Free Tricked by Kevin Hearne

breath to exclaim something profound like “Whoa, shit!” but the smell triggered my gag reflex and I staggered away from her, retching. Behind me, I heard similar startled cries choked off by heaves and juicy splashes of vomit spilling on the ground. Hel lurched a couple of steps my way and made as if to pull Famine out of its sheath, but when I raised Moralltach defensively, demonstrating that her smell hadn’t completely overwhelmed me, she thought better of it. She blasted me again with an unholy Balrog belch, then she shrank back into the widow’s skin, which resealed itself at the top of the head, and resumed her macabre flight north.
    I was tempted to let her go, but then I reminded myself of the stakes.
    In order to save the world, I would simply hold my breath next time I got close.
    Hel lengthened her stride until she seemed to be executing a never-ending triple jump instead of running. I began to close the distance, with Colorado’s energy providing the assist. When Hel spied me behind her for the second time, she didn’t erupt again from the widow’s head in an attempt to intimidate me. Instead, she stopped, turned, lifted her dead left hand toward me, and said with an unfocused gaze,
“Draugar.”
    That word brought me up short. It was the plural form of
draugr
, and those weren’t the sort of creatures you wanted two or more of. Even the singular would ruin most anyone’s day. I waited a moment for something heinous to appear. Nothing did. The unholy grin split the widow’s face one last time, and as Hel cackled at me I heard an alarmed squeal from the rear. It was Granuaile.
    
    I stole a glance back and saw three corpses with darkblue skin between me and my friends, advancing toward them with a fair bit of menace—the corpses’outstretched arms weren’t pleading for hugs. Apparently Hel could summon
draugar
at will. Already large and overmuscled for corpses, they were growing, their arms swelling like Peeps in the microwave. I didn’t want to turn my back on Hel, but I didn’t see what choice I had. My dog and my apprentice—not to mention Frank and maybe Coyote—were in danger.
    But Hel didn’t want to jump on my back. She just wanted me off hers. She turned and ran again to the north, leaving me to fend off three insanely strong zombies—not the George Romero kind that hungered for braaaains, but juiced-up Norse ones capable of magic in some tales. Oberon was barking, his hackles raised as the
draugar
approached them.
    Don’t bother barking. They can’t feel fear. Harry them from behind or the flanks. See if you can knock them down, but don’t let them grab you
, I told Oberon as I sprinted to help.
     he said, and then he scrambled around to the side of the nearest one—which completely ignored him and focused instead on Granuaile—and took a couple of quick strides to gather speed before launching himself at the
draugr
’s torso.
    Why don’t high school math teachers ever come up with cool problems like this? If a 150-pound Irish wolfhound launches himself at seventeen miles per hour at a 250-pound
draugr
, will that dead motherfucker go down? The answer is Hel yes. Oberon actually scored a twofer, because the
draugr
he rode down to the ground clipped the knee of a second blue boogeyman. My hound nimbly leapt away from the clumsy attempt to grab him and circled back around to place himself between the
draugar
and Granuaile.
    “Run!” I shouted at her, now that I was in range.“Just go!” Without any weapons or training, Granuaile wouldn’t stand a chance against these lads, and thankfully she obeyed. The advice should have held true for Frank Chischilly. He wasn’t a young man, and he was breathing hard already from trying to keep up with us this far. Coyote was urging him to bail. But he had pulled out a wee
jish
from his back pocket, and he was untying the rawhide knots as he backpedaled away from the third
draugr
. Coyote looked like he was trying