Christmas. Yule, as it had been known before the coming of the White Christ. The solstice had never really been more than an excuse for celebration, an end to the darkness and the coming of a new year. If this bizarre, unseasonable winter ever ended.
A few gentle snowflakes drifted down to melt on Mist’s hair as she walked along Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive and headed toward Stow Lake. There was a breathless quality to the frigid air. Dense fog began to settle over the nearest trees, turning the park into a ghostly realm of indistinct shapes and ominous silence.
Fog.
Mist stopped, lifting her head to smell the air. Fog like this came in the summer, when warm Pacific winds blew over the colder waters along the coast.
A sudden chill nipped at Mist’s hands and face. Strange weather or not, there was nothing natural about the icy vapor that stretched probing fingers along the ground at her feet, slithering and hissing like the serpent Nidhogg bent on devouring everything in its path.
Disbelief shook Mist with jaws of iron. She knew the smell of the vapor and what it had portended when the Last Battle began.
But it wasn’t possible. The Jotunar, the frost giants, were as extinct as the great sloths or mastodons that had once roamed the North American plains.
Mist encircled her left wrist with her right hand, trying to soothe the unnatural, burning agony beneath the glove. She
wasn’t
going crazy. There was a perfectly logical explanation for the hallucination. This was the old, rejected world’s final attempt to hold her bound in the chains of guilt and self- contempt and loneliness, to abandoned oaths and a way of life she had discarded years ago like ash-soiled rags.
She needed to go home, go to bed, wake up to find Eric beside her—ready with a grin, an invitation, and a reminder that her life was normal now, had been normal long before she met him. Turning on her heel, Mist started back for the street.
A low, rasping chuckle stopped her in mid-stride. She spun around. A face emerged from the vapor, rising two heads above Mist’s generous height. A broad face, heavy, filled with anger and fell purpose. Pale, cold eyes met hers. The mouth, with its rows of teeth filed to points like daggers, gaped in a grin.
“
Heil,
Odin’s Girl,” the giant said in the Old Tongue, his voice deep enough to shake the ground under Mist’s feet. “Or can it be that I am mistaken? Is this what the Valkyrie have become, mountless and dressed no better than thralls?”
No hallucination, no illusion, no madness. The truth took Mist by the throat and shook her like a child’s doll.
This was real. This was death. And everything she had come to believe, everything she had tried to make of her life, was a lie. Instinct, rusty as an ancient blade left to molder in a salty bog, brought Mist back to her senses. Her Swiss Army knife, the one she’d carried since World War II, was of no use against a Jotunn. She peeled off her gloves, dropped them on the ground, and began to search for a long stick, a fallen branch, anything she could use as a weapon.
“No sword, Valkyrie?” the giant asked. “No spear?”
Mist knew she had to keep him distracted. He was obviously the type who enjoyed playing with his victims.
“A little out of place in a modern city, don’t you think?” she said, slipping back into English as she backed away and swept her foot across the ground.
The Jotunn either didn’t know English very well, or he preferred the drama of the ancient language. “A pity you embraced this mortal world so completely,” he said. “It will be your undoing.”
Mist’s boot struck something solid that rolled under her foot. A weathered bit of branch— likely rotten and not as thick as she would have liked, but she didn’t have time to look for something better. She snatched it up and held it behind her back with her left hand while she reached for the knife attached to her belt with her right.
“So you are not without your defenses after all,” the Jotunn said with a low laugh.
“What are you called, Jotunn?” Mist asked, forcing the archaic words through the constriction in her throat.
“I am Hrimgrimir,” the giant said. “I know you, Mist, once Chooser of the Slain.”
And she knew
him.
Hrimgrimir was the frost giant who guarded the mouth of Niflheim, the frigid realm of the goddess Hel, where all mortals but the greatest heroes went after death. Mist had assumed that Hel and her dead minions, like all Loki’s evil forces— along with the gods and
their
allies—had been destroyed in the Last Battle.
Except one of them hadn’t.
“From where have you come, Frost-shrouded?” she demanded, carefully flicking open the blade. “From what dream of venom and darkness?”
