Black Ice

by Susan Krinard

  “Freya,” he said, slowly coming back to himself. “She was here. But she wasn’t.”

  “Odin’s balls, what does that mean?”

  “Did she speak to you?”

  “No,” Mist said, wishing she could shake him. “What are you trying to say? That she wasn’t real?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You sure as Hel acted like she was. You felt her touch you?”

  He rubbed his arm slowly. “Yes.”

  “But she ignored me completely. What in gentle Baldr’s name did we just see and hear?”

  He wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Again, I—”

  “She called you a traitor,” Mist said. “She said that you’d failed in something you were supposed to do, and there was no hope for you.”

  “I don’t remember,” he said, setting his jaw.

  “You betrayed the gods,” she said, “but what did you fail to do?” His blank expression didn’t change. “You have no idea what she—whatever she was—meant by all this?”

  “No.”

  “Fy faen,” Mist swore. She had that all-too-familiar feeling that he was holding something back.

  “Did you feel anything else, any physical sensations while she was talking to you?” she asked.

  He flushed. Seeing him turn red was a somewhat novel experience. She had a feeling that she knew what had caused it, and it wasn’t any kind of light.

  “If it wasn’t just an illusion,” she said, “maybe Freya’s found a way to project part of herself to Midgard again, like she did at Loki’s apartment. You should be able to reach her if you call her again, right?”

  “I am as interested in finding the source of this … manifestation as you are,” he said.

  “Then you really think she might not have been real?”

  His shoulders slumped, and she knew she wasn’t going to get anything more out of him now. “Maybe things will seem clearer once you’ve had some sleep,” she said, scooting her chair back from the table. “I’m going up to talk to the kids. I don’t want to push Ryan, but he did see something.”

  Dainn met her gaze, a hint of real panic in his eyes. It was gone an instant later.

  “It would be best to keep him as quiet as possible,” the elf said. “Let me think on this before you question him. I will look after the young mortals for now.”

  “If you’re okay.”

  “Yes.”

  Mist rolled her aching neck in a slow circle. “Good. I need to take Bryn on a quick tour of the area. She and the Einherjar need to know what to watch out for. But keep your cell phone with you, okay? Just in case something like this happens again while I’m out.”

  He pulled the jar of peanuts toward him and opened the jar. “As you say.”

  “And I meant to tell you—I’ve left a message for Tashiro. He may be coming over sometime today. Keep it under control, okay?”

  “Yes,” Dainn said, clearly none too thrilled at the prospect of seeing the lawyer again. But as long as he didn’t let his dislike of Koji Tashiro spill over into something more dangerous, she could relegate it to the list of secondary problems she just didn’t have the time or energy to handle.

  She started into the hall, relieved that she wasn’t going to have to deal with any more arguments. She didn’t even make it to the door.

  “Mist.”

  “Curse it, Dainn,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “I have to—”

  “If this were the time of the Roman Empire,” Dainn said softly, “and you were the victorious general of a great military campaign, I would stand behind you on your chariot and proclaim, ‘Remember that thou art mortal.’ But since you are not mortal, I would remind you that you are not yet a god.”

  The Runes glittered in midair, ice rimmed with fire, dancing above Loki’s open palms. Again the ice cracked, and the burst of heat singed Loki’s hands. He swore and shook out his fingers, cursing with such force that a tumbler on his bar counter shattered, slivers and chunks of glass flying outward to strike the cabinets, ceiling, and wall.

  It was true that, after yesterday’s battle with Mist and Dainn, he was far from possessing his usual capacity for magic. The experience had been less than satisfying—ending, more or less, in a draw, after the usual taunts and threats from Freya.

  With a grunt of annoyance, Loki lay on the couch with his feet up on the armrest and replayed the battle for the hundredth time. Of course it hadn’t started with Freya. Mist had come to him alone, and in the beginning she had revealed abilities that, at first, had seemed to be entirely her own. She had made use of the elements, of the moon and sun, of fire and water. In every way she had seemed astonishingly adept, wielding her magic as if she had absorbed not only her mother’s skill, but something considerably more dangerous … and ancient.

