Mist

kitchen.

“Jotunar,” he said.

* * *

“We meet again, Sow’s daughter,” Hrimgrimir said.

She came to a stop just inside the gym door, Dainn a step behind her. The giant, about seven feet tall and 350 pounds of solid muscle, stood in the center of the gym, hands on hips, grinning with all the evil relish of a nineteenth-century melodrama villain. The only thing that ruined the effect was his too-tight jeans, bulging at the thighs, and the loose plaid shirt.

He and the two Jotunar with him had not been among those she and Dainn had— hopefully—sent to a desert half a world away. Loki’s forces might have been reduced, but they were by no means eliminated. And Hrimgrimir was among the strongest of them. And the worst.

“Where’s the forest?” Mist asked, feeling for Kettlingr at her hip.

Hrimgrimir lost his grin, his face creasing in confusion. “Say what you mean, bitch,” he said.

“You look like a lumberjack. Shouldn’t you be out somewhere cutting down trees?”

It was a consummately ridiculous thing to say, but Mist wasn’t interested in trying to be clever. Her only goal was to get Hrimgrimir angry enough to make stupid mistakes. Making him angry wasn’t very hard to do.

But Hrimgrimir didn’t take the bait. He looked at Dainn, who had moved to stand beside Mist, and chuckled.

“I’ve never felt such pathetic wards,” the Jotunn said. “Was that really the best you could do, Faith- breaker?”

Mist closed the door behind her, refusing to reveal her emotions. Dainn’s wards had failed. He had seemed confident enough when he’d set them, but the presence of Hrimgrimir and his two friends— one in biker’s leathers and the other wearing an incongruous red silk shirt and striped trousers—proved that he’d screwed up somewhere. Perhaps fatally.

She could tell by Dainn’s rigid stance that he fully understood his responsibility for the current situation. But she didn’t have time to ask him what might have happened.

“What’s wrong?” Hrimgrimir taunted. “Fenrir got your tongue?”

Dainn stepped in front of Mist. “You should not have come here,” he said.

“The threat of a weakling and coward,” Hrimgrimir jeered, rumbling laughter.

“I am not alone,” Dainn said. “Or perhaps you have forgotten what happened in Vidarr’s establishment.”

“You had the element of surprise on your side.” The Jotunn stared at Mist. “You won’t have it again.”

Mist shoved ahead of Dainn. “But Loki made the mistake, didn’t he?” she asked. “He knew I was Freya’s daughter, but he didn’t think I’d be able to fight him.” She smiled. “Did he actually tell you to let me through to him?”

For a moment Hrimgrimir seemed at a loss. “Do you think you’d ever have made it past us if he didn’t?”

“Actually, I do.”

“Only because Freya was there. Loki told us. You couldn’t have done jack shit without the Vanir bitch. Where is she now?”

Good, Mist thought. Loki still credited her abilities to Freya’s presence within her, just as Dainn had said. And that assumption would hurt him, and his allies, as long as he held it.

“Waiting for you to do something stupid,” she said. “What should worry you now is that Loki didn’t know that Dainn was around, or how much damage he could do. And your boss ran off without checking on his Jotunar minions. That’s why about a dozen of your comrades are halfway across the world.” She clucked her tongue in sympathy. “Doesn’t that piss you off just a little bit?”

Hrimgrimir cracked his knuckles. “Loki didn’t send us here,” he said. “We’ve come to get the kid.”

“What kid?” Mist asked, raising her brows.

“You took him away from my men.”

“Because they were beating him up. What’s so special about him?”

“You think we’re that dumb? We’re taking him back. And if we happen to kill you on the way—” He exposed his sharp, yellow teeth in another grin. “Well, that’ll be the icing on the cake.”

“Good luck with that,” Mist said. She flicked a sideways glance at Dainn. His expression was rigid, but she could feel the tension in his muscles, the anger building up inside him.

The beast. The beast of thought, driven by dark emotion and the implacable will to hate, to destroy. A devourer of the mind.

Mist had no reason to doubt that it could also devour Jotunar minds. But Hrimgrimir apparently knew nothing about it. Dainn had kept it hidden, under control. Until tonight.

Magic fed it, too. But magic was the only way Dainn could fight the Jotunar.

Unless she sent him away.

“Go, Dainn,” she whispered. “If you stay—”

“I know,” Dainn said, very softly. “But I will not leave you to face them alone.”

“Freya can’t help us at all?”

“Even if she could, I have no time to reach her.”

“Then I can handle it. You just finished saying how powerful I—”

“Why the whispers?” Hrimgrimir asked. “Trying to figure out how you’re going to get out of this alive? Give us the kid, and maybe we’ll spare one of you.” He met Mist’s gaze. “You, since Loki still has some use for you.”

“And you always give Loki what he wants,” Mist said.

“Only as long as he gives us what we want,” Hrimgrimir said.

“To grab whatever you can of this world when Loki unleashes chaos,” she said. “Better hope he leaves enough of Midgard for you when he’s finished.”

“He needs us,” Hrimgrimir growled.

“For now.” She deliberately bumped Dainn’s shoulder with her own. “Get out of here,” she hissed.

He didn’t budge. Hrimgrimir was cracking his knuckles again, opening and closing his fists.

“Enough talk,” the Jotunn said. “Give us the elf, and we’ll take you and the kid alive.”

Dainn moved so close to Mist that his chest was pressing against her back. “I can hold them off,” he said, “while you get Ryan and the girl to safety.”

“You notice that you’re the one they want to kill?” she asked. “You have to go.”

“Listen to me,” Dainn said. “When they attack, try to remember what you did when I sent the beast to confront you. Use that power. We must hope that you can control it well enough to—”

Hrimgrimir charged, his flunkies behind him, their booted feet clumping on the rubber tiles. Mist drew her knife and chanted it to full size, desperately trying to remember what she’d done to Dainn out of the pure, instinctive need to defend herself.

Darting sideways, Dainn yelled out a foul insult Mist would never have believed she’d hear from an elf ’s lips. Hrimgrimir didn’t break stride, but the gangster Jotunn in the silk shirt split off from the others and headed straight for Dainn. By the time Hrimgrimir reached her, Mist had Kettlingr in out and ready.

To her amazement, Hrimgrimir stopped. “You think that can save you?” he asked.

Suddenly Mist knew why he hesitated, in spite of all his bluster. “Freya will save me,” she said. She envisioned how she had felt in Asbrew when she’d faced Loki. “My mother is here.”

Alarm crossed Hrimgrimir’s face, but she wasn’t quite convincing enough. He swept his arm at her, aiming to knock the sword out of her hand and send her flying across the room.

Mist ducked, stabbing upward. But Hrimgrimir was already out of her path and preparing another strike, while the biker Jotunn behind him was circling around to approach her from the rear. All the warmth was leached from the room as the air crackled with newly formed ice, Jotunn magic meant to freeze her, immobilize her, make her helpless.

Curse it, Mist thought, addressing that part of herself she was so far from understanding. What did you do to Dainn?

Fire and ice and anger. Water and wind and stone. Vanir magic, Dainn had said. Not