Hrimgrimir chuckled. “No dream, Sow’s bitch.” He blew out a foul, gusty breath. “A pity you chose
her
side. You might have lived to see the new age.”
Keep him talking,
Mist thought. “Whose side?” Mist asked, scratching a crude series of Runes into the branch with the tip of her knife.
“Are you stupid as he says?” Hrimgrimir asked, advancing on her with a slow, heavy tread. “The Sow is your mistress.”
“Freya?” Mist said, angling the blade to slice the pad of her left thumb. “I served Odin, but all the gods were your enemies.”
The giant sniffed. “What are you doing, bitch? I smell your fear, but—”
Mist smeared her blood into the shallow Runes, dropped the knife, and swung the branch out from behind her back. She breathed a quick spell, and the blood began to smoke.
Too late, Hrimgrimir recognized what she had done. He reared out of the vapor, huge hands curled, his power and giant-magic swirling round about him like ice-forged armor.
Mist felt his assault in body and soul, and her bloody fingers almost slipped on the branch. But she had been stricken by the battle fever that had driven her through World War II. There was no chance she’d back out now.
She tried a second spell, and this time the magic obeyed her. She stumbled backward as the branch began to change, the end in her hand forming a grip that perfectly fit her grasp, the other end broadening and sharpening into a blade.
“Is that all?” Hrimgrimir said with another grating laugh. He waved his hand as if he were batting away flies, and his fist connected with the branch-blade.
But the wood was no longer wood at all. It flashed in the faint ambient light reflected by the clouds overheard, a blade like the one she had carried so long and laid to rest with all the other reminders of her past.
Hrimgrimir howled as the edge of the sword connected with the side of his hand, slicing a ragged gash in his tough flesh. He took a step back, giving Mist the chance to shift position. She lifted the sword and crouched, legs tensed to lunge forward. Hrimgrimir bellowed and raised both arms, leaving his midsection vulnerable, and she struck at him, aiming straight at his gut. He tried to block her attack with one arm, and cold blue blood splattered over her as her Rune- spelled blade sliced him to the bone.
Mist jumped back, ready for another attack. It never came. The vapor fell like a curtain in front of her, a writhing wall of maggots sheathed in ice. She swung again, but her sword whistled through empty air. The vapor began to recede as quickly as it had come, crackling angrily and leaving a crystalline film on the grass.
Shaken, Mist let the battle fever drain from muscle and nerve and bone. A cold sweat bathed her forehead and glued her shirt to her back. The burning sensation in her wrist was nearly gone, and so was her shock, yet the sense of unreality remained.
A giant had come to Midgard, bringing with him an evil no child of Mist’s adopted city could imagine. Not even the Nazis, or any of the tyrannical regimes that had come and gone since, had possessed such power.
They
had been human.
Flexing her fingers against the ache in her left thumb, Mist dropped her temporary sword and retrieved her knife. Almost instantly, the branch assumed its original form, the Runes burned away along with her blood.
But her thoughts continued to boil with questions. Where had Hrimgrimir come from? Even if she had been wrong about Ragnarok, the Last Battle, and the utter destruction of the world she had known millennia ago, she was certain she would have discovered the presence of other survivors long before the appearance of this one.
Certainly no Jotunn could walk Midgard unnoticed for long, even in more modest size. Had she been drawn to the park tonight because she had felt his presence?
She didn’t have to ask herself why he’d tried to kill her. Though there had always been a minority of Jotunar who had been friends and allies to the Aesir, few giants could meet a servant of the gods without enmity.
But why now? He had known not only what but who she was, and his attack had seemed very personal. He’d been waiting for her. For
her.
Mist stared blindly at the trail of blackened grass Hrimgrimir had left in the wake of his retreat. Hrimgrimir had threatened her, but he’d given up as soon as she’d wounded him. Something about that hasty retreat bothered her. Carefully she reconstructed the Jotunn’s words, parsing them for any meaning she could have missed in the heat of battle.
“You might have lived to see the new age.”
Her heart stopped, and the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood rigid as a new-forged blade. The Prophecies had foretold a new age after Ragnarok, one of peace and plenty. That age would hardly have been one friendly to the dark forces. Few Jotunar would welcome its arrival, even if they survived to see it.
