by Nick Harrow
The bodyguard flicked his eyes to Mimi, then to the heavy concrete planter to the left of the pool chairs. She blinked once, and he prayed she’d gotten the message.
A smoky aroma swirled around the pool, as if there was an open-air barbecue pit nearby. Gunnar had no idea what that meant, but he did not like it one little bit.
“Hey, hey.” Cal turned to face Gunnar, a gruesome smile plastered to his face. “It’s cool, man. You’re safe here. Have another drink. There’s someone coming by that I want you to meet.”
The raven flying overhead suddenly dove out of the sky, cawing like mad. Its wings battered the heads of the guards in the courtyard, and it slashed at their eyes with its beak and talons.
They shouted in surprise and fired their weapons into the air, spraying lead dangerously close to the rooftop guards. Every shot missed the raven, who fluttered and weaved around the bullets with surprising agility. Then it launched itself into the air and soared across the lead-strewn sky.
At the same instant, more jötnar suddenly leapt over the wall, clearing the security fence with feet to spare. They landed nimbly, drawing weapons from the slings around their necks. All of a sudden there were enough submachine guns pointed at Gunnar to put down a riot.
Gunnar knew his only chance of survival was to keep Corso between him and the shooters. He lunged forward and wrapped the fingers of his left hand around the gold chain. He yanked that arm back, dragging Cal’s head forward. At the same time, Gunnar twisted hard at the waist and rammed his elbow into the gang boss’s nose. There was a loud crack and a grisly crunching, and blood sprayed into the air.
He twisted the thick golden rope of a necklace around his left fist, shortening the leash on Corso’s neck, then grabbed hold of the man’s central horn with his right hand. The combination of handholds gave Gunnar the leverage he needed to manhandle the gang lord into position between him and the other jötnar.
Mimi had taken his hint and dropped down behind the planter when the raven had made its move. She had curled into a tight ball behind the cover, her eyes sparking with fury.
“Everybody chill out,” Gunnar shouted. “Any of you makes a move, I’ll rip your boss’s goddamn head off.”
“Slick move,” Cal growled. He tried to push Gunnar back, but the move choked him on his own necklace. “But it won’t save you. Don’t be stupid, man. She wants you, and she gets what she wants. Give yourself up. Don’t be stupid, and Mimi gets to walk away.”
“You’re the one who’s stupid,” Gunnar shot back. “Dressing up as a monster doesn’t make you any less of a pussy. I’ll beat you now, just like I beat you on that stupid Ukranian deal.”
The jötunn, enraged by the insult, whipped his head back and away from the bodyguard. The unexpected move hoisted Gunnar up, the heels of his motorcycle boots a full six inches off the ground. Then Cal whipped his head hard to the right and launched a pair of uppercuts into Gunnar’s torso. The powerful attacks drove the breath from the bodyguard’s lungs and weakened his grip on Cal’s horn. When the gang boss jerked his head sharply to the left, putting his enormous strength to full use, momentum ripped Gunnar’s hands away from the slick horn.
His other hand, though, remained trapped in the chain’s golden coils as his body flew away from Corso. The metal constricted around his fingers, shattering bones and dislocating knuckles in a splintered chorus. A wave of agony exploded from Gunnar’s hand. He couldn’t think through the pain, he couldn’t see.
And none of that mattered.
Primal anger pushed back against the pain. Getting hurt was inevitable. But he wouldn’t die. He’d make the jötunn pay for hurting him.
“Shoot him!” Corso’s voice was still strong. Thick cords of muscle protected the gangster’s trachea from the crushing pressure of the golden chain. “A hundred grand to the motherfucker who kills him.”
Jötnar exploded through the villa’s front door, their bulky bodies jostling for position as they stormed into the pool area. There were so many of the big freaks they’d gotten in each other’s way and couldn’t fire on Gunnar without hitting one another.
The bodyguard knew that was a brief reprieve, though. If he and Mimi weren’t gone before the jötnar got their shit together, they were both dead.
