Black Ice Page 8

  “Understandable,” he said, his expression clearing. “I mean, with the quake and all. But it wouldn’t hurt to let me try, would it?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  To her relief, he let the matter drop. “You got Bryn’s bikers running patrols?” he asked.

  Mist blew out a puff of air, wishing she could be with the others instead of handling important but very frustrating administrative matters—which she hoped she could soon foist off on somebody else—and trying to rest up for the next time she’d have to use major magic. Which could be any time at all.

  “Always,” she said.How’s Dainn?”

  He had reason to ask. Vali had been the only one to see the blood-soaked elf after he’d helped take down the three Jotunar during the gym attack … and just before Dainn had charged off to kill the giants’ master. She was pretty sure that Vali and Dainn hadn’t spoken much, if at all, since she and Dainn had returned from the fight with Loki.

  “He’s not here,” she said. “I sent him out shopping.” “You must think he’s pretty well under control, then.”

  “He has some work to do, but he’ll manage.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Vali stood aside to let her precede him into the kitchen. “I’ve got some stuff to show you, if you’ve got the time.”

  “Stuff?”

  His ruddy face broke into a wide grin. “Come on. This shouldn’t take too long.” He clumped into the back hall and squeezed ahead of her through the door to the computer room, dropping into the chair in front of the largest monitor. The room was filled to the rafters with a half-dozen other servers and peripherals and equipment Mist didn’t recognize. She could hardly believe it had once been “Eric’s” office.

  “You asked if I could combine magic with computer technology,” Vali said, his thick fingers dancing with surprising agility across the keyboard. “I figured out something I think will be very useful.”

  Mist stood behind him, resting her hand on the back of the chair, as the display on the screen changed from one incomprehensible series of letters and numbers to another. The only thing she recognized was an occasional Rune scattered among the other symbols. Runes that didn’t appear on any normal keyboard.

  “You see?” he said, triumph in his deep voice. “Pretty good, huh?”

  Feeling more than a little foolish, Mist leaned closer. “I’m sure it’s great, Val, but I have no idea what you’re showing me.”

  He blushed. “Oh. Sorry. The important thing you have to know is that I’ve written a few programs using Galdr that will make our search for your Sisters a lot easier. One of them”—he pointed at the screen—“runs all the database queries faster than the best mortal-made programs. This one”-he switched to another screen of gibberish—“breaks into systems the most skilled hackers have never been able to bust open. And this—” He rolled his chair to another, slightly smaller monitor and pressed a key. “This is my crowning achievement. It tells me whenever anyone else is accessing the same databases I am within a twenty-four-hour period.” He rocked back in his chair and grinned up at Mist. “It’s specifically set up to detect specific search parameters and patterns, and I’ve keyed the spell to detect Loki’s influence. That means we’ll get a warning if Loki is finding the same information we are.”

  “So we’ll know if he locates one of my Sisters or the Treasures around the same time we do, or maybe even before.”

  “Unless I’ve really messed up somewhere.”

  Mist slapped his shoulder. “Great work, Val. I knew you could do it.”

  Every freckle splashed across Vali’s cheeks and nose stood out like a galaxy of stars against a clear night sky. “Thanks, Mist,” he said. “You made me believe I could.” He grinned. “Haven’t touched a drop since I set up here.”

  “That’s because you know how much could depend on you and your skill.”

  “I’ll need some relief eventually, if one of these Einherjar knows anything about computers.”

  “Or someone else might come along,” Mist said. Hopefully without her “help.”

  He studied her with a frown that produced impressive chasms in his pale, broad forehead. “Speaking of relief,” he said, “have you had any sleep at all since those bikers showed up?”

  “I’ve already been scolded about that,” Mist said wryly, remembering what Dainn had said of ancient Roman generals. “Good thing we aren’t mortal, isn’t it?”

  “If we were,” Vali said, “maybe we could go on pretending this isn’t happening.”

  “Until it all came crashing down on our heads.”

  She turned to go. Vali nearly knocked her over in his haste to stop her.

