Battlestorm

by Susan Krinard

  “No, Ramon!” a young woman shouted from the dark hallway running along the back of the building.

  Mist swung around to face several young men led by a Latino youth with a scarred face and dark, angry eyes.

  “You not supposed to be here,” he said to Mist, his gaze taking in the Alfar and mortals around her. “No one’s supposed to hit this place.”

  “Ramon!” the woman’s voice repeated, and Gabi ran out from behind the men, throwing herself between Ramon and Mist.

  “Gabi?” Mist asked in astonishment.

  “Don’t hurt him!” she begged, flinging her arms wide like a shield. “No one was supposed to come here! It was part of the deal, so that Ramon wouldn’t get in trou—”

  “What deal?” Mist asked. “Why are you here, Gabi?”

  “Ramon works for Loki,” Gabi said, gasping for breath. “He’s been getting info from Loki’s people and passing it to me. This place was his cover. Long as he kept making the drugs…” She turned to face Ramon. “Go! No one will tell, I promise!”

  “You try to betray us, Gabriella?” Ramon asked, his voice heavy. “After all I done for you?”

  “The anonymous tips,” Vixen whispered. “But I didn’t know about any deal!”

  “He’s my brother!” Gabi cried. “You have to let him go!”

  “Shut up,” Ramon spat. “If I don’t fight, they kill me anyway.” He nodded to his men, who drew knives and spread out. Every one of them looked prepared to die.

  “Stand clear, Gabi,” Mist ordered. “You,” she said to Ramon, “you were trying to help us?”

  Ramon laughed. “Not you, gringa. Gabi’s familia.”

  Then he came straight at Mist.

  26

  Mist didn’t want to hurt him. To the contrary: knowing he was Gabi’s brother, and that both of them had secretly been working to get the allies information to use against the enemy, made her all the more determined to keep Ramon and his men alive.

  But Ramon had decided otherwise. Maybe he was genuinely afraid of what would happen if Loki discovered that he was a traitor, or perhaps it was some code of honor Mist didn’t understand. But he moved to kill, and she simply didn’t think. The Eitr acted for her before she could even draw her sword, and flung Ramon and the others back like pins in a bowling alley. They crashed against the walls and into the floor, and when it was over, none of them was moving.

  Gabi screamed and raced to Ramon. She put her hands to his throat, began to weep, and gripped the cross around her neck.

  Mist ran to kneel at Gabi’s side and felt Ramon’s pulse. It was silent. She took Gabi’s fisted hands in her own. They were barely warm.

  Yesterday, Dainn had found a way to heal Ryan. Today, Gabi couldn’t heal at all.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, sickened by what she had done. “You must believe that I didn’t mean to hurt them.”

  “He wasn’t a good guy,” Gabi murmured, the tears running down her cheeks. “He hurt people. I tried to make him help. I wanted to help.” She scraped at her face with her sleeve. “I can’t heal no more. Ramon’s dead. I messed up.”

  “Gabi,” Mist said, “none of this is your fault.” She saw the wild look in Gabi’s eyes and thought quickly. “You’ve been away from camp,” she said, “so you probably don’t know that Ryan was taken hostage by Loki. He’ll be anxious to see you.”

  “Is he all right?” Gabi asked, sniffing hard.

  “Yes. You need to talk to him, show him you’re all right.” Mist called over her shoulder, “Tennessee, check on the others. Vixen, make sure the workers are okay.”

  As the two bikers hurried to obey, Mist helped Gabi to her feet. “Come home now,” she said. “We’ll make sure that Ramon’s body is taken care of, too, however you want us to—”

  “I have to go,” Gabi said, jumping to her feet. “I have to tell mi abuelita.”

  “Gabi—”

  The girl took off like a shot, bursting into a run down the hall. Vixen appeared beside Mist.

  “Let her go,” the biker said quietly. “I don’t know what the hell just happened, but she lost a brother, even if he was a bad guy.”

  “I did this,” Mist said, staring down at her hands.

