The Trap (The Magnificent 12 #2)(38)

Finally Mack said, “Um . . .”

“Well?”

“We’re, um, we’re the Magnificent Twelve. Or four of them, anyway.”

The giant blinked his crazed blue eyes. He got a sort of crafty look and smirked a bit privately. Then, with patently false surprise, he said, “Wow. Is it that late? I thought it was still the twentieth century.”

“No,” Mack said. “We’re, um, it’s, um, you know, the twenty-first.”

The giant nodded. “Well, come on in, then.”

Mack and the others hesitated.

He thought he intercepted a sly look between wolf and giant.

The giant broke into a grin. “Don’t worry about old Fenrir here. He won’t eat you. Just give him a little scratch behind the ears.”

Fenrir made what might be a wolf smile. Or not.

Mack stepped across the threshold. He swallowed hard, bit his lip, scrunched his eyes, and gingerly patted the wolf’s ruff.

“Come on, I want you to hear this,” the giant said. “And give me your honest opinion. Don’t be scared: I don’t do the whole Mjolnir thing anymore.”

They followed the giant and the wolf through the door, which slammed shut behind them.

The room was not at all what they would have expected based on the door. It was big—it would have to be. The walls were massive tree trunks with white plaster between them. There were ancient tapestries that showed ancient battle scenes in faded, muddy colors. But it looked as if many more tapestries had once hung on these walls. And Mack could clearly see an empty place that had once boasted a chandelier.

And the room had some more modern elements. For one thing, IKEA furniture.

It was normal IKEA furniture, but about a dozen tables had been shoved together to form one wide but low table, at which this massive creature could not possibly sit and eat.

Nevertheless there was food on the table: half a dozen two-liter bottles of some unknown soda and several ripped-apart packs of cookies. There was also a vase being used as an ashtray.

At one end of the chamber stood a low stage, and on that stage were massive amps. Inhumanly big. Metallica sized.

“What’s a Mjolnir?” Mack whispered.

Dietmar had gone even paler than his normal pale. “Mjolnir? You don’t know Mjolnir? It’s the hammer of Thor.”





Chapter Twenty-six



BACK TO A LONG TIME AGO . . .

Nine Iron wasn’t sure just what he was expecting the Pale Queen to be like. Probably a queen. Like Queen Victoria, who had died and was widely admired by the English for having never had any fun, ever.

“So, tell me,” Nine Iron said to Risky’s back as they walked down yet another tunnel. “What’s she like, your mother?” He was already thinking the Pale Queen might someday be his mother-in-law.

Poor fool.

“Well, she’s very friendly; she likes to crochet and arrange flowers, and loves long walks on the beach.”

“Really?”

“No, you idiot. She’s the Mother of All Monsters. And you’re supposed to be an assassin? It’s a good thing you’re not interviewing for the mastermind position. Do you even realize that we’re inside the Pale Queen?”

“Inside?”

“These tubes, they’re all part of her. Through this series of tubes—what we call the intraweb—she gives birth to and then dispatches her minions. The tubes are connected to the world above and all through the World Beneath. Although the three-thousand-year curse has closed off just about all the world-above connections. Nowadays mostly she has to reach outside the frame.”

Just to make conversation and to ward off his own nervousness, Nine Iron said, “What’s that mean, outside the frame?”

Risky stopped. She turned back to him. They both stood still. “Maybe you’re smarter than you look after all. But you’d pretty much have to be, wouldn’t you?”

Nine Iron said, “Yes?”

“Say you have a picture, right? A photograph? A painting? You put it in a frame. You stare at that picture long enough, it’s almost like you fall into that painting. That becomes the world you know: whatever is inside the frame. Stare long enough, and you can’t even see what’s outside the frame. But you know what, Paddy ‘Nine Iron’ Trout of County Grind?” She plucked at his collar and gave him a little slap.

Anyone else who ever did that to Nine Iron would have lived (briefly) to regret it. He wouldn’t have let the biggest, scariest, most scarred-up, glowering, evil, squinting thug pluck his collar and slap his cheek. Because Nine Iron didn’t fear guys like that.

But there was something about this redheaded young woman that told him he’d best just stand there and take whatever she dished out.

Paddy had never had anyone stand up to him the way Risky did. She wasn’t afraid of him at all. He might as well have been a fly rather than a feared member of the Nafia.

He kind of liked the way she had slapped him.

At that moment her beauty, her fearlessness, and of course the sheer mind-boggling evil that seemed to emanate from her like some intoxicating perfume made him fall just a little in love with her.

Paddy knew at that moment that he would never marry any other woman. Where would he ever find a woman as completely pitiless, cold, and just plain rotten as Risky?