Arthur Quinn and Hell's Keeper Read Free Page A

over it. The couple are snuggled together underneath a warm bearskin. Loki looks down at them pitilessly. They don’t even stir at his arrival in their house, but continue to dream peacefully.
    The baby lies next to them. She is wrapped first in tight swaddling and then in another piece of the velvety bearskin. The fur blanket is so thick around the babe that she has no need of bed-roll straw like her parents. Her eyes are wide open, staring up at Loki, and she whimpers again – this time Loki can sense her fear – spittle bubbling out at the side of her lips. It’s intoxicating. She’s clearly terrified, more scared than she’s ever been in her short life, too frightened to cry for her mother and father. A third whimpering sound is all she can manage.
    He leans down and picks her up, cradling her in his arms. Then he swivels and leaves the house.
    â€˜You will be my most terrible child,’ he whispers to her as he strides back through Roskilde. ‘I will give you a part of myself. For generations to come, people will whisper your name around campfires and in the dark of night. You, Hel, will be the thing they fear the most.’
    The baby girl finally starts to cry – a high-pitched shriek that pierces everyone’s dreams in the village, waking them. But by now it is too late. Loki steps onto Bifrost and the two of them are gone. The anguished cries of the child’s parents rend the night, while the wails of the lost babe echo throughout Roskilde. And that sound echoes through all of Midgard for all of time. The sound of a taken baby. The sound of Hel herself.

Chapter Two

    Arthur’s eyes shot open. The sound of the baby’s cries faded slowly inside his head. He felt a wetness on his cheek and when he touched it he was shocked to find tears seeping out of his good eye. He sat up in bed and pulled the pendant from around his neck. It had come into his possession months ago, when he’d found it in a tunnel underneath the city of Dublin. It was round, roughly twice the size of a two-euro coin and seemed to be made of bronze. An image was hammered onto the face of the pendant. It depicted a tall, wide tree with bare branches intertwining on top. A snake was coiled around the trunk, strangling it. The pendant protected Arthur from Loki – the trickster god couldn’t touch it without being blasted away – and it was glowing green now as it always did whenever something happened in connection with Loki.
    Arthur wiped the drying tears from his face and threw his blanket off. He put the pendant back around his neck, got out of bed and knelt on the carpeted floor. He reached under the bed, brushing aside the old Beano annuals he had piled there before finding what he was looking for. His hand gripped the handle and pulled out the war hammer.
    He’d found the hammer underneath Dublin, near where he’d found the pendant. The head of it was forged from iron and ancient letters and symbols were embossed into the gleaming metal – runes that even the pendant wouldn’t allow Arthur to read. The handle itself was a simple piece of timber – barely long enough for an adult’s grip – wrapped in fine rope for extra traction. It felt lighter in Arthur’s grasp than it had any right to, as if it was made just for him. He’d held other war hammers and they didn’t suit him. But this one was different – it had belonged to the god and warrior Thor, who’d died battling the World Serpent. The hammer wasn’t radiating like the pendant, but it was giving off a low warmth.
    â€˜Ready for battle,’ Arthur murmured, clutching the handle tightly. It had played an integral part in defeating Loki before and he knew it would do so again. It was the only weapon he knew of powerful enough to hurt the god, and it had already saved his life more than once. He slid it back under the bed, confident that it would come to him when he most