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Someone had died. Someone close to her, close to her heart and yet beyond her reach.

No
. Light and smoke seemed to fill her skull, and she felt the burning elation of the Eitr, life-giving and lethal, stretching across the city from the allies’ camp. Dainn’s mind was crying out in that ancient tongue, and Danny …

Neither dead nor alive, but poised somewhere in the middle, caught in the Eitr like a fly in amber. But Dainn grieved as if he believed that Danny was gone, his emotion carried to her along invisible currents that linked her mind and his.

Go to him,
her heart insisted. The Eitr insisted. But Mist pushed against the pavement with the palms of her hands, fighting the pressure to return to camp, filling her mind with images of the dying only she might save.

Blinded by tears, Mist burst into a run. Hel’s minions were rushing past the corner of Kearny and Columbus Avenues, flowing like smoke over the pedestrians wandering amongst lounges, restaurants, and clubs that beckoned with colorful signs, fancy drinks, and late hours.

Mist felt the fear before she heard the cries of shock and horror. Several people had already died by the time she reached Columbus, and there were dozens of unsuspecting mortals just ahead of the deadly wave. Hel floated behind her servants, observing without participating.

There was no sign of law enforcement of any kind, but Mist knew that emergency personnel would have been slaughtered just as easily as the people they tried to protect. Well aware that she couldn’t get ahead of the dead in time to stop them, she envisioned the choppy waters of the bay half a mile to the west and found a song as unfamiliar as Dainn’s ancient language. She magically sought, gathered, and transported wood and metal from nearby piers, and constructed giant water tanks. She directed the tanks to fill themselves, and used the forge-magic to heat the water to a temperature above the boiling point. She pulled the tanks through the air and over the buildings to hover just above the section of the street the dead were about to reach.

With careful precision, Mist opened the tanks and let the scalding water fall on the dead without touching the onlookers frozen on the sidewalk. Moans and muffled cries announced the annihilation of Hel’s minions, who disintegrated to ash before the mortals’ disbelieving eyes.

The carnage sent most of the mortals running into the nearest open buildings they could find, but a few, curiosity outweighing sense, remained to record the scene with their cell phones. Without warning or explanation, the mobile devices turned black and disintegrated in their users’ hands. Some of the dead rushed onto the sidewalk to snatch up the would-be photographers, while others invaded the clubs, dragging the patrons nearest the door out into the street.

Mist unsheathed Kettlingr. Six of the dead charged, and she cut them down, enhancing her sword-work with all the magic she had at her disposal: Galdr, Jotunn, and Eitr, Rune-staves forged into missiles flung by the invisible winds of the Void amid hails of ice and snow. Another nine or ten dead came at her from two sides, and she managed to take them down as well.

But she quickly realized that the magic she had used to destroy the first wave had enervated her to the point that it was becoming more and more difficult to wield Kettlingr, especially when she was so keenly aware of the mortals who were very likely to die if she didn’t think of a more permanent solution.

And still no police showed up, no ambulances. The hundreds of mortals cowering in the clubs and lounges must have called 911 by now, even if the people on the sidewalk hadn’t succeeded. For the first time, Mist wondered if Hel had created a kind of “dead zone” to keep anyone from entering or leaving the neighborhood. If she could do something like that, she was even more powerful than Mist had realized.

Luckily for her, the dead seemed to have lost their momentum. Hel screeched at them, a sound so hideous that Mist almost dropped the sword to cover her ears. A dozen more of Hel’s hosts started forward, while those who had taken mortals from clubs and restaurants lined them up along the sidewalks like grotesque mannequins.

The dead made no further attempts to kill, and after a time some of the unaffected mortals began to creep out of their hiding places to stare and take more photos. Their devices disintegrated as well. None of them dared to help the hostages, who seemed to be in a kind of trance, unable or unwilling to escape.

Mist glanced at her watch. It would be dawn in less than an hour. The dead must lose some of their power during the day, and once Mist could call for reinforcements …

“You have stood in my way too long,” Hel croaked, rising out of the asphalt near Mist’s boots. “Stand aside.”

“Fat chance,” Mist said, meeting Hel’s penetrating stare.