  “You’re a warrior. Your body uses whatever tools it has to defend itself.”

  “And what if I turn it against the wrong person?”

  “You won’t,” Vixen said. She laid her hand on Mist’s shoulder. “Two of Ramon’s men are still alive. We’ll get the rest back to the—”

  Tennessee nearly ran into them, his breath sawing in his throat. “I think you better come outside,” he said. “It’s Hel out there.”

  * * *

  The second prophecy had said nothing about the child.

  Odin sat on his throne in the room in his newly renovated hall, half-listening to the constant hum of voices and the clash of steel that had continued well into the night. He had already taken advantage of part of the prophecy by making the necessary preparations to take Midgard after the Last Battle, and at the same time, had fulfilled the promise that “many as one” would settle Midgard’s fate by sending pieces of his soul to the Earth with his Valkyrie.

  But the second prophecy had been far more vague than the first, which had predicted Ragnarok, the destruction of nearly all the gods including Odin, and the coming of a new paradise. Odin intended to create that paradise in Midgard, no matter what he had to do to achieve it.

  Anna understood. She sat on a cushion beside him, ready to provide him with anything he should wish, as the Valkyrie had done in Valhalla when they were not riding over a mortal battlefield.

  She was the one he could rely on, the one whose loyalty was absolute. Mist …

  He shifted on the throne and frowned at the floor, covered with a rug he had been told was very fine but seemed little more than a scrap of cotton rag. Mist. He should be able to trust her absolutely … her above all others.

  But her behavior since his awakening had roused many suspicions. First there was the elf’s escape. Mist could easily have helped him. And then, when they had found Sleipnir, she had been far too protective of the traitor, discouraging Odin from killing him.

  Afterward, Odin had been caught in a mind-numbing spell even as he attempted—and failed—to regain the most important part of his soul from his former mount, and neither he nor his guards had any memory of what had transpired for the next fourteen minutes.

  At first, Odin had thought the spell was Loki’s doing. But now he knew it had been the work of the creature who had summoned Hel for Loki.

  The boy. Danny, whom Mist had cradled in her arms with all the tenderness of a mother. The child who held the Eitr in his little hands, when Odin could not even touch it.

  It was amazing good fortune that Loki hadn’t utilized his son’s abilities to more devastating effect. But there was yet another factor Odin had never considered, and it was the most infuriating of all.

  Dainn had used the Eitr. Odin had heard the voice, the most ancient tongue even he did not remember. He had watched Dainn heal the hostage of a mortal wound as easily as he might bind up a shallow scratch.

  Father and son, both possessed of the magic of life itself. Both must be controlled. Both must be made to give up what was Odin’s by right.

  But first he must have Sleipnir.

  “My lord?” Anna murmured.

  Odin smiled. She always knew his moods, as she had known them when he’d been no more than a simple bird.

  “I have a task for you,” he said. “I have much work to do, many spells to prepare. You must wait outside the door and see to it that I am not disturbed, no matter what you may hear. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  He watched her go, wondering how far he might be driven to claim what was rightfully his.

  It hardly mattered. In the end, he would take it, and neither life nor death would stand in his way.

  * * *

  There were six dead mortals on the s
treet outside the store. It was not a good neighborhood, and it was well after dark. Two of the dead were dealers, one an unfortunate vagrant, another a prostitute, and two of what Mist presumed to be johns. Every one of them had died the same way, and they all had the same staring eyes.

  Mist knelt beside the prostitute. She was hardly more than a kid, in her early teens; her face was plastered with makeup, but she couldn’t conceal the gauntness of her face or the thinness of her body under the short skirt and skimpy top.

  She must have been freezing, Mist thought. She removed her jacket and covered the girl’s face, trying to get a handle on her rage.

  “Where is Hel?” Mist said, getting to her feet.

  “We know,” one of the elves said. “Follow.”

  They broke into a run. It took less than two minutes before Mist knew where they were going.

