Loki's Wolves - Armstrong Kelley L. - Страница 24

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“No one’s going to stop a wolf.” He turned to his cousin. “I wish you could change, too.”

Then he turned his back on them and became a wolf.

It would be so much better if she was a wolf, too. He’d hoped in a weird sort of girly way that if she changed, too, Uncle Stig would take them with him. Then they could all three live together like a normal family. Laurie wasn’t happy with her mom and brother, and Fen wasn’t happy moving from house to house, and Uncle Stig surely wasn’t happy alone. Laurie hadn’t turned into a wolf, though, and he didn’t know if she would. He felt sad, which made him want to howl.

She was already crouched down, so they were face-to-face. “Be careful,” she whispered. “Don’t do anything too stupid.”

He butted his head against her shoulder, and then he was off. He walked right up to the guard, who looked at him with the sort of respect that he saw more often from the American Indians in South Dakota. Ranchers weren’t usually keen on wolves, but the Sioux were more likely to respect nature—which included wolves.

The guard watched him warily, and then looked around as if he were seeking shelter. Fen didn’t like that he had frightened him, so he smiled, which he always forgot never looked very friendly when he was a wolf, and the guard took a step backward. Fen felt a little guilty about scaring the guard, but he had no intention of hurting the man. He kept the man’s attention, hoping that Matt and Laurie were moving farther into cover.

Then he leaped over a low wall and started toward the monument. He knew the guard was watching him. The weight of the man’s attention felt good, almost as good as stretching his muscles after hours of sitting and doing nothing. He grinned. Getting close enough to see whatever clue was on the presidents’ faces was going to be easy.

He left the tourist section of the monument—and the guard—well behind him as he made his way up closer to the mountain, enjoying the feel of the ground under his paws, and was almost there when movement caught his eye. He stopped and looked. Rocks were raining down from the faces.

He waited, torn between natural caution and rushing forward to look for the clue before an earthquake or avalanche hid it even more. Several more rocks fell. Then, it looked like a giant part of the rock face was about to come crashing down. He was glad the guard was well out of range, but when he looked back, he couldn’t see where Laurie was.

Whether it was an earthquake or avalanche, he didn’t know. What he did know was that if there was a disaster of any sort starting, he needed to be with Laurie to keep her safe. He turned his back to the mountain and started to race back toward Laurie. He could hear a rumble behind him as he picked up speed.

TWELVE

MATT

“TROLL CONDO”

When Thomas Jefferson’s nose dropped off, Matt’s first thought was: avalanche. He’d never actually experienced one, but he’d seen plenty in movies, and if pieces start falling off the faces at Mount Rushmore, that’d be the only natural and logical explanation. Then, when George Washington’s nose dropped, he thought It’s an earthquake, immediately followed by It’s Ragnarok. More natural disasters. More signs—as if he needed them after being visited by Norns and Valkyries—that the world was indeed sliding into Fimbulwinter.

His first reaction, he was ashamed to admit, was to look around and see who was handling this. Who was in charge. Who’d tell them to get to safety. Then he realized that was him.

He was turning to warn Fen and Laurie when Teddy Roosevelt’s mustache got up and stretched. There was a second where Matt just stared, sure he was seeing wrong. The gray lump on the lip of the twenty-sixth president of the United States could not be stretching. It must be rolling or something, breaking loose.

Except it wasn’t. It was stretching. And Abraham Lincoln’s beard was dangling from what looked like thick gray arms. Then it started going up and down, like it was doing chin-ups. Using Lincoln’s chin.

They’d gotten as close as they could, but the faces were still so far away you’d need binoculars to really see them. Those lumps weredefinitely moving, though, and the more they moved, the less they looked like hunks of stone. The one that had been Roosevelt’s mustache now crouched on the president’s lip, long, apelike gray arms dangling. Then the arms swung, and it leaped down to the rocks below.

“Trolls,” Matt whispered.

“Right,” Fen said. “Mount Rushmore is really a giant troll condo. Makes perfect sense.”

Laurie looked at Matt. “The trolls must have the answer. That’s what the Valkyrie meant, don’t you think?”

“They didn’t say the answers were written on the faces. Just that the answers were on the faces.” Matt looked at the squat stone figure lumbering over the piles of broken rock, and he realized what he had to do.

“We need to get ourselves a troll,” he said.

As they picked their way across the forested mountainside, Matt kept waiting for Fen or Laurie to argue. He’d just told them he planned to capture and question a troll. Fen should say it was a dumb idea, or Laurie should say it was too dangerous. At the very least, Fen should say Go for it, Thorsen, and walk away. But there he was, right beside Matt, peering through the dark forest, head tilting to listen, nostrils flaring to… to sniff the air? Could Fen smell things, like a wolf? Matt thought of asking but figured it was safer to keep his mouth shut. Just because they weren’t trying to hit each other anymore didn’t make them friends.

Laurie was right there, too, on Fen’s other side, looking and listening. The night forest was a scary thing at any time—hooting owls and creaking branches and patches of darkness so complete you had to walk with your hands out, feeling your way. Add trolls, and his own heart pounded in time with his footsteps. He was sure Laurie had to be terrified. She didn’t look afraid, though. Just cautious, like them. Maybe she didn’t really believe there were trolls. Maybe she was humoring him—maybe they both were. Playing along, waiting to laugh at him when his trolls turned out to be piles of rock.

Almost as embarrassing was the fact that he was kinda hoping he waswrong. Otherwise, he had to carry through and actually catch a troll, and he had no idea how to do that.

This time, he was the one who heard something first. His arm shot out to stop Fen, who plowed into it, then turned on him, snarling. Matt lifted his hand to motion for silence.

Off to their left, a twig cracked. Matt pointed.

Fen rolled his eyes. “We’re looking for a walking pile of rock,” he whispered. “It’s gonna make more noise than that.”

True, if a troll was in the forest, they should all hear it, crashing through the undergrowth like a boulder rolling downhill. Maybe it was the guard? But there weren’t any paths here, and they’d seen no sign of guards since they’d come into the forest. Matt guessed that if the trolls came to life at night, they were careful to do it when the guards wouldn’t be watching.

Matt felt his amulet heat. It didn’t get red-hot, like before a hammer flare, but it was getting warmer. He touched his cold fingers to it.

“There’s a troll coming,” he said, before he could even think it.

“What?” Fen waved at the amulet. “Now it’s a monster detector?”

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