Mist stiffened. “And what was it, Ryan?”
“That Dainn would die.”
“Ryan,” Mist said, “you have to believe … I never wanted to—”
“I knew it was a lie.”
Exhaling sharply, Mist got to her feet and locked her hands behind her back. “You lied about a vision?”
“I knew you had to have some kind of plan to save him. I just didn’t see how it would happen.” He almost smiled. “That was fantastic.”
“Odin didn’t think so,” she said. “But you’re right. Dainn is alive.” She squeezed her fingers together so tightly that they ached. “He really doesn’t know?”
Ryan shook his head. “I’m sure Odin was fooled. But he believes you’re dangerous.”
“He told you that?”
“It’s obvious. I don’t know why. You’re powerful, but so is he. Why he’d be so scared…”
“Did you tell him anything else?”
“That you had to be with him if he was going to win.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Please don’t ask me if that was a lie, too.”
She didn’t. “What did he say?” she asked.
“He at least pretended to believe me,” Ryan said. “But I think he’s going to watch you carefully during the next attack, and try to kill you if he doesn’t like what he sees.” He looked away. “I’m sorry, Mist.”
“I wish I could say I’m shocked,” Mist said, her body going numb, “but I’m not.”
“I think the fight’ll be a pretty big one,” Ryan said, “since he keeps trying to find out if I can tell him anything specific. I just go blank and pretend I’m in some kind of trance.”
“Do you remember saying something about trees and grass growing where cities now stand?”
“No,” Ryan said, blinking. “Did I say that?”
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Mist said. “Be very careful. If Odin ever finds out that you’ve deceived him…”
“He doesn’t scare me,” Ryan said, jerking up his chin. “I’ll stay with him as long as I think I might be able to do some good.”
“Promise me that you’ll get away from Odin if you feel any danger at all,” she said.
“I will.”
She took his face between her hands and kissed his forehead. He flushed to the roots of his hair.
“I’d better go, before Odin notices I’m gone.” He hesitated. “I haven’t found any sign of Gabi. She was never the same after Eir died. Do you know what happened to her, Mist?”
“I know she can take care of herself,” Mist said, hoping she wasn’t lying to him. “You’re still her best friend, and she wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. She’ll come back when she’s ready.”
Cupping his hand over the back of his neck, Ryan nodded slowly. “There’s just one more thing,” he said. “You need to believe that what Dainn is doing is right.”
He slipped out before she could ask for clarification. She sat on the bed and touched her stomach again, remembering the pain. And the joy.
“What Dainn is doing,” Ryan had said. Present tense. She didn’t know where Dainn had gone, or what he had planned to do. She only hoped he’d lay low, protect himself and the burden he carried.
But if Ryan had to warn her …
No, Dainn, she thought. Don’t do it.
She knew it was already too late.
* * *
“You’re alive,” Loki said. “How can you still be alive when our son is dead?”
The Jotunar burst into the room on Dainn’s heels, and Loki tossed them back with a blast of ice-wind. He spun to face Dainn, a killing spell already on his lips.
“Calm yourself,” Dainn said. He stood in the center of the well-furnished office, unmoving and unmoved, as if he had nothing of which to be ashamed, nothing to regret, nothing to grieve. “Danny is not dead.”
Carefully containing his emotions, Loki felt his way to the nearest armchair and fell into it, quickly pouring himself a glass of whatever alcoholic beverage stood on the side table. Dainn didn’t sit. His eyes were cold in a way Loki had never seen before.
“You drink too much,” Dainn said. The old, almost comforting words, but dangerously flat. Loki decided that provoking Dainn now might be a very bad idea. He put the glass down.
“You say Danny is alive,” he said. “They said you killed him.”
“They?” Dainn asked. “Your spies? Vali, perhaps?”
Loki bounced out of his seat. “Do not push me too far, my Dainn.”
