Power to take Mist—mind and body and soul.
Before Dainn could put himself between goddess and goddess, the flow of Jotunar through the portal stopped abruptly, and he could hear a new battle outside, in the part of Midgard the giants had left behind—cries and shouts and the clanging of steel, screams of pain and grunts of men and Jotunar succumbing to death. He smelled the new arrivals: Rota and Bryn, nearly all the Einherjar, a dozen mortals he failed to recognize.
Mist forced her way through the shredded margins of the portal, Kettlingr in one hand while the fingers of the other sketched Runes in the air, calling up a wind that would sweep all before it.
So, the elf-woman said. It has come to this.
The voice was inside his head, as it had been in the beginning. The voice he hated.
Dainn snarled, his massive heart pumping great quantities of blood into his limbs, all his will and his senses bent on killing. The power was within him, too. He could destroy her, now. Destroy her, before she could …
But suddenly Sleipnir was hurtling toward him, Danny perched on his back. As Odin’s mount came to a stop, Danny slid to the ground and faced Dainn with confusion on his innocent face. The boy held out his arms, as if he wished to join with Dainn in some unfathomable way the beast could not understand.
Kill him. Dainn roared, clawing at his own head. The boy is too powerful, the voice said with a gentleness that grotesquely contradicted her words. He will destroy us all.
Dainn dropped to all fours, losing even his ability to stand.
I can save you. This will be your last act at my command. Then you will be free.
The voice pounded inside his skull, compressing his brain in a fist that held nothing of love in it, nothing of gentleness or compassion.
But there was another voice inside him, one he knew as well as his own beating heart.
Take him, and we will be one.
The sacrifice, he thought with his last scraps of rationality. He scored deep ruts into the earth with his claws, struggling against his darkest self. He took a single step toward Danny, and then another. He broke into a run, charging toward the boy with no will to stop.
Danny stared up at him as he reared and swung his arm back, ready to rend the child in half.
“No,” Danny said.
The spell shattered. Dainn cast out Freya’s voice as he would expel rotten food from his body, and in moments he was an elf once more, his fingers scrabbling at the waistband of his pants, withdrawing the pouch, lifting it to his lips.
The herb fell into his open mouth, bitter as defeat. He swallowed it, felt it shock his entire system, burn into his blood, turn his limbs to rubber. He fell onto his back, utterly helpless, scarcely able to see Sleipnir kneel to let Danny climb up on his back, wheel about, and return the way they had come.
Dainn lay on the grass, tears leaking from his eyes. He snatched handfuls of dry grass in his hands, searching for the life that pulsed underneath. He felt nothing. The earth and all it nurtured was as dead to him as decaying bones.
He heard Mist run up behind him, pause, fling another deadly spell at those who pursued her, come to a sudden stop. Even now, deaf and blind as he was to the world, he could feel her mingled horror and grief. She was utterly unaware of the goddess so nearby.
“You were going to kill him,” she said, anguish in her voice. “Sweet Baldr. You tried to…”
Dainn curled into himself, his head pressed to the earth. “End it now,” he begged.
For an eternal moment all Dainn heard was the battle beyond the portal. Then he felt the chill of sharp metal against the back of his neck, requiring only a hard push to drive it through his spine.
Then Mist withdrew the sword. “You stopped yourself again,” she said. “You changed back.”
How could he tell her it was none of his doing? That the beast had gone with the last of the herb … like his magic … like himself?
He could not. But he could still protect the lady he served. Freya had shielded herself from her daughter’s sight, and Mist was still in the greatest danger of her long life.
“Go,” he said hoarsely. “The beast is gone. I … cannot harm Danny now.” He pressed his face into the silent earth. “Your allies fight and die as we speak. Hold the Jotunar at the portal. It is our only hope … for his continued safety.”
Mist was far too much a leader to allow her emotions to cloud her reason when the survival of her own people was at stake. She crouched beside him and dropped her plain knife on the ground near his hand.
