The Volvo coughed as she backed into Illinois Street. Dainn buckled in and braced himself on the dashboard and armrest as he had before. Mist kept her foot on the accelerator as they drove north on Highway 101, merged onto the Central Freeway, and continued north on Van Ness. The traffic was still light, but it took far too long to reach the Presidio and the bridge.
“Can you feel anything?” she asked Dainn.
He touched his forehead, still streaked with ash and sweat. “Somewhere over the water,” he said.
“No,” she muttered sarcastically. But they were faced with a very real problem. Even though there was a pedestrian walkway across the bridge, there wasn’t any way to access it from the San Francisco side without attracting unwelcome attention. She sure as Hel didn’t want any mortals involved.
“We’ll have to drive across,” she said. “You tell me where to stop.”
She gunned the engine and sped for the toll plaza, slowing only to pay the toll and pretend she had no intention of breaking every speed law on the books. The moment she was on the bridge she ground her foot down on the gas pedal as if she were in a race against Odin’s mighty six-legged stallion Sleipnir himself.
“Here,” Dainn said when they were half a mile across. Mist pulled up in the right lane and jumped out of the car.
There was nothing to show that this span of the bridge was different from any other. Dainn vaulted over the railing that separated the pedestrian walkway from traffic. Mist followed him to the suicide barrier. Blue- gray water seethed far beneath them, choppy with a rising wind driving west from the bay. Icy rain blew into Mist’s face.
Almost at once she felt the strangeness, a sense of an opening she hadn’t recognized when she’d faced Hrimgrimir. Her wrist began to ache again.
“I feel it,” she whispered.
“The water is disturbed,” Dainn said, leaning far over the railing. He closed his eyes. The air around him shimmered, and the cement under Mist’s feet vibrated with barely leashed energy.
And there was more. She could also sense Eric’s presence, a shadow of his being altered and twisted into a form almost unrecognizable. She drew her knife.
“Where is he?”
Dainn spread his hands in front of him as if he were reaching for something solid. “He was here,” he said, frowning. “But he did not pass over.”
Mist peered in every direction. “Are you sure?”
“The location of the bridge is very clear to me, and it is obvious that Loki expended a great deal of effort here. But it appears that something blocked his way.”
“Something? Like what?”
“It is as if someone had bricked over a doorway, but I detect no magical signature to indicate that it was done deliberately.”
“You mean by Freya or one of the other Aesir?”
He shrugged, which meant he didn’t know, and she didn’t want to waste any time trying to figure it out now. “If this one doesn’t work,” she said, “he’ll probably look for another.”
“I still see ‘Golden,’ ” Dainn said.
“Then we need to get to the park.” Mist jumped back over the barrier and returned to the Volvo. A red Jaguar streaked past, blaring its horn. Dainn got in, and Mist made a sharp and very illegal U-turn, heading back toward the city.
It was a straight shot south on Highway 1 to the park, but the minutes were ticking by, and Mist’s hopes of catching Loki dwindled a little more with every mile. When they got as close as they could to the area where Hrimgrimir had appeared, Mist swerved toward the nearest curb.
She and Dainn jumped out of the Volvo and ran across frostbrittle grass toward the spot they had left just a few hours ago. Dainn slowed and stopped a good ten yards short of their destination.
Mist turned around and strode back to him. “What is it?”
He looked straight through her, his face taut with concentration. “The bridge is gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“Loki was here, and the residue of magic suggests he made a powerful effort, but again he was unable to enter. This one is not only closed, but absent.” He met Mist’s gaze. “The passage on the bridge was blocked, and this one has disappeared. This may work to our advantage.”
“How?”
“Loki may be trapped in Midgard.”
“
“I told you that little is known about how the bridges function. If he cannot leave Midgard—”
“But you don’t
“I have said that all the bridges we have identified are in this city.”
“What if you’re wrong, and there are bridges to Ginnungagap all over the country, or even the planet?”
“Freya is not wrong in this,” Dainn said.
“Okay. But Loki . . . Eric claimed he was a security consultant doing work for the government and frequently traveled around the world. Do you think he, personally, is stuck in San Francisco?”
“If the bridges are here, he would wish to stay where he could easily summon more Jotunar.”
“So why hasn’t he? Why doesn’t he have an army covering every square inch of this city?”
“He cannot have enough Jotunar here yet to constitute an army. If he desired to avoid Freya’s notice, and we can assume that was always his purpose, he would not have risked using too much magic or disrupting the daily business of this world. To do so would send echoes across Ginnungagap that Freya would surely have heard.”
“But he could have been looking for the Treasures every time he was away. Are you
Dainn’s composure remained impregnable. “As certain as we can be. Again, his obtaining any of the Treasures would have made it very difficult to hide his presence in Midgard and transport more Jotunar over the bridges.” He paused. “It is also very likely that making use of the bridges is a heavy drain on his magical energy, and searching for the other Valkyrie, even with the Jotunar to aid him, would be too dangerous.”
“You mean even Loki has his limits,” she said, catching a little glimpse of hope.
“There is always a price for magic, especially of such a sustained and complex nature.”
She wondered again if that was Dainn’s problem. “Even if the bridges are closed to him now,” she said, “and he’s stuck in Midgard, he wouldn’t have any trouble hiding Gungnir and getting through airport security if he wanted to leave the country.”
“I do not believe he would attempt it.”
“He’d have plenty of money to do it. I know Eric—” She broke off and exhaled sharply. “
“Again, such conjuring would have been ill-advised for many reasons. And Loki has always found it more satisfying to use trickery to get what he wants. He has undoubtedly found very mundane methods of acquiring large sums of currency to finance his efforts, and he would do so without arousing the suspicions of mortal authorities and law enforcement.”
“So he’s ahead of us there, too.”
“Perhaps it would be best if we return to your home and wait to see what he will do next.”
Dainn shifted gears so fast that Mist felt like a commuter watching a BART train shoot past without realizing it had ever reached the station. “I’ll put both my hands between Fenrisulfr’s jaws and ask him to bite them off before I’ll let Loki win without a fight.”
He stared at her with such intensity that she found herself instinctively reaching for Kettlingr’s hilt. But the moment passed, and Dainn looked away as if nothing had happened.
“You know him better than I do,” he said. “Where would he go?”
“We’re talking about a city that covers almost forty-seven square miles and has a population of nearly 800,000. He could be anywhere.”
