Mist (44 page)

Mist blinked. She looked at the Spear and tightened her fingers around the shaft. Loki turned his hand palm up and curled his fingers inward, pulling the heat from Gungnir’s blade. It engulfed his hand, freezing instantly, and in a second Loki had shaped the ice into a heavily spiked ball like a mace on a medieval flail.

Loki’s weapon couldn’t kill Freya, who was not yet fully attached to this world, but it could destroy a physical body. Mist would die, and Freya would still be free to seek another shape, even if it took time to find one capable of containing her power.

Dainn began to move. But before he could take more than a step, Loki threw the ball directly at Mist’s head. She swung the Spear to intercept it. It bounced against her arm, slicing through her already shredded jacket and shirt and engraving deep slashes across her skin. She dropped Gungnir, and Loki sprang onto the rosewood coffee table, perching there like an eagle ready to swoop down on its prey.

“We could go on, Sow,” he said to his enemy, “but where would be the fun in that? Especially when even I can see you’re losing your grip on your daughter.”

Mist-Freya picked up the Spear with her left hand as blood soaked her right sleeve. “I can still kill you,” she said.

“I don’t think so.” He brushed water from his shoulder. “In truth, you want me humiliated, not dead. I still want a real contest, Lady. And I think you do, too.”

They stared at each other, goddess and godling, with hatred and complete understanding.

“We will continue our game,” she said, “so I can crush you utterly before you die.”

“And the bridges?”

“Do you think I closed them?” she asked. “You shall have to hold yourself in suspense a little while longer. But I still have the Eitr. For the time being, you will pay the penalty by losing ten percent of your Jotunar. You will obtain funds only by conventional mortal means, not through magic. If you flout our bargain again, I will use it.” She pointed Gungnir at Loki’s chest. “Do you understand me, Slanderer?”

“You couldn’t be more plain.” Loki glanced at Dainn. “Our witness is hardly neutral, but I will accept his honesty. Shall I see you both to the door?”

Freya hurled the spear at Loki’s head. If he hadn’t twitched slightly to the left at the last possible moment, it would have pinned his skull to the wall behind him. Instead, it sliced off several inches of his hair on the right side of his head. Loki fell to his knees.

“Take the Spear,” Freya told Dainn, dusting her hands on her thighs. “We will go.”

She shot Loki a poisonous glance and strode to the door, trailing the benevolent warmth of the sun, golden butterflies, and the scent of primroses. Ignoring Loki, Dainn pulled the spear from the wall and glanced quickly around the room. He saw Mist’s knife at the feet of one of the dead giants and paused to retrieve it.

He tucked the sheath in the waistband of his pants and followed Freya, his stomach churning with horror at what he had permitted to happen.

They met five Jotunar as they reached the elevator. The giants comically skidded to a stop when they saw Freya.

“Never fear,” she said, her voice all seduction again. “Your master is alive. For the time being. You may choose whether or not to continue to serve him by standing in my way, or die.”

The two giants in the lead exchanged glances and moved to the side, leaving the path clear. When she and Dainn reached the lobby, Freya moved to the nearest chair and sank into it. Guests stared at her, but she ignored them.

“Fetch me something to drink, Dainn,” she said. “A sweet drink to cool my temper. I do so dislike being angry.”

Dainn held the Spear against his body and remained where he was. “
Did
you close the bridges?” he asked.

She glanced up at him. “You had no need to know before. It was only a temporary measure, until I could be sure my allies were ready.”

She might be lying, Dainn thought. He could no longer separate truth from falsehood. But she was still as confident as she had ever been.

“I expressly told you not to allow my daughter to come to harm,” Freya said with a very small frown, “but I shall forgive you, since the need for such precautions is past. I will soon have other tasks for you.”

“Searching for the other Treasures?”

“Among other things.”

Dainn shifted his grip on Gungnir’s shaft. “How were you able to take Mist so quickly?” he asked. “I thought you needed more time to prepare.”

She patted his arm. “These are not your concerns, my Dainn.”

My Dainn.
Loki called him the same many times, but he belonged to neither one of them. And never would.

“Are your allies ready as well, Lady?”

