The banging started after Kanesha had fallen asleep, startling her. Having less need for sleep, I had stayed sitting by the desk.

Bang. Bang. Somebody was banging on the boarded up window. Somebody who clearly knew we were in here. It was too long, I thought, for us to have been seen by a security guard.

I drew my sword, but kept it sort of behind me, trailing, as I went to the door and opened it.

And one of Freya’s warriors bounced in, pink hair pretty much leading. “Hey.”

“We’re hiding.”

“In an abandoned asylum. Monsters live in abandoned asylums.”

I’d never caught her name. “So, no wonder you looked for me here,” I quipped.

“Boss sent me. The valkyries are a little busy chasing fire giants around town and she figured you could use the backup.”

“My mother asked.” It wasn’t a question.

Kanesha had woken up. “Who is this?”

“She works for Freya,” I explained. “Never did catch her name.”

“Lizbet,” pinkhair supplied, cheerfully. “I’m your backup.”

“It’s not so much backup we need as somewhere better to go than this place,” I explained. “I can handle anything that shows up and Kanesha’s no slouch, but we were afraid to go to any of our friends.”

“Thruor’s apartment got hit, but she wasn’t there and didn’t have anything irreplaceable. Oh, and that cop you know is with them.”

Mike. I felt relieved, although I suspected he’d been in more comfortable situations than surrounded by a pack…no other word for it…of valkyries. “Good.”

“A place to go I can manage. It has beds. It’s a valkyrie safe house, but they’re pretty sure the giants don’t know about it.”

Kanesha stood up, stretching. “Then let’s go, because beds sound good to me even if they don’t to you less than mortal types.”

I had already reached to offer her a hand up, but lowered it when she was clearly not having problems standing. “Might be risky on the way. Did you bring a vehicle?”

Lizbet nodded. “One that won’t stand out like those bikes.”
“Well, I suppose, you can’t ask a valkyrie’s steed to pretend to be something too ordinary.” I grinned at her.

“It’s not fair. The rest of us have to find our own transport.” She led the way back outside. I kept my sword drawn. I trusted Lizbet to a degree – they seemed to have decided I was on their side and I hadn’t heard anything about anyone wanting to solve the problem by killing me for a while. But only to a degree, and who knew what was out there.

What was out there right now was streets so empty it felt almost like the aftermath of the apocalypse; of some plague that had dropped everyone in their homes. Of Ragnarok. No, the aftermath of Ragnarok would be a lot colder.

At the very least a new ice age, if not a snowball, the Earth locked in ice for centuries. Reality or metaphor?

I hoped never to find out.