Mist

9

Vidarr stalked away without a backward glance. Dainn straightened and rubbed at his arm. There was a part of him, a very lethal part, that was eager to take up Vidarr’s challenge.

But he still had enough sense to resist the impulse. And to ignore what both Vidarr had implied about his relationship with Mist. He went out the door, moving stiffly, and joined Mist on the sidewalk.

“Took you long enough,” Mist said, subjecting him to a brief but searching glance. “Let’s go.”

She set off at a fast pace, returning the way they had come. The early morning sun had come out from behind the canopy of gray clouds that painted the sky from one horizon to the other, but Dainn knew the brief respite wouldn’t last. He had seen the vast changes in weather all over the world, and snow in San Francisco was hardly the worst of it. It constantly amazed him how mortals could engage in such furious denial of obvious fact.

The fact that Fimbulvetr— the Great Winter—was already here.

He and Mist walked back to her automobile, which sported a parking ticket under the windshield wipers. Mist snatched it free and read it with a muttered curse.

“Just what I need,” she said. She unlocked the door and slid behind the wheel. Her efforts to start the engine were unsuccessful.

“It’s dead,” she said. “Should have gotten it replaced a year ago, but I was sort of fond—” She glanced at Dainn and pulled a cell phone from an inner pocket of her jacket.

After she had made arrangements for the car to be towed to a local repair shop, she scratched out several Rune- staves on a sheet from a small pad of paper tucked inside the glove compartment, tore it out, and placed it under the wipers where the ticket had been.

“Should keep the cops away until the truck gets here,” she said. “We’ll take Muni.”

Dainn followed Mist to the streetcar stop, grateful for her continued silence. He had much thinking to do. He was still troubled by the closures of the bridges on the Golden Gate and in the park. Freya’s assurances had eased some of his concern, but he knew he would have to confirm her belief that the other bridges would still serve to transport their allies. He sincerely hoped the Lady would not have a rude awakening when she attempted to send the Alfar across.

“It’s here,” Mist said beside him, and Dainn returned to the present in time to board the streetcar. He kept his senses alert, both physical and magical, as he and Mist rode toward the neighborhood incongruously named Dogpatch.

He became aware that someone was following them well before the streetcar reached the Twentieth Street station. Mist seemed oblivious, as intent on navigating the maze of her own troubled thoughts as he had been earlier, but he knew that one among the other passengers was a little too interested in their movements.

He observed carefully as he and Mist left the streetcar. None of the passengers who got off at the same stop seemed to be traveling in their direction. Dainn dropped behind Mist as she walked to Twentieth Street. They passed a small ice cream shop, a coffee bar, and a store featuring eclectic apparel, but Dainn caught no glimpse of any follower or sensed the presence of a potential enemy.

It was impossible not to notice, however, how many lingering glances Mist attracted. He had been too preoccupied to pay attention before they’d boarded the streetcar, but it was now apparent that other mortals, males in particular, seemed to find her fascinating enough to compel protracted stares as she passed by. She was striking, yes, but this was more than a matter of mere beauty or the graceful, almost sinuous motions of a well-formed woman trained to fight. Mist was Freya’s daughter, newly awakened to her power. If once she had been able to move unnoticed and unremarked, it was unlikely she would ever be able to do so again. And that was more than ample explanation for his sense of pursuit. The Norns alone knew how many pairs of eyes had been fixed on her during the ride.

When they arrived at Mist’s loft a few minutes later, she paused as if listening for a voice she would never hear again. Her shoulders slumped as she unlocked the door, releasing wards no longer effective against anyone but mortal thieves.

Unwillingly aware of Mist’s pain, Dainn followed her into the entrance hall. She turned right almost immediately into a side hallway that ran parallel to the street, facing a large paned window, and led Dainn to the second door.

“You can sleep here,” she said, her voice strained with suppressed emotion. “I’d give you a room upstairs, but it’s pretty messy up there. I really only use the ground floor. I bought the ware house so I could set up a gym with plenty of room.”

