Mist

5

“What change?” Mist asked, sweat trickling from under her hairline and rolling down her temple.

“Oh,” Loki said, arching a brow. “Can it be the elf didn’t explain the situation after all?”

“I got the idea that you wanted to take over the world,” Mist said, slowly reaching toward Kettlingr.

“You do me a disservice,” Loki said. He yawned behind his hand. “I fear the elf may have been withholding certain information from you in an effort to win your cooperation. But perhaps it doesn’t concern you that soon this world will become a battlefield, winner take all.”

“I know.” Her fingers closed around the hilt. Still Loki didn’t seem to notice.

“I wonder if you can envision how it will happen,” Loki said. “Do you believe the Aesir will tread lightly on this earth, benevolently sparing the creatures here any inconvenience? Do you think they will be better than I?”

“When have you ever cared about the well-being of men?” she asked.

“When it serves me.”

“How does it serve you now? You never took any interest in mortals. They were always beneath your notice. Now here you are, lording it over a bar in an unsavory neighborhood.” She smiled mockingly. ‘How are you fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn!’ ”

Loki returned her smile, but it was more than a little pinched. “Do not mistake me for the Christians’ Satan. This is no tale of good versus evil, where the heroes wear white robes and the villains gleaming black armor.”

“Prophecy foretold that Ragnarok would be a wash, with just about everyone dying— including you,” she said, ignoring his comment. “I don’t see why it would be any different this time around.”

“Prophecy was wrong.”

“I know you think you’ll have the Treasures to give you the advantage, but you aren’t just going to walk up to my Sisters and take them.”

“Do you think any mere Valkyrie can stand against me?”

Mist jumped up, Kettlingr firmly in her grip, and lunged for Loki. He stepped back, his face registering shock. It only lasted a fraction of a second, but his response wasn’t fast enough. Mist landed a good blow and cut deeply into his right deltoid. He jumped back, instinctively slapping his hand over the wound.

Godlings bled as much as mortals when they were wounded, though they healed far more quickly, as nearly all from the lost Homeworlds did. Mist charged again, aiming for his belly.

But by then Loki had recovered from the surprise of her attack and had a sword in his hand—a black one, blazing red Runes inscribed in its blade. It was serrated like a Jotunn’s teeth, and Loki didn’t have to use magic to meet her fiercest assault.

It was nothing like her bouts with Eric. Loki’s wound dripped blood on the stained cement floor, but he ignored it and counterattacked with the full weight of his fury. Mist had to give ground, deflecting his steel with her own, feeling his sword’s teeth biting into her own blade and catching, twisting, threatening to wrench Kettlingr out of her hand.

What amazed her, when she had a second to be amazed, was that other than conjuring the sword, Loki used no magic on her. Had he done so, the battle would have been over in seconds. As it was, he seemed to take some pleasure in the duel once he let go of his initial anger.

She didn’t expect that to last. She was the better swordsman—at least, she had been so with Eric—and Loki wouldn’t stand for being second best. Especially not to her.

Metal clanged like bells tolling in a graveyard, and they disengaged again. “You think my Sisters are helpless?” she asked, catching her breath.

Loki laughed, his own breath coming short. “You really have no idea what you’re up against, do you?”

“A bunch of Jotunar who let themselves get their asses kicked by a single Valkyrie?”

“If you think the frost giants are my only allies, you are very much mistaken.”

She didn’t have to ask what he meant. He was talking about his evil children: Hel, who ruled the dead; Fenrisulfr, also called Fenrir, the enormous wolf who was foretold by prophecy to kill Odin; and Jormungandr, the World Serpent.

“Your children are alive too, are they?” Mist said, throwing off her horror with another feint. “Well, it won’t be quite as easy for them to have their way in this modern world.”

“And how, pray tell, did you come to that conclusion?” Loki asked, batting her blade aside and closing with her so that their faces were mere inches apart.

“Disaster strikes on a global scale these days,” Mist said, barely holding him at bay. “Humanity has dealt with far worse monsters than Fenrir and Jormungandr, and emerged victorious.”

“Human monsters,” Loki said, grinning into her face.

