being stupid enough to let the Reaper girl use me to find the Helheim Dagger. Somehow I swallowed down the hot, sour, bitter bile that rose up in my throat.