She opened the door to a plain, sparsely furnished room with a narrow bed, a chest of drawers, and a chair painted to suggest a weathered effect.

“I’ll show you the bathroom,” she said. “And I guess you’re probably hungry. I don’t have much in the house right now. Can you make a sandwich?”

The question was absurd, but Dainn wasn’t inclined to quibble. “Yes,” he said. “I would be grateful for the opportunity.” She led him back the way they had come and along the main hallway leading to the kitchen at the rear of the ground floor. The ashes of Loki’s note were still smeared across the tabletop.

Mist went directly to the sink, dampened a dish towel, and wiped up the ashes with hard, fast strokes. She threw the dish towel into a trash can and slapped her palms against each other as if to remove any traces of ash. And Loki.

A pair of large, thick-coated cats—one gray and white, one red— emerged from a small room adjoining the kitchen. The heavy fur along their spines was slightly raised, and they moved cautiously, nostrils flaring, tails low and large eyes watchful as they approached Mist.

Knowing that Mist was observing him with great interest, Dainn knelt to offer his hand to the cats and spoke softly in the Old Tongue. The larger of the animals, the gray and white, chirruped an inquiry but did not come closer. The red and white cat hung well back, refusing Dainn’s overtures.

“I wondered how they’d feel about elves,” Mist said, leaning against the counter. “Everyone knows the Alfar are better with animals than any other immortal, and cats are sacred to Freya. Interesting that Lee is so standoffish.”

Dainn rose. “We understand that the nature of cats is unlike that of any other beast,” he said, knowing it could have been much worse. The cats might have rejected him completely, sensing what he could become.

Mist took a pair of small bowls from a cupboard and filled them with kibble out of a bag kept under the sink. She carried the bowls into the adjoining room. The cats trotted at her heels, glancing back at Dainn from the doorway before seeking their meals.

“All I’ve got is sliced turkey and some Jarlsberg,” Mist said, washing her hands and opening the refrigerator door. “A couple of tomatoes, and lettuce, wilted. Mayo and mustard. Sprite. And some—” She stopped, and Dainn heard her catch her breath. “Diet Coke,” she finished, very quietly.

Dainn assumed that must have been Eric’s beverage of choice, though he had a difficult time imagining Loki with a soda can in his hand. “Water will be sufficient,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “Then I can get rid of these.” She withdrew four cans from the refrigerator, set them on the counter, and then tossed two thin packages on the table. “Bread’s over by the stove,” she said, popping the tabs on the four cans one by one.

Dainn found the bread and plates in the cupboard, sat at the table, and watched Mist out of the corner of his eye as she unceremoniously poured the contents of the cans into the sink and tossed the empty containers into a plastic bin. She gazed into the bin for a moment, then returned to the refrigerator and removed a bottle of amber liquid Dainn recognized as beer. As Dainn finished making the sandwiches, she twisted off the cap and took a long drink.

Dainn pushed one of the plates toward her. She set the bottle down and stared at the sandwich uncomprehendingly.

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

“Alcoholic beverages will not enhance your mental faculties, or your strength.”

She leaned over the table, her stance belligerent. “Do you even drink?”

“On occasion. This does not seem to be one of them.”

Abruptly she grabbed the plate and pulled it toward her across the table. Dainn took a measured bite of his sandwich. Mist filled a glass of water from the tap and set it down next to his plate. He nodded thanks, she took the nearest chair, and they ate in silence until the sandwiches, and Mist’s beverage, were gone.

“You can make a sandwich,” she said with a huff of strained laughter. “Can you cook, too?”

Dainn permitted himself a small smile. “I have been known to make meals out of ingredients of dubious provenance and questionable edibility.”

“And that’s supposed to be an endorsement? Excuse me if I don’t ask you to help out in the kitchen.” She sobered quickly. “I never thought I’d be sharing a meal with one of the Alfar at my own kitchen table. Where in Midgard have you been all this time?”

“There are few places I have not been,” he said. “Most recently in the Himalayas, where I was studying with a lama in Tibet.”

