Mist (9 page)

Stumbling into the kitchen, she leaned heavily on the table. Yes. That was all it was. Her imagination. And fear she could learn to overcome . . .
if
she ever let this kind of thing happen again.

And she didn’t plan on it. Next time Dainn needed this kind of “help” . . .

She heard his nearly silent footsteps on the linoleum and stiffened. He came to a stop few feet behind her.

“Are you well?” he asked.

She couldn’t miss the note of concern in his question, and she didn’t really understand it. She’d walked out on him without a word, probably messing up all his careful work.

Had he sensed how deeply she’d delved into
his
mind?

Turning slowly, she looked at his face. There was no anger in it, only the same worry she’d heard in his voice. Worry and exhaustion, as if the magic had drained what strength he had left after Hrimgrimir’s attack.

Maybe that had been his problem all along. He couldn’t use magic without weakening himself to the point of—what? Burning himself out somehow?

Mist was just becoming aware of how tired
she
felt.

“I’m all right,” she said. “You?

“It doesn’t matter.” Dainn touched the ash-Runes on his forehead. “I think I know where Loki has gone.”

“Where?”

“ ‘Gullin’ is its name,” he said.

Golden.
As in Golden Gate Park.

“Then he did go back to the Park,” she said, starting into the hall. “There is another place by that name, is there not?”

Gods. How stupid could she be? A golden passage. A bridge between worlds.

The Golden Gate Bridge was nearly eight miles northwest of Dogpatch as the crow flies, farther on surface streets. Dawn was just breaking; traffic would be picking up, but that was the least of her worries. She had to hope the Volvo had one more gallop in her.

“I know where it is,” she said. “Can you tell if Loki has left Midgard?”

“No.”

“I guess we’ll find out when we get there. I think it would be a good idea for you to have a weapon, just in case. I don’t have any firearms, but—”

“No weapons.”

“This isn’t the time to be stubborn,” she said. “If a frost giant could get the better of you, Loki could do a Hel of a lot worse.”

“I will not let Loki harm you.”

“That’s funny,” she said. “I’m more worried that I may not be able to protect
you.
”

“You will not be required to.”

Further argument was a waste of time. Mist knew she was about to find out the hard way just how magically proficient Dainn really was.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

4

Mist dashed out the front door, barely pausing to lock it with a brief spell before continuing on to the driveway. She already had the Volvo in gear and was pulling out by the time Dainn had jumped into the passenger seat.

“If you have any spells that can work on an engine,” she said, “you’d better use them.”

“You know Alfar magic is not of a mechanical nature,” he said dryly.

She was almost relieved he was back to sarcasm. Of course, he was right. Elf magic was of nature and growing things—or, apparently, in at least one case, digging into someone else’s thoughts. But even that had used imagery of nature.

The Volvo coughed as she backed into Illinois Street. Dainn buckled in and braced himself on the dashboard and armrest as he had before. Mist kept her foot on the accelerator as they drove north on Highway 101, merged onto the Central Freeway, and continued north on Van Ness. The traffic was still light, but it took far too long to reach the Presidio and the bridge.

“Can you feel anything?” she asked Dainn.

He touched his forehead, still streaked with ash and sweat. “Somewhere over the water,” he said.

“No,” she muttered sarcastically. But they were faced with a very real problem. Even though there was a pedestrian walkway across the bridge, there wasn’t any way to access it from the San Francisco side without attracting unwelcome attention. She sure as Hel didn’t want any mortals involved.

“We’ll have to drive across,” she said. “You tell me where to stop.”

She gunned the engine and sped for the toll plaza, slowing only to pay the toll and pretend she had no intention of breaking every speed law on the books. The moment she was on the bridge she ground her foot down on the gas pedal as if she were in a race against Odin’s mighty six-legged stallion Sleipnir himself.

“Here,” Dainn said when they were half a mile across. Mist pulled up in the right lane and jumped out of the car.

There was nothing to show that this span of the bridge was different from any other. Dainn vaulted over the railing that separated the pedestrian walkway from traffic. Mist followed him to the suicide barrier. Blue- gray water seethed far beneath them, choppy with a rising wind driving west from the bay. Icy rain blew into Mist’s face.

Almost at once she felt the strangeness, a sense of an opening she hadn’t recognized when she’d faced Hrimgrimir. Her wrist began to ache again.

“I feel it,” she whispered.

“The water is disturbed,” Dainn said, leaning far over the railing. He closed his eyes. The air around him shimmered, and the cement under Mist’s feet vibrated with barely leashed energy.

And there was more. She could also sense Eric’s presence, a shadow of his being altered and twisted into a form almost unrecognizable. She drew her knife.

“Where is he?”

Dainn spread his hands in front of him as if he were reaching for something solid. “He was here,” he said, frowning. “But he did not pass over.”

Mist peered in every direction. “Are you sure?”

“The location of the bridge is very clear to me, and it is obvious that Loki expended a great deal of effort here. But it appears that something blocked his way.”

“Something? Like what?”

“It is as if someone had bricked over a doorway, but I detect no magical signature to indicate that it was done deliberately.”

“You mean by Freya or one of the other Aesir?”

He shrugged, which meant he didn’t know, and she didn’t want to waste any time trying to figure it out now. “If this one doesn’t work,” she said, “he’ll probably look for another.”

“I still see ‘Golden,’ ” Dainn said.

“Then we need to get to the park.” Mist jumped back over the barrier and returned to the Volvo. A red Jaguar streaked past, blaring its horn. Dainn got in, and Mist made a sharp and very illegal U-turn, heading back toward the city.

