Valkyrie gripped the wheel, all of her focus directed at a single point just beyond the hood of her 1934 Packard, where the dense coastal fog obliterated the beams of her headlights into shimmering halos. The slick pavement climbed, twisted, and dropped down next to the Pacific shoreline. The Packard’s ancient vacuum-powered wipers made a quiet whip-creak, whip-creak as they flipped back and forth. A dull static buzzed out of the radio, the white-noise remnants of a jazz station that had vanished somewhere outside of Fort Bragg. In the darkness outside, the sporadic rain seemed to ebb and flow like the tide, now furious and driving, now little more than a mist, but never entirely gone.

Valkyrie’s cell phone rang, and the noise snapped her back to reality. She wondered how long she’d been listening to static on the radio. She glanced at the screen and it said, simply: Unknown.

Perfect, she thought. Her phone hadn’t rung in days, but now that she was flying down a dangerous road in the middle of the night -during a storm, no less- it just had to. Valkyrie was surprised it was even getting a signal. The indicator said one bar, but she doubted that was accurate.

Val scanned the area for a safe place to pull off the road. Through the haze, she saw the meridian curving along the side of the pavement, the thin barrier of sheet metal the only thing protecting her from a two-hundred-foot plunge straight into the icy black waters of the Pacific. To her right, she caught a glimpse of foamy waves crashing against the rocks. To her left, the silhouetted shapes of ancient sequoias and jagged coastal mountains frowning down at her, almost willing her to spin the wheel and slip quietly over the cliffs.

The phone continued to ring as Valkyrie sped through a tight inside corner. She eased off the accelerator and then punched it as she climbed the ridge on the other side. As the highway straightened out, Valkyrie reached out to turn off the radio. She tapped the speakerphone that was built into the car’s custom burl-wood dash, and it spat out a tinny beep.

“It’s Val,” she said.

“Valkyrie, it’s time for us to talk.”

It was a man’s voice, low, broken by the lousy reception, but still familiar. The sound sent a chill crawling down her spine.