She needed to go home, go to bed, wake up to find Eric beside her—ready with a grin, an invitation, and a reminder that her life was normal now, had been normal long before she met him. Turning on her heel, Mist started back for the street.
A low, rasping chuckle stopped her in mid-stride. She spun around. A face emerged from the vapor, rising two heads above Mist’s generous height. A broad face, heavy, filled with anger and fell purpose. Pale, cold eyes met hers. The mouth, with its rows of teeth filed to points like daggers, gaped in a grin.
“Heil, Odin’s Girl,” the giant said in the Old Tongue, his voice deep enough to shake the ground under Mist’s feet. “Or can it be that I am mistaken? Is this what the Valkyrie have become, mountless and dressed no better than thralls?”
No hallucination, no illusion, no madness. The truth took Mist by the throat and shook her like a child’s doll.
This was real. This was death. And everything she had come to believe, everything she had tried to make of her life, was a lie. Instinct, rusty as an ancient blade left to molder in a salty bog, brought Mist back to her senses. Her Swiss Army knife, the one she’d carried since World War II, was of no use against a Jotunn. She peeled off her gloves, dropped them on the ground, and began to search for a long stick, a fallen branch, anything she could use as a weapon.
“No sword, Valkyrie?” the giant asked. “No spear?”
Mist knew she had to keep him distracted. He was obviously the type who enjoyed playing with his victims.
“A little out of place in a modern city, don’t you think?” she said, slipping back into English as she backed away and swept her foot across the ground.
The Jotunn either didn’t know English very well, or he preferred the drama of the ancient language. “A pity you embraced this mortal world so completely,” he said. “It will be your undoing.”
Mist’s boot struck something solid that rolled under her foot. A weathered bit of branch— likely rotten and not as thick as she would have liked, but she didn’t have time to look for something better. She snatched it up and held it behind her back with her left hand while she reached for the knife attached to her belt with her right.
“So you are not without your defenses after all,” the Jotunn said with a low laugh.
“What are you called, Jotunn?” Mist asked, forcing the archaic words through the constriction in her throat.
“I am Hrimgrimir,” the giant said. “I know you, Mist, once Chooser of the Slain.”
And she knew him. Hrimgrimir was the frost giant who guarded the mouth of Niflheim, the frigid realm of the goddess Hel, where all mortals but the greatest heroes went after death. Mist had assumed that Hel and her dead minions, like all Loki’s evil forces— along with the gods and their allies—had been destroyed in the Last Battle.
Except one of them hadn’t.
“From where have you come, Frost-shrouded?” she demanded, carefully flicking open the blade. “From what dream of venom and darkness?”
Hrimgrimir chuckled. “No dream, Sow’s bitch.” He blew out a foul, gusty breath. “A pity you chose her side. You might have lived to see the new age.”
Keep him talking, Mist thought. “Whose side?” Mist asked, scratching a crude series of Runes into the branch with the tip of her knife.
“Are you stupid as he says?” Hrimgrimir asked, advancing on her with a slow, heavy tread. “The Sow is your mistress.”
“Freya?” Mist said, angling the blade to slice the pad of her left thumb. “I served Odin, but all the gods were your enemies.”
The giant sniffed. “What are you doing, bitch? I smell your fear, but—”
Mist smeared her blood into the shallow Runes, dropped the knife, and swung the branch out from behind her back. She breathed a quick spell, and the blood began to smoke.
Too late, Hrimgrimir recognized what she had done. He reared out of the vapor, huge hands curled, his power and giant-magic swirling round about him like ice-forged armor.
Mist felt his assault in body and soul, and her bloody fingers almost slipped on the branch. But she had been stricken by the battle fever that had driven her through World War II. There was no chance she’d back out now.
She tried a second spell, and this time the magic obeyed her. She stumbled backward as the branch began to change, the end in her hand forming a grip that perfectly fit her grasp, the other end broadening and sharpening into a blade.
