Chicks Kick Butt (31 page)

“I’ve been called worse,” she murmured. “Much worse.”

“And if I go along with this insanity?”

“What’s in it for you?” She smiled.

“No. That is not my entire question.… Well, perhaps it is, but it was poorly phrased.”

She placed a palm gently at the center of his chest and watched him swallow hard. “My bad.”

“This will not wipe out the species, Tanya. As long as we’re left, as long as one is left, there will always be Vampyre. It is like a virus, just like polio still exists, the bubonic plague still exists. Evil still exists no matter how many dirty bankers and politicians—”

Her deep kiss stopped his words just as his full mouth and total embrace stopped her breath. “We can let tomorrow take care of itself and save blowing up a few blood clubs for another night.”

“If you claim me, I will help you write this book.”

He’d obviously gone into her mind searching for whatever pleased her, and that he’d even bothered to do so carved out a very special place for him within her eerily still heart. There was something impossible to resist in being wanted dead or alive.

She touched his cheek with trembling fingers. “You think too much, Anastas Baranov.”

Only inches from her face he stared into her eyes. “No, Tanya … search and you will see that my mind is blank only for you now.”

* * *

He was right to insist that they go down into the vault. Daylight surely would have caught them unaware. But as far as she was concerned, she’d already burst into flames. His touch was like hot embers, delicious long-awaited torture. Each kiss brought delirium, and yet he cried out as she planted more against his chest.

Slowly knowledge seeped into her brain; it was the reverb of her caresses echoing off his touch, trading pleasure back and forth down to the cellular level. His French kiss between her thighs left her weeping; warm, rough palms cradling the delicate skin of tightened nipples left her panting. Passion fusion. It was all too insane. Bodies fitted together as though welded. Sweat and sweet, pungent love essence was the lubricant that slicked all boundaries and made them move together like greased gears.

His hair in her fists, she watched him arch beneath her and give her his throat. The temptation was too great to bear; the deep knowledge rising within her, impossible to ignore. In a blinding flash of pleasure, he was marked as hers. Claimed and wanted, dead or alive. She bit him and came so hard that she was afraid she’d drain him dry.

Anastas’s wail rent the air as his fists wound themselves in the crimson satin sheets while ejaculation spasms tore through him. Her name became a broken mantra panted out in two syllables as the tremors ebbed. She lifted her mouth from his throat and dabbed her blood-wet lips with the back of her hand. Tears filled his eyes and then he suddenly gathered her up, sheets and all, hugging her tightly and rocking her hard.

“Never have I been claimed,” he said in a harsh whisper that fractured against her neck.

“Nor have I,” she whispered back, fighting a sob. “I’ve never been here before either.”

* * *

Tanya waited patiently as one by one, mind-stunned humans found an inexplicable need to exit the massive warehouse building. Pulsing music made the night air throb red. Some took a smoke across the street, staring out blankly at the water. Some walked around aimlessly trying to hail a nonexistent cab. A few claimed to be hungry for pizza and fare not served at the bar, and they squabbled with the huge vampire bouncers guarding the exit doors.

“You know after this there’s no turning back,” Anastas said grimly, staring across the street from the shadows.

“I know,” Tanya replied, and opened her cell phone, then punched in the numbers that would detonate the charges they’d rigged in the tunnels beneath the building. “Call 911 to minimize the blaze and to keep it from spreading to other buildings right after I push SEND .”

Anastas nodded and Tanya watched a slow smile creep across his face. She depressed the SEND button with a French-manicured nail.

The building exploded in an orange inferno. Windows shattered beneath glass-melting heat. Almost knocked off their feet from the force of the blast, they hunkered down against the adjacent building that protected them. Heat and flames licked at broken bricks and twisted metal. Shrapnel from the rubble whizzed by them, but Tanya wrapped them both in a dark energy shield as Anastas hugged her against him tightly. After a moment they both looked up to stare at their handiwork. Humans snapped out of their daze and rushed back and forth outside screaming, but no vampires had exited the building.