“Fenrir didn’t manage to kill Odin, did he? And what about Hel? What are you going to do with your daughter now that she doesn’t have the dead to rule anymore?”

“What makes you think she doesn’t?”

“Mortals aren’t as simple as they used to be,” Mist said. “They’re not going to go willingly into some dark, gloomy afterlife.”

“They will have no choice in the matter.”

“You’d be surprised,” she said, pushing him back a few steps. “Outside threats tend to unite the people of Midgard.”

“Mortals are sheep, incapable of making their own decisions on any matter of importance,” Loki said, looking pointedly at her parted lips. “They will always squabble and slaughter each other with the slightest provocation.”

“Look who’s talking.” With a final effort, she threw him off. “All mortals aren’t the same, and there are millions more of them than there are Jotunar, or any of your allies.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “Oh, skatten min. Always the sentimentalist.” He lowered his sword and placed his hand over his heart. “Let me assure you that your mortals will be happier under my guidance than they have ever been in all their brief history.”

Mist wondered if Loki actually believed what he said.

Of course he did.

“So you’re going to set up some kind of throne in the Capitol building and have every government in the world pay obeisance?” she asked, preparing for another attack.

“Perhaps,” Loki said. “But I am not interested in ruling in the conventional way, my dear. All I want is for an end to laws that curtail the freedom of the people of this world to act entirely as they wish. Have you any idea how many mortals I will win to my side with simply the promise of such a paradise?”

No law, he meant. No restrictions on what one man or woman could do to another, one race or culture to another, one country to another. It would bring anarchy, unimaginable cruelty and suffering. Until the world fell apart.

And Loki would watch it all with delight.

“Now you understand,” he said, a good approximation of pity in his voice. “Ruling mortal kind takes little effort on my part . . . unless they are as worthy as you say and can constrain their bestial natures. I will only enforce the law that there is to be no law. And if they still survive . . .”

“Why such hatred of the people of Midgard?”

“I don’t hate them,” Loki said, his narrow jaw hardening. “But I know what Freya and Odin will do to your adopted world. The battle they bring here will cause untold suffering and a billion deaths. That is why I will stop them. And when the old civilization is fallen, I will rebuild from the ashes. Then it may be worth ruling.”

There was nothing left for Mist to say. Arguing with Loki was like asking a starving tiger to pass by a sleeping child lying in its path.

She looked past him at Gungnir. “If you’re so confident that neither I nor the mortals can stand against you,” she said, “why did you try to leave Midgard once you had the Spear?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You tried to escape by one of the bridges.” She flicked another glance at Vidarr, who maintained a rigid silence.

“You are mistaken,” Loki said. “I was not leaving Midgard.”

“You were running. What scared you, Laufeyson?”

He chuckled, though the sound rang more than a little hollow. “Your attempts to provoke me into rash action are futile, my dear.”

But there had to be something she could use to make him reveal more information. She was just beginning to form another plan when she heard a faint sound from the room outside. Loki glanced toward the door.

Mist charged him again. She managed to back him up against the wall before he let his sword fall. She laid Kettlingr’s edge against his throat.

“Maybe you can satisfy my curiosity on another point,” she said. “If you managed to open these bridges to Midgard before the Aesir did, you must be clever enough to have found out who or what sent all of you into Ginnungagap before Ragnarok had barely begun. What force could be powerful enough to forestall Prophecy and subvert the will of the gods?”

Loki’s bicolored eyes showed no alarm at his disadvantaged position. “Whoever or whatever was responsible,” he said, “it was unable to prevent me from reaching Midgard or setting my plans into motion. I will discover it, expose it, and destroy it.”

“What if this force steps in again when you and the Aesir resume the war?”

Orange flame surged around his irises again. “I will be ready,” he said.

“You’re certainly going to have your hands full,” Mist said. “I look forward to—”

Suddenly Loki wasn’t there. She fell forward against the wall, all the air knocked out of her lungs. Kettlingr flew from her hand. A fly buzzed around her head, seeming to laugh in its whining voice.

The fly landed on the wall and rubbed its legs. Loki hadn’t had to use force to defeat her. All he had to do was change his shape.