  But when Freya had arrived—and there had been no mistaking her arrival, or her assumption of Mist’s body—Loki had believed that the Lady finally intended to take full possession of her daughter’s flesh, mind and soul.

  He had assumed that when she had left with Dainn, believing she’d put Loki in his place, she had succeeded. But his spies had quickly disabused him of that notion, and now Freya seemed to have vanished. Along with all access to Ginnungagap.The reason for the Lady’s disappearance, and how Mist had escaped her, evaded Loki for the time being. Dainn almost certainly had something to do with it.

  If so, Loki thought, her next meeting with the elf was bound to be interesting, to say the least. But Loki very much doubted the Lady’s hint that she’d closed the bridges herself. She would surely have had to use her full share of the Eitr—the very substance of life itself—to achieve such a goal. And she wouldn’t be so reckless.

  Playing with the stop-watch on his Rolex Cosmograph, Loki reminded himself that he had certainly drawn the correct conclusion. There must have been a “glitch” in the pathways between the Void and Midgard that Freya had chosen to claim as her own, deliberate work. And while he had been unable to gain any sense of Jotunheim’s Shadow-realm beyond the veil that separated it and the other realms from Earth, he wasn’t prepared to believe that his allies were beyond his reach.

  As long as the Lady stayed out of the picture, the penalties he had expected to pay for breaking the rules of their “game” for possession of Midgard could be ignored with impunity. In fact, as far as he was concerned, the game was over. He had his current crop of fifty or so Jotunar, and Mist’s allies were badly outnumbered.

  But Mist herself …

  Loki stretched to work the dull aches out of his body. Even though she had displayed remarkable potential, it was quite possible that she still relied on her mother’s proximity to work magic of any real significance. That was something Loki intended to find out as soon as a convenient and advantageous opportunity presented itself.

  Perhaps then he would learn how she’d escaped her mother’s fatal embrace, and discover if Dainn had finally confessed the truth to his new lady-love.

  Curling his lip in disgust, Loki got up and went to the bar, clearing away broken glass with a spell that reduced the shards to atoms that fell harmlessly to the floor. He glanced toward the panoramic window with its view of the busy street below, taking note of the weather. The snow had been heavy all night, gradually lessening as the morning advanced; weak sunlight struggled to part the sullen clouds without much success as the city’s inhabitants battled their fellow Yuletide shoppers for the most coveted toys, objects of desire both for adults and their mewling offspring.

  Loki had no use for mortal holidays. But at this time, when the nights were longest and the barriers between worlds were thin as a butterfly’s wings, his efforts to locate and reopen the bridges would surely grow ever more effective with each passing hour.

  Filling his glass with brandy, Loki called up another pleasant image, remembering how he’d had Dainn in his power—Dainn, who had been weak and almost helpless after he’d revealed his “real” beast, the very physic
al monster he could barely control. If he’d kept that particular aspect of his “problem” from Mist, which seemed likely, Dainn would have to be extraordinarily careful.

  And that would make him weaker still, even if he had managed to break Freya’s hold on her daughter.

  Loki laughed at his own conceit, which he very seldom had cause to do. Whatever he might want to believe, he knew very well that Dainn was no lightweight. He was thoroughly, utterly dangerous. And as for the blood-oath he had made with Loki …

  Loki closed his fist over his aching palm, where the deep slash had yet to heal. He had promised to leave Mist and her allies alone as long as they remained with a given distance of her loft, but Dainn certainly wouldn’t keep his end of the agreement now, if he had ever intended to do so.

  Tipping the glass over, Loki held the liquid suspended upside-down. Curse Dainn and his calm “You drink too much.” Loki couldn’t get those foolish words out of his mind any more than he could forget the feel of Dainn’s body against his.

