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*   *   *

“Do you feel Danny now?”

Loki’s voice beat on Dainn’s eardrums like pile drivers, and his arm ached where some weapon had sliced through his sleeve. But it was the gaping wound in his chest that hurt most.

He began to rise, but Loki pushed him down.

“Concentrate,” Loki said. His face was unusually pale, his expression stark and sober. “Is he safe?”

“The beast,” Dainn whispered, closing his eyes against the snow that blinded him.

Loki gripped Dainn’s injured arm, twisting the slashed sleeve. “How?” he demanded.

“Too much … power,” Dainn said, grateful for the pain. “Find Danny. I…” He convulsed again as the other spirit began to fill the hole Danny had left.

Dainn fought it. But he knew his hold on the beast was broken, and the temporary balance he had found with Danny’s presence was shattered.

The beast laughed. It expanded, consuming flesh, mind, and spirit, twice as strong as it had been before.

A shock ran through Dainn’s body, bending his spine and making him shake and jerk uncontrollably. He tasted fresh blood on his tongue, and opened his eyes. The beast’s eyes.

Distantly, faintly, he heard a voice call his name. He ripped upward with his claws, felt them tear flesh. His prey fled out of his reach, still shouting, running.

He heaved himself to his feet and shook out his coat. Swinging his head left and right, he sniffed the air for the smell of his enemy.

One of them had to die, because there was no room in the elf’s soul for both of them. He knew that if the boy won, the beast would cease to exist.

He broke into a run, glorying in the rush of wind and snow over his thick coat, the grip of his paws on frozen ground, the scent of death in his nostrils.

He had just caught the scent when he heard the hoofbeats. He charged the horse and the child on its back—the girl that was not a girl at all. He leaped, raking his claws across the horse’s chest. It squealed, lashing at him with its hooves, but he dodged them easily.

The child looked down at him with wide, fearful eyes. The beast bunched his muscles to leap again.

A thickly furred body struck him from the side … a beast almost as large as he was, as heavy and powerful, but without his claws. He knew the name: Fenrir. Fenrisulfr, son of Loki Scar-lip, who had kept him weak and helpless so long.

Rage kindled in his heart as the Wolf seized his foreleg in its jaws. He felt pain and the flow of blood, but his own coat had taken the brunt of the bite. He doubled back on himself and snapped at the Wolf’s neck, puncturing flesh. The Wolf howled and broke free to pant and glare.

Kicking snow into the Wolf’s face, he looked again for the horse and child. Dark shapes rose in his path, led by a female of two colors and a body that stank of carrion.

He knew her, too. Hel, daughter of Loki. He charged again, and the dead ones fell upon him, clutching at his coat, clawing at his eyes, snatching at his tongue and his tail.

Then Hel touched him, and a great weariness came over his body. He wanted to lie down and sleep for a very long time. But he understood what she was doing to him, and he shook off the dead as if they were fleas.

The boy,
he thought. When the boy was gone, only
he
would remain.

*   *   *

Power.

That was what Mist loosed now: such unrestrained power that it could not be contained except by the most extraordinary effort. She had no body, no form, but the Eitr caught fire within her, burning outward through invisible bone and flesh. She screamed. More power poured into her, and when the bolt struck, she struck back. Everything around her exploded like a gigantic star in its death throes.

“Mist!”

Something touched her, and suddenly she felt her fingers, her hand, her arm, all rematerializing as Ryan gripped her wrist. She blinked snow from her eyes and looked up into the young man’s anxious face, becoming aware that she was lying in a hollow of mingled snow, ice, and dirt, and that smoke was rising from her clothes.

“Odin!” she said, ready to spring to her feet. Dizziness caught her, and Captain Taylor helped her sit again.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Odin attacked you with his magic, but you put up one hell of a fight.”

Mist felt her aching head. “I’m all right,” she said. “How long have I been out?”

“Maybe five minutes,” Taylor said. “We were about to move you when Ryan said you were coming out of it.”

Five minutes,
Mist thought. She’d gone into the fugue state at the moment she’d met Odin’s attack … or at least she couldn’t remember anything of the attack except a brilliant flare of light.

An explosion of light, as if from a dying star.

“Where is Odin now?” she asked.

