Battlestorm

by Susan Krinard

  “A pretty lie,” Freya said. “You cared nothing for me. For any of us.”

  “However it may have appeared to you,” he said, coughing again, “I was never incapable of feeling.”

  “Love, perhaps?” she asked mockingly. “The way you loved Freya in Asgard?”

  “I was a fool,” he whispered.

  “You were always a traitor, shifting with the slightest breeze.”

  Dainn croaked a laugh. “Did your mother tell you how she and Loki schemed to betray Odin in Asgard?” he asked. “Can there be any greater treachery than that?”

  “Betray him?” Freya asked, much too lightly.

  “Loki may lie about many things, but in this he told the truth.”

  “And he told you many other truths, which I will have from you.” A weight of air pressed down on Dainn’s shoulders, heavy as steel bars. “Down, traitor.”

  The concrete rose up to meet Dainn, and he toppled. He knew at once that it was not common magic, but touched on the ancient, calling upon all the elements at once.

  And there was a darkness in it, pain that rushed into Dainn’s nostrils and mouth like noxious gas. The wound in his palm split open, and blood spiraled up into the air.

  Just as it had with Danny in his bedroom. The Eitr. Freya controlled it, wielded it, as she had previously been unwilling or unable to do since her physical arrival from the Shadow-Realm in Ginnungagap.

  Now it was poison, swirling through vein and artery, heart and gut. His body fought to expel it, and as he struggled he felt the nature of the stuff change inside him, as if his organs had taken the magic and leached it of all malignancy. Almost … almost he could grasp it, like a weapon to be turned about and hurled against its original wielder.

  But he stopped before he could follow the instinct, because as the Eitr changed it also gave up the secret it had been hiding, the unique signature he would have known even to the end of all things.

  It did not belong to Freya. The Lady had failed.

  Moisture flooded Dainn’s eyes, and he kept his face averted. Freya was gone. He felt emptiness where a connection had once existed, and wondered how he ever could have mistaken it for the living goddess.

  Did Mist know what had happened? Did she understand the horror of what had almost been done to her? Had she fought for her life, forced to destroy before she was destroyed?

  Dainn didn’t dare ask her now. Mist’s mind was sullied, murky with dark dreams. Freya’s presence might have vanished from the world, but a part of the Lady was still with Mist: a ghost, a shadow, a malign revenant that had not yet been fully dislodged. As long as she remained …

  Fixing his eyes on the ground, Dainn clenched his bloody fist. Mist had to be shocked out of her dream before the malignancy grew and made her a mirror image of her mother.

  “Who are you, Lady of Darkness?” he asked.

  She struck him with a little more force than he had anticipated. He wiped the blood from his cheek and grabbed her callused fingers.

  “Whose hand is this?” he asked as she tried to pull away. “Does it belong to the goddess who mated with both Jotunn and Alfr to produce a daughter fit to be her sword against the All-father? Did she even understand what she was creating?”

  “What … Alfr?” she asked, squinting at him as if her vision were failing her.

  “Konur. He told the secret to me and Ryan after the boy came to find me and tried to help me escape. You have two fathers.”

  “It isn’t true,” she said, wrenching her hand from his. “You have said enough.”

  “But I thought you wanted a confession.” He rose onto his haunches. She didn’t stop him. “Look into my mind, Mist. I know you are capable of it, as you are capable of controlling your magic as you never could before.”

  He felt the slight push from her mind, instinctively resisted, and then gave in. He let her see what was necessary, and when she was finished she rocked back on her heels, her eyes the color of ice.

  “What will you do with this knowledge, Mist?” he asked, relentless in his fear for her. “Will you accept it, or will you escape into Freya’s malicious influence to avoid what you cannot face?”

  The shock of his words did as he had hoped, and he was prepared for the attack. The ancient magic, swelled by the Eitr, reared up again to punish and consume, but he cast it back and aimed his thoughts to strike at the very heart of her being, as he had done months ago when he had first sought to break down the mental barriers that prevented her from accepting his help and recognizing her magic.