  He turned the glass right-side up again and set it down carefully. Closing his eyes, he licked the wound as a cat laps up cream. Their blood had intermingled, palm to palm, heart to heart. In spite of the battle and bloodshed, in spite of Loki’s treatment of the elf, in spite of the beast, something very powerful still bound them together.

  Someone knocked on the door connecting the antechamber with Loki’s living room, interrupting his revived satisfaction. Loki poured himself a fresh drink.

  “Come,” he said.

  The Jotunn—Grer, one of his less intelligent minions, but sufficiently functional in his work—stepped into the room and bowed. Loki smiled sourly. Since his former chief, Hrimgrimir, and his two cronies had died at Dainn’s hands, the others had been somewhat more respectful of their master. They knew they might not survive without his protection. And he wasn’t about to let them forget it.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “You requested regular reports, my lord,” Grer said in an apologetic tone that did nothing to mitigate Loki’s annoyance.

  “Get on with it,” he snapped.

  “Nothing new since the other Valkyrie appeared at Mist’s loft with her mortal followers.”

  Bryn, Mist’s erstwhile companion in those ancient times when they had ridden together in Asgard. But the Valkyrie had arrived without the Treasure she was supposed to have guarded for the Aesir, Freya’s Falcon Cloak.

  Why she had left it behind, or what had become of it, remained to be seen. “Nothing of this young mortal, this Ryan Starling, that Hrimgrimir thought so important?” Loki asked.

  “He has not left the house since he and the girl were seen with the Valkyrie and Vali Odin’s-son yesterday outside the loft.”

  Loki shrugged. Hrimgrimir had told him little about how he’d found the boy or why he considered the mortal of such value, but this Ryan couldn’t be worth pursuing if he’d had so little impact on the game.

  “Are you ready to deploy my little distraction?” he asked Grer.

  “Yes, my lord. He is ready.”

  Loki imagined the chaos said distraction might cause. The spy might not harm Mist unduly, but she would be forced to waste whatever magical energy she had at her disposal just to defend herself. And to kill him, of course. The irony of the situation greatly appealed to what others so dismissively referred to as Loki’s sense of “mischief.”

  Such an inadequate, petty word.

  “You will observe carefully without exposing yourself and report the results to me. In detail.”

  “Understood, my lord.”

  Loki dismissed Grer with a flick of his fingers, set down his glass, and strode to his private elevator. It glided past each of the lower six stories without stopping, coming to a gentle rest at the basement—one not even San Francisco’s famed earthquakes could disturb.

  The Jotunar posted outside the short corridor stepped aside, and Loki sketched a few Runes over the heavily warded and very thick steel door. It opened on silent hinges. He continued to the door at the end of the corridor and opened it as well, using spells that, like encrypted passwords in a secret government facility, changed every time he visited.

  The room behind it was nearly bare save for a small child’s bed, a chest of drawers, a bed table, and a comfortably padded chair for the nurse. Various toys and equipment, including what the mortals called a “squeeze machine,” were neatly stacked against the wall or piled in a large wooden box.

  As usual, the boy sat cross-legged on the bedspread, rocking gently forward and back, forward and back, staring at the wall with no expression on his apparently ten-year-old face. His nurse rose from her chair as Loki entered, her gaze carefully averted.

  “How is he?” Loki asked as he approached the bed.

  “No change, Mr. Landvik,” the woman said, her voice cracking with the nervousness she tried so hard to conceal from him.

  “But you look worried, Miss Jones,” Loki said, cocking his head. “Have you some problem to report?”

  “No. No.” She swallowed and looked up. “He is … quiet. Sometimes I can get him to play, but—”

  “I demand nothing more of you than that you see to his basic needs and provide him with stimulation when he seems to require it. I do not expect you to perform miracles.”

  He didn’t wait to see her face crumple with abject relief. He continued to the bed and sat in the chair beside it.

  The boy gave no sign that he recognized Loki. He didn’t even look at Loki’s face. He simply rocked and rocked, sometimes making small, unintelligible sounds as if he saw or heard something or someone beyond the scope of Loki’s senses. And yet Loki knew there was powerful magic locked inside the boy’s soul, with limits he could only begin to guess at.