“You have sent a large message, I believe.”

“They are gonna be so pissed.”

“Yes … and now that we have visited the Russians, I know of this nice little Polish blood bar in Queens where we can also get a drink with no troubles. Shall we?”

Tanya just shook her head and laughed.

  SAN FRANCISCO, PRESENT DAY

The sword sliced the air inches in front of Mist’s face. She swung Kettlingr to intercept the blow, bracing herself and catching the blade in midstroke. Metal clanged on metal with glorious, discordant music. Her opponent bore down hard for several seconds, his furious gaze fixed on hers, and abruptly disengaged.

“One of these days,” Eric said, his face breaking out in a grin, “I’m going to beat you.”

Mist lowered her own sword and caught her breath. Perspiration trickled from her hairline over her forehead, soaking the fine blond hairs that had come loose from her braid, and her body ached pleasantly from the hard workout. She grinned back at Eric, who sheathed his sword and reached for the towel lying 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.

There had been a time when her kind had been no more than choosers of the battle-slain, bearing the trappings of war themselves, but never baring their swords. Ragnarök had changed Odhinn’s handmaidens, as it had changed so much else.

Mist sheathed her own sword and stroked the runes engraved on the hilt.
She
had no right to pride of any kind. She had but one purpose in Midgard, and it had been her only reason for living after everything she had known was gone. The fact that she had permitted herself a relationship with a man after so many centuries was an aberration, a reckless act of defiance against her fate.

And yet Eric had roused her from the despair of one who waits for a redemption that will never come. He was not afraid of a woman who shared his strength in body and will. 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 could not help but love him.

“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 naked chest streaked with sweat. He lifted a 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 could not 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.

“There’s something I have to take care of first,” she said, smiling to take the sting out of her rejection. “I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

Eric let her go and winked. “I’ll be waiting.” He strode away, and Mist was left wondering what was wrong with her.

But of course she knew. Over the past few months, truly happy for the first time since her voluntary exile, she had begun to acknowledge just how much she had changed. Little by little she had accepted the unthinkable: she had truly become a part of this world … the one world that had survived Ragnarök’s ice and fire. Midgard, a place without magic or gods who intervened in the affairs of men.

Of course, Midgard’s very survival was a puzzle in itself. The prophecies had foretold destruction and renewal, the return of Baldr from Niflheimr, a new beginning for gods and mankind in a paradise of peace and plenty.

No such paradise had ever arisen, for Midgard had remained untouched by the chaos of war between the Aesir and Loki’s children. War and famine and sorrow continued unbroken, and the Aesir were forgotten. No one, not even the sons of Odhinn himself, would come to claim the treasure she guarded. It had become obsolete. Like her.

With a sigh Mist walked out of the exercise room, past the blacksmith shop that occupied a third of the warehouse flat, and into her small kitchen. She could hear Eric singing in the shower. Geisl jumped up on the kitchen table and chirruped, demanding his rightful share of affection. Stjarna bounded up beside him, green-gold eyes far too intelligent for any ordinary cat.

Mist picked Stjarna up and stroked his dense gray fur. Breeders called them Norwegian Forest Cats now; a thousand years ago they had been sacred to the Lady.

So much lost.

“Do you think it’s the same with the others?” she asked him. “Have they given up, too?”

Stjarna licked her hand sympathetically. He didn’t know any more than she did, and she’d lost contact with the other
valkyrjur
decades ago. Only two other survirors of the final battle lived in San Francisco, and Vídarr and Váli had abandoned the old ways soon after she’d settled here. Mist had despised them for it then. Now, settled in a life with a man she had come to love—a life where her only “enemies” were muggers, petty thieves, and the occasional gangbanger—she finally understood.

