The Book of Doom - By Barry Hutchison Page 0,28
a cautious one, as if they weren’t completely sure that Odin was going to win. The last thing they wanted was to get any further into the demon’s bad books.
“Thou hast put a right bloody dampener on an otherwise fine afternoon, Dragon. And for that thou shalt die!”
HE THING THAT had until just a few moments ago been Angelo, vomited Hellfire in the Allfather’s face. The flames licked hungrily across the old god’s weathered skin, turning his eyepatch black and melting the snow that had been balanced on his head.
Although he was several metres away, the heat forced Zac to draw back. Odin growled with pain, but otherwise didn’t flinch. He raised the axe before him, using the flat of the blade to block the worst of the fire.
Angelo’s tail flicked around like a striking cobra and his clawed fingers curled into fists as, step by agonising step, Odin advanced.
Zac kept his distance and just watched. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he had absolutely no idea what to do. He’d spent a lifetime thinking on his feet, finding solutions to problems before they even happened. Now, though, standing in a mythical land, watching a Norse god fight a transforming angel-demon, he was fresh out of ideas.
As he drew close to the demon, Odin swung the axe in an upwards curve. The blade clipped the brute on the chin, snapping his head back and making him shriek and howl furiously.
The Vikings cheered, but Odin’s brow knotted when he saw the blade hadn’t cut through the scaly skin. He swung again, hacking this time at the demon’s barrel-like ribcage. The blow struck like a battering ram smashing against rock. The Angelo-thing staggered, but the axe had failed to draw blood once again.
“What manner of creature art thou?” Odin wondered, before four jagged knuckles crunched into his nose, splattering it across his face. With a roar as savage as any the demon had made, Odin hurled himself forward, letting the axe fall to the floor.
The demon lashed out with its arms and tail. It opened its mouth to cough up more flame, but Odin’s hands clamped round its jaws, pinning them shut.
“Let’s see you do your fire trick now, Dragon!” cried the Allfather. Fury was etched into every line of his face, but there was something else there too, beneath the blood and the beard – a bloodthirsty joy. The Allfather was loving every minute of this.
Thrashing wildly, the monster stumbled, a fireball stuck somewhere near the back of his throat. Zac moved quickly from their path, as god and demon crashed towards the wall, then carried on crashing right through it.
There was a hiss of steam as the demon’s fiery hide hit the snow, and then both combatants were sliding down the hill, each raining blows on the other as they ploughed a trench through the melting slush.
Zac rushed to the hole in the wall and looked out. Angelo and Odin were twenty metres away already, and they were still picking up speed. He looked ahead of them, down the slope. There, just beyond where it levelled out, Asgard dropped sharply off into nothingness. They were hurtling towards the edge, and they didn’t even realise.
“Angelo, look out!” he shouted, but they were too far away to hear, and there was no saying the demon could even understand a word he was saying.
There was a soft whoosh and Herya appeared beside him. “We have to get out of here,” she said.
“Stopped dropping shields on me now, have you?” asked Zac, still watching Odin and Angelo sliding down the hill.
Herya caught him by the arm and pulled him away from the wall. “I was saving you from the demon’s fire.”
Zac’s feet splashed through the puddle of melted gold. “OK, I’ll give you that one.”
She bundled him towards the second shield, which sat like a wide plate on the flagstone floor. “This one’s for our escape.”
“Escape?” said Zac, then he realised that Jurgen and the other Vikings were closing in round them, weapons drawn. They looked far from happy. “Oh, yeah. Escape.”
“There will be no escape for you,” Jurgen growled.
“We were having a lovely time until you showed up,” snarled another of the warriors.
Jurgen glared at Herya. “And as for you, Valkyrie, stand with us or face the—”
“Oh, shut up, Jurgen,” Herya said. She shoved Zac into the bowl of the shield. “And just so you know, when I spilled that drink on you earlier? So not an accident.”
Zac