“Oh, boy. If anyone else had told me that, I—”

Her sentence ended abruptly as she turned to stare in the direction of the front door.

“Someone’s outside,” she said.

Dainn heard it as well, a faint brush of cautious footsteps on cement.

“It’s probably a package delivery,” Mist said, starting down the hall. “No Jotunn would make so much noise.”

“We were followed on the streetcar,” Dainn said.

She stopped. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“I determined there was no threat to us.”

She cast him a scathing look and went to the door. “There’s someone there, all right,” she said. “And they aren’t ringing the doorbell.”

“Your visitor is a mortal,” Dainn said, casting his senses wide. “And female.”

“Then I’ll just find out what she wants.”

She flung open the door. There was no one there, nor anywhere within sight. Muddy mid-morning sunlight crowded the shadows crouched at the foot of the wall.

“She’s gone now,” Mist said. “Do you think Loki’s already recruited mortal spies?”

“Perhaps.” He hesitated, considering whether or not he should tell her that she would have to become accustomed to being pursued by total strangers. “I sensed nothing unusual about her.”

She closed the door almost reluctantly, as if she regretted the necessity of sealing herself in with Dainn. “We should have set fresh wards as soon as we got here,” she said. “Are you up for it?”

Dainn’s body ached, and there was a hovering blackness behind his eyes he couldn’t dispel. “We will not be able to stop Loki,” he said, “but we will be warned if any Jotunn approaches.”

“That’ll have to be good enough for now. Same as before?”

He couldn’t risk joining their minds and magic again so soon. He was in no condition to prevent her from unconsciously attacking him as she had before, or keep her from inadvertently provoking the beast.

And this time she might remember.

“I will do it,” he said.

“I don’t think—”

“An alarm ward requires relatively little effort.”

The hollows under her eyes suggested that she was too weary to argue for the privilege. She turned and walked toward the kitchen. Dainn followed. The cats had vanished, though Dainn smelled their presence nearby, just as he smelled once- green grass somewhere behind the loft.

He continued through the adjoining laundry room, out the back door to a tiny yard and sat cross-legged on the brown, weedy patch of lawn. After he had called up the Rune-wards, he paced out the perimeter of the entire building and set them in place, tracing intricate, intertwining variations on the walls with his finger and reinforcing them at the laundry room door, the front door, and a door opening onto to the driveway that ran alongside the loft. After he was done, he did the same to the windows, giving special attention to those facing the crumbling factories along the waterfront. Of the intruder there was no further sign.

When he was finished, he returned to the loft, almost tripping over the threshold. Mist was waiting there and caught him by the arm.

“I assume even Alfar have to sleep,” she said, quickly releasing him. “You’d better get some rest.”

Exhaustion and exasperation battered at Dainn like Jotunar fists. “You still intend to go after Gungnir,” he said.

“I intend to find out what Loki’s up to.”

“You must not.” He sighed. “Not without me.”

Her mouth set in stubborn line. “You aren’t in any state to help me.”

It wasn’t his intention to touch her, but an impulse beyond rational thought made him seize her arm in an iron grip. “We already discussed the inadvisability of your getting to close to him, and you certainly cannot risk a confrontation.”

She stared down at his hand on her arm as if it were a loathsome insect. “I never said I’d hide from him, did I?”

“Your magic is in its infancy. Loki will not long be deceived by any attempt you make to imitate your mother’s power.”

“I’ll be careful,” she said, snatching her hand out of his.

“You neither know nor understand what he is capable of.”

“And you do, because you helped him.”

Dainn’s hand trembled as he fought off the urge to take hold of her again. “Loki may have been set at a small disadvantage by his confrontation with you, but he cannot have sent all his Jotunar away, and Hrimgrimir escaped. You have some Jotunar magic, some small knowledge of Galdr, and a brief acquaintance with your mother’s skills. But even if you had the smallest chance of defeating them with the little knowledge you have now, you must still find them first.” He made no attempt to hide his mockery, which effectively concealed his desperation. “Undoubtedly you can locate lost car keys or a misplaced cell phone, but could you have found Loki the first time without my direct help?”