Dainn inclined his head, all elvish dignity. Of the beast there was no sign. “I thought I killed him,” he said. “It was what Odin wished.”
“Odin,” Loki breathed. Exactly as he’d suspected.
But Dainn had admitted his own guilt.
“Where is he?” Loki demanded. “Where is my son?”
“Odin intended to make it appear as if you had some part in his death.”
The strength went out of Loki’s legs, and he fell back into the chair. “How?”
“I was with Danny and Sleipnir in his stable, convincing Sleipnir to surrender to Odin. Odin made very clear what he would do if I failed. But then a second Danny appeared, speaking with your voice, and the real Danny fell unconscious. I had just urged you to take Danny away when Odin appeared and cursed me again.”
“But I was never—”
“I did not realize then that Odin himself had posed as you in Danny’s form, while maintaining an independent simulacrum of his own shape.”
Loki banged his fist on the chair arm. “Odin hadn’t used that trick in Asgard for years before the Last Battle, but he posed as a parrot and raven for decades in Midgard. I shouldn’t be surprised that he’d use that magic again.”
“He depended upon the ignorance of his followers. No one else witnessed what occurred. I—” Dainn’s voice caught. “When his simulacrum cursed me, the beast … I attacked what I believed to be you. I tried to kill you.”
“I am amazed,” Loki said faintly, envisioning the scene with growing outrage.
“I thought you were dead until your body vanished, and I found Danny alone.” He turned his face away. “I attacked the simulacrum, and he disappeared. He had intended for me to kill Danny once Sleipnir was released to him. I believed I had succeeded.”
“Without injuring him?”
“I thought…” Dainn jerked up his head. “I thought my magic had killed him. But the situation was not what I believed.”
“Your magic?” Loki stalked toward him. “Where is Danny?”
Dainn met Loki’s gaze, his face neither cold nor warm, cruel nor gentle, but something precisely balanced between the two extremes.
“Danny is here,” Dainn said, touching his own chest. “He sojourned with Mist for a short while, but she returned him to me, and he showed me the truth.”
“He sojourned with—” Loki’s heart was not subject to what mortals referred to as a myocardial infarction, but it might as well have been. “He is inside you?”
“Only his body is gone.”
“And he … speaks to you?”
“He is a part of me.”
Loki collapsed. Dainn caught him and eased him into the chair. Loki shook him off and scraped at his cheeks.
“Is he fully aware?” he asked at last.
“Yes. He shares my mind.” Dainn closed his eyes. “When it seemed that the beast was in control, and that I had killed Danny with my magic, I had actually done something very different. I had unconsciously taken his soul, his … being into myself to save him from Odin. He was lost in my mind, but Mist found him again, and kept him until I understood what I must do.”
“And the beast?”
“It is in Mist’s keeping.”
“How is that possible?”
“After the … incident, Odin had me bound and condemned. I was in a state of shock, unaware that Danny’s spirit had joined with mine. Mist refused to accept that I would kill my son, even as the beast. She released me and entered my mi
nd, taking Danny and the beast from me, but I did not understand. I let Odin’s men catch me.”
“And she helped you escape again.”
“She was ordered to execute me at dawn this morning. She showed me that Danny still lived, and they … they arranged to set me free.”
“Mist and Danny?” Loki said with a short laugh. “Her loyalty is to the All-father.”
“Her loyalty is torn,” Dainn said, sadness in his voice. “She defied Odin for my sake, but she was careful not to let him see what she did. She does not yet know the part Odin played in Danny’s supposed death.”
“I warned her,” Loki said. “But would she listen to me?” He folded his arms across his chest. “How did she manage to get you away without exposing herself?”
“The storm,” Dainn said.
“You mean the freakish weather that cut the power to over half the city?”
“Mist was responsible.”
At least, Loki thought, he had grown beyond the tendency to experience unpleasant shocks where Mist’s abilities were concerned. “Odd,” he said, “how things turned out precisely the opposite of what you predicted would happen if I warned Mist of Freya’s intentions.”
