Mist

She grinned back at Eric, who sheathed his sword and reached for the towel draped across the bench against the wall.

“You’re good,” she said. “Almost as good as I am.”

He grimaced and scrubbed the towel across his face. “I outweigh you by eighty pounds,” he said. “I don’t want to think about what you could do to me if you were my size.”

Size had nothing to do with it, though Mist hadn’t yet found a way to tell Eric why he’d never be able to beat her. She’d even thought once or twice of letting him win, male pride being such a fragile thing, but instinct was too strong.

Mist sheathed her sword and ran her thumb over the engraving etched into the hilt. She had no right to pride of any kind. She’d lost that right long ago, as she’d lost her honor and the only man she had ever loved.

And yet Eric had unexpectedly roused her from the despair of one who waits for redemption that will never come. Like Geir, he wasn’t afraid of a woman who shared his strength. He’d taught her to laugh again. And when she looked into Eric’s face— the face of a true warrior of the Norse, broad and handsome and fearless—she knew he was safe. Safe because he would never demand more than she could give. Safe from her mistakes.

But there would be no more mistakes. She had made sure of that.

“I’m headed for the shower,” Eric said, catching her glance and giving her a sly look in return. He padded toward her, remarkably graceful and light on his feet, his bare chest streaked with sweat. He lifted a loose tendril of her hair, rolling it between his fingers. “Care to join me? I’ll wash your back if you’ll wash mine.”

His meaning couldn’t be clearer, and she was eager enough to join him in bed after his long absence. But she dodged aside when he bent to kiss her.

“I’m really tired tonight,” she said, smiling to take the sting out of her rejection. “Long day at the forge. I promise I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.”

Eric frowned and rubbed his thumb along the edge of her jaw. “You okay? You’ve seemed a little preoccupied ever since I came back.”

She covered his hand with hers. “It’s nothing. I missed you, that’s all.”

“Have you?” He nuzzled her neck. “Show me.”

“Soon. I promise.”

Eric let her go and winked. “My sword is always at your service, m’lady.” He strode toward the door that connected the gym to the loft’s ground-floor living space, throwing another wink over his shoulder, and Mist was left alone in the echoing silence of the gym.

Her wrist was aching again. The red tattoo encircling it—still as bright as the day she’d had it done—seemed to squirm on her skin, an endless chase of wolves and ravens, the animal symbols of Odin All-father.

You used your wrist too much today, she told herself. But that didn’t account for this strange restlessness, which even Eric had noticed in spite of her best efforts to hide it.

With a sigh Mist returned the sword to the rack at the opposite end of the gym and followed Eric into the long hall, pausing at the door to the master bedroom. She could hear Eric singing in the shower.

Not in the mood to wait for her turn—and another invitation to bed— Mist threw on her leather jacket, pulled on her gloves, and went out to the garage. The temperature had fallen thirty degrees since the warmest part of the day, and the cold seemed to crackle in the late December air. Even the tart, briny scent of the Bay a third of a mile to the east seemed subdued by the frigid weather.

Her Volvo was ancient and often unreliable. It usually rumbled and complained like the great hound Garm whenever she needed it to operate smoothly, refusing to respond to even her most coaxing spells . . . such as they were. Tonight the car leaped to life almost immediately; it almost seemed to Mist as if it, too, felt her restlessness.

Dogpatch was far from quiet even at this time of night, in spite of the unseasonable cold; the Muni light-rail ran right down the center of Third Street, and the whole neighborhood, once an industrial area packed with warehouses, was becoming fashionable, with young professionals who frequented the growing number of clubs, restaurants, and galleries. Colored lights festooned the old houses and shops, and someone had set a decorated Christmas tree on the roof of the recording studio across the street.

Without really thinking about her destination, Mist turned north on Third Street and left on Sixteenth Street toward Golden Gate Park on the other side of the city. It didn’t surprise her that she’d ended up here; it had the closest thing to woods as anywhere in San Francisco, and it made a nice change from the tiny, half- dead scrap of lawn behind her loft.

She parked along Lincoln Way, got out of the car, and entered the park from Nineteenth Avenue. It was near midnight, and the park would officially be closed to visitors in a few minutes, but Mist had no trouble finding an unobtrusive way in. The only other people in the park were the homeless and vagrants who spent their nights huddled in tattered blankets under the bushes. There would be no Christmas for them.

Christmas. Yule, as it had been known before the coming of the White Christ. The solstice had never really been more than an excuse for celebration, an end to the darkness and the coming of a new year. If this bizarre, unseasonable winter ever ended.

A few gentle snowflakes drifted down to melt on Mist’s hair as she walked along Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive and headed toward Stow Lake. There was a breathless quality to the frigid air. Dense fog began to settle over the nearest trees, turning the park into a ghostly realm of indistinct shapes and ominous silence.

Fog. Mist stopped, lifting her head to smell the air. Fog like this came in the summer, when warm Pacific winds blew over the colder waters along the coast.

A sudden chill nipped at Mist’s hands and face. Strange weather or not, there was nothing natural about the icy vapor that stretched probing fingers along the ground at her feet, slithering and hissing like the serpent Nidhogg bent on devouring everything in its path.

Disbelief shook Mist with jaws of iron. She knew the smell of the vapor and what it had portended when the Last Battle began.

But it wasn’t possible. The Jotunar, the frost giants, were as extinct as the great sloths or mastodons that had once roamed the North American plains.

Mist encircled her left wrist with her right hand, trying to soothe the unnatural, burning agony beneath the glove. She wasn’t going crazy. There was a perfectly logical explanation for the hallucination. This was the old, rejected world’s final attempt to hold her bound in the chains of guilt and self- contempt and loneliness, to abandoned oaths and a way of life she had discarded years ago like ash-soiled rags.

She needed to go home, go to bed, wake up to find Eric beside her—ready with a grin, an invitation, and a reminder that her life was normal now, had been normal long before she met him. Turning on her heel, Mist started back for the street.

A low, rasping chuckle stopped her in mid-stride. She spun around. A face emerged from the vapor, rising two heads above Mist’s generous height. A broad face, heavy, filled with anger and fell purpose. Pale, cold eyes met hers. The mouth, with its rows of teeth filed to points like daggers, gaped in a grin.

“Heil, Odin’s Girl,” the giant said in the Old Tongue, his voice deep enough to shake the ground under Mist’s feet. “Or can it be that I am mistaken? Is this what the Valkyrie have become, mountless and dressed no better than thralls?”

No hallucination, no illusion, no madness. The truth took Mist by the throat and shook her like a child’s doll.

This was real. This was death. And everything she had come to believe, everything she had tried to make of her life, was a lie. Instinct, rusty as an ancient blade left to molder in a salty bog, brought Mist back to her senses. Her Swiss Army knife, the one she’d carried since World War II, was of no use against a Jotunn. She peeled off her gloves, dropped them on the ground, and began to search for a long stick, a fallen branch, anything she could use as a weapon.

“No sword, Valkyrie?” the giant asked. “No spear?”

Mist knew she had to keep him distracted. He was obviously the type who enjoyed playing with his victims.

“A little out of place in a modern city, don’t you think?” she said, slipping back into English as she backed away and swept her foot across the ground.