“You forced him to retreat,” Taylor said with grim satisfaction. “You knocked over a couple dozen of his fighters, and put the fear of God into him. I think he’ll be licking his wounds a little while longer.”

Mist nodded and met Ryan’s gaze. “Where did you come from?” she asked. “You should have stayed in camp.”

“I had to be here,” Ryan said, sitting back on his heels. “This is where it happens.”

Of course. She’d been stupid to think that anything could keep the kid away from the denouement of his visions.

But she couldn’t ask him
what
was going to happen. And she knew he wouldn’t tell her.

“Have you seen Sleipnir?” she asked Taylor. “Dainn? Loki?”

“They’ve disappeared,” Rick said, kneeling beside Taylor. He glanced at the captain. “Hel’s retreated, and—”

“Why?” Mist asked.

“Some kind of internal trouble with her army of the dead. We’re still outgunned.”

“How many have we lost?” Mist asked Taylor.

“It’s impossible to tell in this storm,” the captain said.

Mist made another effort to get up. She made it to her knees. “Listen,” she said. “We need to find Sleipnir. He got away from Odin, and a little girl is riding him. I need you to find that girl.”

“A little girl?” Rick asked. “Who the hell is she?”

“We can talk about that later,” Mist said. “Taylor, try to keep our fighters in a holding action until—”

“Is
that
the girl?” Rick asked.

Mist followed his stare. Sleipnir was galloping toward them, Rebekka’s small figure dwarfed by the huge saddle. Mist knew immediately that Danny still had control of the body. He slid off the stallion’s back and ran to Mist.

“It’s coming!” he said.

“Stand behind me,” Mist said. She drew Kettlingr.

“Don’t hurt Papa,” Danny-Rebekka begged. He reached for Mist’s free hand and clutched it tightly. “He saved everyone.”

Mist looked down at him. His eyes swallowed her up, and she saw the exploding light, flinging out thousands of sparks … souls, living beings, cast into Ginnungagap from the Eight Homeworlds.

But alive. Alive, when they would have been killed at Ragnarok, as prophecy foretold.

The Dispersal.

Her mind erupted with ancient Runes and memories, and she became Danny, cradled in Loki’s womb, a creature born to magic and utterly innocent. Then she was Dainn, who had tried to prevent Ragnarok with diplomacy … Dainn, ravaged by the beast and swimming in dark Eitr, cursed by Odin to kill Loki Laufeyson. Rage, and a flare of lost memory, a time before Asgard and Aesir.

Knowledge, understanding, revived at the perfect balance between dark and light. Dainn unconsciously sensing that to kill Loki would be to kill the son he hadn’t known he had. Finding the means to stop Ragnarok … with a final act of magic that would split him in two.

But the magic hadn’t been lost.

“I understand,” Mist murmured, squeezing Danny-Rebekka’s hand. “I know how to reach him.”

“Mist?” Taylor said.

“Go,” Mist said, giving Danny a gentle push toward the captain. “Take her and Sleipnir. I have other work to do.”

Taylor grabbed Danny-Rebekka’s hand and shouted to the others. Mist was alone when the beast came—tongue lolling, confident, fearless.

There was nothing of Dainn in his eyes.

Mist remembered the ancient Runes she had heard Dainn use before, the ones she had seen in Danny’s mind. She knew their structure now, their alphabet, the way they worked. She sang them silently, one by one, and let them simmer in the back of her thoughts like a potent witch’s brew.

The beast sat back on its haunches and laughed.

Mist,
it said into her mind.
Give the child to me
.

“I know why you want him,” she said, tightening her grip on Kettlingr. “You think that only one of you can exist inside Dainn, joined with his Eitr. You’re wrong.” She crouched and laid down her sword. “You know that Odin didn’t create you. You were always the dark half of Dainn’s power. His mistake was to deny that you existed until it was too late. When Odin cursed Dainn, you were set free. But even freedom isn’t without limits.”

I will never go back into the shadows
.

“Odin made you into a weapon to turn against Loki during the Last Battle, but Dainn didn’t let you win. Now Odin has you again, and he doesn’t even have to tell you what to do.”

I am no man’s tool
.

Mist looked deeply into the beast’s eyes. “Dainn, fight it. You’ve mastered it before, without Danny. You can do it again. I have faith in you.”

