Battlestorm Read online

  Mist closed her eyes as the magic raced through her body, carrying her consciousness onto a higher plane. She felt neither fear nor anger, only a sense of complete freedom. Her purpose was clear.

  And it was so easy. She could feel each element, drawn long ago from the earth, striving to reach her as the beast crashed onto its side, its dark fur streaked with pale dust. A crack formed under it, gaping like toothless jaws.

  Like the street had cracked when Dainn fought Jormungandr. When the earth had almost swallowed him alive.

  This time, he wouldn’t survive.

  And what becomes of those who will die when he does?

  Her mind filled with images of fleeing mortals and crushed bodies, flattened under rubble from fallen walls and ceilings. Danny, blood leaking from his mouth, sightless eyes staring in a broken face.

  Mist came back to herself just in time. She struggled to undo the spell, reversing the ancient magic, pushing the molecules back into place. The entire garage groaned, and Mist focused all her power on restoring its structural integrity.

  The shaking stopped. The car alarms fell silent. Nothing moved except the beast, whose chest rose and fell violently as it coughed up powdered concrete.

  Trembling with the effort, Mist got to her feet. She’d almost lost it. She’d snatched at the ancient magic, nearly killing Dainn—and almost destroying the entire garage along with him. Hundreds of lives at stake, because she had let herself …

  The beast heaved itself to his feet and faced her, unfazed.

  “Freya failed,” it said.

  “I’m not Freya!” She moved toward it, hands spread wide. “You know me, Dainn!”

  Its ears flattened tight to its broad skull. “Kill Danny,” it rasped.

  “No. You won’t hurt him.” She sucked in a breath. “You’ve lost yourself. You’re sick, Dainn. Like you were on the steppes.”

  The big body flinched, and the beast threw back its head like a wolf about to howl. “You kill him,” it snarled. “You.”

  And then she finally understood. The beast hadn’t come to kill Danny. It had seen what appeared to be the Lady preparing to attack the boy.

  Because Loki set it up, Mist thought. Using his own son. Sending Danny to make Mist think that the beast might be after him, then giving Dainn reason to believe that Freya would kill the boy herself.

  But if Loki had known that Mist was posing as her mother from the very beginning …

  Timing, Mist thought. It would have had to be perfect. Dainn had to believe that Mist was Freya, and he had to be here at the right moment to see her as a direct threat to the boy.

  But it wasn’t Danny standing here a few moments ago, she thought, cursing her own carelessness. It had been illusion and a very tangible one. Loki’s illusion.

  Had she ever seen the real Danny at all?

  Of one thing she was certain: Loki mustn’t have believed that Dainn could kill her, or that she could kill Dainn. Or would want to.

  He was half right.

  Why does Loki want us to fight? Why here, and now?

  “Dainn!” she said, backing away. “Listen to me. Loki’s played a trick on us. I never intended to—”

  With another roar, Dainn came at her. He was slower than before, and she jumped out of his path.

  “I tried to kill you with the ancient magic,” she said, circling the beast carefully. “I didn’t even think about it, and I could have brought this entire garage down. If you keep pushing me, I might do it again.” She ducked a sweep of its heavy foreleg. “Loki made himself look like Danny at exactly the moment you came in. I was trying to stop myself.”

  The beast paused in midstride, panting. There was a flicker of confusion in his eyes.

  “She’s lying!” Danny’s voice shrieked.

  Dainn turned his head toward the voice. Mist raced across the concrete to grab the reinforced car door she’d used during her fight with Loki.

  “That isn’t Danny!” she shouted. “Use your brain, Dainn! Listen to your instincts!”

  But he wasn’t listening. He leaped at her, and she swung the car door out, slamming it against him. Claws raked through her shield, severing Runes and metal at once. She was momentarily startled, until she remembered how Dainn, in beast form, had used some kind of bizarre magic to help drive Jormungandr back into the earth, and how he had healed Ryan of the wounds he himself had made.

  Maybe he could kill her.

  “That’s enough,” she snapped, pushing back with all her strength. “You betrayed me, Dainn. You betrayed all of us by going to Loki.” She caught her breath. “Are you so far gone that you’ve forgotten everything we did together, everything we fought for? Everything in you that was ever sane or good?”

