Battlestorm Read online

  He had also realized that he must hide, especially from the enemy who had tried to take him and Anna before. Hide himself with spells of concealment until he was strong and wise enough to face that enemy and fulfill his destiny.

  That meant that not even Odin’s chief Valkyrie, Mist, could know where he was. He had sent Vidarr to follow Anna when she left the city where the battle would begin and end. He had taken the pendant from Vidarr and kept it safe.

  The pendant was important. Orn knew he was very close to making sense of all the fragments of thoughts and memories buzzing around in his head, and the stone with the raven’s-head etching was where all the fragments would come together.

  The fragments, and the Treasures. The three that Mist held—the Chain, the Glove, and the Steed—were too well warded for him to touch unless he exposed himself before he was ready. But once he had these …

  “The ground’s too hard,” the Valkyrie Rota said, her voice carrying up to Orn as he flew above her, her red hair a blaze against the backdrop of white snow and blue shadow. “You boys have any spells that can break it up a little?”

  One of the Alfar stepped forward and began to sing. Orn circled lower, watching intently. The earth heaved and trembled as the ice trapped within it began to thaw, and trickles of water welled up from a dozen tiny fissures in the ground.

  “Let’s try again,” Rota said, setting to work with her spade. It was not long before the Valkyrie gave a low hoot of triumph as her spade touched the lid of the coffer. The Alfar knelt to brush the mud away and lifted the coffer from the cache. Anna stood by, hovering like a female raven defending her chick.

  As if the Treasures were as important to her as they were to Orn. As if she, like Horja, had in truth been Odin’s Valkyrie. And would be again.

  Once the coffer had been placed on the cleared earth beside the hole, the fair elf, Hrolf, crouched over it and laid his hand on the lid. He snatched it back with a very unelvish oath.

  He, Rota, Anna, and the other Alfar huddled together in soft conversation, though Orn could easily hear their words. After a moment, Anna knelt beside the coffer, closed her eyes and began to chant the Rune-spell, pronouncing the words as perfectly as if she had been born among the ancient Norse. The lid opened with a faint moan of protest.

  Orn descended swiftly and landed on Anna’s shoulder. She started, stumbling back from the coffer. Rota cursed and reached out to steady the mortal, while Orn flapped his wings to keep his balance.

  Anna froze. “You’re real,” she stammered, tentatively reaching up to touch Orn’s breast feathers. “I thought I was dreaming.”

  “You saw him?” Rota asked.

  Anna ignored the Valkyrie. Her eyes glittered with moisture, drops suspended on the fringe of tiny feathers surrounding her eyes. “I didn’t think you were coming back, Orn,” she whispered. “No one could find you. Where did you go?”

  “Here now,” Orn said, deliberately keeping his speech simple.

  “Did you follow us? Why didn’t you let me know?”

  Orn cocked his head, peering at each of her companions in turn. “Dangerous,” he said.

  “Why? Was Loki … was someone watching you?”

  Loki. Orn’s crest rose.

  “I saw Vidarr,” Anna said. “He wasn’t real, was he?”

  Pretending not to understand, Orn glided down from her shoulder to land at the edge of the hole. He pecked at one of the half-frozen clods of earth cast aside by the spade and the magic the elves had used to soften the ice-locked soil.

  “He doesn’t seem to have much more to say now than he did when he was with you and Mist,” Rota said. “I’m sorry, Anna, but this whole ‘Odin’s messenger’ business…”

  “Orn didn’t exactly get a chance to deliver any message,” Anna said, her voice rising. “Vali—”

  “The raven could have returned to Mist any time once the battle was over. He’d have been safe with both Mist and Freya to protect him.”

  Ignoring mortal and Valkyrie, Orn hopped up to the rim of the coffer and examined the contents. The soft leather pouch and broken staff lay cradled in nests of padded velvet. He dipped his head inside the coffer and lightly pecked the pouch and each half of the staff. Painfully bright light burst inside his head. There were pictures there, too, but he couldn’t quite make them out. He hopped down into the snow, drawing patterns with his feet as he moved this way and that.