Gunnar threw one leg behind Corso’s leading foot and slammed his weight into the monster. The surprise and leverage from the attack overcame the gangster’s superior strength and buckled Corso’s knee. Gunnar pulled the gang kingpin’s necklace hard to the right and down, using his body weight to rip Cal off his feet and slam him to the ground.
Three of the jötnar around the pool opened fire. Bullets ripped through the air above Gunnar and Cal and hammered the privacy wall behind them. Leaves and twigs from the bushes that bordered the property spewed into the air as lead missiles flattened against the stones.
Cal and Gunnar had landed hard on their sides, and the bodyguard used the surprise to continue his roll away from the guards. Cal was unprepared for the maneuver and grunted as his shoulder crashed into the concrete again. The pair had rolled behind another planter, giving the bodyguard precious seconds of safety.
“Give me the stone,” Gunnar shouted. He slammed his fist into the jötunn’s right eye, then the left.
“Fuck you,” the jötunn roared. With a sudden, explosive move, Cal shot back to his feet. The chain tangled around Gunnar’s hand dragged the bodyguard up, too, and Gunnar struggled to get his feet under him. They ended up standing face to face, snarling and shouting as they hammered at one another with vicious punches.
One of the jötunn guards rushed Gunnar’s blind side and clamped a hand around the back of the bodyguard’s neck. He hoisted him into the air by his spine, squeezing Gunnar’s cervical vertebrae between meaty fingers.
But the monster hadn’t counted on Mimi. She darted from behind cover and grabbed hold of the submachine gun dangling from the strap around his neck. She found the safety and slid it off in the blink of an eye, then rammed the muzzle up under the jötunn’s ribs on his right side. The weapon spat a three-round burst into the guard, shredding his heart and lungs in less than a second. Golden light flared from the hole in her forehead, and the rest of the jötnar shouted in surprise.
And fear.
While Gunnar and Corso traded blows, Mimi freed the weapon from the fallen monster and put it to work as she retreated to cover behind the planter. Her first burst shattered the nearest jötunn’s knee, cracked his thigh, and blew a hole through his guts. As that foe fell back, she unleashed a second burst that stitched through another jötunn’s chest and knocked him back into the pool. The creature’s blood clouded the water in a black flood.
With each death, a rush of static electricity blasted across Gunnar’s skin. Even the hairs of his beard stood at attention. He felt more powerful, more alive than ever before. The surge of hamingja energy filled the bodyguard with liquid warmth, like he’d just swallowed a jugful of whiskey. The strange new power spread into Gunnar’s arteries and muscles.
The remaining guards realized their foes were armed, and confusion exploded around the pool. Some of the monsters tried to rush into the house for cover, while others tried to press forward to get a clear shot at Mimi crouched behind the planter. The momentary confusion gave the good guys a few more seconds to work with.
“Behind you!” Mimi shouted. She fired another burst that punched through a monster’s heart and lungs with unerring accuracy, then shifted her aim and took the top of a jötunn’s head off in the same breath. It was as if she couldn’t miss even if she tried.
Gunnar knew he had to make the most of the space she’d given him. But with one hand trapped in Cal’s chain and no weapon, his options were limited. All he had was the strength of the hamingja pouring into his veins from Mimi’s kills and a bad attitude.
He threw a looping punch toward the right side of Cal’s head. The jötunn easily avoided it, but the bodyguard had expected that. For a moment, the crime lord’s head was turned
to the left.
Bringing his eye in range of Gunnar’s striking hand. With a vicious snarl, the bodyguard extended his thumb and buried its first knuckle in Cal’s eye socket. He strained to push it in deeper.
But for all the strength the hamingja gave to him, Gunnar was no match for the jötunn’s raw power. Cal wrenched his head out of the bodyguard’s grip, spraying blood and gore across the grass.
“You can’t kill me!” Cal roared in Gunnar’s face. “I am Hyrrokkin’s chosen. She’ll make me a fucking god for killing you.”
Cal slammed his head into the bodyguard’s face. The tips of the curved horns grazed the sides of Gunnar’s head, tearing open the skin at his temples. The longer horn slammed down on top of the bodyguard’s skull and split his scalp to the bone as the gangster’s ridged forehead crushed Gunnar’s nose into a pulpy ruin.