  This time she made an impression. He retreated a few steps and stood, swaying slightly, staring at her. The beast’s red irises deepened to elven indigo.

  “Mist!”

  Konur, somewhere across the garage. Mist didn’t risk looking away from Dainn. She didn’t dare move so much as an eyelash.

  “You know who I am, Dainn,” she said. “You know who you are. We both want to protect Danny. Loki is the enemy.”

  The beast shuddered. Mist thought she saw the heavy pelt begin to thin, the face to flatten, the posture to straighten.

  He believed her. He was changing back.

  Maybe there was a chance …

  Dainn swung around, still poised between beast and elf. Mist followed his stare. Konur stood near an exit sign, holding another man by the collar.

  Edvard. Edvard, the berserkr who had disappeared from the loft soon after he had confronted Dainn following Jormungandr’s defeat.

  Elf vanished, and the beast burst into a four-legged run. Mist caught a glimpse of Edvard’s pale, panicked face as Konur lifted him and swung the berserkr behind him.

  Mist knew Dainn wasn’t after the elf-lord. And so, apparently, did Konur.

  Remembering what she had done to the garage just minutes before, Mist hesitated. All you have to do is stop him, she thought. He can be reasoned with.

  But no spell would come. Her voice refused to sing the chants, her fingers to shape the Rune-staves. She was failing, just as she had at the protest.

  “Konur!” she shouted.

  The elf raised his hands. Mist could feel him searching for the nearest source of living nature, but as he reached through the concrete toward the earth, she realized that even the smallest shift in the ground could cause the garage’s structure to weaken again.

  “No, Konur!” she shouted. He lifted his head, Dainn prepared for a final jump, and a small figure popped into existence halfway between beast and elf.

  Dainn twisted in mid-leap, landing on his side inches away from Danny. The boy crouched beside him and laid his hand on the heaving chest.

  A violent shiver wracked the beast from nearly invisible tail to gaping mouth. Fur gave way to a rumpled suit, pointed muzzle to pale elven skin. Dainn splayed his hands against the floor and pushed himself up, pausing to cough and gag. His long hair was a tangled mess, gray with dust.

  By the time Mist reached him, Danny was gone again. Or Loki was. But would Laufeyson have tried to protect Konur and Edvard?

  What in Hel was Edvard doing here in the first place?

  Dainn climbed to his feet, twice losing his balance. He didn’t look at her, and Mist didn’t try to touch him. Konur watched him carefully, muscles tensed.

  “Stay where you are, Dainn,” Mist said. “We don’t need to fight anymore.”

  “Where is…” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “Where is Danny?”

  “If he was here, I don’t know. But I don’t think he was ever in any danger.” She kept her own voice neutral, neither accusing nor conciliatory. “Did Loki tell you that Freya planned to hurt Danny? Is that how he got you here?”

  He shook his head. “Danny did.”

  “Then he was probably Loki in disguise. He managed to create a physical manifestation, and it must have ta
ken all the magic he’s got to pull it off.”

  Showing no sign that he’d heard her, Dainn straightened and stared at Edvard, who continued to hide behind Konur.

  “Who is this man?” Konur asked Mist, tightening his grip on Edvard’s collar.

  “A berserkr who came with Bryn,” Mist said, keeping an eye on Dainn. “He offered to help Dainn when—”

  “Help,” Dainn spat.

  Mist flexed her fingers. “Dainn, it’s over. Whatever problem you have with Edvard—”

  “It isn’t over,” Dainn said. He glared at Edvard. “You betrayed me from the beginning. You knew all along that when the herb wore off, the beast would return.”

  “What herb?” Mist asked, painfully aware that she had no idea what elf and berserkr were talking about. “Where have you been, Edvard?”

  “I caught him running out of the garage,” Konur said. “I smelled Loki on him.”

  “You are working for Loki,” Dainn said, taking a step toward him.

  “It isn’t that simple,” Edvard said, his deep voice thin with fear.

