Mist

by Susan Krinard

  “Here,” Dainn said when they were half a mile across. Mist pulled up in the right lane and jumped out of the car.

  There was nothing to show that this span of the bridge was different from any other. Dainn vaulted over the railing that separated the pedestrian walkway from traffic. Mist followed him to the suicide barrier. Blue- gray water seethed far beneath them, choppy with a rising wind driving west from the bay. Icy rain blew into Mist’s face.

  Almost at once she felt the strangeness, a sense of an opening she hadn’t recognized when she’d faced Hrimgrimir. Her wrist began to ache again.

  “I feel it,” she whispered.

  “The water is disturbed,” Dainn said, leaning far over the railing. He closed his eyes. The air around him shimmered, and the cement under Mist’s feet vibrated with barely leashed energy.

  And there was more. She could also sense Eric’s presence, a shadow of his being altered and twisted into a form almost unrecognizable. She drew her knife.

  “Where is he?”

  Dainn spread his hands in front of him as if he were reaching for something solid. “He was here,” he said, frowning. “But he did not pass over.”

  Mist peered in every direction. “Are you sure?”

  “The location of the bridge is very clear to me, and it is obvious that Loki expended a great deal of effort here. But it appears that something blocked his way.”

  “Something? Like what?”

  “It is as if someone had bricked over a doorway, but I detect no magical signature to indicate that it was done deliberately.”

  “You mean by Freya or one of the other Aesir?”

  He shrugged, which meant he didn’t know, and she didn’t want to waste any time trying to figure it out now. “If this one doesn’t work,” she said, “he’ll probably look for another.”

  “I still see ‘Golden,’ ” Dainn said.

  “Then we need to get to the park.” Mist jumped back over the barrier and returned to the Volvo. A red Jaguar streaked past, blaring its horn. Dainn got in, and Mist made a sharp and very illegal U-turn, heading back toward the city.

  It was a straight shot south on Highway 1 to the park, but the minutes were ticking by, and Mist’s hopes of catching Loki dwindled a little more with every mile. When they got as close as they could to the area where Hrimgrimir had appeared, Mist swerved toward the nearest curb.

  She and Dainn jumped out of the Volvo and ran across frostbrittle grass toward the spot they had left just a few hours ago. Dainn slowed and stopped a good ten yards short of their destination.

  Mist turned around and strode back to him. “What is it?”

  He looked straight through her, his face taut with concentration. “The bridge is gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “Loki was here, and the residue of magic suggests he made a powerful effort, but again he was unable to enter. This one is not only closed, but absent.” He met Mist’s gaze. “The passage on the bridge was blocked, and this one has disappeared. This may work to our advantage.”

  “How?”

  “Loki may be trapped in Midgard.”

  “May be? You think the other bridges Freya saw are blocked, too?”

  “I told you that little is known about how the bridges function. If he cannot leave Midgard—”

  “But you don’t know he can’t. Maybe you’ve heard that California is called the Golden State?”

  “I have said that all the bridges we have identified are in this city.”

  “What if you’re wrong, and there are bridges to Ginnungagap all over the country, or even the planet?”

  “Freya is not wrong in this,” Dainn said.

  “Okay. But Loki . . . Eric claimed he was a security consultant doing work for the government and frequently traveled around the world. Do you think he, personally, is stuck in San Francisco?”

  “If the bridges are here, he would wish to stay where he could easily summon more Jotunar.”

  “So why hasn’t he? Why doesn’t he have an army covering every square inch of this city?”

  “He cannot have enough Jotunar here yet to constitute an army. If he desired to avoid Freya’s notice, and we can assume that was always his purpose, he would not have risked using too much magic or disrupting the daily business of this world. To do so would send echoes across Ginnungagap that Freya would surely have heard.”

  “But he could have been looking for the Treasures every time he was away. Are you sure he doesn’t have any of the others?”

