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Jovi
The heat in Torsten’s eyes rivaled the geysers that shot lava out of the ground. He growled deep in his throat and the bulge of his erection against my thigh was unmistakable. My body reacted to him immediately. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply as if he’d caught the scent of my arousal. I thought he might have kissed me again, but a look of terror entered his gorgeous eyes instead.
Torsten peered over his shoulder, and I followed his line of sight towards another giant that had been slowly making its way toward the valley. The fire giant let out a roar that caused my ears to ring painfully. It ran straight for us, moving at a speed that seemed impossible for a creature that size. Torsten was frozen and there was panic in his eyes, only then did I realize he was shaking. His side was misshapen, bones pressing sickeningly outward. Clearly, his ribs were broken. What else had he suffered at the hands of these assholes? And the better question: did he have another fight left in him?
Probably not. We needed to hide. Maybe Brisingr could handle this one.
I crawled out from under him and dragged him behind a cluster of jagged stones. My hands scrambled over his face, trying to snap him out of the daze into which he’d fallen.
“Torsten!” I cried. “We need to get out of here before we’re stuck in this godforsaken hellscape.” His head started to droop as his eyes grew sleepy. I shook him. “Talk to me, Torsten.”
He opened his eyes. “Jovi?”
“Yeah, I’m right here, big guy,” I replied. “Now, tell me how we get out of this.”
“There’s nowhere we could hide in Muspelheim that the giants would not find me.” He pulled my hands away from his face and said, “I’ll distract the thing long enough for you to run. Find the dwarf and get out of this realm.”
“No! I’m not going anywhere without you.” I shook off Torsten’s hold and tried to look around for a way out. Instead, I saw a familiar dwarf sidestepping and occasionally killing pit-mutts. He made his way over to the rocks we’d hidden behind. Blood soaked his armor, startlingly red against the metal.
“Feck, feck, feck,” Brisingr slid to a stop and pressed his back against the stones beside Torsten. He took one look at the wolf shifter and scoffed. “Cause enough trouble, did ye? Yer kind never did quite master the art o’ subtlety.”
“From my experience, your kind isn’t much better.” Torsten’s dislike for the dwarf was evident in his tone. The tension between them was most likely tied to some ancient feud that I didn’t have the energy to think about.
“Focus, please,” I shouted. “Surviving seems like the most important topic at the moment.” I looked between the two of them. “So, who has a plan?”
Brisingr slapped an axe into my palm. It wasn’t very big, but the sharp edge appeared lethal enough. The axe felt like ice in my hand and yet it was lighter than I expected.
“We fight,” said Brisingr, despite the pointed glare from Torsten. “Try that one, me lass. It’s more your size.”
“Where’s my weapon?” Torsten asked.
“I would never give one o’ yer sort a weapon.” The dwarf came face to face with the berserker’s furious expression.
I ignored both of them and charged towards the first mutt that came near the cluster of stones where we hid. The axe sent a tingle up my arm and frost collected on my fingertips as I buried it into the flaming canine’s skull. The beast turned to ice and shattered like glass. I stared at it for a moment before breaking into a wide grin.
“Cool.” I laughed. “Literally, I guess.”
Torsten grabbed the broadsword that Brisingr had strapped to his back. Then, as much as he was able, he rushed to my side with the sword raised high. Three of the mutts dropped one after another, their heads rolling into the fiery cracks in the stone beneath my feet.
The fire giant jumped high off the ground and landed with such force that the remaining demons scattered like cockroaches. Its scarred hand reached for us, but Torsten swung the mighty sword and severed two of the giant’s fingers. Black, sticky blood squirted out of the wounds, dousing me before I had the chance to get out of the way. I shivered in repulsion as Brisingr pulled something off his armor and tossed it into the air. A rift opened when it hit the ground, sucking Torsten and I into a dark abyss before the giant could capture us.
The last thing I saw as we were swallowed by darkness was a great eye with a slitted pupil.
***
Skarde
I woke in an upright position, strapped to a chair, and moving at great speed. For a moment, I was certain the witch had taken my hostage and was preparing to fling me into a far corner of Midgard. Then my vision cleared, and I found I was staring out a clear pane of glass, watching trees flash by in my periphery.
One of Torsten’s vehicles, then. Ugh. I wasn’t sure what sort of sorcery Fyrcat had used to get me inside without waking me. Or how we’d reached Torsten’s home to begin with. We were moving faster than we had on foot, but it didn’t mean I liked it.
“Blast,” Fyrcat hissed from my left. I turned my head in time to see her yank the steering wheel to the side. The truck skidded on the ice, but she somehow managed to wrangle the beastly machine under control. Every now and then she looked up at the rearview mirror.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. Or tried to ask. My tongue felt fat and swollen in my mouth, a side-effect of the mistletoe. I hadn’t felt this rotten since my first round of ale with my brothers.
“The dead,” she muttered, deciphering my meaning. “They’re coming, and I can’t push this rust bucket any faster. We’re going to crash if I’m not careful.”
“We should go on foot.”