  Dainn took another step. “No one here can protect you if you do not tell me the truth. Did you give the herb to Loki, so that he could control the beast?”

  Edvard swallowed several times. “He … fed you the herb with your meals, so the beast would stay quiet.”

  “But he stopped, did he not? And now you would turn me into a weapon for him. Was that always your plan?”

  “You went to Loki willingly. You must have known—”

  “My magic was gone. I was no threat to—”

  “To Danny?”

  Dainn froze, nostrils flaring, breath coming fast. “She told me to kill him.” He looked at Mist, tears in his eyes. “Listen to me. Freya is—”

  16

  The words stopped, and Dainn’s hands flew to his throat. Konur wore a look of intense concentration, and Mist knew that he had silenced Dainn, though she didn’t know how. Or why.

  “Let him finish, Konur,” she said. “He said something to me during the party, when he thought I was Freya. I want to know what he meant.”

  “What he says does not matter,” Konur said, his expression grim. “I know my own kind. Dainn is quite mad. His perception of the world has been warped through the eyes of the beast. He can destroy us with his lies.”

  Without warning, Dainn lunged at Konur. Fur sprouted from his body, covering and absorbing suit and elven flesh. Konur released Edvard and flung up his hands.

  Mist propelled herself after Dainn, jumped onto his back, and locked her arms around his neck. No matter how hard she squeezed, his pelt protected him. He bucked like a bronco, trying to throw her off.

  Her tattoo burned, and she remembered the bracelet. She tugged it off and, using forge-magic to enlarge it and reinforce the metal with Rune-staves of steel, created a collar large enough to fit around the beast’s neck. She snapped the collar into place, welded it shut with another forge spell, and pulled it tight … tight enough to impair his ability to breathe without actually strangling him.

  “Stop fighting,” she said, digging her fingers into the dense fur on the sides of his jaw. “Give it up. You’re not—”

  Dainn reared and spun in one motion. Her hands lost their grip on the beast’s fur, and she plummeted to the ground. Her sight dimmed, and she felt hot breath on her face.

  By the time she could see again, Dainn the elf was lying on the floor, the collar still around his neck, his cheek pressed to the concrete. His eyes were closed. She fell beside him and put her fingers to his throat.

  Alive. Breathing. He opened his eyes.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked, quickly withdrawing.

  His lips parted, but no sound emerged. He closed his eyes again, showing no inclination to move, let alone try to escape.

  Konur joined her, along with a half-dozen Alfar who had arrived sometime during the last struggle.

  “We must go,” Konur said.

  “Edvard?” Mist asked, getting to her feet.

  “Escaped. But that is of no importance now. Loki is gone, and though I erected a ward to discourage mortals from entering here, it will not last much longer. Considering the damage—”

  Mist scanned the garage, unable to hide a wince. She’d only destroyed two cars, but quite a few others had rolled away from their spaces and crashed into other vehicles.

  The greater problem was that the entire structure had probably been weakened, and she was going to have to find a way to report the problem to the proper authorities without becoming directly involved.

  “You cannot protect the mortals from such losses,” Konur said. “If Loki wins, they will lose everything.”

  How many times had Mist heard some variation on those words? How many times had she told herself?

  “Whatever Loki hoped to achieve by all this,” she said grimly, “he must have been happy with the result.”

  One of Konur’s Alfar spoke quietly to him in the Elvish tongue. “I am told that Freya has awakened,” Konur said to Mist, “and that she has gone to the place where Sleipnir is hidden.”

  Mist felt a strange combination of relief and unease. If Freya had left the loft, she must have regained not only her consciousness but control of her magic.

  “Do you know why she went there?” she asked. “She’s never shown any interest in Sleipnir before.”

  “It is not clear,” Konur said, after consulting with his aide again. “But apparently she was insistent that you should join her as soon as possible.”

  “Let me have your cell phone,” Mist said. “I’ll call her.”

  “I have tried,” Konur said. “I cannot reach her.”

  Mist blew out her breath. “Can you and the others handle Dainn?”

  “Is it safe to take him with us?” Konur asked, staring down at Dainn with icy hostility.

