Loki's Wolves - Armstrong Kelley L.. Страница 34

But that’s your job, isn’t it? That’s the test the Valkyries gave you. Find the others and get them to join up.

The fighting part was so much easier.

He sized up the twins. The answer seemed to be to ignore the weird clothes and the makeup and just talk to them. But Laurie had already tried that.

The heat of his amulet flared, as if to remind him that he could makethe twins join up. Scare them into it. The very thought made him queasy. That wasn’t how a leader acted. It wasn’t how Thor had acted, either. Sometimes people thought he had, but in the old stories, he always used his strength for good. To help others, not hurt them.

Matt watched the twins, now close enough for him to see their faces, set in that same the-world-bores-me look they’d had earlier. And he realized he had no idea what they could do now that they hadn’t done earlier, and Fen and Laurie were expecting him to do more, to find the right words, except he didn’t know them and now they’d gone through all this for nothing and—

He took a deep breath. He’d talk to them. He’d be reasonable. Use logic.

Logic? They were telling these kids that they had to help them save the world. Fight a giant serpent before wolves ate the sun and moon and plunged Earth into eternal winter. Logic didn’t even—

His amulet began to vibrate now. He tugged the new cord and flicked it outside his shirt so he could concentrate. Only even as he was moving it, he felt the vibration, and it wasn’t coming from his warm amulet. He dropped quickly and pressed his fingers to the ground. Itwas vibrating. Which meant it wasn’t the twins making his necklace react.

Matt leaped up. “Tro—!”

He didn’t even finish the word before two headstones sprang to life. They vaulted over the wall before Matt could get out from behind the monument. The twins turned and gaped.

The trolls scooped them up and swung them over their shoulders. The boy—Ray—froze. Reyna pounded at her captor’s back and shouted. Matt raced from the monument, Fen and Laurie behind him, but the trolls moved lightning-fast, swinging back over the wall. As the trolls ran, another headstone jumped up and followed, and the three tore through the cemetery. All the while, Reyna was howling and struggling.

Matt raced after them, but by the time he reached the spot where they’d jumped the wall, they’d vanished into the dark cemetery. He ran in the direction they’d gone. There was no sign of them, though, and he slowed, squinting as he kept jogging forward. Finally, he saw something move over by the monument to Wild Bill Hickok.

He stopped Fen and Laurie and pointed. The troll who’d been playing backup for the kidnappers had stopped at the fence surrounding Wild Bill’s grave. He was trying to shove his hand through the chain-link fence to grab at something.

“The coins,” Matt whispered, remembering Laurie throwing one to the troll at Mount Rushmore.

As he moved from headstone to headstone, he could see he was right. Earlier, they’d noticed that people had reached through the fence to leave “offerings” on Wild Bill’s grave. There were a couple bottles of whiskey, a flower, a set of aces, and coins. It was the last that had caught the troll’s attention.

As Matt watched the troll struggling to get the money, he had to stifle the urge to laugh. It was kinda funny, like watching a six-hundred-pound tiger stop chasing a gazelle to bat at a butterfly. The other trolls were long gone.

“I’ll circle around,” Fen whispered. “When I give the signal, we’ll both run out and jump him. Make him tell us where they took the twins.”

A day ago, Matt would have thought this was a perfectly brilliant plan. But he’d fought the last troll. He knew that, as silly as this one looked, grunting and grumbling and straining for pocket change, it was still a living pile of rock… with a sledgehammer punch. Forcing Leaf to reveal the twins’ whereabouts hadn’t worked so well. So he motioned for Fen to hold off and just watch.

The troll spent about five minutes trying to get its oversized arm through the wire before it realized that the fence barely came up to its chest. Then it took a few more minutes to figure out how to climb over.

“Not too bright, are they?” Laurie said with a soft laugh.

That was an understatement. And something Matt needed to remember if they had to take this guy on. They didn’t, though. It got the money, climbed back over the fence, and loped off. Matt motioned for them to follow.

With the other two trolls long gone, this one didn’t seem to be in as much of a rush, and they were able to keep up. The troll continued over the hills, occasionally disappearing behind clumps of trees or melding with gray headstones then emerging a moment later, still on the move. Finally, nearly at the far side of the cemetery, Matt heard the twins.

“Do you really think we’re stupid?” Reyna was saying. “You’re working with those kids. They tell us stories about gods and trolls, and you guys show up wearing troll costumes. Lametroll costumes. I can see the zipper in the back, you know.”

“I don’t see a zipper,” Ray’s whispered voice drifted over on the breeze.

“Well, there must be,” his sister said. “They’ve put on costumes to kidnap us for ransom. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Ransom?”

“Treasure,” one of the trolls rumbled. “Aerik want treasure.”

“See?” Reyna said.

Matt darted along the headstones until he could see the trolls. The third one had joined its companions, and all three crouched around the twins, who sat, bound back-to-back. Ray looked terrified; Reyna looked furious.

Now that they were closer, Matt recognized one of the two trolls who’d taken the kids. He’d know the crags of that ugly face anywhere. Leaf.

It was Leaf who spoke next, turning to the one who’d been delayed and saying, “Where Sun go?”

The troll—whose skin was veined with dark red, like rusty iron—opened his hand, revealing the coins.

“More?” Leaf asked.

Sun shook his head.

Leaf grunted and turned to the twins. “You have treasure.”

“Money?” Ray said. “Sure, our parents have money. Our dad runs one of the casinos.”

“Don’t—” Reyna began.

He shot her a look that silenced her, then he turned back to the trolls. “Our dad will pay. I can give you his cell phone number. Or…” He looked them up and down. “I can call on mine.”

The trolls stared blankly at him. Then Aerik said, “Treasure. Aerik want treasure. Leaf say girl daughter Freya. Boy son Frey. God kids want. Frey and Freya have treasure.”

Laurie leaned over and whispered, “They know the twins are valuable because we wanted to find them so badly.”

Matt nodded. “And to them, valuable means treasure.”

They listened for a few more minutes, as the two sides tried—without much success—to understand each other.

“They’ll be at this for a while.” Laurie turned to Matt and asked, “Should we wait until they turn to stone?”

Matt looked up at the sky. The stars had just appeared about an hour ago. It was a long way from dawn. He glanced over at the trolls. One they could handle. Two might be okay if they could free Ray to help. Three? Not happening.

Matt nodded. “We have to.”

A half hour later, the twins finally started to get what the trolls meant. Kind of.

“No paper money?” Reyna said. “How do you get a ransom without paper money? Bonds or something?”

“Gold,” Ray whispered to his sister. “They said shiny treasure, so I think they mean gold.”

“Then why don’t they say gold?”

Ray looked at the trolls, and Matt could see by the way he studied them that he’d figured out they weren’t guys in costumes. But when he glanced at his sister, he seemed to decide this wasn’t the time to argue with her about it.