  “Shit,” he said. “All this, and I forgot to tell you the most important thing. I think I’ve found one of the Valkyrie.”

  7

  “Show me,” Mist said, following him back to the large monitor. He sat again and opened a screen that seemed to be some kind of unfamiliar e-mail software. There was a single message in the inbox, its sender and subject line composed of random letters and numbers.

  “Encrypted,” he said. “Whoever sent this knew what she was doing.”

  “Who?” Mist asked, pulling a second chair close to his.

  Vali clicked on the mouse, and suddenly the random letters and numbers resolved into real words.

  The e-mail was from someone called “PapaBull” at a domain Mist had never seen or heard of. The text read:

  “Message received.”

  Mist glanced at Vali. “What exactly does this have to do with my Sisters?” she asked.

  “Papa Bull,” Vali said. “That sounds like a male bovine with offspring, right?” he asked. “But it sounds a lot like something else, too.” He looked into Mist’s eyes. “Think. Does ‘papa’ mean more than just father?”

  “Not unless it’s a word in some language that means something else.” She snapped her fingers. “The Latin word for ‘pope.’”

  “Exactly. So let’s say the sender means pope, not father. What about ‘bull’?”

  “Bull,” Mist mused aloud. “Papal bull. Isn’t that some kind of charter?”

  “From the pope, marked at the end with a lead seal called a ‘bulla.’”

  “So you think Papa Bull is Papal Bulla? What does that tell us?”

  “There’s a sign that makes up part of the pope’s signature. Guess what it’s called.”

  “Vali…”

  “Rota.”

  Mist nearly fell out of her chair. Rota. As in the Valkyrie who had been assigned to guard and protect the Treasure Jarngreipr, the iron gauntlet that allowed Thor to handle and catch his hammer, Mjollnir.

  “I put a lot of feelers out there,” Vali said. “Careful ones, yeah, but the kind that someone who knew what to look for might pick up on.”

  “Could it be that easy?”

  “Something has to be,” Vali said. “Anyway, I’ll work on it. No sign that Loki’s caught on to this, but I’ll have to keep it under wraps as much as possible.”

  Mist slapped his shoulder again. Three out of twelve, she thought. Only two Treasures, yes, but it was a start.

  Except that Vali’s much less pleasant brother, Vidarr, had demanded Gungnir—Odin’s Spear, the Treasure the All-father had set Mist to guard—for his part in helping Mist find Loki when Dainn had gone to confront their enemy. And she still didn’t know what he planned to do with it.

  Either she could wait around for him to show up and demand the Spear, or she could go to Vid and make one more attempt to convince him that they had to work together. He hated Dainn, he hated Freya, and he hated her, but even Vidarr’s formidable temper couldn’t permanently erase his sense of self-preservation.

  He had to realize he couldn’t stand against Loki alone, especially if he knew that Ginnungagap and its inhabitants seemed to have dropped out of sight.

  Assuming that Freya hadn’t actually put in some kind of appearance that morning. And so far there was no indication that the “real”
one had.

  “Let me know if there are any new developments,” she said to Vali as the wolf and raven tattoo on her wrist began to burn again. Her mouth filled with the taste of metal, and she strode to the front door, rubbing her arms as if she could smooth down the tiny hairs that were standing up all over her body.

  This morning she hadn’t been able to endure binding her hair into its usual fat braid, and now her skin seemed too small for her bones. It felt as if she were touching a live wire and conducting some violent energy that had nowhere to go.

  Whatever she was sensing, she had a terrible feeling that it had to do with Loki. And Dainn still wasn’t back.

  She was almost tempted to go to Ryan to ask if he’d felt anything, but after what he’d been through, she didn’t have the heart for it.

  Reluctantly she returned to the closet off the gym to check on the captive Jotunn. He was still unconscious or asleep, but his heartbeat was steady and his breathing normal. His wound looked a little better under the makeshift dressing.

  She knelt beside him for a while, staring at his face and wondering why he seemed so familiar.