“Better be glad I don’t have a flyswatter,” Mist gasped.

Loki resumed his own form, leaning against the wall with his thumb hooked under his belt. “What a dreadful image,” he said. “I remember the sweet, heartfelt conversations we used to have after our lovemaking. Do you miss them as much as I do, darling?”

Mist had to remind herself again how thoroughly stupid it would be to attack him with her bare hands. “Please, just kill me,” she said. “Listening to you talk is worse than spending an eternity in the Christian Hell.”

Loki didn’t rise to her bait. He plucked at his slashed sleeve with a frown. The bleeding had stopped, and the flesh beneath was already knitting.

“You ruined my new jacket,” he said plaintively.

“You can conjure up another one,” Mist said. “It was conjured, wasn’t it?”

“Did you think I was idle all the time I was with you? I have a considerable fortune, Mist. I intend to put it to very good use.” He met her gaze. “It need not be this way, you know. Why should we speak as enemies when we could so easily be allies?”

“You’re crazy,” she said.

Loki drew a small dagger from a sheath inside his jacket and slid the needle tip under one beautifully manicured nail. “You gave up your duty to Odin long ago. You owe nothing to Freya. Is it really concern for this world that makes you turn against me? Or guilt, perhaps, now that you know the Aesir are still alive?”

“I’m not looking for redemption. Only for a way to kill you.”

“I see that you are still as intractable as ever,” he said.

Mist folded her arms across her chest. “Let’s just say I decided to take your offer. What good could I possibly be to you?”

“You have managed to intrigue me all over again, darling. And you will never find a better fuck than me, I assure you.”

Mist sighed. “Psychiatrists call your particular condition narcissistic personality disorder. They might have created the category just for you.”

In a blur of motion Loki was directly in front of her, the blade of his dagger at her throat. “Even I have my limits,” he said. His lips peeled back from slightly pointed teeth. “You’re going to tell me where I can find your Sister Valkyrie.”

“I have no idea where they are.”

“You suffer from the same disease that plagues all those who claim to be honorable. You are a very poor liar.”

“The problem with habitual liars like you is that they are seldom capable of recognizing the truth.”

“I can make your death very unpleasant.”

She shrugged, though the movement pushed her throat into the dagger’s edge. Blood trickled under her collar. “I didn’t expect anything less.”

“Perhaps you think that Vidarr or his drunk of a brother will find the courage to assist you? Or that the elf might return?”

Mist had pretty much given up on the idea that she’d get any assistance from Vidarr. In fact, she’d almost completely forgotten he was in the room at all.

As for poor Vali . . . she could only hope that the Jotunar outside didn’t consider him a threat and that he’d had the sense to get out of their way. And Dainn . . .

“I don’t need help to die,” she said.

Abruptly Loki withdrew the dagger, wiped it fastidiously on her jacket, and sheathed it. “I don’t want you dead, skatten min,” he said. “Look at me. Eric is still here, and he can be very generous to his inferiors.”

Mist eyed Kettlingr. “I’m no good to you, Slanderer.”

Loki picked Kettlingr up and examined the sword intently. “What is your price? Wealth? Power? To stand by my side as the consort of Midgard’s master?”

“By the side of a creature who mated with a stallion and gave birth to a serpent?”

With a grunt of rage Loki flipped his hand in the direction of the desk, raising the wine glass into the air and sending it flying against the nearest wall. It shattered, silver particles rising in a cloud and hovering in midair like powdered ice.

“I am weary of this sparring,” he snapped. “One final chance, Mist.”

“Nothing has changed,” she said, tilting her head back to expose her throat. “Go ahead.”

Loki stared at her, the muscles in his jaw clenching and unclenching. Vidarr moved for the first time since he’d spoken to Mist, turning his head just enough to catch her eye, as if he were trying to tell her something important. Something that might change the game completely.

“Why are you hesitating, Slanderer?” she asked Loki. “You have my sword. If you have any feelings left for me, let me die by her blade.”

“No,” he said, setting the sword on the desk. “But I wonder . . . shall we test to see if Gungnir is still all it was in Asgard?”

