Black Ice

by Susan Krinard

When Jormungandr finally struck, she swept both hands up simultaneously, the left with the mace and the right with the sword. The mace struck the Serpent’s jaw while the sword cut across its chest. But the blade lodged in the creature’s bones, and Kettlingr was jerked from her hand.

  Before Jormungandr could recover from the ice mace’s impact, Mist snatched more snow and ice out of the air and built a shield, plank by frigid plank, butting them together and sealing them with Rune-reinforced ice as strong as steel. She shaped a boss out of iron-Runes and constructed a grip to hold the shield to her chest.

  Jormungandr shook his head, sending long threads of pale spittle flying across Mist’s arms and face. Wherever it struck, the sputum ate into her flesh like the poison it was. She called on her anger and disgust to strengthen and expand the shield until it was large enough to cover her whole body and yet light enough so that she could easily maneuver it.

  With a wail of rage, the Serpent plunged toward her. Its head crashed against the shield and it screamed, the vibrations of its unearthly voice ripping along Mist’s nerves like the blade of a saw on chalkboard. She staggered, her energy beginning to fail her.

  “Mist!” Dainn shouted.

  She didn’t dare turn, but instinct told her when to reach out and snatch Gleipnir from the air. It lashed at her skin, and she remembered when she’d told Dainn that she and the other Valkyrie weren’t permitted to use the Treasures.

  But the risk had to be taken. She coiled the Chain into a whip and snapped it at Jormungandr. It lengthened to accommodate her intent, but its end fell to the ground before it made contact with the Serpent’s scales. As the creature coiled its body upon itself, poised for an attack Mist knew she would likely not survive, she yanked Gleipnir back and prepared to run.

  Before she could retreat more than a few steps, she felt a blast of furnace heat from the chasm. Forge heat. She darted toward the Serpent, dived under its neck, and tossed one end of Gleipnir into the fissure. Fire coated the Chain’s surface, and she hurled it upward.

  The fire struck and opened a blackness in the thing’s skin. It bellowed again, flinging its head forward and back. Gleipnir dropped to the asphalt, limp and still.

  Mist knew she’d used up all her resources except one.

  “Mist!”

  She turned to see Eir dashing toward her from the corner of Twentieth and Illinois. Eir, who was no warrior.

  Yelling at the top of her voice, Mist struck at the black wound in Jormungandr’s flesh. With a squeal of outraged pain, the creature flung itself back and down, withdrawing into the crack in the earth. The ground trembled again and then went still, leaving behind it a profound silence.

  Mist retreated, set Kettlingr down carefully, and bent over, resting her hands on her knees and breathing hot air into her lungs. A bitterly cold pool of water covered the area where she’d worked her last magic, fire melting all the snow for yards around. She didn’t for one minute believe that Jormungandr was defeated, but at least it had withdrawn.

  For now.

  Straightening again, she blinked the sweat from her eyes and watched Eir approach with the mortals who had attempted—and failed—to distract Jormungandr.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she rasped.

  Eir stared at the chasm and shivered. “It’s not really gone, is it? Where did it come from?”

  “It’s Loki’s child. What do you think?” She caught at Eir’s arm and jerked her head toward the loft. “Did you keep me from going after the kids with some kind of anti-healing magic?”

  “The fever,” Eir said. “Yes.” She muffled a cough. “It was the only way to stop you. There is so much more at stake than the lives of those two children.”

  “You’re a healer, and you can talk like that?”

  Eir closed her eyes. “I have spoken with Gabi. They know they might die like any of us.”

  “Maybe I’m not ready to sacrifice—”

  The earth shook again, and a fresh crack formed in the street. A ghostly shape shot out of it like a geyser, flinging a shower of broken concrete from its body. Its wound had healed, and it seemed possessed by new strength and purpose.

  But it wasn’t Mist the Serpent was after now. Gabi had returned and was standing in front of the monster with an expression of angry defiance.

  Immediately Mist snatched Kettlingr from the pavement and ran toward Jormungandr. She wasn’t fast enough. The creature shot down toward Gabi, opened its jaws, and caught her up, swinging its head skyward as if it would swallow her whole.