The beast roared, scraping deep furrows in the snow with its claws. She could feel Dainn struggling to break free, but Odin’s curse lingered, a final barrier he couldn’t overcome.

She plunged into the beast’s mind, into its darkness, and made herself one with it. The beast convulsed, but Dainn remained beyond her reach. She let the Eitr flow into her, felt it merge with Dainn’s, bubbling and seething and seeking destruction.

Her mind grew clouded, filled with thoughts of triumph just beyond her reach. It had to be finished.

A tall elf tried to stand in her way as she set off to find Odin, and she drew a narrow bolt of lightning out of the clouds to strike him down. A dark-skinned mortal pursued her, calling her name, and she wrenched a stone from the ground with half a thought and hurled it back at him.

No one else dared disturb her as she strode across the field. Odin stood alone on a hillock, guarded by a dozen mortal hostages and three times as many Einherjar who flailed at her with their axes and swords. She twisted her fingers, and heavy branches snapped off the nearest trees. She shaped them as they flew, and they impaled the Einherjar. Some went wide of the mark and struck mortals instead. Mist hardly noticed.

“All-father!” she called.

He looked up, teeth bared behind his blood-spattered beard. “Mist,” he said. He waved his hand, and a dozen new mortals, men and women who had never seen a battle in their lives, ran to him like well-trained dogs. Whipped dogs, cringing and afraid.

“Come,” Odin said. “I am ready.”

Mist laughed.

*   *   *

Ryan vomited into the snow, got to his feet again, and ran after Mist, calling her name again and again.

She was too busy killing to hear him. His stomach heaved, and he raised his voice.

As if she had just noticed a fly buzzing around her head, Mist glanced over her shoulder.

“This is only a part of you!” Ryan yelled. “Remember who you are!”

“This
is
what she is, boy!” Odin shouted, kicking fallen mortals away from his boots. “It is what she has always been! Or didn’t your visions prepare you?”

They hadn’t, Ryan thought. Not like this. But he was responsible, because somewhere along the line he’d made the wrong decision: to tell or not to tell what he had seen of the future, to act or remain passive. He could blame only himself.

Before he could speak again, the beast loped up behind him, tongue lolling, eyes slitted. Mist half-turned to face him, and for a moment she seemed torn between Dainn and Odin.

“Perhaps you can still save him,” Odin shouted.

“Maybe I don’t want to!” she answered. “We both want you dead!”

“But only one of you can face me,” Odin said, brandishing Gungnir.

Immediately the beast turned on Mist. They stared at each other, bound by the dark Eitr, ready to kill.

“No!” Ryan called. “You’re tied together now. You’ll both die! You have to—”

Not fight it,
he thought. That would only make the darkness stronger.

“Dainn!” he yelled. “Look at me!”

The beast swung its head around, blinking in confusion.

“Remember the light!” Danny said. “You saved a million lives! Can you take Mist’s now?”

Crouching low, the beast backed away from Mist, stumbling over bodies in his way. He shook his head as if casting off parasites, and began to whine deep in his throat.

“I know you hear me, Dainn,” Ryan said. “Mist remembers what you hid from yourself. You can see it. You can feel what she means to you. You are together, and the only way to save her is to save yourself.”

Mist thrust Kettlingr at the beast. “Will you fight, cur?” she demanded.

He growled and whined and retreated, shivering violently.

“You can’t just conquer the beast, Dainn,” Ryan said. “It’s part of you. You have to
accept
it. Just like Mist has to accept—”

A heavy stone from the enemy ranks struck Ryan full in the chest. He hit the ground hard and bit into his tongue. Something felt wrong inside his ribs.

It hurt, but not as much as screwing up. He
had
to make them understand.

“You
have
to accept,” he whispered. “Both of you. Everything that … you are, dark and light, or it’s all going to end.”

With a contemptuous glance at Dainn, Mist moved to stand over Ryan. “Everything I am is here,” she said.

“No.” He coughed. “Dark and light,” he said. “Both … necessary. Don’t let … either one…”

Without warning, a little girl ran up to them, waving her arms. Rebekka’s arms, Ryan thought, but also Danny’s. Loki was right behind him. He tried to grab Danny, but Rebekka’s body fought like a demon and ran straight to Dainn.

Ryan felt the beast struggle to escape Dainn’s control. He clawed at his own chest, howled, tore at his flesh with razor fangs.