Black Ice

by Susan Krinard

  Smoke billowed out of the bedroom, shocking her into action. Her eyes stinging with tears, Anna got to the bedroom door just as the flames consumed her bed, leaping up to catch on the drapes. Orn snatched a beakful of her hair and virtually dragged her toward the window, tugging and tugging until she was standing right in front of it. She hardly felt the pain.

  “Run!” he cried. “Run!”

  Think, she told herself. Even if she’d only imagined the fire in the hall, her own apartment was burning. She had to call 911, if there were any emergency personnel available after the quake. She grabbed her cell phone from the kitchen counter, only to find that the phone had never recharged when she’d plugged it in. She snatched at the land line phone, the one she never used. All she heard was a busy signal.

  Dazed with shock, she staggered into the hall again. Nothing had changed. She sucked in a breath of clean air and leaned against her door. It was searing hot.

  Ms. Hudson stuck her head out the door of her apartment just down the hall. “Anna, is that you?” she asked, blinking her nearsighted eyes. “I thought I heard you yelling.”

  Anna stared at her. “Don’t you smell it?” she shouted.

  “Smell what?” Ms. Hudson said, wrinkling up her small nose. “Is something leaking? This damned earthquake is going to cost me a fortune.”

  Anna raced toward Ms. Hudson, who began to retreat into her apartment with an expression of alarm. Grabbing her wrist, Anna dragged her to her own door.

  “Don’t you feel it?” she said, pressing Ms. Hudson’s palm to her door. “My apartment is on fire!”

  Staring into Anna’s eyes with real fear, Ms. Hudson twisted her hand free and backed away. “You need help,” she said. “I’ll … I think I’ll just call for … an ambulance. Yes. Stay calm, Anna. I promise—”

  Anna dashed for the lobby door, Orn flying right behind her. Blinded by terror, she ran into the street, intent only on getting away and barely noticing the startled faces turning toward her. She could already hear the boots drumming on the pavement, the shriek of a whistle as the hunters tracked their prey.

  There were places she could hide. Safe places where no one would look. She clung to the shadows, her heart slamming under her ribs, and ran until she found the alley she was looking for.

  As long as they weren’t using dogs, she was safe. She dove under the thick pile of rubbish and found the small, hidden doorway beneath. She could just crawl through it by falling to her stomach. Orn squeezed in behind her, and together they huddled in the dark behind the false wall of the building as the hunters rushed obliviously by.

  Anna lost track of time. She had left her watch behind, but she knew several hours had passed since she’d escaped, and keeping on the move would be better than staying hidden indefinitely. She took a breath and stuck her head through the low doorway, surrounded by the stink of the rubbish. After a moment she crawled out, and Orn followed.

  It was well past curfew, and Anna couldn’t see anyone on the streets. The soldiers were gone. Shivering in the cold, she remained where she was, frozen by indecision.

  “Anna.”

  She didn’t recognize the voice, but she knew who it was. Orn settled on her shoulder, all glossy black feathers, arrow-shaped head, and pointed beak.

  That was when she realized everything she’d experienced since she’d left the apartment had been a dream like all the others, a flashback to a past not her own.

  Only one part had been real.

  “Anna,” Orn said. “Find Mist.”

  “Where?” she whispered.

  He spread his wings and began to fly.

  Dainn stood in front of the office building, staring up at the sixth floor while determined shoppers—unfazed by the recent disturbance—flowed around him, jamming the sidewalks and dodging small pieces of glass and rubble. Police were directing stalled traffic, the din of horns overwhelmed tinny music from storefronts, and snow was softening the edges of every surface, broken or otherwise. The sun had set some time ago, swiftly vanishing behind the taller buildings as if it couldn’t wait to abandon its fruitless attempts at bringing some measure of warmth to the world.

  His fingers tightening around the flimsy handles of the shopping bag, Dainn dropped his gaze to the men standing on either side of the building’s doorway. They looked quite ordinary, though one was smoking very close to the door in defiance of the citywide ban. They seemed not to notice Dainn at all.

