by J. F. Penn
“From what you’ve said, the real prize is the Eye of Odin, and this staff needs some kind of activation to work its particular magic. Plus, I don’t think we have a choice at this stage.”
They walked together back through the hall of galleries, emerging through the columns of the classical temple facade that flanked the upper entrance to the Mesopotamian and Egyptian displays. The museum restaurant was empty, nestled in the shadow of the huge round exhibition hall that dominated the central space of the Great Court. White marble steps led down to the ground level entrance. At the top stood one of the Neo-Vikings, his hand on a modern Glock 26 pistol that looked out of place with his authentic clothing. The man gestured with his gun for them to walk down ahead of him.
Morgan had only been here when the Great Court was packed with tourists, their chatter a hubbub of life in the wide marble space. Now, it was silent except for the sobbing of those below. Their footsteps were loud as they descended the steps, rounding the corner to look down on the forecourt.
“Raise your arms,” Morgan whispered as she lifted her own, indicating their surrender, holding the staff high so it could be seen. Blake held his gloved hands up too, his eyes darting to the armed Neo-Vikings that looked up at them.
The hostages were bunched together in a group near the tourist information stand, only a few meters from the front entrance of the museum. Above them, the paneled glass ceiling of the Great Court arched across the space, sun dappling the marble floor with light. Morgan counted five men below with the Valkyrie, and one behind them on the stairs. They were all armed and also held shields now, great metal roundels that made Morgan wonder what they were needed for. She wouldn’t expect the British police or military to be storming in here any time soon, not without some negotiation, and even if they did, these shields wouldn’t be much use in the face of modern weaponry. But whatever this group had planned, they were surely near the end of it now.
Amongst the faces of the hostages that stared up at them, a few children huddled against their parents. Morgan could see a touch of Gemma in one little girl, and she was thankful that her niece was safe in Oxfordshire. After the sacrifices of Pentecost, she had sworn to make sure her family was never involved in her missions again.
When they reached the bottom of the staircase, two of the Neo-Vikings flanked them as the Valkyrie stepped forward. Morgan held out the staff and the woman took it, her hands mottled with age but her grip as strong as the iron staff itself.
“Why did you take it?” the Valkyrie asked, her eyes piercing.
Morgan stood with shoulders slumped, her head dropped as if she struggled to meet the woman’s eyes. “We were scared,” she said, her voice humble. “Please … I’m just an academic and I’m doing a paper on the staff. We didn’t know you wanted it. We just happened to be there. Truly.”
A moment’s silence, then the Valkyrie whipped the staff up, smashing it against Blake’s cheek. He didn’t have time to react, his head snapping sideways. He stumbled and dropped to his knees, clutching his face. A collective gasp came from the hostages.
“No,” Morgan cried. Her military instincts kicked in as she moved to take the Valkyrie down, but the big man behind grabbed her, forcing her arm up behind her back in a grip that told Morgan he knew what he was doing. He would not be as easy to defeat as the men upstairs.
“Stay still, or I’ll break your arm, bitch,” the man whispered.
“It’s OK, Morgan. I’m OK. Do what they want, please.” Blake was standing again. A cut had opened up high on his cheekbone, and blood began to soak through his gloves as he held his face. Rage bubbled inside Morgan. She longed for a weapon so she could deal with these people, but it wasn’t just her life that was at stake here.
“You’re clearly not just an academic,” the Valkyrie spat. “You sent two of my men back bruised and bloody. They will beat your friend here until you tell the truth, then I’ll move on to the children if you continue to lie.”
The Neo-Viking pushed Morgan’s arm higher, to the edge of breaking it.
“Alright,” she said. “I’m Dr. Morgan Sierra, from the Arcane Religious Knowledge And Numinous Experience Institute. I am a researcher, but I’m also ex-Israeli Defense Force. When the aurora borealis was seen across England and the prophecies about the date of Ragnarok came up in my research, I found a link to this staff. I came to see it for myself.”