“Loki will leave a trail of magic a mile wide.”

“One I might follow. You are not ready.”

Yanking her loose hair behind her head, she began to braid it again with ungentle fingers. “I’m going to try.”

“Then promise me that if you find a trail of any kind, you will wait for me. I will find you.”

“Maybe you’ve forgotten what I told you. No one, least of all you, is giving me orders.”

“It is a request,” he said.

Leaving her thick hair only half braided, Mist reached inside her inner jacket pocket and pulled out several small squares of wood. The fact that Mist knew she needed them for carving the staves was proof enough that she had no confidence in her ability to use the mental Runes he had begun to teach her.

She tucked the pieces of wood back into her pocket and drew the knife from her belt. She weighed it in her hand and turned it over to display the Runes etched into its silver blade. “Don’t come after me,” she said, sheathing the weapon again.

“Mist—”

But she was already striding toward the front door. He took a few steps after her and staggered, beaten down by exhaustion. Exhaustion that held him back from pressing his magic too hard, weakening his hold on his other self. He could not help Mist in this state.

He went to his room, took off his boots and lay on the narrow bed. It was far more comfortable than anything he had slept on in many months.

Sleep, however, was not on his agenda. He lay awake, monitoring his strength, waiting for the moment when he could safely follow Mist. The sounds of human activity thumped and rattled and hummed outside, automobile engines and streetcars and raised voices from busy Third Street with its peculiar mixture of small stores, ware houses, and residences.

When the soft footsteps came, Dainn rose, left his room and went barefoot to the front door. He lunged outside, grabbing for the slight figure who was already turning to run. He glimpsed a thin, brown, defiant face before the girl squirmed around to attack him, scratching with fingers bent like claws and kicking frantically at his legs. She was all wiry muscle and very little spare flesh, remarkably strong for her size and weight.

Dainn held her away from him and kept his grip as she cursed and struggled and screamed at him in Spanish. He knew almost at once that his first assessment of the mortal at Mist’s door had not been correct.

This one was no ordinary girl. She was either Loki’s spy, or the first of the Mist’s Midgardian allies.

It was too easy.

When Mist returned to stand outside Asbrew, she smelled traces of Loki in the air, as if he had left the residue of his evil wherever he walked, like a snail laying down a trail of slime.

Of course he hadn’t walked out of Asbrew. He’d made a dramatic exit, disappearing into thin air. But he couldn’t fly unless he turned himself into an eagle, as he’d done more than once in Asgard, or made use of his flying shoes. Mist was pretty sure he didn’t have those with him.

No, he’d have found a taxi. It was even possible that he’d had transportation waiting for him somewhere out of sight when she and Dainn had arrived at Asbrew.

And that was the problem. If she could sense Loki with so little difficulty, Dainn was probably right. Loki might very well have laid a trap for her, and only the Norns knew what was lurking in it.

Still, she went around the corner and into the narrow street between Asbrew’s block and the block on the opposite side. The lingering traces of magic were stronger here. She knelt to touch the cracked pavement where a large vehicle had left black skid marks on the road.

Loki’s escape car. Not big enough to hold a dozen giants, so he obviously hadn’t intended them to ride with him when he left Asbrew. Assuming, of course, that he’d expected them to leave with him at all. Mist wondered if he knew where she and Dainn had sent the Jotunar and if—when—Loki would succeed in getting them back.

But that worry was for another time. She pulled a piece of wood from her pocket, laid it flat on top of the tire marks, drew the knife, and carved three Runes deeply into the surface. She nicked her finger and squeezed the blood into the staves. When they were filled, she removed her lighter and put the small flame to the corner of the wood.

It was consumed in a few seconds. Remembering what Dainn had done at the loft, she dipped her slightly bleeding finger into the ash and drew the same Runes on her forehead. A young woman walking a dog paused at the entrance to the street and stared at Mist while her terrier barked frantically.

