Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six)

nearest
draugr
. “I’ll be spanked by all the men of Scotland before me mates are wiped out and no one pays for it!”He kept going like that, slinging curses and lopping off heads, and I joined in lest he be overwhelmed. The
draugar
had not been armed and had little defense against our weapons, but anyone could use help against odds like that. Oberon pitched in by knocking a couple of them down, giving us the time to finish them off.
    Once the
draugar
were decomposing into ash at our feet, I turned in disbelief to the Olympians, who hadn’t stirred an inch to lend us aid. Zeus closed his eyes in perverse pleasure for a moment before flashing me a crooked grin. “Who was that tall woman who appeared just now? She wasn’t half bad.”
    “Bloody git,” Herne whispered.

Chapter 27
    “That was Hel,” I explained. “Loki’s daughter. And now that they’re together, Ragnarok could start at any time.”
    “And what, exactly, would that entail?” Jupiter asked, clearly trying to decide if he should care or not. “You said something about Hel and Muspellheim, but I am unfamiliar with their legends. Why would the nightmares of the ancient Norse trouble the modern world?”
    “Okay, fair enough. I’ll lay it out for you.”
    “We should move before we talk,” Perun interjected from where he knelt next to Flidais. “Innocent peoples come.” He pointed east; there were now four aircraft heading our way, silhouetted in the early-morning sun.
    “True,” I said. “Let’s move deeper into the forest. Would that be agreeable to you?” I raised an eyebrow at the Olympians.
    Zeus and Jupiter exchanged glances and gave each other a tight nod.
    “All right, give me a moment.”
    If the fire on the edge of the forest took firm hold and began to spread, we’d have firefighters here in addition to investigators. Aside from that, of course, I couldn’t bear to let it continue; these were trees for which the Wild Hunt of Herne had perished, and I knew that somewhere, later, I would find the time to be very upsetat their passing. With help from Albion, who was much better at moving earth than I was, I bound turf and dirt from the forest floor to the trunks of the affected trees, smothering the flames before allowing the earth to settle back down. While I did this, Zeus and Jupiter finally deigned to be helpful and transformed their thunderclouds into a thick fog that hid us neatly. Mist swirled and shrouded us as the thump of rotors whipped the air above. They’d have to put someone on the ground to find us now, and I figured we still had some time before that happened, if it happened at all.
    I led the Olympians to the place where the huntresses were buried and silently asked Albion to move Mercury underneath the ground to somewhere near them. Perun and Flidais followed, though Flidais moved gingerly and only with Perun’s help. She would heal fully from the burns eventually, but I knew from experience that it would take an uncomfortable while.
    “Right,” I bellowed over the noise of the choppers, which I hoped would move away soon. “You wanted to hear why you should care about the Norse. Let’s start with Hel, whom Zeus found so alluring. Hel commands legions of those semi-corporeal zombies called
draugar
, who don’t go down easy unless you behead them, and I have sources who tell me that they now have access to modern automatic weapons. She can also command the dead, so every person her army kills is a potential recruit for said army. Her forces will quickly build into something that can’t be stopped before you add on anything else, but there’s more. The sons of Muspellheim are fire giants—sort of like Loki but without an off switch. They just love their fire and magma and want to share it with everyone. And the frost giants are going to join in too, so you’re going to have elemental upheaval on top of the zombie apocalypse. And then there’s Jörmungandr, the world serpent, who will presumably pop up somewhereand start shit in the ocean. And we may or may not have to deal with dark elves. Humans won’t stand a chance against them. Well, maybe Chuck Norris would. But you know what humans are like. They’ll panic and start shooting one another, because they’re going to think their enemies are responsible for it all. Or else they’ll go into Doomsday mode, assume that the only rule is anarchy, and do something unthinkable to people. Some trigger-happy idiot might even launch a nuclear