Gunnar’s thoughts had scattered like startled ravens, and blood filled his eyes. But he clung to the image of the Valknut. He twisted the hand still caught in the golden rope’s trap, tightening the noose, using his newfound strength to grind the chain’s links through Cal’s skin. The pain from his split skull, from his crushed fingers, meant nothing. All that mattered was the fight.
And the fight felt good. Something about the sheer act of violence reignited the energy that had gone into him with the first jötunn’s death. He wrenched the chain hard to one side and moved behind Cal, hoping to keep the leader between him and hostile fire.
Behind him, Mimi let loose a battle cry that sounded like a hunting hawk’s shriek. She emptied the submachine gun, the bullets snuffing out jötunn lives and filling Gunnar with much needed strength. The fight was almost over. Just a few more seconds.
Cal wheezed in the bodyguard’s grip. His thick-nailed fingers clawed at Gunnnar’s wrist, raking bloody furrows through the flesh of his forearm. He stomped with desperate fury, doing his damnedest to crush his enemy’s feet.
But try as he might, Cal couldn’t overcome Gunnar’s berserker fury. His knees buckled, and he dropped to the stones beside the pool, chin sagging over the necklace biting into his neck. Blood rained down the jötunn’s chest and his breath died in his lungs.
“You picked the wrong side,” Gunnar growled. He pulled harder on the bloody links and rammed his knee into Cal’s back. “You shouldn’t have crossed me.”
Something gave way, and for a moment Gunnar wasn’t sure if it was the necklace or the gang leader’s neck. The answer came when Cal’s head rolled free, the ragged remains of his throat splattering against the wet stones. It splashed into the pool and vanished beneath the black waters. The dead gang lord’s hamingja roared out of him and into Gunnar, a flood of power that filled the bodyguard to overflowing.
Bullets screamed through the air around Gunnar and Mimi. One of them tugged at the side of his head, filling his ears with a high-pitched whine. Another punched through his jacket’s sleeve to carve a burning line across his forearm. More bullets kicked up chunks of the stone deck and hurled them at Gunnar’s face. Others ricocheted off the wall behind him and whined over the Mirage’s roof.
The bodyguard shoved the Valknut into his inside jacket pocket, then grabbed Mimi by the wrist. They raced to the security wall, dodging between the dwarf lemon trees for cover.
“Can you handle being thrown over the wall,” he asked, grabbing her by the waist.
“Do it. I’ll get the car,” Mimi said.
Gunnar tossed her into the air, and she easily cleared the fence’s tines. A second later, she called back, “I’m good!”
Bullets howled around Gunnar. They dug chunks out of the wall and sent a cascade of green leaves raining down from the lemon trees. His head ached, and his thoughts swayed drunkenly through his brain.
There was something he had to do.
Run. He had to run. Get to Mimi. Get to the car.
Not yet. The rune. The voice in his head was raw and coarse, like a raven’s caw.
Gunnar saw the symbol in his head, clear as the blood on his hands. His old man had shown him the Elder Futhark runes in a vain attempt to interest Gunnar in his heritage, but this was not one the bodyguard recognized. It was both more complex and more primal, a pair of triangles turned on their corners, their tips touching, and a pair of sideways Vs jutting from their outer edges. It called to him, and he knew what he had to do.
Time slowed to a crawl as he went to work on the sigil. Gunnar dragged the fingers of his left hand across his face, then began drawing the rune on the inside of his right forearm with his bloody fingertip. Each stroke hissed and steamed like the touch of a branding iron against his flesh. Gunnar gritted his teeth against the pain. A little more suffering was nothing compared to the torture Corso’s goons would give him if they caught up to him.
But more worrying than that was the smoking woman who stalked toward him, her body covered in veins of red fire. Smoke rose from her footsteps, and a veil of black smoke covered her face. She was beautiful, and terrifying.
Only she and Gunnar were moving. Time had frozen for the rest of the world.
“Don’t do it, lover,” the burning woman said. “You can still turn back.”
“Fucking trolls,” Gunnar groaned and drew the rune’s final line. The world lurched into motion and the monstrous woman howled in rage.
