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“Mimir’s eyeteeth,” Mist said, “we can’t do this from the ground.” She sucked in a breath. “Can you smell it? The Eitr’s getting thicker. Am I going to have to forge wings, or—”

A boom shook the park, as if a jet had just broken the sound barrier. Spurting gaseous ooze from its nostrils, a very large silver dragon landed a few yards away and uncoiled its serpentine body. Mist recognized it as one of Japan’s supposedly mythical beasts, made to swim in rivers and oceans.

Or, on occasion, to fly.

“Jesus,” Taylor whispered.

“Koji,” Mist said.

“Koji?” Dainn repeated. He prepared a defensive spell in his mind as the long, almost canine head swung toward them, revealing a flickering tongue and serrated teeth.

I am going to regret this,
the dragon said.

*   *   *

Once they were aloft, Mist realized that Odin would have to wait. The Eitr had spread to cover the entire city, scattered by the storm, hanging above the streets and buildings like a shroud and dimming the lights of every building to fading embers. Wherever they flew, mortals sprawled on the streets and sidewalks, gasping and retching; cars had stalled in tangles of rubber and steel, and corrosion had already begun to eat away metal and plastic and concrete alike.

The dark Eitr was unmaking the city, and there was little time to stop it.

Mist knew what she had to do. She wasn’t afraid anymore; Dainn was at her back, his arms around her waist, while Loki gave a Japanese dragon the illusory shape of a low-flying plane.

Again, she called up her own dark Eitr—as much a part of her now as her blond hair and gray eyes—inhaled deeply, and accepted the poison into herself, sucking it up as Koji flew, coiling and uncoiling, over the city. There was no limit to what she could absorb, and with every breath she set the Eitr to devouring itself, eating away at its own substance.

There was pain. That was inevitable. But Dainn held her steady against his chest as he healed her burns, and when the sky began to clear, showing the stars again, her relief smothered the pain completely. People began to move again as sirens wailed on the streets below, and the storm faded to a light snowfall.

They found Odin alive on Ocean Beach, his face blackened and his body wasted by his own poisons. Sleipnir stood with all eight legs in the surf, snorting and trembling, but when Dainn went to him he calmed and rubbed his head against Dainn’s hair.

They returned to the park by the most direct route, Dainn on Sleipnir with Odin’s unconscious body and Mist with Loki on the dragon’s back. When they set down in the park, all was quiet. Torn tree trunks and branches lay scattered like twigs over the Polo Fields and dead leaves and pine duff covered almost every surface, but the ice had melted and the earth, with the help of the Alfar, had begun to absorb the blood into itself.

The scars would remain, Mist thought as she dismounted. But a little more work would clear the worst of it, and in the end the mortals of San Francisco would remember a horror they could not explain. A horror that would never return.

“Remind me never to ride a dragon again,” Loki griped as he slid off Koji’s back. With great eloquence, Koji snorted into Loki’s face and swung his head toward Mist.

Now I must face the wrath of my elders,
he said with a familiar sparkle in his eye.

“Wait,” Dainn said. “Why did you pose as a lawyer to seek Ryan last winter? Why did you help him find Mother Skye? What is your connection to her?”

There are alliances you know nothing of,
Koji said.
Such alliances will always be necessary whenever this world is in danger
. He tipped his head toward Mist.
I go
.

Thank you, Koji,
she said, resting her hand on the bewhiskered muzzle. “Good-bye.”

He dipped his head, crouched, and hurled himself skyward. In a matter of moments he was only a flicker of silver lit by the moon. And then he was gone.

“Remarkable,” Dainn said. “Did you never guess, in all the time he was your lover?”

“Dainn, that was only a—”

“I tease you,” Dainn said. His eyes were quiet … a little sad, but no longer dark with horror and self-contempt. “I could have brought you no comfort then. I am grateful to him.”

Sleipnir butted his head against Dainn’s chest, and Dainn rubbed the horse’s cheek. “The others are coming,” he said.

Taylor and Konur, Rota and Hrolf, Vixen and Roadkill and the rest gathered around Mist, staring up at the sky or down at Odin’s comatose body. “Orders?” Taylor asked.

“Gather the Treasures,” she said. “Take Thor’s weapons and Gungnir. The rest should still be at the camp.”

“I’ll retrieve Thor’s,” Loki said.