  But they saw him. They knew him. And after a few moments they went inside, the smoker tossing his still-glowing butt on the sidewalk to be trampled underfoot.

  Dainn continued to wait. Loki didn’t come out, and neither did the Jotunn guards. They had no reason to fear his presence. He had been drawn here almost against his will … and Mist’s explicit instructions. Drawn by his need to understand Freya’s “appearance” in the loft that morning.

  He’d suggested at the time that “Freya” wasn’t quite real. Mist had theorized that the manifestation might have been Freya’s projection of herself, but Dainn knew that such had not been the case.

  He hadn’t told Mist that it could have been an illusion created by one who, for all his cleverness, should not have been able to perform such a feat. Created to hurt Dainn, and not in the physical sense. If Mist were to discover the meaning of the illusion’s accusations before Dainn was ready to explain, she would lose her ever-fragile trust in him when she needed him the most.

  And when will you be ready? he mocked himself. He knew that, in spite of the silence from the Void, the odds were great that Freya would return and the bridges reopen. He had told Mist that Loki had managed to “send” Freya away after their battle because she was not yet fully in the world, but it had been Dainn’s own act of desperation—a single kiss that had jarred the Lady out of Mist’s body. Or so it had seemed.

  He still had no clear idea of how the break had been achieved. He couldn’t grant himself the credit of having done it solely with his own magical skill, let alone sexual potency. But if at first he had deceived himself into believing that he might placate Freya and keep her away from Mist when the Lady did return, the incident in Mist’s kitchen had reminded him that Freya would surely condemn him for the traitor he was.

  A traitor to her, and to her foul plans for her daughter.

  He stared at the reflections of passing pedestrians in the windows, blurs of color that ran together like the senseless images of a dream. Loki had seen Freya possess Mist’s body, but he knew that Dainn had taken Mist’s part over his former mistress’s. Loki would have realized soon after the fight that Freya had not returned to the loft in her daughter’s shape.

  Laufeyson would never believe that Dainn could truly have harmed Freya, even if he accepted the possibility that Dainn had helped separate mother from daughter. But Loki could guess how Freya would respond when she met Dainn again. What words she would speak. How her fury would turn the scent of primroses to the stench of scorched earth.

  And Loki knew how it would look to Mist, still ignorant of her mother’s true intentions for her.

  Dainn’s breath of laughter condensed and was torn apart by the falling snow. Ironically enough, If Loki had hoped to open a new rift between Dainn and Mist, he hadn’t succeeded. Any suspicions Mist might have harbored had fallen prey to more immediate concerns. And still Dainn kept his silence, hoping that by discouraging Mist’s use of the ancient magic he could prevent Freya from finding a way back into her daughter’s soul.

  You deceive yourself, he thought, blinded by the delicate ice crystals that caught on his eyelashes. Though the ancient magic made Mist far more vulnerable, Freya might still find another, even more insidious method of attack.

  Mist didn’t want to be defended. But who among her allies knew enough of Freya’s weaknesses to stand against the lady if Mist turned against the only one who did?

  There were no answers here, on this street, in this eye of the storm … not unless he were mad enough to strike some new bargain with
Loki. And Dainn had not yet become quite that desperate.

  But that time might come very soon. If he could only eliminate the beast, he might be free to use the full extent of his magic to teach Mist in the way she must be taught in order to defend herself.

  He might as well wish that the conflagration that had burst inside him when he had faced “Freya’s” accusations had consumed him and allowed him to arise, perfected, from the ashes.

  Dainn was about to turn back for the loft when a person emerged from the door. A very small person, no more than nine or ten years of age, who carefully closed the door behind him and stood just outside it, dark eyes seemingly blind to the holiday pandemonium around him.

  He had taken no more than a single step onto the sidewalk before Dainn was sweeping him out of the path of oncoming pedestrian traffic. The boy clung to him with absolute trust, his small arms firm around Dainn’s neck.