“You are alone, with no one to help you,” Hel said. “Though your trick with the water tanks was impressive, I can feel that you have weakened. Soon you will no longer be able to destroy even a few of my hosts without suffering injuries yourself.”

“Let me worry about my own health, Fenrir’s Sister,” Mist said through her teeth. “The one thing I don’t get is why Loki sent you
here
. If it was a trap for my allies, it didn’t work. And these mortals aren’t fighters or anyone who can hurt him. If Loki wants to terrorize average citizens, why aren’t you letting people and calls go through so that this gets out to the whole city?”

“I am not subject to Loki’s every whim.”

“You mean he didn’t order this strike, and you just wanted to come out and play?”

“Perhaps I merely wish to swell my ranks.”

“You’ve presumably got millions already at your command. I wonder if you’re really just showing Loki that you have a mind and will of your own?”

Sweeping her robes around her legs, Hel hovered in a tight circle like an angry wasp. “Do not presume to know me, Valkyrie,” she hissed. “But perhaps we can reach an agreement. I take a few dozen mortals to join my host, and then I will leave the survivors in peace.”

“Until tomorrow, you mean?” Mist tipped Kettlingr toward Hel’s semitransparent neck. “I don’t think so.”

“But I can never be destroyed, and I cannot return to my realm, since it no longer exists.” She spread her hands. “A place must be made for me in Midgard, or I will go on wreaking havoc on your innocent mortals.”

“So this
is
about you. Loki won’t be happy if you go on rampages without his permission.”

“Must my father be happy?” She smiled. “Must yours?” She glanced to the east. “Night wanes. But I was never confined to darkness, whatever Midgardian legends may claim.” She lifted her arms with a terrible ululation and opened her robes. More dead rose around her, emerging from beneath her gown, tumbling over each other in their haste to reach the watching mortals. A miasma of rot and putrefaction came with them. Mist found her own arms almost too heavy to lift, her strength rapidly waning as if she were soon to be among the dead herself.

She closed her eyes, remembering her own darkness—not only Freya’s legacy, the desire to rule at any cost, but the power to destroy that had always lain within her since she had first used the ancient magic.

All she had to do was accept it, and she might still save the mortals facing a most horrible death.
I
can
destroy Hel
, she thought. Suddenly the answer was clear, and red mist swirled behind her eyes, the blood of the Eitr pulsing hot and hungry.
I can only kill evil with evil
.

But her body resisted her mind’s commands. It began to tremble, and her hand went numb on Kettlingr’s hilt. Hel’s dark cloak flared wide like a cobra’s hood. A great moaning rose up over the neighborhood, and the sky overhead turned black.

But as dawn broke over the hills across the bay, forging a narrow path through the clouds, it brought with it a powerful man on a white, eight-legged steed, wielding a spear that sang as he raised it to strike. Behind him ran six Valkyrie—Rota and Hild, Hrist, Regin, Olrun, and Skuld, the latter four carrying Treasures: Bragi’s Harp, Freyr’s Sword, the Chain Gleipnir, and the two halves of Thor’s Staff, Gridarvoll.

And behind them came tall men, warriors in dark leather, bearing axes and swords only the strongest of mortals could wield. The true Einherjar, Odin’s resurrected warriors … his hidden army, set loose at last.

Odin swept past Mist, unseeing, and cast his spear at Hel. It struck her in the chest, and she shrieked, her body seeming to collapse in on itself like the Wicked Witch of the West beneath her black robes. Clouds boiled and simmered overhead, smothering the weak rays of the rising sun.

The other Valkyrie caught Mist up among them, and she raised her sword, fresh energy pouring into her arms and legs, the reckless, mindless heat of war filling her veins with fire. She cut down the dead in their dozens, cleaving and hacking and chopping at half-living flesh until there was nothing left of her opponents to stand and fight. There were screams amid the shouts of battle, but to Mist they were music, like the sounding of trumpets, like the Gjallarhorn itself.

And now,
now
the darkness came. The shadow-side of the Eitr rolled before her like a hard wind before a storm. She called up Rune-staves of the forge and twisted them, reversed them, cast Merkstaves that reduced the dead to ash. She dropped Kettlingr and pushed her way through bodies of the once-living, laughing as they crumbled in her wake. Only as she reached the last line of Hel’s warriors did she feel the joyful fury begin to subside. There was no hope for them; the Einherjar were already among them. Though many had fallen to “permanent” death at the hands of the dead, they continued to fight with reckless courage, their blows severing gaunt heads from half-wasted bodies.