“Is that all?” Hrimgrimir said with another grating laugh. He waved his hand as if he were batting away flies, and his fist connected with the branch-blade.
But the wood was no longer wood at all. It flashed in the faint ambient light reflected by the clouds overheard, a blade like the one she had carried so long and laid to rest with all the other reminders of her past.
Hrimgrimir howled as the edge of the sword connected with the side of his hand, slicing a ragged gash in his tough flesh. He took a step back, giving Mist the chance to shift position. She lifted the sword and crouched, legs tensed to lunge forward. Hrimgrimir bellowed and raised both arms, leaving his midsection vulnerable, and she struck at him, aiming straight at his gut. He tried to block her attack with one arm, and cold blue blood splattered over her as her Rune- spelled blade sliced him to the bone.
Mist jumped back, ready for another attack. It never came. The vapor fell like a curtain in front of her, a writhing wall of maggots sheathed in ice. She swung again, but her sword whistled through empty air. The vapor began to recede as quickly as it had come, crackling angrily and leaving a crystalline film on the grass.
Shaken, Mist let the battle fever drain from muscle and nerve and bone. A cold sweat bathed her forehead and glued her shirt to her back. The burning sensation in her wrist was nearly gone, and so was her shock, yet the sense of unreality remained.
A giant had come to Midgard, bringing with him an evil no child of Mist’s adopted city could imagine. Not even the Nazis, or any of the tyrannical regimes that had come and gone since, had possessed such power. They had been human.
Flexing her fingers against the ache in her left thumb, Mist dropped her temporary sword and retrieved her knife. Almost instantly, the branch assumed its original form, the Runes burned away along with her blood.
But her thoughts continued to boil with questions. Where had Hrimgrimir come from? Even if she had been wrong about Ragnarok, the Last Battle, and the utter destruction of the world she had known millennia ago, she was certain she would have discovered the presence of other survivors long before the appearance of this one.
Certainly no Jotunn could walk Midgard unnoticed for long, even in more modest size. Had she been drawn to the park tonight because she had felt his presence?
She didn’t have to ask herself why he’d tried to kill her. Though there had always been a minority of Jotunar who had been friends and allies to the Aesir, few giants could meet a servant of the gods without enmity.
But why now? He had known not only what but who she was, and his attack had seemed very personal. He’d been waiting for her. For her.
Mist stared blindly at the trail of blackened grass Hrimgrimir had left in the wake of his retreat. Hrimgrimir had threatened her, but he’d given up as soon as she’d wounded him. Something about that hasty retreat bothered her. Carefully she reconstructed the Jotunn’s words, parsing them for any meaning she could have missed in the heat of battle.
“You might have lived to see the new age.”
Her heart stopped, and the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood rigid as a new-forged blade. The Prophecies had foretold a new age after Ragnarok, one of peace and plenty. That age would hardly have been one friendly to the dark forces. Few Jotunar would welcome its arrival, even if they survived to see it.
Unless the “new age” Hrimgrimir spoke of was very different from the paradise that had never come.
Skita. All Mist wanted now was a warm bed and Eric. But she had to have answers to this mystery before she could ever hope to have a normal life again. S
he had to find Hrimgrimir and make him talk.
Moving quickly, Mist followed the Jotunn’s trail, her boots crunching on the frozen grass. The park was still silent save for the bitter wind in the treetops and the distant roar of a motorcycle on Fulton Street. She had gone only a few hundred feet when the track disappeared completely. No trace of the giant remained.
And yet, as she stood still and opened her senses to the unseen, the feeling of something out of place began to grow again.
She looked for another piece of wood. She was long out of practice, and she, like all Valkyrie, had possessed only enough Galdr and basic Rune-lore to perform her duties. She’d been lucky the first spell had worked and that it hadn’t weakened her. This time the magic might fail or even turn against her.
Still, she had to try. She found a piece of firm bark, opened the knife again, and held the bark against the trunk of the nearest tree. The Runes sizzled as she cut them into the wood, simple yet powerful symbols formed of short, straight strokes: Uruz, Thurisaz, Ansuz.