  A shock passed through Dainn’s body. He stepped back into the comparative shelter of the slightly recessed doorway and set the child on his feet without releasing his grip on the boy’s thin shoulders.

  The child had come out of Loki’s new headquarters. He might have wandered into the building, separated from his parents, but Dainn could not imagine how such a thing could have occurred without the interference of the Jotunn guards. Who had mysteriously vanished.

  Turning his body into Dainn’s legs, the boy clutched at Dainn’s light jacket. There was a strangeness about his movements, as if he were manipulating a puppet rather than his own body. It occurred to Dainn that he might have been some kind of hostage—against what, Dainn had no way of guessing—but why, then, had he been permitted to leave, and so late in the evening?

  Taking the boy’s hand, Dainn guided him carefully along the periphery of the sidewalk as if they were a pair of fish in a school of thousands, looking for a safer place to speak. It was the boy who stopped him, his unexpectedly strong fingers tugging on Dainn’s with an insistence he couldn’t ignore.

  He pulled the child into another doorway and knelt to look into the boy’s expressionless face.

  “Papa,” he said in an oddly flat voice.

  “You’re looking for your father?” Dainn asked.

  “Papa,” the boy repeated, his gaze fixed on a point above Dainn’s shoulder.

  “Where did you last see your papa?” Dainn asked.

  There was no answer. It was if the boy hadn’t heard him. Nor did he hear Dainn’s other questions, no matter how simply they were phrased. Perhaps he had been so terrified of being separated from his father that he had withdrawn into himself, blocking all outside stimuli from his mind.

  Dainn scanned the area. He had only the sketchiest understanding of children, and surely the earthquake had separated many young mortals from their guardians. The wisest course of action would be to find a police officer, who could take charge of the boy and find his parent.

  And yet …

  Turning the boy’s face gently toward him, Dainn opened his senses. He couldn’t deny that there was something odd about the child besides his strange detachment.

  Dainn was considering how best to proceed when a woman came dashing up behind him and grabbed his arm.

  “Thank God!” she cried, panting heavily. “I thought he was lost!”

  Dainn turned to meet the woman’s dark, terrified gaze. Given the tone of her skin, so much deeper than the almost ghostly white of the boy’s, it was unlikely she was his mother, though certainly not impossible.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said, brushing at the snow on her uncovered black hair. “I thought he was with me, and then he just disappeared.” She looked at Dainn as if for the first time, and suspicion replaced the fear in her eyes. She held out a hand to the child, who ignored it.

  Acting purely on instinct, Dainn put his arm around the boy’s shoulders to keep him close. “He said he was looking for his father,” Dainn said. “Since he appeared to be lost, I was taking him to the police.”

  “The police?” The woman’s eyes widened as she searched the crowd. “No. Oh, no. His father asked me to take Danny out while he was conducting business, but he…” She pressed her hands to her mouth. “Oh God … he’ll be furious.”

  The woman wasn’t feigning her fear. Was her employer such a monster, or was she merely reacting as most mortals would to the near-loss of a child and the possibility of facing a kidnapper?

  “I was merely concerned for the boy,” Dainn said, seeking to ease her agitation. “I would never have done him harm.”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said, composing herself again. “Of course you wouldn’t. I’m grateful. But Danny’s autistic, you see, and I’m afraid all this will have been too much for him.”

  Dainn knew little of the disorder, but he was aware that it could afflict a mortal with difficulties in interpreting and interacting with the world and other people. It certainly explained the boy’s detached behavior in the midst of so much commotion.

  “I’ll take him home now,” the woman said. “Again, I’m very grateful, Mr.—”

  “Alfgrim,” he said.

  “Thank you so much.” She reached for the boy’s hand again. This time he took it, though once again he seemed to act less of his own volition than in response to some inaudible command.