The Valkyrie nodded. “Then you have seen the days ahead. A storm is coming and you will be a witness for the truth of it, Morgan Sierra. I know of ARKANE. They will be the ones to validate the power of what is to come. And for your truth, I will spare your friend.” She turned to her men. “Secure them.”
The Neo-Vikings put plastic cuffs on Morgan and Blake, tugging their wrists behind their backs.
“Be a good girl now,” the one behind Morgan whispered as he ratcheted the cuffs tight. He licked her ear, his tongue wet and probing. “Or I’ll come back and teach you a lesson.”
Morgan exhaled deeply, forcing down her natural reaction to turn and teach him a bloody lesson. He would be screaming soon enough, but Blake and the other hostages would pay a price for her anger. She calmed herself.
The men pushed the pair to the floor and put plastic cuffs around their ankles, too. The hostages around them cast surreptitious glances, not wanting to draw attention to themselves. Morgan had seen this reaction before: the urge to keep quiet and avoid the captor’s wrath. But she had also seen it in photos, on the faces of those on the train cars, the Jews who had never come home again.
Blake’s cheek was swelling, and bruising had already appeared around the cut.
“Are you OK?” Morgan whispered, shuffling closer to him.
He nodded, but she could see he was still reeling from the blow and shocked by the sudden pain. “I’m doing better than him.”
Morgan turned to see two of the Neo-Vikings drag the curator out to the front of the hostage group, and push him to kneel in front of the Valkyrie. He stumbled. Morgan could see he was bleeding too, clearly having taken a beating for his insolence in the exhibition hall.
The Valkyrie raised her arms, holding the staff in a tight grip, pointing it to the sky above. It seemed like an extension of her arm and the way she held the heavy metal made it appear lighter … As if it belonged there. In the moment of silence, Morgan heard the faint thrum of a helicopter in the skies above.
“You’re witnesses to the beginning of a new age,” the Valkyrie said, her voice echoing in the marble hall. “Those of you who are left will report to your media and they will know that Ragnarok is upon us, that I will usher in the final battle by calling up the souls of the dead to vanquish this land like our ancestors did. Too long have we been pathetic in the eyes of the world. Too long have we concerned ourselves with unimportant things. But when the moment of death comes, that is when we realize the triviality of our existence. You will know this soon enough, for a storm is coming.”
The helicopter was louder now. Morgan thought perhaps it was the military finally come to free them, or a press helicopter capturing what must be a crazy scene outside.
The Valkyrie began to chant, using the iron staff to spin her words into the air around them. The wind began to blow, lightly at first, as if the doors had been opened to the world outside. It whirled about her as she chanted, the men joining for parts of the incantation, a response to her lead.
“Nú er blóðugr örn breiðum hjörvi,” she called, her eyes filled with a dread darkness. “Now comes the Blood Eagle with the broadsword.”
The curator’s head came up, his eyes wild as he clearly understood what she said. He struggled against those who held him.
“No,” he screamed. “Not that, please.”
He was dragged by two of the men in front of the Valkyrie. They forced him to his knees and held his mouth open while the seeress poured a dark liquid into his mouth, chanting ancient words of sacrifice. The man slumped into silence within a minute, his eyes glazed over, mouth drooling.
The men turned him so his back was to the Valkyrie and ripped his clothes away to reveal his naked torso. The Valkyrie pulled an obsidian knife from her belt, tucking the staff in its place. The light reflected off the surface of the knife. In the glitter, Morgan saw the man’s death.
“Great Odin, accept this sacrifice as a herald of the New Age. The Blood Eagle will honor you,” the Valkyrie said, her words in English so all could hear. “Hold him tight now.”
Two of the men held the curator down as the Valkyrie plunged the knife into his back next to his spine. He screamed despite the sedation and his voice echoed through the Great Court, an animal cry of agony. The Valkyrie began to saw through his ribs and Morgan struggled in her bonds, desperate to stop the atrocity. One of the Viking men backhanded her, making her head ring. She lay stunned on the floor as the Valkyrie carved the curator’s body in the ancient way. The hostages around her wept, some frozen with terror, hiding behind each other, desperate not to be next for the slaughter.