  “What is he doing?” Rota asked. “Those almost look like Runes.”

  Hrolf crouched to examine the tracks as Orn fluttered out of the away. “They are,” he said, “but they make no sense. If the raven knows what the symbols represent, he has no understanding of how to give them meaning.”

  Orn laughed. Of course they did not understand. The power contained in these Treasures had altered him yet again; he could feel the strength growing inside him, pushing outward as if it would burst through skin and feathers. He had laid the spell as easily as he might pluck a sparrow out of the air.

  “What if it’s a message from Odin?” Anna asked. She looked at Hrolf. “Do you think you might figure it out if you studied them for a while?”

  The fair-feathered elf shook his head. “We must not linger. The Jotunar may have found our trail again.”

  “He’s right,” Rota said. “We’ve been lucky so far. Luckier than we’ve had any right to be.”

  Smearing the Runes with his beak, Orn shook out his feathers. The fools didn’t know that he had been protecting them almost since they had arrived in this familiar country—leading the pursuing giants astray, giving subtle warning to the elves and Valkyrie that they had been too blind to recognize.

  He flew back to Anna’s shoulder. “You,” he said, staring into the eyes of the Valkyrie. “Say nothing.” He looked at each of the elves in turn. “You did not see me.”

  One by one they looked away, as if he had become invisible.

  “Orn?” Anna murmured, reaching up to touch him.

  Such was the nature of their long association that she had unconsciously resisted the spell. But Orn was not displeased. He leaned his head very close.

  “I go,” he said in his softest croak. “You did not see me. Danger. Understand?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “I understand, but…” Her throat bobbed. “You’re not the same, Orn. You’ve changed again. Why? Why did you leave me without saying any—”

  Orn didn’t wait for her to finish. He spread his wings and launched himself skyward, leaving her and the cold earth far behind.

  Soon he would have no need of these wings, this puny body. He would have another far more powerful.

  Many as one. The second prophecy was the answer, the prediction he had built his strategy upon, the part his enemies, even Freya, did not know.

  When he was whole they would all bow to him, and he would have both revenge and victory. Traitors would fall, and a new world would rise.

  His world.

  2

  SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

  EIGHT MONTHS LATER

  It hadn’t yet begun to snow in the San Francisco Bay Area, but Ryan Starling could feel the cold seeping through his jacket—the kind of cold no one in their right mind would have believed possible just a few years ago. September, he thought, and already plants that had once thrived in this moderate climate were beginning to wither, the birds flying south in greater and greater numbers.

  And a storm hung over the city, swirling clouds that seemed to spin around and around in a crazy dance. Sometimes lightning flashed horizontally from one edge of the constantly spinning circle to the other, making the clouds glow from within.

  From here, you couldn’t tell that there was a battle raging in San Francisco. It wasn’t on the news. No one blogged about it … well, almost no one, except the people everyone thought were crazy, the kind who believed there were signs and portents hidden behind the bizarre weather and the shadows that crept through the streets, slowly stealing what light remained.

  Of cour
se most of those crazy people weren’t crazy at all. And Ryan had seen Loki in videos, pictures of him in places he didn’t have any right to be.

  “What do you see?” Mother Skye asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. Thank God. “Nothing but the bridge and the city and the storm.”

  The old woman touched his arm. “You can control your gift now. You’ll know when a true vision comes.”

  At a price, Ryan thought. There was always a price, and he wouldn’t necessarily be the one to pay it.

  Zipping his jacket up to his chin, he imagined Dogpatch as he had last seen it, the neighborhood swathed in snow and ice and dangerous magic. He was dreading this reunion, knowing what it would dredge up: emotions he didn’t want, unrequited feelings for the elf who could never return them, memories of a foolish boy who had been too stupid to recognize the part he was to play.

  At least Gabi was okay. Mother Skye had made sure he was up to date on the basics. She just couldn’t tell him what the future would hold, even though that had once been her job.