“If you’re wrong about the beast, try to slow it down. I told you I’d help you fight it, and I will.” She got to her feet. “Just hold on.”
Then she was running back for the portal, and Freya was suddenly standing above Dainn, black elven hair flowing gently about her face. The empty pouch dangled from her fingers.
“Very touching,” she said. “My brave daughter has developed a strong affection for you, has she not? One might even say love, if she were capable of making such a mistake again. As you have.” Her eyes glittered with spite. “I told you to prepare her. You did far more than that.”
Dainn climbed to his knees, looking the way Mist had gone. She had vanished, and there was no one left fighting at the portal. He and Freya were alone.
“I did nothing but allow your daughter to recognize her potential,” he said.
“You drove me out.”
Laughter tore at his throat. “Have I so much power?”
“A kiss,” she said. “How appropriate. How bold, how very clever of you to use my own ways against me.” Her long shadow fell over him as she moved closer. “I admit that I was mistaken in believing that your desire to rid yourself of your beast would outweigh any unlikely attraction you might feel for a woman as blunt and unrefined as my daughter. But she was repulsed by your touch, as she is repulsed by this thing you have become.”
“Yes,” Dainn said, lifting his head. “But my method—the method I borrowed from you—was successful.”
“And yet here I stand.” She glanced up at the bridge he had so foolishly ignored, the strangely localized storm that circled round and round in a clear morning sky. “A little trouble delayed me in the Shadow-Realm,” she said, “but it is over, and I will claim what is mine.”
Dainn braced his arms and pushed himself to his feet. “And I,” he said, “will stop you.”
“How?” She dropped the empty pouch in front of him. “This substance seems to have robbed you of your one reliable weapon. Unless, of course…” She leaned close, her eyes heavy-lidded, full lips parted. “Unless you wish to try your ‘method’ on me again.”
“I would not find it pleasant.”
Her flawless face darkened. “Nor effective. You have lost more than your savagery, have you not?” She brushed the pad of her thumb across his lower lip. . An elf who loses his magic is no better than a beast.”
The crushing weight of Dainn’s loss was as nothing to his fear for Mist. And Danny.
“You can no longer protect my daughter, and that torments you, does it not?” Freya asked. She waved toward the portal, through which Dainn could still hear the clash of metal and cries of pain. “I know you wish to die. I shall grant your wish if you tell me who created this portal. Was it the boy?”
“Why do you want him dead?”
The Lady buffeted Dainn with a wave of lust that fogged his mind and hardened his body. “What does he mean to you?”
“Why … do you fear him?” Dainn gasped, fighting the helpless desire to tell her everything Danny had taught him. She pushed Dainn to his knees. “He is Loki’s son. But you know that, do you not?”
“I … took him from the Slanderer.”
Her eyes widened. “And you let him live? Have you no comprehension of what he can do to this world and every one of us?”
“How is he more dangerous than his father?”
Her eyes widened. “You know,” she whispered. “I feel it in you. And yet you protect him
.” She flicked her fingers, and Dainn dropped to his belly. “Tell me where he is.”
“Gone.”
“There is a bond between you. You can find him.”
Find him, Dainn thought. His magic was gone, like the beast, but perhaps …
Run, he thought, flinging his thoughts outward, envisioning light like rays of the sun warming Danny’s face, penetrating his strange, innocent, precious mind. Save yourself.
Freya swayed. “Be silent!” she screamed, pressing her fingers to her temples.
Dainn writhed on the ground, distantly aware that Freya was shaking uncontrollably, her features frozen in an expression of shock and terror.
But her moment of vulnerability was brief. She lifted her hands and assaulted Dainn with her glamour, turning him into another kind of beast.
“You long for death,” she said, “But I will not kill you. I will find the boy, and destroy him. You may wander this world as you did before, knowing that those you love are lost to you forever. And I shall make quite sure that Mist believes you have betrayed her before I finish with her.” She turned her back on him. “And now I must join my daughter. I would not wish her to suffer an injury before I claim her..”