  You are not Freya, he said. You can never be.

  Her fingers blackened and burned like live coals in a fire pit, and she raised her hands to fling the fire at his face. He leaped at her, holding the beast in check with all the magic that had been restored to him along with it.

  They came together in a tangle of limbs, and he dragged her to the ground. He pinned her there, and a flash of memory took him back to that moment when he had driven Freya from her body with a kiss. He wanted her, even as she met his gaze with disgust and hatred.

  But he could never touch her again. He had been tainted—not only by the beast, but by his months as Loki’s captive. He had let himself be used in every way imaginable. His love for Danny held no cure for what he had become. Only now, as he saw the contempt in Mist’s eyes, did he realize just how deep the corruption had reached.

  He rolled away, and Mist sprang to her feet, panting harshly. Dainn rose and put his back to the wall.

  “Konur is your father,” he said. “He served Freya, but he chose you.”

  21

  Mist sank back to her knees, no longer raging but bewildered and lost. “What do you mean he chose me?”

  In a matter of seconds, Dainn relived the confrontation behind the warehouses, when Konur had spoken of secrets that must still be kept. When he’d promised not to hurt his own daughter.

  “Over the Lady,” Dainn answered slowly, watching Mist’s face for any sign of rejection. “He must have known that only one of you would survive.”

  Her skin blanched, and she raised both hands to her mouth. “Sweet Baldr,” she whispered. “I killed her.”

  It was not a sudden realization, Dainn knew, but a fresh acceptance. She remembered everything, and he felt the shock of that memory in his own mind.

  “She is gone?” he asked.

  “I … destroyed her body. But not all of her. Not until now.”

  “She was powerful,” Dainn said. “Her spirit was strong, and—”

  “You knew,” Mist said suddenly. “I saw it in her mind. You knew what she planned all along.”

  Dainn closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said.

  “You always intended to help her.” She scrambled up, stumbled back, and slammed into the door, leaning against it heavily. “That was why you were sent to me … not for the Treasures, or because I was supposed to lead any kind of resistance against Loki.”

  “I was wrong,” he said, striving to keep his voice level. “I realized it not long after we met. But I was too much a coward. I feared you would cease to trust me.” He swallowed. “For a long time, even when I was with Loki, I convinced myself that you had grown strong enough to hold your own against her. Only after the protest, when you—” He broke off. “I made an unforgivable mistake.”

  Mist shook her head wildly. “No. At the garage, you did try to warn me. Konur silenced you.”

  It was, Dainn thought, as if she were grasping at any excuse to absolve him. He was unable to speak.

  “You said he chose me, but he let me fall into Freya’s trap,” she said, a bitter edge in her voice. “My own—”

  “I know Konur will have a reason for his actions,” Dainn said, though in that moment he hated Konur as much as he hated himself. “He had ample opportunity to do more than silence me. Perhaps he always knew you would win.”

  Mist began to laugh, a strange, high-pitched moan. Someone approached the door from outside, and she pressed her palms flat against
the door. It turned to ice.

  “Konur was with me, after it happened,” she said, the laughter dying. “I was in and out of consciousness for days. I told him that Freya was lost when we were working together to find Sleipnir—he was in the room when she asked me to do it. He didn’t seem to grieve for her at all.” She seemed to notice what she had done to the door and tucked her hands under her arms. “You’re right. If he knew, he must have thought I would—Gods.” Mist dragged her hand over her face, smearing tears across her cheeks. “Is there anyone left I can trust?”

  “You must make your own peace with Konur,” Dainn said, bowing his head. “I will tell you what little I know of Loki’s plans, though he did not often confide in me. I will not ask for your forgiveness.”

  “Still the noble elf,” she said, though her contempt rang hollow.

  “Never noble,” he said. “There were many times I wanted to die. I told you once that the beast would not permit it. But the creature was gone almost all the time I was with Loki, as was my magic.”