As the Valkyrie finished separating a rib she pulled it out and away from the man’s body, her hands and arms coated with blood, the men on either side spattered with gore. The curator fell silent and slumped forward, shock shutting down his body, or perhaps dead already from the wounds. But the woman didn’t stop. She kept carving and pulling until the ribs formed hideous wings on either side of the man’s torso – the wings of the Blood Eagle. Finally, she reached in and pulled the man’s lungs from his chest, cutting them from him and offering the chunk of meat to the heavens.
“See this, Odin, and bless our final steps toward glory. Give me your vision now.”
The Valkyrie pulled a vial from a pouch at her belt, and sprinkled powder onto the bloody mess of the curator’s back. From Blake’s description of the Lindisfarne ritual, Morgan thought it must be some kind of powdered relic. The Valkyrie thrust the staff into the wound, coating the iron with fresh blood and powdered bone until it ran red, soaking the sleeves of her tunic.
She held the staff aloft again, spinning around and around, her robes flying out from her. She called out in Norse, a frenzy of blood and power upon her. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she spoke strings of words that Morgan couldn’t understand. The Valkyrie was in a shamanic ecstasy, seeing into realms beyond the physical. Could she see where the Eye of Odin lay?
“It is beginning,” the Valkyrie called. A vortex of winds seemed to be drawn in, spinning with her, sweeping the dust of the ancient place into the air until it spiraled upwards toward the glass roof. The hostages huddled together, shielding their eyes from the dust that whirled about them, but Morgan needed to see. The Neo-Vikings lifted their shields up over their heads, looking towards the roof as they did so. In that moment, Morgan knew what was going to happen.
Chapter 7
THE VALKYRIE THRUST HER staff upward with a shout of triumph. The spiral of wind hit the glass roof with incredible force, smashing the panels, sending a rain of glass down on those below. With a last reserve of energy, Morgan flipped her body and with both feet, sprang for cover as the first shards of glass fell. Blake had the sense to follow her, using his bound feet to push himself along the floor. They made it under the shelter of the tourist information booth before the glass exploded on the marble floor.
Several of the hostages crammed themselves under the overhang along with them, and Morgan pulled one of the children tightly toward her, shielding the little girl’s head. Huge shards of glass fractured on the flagstones and the wind whipped the pieces like razors through the crowd as screams echoed through the Great Court. The Valkyrie stood unharmed in the eye of the storm as shards spun around her, while her men were shielded from the large pieces by their shields but were cut by the exploded fragments.
Morgan couldn’t take her eyes off the Valkyrie, as she thrust the staff upward again and again. The screams of the captives were peppered with groans as people were cut down while running for cover. It was chaos in the Great Court, but the Neo-Vikings were no longer concerned with the captives.
The vortex smashed against the roof until the metal struts between the glass panes began to warp and bend. A part of Morgan screamed that this must be an illusion – how could the staff hold the power to do this? But the evidence was before her eyes. She could only imagine what it must look like from outside. The sound of smashing glass and howling wind must be heard by the press and police, who were surely now escalating their plans to storm the museum.
When the hole in the roof had stretched across half of the widest part of the Great Court, the Valkyrie stopped her spinning. The wind died down. The sound of a helicopter grew louder, and then it appeared, a shadow against the blue sky above. It was a Black Hawk, the open door revealing two men inside as well as the pilot. Hovering directly above, they lowered a winch basket that descended to the floor of the museum. The Valkyrie didn’t even look back at the hostages. She entered the basket and two of the Neo-Vikings entered with her, all three holding tight to the mesh sides.
They can’t possibly get away, Morgan thought. A helicopter this low over London would have the military out after them. They weren’t so far from Parliament and Buckingham Palace, after all. Concern flashed through her mind, for this group was clearly well funded. This was not the work of a two-bit cult in furs. Everything in Morgan wished for a weapon to stop them, to punish them for what they had done. Instead, she lay with Blake under the overhang, unable to do anything to stop the escape.