Setting Stjarna back on the table, she gave Geisl a brief pat and walked down the short hall to the second bedroom. The rune-wards that guarded the door had never been disturbed except by Mist herself. She released them with a word, lifted the key on its chain from around her neck, and unlocked the door.

Two dozen swords, axes, daggers, and knives, each lovingly forged by her own hand, hung in oak-and-glass display cases built into the walls. Mist locked the door behind her, passed by the swords and axes, and went directly to the knife case, which held eight weapons with hand-carved grips and edges sharp enough to slice flesh like tissue. Each knife was unique, but no one of them appeared substantially different from any other except in subtle elements of design and embellishment.

The one she chose, like the others, was perfectly balanced for a hand that would never wield it in battle, a fine object that might have found a home in some collector’s case among his or her other most valued possessions. But when Mist closed her fingers around the grip, it sang. Sang of a past she could scarcely remember.
An axe age, a sword age.
An age of heroism and blood and doom.

Mist knew the magics. She knew the runes and spells and songs, though her skill was only enough to guard what she held in her hand. The chant she sang now came without thought, for she had sung it a hundred times. A thousand.

The knife shuddered in her fist. Then it began to grow, the blade widening, the grip lengthening inch by inch until it was as long as her arm, long enough to touch the floor and reach above her head.

Gungnir. The Swaying One, the spear that could not miss its mark. The magic weapon Odhinn had entrusted to her in the final moments of his life, as he and the Aesir had entrusted the other treasures to her sisters.

But Gungnir was hers to guard with her life. The rune-spells that protected it from enemy hands also hid its true shape, and would continue to do so until …

Mist closed her eyes. There was no “until.” The evil ones were no more than dust and ash. The old heroism was only a dream. Never again would she ride Gyllir on the battlefield and carry the bravest warriors to Valhöll. She was only an ordinary woman now, a forger of fine weapons, a teacher of lost arts.

It’s time. Time to bury the dead and begin to forget.

Realizing that she was gripping Gungnir’s shaft far too tightly for her own good, Mist relaxed her fingers, sang the spell, and watched the spear shrink to its former size. She hung it carefully back in the case, locked and warded the door, and went in search of Eric.

He was gone. A scribbled note lay on the kitchen table; he’d been called in to work and didn’t know when he’d be back.
Sorry,
the note read.
See you tonight
.

Shaking off her disappointment, Mist took a solitary shower, threw on a sweater, and went out to the garage. The sky was flawlessly blue, crisp and lovely, and Mist could smell the tart, briny scent of the bay half a mile to the east. Ordinarily she would take Muni into the city, but this time she had errands to run in South San Francisco, home of the only comprehensive ironworking supplier in the entire Bay Area.

Her Volvo was ancient and often unreliable, hardly the kind of transportation she had been accustomed to in her former life. It rumbled and complained like the great hound Garmr, chained at the gates of Gnipahellir until the final days.

But Garmr was gone, like Fenrisúlfr and Loki and the great serpent Jörmangandr, the giants and dwarves who had fought the Aesir and álfar. Not even shadows remained.

Hardly aware of the drive, Mist completed her errands, her trunk and backseat groaning under the weight of the supplies. When she returned to the warehouse, Eric was still gone. She unloaded the car, arranged the supplies neatly in the shop, and set herself to completing the custom sword she had been making for one of San Francisco’s more influential politicians, a man who had never fought a real battle in his entire life.

Mist paused to wipe the sweat from her forehead and stared into the glowing coals in the firepot. Even Eric, strong and skilled as he was, wore tailored suits and went to an office every day, his sphere one of endless documents, dull meetings, and deadening paperwork.

That was the world he lived in, the world she’d chosen for his sake. And hers.

Mist finished her work well after ten that night. Eric hadn’t returned or left a message on the cell phone he had insisted she buy several months ago. She found herself strangely restless in spite of her hard work at the forge. She fed the cats, put on her leather jacket, and left the house.