  Maybe because he tried to kill you, she thought. But she remained uneasy as she got to her feet, thinking about a shower and a fresh change of clothes. She wished she could shed all her doubts along with her dirty jeans and rumpled shirt.

  Get your ass back here, Dainn, or …

  Or she might never be able to trust her own judgment again.

  The drawbridge was only a mile and a half north of Dogpatch, and Loki knew he was inviting trouble.

  Not that he feared the prospect of an imminent contest with Mist. After their recent duel, she probably wouldn’t be expecting him to venture near the very border of her “territory.” If his original theory concerning her role as a mere conduit for Freya’s power held true, she would have no help from her mother now.

  Even if his new theory was correct, she’d have enough on her plate dealing with the Jotunn she’d taken prisoner. “Any luck, boss?” Hymir asked.

  Loki’s new chief of giants, appointed after Hrimgrimir’s unfortunate demise at Dainn’s hands, had proven to be quite malleable—as malleable as any Jotunn could be. Loki’s other escorts, Grer and Ide, kept a watchful eye on the surroundings, though at near-midnight China Basin was deserted. Choppy winds drove into Mission Creek from the Bay, clear of snow but cold enough that even Loki could feel it.

  He left Hymir’s question unanswered and focused his inner senses. It was faint, so very faint, but he was certain there was the smallest crack in the invisible wall that had descended between Midgard and the realms of the Void, a crack suggesting that the lack of communication with the Shadow-Realms was not a matter of Ginnungagap’s “disappearance” but of some obstruction. A crack he could widen and use to bring his allies into this world.

  He rubbed his hands together, raising a spark in the moist air, and examined the framework that would anchor his spell. Lefty O’Doul Bridge was hardly a significant landmark in San Francisco. But every metaphysical bridge between Midgard and Ginnungagap’s Shadow-Realms was somehow associated with a feature in the City’s landscape that connected one place to another, and this unprepossessing structure was the one that had drawn him.

  He opened his left hand, gathering into it the finest crystals of ice from the air and the earth surrounding the bridge. He closed his fist, and when he opened his fingers a tiny crystalline spider crouched on his palm, its legs like needles and its faceted body reflecting the moonlight like a diamond.

  Loki tossed it into the air, and it began to spin a webwork of ice strands as fine as sewing thread, firmly anchored to the trusses and deck of the bridge. Loki kept the web stable as the spider did its work, spreading his hands wide and chanting the Runes: Day, Water, the Wagon, each stave stretched until it, too, was no more than the width of a single hair. He tossed the attenuated staves toward the spider, who wove them into the filaments of ice, blocking the road and forming a structure that could have stopped an army of bulldozers in its tracks.

  When it was finished, the spider crouched in the center of the web, waiting silently. Loki closed his eyes, drawing again on the air and earth until every last particle of warmth was sucked into his hand. The already stunted grass in China Basin Park blackened and shriveled, and jagged cracks formed in the deck of the bridge, radiating outward from Loki’s feet like the warped spokes of a giant wheel.

  A flame leaped to life in Loki’s hand, dancing joyously. It was not the magic of the mother whose name he bore. He hated its source, but it was far too useful to him to reject. Shaping the flame into a sphere, he flung it at the center of the web.

  The spider exploded, sending shards of ice flying in every direction. The web caught fire, melting the ice outward from the tiny opening where the spider had lain. A hole was forming … an aperture that could be the beginning of—

  “Boss!”

  Hymir’s voice shattered Loki’s concentration. The flame went out, and the fragile strands of the web evaporated.

  Loki swung around, grew to match the Jotunn’s height and struck Hymir across the face. The giant fell back, eyes wide with shock. Loki was advancing on the giant again when he became aware of the reason for the Jotunn’s warning.

  A motorcycle was approaching at breakneck speed, its rider bent low over the handlebars. The Jotunn skidded to a stop, turning the bike in a half circle, and leaped from the seat.

  “My lord,” Haurr said, dipping his head, “a raven has come.”

  The image of Danny’s drawing sprang into Loki’s mind. “Where?” he demanded.