“Your sacrifice has earned you a place in Valhalla,” the Valkyrie said to the men who would be left behind. Two nodded, watching as the basket was winched up to the helicopter above the museum.
“No, take me too,” one of the men shouted, his eyes wide with fear of what would befall him if left behind. He ran wildly for the cage, which was now just six feet from the ground. The man jumped and caught hold of the bottom, his fingers protruding into the cage. The winch shuddered and inched up more slowly.
“Let go,” the men in the basket shouted, stamping at his fingers. “It’s too heavy.”
The cage inched higher and the man still held on.
“Please,” he screamed. “Don’t leave me.”
As the cage reached the upper third of the open space, the Valkyrie bent and slashed at the man’s fingers with her knife. When he still didn’t let go, she began to saw at them.
“No,” he screamed as blood ran down his arm. Finally, he couldn’t hold on anymore. He let go, his scream silenced as he smashed into the flagstones, his blood running into the words of Tennyson carved in the marble floor of the Great Court.
The cage was winched up the final meters and the Valkyrie and her men pulled into the helicopter as it banked away out of sight, the noise of the blades fading as it flew off. Morgan’s resolve was steel, refined by the heat of her rage at the murder of the curator, the injuries to the hostages and the despoiling of this great museum. She would hunt down this Valkyrie and get the staff back, and she would find the Eye of Odin.
The Neo-Vikings left behind threw their shields down. Without looking at the hostages, they ran toward the back of the museum. The hostages, many cut and bleeding, sat in stunned silence for a moment. Then one man stood up and walked toward the entrance, his steps halting as if he couldn’t believe he was free to go.
There was a crash from the museum’s front entrance and a team of armed police and medics swarmed in, one wrapping the man in a blanket as they passed to triage those huddled on the marble floor. A policeman called for body bags and soon the hall was alive with activity, processing the crime scene and helping those with injuries to waiting ambulances. Several of the armed police headed toward the back of the building, but Morgan considered that this was so well planned, the Neo-Vikings may well have got away unseen.
In the group of medics that entered, Morgan saw Peter Lovell, one of the ARKANE London support team. With fifteen years as a military doctor, Peter’s buzz cut, upright posture and confident bearing made him stand out, and he was definitely overqualifi
ed for this type of first aid care. He came straight to her, ignoring all the others, leaving them to the official emergency services.
“Morgan, are you OK?” Peter asked. “Where are you hurt?”
“Just get these cuffs off,” she said, holding her wrists out as he reached into his bag for a scalpel. “This is Blake.” Morgan nodded to the side, where Blake sat staring up at the hole in the magnificent glass roof. “He has a head wound that needs to be dealt with before you look at me properly.”
“Director Marietti wants you back at base ASAP, if you’re OK,” Peter said. “I’ll take you back now and leave this lot to the crime scene techs. ARKANE will help the police coordinate the search with expert help on where the Neo-Vikings might have gone.”
“Let me guess,” Morgan’s mouth twisted in a wry smile as he finished cutting her cuffs. “I’m the expert help.”
Once Morgan’s wrists were free, Peter cut away the restraints on her feet and then did the same for Blake.
“I’m going to find them,” Morgan said, her hand resting on Blake’s upper arm, feeling the tension under his skin. “I’ll get the staff back and they’ll pay for what they did to the curator.”
Blake looked over to where the body of the mutilated man was being lifted onto a stretcher.
“He was a cantankerous old bastard sometimes, but he was a respected colleague and pretty fun at Christmas parties.”
He smiled painfully at the memory and turned to Morgan, his blue eyes meeting hers, and she saw that his resolve matched hers.
“I want to help. You know what I can do, and if we want to find them quickly, I think we need to check out The Lindisfarne Gospels. They might have a clue as to what happened to the original Valkyrie.” He turned his head so Peter could clean his wound, wincing with the sting of the antiseptic on his bruised skin and open cut.
Morgan knew that Director Marietti wouldn’t like involving a civilian, but the London ARKANE office didn’t have anyone with psychometric ability – not that she knew of, anyway.