Page 57 of The Fanged One

She approves of us. I like her, her wolf said with zero shame about it.

Fenris set Hel back on her feet, his ears red. "Behave yourself, little sister."

"Never. Forgive my brother's bad manners. He's been asleep a while and has forgotten how to make introductions." She turned and looked the rest of them over, head to boots, the way a butcher considers a good delivery. "You all look so nervous. Is it the dead people?"

She tipped her head at the silent shapes, which had stopped at the edge of the forest. "Don't mind them. They're curious, that's all. We so rarely get visitors with a pulse."

"There's, um…" Layla's voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. "There are a lot of them."

"There's a lot of everyone, eventually." Hel smiled.

Von made a strangled sound of pure joy, unable to contain it. "This is surreal."

Tor, eyes locked on Hel as if she might lunge, said what they were all thinking. "The stories say you're half dead and that you rule down here because you're, ah...half rotted."

"Tor!" Ciara and Layla hissed at the same time.

"Oh, I suppose this is what you were expecting. Well, I might as well show you." Hel's smile fell, and the flesh began to slide off the left side of her face. The skin of her cheek grayed, split, and peeled back off the bone in wet gray ribbons and splattered on the ground, until half of her beautiful face was a grinning skull with a lidless eye rolling in the socket.

Layla screamed, clutching onto Arne. Ciara's blade came all the way out as Tor threw himself in front of her.

Hel doubled over, her skull face laughing in wet and delighted uproar. The flesh came flooding back up over the bone as she wheezed, cheek and lip and lidded eye knitting themselves back around a grin so wide it looked painful.

"If only you could see your faces!" she gasped, gripping Fenris's arm to stay upright. "It never gets old."

"You absolute monster," Von breathed. "I think I just fell in love you."

"Humans! Still repeating that half-dead nonsense as if you've never met a metaphor in your lives." Hel straightened and smoothed the front of her dress. "I'm not half a corpse, you sweet, literal-minded creatures. I'm a necromancer. The dead are my beloveds, and when I call, they come, and not because I keep one foot in the dirt for show." She made a very unladylike snort. "Half living, half dead. It's bad poetry. Skalds! What can you do?"

"That was the single most upsetting thing I have ever seen," Layla said, an excited laugh escaping her. "That's it. We're keeping her."

"You can't keep me. I have a realm and the forgotten dead to care for." Hel's grin sharpened to a point. "Some seem to be more restless than others today."

Suddenly, the earth split beside them, and a hand shot out, spraying dirt. Linnea clambered up Fenris's back with a yelp. "What the fuck!"

The earth beside them heaved again as a second hand, all bone and flaking mail, clawed its way through the frost-rimed soil. It was followed by a helmet, rusted to the color of old blood, with a skull tilting inside its cavernous dark. The thing wrenched itself free with a sound of grinding stone and the shriek of corroded metal.

Linnea's fingers dug into Fenris's shoulders as a low growl vibrated through his chest. Ice and clods of grave-dirt slid from a cage of bone as the creature stood, towering a full head over Tor. Its jaw, webbed with sinew, cranked open. A double-headed axe was locked in one gauntlet, fused by a century of rust and grave dirt.

"Oh, for crying out loud, this guy," Hel sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Knut! We have guests. Must you be so dramatic every time?"

The skeleton threw its head back, and a dry, rattling roar echoed from its empty chest. The rusted axe swung high, carving a deadly arc against the pale sky.

"Kill it! Kill it!" Von shrieked, pulling Arne in front of him as a human shield.

"Stand down, Knut!" Hel commanded the warrior. "They're not enemies. It's just my brother and his companions."

The skeleton grumbled in old Norse as it lowered the axe, turned on its heel like a soldier dismissed, and walked back into the hole it had crawled from. The ground sealed over it and went smooth and frozen again, as if nothing had ever broken it.

"It's okay. He's just a curious one." Hel started laughing at them again. "You're all scared? Priceless. I could do this all night."

"Please don't," Ciara begged. "I think I just peed a little."

"Sorry. The living are too gullible not to fuck with," Hel replied with a wink.

"You've had your fun, little sister, and we have things to discuss. It's okay, Linnea. She will keep the skeletons in the ground," Fenris said and patted the legs that were still wrapped around his waist. Linnea forced her limbs to unlock and slid off his back, face burning.

"If something comes to eat me, you'd better fight it," she whispered to him.