The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

“It’s a stairway!” Mack gasped.

They leaped, all together, onto the next pillar as it surged past them, impossibly big, and all covered with amazing carvings—lions, unicorns, weird things that none of them recognized, symbols, and figures of giant bearded dudes and women with severe braided hair.

Up they went. Mack leaned out to see if any more steps were coming, but this seemed like it.

“Look!” Xiao cried.

The pillar, the final stair, pushed up toward a door that hung all by itself in the air. A large door that led, as far as Mack could tell, to nothing at all.

Chapter Twenty-five

The door frame was a pointed arch of stone, all of it entwined with stone snakes and shields and spears and other not-very-welcoming things.

The door itself was made of trees. Not wood. Saying “wood” implies nice little two-by-fours or maybe a sheet of plywood. This door was built of logs as big as redwoods. They still had the bark on. And they were bound together with fat bands of iron bristling with barbed spikes.

The pillar came to a stop. It was still wet and a bit slimy with lake water. Mack and the others were probably five hundred feet in the air. High as a skyscraper. High enough not to hear the cameras clicking away be

low or the cries of amazement. But not so high that they couldn’t see a lot of stunned, antlike tourists gaping. The inevitable phones and cameras were aimed up at them.

And there were Nine Iron and Valin. They were too far away for Mack to be sure of their expressions, but neither seemed to be raging or threatening. They seemed disturbingly calm.

“There’s a sign on the door,” Jarrah said.

Dietmar peered at it. “It says, ‘Beware of Wolf.’ In German and I think in Swedish and Danish, too.”

“‘Beware of wolf’?” Mack echoed. “There’s a wolf?”

There was definitely a door knocker. It was a massive iron ball on a hinge. There was zero chance any of them could lift it.

“Should we knock?” Xiao asked.

“Like anyone would hear?” Jarrah said.

“Do we even want it to open?” Xiao wondered aloud.

Mack sighed. “Grimluk said we had to discover secret places. Get help from ancient ones. He sent us here, right?”

He knocked on the door. It made a very small sound.

“I think I know what is behind this door,” Xiao said.

“I as well,” Dietmar said.

Stefan kicked the door. Three times. As hard as he could without breaking his foot. That didn’t make much noise, either, but it got a response.

A howl.

No, that doesn’t quite express it. More like: HOW-OOOOOOOO-OOOWWLL!

Like that.

Mack, Jarrah, Xiao, and Dietmar jumped. If you added up all the jumps together, you’d have an Olympic record. Stefan did not jump. But he did say, “Huh.”

The door opened with a sudden jerk. The motion of the door almost sucked them in.

Standing there holding the knob and scowling was a giant. He was probably fourteen feet tall. He had massive, bunched, oiled, tanned muscles. He had a blond beard almost down to his waist. His eyes were blue and crazy-intense.

In his free hand he held a short leash attached to a very big collar that went around the neck of a wolf the size of a medium-large elephant.