It was too dangerous to use blood again so soon, so she closed the knife, withdrew a lighter from her jacket pocket, and set fire to the bark.
In three breaths it was consumed. The ashes fell to the foot of the tree in the pattern of an arrow, facing west.
Without hesitation Mist turned onto a narrow, dusty path that wandered among a dense grove of Monterey pines. Her search brought her to a heap of discarded clothing spread over the pine needles, half hidden under a clump of thick shrubbery.
Mist cursed. The magic had turned against her, mocking her meager skill. She was about to leave when the pile of rags heaved, and a hand, lean and pale, reached out from a tattered sleeve. A low groan emerged from the stinking mound. She smelled blood, plentiful but no longer fresh.
Against her better judgment, she knelt beside the man. She expected an indigent, perhaps injured by some thug who found beating up helpless vagrants a source of amusement. But the hand, encrusted with filth as it was, appeared unmarked by the daily struggle for food and shelter, more accustomed to lifting golden goblets of mead than sifting through rubbish in a Dumpster.
She started at the thought. Mead had been the most favored beverage of gods and heroes and elves.
This one certainly didn’t look like any kind of hero. Hesitantly she pulled the blankets aside. A tall, lean form emerged, dressed in torn shirt, trousers too short and wide for his body, and hole-ridden sneakers. He lay on his belly, legs sprawled, cheek pressed against the damp, chilly earth.
And his face . . .
Mist had seen its like countless times in Odin’s hall, Valhalla, regal and stately among the carousing Aesir and warriors, fairer to look upon than the sun. It had always been accepted that the most beautiful of all creatures were the light-elves of Alfheim, allies of the gods.
This man was not so beautiful. His face was a mask of gore and mud, one eye swollen shut and nose covered in blood. Yet his features could not be mistaken.
A frost giant had come to Midgard from gods-knew-where. Now one of the Alfar had arrived as well, against all reason. Against every “truth” she had known, believed for so long.
Mist touched the elf ’s shoulder. “Can you hear me?” she asked in the Old Tongue.
He moved his hand, fingers digging into the soil, and spoke in a voice rough and raw with pain.
“Who . . .” he croaked, opening his one good eye. “How . . .”
There was no doubt, no doubt at all, that he was speaking the Old Tongue with the accent of the Alfar. He was every bit as real as the Jotunn had been.
“Rest easy,” she said, shrugging out of her jacket and laying it over him. “You’re safe.”
The eye, so dark a blue as to be almost black amid the red and brown of blood and dirt, regarded her with growing comprehension. “Safe?” he whispered. With a sudden jerk he rolled to his side, pushing her jacket away. “The Jotunn . . .”
“There is no giant here now,” she said, pushing him down again. “Lie still, man of the Alfar. All is well.”
The sound he made might have been a laugh. He eased himself back down, inhaling sharply, and looked into her face. “Who . . . are you?”
Mist hesitated. The laws of Midgard— the natural, mundane laws she had accepted for centuries— had been broken. She didn’t know what the rules were anymore or whom she could trust, including herself.
But he was of the light-elves, who had fought and died alongside the gods. Even if she’d never had much use for the lofty, superior aesthetes who had been much too grand to spare so much as a glance for a lowly Valkyrie, she badly needed answers.
“My name is Mist,” she said.
In a burst of speed his hand shot out and encircled her wrist, long fingers curling around her tattoo. It seemed to catch fire again, and she wrenched her arm out of his grip. He closed his eye and released a shuddering breath.
“It is as I hoped,” he said.
Mist was too angry and startled to wonder what he’d hoped. “Whoever you are,” she said, “don’t do that again.”
He rubbed at his swollen mouth with his other hand. It was shaking. “Where is the frost giant?” he asked.
“He fled.”
“He did not . . . harm you?”
“No. I think I scared him off.”