Dogpatch was far from quiet even at this time of night; it was becoming fashionable with young professionals who frequented the growing number of clubs, restaurants, and galleries tucked between warehouses and ancient Victorian cottages. It seemed even more crowded now that Christmas was coming; colored lights festooned the old houses and shops, and someone had set a decorated tree on the roof of the recording studio across the street. Mist bypassed the busier streets, heading north and west toward Potrero Hill and the Mission District.

It was a long walk to Golden Gate Park on the opposite side of the city. Mist reached it before midnight and entered the park from Arguello Boulevard. Unlike Dogpatch, the park was deserted except for the homeless and vagrants who spent their nights wrapped in tattered blankets under bushes, huddled against the damp winter chill. There would be no Christmas for them.

Christmas. Yule, as it had been known before the coming of the White Christ. The time when the barriers between the planes of gods and men were thinnest.

Mist shivered and laughed at herself. There were no barriers, and no one to cross them. The solstice was nothing but an excuse for celebration, an end to the darkness and the coming of a new year.

She crossed Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and headed toward the Arboretum. Fog began to settle over the nearest trees, turning the park into a ghostly realm of indistinct shapes and ominous silence.

The fog
. Mist stopped, lifting her head to test the air. Fog like this came in the summer, when warm Pacific wind blew over the colder waters along the coast. A sudden, bitter chill nipped at Mist’s hands and face. There was nothing natural about this cold, or the icy vapor that stretched frigid fingers along the ground at her feet, slithering and hissing like the World Serpent bent on devouring everything in its path.

Disbelief shook Mist with jaws of iron. She knew the smell of the vapor and what it portended. But the
jötunar
, the frost giants, were as extinct as the great sloths or woolly mammoths that had walked the North American plains.

It wasn’t possible. She must be going mad. Too many years alone. Empty years, centuries, millennia, protecting a weapon that would never be used again.

A low, screeching howl pulled Mist out of her bitter reverie. A face emerged from the vapor, rising two heads above Mist’s generous height. Broad, heavy, filled with anger and fell purpose.

The cold eyes fixed on hers. The mouth, with its rows of teeth filed to points like daggers, gaped in a grin.

“
Heil
, Odhinn’s girl,” the
jötunn
said, his voice deep enough to shake the very ground under Mist’s feet. “Or can it be that I am mistaken? Is this what the
valkyrjur
have become, mountless and dressed as thralls?”

Recovering her senses, Mist reached slowly inside her jacket for the knife she carried against her hip. It was too late now to draw the runes and burn them, and she had no song prepared that would work against a
jötunn
. She had never imagined she would need it.

“How are you called, giant?” she asked in the Old Tongue.

“I am Hrimgrimir,” the
jötunn
said. “I know you, Mist, once Chooser of the Dead.”

Mist shook her head, trying to dislodge the nightmare that had seized her mind and senses. Hrimgrimir was the frost giant who guarded the mouth of Niflheimr. His mistress, Hel herself, had perished at Ragnarök. Like the others, he should no longer exist.

“From whence have you come, Frost-Shrouded?” she asked. “From what dream of venom and darkness?”

Hrimgrimir laughed. “No dream, Sow’s bitch.” He blew out a foul, gusty breath. “A pity that you chose
her
side. You might have lived to see the new age.” He reared out of the vapor, huge hands curled, his power and giant-magic swirling round about him like the sleet he wore like ice-forged armor. “You will tell me where it is before you die.”

Mist felt his assault in body and soul, and her fingers slipped on the grip of her knife. She staggered back, pulled it out, and rubbed the runes engraved with such painstaking care by Odhinn himself. Like Gungnir, the knife began to stretch, to broaden, to become what it was meant to be.

“My kitten will silence your boasts,” she said into the howling wind that beat against her. She lifted Kettlingr and took a step forward, body bent, legs tensed to leap. A great ice-rimed hand swung toward her like a mallet meant to crush and shatter.