  Gabi screamed, jabbing her knife into the creature’s jaws again and again. Mist realized then that she couldn’t send Eir away. She needed someone else with magic, no matter how limited it might be.

  “Eir!” she yelled.

  The healer rushed to her side and raised her hands. She spoke without making a sound, her lips moving, her palms filling with water drawn up from the asphalt at her feet.

  Mist almost lost her footing as the water turned bloodred and the force of the Rune-spell caught her in its wake. Laguz, the Rune of Water, the source of cleansing, life, and healing, but reversed: madness, withering, sickness.

  The water streaming from Eir’s hands struck Jormungandr just behind his jaw. He screamed again, shaking ichor and pus from a weeping burn that covered the side of his neck. His skin began to tighten around his huge skull, sinking inward and buckling around his eyes.

  Eir cried out and dropped to her knees, cupping her hands in the water and splashing her face. It was a mask of pain and horror, ravaged, little more a thin sheet of flesh over bone, eyes sunk so deep that Mist could not even see their color. Her hair was as lifeless as straw, and some of it had fallen out. It was as if she had been subjected to a deadly blast of radiation.

  But Mist couldn’t help her now. In spite of Jormungandr’s injuries, he still had Gabi. The teenager was still alive; no blood, or anything like blood, suggested that she’d been injured. But she was no longer a solid figure struggling in the Serpent’s jaws. She and her knife had become as ghostly as the thing that held her, her screams now silent as if her voice had drained away with her substance.

  Swinging Kettlingr, Mist sliced into the Serpent’s side again. It flinched but didn’t release its prey.

  “Take me!” she shouted. “I’m the one you want!”

  The Serpent ignored her. Mist closed her eyes and sang, trying to summon Runes she was no longer clearheaded enough to understand. She swung Kettlingr again and again, all to no effect.

  The Serpent lifted its head and tilted it back like a boa constrictor ready to ingest a mouse. And then, without warning, a huge brown animal charged directly at it, batting at its flesh with paws the size of dinner plates.

  The bear reared up on his hind legs and roared, revealing sharp yellow fangs and scythelike claws. He raked Jormungandr’s side until the Serpent, never loosening its grip on Gabi’s body, slammed one of its massive coils against the animal.

  With an almost human yelp of pain, the bear tumbled onto his back. As he struggled to rise again, something almost too fast to be seen darted behind the Serpent—

  And ran right through it.

  19

  Stretching its jaws wide, the Serpent released Gabi. Mist barely had time to drop Kettlingr and catch the girl, who fell like a dead weight into Mist’s arms. Jormungandr made a choking sound and thrashed from side to side, focused on something far more deadly to it than Mist could ever be.

  There was a shadow in the Serpent’s gut. A larger-than-human shadow, heaving like an enormous parasite. An enemy inside Jormungandr.

  Mist had no time to make sense of what was happening. “You!” she shouted to the disorganized Einherjar. “Roadkill, Rick, Bunny, Vixen—get Eir and come with me!”

  Mist headed for the street corner at a dead run and turned sharply onto Twentieth. She found Ryan kneeling on the sidewalk, clearly in a state of shock. No one was with him—not Vali, who had failed to protect Gabi, nor Dainn, who would surely have seen the
teenager when he’d taken Anna away from the fight. “Ryan,” she said, easing Gabi to the ground. “Are you hurt?”

  He stared at her blankly. Mist saw that there were smears of blood all over his shirt, but the garment itself was in one piece, and Mist couldn’t detect any injuries. It was as if it wasn’t Ryan’s blood at all.

  “Did you see Anna and Dainn?” Mist asked, kneeling beside him. “Where’s Vali? He was supposed to—” Ryan slumped, and she held him up. “Can you hear me?”

  But he wasn’t listening, and he obviously wasn’t capable of answering. She glanced at Gabi, whose skin was more gray than brown. Her breathing was labored. Mist took her wrist, frantically counting her pulse.

  A moment later Bunny, Rick, and the other two Einherjar arrived, Eir slumped between them. They helped the Valkyrie sit and stepped back. Mist knelt beside her.

  “What can I do?” she asked, feeling as helpless as a turtle on its back.

  “I’m … all right,” Eir said. “This will pass. Take care of the others.”