“Even I underestimated her,” Dainn said, “but if Odin still does, it will not be for much longer. I do not know what proof Mist left of my death, but Odin is not entirely a fool.”
“And what did he think of the storm?”
“Eventually, he will guess it was her doing. Even now, I do not believe that he is fully aware of her capabilities.”
“Her hero has feet of clay. Whatever he expected to find in Mist, it is not what he discovered when he came to Midgard. Will you wait until he comes to fear her so much that he takes direct action against her?”
“A great deal has changed since he and the Einherjar arrived, and she was relieved of much of her authority among the allies. I was confined when she fought Hel at Odin’s side, but she experienced many shocks during the battle that troubled her greatly.” His gaze hardened. “How many did you send your daughter to kill, simply to provoke the All-father?”
“I didn’t…” Loki lowered his head and stared at Dainn from under his eyelashes. “I didn’t send her. She decided to freelance.”
“Then you cannot control your own children.”
“It won’t happen again.” Loki shook off his anger. “How did you get here?”
“We teleported.”
“Then if you can borrow Danny’s magic whenever you need it, you should be able to find a way to get Mist a message without putting Danny at risk. A manifestation, perhaps…”
“Danny holds his own spirit alive inside me,” Dainn said. “If he is too often distracted by such efforts, I do not know how long he can maintain his separate existence.”
“You mean he’ll just … disappear?”
“I know only what he fears. We must find another body, one that can contain his magic and has no soul of its own, and find a way to transfer his mind and spirit.”
“No such child exists!” Loki exclaimed.
“Perhaps. But neither I nor Danny will permit him to return by means of destroying another living being, as Freya would have done with Mist.”
“Why didn’t the boy seer tell you what Freya planned?”
Dainn’s hand snaked out and grabbed Loki by the neck. His grip was perfectly calculated to hurt but not damage, and Loki knew the slightest change in pressure would snap his spine.
As fast and deadly as the beast, Loki thought, but not the beast. This was something colder. And far more ancient.
“Why did you try to kill Ryan after we found Sleipnir?” Dainn asked.
Gripping Dainn’s wrists, Loki tried unsuccessfully to free himself. “It was a test,” he squeaked.
“Of what?”
There was little point, Loki thought, of keeping the secret now. “To see … if you had the Eitr. If you could heal him when he was at the very edge of death.”
Dainn’s grip eased. Loki gasped.
“If you had been wrong,” Dainn said, “Ryan would have died.”
“But I was … not wrong.” Loki gagged. “When did you … know you could access it?”
“I wondered when Danny first manifested it in this house,” Dainn said, “but I was not certain until Odin insisted upon acquiring it from me.”
“He … knew you had it.”
“And he knows that Danny has it as well. But you—” He tightened his grip again. “How long have you suspected?”
“Since”—he coughed—“Danny revealed his ability to wield it. I knew that ability had to come … from one of us.”
“Why do I think you are lying?” Dainn asked.
“There was another time, when you helped defeat Danny’s manifestation of Jormungandr. Do you remember how you made yourself a part of him and attacked him from within? Could you have done that with ordinary elven magic?”
“Why then? How could I not have known?”
“You were too busy fighting the beast.”
Abruptly Dainn let Loki go, and Loki fell against the chair. He braced his arms behind him, watching Dainn’s inscrutable face, ready to run. But Dainn was no longer looking at him.
“Odin told me,” Dainn said, “that when I came to Asgard, I burned with the light of the Eitr. I have no memory of it, but I would think he destroyed any such ability when he released the beast.”
“It was not destroyed,” Loki whispered. “And you did shine. As Danny did, before—” The thought that came to Loki then erased all the pain in his throat. “You said we would need a body to restore Danny to full life,” he said. “I think there may be another way.”
30
Dainn’s gaze swung back to Loki. “Explain,” he said.