  Now it was his.

  “If you’re ready…” Mother Skye said.

  With a sigh, Ryan returned to the car. It was as beat-up looking as Mother Skye. Both had earned their dents the hard way.

  He pulled onto the Golden Gate Bridge, wondering if he’d feel the changes before he saw them. He didn’t know how many mortals Mist had recruited for the fight for their world, how many allies she’d brought over from the Void, or if Loki had managed to summon his three monstrous children to join in the battle.

  He didn’t even know who was winning.

  “You sure you won’t come all the way?” he asked Mother Skye, though she’d answered the question about six times already. “It’s not like you’d be unwelcome. If you just explained—”

  “They would demand the very things I can no longer give,” she said in her soft, aged voice, staring out the window at the tollbooth. “And you cannot tell them what you have become, lest you change Fate before the time comes.”

  “But I’ll have to give them some proof if I’m to stay with them,” he said, “or they’ll just try to send me away again.”

  “Only something small. Never let them guess the magnitude of your abilities. Not until it is unquestionably necessary.”

  “And I’ll know when that is,” Ryan muttered.

  “You will.” The words held a note of sadness, and Ryan knew why.

  Before the war was over, a lot of people were going to die. He would have to be very careful about sharing his gift, because every time he intervened he could set the future on a path even he could not predict.

  Except for the sacrifice. He knew that would come in any possible turning of Fate. A terrible sacrifice that he couldn’t see.

  And never wanted to.

  “Be strong,” Mother Skye said. “You are the only one who can complete this duty. You are the last Norn.”

  * * *

  No one saw the skirmish. Like all the rest, it was warded from mortal sight. That was one of the few “rules” of engagement, such as they were—like the prohibition against firearms—and so far the enemy had stuck to them. More or less.

  Mist swallowed a battle cry as she hacked at a frost giant, slicing a ragged piece of flesh from his half-armored shoulder. He yelped in pain, but the wound hardly slowed him. He swung his arm, adorned with a hundred razor-sharp icicles, at her head.

  Konur, lord of the elven allies, caught the blow on his own sword, staggering a little under the weight of the blow. He recovered quickly, elf-swift, and danced aside. Mist slipped into his place and stabbed at the Jotunn’s belly.

  Fortunately, this particular giant was more bulky than fast, and he failed to get out of the way in time. He moaned and fell like an ancient redwood cut down by elements even its formidable strength couldn’t withstand.

  Mist pulled Kettlingr free and wiped the blade on the Jotunn’s clothing. She caught her breath and brushed her hand across her forehead, sweeping up a damp strand of hair that had come loose from her braid, and watched the dark-haired elf-lord take on another frost giant.

  For a moment she imagined Dainn fighting there, just as swift and sure, concealing a savage beast behind his dispassionate face. She was barely prepared when another Jotunn came at her from behind.

  Fury beset her whenever she thought of Dainn, and this time was no different. She spun wildly to catch the Jotunn’s ice-sword on hers, and felt the frost giant’s weapon cut through her sleeve.

  Chanting the Galdr as she built the Rune-staves in her mind, she added the smallest touch of forge-magic, as if her blade had just been pulled from the fire. The Jotunn was briefly confused by the glint of flame and attacked empty air. Mist cut off his head.

  Two of the surviving Jotunar fled for the mouth of the alley and the relative safety of Grant Avenue. Mist knew better than to pursue them; true dawn was still a good half-hour away, but on a Tuesday morning there would be people already headed to work, drivers and pedestrians not quite groggy enough to ignore a sword-and-ax fight in the middle of the street.

  She turned back, ready for the next opponent. But there was no one left to fight. The asphalt was slick with melting ice, the buildings on either side splashed with blood both red and blue. One mortal lay dead. Two mortals and one elf were wounded, but Mist’s warriors had accounted for three Jotunar.

  Mist sheathed her sword and knelt beside the human warrior, sketched Runes of peace and protection on his brow and gently closed his eyes. She knew his name, but little of his life or what had drawn him into this fight.