Dainn struggled to rise, to reach her, to kill her, to love her. Sex and death became one, spinning in an obscene dance, pulling his mind and soul and body apart like some Medieval device of torture. He bit down on his tongue, driving the crippling lust away with pain.
“Freya,” he called, spitting blood into the grass.
“What was the trouble in the Shadow-Realm? Have you … quarreled with the All-Father?”
“Odin?” She turned toward him quickly, as if she was eager to refute him. “No. Our enemies, the Jotunar—
“Why is the bridge here, Lady?” He said, feeling Freya’s spell begin to lose its grip. “Why not in the city where your enemy waits? Is it because you did not create it at all?” He struggled to his knees again. “I think you have lost control, Lady, and that makes you desperate. You are terrified.”
She strode back to him, struck him down and clenched her fingers as the full force of her glamour tightening around his groin like a vise of white-hot barbs. He felt that part of himself begin to die.
“I have changed my mind,” she said, breathing fast. “When I am finished, I will return in Mist’s body and kill the boy before your eyes.”
She strode toward the portal, nothing of seduction in the jerky movements of her body. She paused by Mist’s forgotten motorcycle and steered it toward the portal. Dainn rolled onto his back. The pain receded, and he realized that he was whole, his body unharmed by Freya’s spell. The rent in the sky from which the Lady had emerged remained open, and from it descended a path of silver mist, a surface that appeared as slick as ice and nearly as transparent.
Two, six, a dozen lean and graceful figures, some bearing Void-forced daggers and slender blades, descended along it—Alfar, a full three dozen males and females racing toward the portal. Jotunar spilled through from the other side.
The Alfar stopped as one, drawing upon the flora and fauna rife in the grasslands to build their spells. In soft, taunting voices they lured the Jotunar onto the steppe where their power was greatest, weaving grass into nets, shaping dirt into smothering shrouds, raising small earthly creatures to climb and crawl over the Jotunar in a frenzy of frantic motion.
The giants began to retreat. As they scattered, Dainn glimpsed Freya passing through the portal, the elves at her heels.
But not all of them had gone.
Dainn had just managed to rise when three Alfar raced past him, running in the direction Sleipnir had taken Danny with the grace and speed of cheetahs on the hunt.
Gathering his uncertain strength, Dainn pursued them. As he approached Hild’s cottage, he saw with a sinking heart that neither Hild, Sleipnir, nor Danny had fled. Hild faced one of the Alfar with a long knife in her hand. Sleipnir had risen on all four hind legs and was beating another elf back—Danny astride and clinging to his mane—while the third Alfr circled boy and horse, his voice rising in a spell-chant.
The circling Alfr saw Dainn, and their gazes locked. The elf broke away from the others and charged, a curved dagger gripped in his hand. He leaped, twisting lithely in midair, and came down with the dagger’s point aimed at Dainn’s neck.
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Contorting his own body to avoid the blow, Dainn rolled and found his feet again before the elf could regain his balance. The elf dropped the dagger and raised his hands to call up a binding spell.
A single scream froze them both. The first of the Alfar had Danny in his arms, and the boy was fighting as if Dainn’s beast had possessed him. Hild lay dazed on the ground, but Sleipnir had already put paid to the second elf.
Dainn wasted no more time. He attacked his distracted opponent, making use of his centuries of training, toughness he had developed over years of wandering Midgard and subjecting himself to every challenge, physical and mental, that could strengthen his control over the beast. He brought the other elf down and crouched over him, his arm bearing hard on the Alfr’s neck.
But the one who held Danny, now limp in his arms, was already running back toward the portal.
“Sleipnir!” Hild shouted. She scrambled to her feet, leaped onto the horse’s back, and rode off in pursuit.
“You,” Dainn’s captive whispered in the elvish dialect of the Old Tongue. His eyes were filled with hate. “Faith-breaker. Coward.”
Dainn made no effort to deny it. “The Alfar are no harmers of children. Why do you attempt to take the boy?”
“Loki’s child.” The Alfr tried and failed to spit. “The one who will destroy us all.”