Suddenly the Spear was in Loki’s hand, and he was aiming straight at Mist’s heart. The Swaying One hummed in his grip as he let fly. Mist desperately chanted Runes of protection in the hope that the strange new power that had come to her when she’d fought the giants would somehow return.

She wasn’t fast enough to intercept Gungnir’s flight, but no cold metal pierced her chest. The Spear’s head penetrated the door just above and behind her shoulder, splitting the wood from top to bottom. Mist spun to grab for the shaft, straining to remove it from the door. It wouldn’t budge.

“You have worn out my patience, little bitch,” Loki said, moving up behind her with a nearly soundless tread.

“And you’ve tried mine,” Mist said, turning to face him. “You were never as good at anything as you thought you were.”

“Perhaps I’ll take you one last time, and show you just how good I am.”

“Try it, and I’ll roast your balls like chestnuts.”

Loki flinched. It was only a small movement, but it told Mist something she hadn’t anticipated.

He’s afraid, she thought in wonder. But what was the key to his fear?

“Freya is the key.”

Dainn’s voice, speaking inside her head. The elf was still here, and in a way she never would have expected.

“Dainn,” Loki said. His voice had an odd tone, as if he were truly taken aback. Setting aside her own surprise at his reaction— and his use of Dainn’s name— Mist took advantage of his confusion. As she had shaped the Runes in her mind back at the loft, now she did the same with words, projecting them outward in hopes that Dainn would hear.

The elf understood her question before she was finished. “Loki fears you because he fears the Lady,” he said. “He taunted and mocked her and called her whore because he wanted her but could not have her.”

And what in Hel did that have to do with her? Mist thought. She tried to ask Dainn again, but Loki was already moving. He caught Mist by the throat, and she felt her breath stop. Within a few seconds her vision began to go dark, and her thoughts were no longer coherent enough to form even the simplest question, let alone project that question into someone else’s mind.It was over. She had nothing left with which to fight.

“Halfling,” Dainn’s silent voice whispered again, beginning to unravel like thread caught in a kitten’s claws.

And then she understood.

Loki’s piss. That was what Hrimgrimir had meant. Why the new song had come to her, briefly making her a match for a dozen angry Jotunar.

They were her kin. The kin she had never known growing up an orphan in Asgard.

“A Jotunn was your father,” Dainn said. “Your mother . . .”

Dainn’s presence faded, but he left in her mind a single image. An image of a face she recognized, a beauty beyond compare.

Mist bit back her disbelief. She had nothing to lose. Her vision cleared and she met Loki’s gaze, letting him feel every last particle of her contempt.

“Is that why you lied your way into my bed?” she croaked. “If you couldn’t have the mother, you’d take the daughter by trickery?”

Loki’s fingers loosened again. “She’s a whore,” he hissed, his voice not quite steady. “She lay with every elf and god in Asgard, every Jotunn and Dvergar in Jotunheim and Nidavallir.”

“Everyone but you.”

He tightened his grip, but he never finished. The magic came from nowhere, settling over Mist without any effort on her part, a radiant warmth that filled her with a peace she had never known. The scent of primroses filled the air.

Loki’s face blanched. He let her go and stumbled away.

“Freya,” he moaned.

Mist raised her hand, and Kettlingr flew into it like a tame sparrow. “It is you who have the choice, Laufeyson,” she said in a voice she barely recognized as her own. “Come back to us.” She moved toward Loki, one hand beckoning while the other hand held the sword. “Let me show you what might have been,” she said. “What might still be.”

Suddenly Loki was right in front of her, and she was embracing him, smothering him against her chest, murmuring words of love in his ear. His face slackened like that of a satyr drunk on wine and sex. She felt his lips on her neck, heard his heartbeat rise to a speed no mortal could survive.

She was killing him with love.

Mist pulled back, leaving Loki to stagger as she withdrew her support. He straightened, and his expression cleared.

“You,” he croaked. “You are—”

Vidarr slammed into him from behind, and Loki staggered again. He smacked Vidarr aside, leaped up on the desk, and crouched there, hatred in every line of his body. He flung a full-blown blizzard at Mist’s face, and she deflected it with a wave of her hand. It spent its fury against the wall, and the air filled with countless drops of water and chips of ice.