Loki took a deep breath and opened his right hand, revealing a swollen palm leaking watery blood. “It has not healed. Has yours?”
Slowly Dainn opened his hand to reveal the identical wound. “No,” he said.
“I told you that it would always bind us. It is your Eitr that imbues these wounds, though I did not realize at the time why they would not close.” He met Dainn’s gaze. “You possess knowledge of the ancient Runes?”
“Why?” Dainn asked coldly. “Do you know how to break this bond?”
“It isn’t for us,” Loki said. “It’s for our son.”
“How?”
“You and I created Danny, whether or not you wish to acknowledge it,” Loki said. “Your connection to the Eitr lives in Danny, as it lives in these wounds.”
“Speak plainly,” Dainn said.
“Perhaps … we can restore Danny, body and all. Together.”
Dainn stared into Loki’s eyes. His fists clenched. “You still hold some Eitr within you,” he said.
“I had it before Danny was conceived,” Loki said, “because Freya and I obtained it from you at a time when you were completely unaware of the magic you possessed.”
A tense silence fell as Dainn digested what Loki had told him. “Obtained,” Dainn said. “Stole. I had no knowledge of this.”
“Because you lacked the memory and understanding to see yourself as you really were.” And still do, Loki thought.
“Is that how you opened the first bridge to Midgard?” Dainn asked.
“And how Freya controlled the Aesir in the Asgard Shadow-Realm,” Loki said, warily keeping his distance. “Obviously we made a very small dent in your supply. If Danny was the creation of your Eitr, he was also partly of mine. I believe that the mingling of our blood, aided by certain spells…”
“No.”
At first Loki wasn’t certain that he’d heard Dainn correctly. “No? Do you crave his power for yourself?”
His head snapped back as Dainn struck him. Loki moved to strike back, but his hand froze in midair as if caught in an invisible grip.
“Never suggest such a thing to me again,” Dainn said, his eyes utterly black. He gestured, and Loki found his hand free.
Rubbing his
jaw, Loki laughed. “Was that you, or Danny?”
“He would not hurt you. Not in that way.”
“Even if you asked him to?”
Dainn’s eyes unfocused. “No,” he said, in a completely different voice. “I want to.”
Danny, Loki thought. “What do you want?” he asked softly.
“I want to stay with Papa.”
“Danny,” Loki said. “If you don’t leave Dainn now, you could be hurt. You could be—”
“He will not do it,” Dainn said, his voice his own again.
“Ymir’s bones,” Loki swore. “Why not?”
“He will not tell me,” Dainn said, blinking slowly. “He will reject any spell we attempt.”
“Then what do you want of me?” Loki shouted.
Dainn told him. Loki sat down again.
“You want to … ally with me?”
“For the sole purpose of defeating Odin.”
“You consider Odin worse than me?”
“Only your methods differ. I detest everything you are. But Odin is prepared to sacrifice any number of mortal lives to defeat you, and you are obviously prepared to do the same. Neither one of you can win without destroying the very world you wish to rule. Despite your evil acts, I know that is not your ultimate intention.”
“It isn’t Odin’s, either.”
Dainn sighed. “In the crack house, Ryan spoke of a vision. ‘You have to be together,’ he said, and he included me, Mist, and you in his prophecy. I know he fears the consequences of transmitting such information, and I do not think he would have risked it if he did not firmly believe that such an alliance is necessary.”
“Or maybe you think I’ll be easier to control when Odin is defeated?”
“I am not so foolish as to believe that you will give up your own quest for power. But we will deal with that when the battle is over.”
“And Mist knows nothing of this … proposed alliance?”
“She will soon recognize the necessity.”
Dainn met Loki’s eyes. “When Mist realizes what must be done, I will be ready to support her.” He leaned over the chair. “I know you will try to betray us. It is in your nature, as it is the nature of a cockroach to shun the light. But if you care for Danny, you will help us defeat Odin.”
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