  The Financial District should have been deserted on this cold night. The office buildings and high-rises were empty save for cleaning staff and a few overworked employees huddled at their desks behind lit windows. The restaurants, except for a few scattered clubs and bars, were closed.

  But the district wasn’t completely abandoned. There had been tourists who had wandered away from the nearly constant activity of Market Street, office workers heading for buses and home, inebriated clubbers scouting out their next drink, a dozen drug dealers and their customers, and a few scattered homeless people huddled in recessed doorways.

  Some were still alive. Most of the survivors were kneeling on the pavement in a state of shock, half-dead themselves. Others were weeping. Mist’s people scattered, doing what little they could.

  “Most of them can’t speak,” Vixen said. “I’ve seen a lot of terrible deaths since all this started, but this beats them all.”

  Because it’s Death herself we’re facing, Mist thought. Hel’s soldiers could have taken all of the mortals easily enough. She hadn’t, and that meant that this was a warning.

  No, not a warning. A taunt. A dare. Come and find us, or more mortals die.

  Too soon. Odin still wasn’t ready to lead a concerted attack against their enemy.

  “We can’t just call an ambulance,” Tennessee said, joining Mist and Vixen. “They’ll take one look at these people and there’ll be cops and fire trucks and people thinking this is some kind of weird infectious disease. Someone’s going to leak this for sure.”

  Mist beckoned to the others, who quickly gathered around her. The Alfar wore grim expressions, and few of the mortals could conceal their horror.

  “I know what you’re feeling,” she said, working to keep her voice level and her face calm. “But this isn’t the time for a reckless attack on an enemy we don’t have the means to fight. I want all of you to go back to the drug lab and collect our fallen. Hide the bodies of the other mortals as best you can. I’ll take care of them later. Once you’re out of the area, call the police anonymously and tell them that there’ve been multiple casualties.”

  “You sound as if you’re staying here,” Tennessee said.

  “I’m going to have to dispose of these bodies.”

  “You mean they’ll just disappear,” Vixen said. “Their families will never know what happened to them.”

  “It’s that, or citywide panic,” Mist said. “I’ll keep their identification. After this is over, we’ll find a way to get word to their relatives.”

  “And the living?” one of the elves asked.

  “By the time the EMTs get here, they’ll look like victims of a gang attack.”

  “You’re not actually going to hurt them?” Vixen asked.

  Mist gave her a hard look. “I won’t touch them. Most of it will be for show.”

  “She does what she must,” the elf said. “Let us go.”

  They left, slowly, one or two of them looking over their shoulders. Mist threw up a ward and went to work, the rage feeding her magic. When she finally set out after Hel, bloodied mortals with glamour-induced amnesia sat or lay on the sidewalk, and every trace of the dead was gone. The wailing of sirens drowned the roar of her pulse throbbing behind Mist’s ears.

  * * *

  Dainn leaped out of his cot, aware only that someone had entered the cell.

  “Dainn Faith-breaker,” Odin said. He stood near the door, the edges of his powerful body blurred, the faint outline of the door visible behind him.

  The beast stirred. Dainn pushed it down. He could hate; he could long for the chance to kill Odin for lying to Mist, for threatening Danny, for what the All-father had done to him.

  But the king of the Aesir still had Danny.

  “You come very late,” Dainn said coldly.

  “You know why I am here,” Odin said.

  “No.”

  Odin laughed softly. “One might almost believe that you are still the inscrutable advisor I once permitted to stand by my throne and speak words of wisdom into my ear.”

  “I was never a traitor.”

  Odin leaned against the wall, becoming more solid as he relaxed. “You were a traitor, of sorts. You made the error of falling for Loki’s tricks while Freya believed she was seducing me. I knew all along that they were conspiring against me.”

  “Not from the beginning,” Dainn said, “or you would have done far worse to Loki than bind him beneath the serpent to suffer from its venom until the coming of Ragnarok. And Freya would never have escaped unscathed.”

  “What I did not know, you told me when you came to me to warn me of their schemes. And there was much I understood that you never did.”