  “In the garage, you said—”

  “I said that without the herb, the beast would return.”

  “And Edvard provided you with that herb, before he left us.”

  “He claimed it was used by his people when one of them suffered an illness that interfered with their control of their own beasts. For a short while, when I was still with you, the herb was effective. But on the steppes—”

  “The beast tried to kill Danny. At Freya’s command.”

  “Yes. I feared I could not stop, so I took the remainder of the herb I had brought with me, and it silenced the beast. When I was with Loki—” He slid down to the floor and wrapped his arms around his knees. “They continued to feed the herb to me without my knowledge, waiting until Loki found some use for the beast again. But even if I had known, I would have taken it willingly.”

  “Odin’s balls,” Mist said, teeth clenched. “Why did Edvard go to Loki in the first place?”

  “I do not know. I never saw him at Loki’s house. I only realized the part he must have played when I saw him in the parking facility, and understood that they wanted the beast to create havoc while they stole Sleipnir.” He bowed his head. “I believed you were Freya. I meant only to protect Danny.”

  Mist ran her hands through her hair. “Loki knew I was Mist all along.”

  “He would have schemed for any eventuality, but he told me that Freya might have … already taken you at the protest, when she seemed to fall. I asked to attend the party to learn the truth.”

  She gave a hoarse laugh. “Did he always know what Freya wanted, too?”

  Dainn winced. “I believe he discovered it when you fought him at his first apartment.”

  “She tried to do it then, didn’t she? I used the ancient magic, and when I fell into the fugue state, it was really her taking over. You got rid of her.”

  “I did not know what had become of her after she vanished. Not until Loki told me that Freya had placed the other Aesir under a spell, and that she had never intended to bring them to Midgard.”

  “I know,” Mist said. She clamped her hands around her head. “I know everything she did and meant to do. You said it. I was supposed to be her champion against Odin. I was supposed to have power she didn’t, because I was … bred to be different.”

  “But she rejected you in Asgard, failing to see how well she had succeeded. You overcame all the magic she sent against you here, and now you have access to more power than you could have imagined. She tried to create a weapon, but it turned in her hand.”

  Mist straightened and met his gaze, dry-eyed and sober. “I think this power has always been inside me, like the ability to use the ancient magic.”

  “Because one is dependent upon the other,” Dainn said slowly. “You have discovered the Eitr.” He leaned forward, engaged in spite of himself. “You were always able to touch it, Mist. The eldest magic manipulates the source of all life, the beginning and end, the sickness and the cure, all the elements in perfect concert. Without the ancient magic, the Eitr is almost impossible to control. Odin once wielded it himself, but was said to have lost the skill over the millennia. Freya and Loki both held it for a time—”

  “Freya still had it, when she tried to take me,” Mist said. “But how could she, if Odin didn’t?”

  “I do not know. But Loki depleted his, and Freya … she could not still have possessed it in any measure when she tried to take you, or she would have destroyed you.”

  Mist was silent, and Dainn thought of Danny. His excitement evaporated. If Danny returned to Loki, Laufeyson would use the boy’s access to the Eitr. And he would use it to destroy.

  “Mist,” he said, “I heard that Danny escaped from Loki. Have you learned anything more?”

  “No. But I wonder if he could be with Sleipnir now.”

  “It is possible,” Dainn said. “But Danny is still in great danger.”

  “I’m as worried about the kid as you are,” Mist said. Dainn took a long, deep breath. “You still believe that Danny is an innocent,” he said, watching her carefully.

  “Loki’s used him as badly as he has anyone. Maybe—” She glanced at Dainn with a slight grimace. “Maybe even worse.”

  “Yes. That is why I ask you to withhold judgment when I tell you that it was Danny who asked Loki to take Sleipnir.”

  Mist stopped in midstride. “He asked?”

  “He craved a reunion. And Loki believed the time was right.”