A shock wave exploded away from the steaming symbol on his arm, shattering the security wall. The jötnar screamed as burning stones slammed into them and a tidal wave ripped across the pool. The blast ripped fruit trees out of the ground, upended the pool furniture, and shredded the bushes. Meaty explosions erupted behind Gunnar as the power blasted the smoking woman off her feet and dispersed her to the screaming winds.
Chunks of jötunn rained from the sky, along with a storm of blood and viscera. Hamingja flooded into Gunnar in a scorching storm. Soaked with blood, looking like an extra from The Walking Dead, the bodyguard stood and walked through a blast hole in the security wall and down the street. The energy he’d stolen from the dead monsters struggled to heal him, and Gunnar realized how close he’d been to death. If Mimi hadn’t picked up the gun and started shooting...
Gunnar pushed the thought away. It was pointless to worry about what might have been. If death wanted him, it would find him. Worrying about it wouldn’t change that. He walked down the road, head humming with the dull roar of a concussion, the broken bones of his hand aching like he was squeezing a bag of broken razor blades.
“You look like hell,” Mimi said when she pulled the Charger up alongside him.
“Better than Corso,” Gunnar grunted and pulled the door open. He flopped down in the car’s passenger seat. Blood from his wounds splashed across the dash and windshield. “Let’s go home.”
Chapter 9
HILDA DRAGGED HER ASS out of bed, tripped over her new tail, and thrust a blue-skinned hand out to catch herself before her horned head could bash into the half-demolished dresser next to the bed. Unfortunately, her black claws landed on the innards of last night’s amusement and razored through a tangled mess of guts and kidneys. The jötunn’s outstretched hand slipped on the gore and offal, and she fell to her knees. Filth burst out of the ruptured intestines, filling the hotel room with a pungent odor.
“Shit,” she grunted.
The smell, though the jötunn knew it had to be objectively horrible, didn’t bother her much. In fact, her stomach grumbled at the powerful scent. Not because she wanted to eat it, Hilda realized, but because it smelled like death.
And where there was death, there was meat.
Food.
Hilda stood up and kicked the dead body out of her way. It had belonged to a guy she’d met at Caesar’s last night, while she was out trolling for some coke. Brian? Byron? She shook her head. No, that wasn’t right. Not that it mattered anymore. The dude was really, truly, super dead. Someone had ripped his dick off and shoved it down his neck, taken out one of his eyes and stuffed it up his nose, and then torn him open from asshole to sternum.
That wasn’t right. Someone hadn’t done that.
She had.
“Shoulda got out when I told you to go,” Hilda said to the corpse. “You, too, bitch.”
There was another body sprawled on the couch. This one had most of its body parts where they belonged but was covered in vicious bite marks. Hilda licked her lips at the sight. That girl...Gillian? Judy? She couldn’t remember anything about her except for the way she’d tasted. Like fear and lust, blood and cum.
Fucking delicious.
Hilda paused in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror attached to the closet door. She stretched her arms overhead, delighted in the way the muscles rippled under her new blue-black skin. She swished her tail from side to side and giggled when its spade-shaped tip picked up sticky blood from the floor and flung streaks of it across the face of the big-screen television mounted on the wall. Hilda even liked her new hooves.
She headed into the bathroom for a quick shower. The blood crusted on the insides of her thighs and smeared across her chest and belly smelled amazing, but it was itching now that it had dried. She did not like that at all. Hilda cranked the water up as hot as it would go and leaned against the bathroom counter.
The past twenty-four hours were a bit of a blur, and she tried to make the fractured images in her head fit together. She’d come down with a fever, which was so fucking annoying when all she really wanted was some strange dick, enough coke to blow the heart out of an elephant, and some good, old-fashioned me time.
Had she really picked a fight with some out-of-towner in the casino? Yeah, that had definitely happened. The girl in the other room had helped her kill that dumb cow. The now-dickless dude had wandered up, and the three of them had gone a little apeshit murderizing anyone who got in their way. Until their bloodlust had turned into plain, old regular lust and they’d come upstairs for some freaky-deaky time. And then...