  Hating the necessity of leaving Eir or the kids in such a state of suffering and uncertainty, Mist looked west toward Third Street and the chaos the latest quake had created. Local residents were still running back and forth on the sidewalk and street, helping the injured, working to get stalled or damaged vehicles off the road or simply weeping in shock.

  There was no sign that the mortals there—or even her closest neighbors—were aware of the battle that had just taken place. It was as if she and Jormungandr had been fighting in some vast invisible bubble.

  She turned back to the Einherjar. “You two,” she said to Bunny and Roadkill, “I want you to get the kids and Eir away from here. If Ryan is injured or Gabi doesn’t improve, get help, even if you have to flag down an ambulance. We’ll deal with the repercussions later. Rick and Vixen, you look for Anna and Dainn. He’s got to have taken her somewhere he thinks is safe.”

  The earth heaved again, and there were more screams from the direction of Third Street. Mist spun and raced back to Jormungandr, snatching up Kettlingr as the Serpent coiled around and around on itself, attacking its own body. With increasing desperation it ripped at its underbelly, tearing off chunks of what passed for flesh. Ichor flowed, but still the monster bit and tore, striving to reach the shadow writhing and clawing under its skin.

  The shadow reached up, part of it seeming to flow toward the Serpent’s head, balling in its throat like a fist made of smoke. Jormungandr gagged, trying to expel its tormentor. Its efforts were futile. As if it realized it could not destroy the thing inside it without destroying itself, it shrieked loudly enough to rattle the loft’s windows and fell back into the chasm, moving so fast that it had disappeared before Mist could blink.

  The crack began to close over it, but something prevented the edges from coming together.

  The something was Dainn, covered in ichor and struggling to pull himself out. Mist dropped Kettlingr again and ran to grab his hand. It slipped out of her grasp, and Dainn fell farther into the chasm.

  With a last burst of strength, Mist clutched his right wrist in both hands. The bear appeared out of nowhere and seized Dainn’s shoulder in his jaws. Together they hauled the elf out of the pit. As soon as he was free the gap closed, becoming a thick black line in the pavement with hairline fractures radiating in all directions.

  Dainn lay on his stomach, barely breathing. His chest, legs, arms, and feet were a bloody mess. Mist rolled him over and wiped his face with her hand. He coughed and expelled a stream of ichor.

  “Dainn!” she shouted.

  He opened his eyes. They were empty. Soulless.

  “Jesus,” Edvard said.

  Mist turned to stare at the biker, who was crouched exactly where the bear had been.

  “Berserkr,” she hissed. “Why didn’t you tell me before? Why didn’t Bryn?”

  “Never had the chance,” Edvard said. “Did he do what it just looked like he did?”

  “He’s the only one who can tell us.” She shook the elf lightly. “Dainn!”

  Still nothing. Mist slapped his cheek, not nearly so gently. “Wherever you are right now,” she said, “you have to come out. We need you.” I need you.

  Life came slowly back into Dainn’s eyes. He coughed again and rolled onto his side, curling up in a fetal position. Mist laid her hand on his shoulder, careful not to touch the abrasions where Edvard’s teeth had marked his skin.

  And to think, Mist thought with brutal self-disgust, that she had briefly considered the possibility that he had turned coward.

  “That was you inside the Serpent, wasn’t it?” she asked. How? What did you do to it?”

  “It will not be back,” he whispered. “What of Gabi?”

  “Safe,” she said. “Dainn, where is Anna?”

  He coughed once more, deep and racking. She steadied him as he struggled to his knees. “I left her with the young mortals … and Vali,” he said.

  “Vali and Anna are missing.”

  “He must have … taken her to safety when I returned.”

  “And left the kids?”

  Dainn looked at her as if he were blind. “I I am sorry I couldn’t help you before.” “Curse it, Dainn, what did Vali say when you left him and the others?”

  “I could not call the beast,” he said, as if he still hadn’t heard her question.

  “You can explain that later,” she said. “Right now we have to—”

  “You do not understand. The beast did come, when I found Gabi and Ryan in the loft.”

  “You saved them?”