It was a straight shot south on Highway 1 to the park, but the minutes were ticking by, and Mist’s hopes of catching Loki dwindled a little more with every mile. When they got as close as they could to the area where Hrimgrimir had appeared, Mist swerved toward the nearest curb.

She and Dainn jumped out of the Volvo and ran across frostbrittle grass toward the spot they had left just a few hours ago. Dainn slowed and stopped a good ten yards short of their destination.

Mist turned around and strode back to him. “What is it?”

He looked straight through her, his face taut with concentration. “The bridge is gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Loki was here, and the residue of magic suggests he made a powerful effort, but again he was unable to enter. This one is not only closed, but absent.” He met Mist’s gaze. “The passage on the bridge was blocked, and this one has disappeared. This may work to our advantage.”

“How?”

“Loki may be trapped in Midgard.”

“
May
be? You think the other bridges Freya saw are blocked, too?”

“I told you that little is known about how the bridges function. If he cannot leave Midgard—”

“But you don’t
know
he can’t. Maybe you’ve heard that California is called the
Golden
State?”

“I have said that all the bridges we have identified are in this city.”

“What if you’re wrong, and there are bridges to Ginnungagap all over the country, or even the planet?”

“Freya is not wrong in this,” Dainn said.

“Okay. But Loki . . . Eric claimed he was a security consultant doing work for the government and frequently traveled around the world. Do you think he, personally, is stuck in San Francisco?”

“If the bridges are here, he would wish to stay where he could easily summon more Jotunar.”

“So why hasn’t he? Why doesn’t he have an army covering every square inch of this city?”

“He cannot have enough Jotunar here yet to constitute an army. If he desired to avoid Freya’s notice, and we can assume that was always his purpose, he would not have risked using too much magic or disrupting the daily business of this world. To do so would send echoes across Ginnungagap that Freya would surely have heard.”

“But he could have been looking for the Treasures every time he was away. Are you
sure
he doesn’t have any of the others?”

Dainn’s composure remained impregnable. “As certain as we can be. Again, his obtaining any of the Treasures would have made it very difficult to hide his presence in Midgard and transport more Jotunar over the bridges.” He paused. “It is also very likely that making use of the bridges is a heavy drain on his magical energy, and searching for the other Valkyrie, even with the Jotunar to aid him, would be too dangerous.”

“You mean even Loki has his limits,” she said, catching a little glimpse of hope.

“There is always a price for magic, especially of such a sustained and complex nature.”

She wondered again if that was Dainn’s problem. “Even if the bridges are closed to him now,” she said, “and he’s stuck in Midgard, he wouldn’t have any trouble hiding Gungnir and getting through airport security if he wanted to leave the country.”

“I do not believe he would attempt it.”

“He’d have plenty of money to do it. I know Eric—” She broke off and exhaled sharply. “
Loki
wasn’t hurting for money, and he wouldn’t have to work very hard to get it. He could just conjure it up if he wanted to.”

“Again, such conjuring would have been ill-advised for many reasons. And Loki has always found it more satisfying to use trickery to get what he wants. He has undoubtedly found very mundane methods of acquiring large sums of currency to finance his efforts, and he would do so without arousing the suspicions of mortal authorities and law enforcement.”

“So he’s ahead of us there, too.”

“Perhaps it would be best if we return to your home and wait to see what he will do next.”

Dainn shifted gears so fast that Mist felt like a commuter watching a BART train shoot past without realizing it had ever reached the station. “I’ll put both my hands between Fenrisulfr’s jaws and ask him to bite them off before I’ll let Loki win without a fight.”

He stared at her with such intensity that she found herself instinctively reaching for Kettlingr’s hilt. But the moment passed, and Dainn looked away as if nothing had happened.

“You know him better than I do,” he said. “Where would he go?”

“We’re talking about a city that covers almost forty-seven square miles and has a population of nearly 800,000. He could be anywhere.”

“How much did you know of the background he created for himself? Were there any locations he frequented, places he preferred to all others?”

As much as she hated being reminded of her own gullibility, Mist recognized what Dainn was getting at. “He needs more than just Jotunar to help him conquer Midgard,” she said. “So he’ll have been looking for mortal allies wherever he can find them.” She dragged her hand across her face, which felt about as rough as corrugated cardboard. “He could have been building a whole underground empire, and I wouldn’t have known it.”

“As I said before, he will not have wished to disrupt mortal society in any way that would alert Freya to his presence here. But he almost certainly has been laying the groundwork, and he will no longer have any reason to delay finding such allies.”

Mist flipped her braid behind her shoulders again, searching her mind for anything that would help them. “Loki had a computer at the loft, but even if he’d kept his contacts on it he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave the information for me to find.”

“There is another possible source of information in this city which you yourself mentioned,” Dainn said.

Mist snapped her fingers. “Vidarr and Vali,” she said. An ugly thought settled in the pit of her belly. What if Odin’s sons had known all along that the Aesir were still alive? What if they’d known about Loki, and hadn’t warned her?

The idea was flatly ridiculous, as ridiculous as the idea that Odin had known there would be no Ragnarok. Vidarr and Vali would never go over to the enemy.

“Loki can’t have gone anywhere near them before,” she said aloud, “or they would have recognized him. They’ll probably be just as shocked by all this as I was.”

And Vidarr wouldn’t like it. Not one bit. Though he’d said he didn’t remember how he and Vali had come to Midgard, Mist had always had her doubts. He had certainly rejected most of his divine heritage years before Mist had made the decision to leave the past behind. Knowing he’d have to become involved all over again . . .