  Dainn’s composure remained impregnable. “As certain as we can be. Again, his obtaining any of the Treasures would have made it very difficult to hide his presence in Midgard and transport more Jotunar over the bridges.” He paused. “It is also very likely that making use of the bridges is a heavy drain on his magical energy, and searching for the other Valkyrie, even with the Jotunar to aid him, would be too dangerous.”

  “You mean even Loki has his limits,” she said, catching a little glimpse of hope.

  “There is always a price for magic, especially of such a sustained and complex nature.”

  She wondered again if that was Dainn’s problem. “Even if the bridges are closed to him now,” she said, “and he’s stuck in Midgard, he wouldn’t have any trouble hiding Gungnir and getting through airport security if he wanted to leave the country.”

  “I do not believe he would attempt it.”

  “He’d have plenty of money to do it. I know Eric—” She broke off and exhaled sharply. “Loki wasn’t hurting for money, and he wouldn’t have to work very hard to get it. He could just conjure it up if he wanted to.”

  “Again, such conjuring would have been ill-advised for many reasons. And Loki has always found it more satisfying to use trickery to get what he wants. He has undoubtedly found very mundane methods of acquiring large sums of currency to finance his efforts, and he would do so without arousing the suspicions of mortal authorities and law enforcement.”

  “So he’s ahead of us there, too.”

  “Perhaps it would be best if we return to your home and wait to see what he will do next.”

  Dainn shifted gears so fast that Mist felt like a commuter watching a BART train shoot past without realizing it had ever reached the station. “I’ll put both my hands between Fenrisulfr’s jaws and ask him to bite them off before I’ll let Loki win without a fight.”

  He stared at her with such intensity that she found herself instinctively reaching for Kettlingr’s hilt. But the moment passed, and Dainn looked away as if nothing had happened.

  “You know him better than I do,” he said. “Where would he go?”

  “We’re talking about a city that covers almost forty-seven square miles and has a population of nearly 800,000. He could be anywhere.”

  “How much did you know of the background he created for himself? Were there any locations he frequented, places he preferred to all others?”

  As much as she hated being reminded of her own gullibility, Mist recognized what Dainn was getting at. “He needs more than just Jotunar to help him conquer Midgard,” she said. “So he’ll have been looking for mortal allies wherever he can find them.” She dragged her hand across her face, which felt about as rough as corrugated cardboard. “He could have been building a whole underground empire, and I wouldn’t have known it.”

  “As I said before, he will not have wished to disrupt mortal society in any way that would alert Freya to his presence here. But he almost certainly has been laying the groundwork, and he will no longer have any reason to delay finding such allies.”

  Mist flipped her braid behind her shoulders again, searching her mind for anything that would help them. “Loki had a computer at the loft, but even if he’d kept his contacts on it he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave the information for me to find.”

  “There is another possible source of information in this city which you yourself mentioned,” Dainn said.

  Mist snapped her fingers. “V
idarr and Vali,” she said. An ugly thought settled in the pit of her belly. What if Odin’s sons had known all along that the Aesir were still alive? What if they’d known about Loki, and hadn’t warned her?

  The idea was flatly ridiculous, as ridiculous as the idea that Odin had known there would be no Ragnarok. Vidarr and Vali would never go over to the enemy.

  “Loki can’t have gone anywhere near them before,” she said aloud, “or they would have recognized him. They’ll probably be just as shocked by all this as I was.”

  And Vidarr wouldn’t like it. Not one bit. Though he’d said he didn’t remember how he and Vali had come to Midgard, Mist had always had her doubts. He had certainly rejected most of his divine heritage years before Mist had made the decision to leave the past behind. Knowing he’d have to become involved all over again . . .

  No, it wasn’t going to be easy to tell him. Vidarr hadn’t been able to accept that Mist had radically changed from the willing servant she’d been in Asgard, even if he was different himself. He’d resented that mere Valkyrie had been entrusted with the Treasures.

  But there was no question that he’d take a stand against Loki once he understood what was going on, even if didn’t want any part of this new Ragnarok. This was his city.

  “We’ll go to Asbrew,” Mist said.

  Dainn shot her an inquiring look. “The Rainbow Bridge? I told you it had been destroyed along with Asgard.”