Mist paused to catch her breath and grinned at Rota and Hild, who had stopped to stand beside her. Rota’s red hair was loose around her face, and Hild was smudged with ash and blood.

A single, pitiful beam of sunlight brushed Mist’s eyelids. She blinked to clear her eyes, and the darkness was gone.

“Mist,” Rota whispered.

The street was littered with dead. Not only the ash that was all that remained of Hel’s minions, but at least twenty Einherjar and two dozen men and women, mortals all, some struck down by the same warriors and magic that had destroyed the enemy.

“
Yzhas,
” Hild swore. Mist closed her eyes and opened them again.

It was no illusion. Odin sat on Sleipnir, erect in the saddle, Gungnir braced against his thigh. The Einherjar stood around him, weapons leveled as if they expected the dead mortals to rise as they themselves had done, ready to fight for Hel.

But the mortal dead remained silent. Mist walked to the nearest body, an elderly woman with a grocery bag of vegetables torn open on the ground beside her. Her eyes were staring, but they were an ordinary brown. Mist knelt beside her and passed her hand over the woman’s face.

“Sweet Baldr, welcome and protect her,” she whispered. Surely no one else in Hel would. If that was where her soul had gone. The idea of this old woman with some ghastly weapon in her hand, slaughtering her own kind …

Mist rose, her jaw clenched so tight that she felt the bones would split her skin. She made her way through the ash to Sleipnir—past Valkyrie who had been lost to her so long—and stared up at Odin, seeing nothing but a halo of reddish light.

“Mist,” he said, reaching down to touch the top of her head. “Well done.”

But there was something wrong about his voice, and suddenly Mist could see him properly again: only a god on a horse, a strange look in his blue eye. He smiled, and the look was gone.

“If all our victories are so easy,” he said, “we will win this city within a week.” He kicked Sleipnir’s barrel, and the horse picked his way among the bodies without a single twitch of his ear.

The Sleipnir she had known was gone. And Odin looked down at the dead mortals with as little interest as he would show a can of beer crushed under the horse’s hooves. With hardly a glance in her direction, the Valkyrie Odin had claimed—Olrun, Hrist, Regin, and Skuld—marched at his heels. Einherjar ran out into the street to collect the bodies of their own fallen.

Mist turned aside and retched. Rota laid a plump hand on her shoulder. “It was not … what we thought it would be,” she said in a very quiet voice. “We never expected so many innocents to die.”

With a grim look, Hild folded her arms across her chest. “All is not well in the camp,” she said.

“Danny,” Mist said, the sickness threatening to turn her stomach inside out. “I felt—”

“He is dead,” Hild said. There were tears in her eyes. “It was an accident.”

Mist swayed on her feet. “Who did it?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, Mist. It was Dainn.”

*   *   *

Dainn wasn’t in his cell when Mist returned to camp. He was chained up to a pile of rebar-laden rubble tossed outside one of the refurbished warehouses, his clothes filthy and a bloodstained bandage wrapped around his right hand. Four Alfar surrounded him, alert and well-armed. One of them blocked Mist’s path with his spear as she approached. She looked him in the eye, and he bowed and raised the spear, stepping out of her way.

If he hadn’t, Mist thought, she would have punched him in the face.

She knelt level with Dainn, her empty stomach still heaving, and tried to get him to look at her. He didn’t. In fact, everything about him reminded her of Danny when he was in his detached state.

But it wasn’t ordinary grief that had turned him silent and expressionless. He’d been that way many times before. Even horror and guilt weren’t enough to cause this emptiness, create this hollowed-out husk that felt as dead to her as any of the mortals she’d seen lying on the street.

Neither Rota nor Hild had been able to tell her who had witnessed the death, or how it had come about. She didn’t need the details to know what
hadn’t
happened.

“I don’t believe it,” she said softly. “They say it was the beast, but you had it under control.”

Dainn continued to stare at some spot on the cracked concrete a dozen feet away.