She laughed, the sound drawing the stare of every male in the room. “Those who fight for me shall be free to come within the next two Midgardian weeks.” Freya casually waved her hand. Mist’s warm, calloused hand, and the wrist that bore a tattoo no longer red, but black. “In the meantime, now that I am here in body, I can have every man I meet eager to serve me. How many can I gather in a day? A week?” Her fingers drifted along Dainn’s thigh. “My daughter has power that enhances my own in ways I could not have anticipated, and it is all open to me. And I
shall
reward you well, my Dainn. Just as I promised.”

Dainn looked away, feeling nothing of Freya’s caress. If there was anything left of Mist behind Freya’s stunning blue eyes, she would soon have no hope of escaping her mother’s control. Soon—in minutes, hours, days—she would be completely absorbed into a mind that would use Mist’s own power to prevent her resistance until she no longer had the strength to fight.

“Don’t look so sad,” Freya chided in a voice rich with sympathy. “I can see you developed some fondness for the girl. That can scarcely be a surprise. But now she serves the greater good. Midgard will be saved.”

“As you say, Lady.”

“Then fetch that drink, and we will begin looking for proper accommodations. Loki’s apartments were richly furnished, but very dull. I think—”

Dainn dropped the Spear, leaned over Freya, and caught her mouth with his. She pressed her hands against his chest, and he could feel the power building, power that could turn him into a gibbering drone with a single embrace.

But it wasn’t Freya he was kissing. And in that moment when he took Freya off guard, the beast began to stir, roused again from the place inside him where it had hidden since its encounter with Loki, awakening to the sexual heat coursing in Dainn’s blood. The beast began to possess him again, demanding more, drawing blood from Freya’s lower lip. She laced her hands in his hair, pulling him down to his knees.

And then she flung him back, her face contorted in fury, her gaze all indignation, all outrage, all chagrin.

All Mist.

She sprang up from the chair, staring at Dainn as if he had suddenly risen out of the tiled marble floor. “What the Hel—”

Quick footsteps approached from the direction of the reception desk. Dainn shuddered, shaking off the beast, and grabbed Gungnir. He thrust Kettlingr into Mist’s hand.

“We must go,” he said, “or we will be facing more questions than we can answer.”

Without debating his suggestion, Mist chanted the spell to reduce Gungnir to knife shape, tucked it inside her jacket, and ran for the door to the street. Dainn hung back long enough to discourage anyone who might choose to follow.

The male receptionist came to a stop, chest heaving. “We’ve called the police,” he said. “What ever you’ve done—”

“—may save your world,” Dainn said. The beast strained against its new-made chains, and Dainn let it look through his eyes.

The man backed away. The guests huddled in the corner nearest the fireplace, eyes wide, whispering frantically. Forcing himself to draw on the beast’s strength, Dainn sang a spell that would strip the minds of every mortal in the room of any memory save that of two vague figures quarreling and kissing in the lobby.

The beast howled, and for a moment Dainn almost lost himself again.

Someone screamed. Dainn turned and ran. Mist was just pulling up to the curb on a small motorcycle.

“Get on!” she shouted as the wail of approaching sirens began to drown out the hum and rumble of evening traffic. Once Dainn had mounted the vehicle behind her, Mist squealed away, cutting between trucks, taxis, and double-parked vehicles with reckless abandon.

They outran the sirens, and when Mist finally pulled over into the deep shadows of an empty ware house on a pier about a mile north of Dogpatch, she slumped over the handlebars and cursed herself, Dainn, and Loki in rapid and violent succession. Dainn climbed off the motorcycle and crouched a little distance away, shaking with exhaustion and waiting for her to remember.

She lifted her head to meet his gaze. “What did you think you were doing?” she demanded, her words catching as if she were just becoming used to speaking with her own voice again.

“You knew I would be with Loki,” he said, pretending not to understand her question.

Groaning, Mist pressed the heels of her palms into her temples. “Did you seriously think I wouldn’t figure it out?” she snapped. “When Vali told me you’d been hiding in the house all along and you needed to get away from the loft to ‘deal with’ what happened . . .” She gasped as her massaging hands found a particularly painful spot. “You thought you didn’t have anything else to lose, didn’t you?”

“I had already lost.”