  Dainn sucked in a lungful of air and released it slowly. “I could barely master it then, but when I most needed it, it defied me.” A tear leaked from the corner of his eye. “What control I had is gone. The beast has become … greater than before.”

  “It’s okay,” Mist said, feeling her own self-control beginning to crumble. “You didn’t hurt anyone. All I want you to do now is tell me what happened to Anna and Vali. What’s the last thing you remember before you came back and attacked Jormungandr?”

  “I … don’t know.”

  She released him. “We have to find them.” Her heart stopped. “Odin’s bloody eye, this whole attack might have been a feint on Loki’s part so he’d have a chance to take Anna and Orn. I didn’t think he was capable—” She broke off and glanced at Edvard. “I’ll need you to track Anna, and Vali if he’s with her.” She turned back to Dainn. “Can you help?”

  “No,” he said hoarsely. “No.”

  “Dainn, we can’t let Loki—”

  “Don’t you understand?” Dainn said, his gaze suddenly clear, his lips curling back from his teeth like a cornered tiger’s. “It is not Loki you must fear now. The beast defied me to prove its power. It wants blood. It will take whatever I cannot prevent it from taking. You, Anna,… the children.” He bent over, spitting red-flecked foam.

  Mist dug her fingers into his arms, no longer caring if she hurt him. “I won’t let it. I’ll help you. If I’m with you, we—”

  He lunged at her so suddenly that she fell back, instinctively raising her fists to defend herself. Edvard grabbed Dainn and pulled him down again. The elf slapped the biker aside, sending him rolling across the street.

  “Dainn!” Mist shouted, looking for Kettlingr.

  “This thing inside me demands a sacrifice,” Dainn snarled. “It will use me until it has what it wants.” He closed his eyes and turned his face skyward, the incongruously gentle snowflakes settling on his dark eyebrows and wild hair. “When the time comes—”

  “You’re talking crazy. I don’t—”

  All the blood vessels in Dainn’s eyes seemed to burst at once, flooding his sclerae with red. “I almost killed Ryan when I found him and Gabi in the loft.”

  “The blood on his shirt … Hodr’s tears, what did you do to him?”

  “It wasn’t his blood.”

  “Then you—we—can still stop this thing!”

  He laughed, a ter
rible grating sound no elven voice should be capable of making. The transformation happened so quickly that Mist had no time to imagine, let alone prepare.

  The thing rising before her was neither bear nor wolf nor anything Mist had seen before. It reared up to a full eight feet, triangular ears pressed flat to its round skull, muzzle pulled back from far too many needle-sharp teeth.

  “Now, you see,” Dainn rumbled, the words barely comprehensible.

  Mist recoiled. She felt horror, and shock, and rage that he had never told her.

  But she didn’t let him see her emotions. He was trying to prove he couldn’t be saved, that this beast—this real, physical, deadly creature—couldn’t be stopped.

  She couldn’t let him believe it.

  “Dainn,” she said softly. “This isn’t you.”

  “It is,” Edvard said, moving up behind Dainn. And he, too, changed, into a bear as big as the largest Kodiak, rising to stand only a few inches shorter than Dainn’s beast. Dainn swung around, and the two creatures faced each other, assessing strength and weight with savage intelligence.

  Mist didn’t have the leisure to ask Edvard what in Hel he knew about it. “Is this what you showed Loki when you went to kill him?” she asked, stepping quickly around Dainn’s massive body to separate him from the berserkr. “Did he see this before, in Asgard?”

  It seemed impossible that there should be anything left of the elf in the beast, but when he looked down at her she saw Dainn’s agony, his desperate need to be free. He lifted one powerful arm and tapped his temple with a curved claw.

  Did he mean Loki had only seen a beast of the mind, as she had before? Was this the part of Odin’s curse Dainn had been so intent on hiding from her?

  Carefully she reached out to touch the dark fur. Edvard tried to get in her way, but she pushed him aside as if he were a three-week old cub.

  “It’s all right, Dainn,” she said, stroking the surprisingly soft coat. “You could kill me now, if this creature was really in control. But it isn’t. And it never will be, if I have anything to say about it.”

  With a howl of some indescribable emotion, Dainn broke free. He dropped to his haunches, supporting his upper body on his forelegs, and shuddered violently.