  With strange reluctance, Dainn let them go. But some inexplicable compulsion drew him after them, and he made careful use of his magic to create a small spell that altered the flow of air around him, wreathing him in snowflakes and hiding him from her sight.

  When the woman reached the doorway to Loki’s building, the Jotunar were there again. They held the door open for her, and she and the boy walked through. Danny turned at the last instant, and his eyes, focused and clear, found Dainn’s through his camouflage.

  Dainn stood watching long after the boy had gone inside. Clearly the child was in some way connected with Loki. His father was presumably within the building as well, perhaps in Loki’s employ.

  And yet the boy’s penetration of Dainn’s camouflage suggested that he was more than a mere mortal’s child. If he belonged to a Jotunn, what giant would stand so high in Loki’s esteem that his offspring would merit his own nurse and such intense concern?

  None of the possibilities in Dainn’s mind gave him any comfort. The feeling that something was wrong persisted. The beast inside him growled, disturbed by Dainn’s unease.

  Or perhaps by something else entirely. As he began to turn away, Dainn felt a tug on his senses somewhere above him, an unmistakably magical one that smelled neither of Loki nor Jotunar nor Freya nor Mist but something utterly different.

  He looked skyward. Amid the white, rising between the upper stories of the buildings and bright decorations, flew a black bird. It appeared to be circling as if searching for something or someone, spiraling lower and then rising high again, ever moving east toward the bay.

  Dainn had not been in San Francisco long, but he knew that ravens were no common residents of this city. And this was no ordinary raven.

  He lowered his gaze to glance at the Jotunar across the street. Only one stood guard now, and Dainn had no doubt that he was not alone in sensing the intrusion of alien magic into Loki’s domain. If Loki was inside the building, this would surely draw him out.

  But Dainn hadn’t forgotten Mist’s warnings. As he was considering whether it would be best to wait or follow the raven, he heard the rumble of a motorcycle emerging from the alley next to the building.

  As the Jotunn rider pulled into the heavy traffic, Dainn saw him look upward. There was no question in Dainn’s mind that the giant had been sent out to follow the bird.

  Once again Dainn faced a choice. He could pursue the Jotunn and thus the bird, or report to Mist.

  He smiled grimly to himself. He continuously promised to respect Mist’s authority, and yet now he proposed to take on a problem of unknown significance and magnitude. Alone, and with less than absolute control over the darkness within him.

  Th
e Jotunn was weaving recklessly among the stalled vehicles, moving out of sight, and Dainn knew he would make little headway by boarding any of the immobilized streetcars, buses or taxis. Traveling on foot was the only option, and he was a very fast runner.

  Shedding his camouflage, he raced along the street just parallel to the sidewalk, the shopping bag swinging at his side. Horns honked and faces turned to watch him pass, but he quickly left each group of observers behind. The bird, too, had vanished by the time he reached Third Street.

  “Hey, Mist. You trying to freeze us to death?”

  She turned from the open doorway, glancing back at Vali. Odin’s big, bluff son was joking, of course; like her he was half Jotunn, and it would take a lot more than a mortal winter, no matter how unnatural, to make him feel even the slightest chill.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while,” she said—genuinely grateful, in spite of her seemingly endless store of worries, that she hadn’t had to contend with yet another player in this crazy battle circus. There were things to be said for the reclusive tendencies of a computer geek. Even a godly one.

  “Yeah,” he said, joining her as she closed the front door. “I know I’ve been pretty much holed up in the computer room since I started working for you. I guess a lot goes on outside my door I never seem to notice.” He cleared his throat.”I heard about that Jotunn who attacked you. You need any help?”

  “It’s under control,” Mist said, walking ahead of him into the hall. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “What’re you going to do with him?”

  “I don’t know yet. We need to find out why he attacked us.”

  “Maybe I can talk to him. He may be an enemy, but I’m still half Jotunn.”

  “So am I. It doesn’t seem to have helped.” She looked back at Vali. There was real hurt in his eyes.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m not in a great mood right now.”