She dropped her hands and scowled at him. “You’ve really pissed me off this time, Dainn. I saw you change in the gym, in a way you never warned me about. If I’d known, things would have gone very differently.”

Once she found out just how
much
he could change, Dainn thought, she would be more than merely “pissed.”

“I . . . didn’t expect it to escape my control,” he said.

“You kept telling me you could keep it in check. But I—” She swallowed. “
I
told you to let it go. I just didn’t realize—”

“Yes,” Dainn said softly. “It transforms me into a creature capable of physically destroying anything in its path. It feels no pain, no loyalty, no mercy.”

She slammed her fist on the bike’s handlebar. “I told you I wanted to help!”

“You could not. Whatever your power, this is beyond it.”

“No. I won’t believe that. You said it feels no loyalty, but you weren’t just trying to kill Loki, or those Jotunar in the gym. You were protecting the kids and me. You could have killed Tashiro, even Ryan, but you didn’t. How do you account for that?”

He shook his head, unable to answer. “How did you find me?” he asked.

She hissed through her teeth, recognizing his dodge. “I went to Vidarr. He’s been keeping tabs on Loki without sharing the information with us, and he was able to find out where Loki has been living when he . . . when he wasn’t with me. I saw a Jotunn on the street outside Asbrew, so I knew they’d be waiting for me at the tower. I let them take me to Loki.”

The beginnings of dangerous anger gnawed at Dainn’s frayed nerves. “They struck you.”

She touched her face gingerly. There were no visible injuries, and the cut in her arm had healed. Only the blood on her nose and clothing served as a reminder of the wounds.

“I wanted to make Loki think I was helpless for a while,” she said.

“But you had a plan when you arrived.”

“I hoped I could use my own magic to get you out of there, and take Gungnir if I could.” She smiled grimly. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t think I could work the Rune-magic against him . . . though I’ve been doing pretty well with that since you left.”

“Vali said you disposed of the Jotunar bodies.”

“And the evidence of what had happened. But I wasn’t kidding myself that I’d be good enough with the Galdr to defeat Loki that way.”

“The old Vanir magic,” Dainn said.

“I had a feeling it would come to me when I needed it again, and it did. Or at least, it started to. I knew I had to stall Loki until it felt strong enough. Then you stepped in like three kinds of idiot, and Loki—” She met his gaze. “But you know all that.”

“Yes.”

“Have I ever told you how much I hate it when you answer my questions that way?”

“Was it a question?”

“Curse you, you son of a . . .” She sagged over the handlebars. Dainn studied her face. There was still confusion in her expression, the knowledge that something was amiss. “All the time I was pretending to be Freya,” she said, “I could feel the magic building, but it wasn’t opening up to me. Loki wasn’t convinced I was really the Lady. When I told him I didn’t care if he killed you . . .” She trailed off again, flushing to the roots of her fair hair.

“I understand,” he said. “You bought your time.”

“Yes,” she murmured, lifting her head. “And when the magic came, it was like becoming one of the Aesir. More powerful than the Aesir. But then Loki became Eric, and I—”

“Something seemed different to you?”

“I remember telling you to find Gungnir. Then I felt Freya come to help me.” Her gaze fixed on something only she could see. “Then . . . Gods, I don’t remember. Until you tried to kiss me.”

Dainn released his breath slowly. She didn’t know everything that had happened. He still had time to prepare her for the full truth.

But not yet. If he told her what Freya had intended and how he had planned to help the Lady, she would turn on him and never trust him again. And she
must
trust him. The Lady would not give up now that she knew what her joining with Mist made her capable of.

“You lost yourself in the magic,” he said, “as I lost myself to the beast. You forced Loki to retreat, but you were unprepared to handle the unleashed potency of your abilities.”

“Is that what gave me this pounding headache?” she asked, her voice rough with a brave attempt at humor. “Or was it the kiss?”

Dainn could never forget the look on her face and how she had laughed when Loki had called him her lover. “I am sorry,” he said, staring at the pavement between his feet. “It was necessary to shake you out of your fugue state.”

“I guess it worked.” She probed her lower lip with a fingertip. “Did the beast come back then? You said that strong emotions . . . I mean—”