River of Shadows (Underworld Gods 1)

“Run outside!” he yells at me, trying to push off Noora who is trying to drag him down.

I whip around and see Eero coming at me. He’s a big man and his eyes are so black that there’s no iris, and I don’t know if it’s my mind or something else that’s making me believe he has claws on his outstretched hands and horns starting to poke through his hair, but I drop low and spin forward off my hands, sliding under him as he tries to make a grab for me.

Claws just scrape along the back of my scalp, slicing off a strand of hair, and then I’m up again and running out of the room, through the lounge, past the dining room. I want to scream in horror, scream for help, but I don’t think anyone is going to help me now.

As I round the bend to the lobby, I can feel Eero’s presence behind me, getting closer and closer, but I don’t dare turn around and look. I’m almost at the front doors when I suddenly feel a flash of intense cold at my back, as if a door opened behind me, and in the reflection of the glass I see a white wall, as if the air in the lobby frosted over.

My hands strike the door and I push it open and I keep running, the sub-zero temperatures causing my breath to freeze in my lungs, my eyes to burn. Thankfully I’m wearing boots, but I’m just in a sweater, my coat left back in my room, and I’ll freeze to death soon if I don’t find shelter or someone to help me.

My first thought is of the cars in the parking lot, maybe I’ll get lucky and find the keys in one of them, drive off to safety, wherever that is. Fuck, I don’t even know where I really am.

I reach into my pocket to grab my phone to see if I have enough reception to call the police—no bars—and hear the hotel door slam shut behind me and suddenly Rasmus is at my side, grabbing my arm and pulling me along into the knee-high snow, away from the parking lot.

“This way,” he says, his legs moving preternaturally fast.

I look over my shoulder at the hotel, expecting Eero and Noora to come running out after us, but there’s no one there.

“What happened in there?” I cry out.

“I stopped them,” he says gruffly.

How? I want to ask. Did he kill them? I try to pull back and slow down, pointing at the parking lot. “Where are we going, shouldn’t we try and steal a car?”

He shakes his head firmly and continues to pull me along. I’m nearly stumbling as I go, the snow getting higher and higher, filling my boots. “We wouldn’t get very far,” he says. “I have to take you to see your father.”

“I don’t understand!” I’d tear my hair out if the adrenaline wasn’t propelling me forward. “Where is he? Why were you in the casket? What were they trying to do to me?”

“Plenty of time to answer those questions later,” he says. He glances over his shoulder and frowns. “They’ll be out any minute now.”

I guess he didn’t kill them. I look behind me again but immediately eat shit, falling right into a snowbank, snow sinking into my sweater and jeans. Rasmus hooks his arms under me and pulls me up like I weigh nothing at all.

“Almost there,” he says. “You can do it.”

My mind seems to empty out, the cold finally getting to me. I have this vague sensation that I’ll die soon if I don’t get inside somewhere, if I don’t get warm, and that death wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

“Fight it!” Rasmus barks at me. “Don’t let them in your head!”

Don’t let who in my head? I don’t even know who we’re running from. I don’t even know where I am. Who I am.

My sight starts to turn gray at the edges.

“Fuck,” Rasmus says. “Hold on.”

The lights from the hotel fade away, like they’re being snuffed out, and everything is turning black. I’m falling for a moment and then I’m being lifted up in the air. Carried. I hear the rasp of Rasmus’ breath in the cold air, his legs as they plow through the snow.

Then, somewhere in the distance I hear. “Rasmus! Hanna!”

The voice doesn’t even sound human. It’s sinister and macabre and strikes fear in the deepest part of my soul.

Hanna. That’s my name. I’m Hanna.

I’m…trying to survive.

I gasp, as if just being pulled from drowning, and open my eyes to find myself being placed on a low, two-person sleigh, blankets piled high around me.

A sleigh attached to a fucking reindeer.

I stare at the animal for a moment and it turns its head, staring right back at me with brown liquid eyes, as if wondering who I am.