Page 89 of The Fanged One

He caught her and let her escape. She circled back and nipped at his ruff and dragged her whole side the length of his in a long, luxurious pass of scent, marking him, claiming him back, and the new thread between them sang with how happy she was. Fenris had never really had anyone play with him. He liked it more than all the rest put together.

Something moved under his paws, and he lifted his nose to the wind. Threaded through the clean night air was a scent he knew in his marrow. It was green things growing, smoke, cleverness, and mischief with teeth.

Father.

Linnea skidded to a stop at his flank, every scrap of play gone out of her, reading the change in him down the bond. He tracked the scent across the hollow, past the little hall, to the far side where the wall of black onyx stood.

Every rune cut into its face was gold and molten red, glowing out of the stone like veins of trapped lava. Where there had been unbroken black stone, there was now an opening.

Fenris and Linnea stood shoulder to shoulder and stared into the dark of it. He didn't have to say a word to her. The thought took shape in the pair of them at the same instant, one certainty passed along the thread with nothing spoken.

They turned as one and ran for the hall.

Von was already awake, hammering his fist on one sleeping room after another and shouting.

"Up. Up. All of you, up. There's big magic happening very close by, and I'm not dealing with it on my own. I can feel the power of it in my teeth! It could be anything!"

Fenris shifted back to a man between one stride and the next. Linnea came up beside him on two feet, bare and glorious. He drew his own magic around her before the first door opened, making dark trousers and one of his own shirts settle over her skin to cover her. She glanced down at herself and back up at him, the corner of her mouth curling in amusement.

Von took in the two of them, the shirt on Linnea that was very plainly Fenris's, and his whole face split into an impish grin. "At least somebody had a productive evening."

The rest of the doors opened, everyone spilling out in stages of half-dress, hair wild, blades already in their hands. Tor had a knife and no shirt. Ciara had a sword and Tor's shirt. Layla had managed a shirt, a bow, and a boot.

"What the fuck is going on?" Layla demanded. "What's the emergency?"

"A door opened. That's the magic you're feeling," Fenris replied and nodded at Von. "It belongs to my father."

"Fuck! Why didn't you say so straight away?" Von demanded, rushing back to his room.

The rest of them were right behind him, snatching up packs and weapons until the whole ragged company crossed the moonlit hollow toward the seam in the black stone.

"Would you look at these runes? They are…" Von said, reaching out for them.

Fenris caught his hand. "Don't do it. They'll burn."

"Always have to go straight for the touch. This is bloody Yggdrasil all over again," Arne complained, wrapping Von on the forehead. "No touching magic until you know what it is."

"That's a dumb rule."

"Getting back to the gaping door of doom. Who's going first?" Ciara interrupted.

"Fenris," they all said at once, even Linnea.

"I'll be right behind you," she added quickly. "I figure Loki is less likely to blast you in self-defense if he's awake and pissed."

"I wouldn't count on that, but if he were already awake, we would know."

"How?"

"We would hear him bitching about still being tied up."

Fenris stepped through the door and onto the stairs that wound down into the rock, tight and steep. The path lit up with the same molten glow that bled from the runes above. They went down and down, until the steps let out into a low, round chamber at the bottom of everything.

"This feels uncomfortably familiar," Linnea mentioned behind him, her hand moving to touch his back in reassurance.

"It's made into the Gap like my prison, but this wasn't made by Havi and Freya. Only Loki could build something to contain Loki," Fenris replied as the stairs ended and opened out into a chamber.

In the center of it, on a slab of raw black rock, lay a body. Green and gold serpents, thick as a man's arm, wound around and around his father from throat to ankle, scales catching the light, so still they might have been cast in metal.