“You fought him?”
“He attacked me. I didn’t have much choice.” She leaned closer to the elf, studying his face in search of anything familiar. “What do you know about him? Where did he come from? Where did you come from?”
Wincing, the elf pushed himself up on his elbow. “I will . . . answer all your questions, Mist of the Valkyrie,” he said, his voice regaining a little of the melodic cadences of his kind. “Is it safe?”
Mist shivered as if Hrimgrimir’s icy vapor had sunk deep into her flesh and muscle and bone.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
He stared at her, his sole visible eye filled with mild contempt. “Do not pretend ignorance. It is not plausible.”
“I don’t much care what you find plausible. Who are you?”
“I am . . . Dainn. Dainn Far-seeker.”
Dainn. It was not an uncommon name for elf or dwarf. There were two most famous among the Alfar. The first was Dainn Rune- bringer, who had given the Rune-magic, the Galdr, to the elves, as Odin had brought it to the Aesir after days of bitter suffering. Mist had never seen Dainn Rune-bringer in Asgard, and it was no wonder: that Dainn was said to have vanished many ages before the fall of Asgard.
And then there was the other. Memories of the Last Battle flooded into Mist’s mind, images of bloody conflict and hopeless courage. She and her Sisters had only been present at the start of the fight, but she knew that the Alfar, though they never lifted a single weapon amongst them, had fought bravely with their potent magic. All but one.
He, too, she had never met, but she knew all about him. Dainn Faith-breaker, slain by Thor for the foulest treachery against Odin and the forces of good.
The Dainn before her was as ordinary as any elf could be . . . which would have been dazzling enough if he hadn’t just come out of the wrong end of a fight.
“Dainn Far-seeker,” she said. “The Jotunn attacked you?”
He nodded and gingerly touched the lump on his forehead. “It was not my intention to let him catch me.”
“He was after you, too?” she asked. “Why? What did you mean when you said—”
He held up a grimy hand to silence her. “Do you still have it?”
His voice had taken on an imperious note, which might have been more convincing if he hadn’t been covered with filth and rags that probably hadn’t seen anything resembling soap for years. He obviously wasn’t going to let her get away with playing ignorant again.
Simple, everyday annoyance began to wear the edge off Mist’s shock. “Odin gave me no leave to speak of it to anyone,” she said, “not even the Alfar.”
“You can trust me.”
Sure, Mis
t thought. But even if an elf had improbably gone over to the dark side, he couldn’t break the warding spell..
“It’s concealed and shielded with magic devised and gifted to me and my Sisters by the All-father himself,” she said. “And now I think you’d better start explaining—”
“What did the Jotunn say to you?”
“You seem to know that already,” she said, lapsing into English.
“You said nothing that could lead him to it?” he asked, his own English like something straight out of an Austen novel.
“No, I didn’t,” she said. “And no Jotunn could get through the wards. It would take a god to do it.’ ”
“And yet you have clearly been unprepared for any attempt to take it from you.”
“I didn’t exactly expect to meet a Jotunn or an elf when I got up this morning.”
He shook out his long black hair— the feature that all Alfar took most pride in—as if he might shed the leaf-litter and dirt that matted it almost beyond recognition. “I cannot fault you for holding true to your duty.”
“I don’t know what I’d do if you disapproved of me,” she said with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “Now maybe you’ll deign to tell me how you and Hrimgrimir managed to survive the Last Battle.”
Dainn rolled onto his knees and tried to stand, a little of his Alfar’s natural grace returning, then sank back down again with a very unelvish grunt of frustration.
“The Last Battle?” he said. “Is that what you thought it was?”
There was no mistaking his mockery, blandly delivered with that oh-so-superior elvish attitude. “It’s been centuries since Ragnarok,” she snapped. “Since none of us heard from Odin or any of the Aesir in all that time—”
“You naturally assumed that the gods had met their final destruction, as the Prophecies foretold.”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “What in Hel’s name is going on?”
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