“Is that what the Lady told you?” Dainn said, bearing down harder on his opponent’s neck. “How will he carry out this destruction, and why?”
The Alfr coughed. “It is enough that the Lady knows of the danger.”
“Why didn’t you kill him, then, as she commanded me to do? Can it be that you did not fully trust Freya’s claims?”
“We—”
“I, too, trusted her. Once.” Dainn took the leap. “What has Freya done to the other Aesir?”
The elf stared at him as if he’d spoken gibberish. “The other Aesir … sleep to conserve their strength until Freya has cleared the path.”
“Do they sleep, or are they gone?”
“I do … not understand you.”
“Would you serve Freya before your own people? What if you must choose between one and the other?”
“I would … serve us all by killing you.” Suddenly there was an unelvish madness in his eyes, and he seized Dainn’s wrist, gripping so hard that Dainn’s bones ground together. His eyes widened.
“Gone,” he said. “You have nothing.” He heaved himself over, throwing off Dainn’s restraining arm. Dainn lunged after him, struck his opponent’s neck and heard bone snap. The elf tore at the earth with clawed fingers, but the light was already fading from his dark eyes.
Dainn concealed his grief. “I am sorry,” he said. “Is there anything you would have said to those you leave behind?”
The elf’s fingers slackened. “She will destroy you.”
“Perhaps. But I will do everything within my meager power to protect her daughter from her twisted schemes, whatever they may be, and fight to my last breath to see that the boy never becomes Loki’s tool.”
The elf sighed. “My name is … Skolmr. Farewell.”
And then he died, having given the gift of his name. Dainn had no time to sing the song of passage and wish Skolmr a swift return to the earth. He got to his feet and ran toward the portal and San Francisco.
They fought side by side: the Einherjar; the mortals who had appeared so abruptly at the loft; the Alfar who had burst through the portal with the elf-woman who led them; Mist’s two Sisters with knives and swords forged in Mist’s own shop.
None of them was truly ready, especially not the mortals whose fighting skills were so wil
dly varied. But Mist was. She drove Dainn from her thoughts as three of Loki’s new Jotunar barreled toward her, axes as sharp as Hild’s tongue, clubs as big as a man’s torso.
The black ice underfoot made even the most careful movement treacherous, but it gave the Jotunar a fearsome advantage. Mist held her hands palm-up and began to prepare as Rota and one of the Einherjar, Fatty tried to slow the Jotunar, Rota with her sword and the mortal with a heavy length of rebar.
Fatty slammed it down on one Jotunn’s shoulder and went flying, swept aside by the giant’s casual gesture. Rota managed to land a substantial blow on the ax-wielder’s arm before she slipped to one knee on the ice and the Jotunar resumed their charge.
“Mist!” Rota cried.
Mist didn’t look up. Wolves and ravens raced around her wrist, trailing agony. She called the forge-Runes, set them alight like coals in a hearth and cupped them in her free hand, holding steady as they burned her flesh. Just as the Jotunar came near enough to strike, she let them fall.
Molten fire raced away from the ice melting under her boots, reaching the first Jotunn’s feet as he raised his club to strike. He shrieked as the searing heat enveloped his boot and climbed up his leg.
The other two Jotunar stopped for a moment, staring at their bellowing comrade, and then came at Mist. She caught one ax on Kettlingr’s blade, ducked aside as the second Jotunn swung for her head, and skipped away just as the fire turned the ice underneath to boiling water.
The Jotunn tottered and fell, screaming as the water soaked through his breeches and scalded flesh. The third stepped back, his gaze snapping up to something behind Mist.
She had Kettlingr ready and another spell on her tongue when the two Jotunar behind her struck, but even the simplest Galdr required more than a few seconds to effect. She felt the breeze of an ax blade whistle past her ear, nearly severing it, before she realized why the Jotunn had missed.
The elf-woman who led the Alfar had plunged a slender but deadly spear through the giant’s neck, and he was already dying. His companion had turned and was staring at the Alfr as if mesmerized by her striking beauty.
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