The Trap (The Magnificent 12 #2)(37)

These two pillars then crunched and ripped and tore and pushed themselves right up against Mack’s pillar.

They formed now a sort of crude three-step staircase. A staircase you might climb if you had extremely long legs.

With a surge of dark green water, a new pillar began to rise from the lake. It pushed its way straight up, spilling water and mud and algae all down its side.

It rose higher, all the way up to where Mack and the others were standing.

“Come on!” Mack yelled.

He leaped onto the rising pillar. He landed hard, stumbled, took two way-too-big steps to try and steady himself, and almost launched off the edge.

But Stefan’s hand grabbed him and yanked him back.

Still another pillar was growing now, even as the one they were on was still rising. The latest pillar was surging from the lake, catching up to them.

“It’s a stairway!” Mack gasped.

They leaped, all together, onto the next pillar as it surged past them, impossibly big, and all covered with amazing carvings—lions, unicorns, weird things that none of them recognized, symbols, and figures of giant bearded dudes and women with severe braided hair.

Up they went. Mack leaned out to see if any more steps were coming, but this seemed like it.

“Look!” Xiao cried.

The pillar, the final stair, pushed up toward a door that hung all by itself in the air. A large door that led, as far as Mack could tell, to nothing at all.





Chapter Twenty-five



The door frame was a pointed arch of stone, all of it entwined with stone snakes and shields and spears and other not-very-welcoming things.

The door itself was made of trees. Not wood. Saying “wood” implies nice little two-by-fours or maybe a sheet of plywood. This door was built of logs as big as redwoods. They still had the bark on. And they were bound together with fat bands of iron bristling with barbed spikes.

The pillar came to a stop. It was still wet and a bit slimy with lake water. Mack and the others were probably five hundred feet in the air. High as a skyscraper. High enough not to hear the cameras clicking away below or the cries of amazement. But not so high that they couldn’t see a lot of stunned, antlike tourists gaping. The inevitable phones and cameras were aimed up at them.

And there were Nine Iron and Valin. They were too far away for Mack to be sure of their expressions, but neither seemed to be raging or threatening. They seemed disturbingly calm.

“There’s a sign on the door,” Jarrah said.

Dietmar peered at it. “It says, ‘Beware of Wolf.’ In German and I think in Swedish and Danish, too.”

“‘Beware of wolf’?” Mack echoed. “There’s a wolf?”

There was definitely a door knocker. It was a massive iron ball on a hinge. There was zero chance any of them could lift it.

“Should we knock?” Xiao asked.

“Like anyone would hear?” Jarrah said.

“Do we even want it to open?” Xiao wondered aloud.

Mack sighed. “Grimluk said we had to discover secret places. Get help from ancient ones. He sent us here, right?”

He knocked on the door. It made a very small sound.

“I think I know what is behind this door,” Xiao said.

“I as well,” Dietmar said.

Stefan kicked the door. Three times. As hard as he could without breaking his foot. That didn’t make much noise, either, but it got a response.

A howl.

No, that doesn’t quite express it. More like: HOW-OOOOOOOO-OOOWWLL!

Like that.

Mack, Jarrah, Xiao, and Dietmar jumped. If you added up all the jumps together, you’d have an Olympic record. Stefan did not jump. But he did say, “Huh.”

The door opened with a sudden jerk. The motion of the door almost sucked them in.

Standing there holding the knob and scowling was a giant. He was probably fourteen feet tall. He had massive, bunched, oiled, tanned muscles. He had a blond beard almost down to his waist. His eyes were blue and crazy-intense.

In his free hand he held a short leash attached to a very big collar that went around the neck of a wolf the size of a medium-large elephant.

But the wolf was much scarier than an elephant.

The wolf was gray, aside from its black nose and black eyes and very white teeth. It, too, had crazy-intense eyes.

It made a sound approximately like “Grrrr-grr.” Very low and deep in its throat.

All of this was alarming to Mack.

But despite the fact that Mack knew he should be focusing on the wolf’s slavering jaws—jaws that could without the slightest doubt not just blow your house down, little pig, little pig, but chew it and swallow it no matter how many hairs you had on your chinny-chin-chin—Mack found his gaze drawn irresistibly to two very odd details.

First, the giant bearded guy was wearing sweat pants and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt. The pants were pale blue with a yellow stripe down the side. The T-shirt was stretched so tight over the massive upper body that it was like a grown man wearing a baby T. The giant’s stomach was bare, revealing at least half of a six-pack.

The second thing, even more astounding, was that around the giant’s neck hung what was unquestionably the biggest electric guitar in the world.

“What do you want?” the giant roared.

They stared, not quite knowing how to answer. Because none of them had a lot of experience dealing with giant wolf-wrangling guitar players.