  “Heading this way,” Haurr said. “I followed it from headquarters, but I didn’t think I should get too near. There’s a woman who seems to be with it.”

  “Who?”

  “Mortal. I’ve never seen her before.”

  So. A most intriguing and dangerous mystery, the kind Loki savored.

  “Show me,” Loki said.

  Haurr and the other Jotunar ran for the nondescript but fast car Loki had procured for them while he mounted the bike. He watched the charcoal-colored sky as he rode, paralleling the car and finally allowing it to move ahead.

  He saw the bird before Hymir signaled from the window of the automobile—a black bird, filmy moonlight limning its feathers with silver and catching the obsidian sphere of its eye. It made no sound, but Loki knew it instantly.

  “Odin,” he breathed, gunning the engine to keep pace. Not the god, of course. That was impossible. But even as the raven winged overhead, the All-father’s magic painted the night sky like a jet’s contrail.

  If one of Odin’s messengers was here in Midgard, it had either come through at the same time Loki had first opened the bridges to this world, or one of the supposedly “closed” bridges was already functioning again. And if Freya was still alive and knew of this, she should be more than a little concerned. In fact, there might be a direct connection between her failure to retain her grip on her daughter and the raven’s sudden appearance.

  Loki laughed, giddy with excitement. Maybe he was putting the chariot before the cats, but he always enjoyed a little volte-face from time to time.

  He braked hard and brought the bike to a halt. The bird had banked north and seemed completely unaware of him. That might be his only advantage, for he had used most of his already-depleted energy.

  He lifted his hands skyward, feeling the pull of gravity as he drew on his magic once again. He had to reach very high to find ice in the air. His hands began to tremble as he drew it down, shaping a vast sphere with a binding of Merkstaves and flinging it after the bird as it streaked northward.

  The spell missed its mark. The sphere dissolved before it could make contact, and the raven flew on as if it had never felt the slightest disturbance in the air behind it.

  Perhaps it hadn’t, Loki thought. Perhaps, intent on some other goal, it had entirely overlooked his presence.

  And there was no sight of the mystery woman.

>   Loki waved at the car that had pulled up beside him. “Follow it,” he said.

  “Mist.”

  Dainn had come up so quietly on the sidewalk that she hadn’t heard him at all. He was carrying a Macy’s shopping bag, one straw handle half torn off, and looked very different from the last time she’d seen him. His taste in mortal garments ran to rather un-elflike black and deep, muted tones: at the moment he was wearing a dark aubergine shirt, open at the neck, and black jeans that emphasized his height and his lean but well-developed physique.

  He was also sweating heavily, his black hair plastered to his head, his pale face flushed, his breathing harsh and rapid. Plumes of condensation obscured his features.

  “What’s happened?” she asked in alarm, dragging him toward the front door. “Are you all right?”

  “If you fear the beast,” he said hoarsely, “you need not. It is quiet.”

  “Then where have you been?”

  “I have seen a raven.”

  She stared at him, trying to make sense of his statement. “A raven?”

  “Has Ryan spoken to you?”

  “No. I tried to talk to him again after he refused to see Tashiro, but he wouldn’t speak to me.”

  “Have you been aware of anything different within the past several hours?”

  Mist scanned the area from the defunct factories and warehouses to the empty street and the area around the loft. “What are you getting at?”

  He dropped the bag on the pavement. “How many ravens live in this city?” he asked.

  She knew that ravens didn’t make a habit of flying around big cities like San Francisco, unless one had blown in on a stiff wind from across the bay. And even then …

  Her tattoo nipped at her wrist, and suddenly it became dreadfully, strikingly clear. “It rode on magic,” Dainn said. “I felt it when I was downtown. It was moving east then, and one of Loki’s Jotunar was pursuing it.”

  Mist struggled against the urge to sit down right on the icy sidewalk. “You followed it, too?”

  “I tracked it on foot, but I did not see it or the Jotunn again. I was unable to determine where it was bound, so I came here to inform you.”