  Dainn’s heart pounded behind his ears. “Is it your intention to enlighten me, All-father?”

  “Have you begun to remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “The time before you came to Asgard. The magic you always claimed not to possess.”

  Suddenly Dainn grasped Odin’s meaning. The All-father had seen Dainn’s “new” ability to heal, heard spells chanted in a language he did not know. He had witnessed the use of magic Dainn still did not fully comprehend.

  The ancient magic, pulling the Eitr into Dainn’s body.

  “I remember no such magic from a time before Asgard,” Dainn said with desperate honesty. “I always had the magic of my people—”

  “But this is not elven magic,” Odin said, his teeth flashing through his beard. “For millennia I held the Eitr, but it was lost to me along with the spells to wield it. From the moment you came to Asgard, you burned with its light. I showed you great favor, stranger that you were, waiting for you to transmit your knowledge and power to me.”

  “You never asked for such knowledge,” Dainn said. “I saw no light. How could I—”

  “Why should I ask?” Odin snapped. “I gave you everything, and expected so little in return.”

  “I had nothing to give you.”

  “And yet you have access to the Eitr now, do you not?” Odin asked. “Where did it come from, Alfr? Have you always denied its presence, even to yourself?”

  “If I had such abilities, you would have destroyed them when you cursed me with the beast.”

  “A beast you cannot control without my help.”

  “You would help me control the thing you created to punish me?” Dainn asked with a short laugh. “Perhaps I no longer require assistance.”

  “Even if you believe you have mastered it now, do you truly believe it will not escape again?”

  “Are you suggesting that you will remove the curse?”

  “I am the All-father. I can undo what I have done.”

  For a moment, Dainn was almost tempted. Tempted enough to believe that Odin might be telling the truth.

  But the price would be too high. And as long as the All-father didn’t know that Mist possessed the ancient magic, as well …

  “You know the spells, the chants to obtain and control the Eitr,” Odin said, his words almost wheedling. “You will teach them to me.”

  “I do not control the Eitr,” Dainn said quietly, praying that Odi
n would accept the half-truth. “If I drew upon it, I did so in extremity, not because of any discipline or true understanding. What I do not understand, I cannot teach.”

  “If adversity inspires you, it can easily be arranged. Your son—” Odin laughed. “Yes, I know he is your son, Faith-breaker. As I know that he, too, has the use of the Eitr.”

  Nearly choking on the bile that rose into his throat, Dainn clenched his teeth. “You are mistaken,” he said.

  “He has placed a spell on Sleipnir to bar my access to my own soul, and my patience is not without limit.”

  Dainn suppressed a shiver. From the moment Danny had fallen into a state so near death, he had been certain that the boy’s desire to protect Sleipnir had greatly weakened him. The fact that Dainn had been able to revive his son was of little comfort, given that Danny obviously maintained the spell even now.

  Through Rota, Mist had assured him that Danny would be closely watched—as yet, most of the allies, elf and human, knew only that an unknown boy had been brought into camp—and that any sign of illness would be dealt with immediately. Dainn never doubted that she would do almost anything to save Danny. But as long as Danny continued to protect Sleipnir from Odin, he was as much at risk as if Odin directly threatened his life.

  He will have Sleipnir’s soul by any means necessary, Dainn thought.

  But he would not have Danny.

  “You want me to convince Danny to release the spell,” Dainn said.

  “Convince or compel, yes. But then you and I shall begin working together, as Mist and I did when we sought Sleipnir. You will let me into your soul, Faith-breaker, and show me what you claim you cannot teach.”

  Shadows closed in around Dainn, exuding a thousand tiny needles that stabbed through his clothing into every raw nerve. His palm flared with pain.

  “You do not know what you ask,” he rasped. “You cannot take the Eitr by force.”

  “But you will give it to me. If saving your son is not enough motivation, you may also think of Mist. Or are you prepared to sacrifice her to your own arrogance?”

  Blood began to drip sluggishly from between Dainn’s curled fingers. “Why should Mist suffer because of me?” he asked.