Unless the “new age” Hrimgrimir spoke of was very different from the paradise that had never come.
Skita.
All Mist wanted now was a warm bed and Eric. But she had to have answers to this mystery before she could ever hope to have a normal life again. She had to find Hrimgrimir and make him talk.
Moving quickly, Mist followed the Jotunn’s trail, her boots crunching on the frozen grass. The park was still silent save for the bitter wind in the treetops and the distant roar of a motorcycle on Fulton Street. She had gone only a few hundred feet when the track disappeared completely. No trace of the giant remained.
And yet, as she stood still and opened her senses to the unseen, the feeling of something out of place began to grow again.
She looked for another piece of wood. She was long out of practice, and she, like all Valkyrie, had possessed only enough Galdr and basic Rune-lore to perform her duties. She’d been lucky the first spell had worked and that it hadn’t weakened her. This time the magic might fail or even turn against her.
Still, she had to try. She found a piece of firm bark, opened the knife again, and held the bark against the trunk of the nearest tree. The Runes sizzled as she cut them into the wood, simple yet powerful symbols formed of short, straight strokes: Uruz, Thurisaz, Ansuz.
It was too dangerous to use blood again so soon, so she closed the knife, withdrew a lighter from her jacket pocket, and set fire to the bark.
In three breaths it was consumed. The ashes fell to the foot of the tree in the pattern of an arrow, facing west.
Without hesitation Mist turned onto a narrow, dusty path that wandered among a dense grove of Monterey pines. Her search brought her to a heap of discarded clothing spread over the pine needles, half hidden under a clump of thick shrubbery.
Mist cursed. The magic
had
turned against her, mocking her meager skill. She was about to leave when the pile of rags heaved, and a hand, lean and pale, reached out from a tattered sleeve. A low groan emerged from the stinking mound. She smelled blood, plentiful but no longer fresh.
Against her better judgment, she knelt beside the man. She expected an indigent, perhaps injured by some thug who found beating up helpless vagrants a source of amusement. But the hand, encrusted with filth as it was, appeared unmarked by the daily struggle for food and shelter, more accustomed to lifting golden goblets of mead than sifting through rubbish in a Dumpster.
She started at the thought. Mead had been the most favored beverage of gods and heroes and elves.
This one certainly didn’t look like any kind of hero. Hesitantly she pulled the blankets aside. A tall, lean form emerged, dressed in torn shirt, trousers too short and wide for his body, and hole-ridden sneakers. He lay on his belly, legs sprawled, cheek pressed against the damp, chilly earth.
And his face . . .
Mist had seen its like countless times in Odin’s hall, Valhalla, regal and stately among the carousing Aesir and warriors, fairer to look upon than the sun. It had always been accepted that the most beautiful of all creatures were the light-elves of Alfheim, allies of the gods.
This man was not so beautiful. His face was a mask of gore and mud, one eye swollen shut and nose covered in blood. Yet his features could not be mistaken.
A frost giant had come to Midgard from gods-knew-where. Now one of the Alfar had arrived as well, against all reason. Against every “truth” she had known, believed for so long.
Mist touched the elf ’s shoulder. “Can you hear me?” she asked in the Old Tongue.
He moved his hand, fingers digging into the soil, and spoke in a voice rough and raw with pain.
“Who . . .” he croaked, opening his one good eye. “How . . .”
There was no doubt, no doubt at all, that he was speaking the Old Tongue with the accent of the Alfar. He was every bit as real as the Jotunn had been.
“Rest easy,” she said, shrugging out of her jacket and laying it over him. “You’re safe.”
The eye, so dark a blue as to be almost black amid the red and brown of blood and dirt, regarded her with growing comprehension. “Safe?” he whispered. With a sudden jerk he rolled to his side, pushing her jacket away. “The Jotunn . . .”
“There is no giant here now,” she said, pushing him down again. “Lie still, man of the Alfar. All is well.”
The sound he made might have been a laugh. He eased himself back down, inhaling sharply, and looked into her face. “Who . . . are you?”
Mist hesitated. The laws of Midgard— the natural, mundane laws she had accepted for centuries— had been broken. She didn’t know what the rules were anymore or whom she could trust, including herself.