  Just as he could only seem to flounder about trying to get the child to do what he wanted.

  Aware that the boy might feel his frustration, Loki suppressed his emotions. There had been a time, in Ginnungagap, when Danny had been more responsive. He had always been reserved and quiet, strange and sometimes incomprehensible. But he had also helped locate the bridges that would have allowed Loki and his Jotunar to reach Midgard before any of the Aesir, including Freya, could manifest physical form and escape the Void. Would have, Loki thought with a grimace. Freya had discovered the bridges before he could make his move, and so he’d had to agree to the game and the rules he and the Lady had set between them.

  As far as he knew, the Lady was ignorant of Danny’s abilities. She knew the boy existed; when she and Loki had met again in Ginnungagap, Danny had been with him. But merely knowing Loki had a son didn’t give her much to go on, and her ignorance did Loki little good now that Danny would no longer speak to him in even the simplest words. His efforts to pierce the barrier between them had not only failed but also driven the boy deeper into himself.

  “Danny,” he said softly. “Do you hear me?”

  3

  The boy didn’t react. Loki sighed and tried again. “I need your assistance. There are people who would very much like to hurt both of us, and you can help me stop them.”

  Blank eyes flickered toward Loki and then focused inward with a finality Loki recognized all too well. He glanced over his shoulder at the wall, where Miss Jones had pinned up several of the boy’s drawings on a blackboard.

  Whatever his limitations in verbal communication, Danny could express himself very well with crayons. Scrawled on various pieces of drawing paper were the expected images of Loki and Miss Jones and even Danny … or the way he apparently saw himself, with lines radiating out from around the crude shape of a small boy, hands flung up as if to cast or repel magic.

  That meant he was at least partially aware of his own nature, as well as the presence of the two people he saw every day. But the other images were more interesting: Jormungandr, Fenrir, and Hel—massive serpent, monster wolf, and goddess of the dead, respectively—Danny’s half-siblings, from whom Loki had kept Danny carefully separated while they inhabited the
Void. Even Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged steed and another of Loki’s offspring, appeared in one of the drawings.

  Danny had never seen any of them, and Loki assumed that somehow he had plucked those images out of his parent’s mind. Such a capability surprised Loki not at all.

  But there were also sketches of Freya and figures Loki thought might be elves. Had they, too, come out of Loki’s mind? Did Danny recognize them as his parent’s enemies?

  Loki reached out to touch the soft wisps of reddish-blond hair that framed the boy’s face. Not quite his mother’s, but doubtless it would darken with time. Never as dark as his father’s, of course.

  The thought of revealing the child to his other parent was a pleasure Loki intended to savor as long as he could. It had to be delayed until just the right moment … the moment when the shock would give Loki a needful advantage.

  Shaking his head, Loki cupped the child’s soft cheek. “Centuries we were prisoners in Ginnungagap,” he said softly, “and no more than ten years to you. But you were kept safe. And I promise you will continue to be so. My son.”

  He was utterly unprepared when Danny’s eyes cleared and focused on his. The boy made a peculiar gesture with one hand.

  “He wants his paper and crayons,” Miss Jones said, her voice stronger and more assured than before.

  “Then give them to him,” Loki said. He studied Danny’s face as Miss Jones provided the boy with a lap desk, a large sheet of white paper, and a small box of crayons. Without hesitation, Danny selected several crayons and laid them out on the paper. He began to draw, an outline in black, which he quickly filled with the same color.

  There was no mistaking the image. The raven’s beak was open, its wings spread as if it were about to launch itself heavenward. Danny chose a blue crayon and scribbled in the sky, filling it with swirls of darker blues and purples as in a Van Gogh painting.

  “Here,” Danny said distinctly. And then, just as suddenly as he had come awake, Danny lost interest. He released the paper. It drifted gently to the floor, and Miss Jones picked it up.