Mist looked up, and the woman beat a hasty retreat. But Mist wasn’t worried about observers. She had focused all her concentration on the Runes sketched across her forehead, imagining them burning into her brain.

Suddenly she could feel something—a sense of direction, of movement continuing north on the street. She got up slowly and followed her hunch.

It didn’t take long before she found evidence that the vehicle had pulled into a side alley, made a sharp Y-turn, and reversed direction.

She was about to return the way she had come when she heard the choked cries coming from the alley. Without hesitation, she ran into the dim corridor, racing past colorful graffiti with fat letters the height and width of a man and skirting malodorous garbage blown in by the winter wind.

Two Jotunar in reasonably human shape were crouched in the alley where a battered chain-link fence blocked pedestrian traffic. They weren’t the biggest Mist had seen, but they were considerably larger than the figure lying on the dirty cement between them.

A boy. Or, more accurately, a young man, flat on his back and jerking wildly as if he was in the midst of a seizure. Mist launched herself straight at the Jotunn on the left, drawing Kettlingr as she attacked and chanting it to its full and lethal size.

The first giant wasn’t prepared. He fell backward as Mist slashed down, belatedly raising an arm the width of a small tree trunk to fend off the blow. Kettlingr bit deep, and the giant roared in pain.

By then the other Jotunn was on Mist’s back. He drove her down with the weight of his body, and only her quick reflexes saved her from being reduced to a red splotch on the pavement. She rolled out of his way, gasping as a cracked rib grated in her chest but somehow managing to maintain her grip on her sword. The second giant began a chant as harsh and booming as a wrecking ball slamming into a decrepit apartment building. Mist’s breath turned to fog, denser than any ordinary cold could produce.She knew then that they didn’t intend to kill her. The first giant, still grunting with pain, had joined the second in creating the spell, and Mist felt her jacket begin to crackle with a heavy layer of frost. It penetrated her jeans and crunched inside her boots, cracked her lips and rimed each hair of her eyebrows. They would encase her in layer after layer of frost, transforming her into a sculpture of living ice.

But they had forgotten about the boy. He was no longer shaking but had rolled onto his side, grasping a length of rebar in his slender hand. He swung it at the first Jotunn’s legs with surprising force.

The giant staggered and lost his balance. As he turned on the young man, fist raised, the boy jumped up and ran between the Jotunar like a mouse scurrying under the legs of a hungry cat. The first Jotunn, the wound in his arm still bleeding freely, set out after him.

But the spell was broken, and the ice slicking Mist’s clothes and body began to melt immediately. As soon as she could move, she raised Kettlingr and ran after them. She found them just outside the mouth of the alley, the boy hanging between them as if he weighed no more than a handful of snowflakes.

Mist yelled and swung Kettlingr at the Jotunn she had already wounded. The blade seemed to catch fire, blazing as if it had drawn the weak rays of the sun and multiplied their light a hundredfold. The moment it hit the Jotunn, he screamed with real terror and let the boy drop. The second Jotunn backed away in confusion, his gaze fixed on the burning steel.

All at once the giants gave up, spun around and ran, the injured giant clasping his smoking side. Mist followed them a short distance, heard the screeching of tires on Eddy, and stopped. She stared down at the sword in her hand. It was normal again, Rune- etched metal a dull gray as the sky clouded over.

“Are you okay?”

She turned to face the boy. He was Caucasian, about seventeen, maybe eighteen . . . lanky, boyishly good-looking and clearly scared out of his wits. He had a small cut on his chin, and Mist was sure he’d have a whopper of a black eye in a few hours. She suspected there were more injuries she couldn’t see. It was more than a little ludicrous that he’d asked if she was okay, especially since she was holding a sword in her hand.

“I’m fine,” she said, ignoring her cracked rib. “Are you hurt?” The young man shook his head. “A little roughed up,” he said, his voice still hoarse with fear. “But I’m used to that.”

Mist didn’t ask what he meant. She had a pretty good idea. “Why were they after you?” she asked.

“Those . . . men?” he asked, shivering hard. “I don’t know.” He looked down at Kettlingr. “That’s real, isn’t it?”