  “We saw Fenrir. Did Danny find him, too?”

  “Danny has a little more understanding since you saw him on the steppes, but his motives remain a mystery, even to me.” Dainn gathered his courage. “I said I left you for Loki because I did not believe that he could use the beast to harm you, and because I feared what I might do to you if I remained. But those were not the only reasons, Mist. There was another just as great. I feared for Danny, for what Loki would do to him. I believed I could protect him.”

  “How could you protect a son from his own father, especially a father like Loki?”

  “Because Loki is not his father.

  “I am.”

  * * *

  It all made a horrible kind of sense.

  Mist found herself leaning against the door again, her mind busy sorting through memories and bits of conversation and all the clues that should have told her the truth long ago. Danny’s rescuing Dainn from Loki and demanding his help in finding Sleipnir on the other side of the portal. Dainn’s seemingly immediate affection for the boy. The bond that had been so evident between them from the beginning.

  And all the time Dainn had been with Loki in Asgard, believing his intimate partner to be Freya.

  “How long have you known?” she asked, stumbling over the words. “Was he … was Danny born in Asgard?”

  “No,” Dainn said, his haunted eyes focused on something Mist was glad she couldn’t see. “He was born in the Void. I knew nothing of him until Loki told me, after I gave myself up to him.”

  “Loki’s fucking piss,” Mist said, remembering to breathe. “But some part of you did know, didn’t you?”

  Dainn didn’t answer. It was as if he didn’t want to give her any excuse for letting him off the hook.

  As if she could. As if she would ever forget all the lies he’d told, knowing she would lose everything when Freya came for her.

  And he’d still betrayed his mistress in the end.

  “Did Freya know?” she asked quietly.

  He shook his head. His eyes were wet. She looked away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “What Freya did to you on the steppes—”

  “I gave her power over me. There is no excuse.”

  She dropped into a crouch. “What am I supposed to do with you now? You knocked Freya out of … whatever part of my mind she still controlled, like you did before. I’m grateful for that.”

  “It was my responsibility.”

  “I’m responsible for myself.”


  “Then I repeat my request. I cannot protect Danny now. Once Loki recovers Danny—and he surely will, if he is not stopped—he will still try to turn my son’s abilities against you.”

  “Have you been keeping Danny from helping him?”

  “Loki permitted me to work with him, believing that I could reach through the barriers of Danny’s mind and convince him to act on Loki’s behalf. I did what I could to discourage him.” His voice dropped to a hoarse plea. “You must find him. Please.”

  His desperate humility made her feel ill. “I promise that I’ll try. I just don’t know if I can—”

  “Once you have truly learned to control the Eitr—”

  “Didn’t I almost kill you a few minutes ago?” She swallowed. “Have you forgotten that you called me ‘Lady of Darkness’?” He didn’t respond, but she knew there was no easy answer. There was and had always been a shadow inside her that her battle with Freya had tapped, not created. She had known it ever since she had used the glamour on Koji last winter. She’d behaved exactly like Freya that time, too.

  If she were as noble and pure as the champion she should be, Freya’s corrupt influence could never have touched her.

  “There is no evil in you,” Dainn had said, ages ago. But he had been wrong then, and he must know it now.

  “Dainn,” she began.

  But he no longer seemed to be listening. He slumped over himself, forehead to knees, and Mist noticed for the first time how much he resembled the “homeless man” she had found in Golden Gate Park on the day she had met the Jotunn Hrimgrimir and realized that all she had believed of the past was a lie.

  “Don’t,” she said. She moved toward him as carefully as she would approach a dangerous animal backed into a corner and wondered if, in his desperate fear for his son, he would call on the beast. “I can’t blame you for doing everything to save your son.”

  He looked up, and his pain became hers—his shame, his self-contempt, his horror at what he had become. The beast was no part of that horror, though his hatred of it had never left him. The anguish she saw now was only a tiny fraction of the torment he endured every moment he was alive.