But it had not completely failed in its purpose. Mist swayed, no longer able to tell floor from ceiling. All she could see were Loki’s eyes, staring at her with cold calculation.

“You haven’t won, bitch,” he said. “This is far from over.”

He snapped his fingers, and a flame burst to life in his hand. He tossed it onto a pile of old newspapers stacked up beside the desk and looked straight at Mist.

“Don’t trust her,” he said. “And don’t trust him.”

The flames blazed up, obscuring Loki in smoke. Then he was gone, vanished into the shadows, the stench of his rage dispersing like a frenzy of roaches exposed to the light. Vidarr scrambled up from the floor and traced a Rune over the burning papers. The flame winked out.

Mist closed her eyes. The warmth and joy and power she had felt only seconds ago was already abandoning her, leaving her an empty sack of skin and bone. She had no clear idea of what had just happened, but for a moment she had spoken with someone else’s voice, succumbed to someone else’s will.

She had become Freya. Freya, her mother.

Shaking uncontrollably, she set Kettlingr down and turned back to the door.

Gungnir was gone. Loki had taken it.

She leaned against the ruined door and wiped her mouth. Once again Loki had slipped out of her grasp, and so had Gungnir.

But where were the giants? Even if Loki had told them to stay out, they must surely have sensed the powerful magic when Freya had made her unexpected “appearance.” Why had they remained outside when their master was threatened by something even he couldn’t fight?

Before she could finish pulling the broken door open, Dainn climbed through it, his face as pale as a fish’s belly. “Are you well?” he asked.

She turned on him. “Coward!” she said, shock exploding into anger. “You had words in plenty, but where were you?”

Dainn said nothing. He simply walked out of the room again. Vidarr got to his feet, popping his shoulder back into its socket. “Mist,” he said. “You have to believe I never—”

Vali burst into the office, looking anxiously from Mist to Vidarr and back again. “You guys okay?” he asked. “The elf said Loki’s gone.”

“He’s gone, all right,” Mist said.

“You got Gungnir?”

Mist shook her head, too ashamed to meet his gaze, and pointed at the door. “He did that just before he left. What about the Jotunar?”

“They won’t be any more trouble.”

Mist realized she’d severely underestimated Vali’s skill and determination. “They didn’t hurt you?” she asked, carefully looking him over.

“Didn’t get the chance.”

Mist blew out her breath, her anger seeping away. “Thanks for what you tried to do in there, Val. Sorry I couldn’t take advantage of it. I had to find out what was going on in here.”

Vali’s ruddy skin went ruddier still. “I guess it’s a good thing you did. You freed Vidarr.”

Mist glanced in Vid’s direction. He had turned his back to them, clearly in no mood to finish whatever he’d been about to tell her. Had he been a prisoner, or had Loki been telling the truth about their reaching some kind of agreement?

Mist couldn’t bring herself to believe it. Gods knew that Loki would be happy to lie if it meant turning potential allies against each other. And Vid had helped in the end, even if that help had come late. There was a lot more going on here than met the eye.

Even within herself.

Vali pushed his big hands in his jeans pockets. “I can’t believe the Aesir are still alive,” he said. “Damn. Might take a while to get used to the idea.”

“Loki told you?”

Vali nodded. “This is all pretty strange.”

That was an understatement. “How did Loki get the drop on Vidarr?”

“I wasn’t there when it happened. When I figured out what was going on, Loki just told me to stay out of the way. He didn’t think I was much of a threat, so I bided my time until I thought I could be of some use.”

“Did anyone in the bar hear what was going on?”

“Loki soundproofed the back rooms when he showed up, and then Dainn—”

“Just what was he doing while Loki was trying to kill me?”

“Come with me.”

Vali led her through the door into the other room. Mist stopped so suddenly that she almost tripped over her own feet.

The Jotunar were piled in a heap in the middle of the room, most unconscious and the rest groaning in pain. Hrimgrimir was not among them.

“The elf did that,” Vali said.