No matter what she did now, Mist knew the kid had probably seen things more disturbing than the sight of her sword turning back into a knife. She whispered the spell and put the weapon away. The young man didn’t make a sound.

“Can you tell me what happened?” she asked.

“I was waiting out here,” he said, “and these things attacked me. I think they wanted me for something, but they didn’t say what.”

“Why do you call them ‘things?’ ”

“Because I know they weren’t . . . I mean, they weren’t just addicts looking for drug money or anything.” He wet his lips. “You fought them. They weren’t really men at all. You know.”

And so, obviously, did he, Mist thought. “I’m sorry you had to go through this,” she said.

He brushed a shock of ragged blond hair out of his eyes. “What were they?” he asked.

Mist knew she could stop it right there, give the boy a little money, send him off to urgent care. But over the past twenty-four hours she’d learned not to ignore her instincts. It wasn’t a coincidence that the Jotunar had been here, right in the same place where Loki’s getaway car had been waiting. It couldn’t be just chance that they’d attacked this particular kid.

“I don’t think you’ll believe me,” she said.

He smiled, an expression that was as real as it was unexpected. “I think I will. It’s not like I have anything to lose, right?”

Mist hesitated, wondering how to begin. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Ryan,” he said. “Ryan Star—” He shivered violently. “Starling.”

“You’re freezing,” Mist said. She shrugged out of her jacket and handed it to him. “Take this.”

“Don’t you need it?”

“I don’t get cold easily,” she said, trying to be as gentle as she could. Not that she’d ever had much to do with kids his age—or any age, for that matter.

“My name is Mist Bjorgsen,” she said. “We should find somewhere to talk where you can sit down.”

“No.” Ryan pulled the jacket around his shoulders. “I want to know what’s happening to me.” His eyes pleaded with her. “I need to know.”

And his life might depend on that knowledge, Mist thought. “Do you know anything about Norse mythology?” she asked.

Ryan’s gaunt face went blank. “Uh . . . is it like Lord of the Rings?”

“Not exactly. The author borrowed from it, though. Elves, dwarves, trolls. Quite a few other things. But it started long before he wrote the book.”

“I didn’t read it,” Ryan said, thoroughly dazed. “I snuck into the movie, when I—” His eyes cleared. “The war,” he said. “The bad guy with the burning eye, and the Orcs. And the elves were on the good side.”

“In Norse mythology, it wasn’t Orcs who worked for the bad guy,” Mist said, carefully watching his face. “It was giants. Jotunar.”

“Oh, God.” The boy dragged his hand across his mouth. “Is that what they were?”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t—”

“I believe you,” he said slowly. “Your sword . . . is it magic, like the one in the movie?”

“Not quite the same,” Mist said. “But it’s real.”

“I saw the fire,” Ryan said, dazed again. “It is magic.”

Mist wondered how she was going to be able to hide her abilities with the Jotunar going around beating up mortals right in front of her. “Do you believe in magic, Ryan?” she asked.

“Yeah. I think . . . ever since I was a little kid. I just didn’t know I did. I didn’t know what it all meant.” He shivered again. “That mythology stuff . . . it isn’t just fairy tales, is it?”

“No.” She sighed. “I don’t know how to make this any easier for you, Ryan. You said you didn’t know why the giants were after you, right?”

“I didn’t even see them. One second I was alone, and then they were there. They dragged me into the alley. They were too strong for me to fight.”

“They’re too strong for almost any mortal to fight,” Mist said.

“Mortal?”

Too much, too soon. Mist knew she’d have to be a little more careful. “Let’s worry about that later. You must have had something they wanted. You can’t think what that might be?”

“I think . . . I think they wanted me,” he said.

“Why, Ryan? Why would they want to kidnap you?”

“I don’t know.” He looked at her again as if he were seeing her for the first time. “I came here because I was looking for something. Someone, I mean.”

“Who?”

“I think it must have been you.”

Mist stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“I recognize you now. You were always there, in the middle.”

“In the middle of what?”

“The war.”