  “We’ve got no choice. Get him back to the loft in one piece, but do it quietly. The fewer who know about his return to camp, the better.”

  “As you wish,” Konur said, accepting her decision without any sign of reluctance. “Do we have your leave to do whatever is necessary to control him?”

  “As long as you don’t maim or kill him.”

  The anger in her own words shocked her, but she had felt herself slipping closer and closer to forgetting that Dainn was a traitor, both during the party and after the fight. Anger was the one sure way of fighting that kind of weakness.

  “Do whatever you have to do,” she said.

  “We will see that he is confined in such a way that he cannot escape or harm anyone.”

  Suddenly Dainn pushed himself up and got to his knees, the muscles of his face bunched with effort. His mouth and throat worked.

  “Are you keeping him silent?” she asked Konur.

  The elf-lord shrugged. “Perhaps the beast has stolen his tongue.”

  Or it’s the collar, Mist thought. It was snug around his neck, but it didn’t look tight enough to cut off his voice.

  Dainn reached for her, and a raw sound pushed out of his throat. Two of the Alfar grabbed him under the arms and pulled him to his feet, not gently. The others closed in around him.

  Mist didn’t look at him again. “I’m going to find a bike,” she said. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I find out what’s going on with Freya.”

  Konur nodded to his men, and they half-dragged, half-carried Dainn toward the exit. Mist began looking for a bike she could “borrow” to get her to Sleipnir’s hidden stable.

  Halfway along the aisle, she saw movement and instinctively dropped behind the nearest vehicle. The figure was barely visible, but she recognized the clean-shaven man as none other than Vidarr Odin’s-son.

  The minute she saw him, he vanished again.

  I did see him at the protest, she thought.

  He couldn’t be working for Loki now, but he had to factor into this somewhere. And chasing him down simply wasn’t an option.

  As she continued along the aisle, she could hea
r voices coming from the stairwell … mortals finally arriving to investigate the shaking and noise that must have carried over the entire block.

  To be on the safe side, Mist followed the ramp to the lower level. She could see no obvious signs of damage. In a few minutes she’d found a Kawasaki Vulcan, thrown her bare legs over the seat, and started it with a Bind-Rune shaped to fit in the lock.

  She used just a touch of the glamour to get past the toll booth and pulled into the street. At this hour, traffic was light, but the streets were clogged with the usual tourists, many of them returning to their hotels after visiting the junk-filled shops that had become fronts for underground clubs. The drug dealers were also out in force, along with young prostitutes whose heavy makeup couldn’t hide their despair.

  Mist forced herself to drive past them without stopping. Once she was on the freeway, she accelerated southbound toward Milpitas.

  Timing, Mist thought. Everything that’s happened tonight has hung on things occurring at exactly the right moment. For Loki.

  Leaning over the handlebars, Mist gripped the accelerator until her hands ached. The fifty-mile ride seemed more like five hundred, even at a speed well above the limit. She coaxed every bit of power out of the Vulcan, wishing her mechanical mount could fly like Sleipnir.

  * * *

  The Jotunar fell.

  A quick seeking spell had told Orn that Loki had left nearly two dozen frost giants to defend his mansion, most of them doubtless charged with guarding the boy. None of them, however, was prepared to face Orn’s magic, or his warriors.

  They had spent centuries in Midgard training for battle, keeping themselves fit and ready for Odin’s call, just as Mist and the Valkyrie had waited out the long years guarding the Treasures. Both warriors and women had hidden themselves among the mortals of Midgard, but the Valkyrie had never known they shared their adopted world with those whom they had once carried from the battlefields of Earth to the realm of the Aesir.

  The foremost of Orn’s Einherjar, Hrothgar, split his warriors into four groups, three to take on the rallying Jotunar and the fourth to look for the Treasures. Orn blackened the eyes of all the screens that watched the halls and chanted seeking spells. Loki’s mortal servants were discovered in various parts of the house, and Hrothgar compelled one of them to turn off all the other electronic devices while the rest were quickly confined in a large closet. Soon one of the other teams returned with several Jotunar, and it took Orn very little time to learn where the Hammer and Belt were hidden.