“And bring them right back here,” Mist said, in a voice even Laufeyson couldn’t ignore.

“What will you do?” Dainn asked Mist when Loki was gone.

“Capture Odin’s soul with this,” she said, pulling the raven pendant from beneath her torn shirt, “and divide it among the Treasures. He’ll be back where he started, and we’re not going to let him out again.”

“Loki will not be pleased to lose his revenge.”

“I’m not in the business of pleasing Loki, no matter how cooperative he’s been.” She touched Dainn’s cheek. “Not after what he did to this city, and to you.”

“What he did to me will be forgotten,” Dainn said, taking her hand in his.

Will be,
Mist thought. Eventually. “All I can say is that we’d better get those Treasures,” she said. “If we don’t act quickly—”

“You will need this.” A dark-haired woman approached Mist, a curved horn in her hands.

“The Gjallarhorn,” Dainn said, peering into the woman’s face. “You are Kara. The one Valkyrie we could not find.”

“Yes,” the woman said. “It was difficult to evade all of you so long. But I could not allow any to possess the Horn before its time.”

“But you blew it, didn’t you?” Mist said, feeling cross. “Who gave
you
the right to choose the time?” She peered into the Valkyrie’s face. “You don’t look like the Kara I used to know.”

“No,” Dainn said. “She has another name.”

The slender young woman began to change, to broaden, her hair turning gray and her garments transforming from Kara’s jeans and jacket to a full, layered skirt hung with ribbons, bric-a-brac, pouches, and other things Mist couldn’t begin to identify.

“My name is Mother Skye,” she said, her voice deeper and rough with age. “I was once the Norn called Skuld, and the Valkyrie who carried this Horn once carried my name, though not my burden.” She smiled sadly. “Skuld or Kara, she was my daughter. She died, and I could not save her, for I have long since lost the gift of altering Fate.”

“But when you blew the Horn—” Mist began.

“A last hurrah, you might say.”

“Ryan,” Dainn said. “Mist, Ryan is—”

“Dead?” Mother Skye said. “I know. When his young friend was near death, he offered his own life to Hel in her place.”

“Gods,” Mist breathed. “I wondered why Gabi was still alive.”

“He sacrificed himself,” Mother Skye said with deep sadness. “But it was his choice. As it was yours, Dainn, to acknowledge your most potent magic, good and bad. And yours, Mist, to accept your power in all its forms.”

“I won’t accept Ryan’s death,” Mist said. “If Hel thinks she can hold him…”

“A challenge?” Hel said, floating up behind her. She was herself again, coldly beautiful and bitterly ugly. “Would you speak to my new acquisition?”

She gestured, and Ryan came forward, hollow-eyed but not yet transparent. “Mother Skye,” he whispered.

The old woman smiled. “I did not know if we would meet again. You have done well.”

“Is this what you call ‘well’?” Mist snapped. “All his visions, coming to this?”

“Perhaps I sent him back too soon,” Mother Skye said. “But I had no choice. I was the last of the Norns, and I had lost my power. Ryan came to me at the right time to take that duty from me.”

“You were wrong,” Ryan said. “
Everything
was wrong.”

“But Fate has been reset,” Mother Skye said. “The Second Prophecy, the one I gave Freya and Odin so long ago, has been fulfilled. Many as one have saved this last Homeworld. Mortal and elf, Jotunn and the child of gods. The battle is over.”

“Not quite,” Mist said. She turned on Hel. “I want you to give him back.”

“And what,” Hel asked, “shall I receive in return?”

“Some small place to make your own new Niflheim,” Mist said, “somewhere no one is going to stumble across you … after you’ve freed every mortal you took since this fight began.”

Hel’s dark half turned almost as pale as the light side. “You dare—”

“They aren’t ancient Northmen, so you never had any right to them in the first place.” Mist leaned companionably against Dainn, relishing the steady beat of his heart and the warmth of his hands on her shoulders. “And you’re not to take any more of the dying unless they follow the Northmen’s faith. The rest can have their own afterworlds without your interference.”

“I’d take the deal, if I were you,” Loki said. He strolled up to them, Fenrir panting at his heels. “I’m not having you and your skulking minions lodging with me.
This
one is enough.” He tossed Thor’s Treasures at Mist’s feet. “Can she keep the dead Einherjar?”

“Be my guest,” Mist said.

An abominable sound came out of Hel’s throat, and she stamped her rotting feet. “It isn’t fair, Father,” she said.