  It was a natural mistake on his part, since Asbru was another name for Bifrost. “As-b-r-e-w,” she spelled out. “God’s brew. It’s a pun. I don’t suppose you know what that means.”

  “I am aware of puns,” he said. “I have been on this world a very long time.” He arched a dark brow. “I believe the English writer Samuel Johnson referred to them as the lowest form of humor.”

  Dainn’s reference to Johnson made her wonder what he’d been doing in Midgard over the centuries. She knew that he, like she, would have had to keep moving or change his identity every few decades to avoid calling attention to his extremely slow aging.

  Even the Aesir eventually aged without the divine Apples of Idunn, and that had been one of the Treasures Odin had sent to Midgard. But Dainn had indicated that the gods weren’t aging in Ginnungagap, and Mist had changed hardly at all since the Last Battle.

  As much as she wanted to hear about Dainn’s past, she knew her curiosity would have to wait a little longer. Assuming she and Dainn were still alive when she had the chance to ask.

  Without another word between them, she and Dainn ran back to the Volvo, which looked to Mist as it were on the verge of literal collapse.

  “Hang in there, girl,” she whispered, patting the dashboard. Dainn stared resolutely out the window as they set off again.

  Vidarr’s bar was in the Tenderloin, once known as the “soft underbelly” of San Francisco for its history of crime and vice, a tradition that hadn’t completely been eradicated by the gradual gentrification of the area. Tucked between the wealth of Nob Hill and the busy downtown of Civic Center, the district was a seedy patch in an otherwise respectable neighborhood.

  In spite of the dubious location, Asbrew was pop u lar with artists, musicians, and the more affluent youth from the best addresses in the city. Mist hadn’t been inside for a de cade, but she assumed that things hadn’t changed much since Pink and Avril Lavigne were basking in the Top Ten.

  The Volvo, having been pressed far beyond its capacity, decided to give up the ghost at the corner of Van Ness, a little over a mile short of their goal. Mist eased the failing vehicle to the curb and set it in park.

  “We’ll have to hoof it,” she said.

  Dainn was out of the car a second after she was. She set off north on busy Van Ness, fiercely grateful for the chance to move her body again. She might not trust her own feeble magic, but legs and arms, muscle and bone were tools she had honed to obey her will without thought or hesitation. Dainn kept pace, lithe as a cheetah in spite of his rags, his long legs covering the ground with ease.

  At McAllister Mist turned east, leading Dainn past City Hall, and then jogged north on Hyde to Eddy. Suddenly they were in the midst of Southeast Asian restaurants, fleabag hotels, and boardedup mom-and-pop markets, running past indigents with overflowing shopping carts and more than one dealer on the prowl for addicts looking to score. Panhandlers and drunks stared after her and Dainn with dull astonishment, but they were only a blur in Mist’s eyes.

  Though it was barely seven o’clock in the morning, Mist knew that Asbrew would already be jumping. It never actually stopped. No cops would come knocking for the simple reason that Vidarr had set Rune-wards to repel them; she could feel their potency as she reached the scarred and graffitied doorway squashed between a rundown residential hotel and a pawn shop. Vidarr might have rejected his heritage, but he could still call upon it when it suited him.

  Mist opened the door and walked in. Vidarr employed a doorman to keep out any “undesirables” who might slip past the wards, but she didn’t recognize the bruiser with the underbite standing just inside. He did a double take when Dainn came up behind her.

  “Where’s Vid?” Mist asked the doorman.

  He folded his massive arms across his chest. “He ain’t available.”

  “My name is Mist Bjorgsen. He’ll see me.”

  “We don’t allow no bums in here,” the man said, jerking his thumb at Dainn. “And he stinks.”

  Dainn showed no reaction to the insult. He began to hum under his breath. The doorman was oblivious, but Mist felt the stirring of magic—simple magic, to be sure, but potent enough to repel a mortal, no matter how big and menacing he was.

