The Trap (The Magnificent 12 #2)(45)

“Muscles are not so important,” Dietmar muttered through pursed lips.

Thor wasn’t waiting around for Stefan to get any bigger. With a bellow that literally shook the walls, he leaped at Stefan.

Stefan slashed. Thor swung. Both missed.

They whirled past each other, came back around face-to-face, and Stefan raised the sword high and brought it down hard. It missed Thor’s skull but hacked off a few inches of hair. The blow threw Thor off balance so he couldn’t wield his hammer, but even falling away, he could kick. His boot caught Stefan in the chest and knocked him flying.

“Stefan!” Jarrah cried.

Stefan skidded halfway down the hallway on his back. His bare back skin made a squeegee sound.

“AAAAAAAAH!” Thor cried in loud triumph.

It had to be said that both Thor and Stefan seemed to be having a very good time.

But when Stefan got up, he had grown another several feet. He banged his head against the high, arched ceiling. He frowned, reached to one of the chandeliers, and pulled out what looked like a dark blue cloth.

“Someone want this?”

“My scarf!” Nott said. “So that’s where it was.”

Stefan had to squeeze to get his head around the chandelier and get back into the fight.

“He’s getting too big,” Mack said.

“I know. What’s the Vargran for ‘Stop growing’?”

“Like I know?” He felt Nott’s disk in his pocket. The disk that supposedly could be combined with another to unlock Vargran power words. Why a stone disk? Did none of these people understand the concept of a computer file?

“I don’t know ‘stop.’ I only know ‘larger’ and ‘smaller.’”

Thor charged with a roar.

Stefan handled the sword like a toy now. He whipped it around in a circle of steel, like a lawn-mower blade.

Thor stopped charging. He drew back mighty Mjolnir, and there was no way he could possibly miss now. Not with Stefan basically filling the entire hallway.

“Esk-ma pateet!” Jarrah yelled.

Mjolnir flew.

A bright turquoise-and-gold serpentine creature smacked into the hammer in midair. Mjolnir went flying harmlessly past Stefan, but knocked Xiao into a wall with a sickening crunch.

“Hey!” Stefan yelled. “I promised to get her back safe!”

He charged Thor—who was still waiting on Mjolnir to return—and stabbed him with the sword.

The sword went into Thor’s side and opened him up like a gutted trout. . . . Well, it would have gone straight into Thor’s side and opened him up like a gutted trout except that Stefan was shrinking. And he was shrinking even faster than he had grown. So instead of the trout-gutting move, it was a thigh-stabbing move.

Blood sprayed. It sprayed like a fire hose because there’s no such thing as a berserker without high blood pressure.

“AAAARRGH!” Thor cried.

“Yeah, try that on,” Stefan said. But it was less than effective as a triumphant gloat because he was getting a bit of a chipmunk sound in his voice as he shriveled like cashmere in a hot dryer.

Thor was yelling and dancing around in pain, holding the wound in his thigh. It was a good thing he was distracted, because Stefan was now just about hobbit sized, and that whole scene where the hobbit stabs the king of the Nazg?l in the foot is fine in a book or a movie, but this was real life.

“Make him grow again!” Mack cried.

“You can’t repeat a spell in less than twenty-four hours!”

“Huh,” Stefan said in an adorable little voice.

“Plan B: ruuuun!” Mack cried.

Xiao had recovered. She swooped low, snatched tiny Stefan up, and they all pelted past Thor, who was really being kind of a big baby about the wound in his thigh.

Mack, Jarrah, and Dietmar raced after her. Nott swept in behind them, providing a sort of shield from whatever Thor might throw their way next.

The observatory was just ahead. What exactly that meant for Mack, he wasn’t sure.





Chapter Thirty



NOT VERY LONG AGO . . .

Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout grew old in the service of the Nafia and the Pale Queen. The world changed around him, going from bad to worse. Then back to bad. Then worse again.

He lived through wars and plagues and many terrible hard times. He survived them all. He even survived the departure of Simon Cowell from American Idol.

After long, long lives, his parents died.

First his father, who drank himself to death. No, not whiskey: sow’s milk. It was the sow’s milk of August. Never drink sow’s milk in August. Sh! You don’t need to know why: just don’t.

Then, at the age of 121, Paddy’s mother died of a broken hearth.

As you know, a hearth is a fireplace. And in County Grind all the cooking was done in the hearth. Mother Trout was getting quite old, and a little forgetful. She had prepared oat-stuffed bladder a thousand times before. But this time—who knows what may have distracted the poor dear—she forgot to pierce the bladder. In the heat of the hearth the bladder swelled, swelled, bigger and bigger, and with no way for the oat vapor to be released, it exploded. The hearth blew apart, killing Mother Trout instantly.

Paddy came to her funeral.

Well, actually he was on the way to kill a guy over in County Toyle and he thought, You know, while I’m here, I could finally kill Liam. That would have been a twofer.