“Kindly remember that you almost lost everything to these rebellious dead of yours,” Loki said. “I got you out of it. If you fight Mist over this, you’re on your own.”

“I would not advise it,” Dainn said dryly.

“Take him, then.” Hel shoved Ryan, and he stepped out of the gloom into the breaking moonlight. He breathed deeply, and the color came back into his face.

“Thank you,” he said to Mist, his eyes bright with tears. He turned to Mother Skye. “You’re going?” he asked.

She reached out to stroke his hair. “You know I must. But as nothing lasts forever, neither is anything lost forever.” She kissed his forehead. “You are free. Farewell.”

Her round form faded and winked out. Ryan scraped his face with his palm.

“Shit,” he said. “Does it ever get any—”

A girl’s voice shrieked somewhere behind him, and his face lit with a grin. He turned and ran toward Gabi, his arms outstretched.

“I have seen enough,” Hel said sourly. “I shall be waiting for my new home.”

“Wait,” Mist said. “You haven’t let the others go.”

With a sharp sigh, Hel opened her robes. Men and women began to emerge, still in their torn and dirty clothes … mortal and Alfar fighters who had lost their lives to the Einherjar and fallen to Hel’s grasping hands. They staggered and stumbled as they found their bodies again, laughed and cried and embraced. Rick stepped out of the shadows and felt his chest, grinning broadly.

One man came last.

“Geir,” Mist said, pulling away from Dainn.

He gave her a faded grin. “We tried,” he said. “We almost took her out this time, too.”

Grabbing him by his frayed collar, Hel reeled him back in. “You will suffer, rebel,” she said. “There are torments even you—”

“Geir!”

Anna crept into their strange circle, still draped in half-ruined armor, her eyes haunted with memories she couldn’t erase. “Papa,” she said in a little girl’s voice. “Don’t leave me.”

Mist searched for a sword, but Dainn caught her wrist. “She was in Odin’s thrall,” he said, “but she is no more. Look at her.”

Mist looked more carefully. She saw nothing of Horja’s strong-boned face, no fanatical warrior willing to protect and serve her lord at any cost.

What Mist “saw” was a little girl and a young woman, still intertwined. But Rebekka, whose body Danny had so briefly borrowed, was fading.

“She was ours, once,” Geir said to Mist. “I loved her, as I loved you. But now it is time to let go.”

“
Oldefar,
” Anna whispered. “Grandfather.”

“Enough!” Hel said.

But Geir fought her pull with all the strength Mist remembered from the war. “You are free,
lille,
” he said to Anna. “Let Rebekka return to the past. This is your world. Take it, and live.”

Anna smiled through her tears. “I will,
Oldefar
.”

“Let him go,” Mist said, facing Hel again.

The goddess laughed. “Never.”

“He was a brave soldier. If he had been taken to Valhalla, I know he would never have fought for Odin.”

“No,” Geir said, “but there are other battles.” He winked at Hel. “Perhaps one endless day I can convince our mistress to improve conditions in our barracks.” He reached out as if to stroke Mist’s cheek. “
Farvel,
Mist.”

With a last glance at Anna, Geir began to fade. He was still smiling when he vanished.

“Admit it, Daughter,” Loki said, reminding everyone that he was still there. “Life in Niflheim is deadly dull. You like a little conflict now and then.”

“Father…” Hel twitched her robes around her legs, stuck her tongue out at Loki, and slowly sank into the earth. Anna began to shed her armor, and when she met Mist’s gaze there was only a single young woman in her eyes.

“You have won again,” Dainn said softly, turning Mist in his arms.

“It doesn’t feel like a victory,” Mist said, tracing his lips with her fingertips.

“There is always sacrifice,” Dainn said. “Let us be sure that none of them were made in vain.”

36

Mist pulled his head down and kissed his forehead, his eyelids, and his lips. “I’m so sorry, Dainn. For so long, I didn’t really understand what Danny really was, that he and your ancient powers couldn’t be separated.”

“It is fortunate that we now have healers among us,” Konur said, coming to join them. “We will need much of their skill, for body and soul.”

“This city will need a lot of healing,” Mist said, shaking off her sadness. “And explanations. The whole infrastructure Loki built is about to implode.”

“You do me far too little credit,” Loki said. “It runs like a well-oiled machine. A few adjustments here and there…”