  The last thing Mist could afford was to provoke Vidarr by causing a disturbance. She took Dainn’s arm, shoved the doorman out of the way and started toward the back of the bar.

  “Hey, bitch!” The doorman clamped one beefy hand over her shoulder. “You ain’t—”

  Mist spun around and punched him in the stomach. He let her go with a woof of astonished pain. She nodded to Dainn, who offered no comment, and they continued into the dark, smoky pit of the bar. There were three rooms stretching along Asbrew’s narrow length, one after another like those of a railroad flat. It was the third one she wanted.

  A dozen sets of eyes assessed them from the shadows as they passed through the public room. The radio blasted Norwegian death metal from huge speakers hung on the walls. Sullen kids with multiple piercings huddled over tables strung against the wall opposite the bar, and aging hipsters, ignoring the citywide smoking ban, argued over espresso and cigarettes.

  They were of no interest to Mist. She didn’t bother to ask the bartender where she could find Vidarr but kept moving through a tightly packed crowd of sleepy- eyed slackers and entered the door behind them.

  The clientele in the second room was of a caliber far different from the kids in the public area. The dozen men and women were all mature, attractive, and reeking of wealth . . . the kind who dined every other night at French Laundry, had their clothes tailor-made in Paris, and lived in apartments and penthouses worth more than all Freya’s gold.

  But there was something off about them, a strangeness that went beyond the fact that they didn’t belong in a place like this, especially early on a weekday morning. They stared at her as if she had crashed an exclusive wedding wearing nothing but her sword.

  As if she was an enemy.

  “Leave,” Dainn whispered at her back. “Leave now.”

  Mist barely heard him. “Who are you?” she asked, looking at each hostile face in turn.

  Glances were exchanged, but no one answered. Dainn gripped her arm. “There are too many,” he said.

  And suddenly she knew. “Where is he?” she demanded of the crowd in the Old Tongue, loosening her knife. “Where is your master?”

  Hard eyes fixed on hers. Several of the men began moving toward her, getting taller by the second. Faces blurred, becoming coarse and ugly with hate. Fists lifted. An unmistakable chill rose i
n the room.

  Hrimgrimir emerged from the crowd, grinning with hideous delight. “So we meet again, halfling. Or should I call you cousin?” His pointed teeth were red in the dim light, as if they were already stained with blood. “You must be eager for death. We will be happy to oblige you.”

  For a moment Mist couldn’t process his words. Halfling? Cousin? It made no sense. None of it did. Why were the Jotunar in Asbrew? Where in Hel was Vid?

  Pulling her knife free, Mist chanted the Rune- spell of change. Dim light raced along Kettlingr’s blade. She felt Dainn’s touch on her shoulder.

  “If you must fight,” he said, as if from very far away, “know that youhave far more strength than you realize..Feel it, warrior. Let it come.”

  She didn’t understand what in Baldr’s name he was talking about, but suddenly he was gone, and Hrimgrimir and his kin were upon her.

  Kettlingr flew up to meet the attack. The blade skittered against a wall of ice that dissolved as soon as the sword completed its arc. She swung again, narrowly missing a giant’s arm.

  Dainn had been right. There were too many, and she didn’t have the time or means to draw the physical symbols, the staves, that anchored her rudimentary magic and gave the Runes their power.

  You can build them in your mind, she thought. She’d never even considered the possibility before this morning, but somehow she and Dainn had made it work.

  Unfortunately, Dainn wasn’t here. She danced out of the way of a blow that would have flattened an elephant and tried to shape a repelling Bind-Rune out of her frantic thoughts.

  The giantess who had swung at her gave a yelp of surprise and fell back. In the clear for a few precious seconds, Mist shaped a second Bind-Rune for strength and speed.

  Suddenly a song rose in her chest—not merely a chant or a simple tune, but a robust, unfamiliar melody that throbbed with unexpected power. Strength greater than that of mortal or Valkyrie pulsed in her blood and blossomed in bone. Battle staves flared before her eyes. Driven by a compulsion she didn’t understand, she released the Runes from the pit of her belly like an opera bass reaching for his deepest note.