  It wasn’t easy keeping track of the two hundred or so mortal recruits who’d trickled in over the past spring and summer, especially since they were spread out all over the city countering Jotunar assaults and tracking the giants’ increasing encroachment into the city’s underworld.

  Hel, Loki practically ran all of it now. And more.

  A lot more.

  “He died well,” Konur said, coming up beside her. “Do not grieve for one who willingly gave his life to save his world.”

  Mist wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “He wouldn’t have died at all, if we hadn’t brought this war down on mortalkind.”

  “We did not bring it,” Konur said, cleaning his own sword before sheathing it and reducing it to the size of a small dagger. “He was as like to have died in one of the mortal’s own wars, and for a far lesser purpose.”

  Biting back a sharp retort, Mist got to her feet. “What about your people?”

  “Only the one is injured, and not severely. Our healer sees to the mortals.” He concealed the dagger in his jacket—the Lord of the Alfar still looked bizarre to Mist in his very ordinary human clothes—and glanced up at the lightening sky. “We must go as soon as they are able to travel.”

  Mist followed his gaze, clenching her fingers around Kettlingr’s hilt. Konur touched her shoulder.

  “You are hurt,” he said.

  She glanced at her bloodied sleeve. “I can’t even feel it.”

  “You will.”

  Yeah, she thought. It’s always afterward, isn’t it? Pain, grief, guilt. Regular as clockwork.

  “Why don’t you ever sweat?” she asked Konur, pretending she hadn’t heard him. “Too good for such distasteful bodily functions?”

  “We try to avoid them as strenuously as possible,” he said, mockingly grave. Like Dainn had been.

  Fighting the pull of memory, Mist went to check on the two injured mortals. The man was only half-conscious, but the young woman managed to smile at her with something disturbingly like hero-worship in her eyes. It was an embarrassing cult of personality Mist knew was fed by the unwanted glamour she had inherited from her goddess-mother Freya.

  But without the magic of attraction, love and lust, she might not have mortal allies at all. Gods knew that Freya hadn’t done anything to pull in ground troops.

  And neither have you, Mist thought, wielding guilt against revulsion as she ha
d done so many times in the past. Revulsion kept on winning, but she knew it was only a matter of time before—

  “Mist!”

  She jerked out of her thoughts to find the young woman pointing toward the mouth of the alley. A lone Jotunn stood there, ax in hand, as if he were about to challenge her to single combat. She drew Kettlingr and jumped to her feet, rage warring with sense.

  Sense was winning when she finally noticed the Jotunn’s face.

  He looked like Svardkell. Svardkell, the Jotunn father she had never had the chance to know. The one she’d killed, believing he was Loki’s spy.

  Before she could think, she was running toward the street. The Jotunn waited until she was almost within reach, and then spun and ran north toward Bush Street. Mist had nearly caught up with him when she heard the squeal of tires and the whooping of a siren.

  A moment later the sleek black-and-white Interceptor was nearly on top of her, and someone was shouting at her to put the weapon down. She lowered Kettlingr and turned to face the cops. Both had their pistols trained on her, and one was already calling for backup.

  Mist weighed her options. If these were Loki’s men, they wouldn’t be able to shoot her. But there was a loophole in the “no modern weapons” rule Freya and Loki had agreed to in their original “game,” and still abided by; “unaffiliated” mortals weren’t bound by it, and there were still a few good cops who hadn’t been caught in the web Loki had been industriously spinning around the city.

  Those good cops were fighting an uphill battle against a system that used their honesty against them, turning them into unsuspecting weapons, and Mist didn’t want innocent blood on her hands. A passing car had slowed down to rubberneck, and a couple of teenagers had stopped to stare, seemingly unconcerned that they might be drawn into a violent confrontation.

  This could get bad very fast.

  “Put down the weapon!” one of the cops yelled. “Hands behind your head!”

  Slowly and carefully, Mist laid Kettlingr on the sidewalk and raised her hands. “It’s all right,” she said. “I won’t—”