by Nick Harrow
“Surrender, pawn,” the hideous creature hissed, its bloody saliva splattering Gunnar’s face. “Hyrrokkin will not rest until you are slain. You should not have spurned her offer. Now not even this hole in the ground will save you from the wrath of her faithful.”
More of the creatures poured through the elevator’s wrecked doors armed only with hulking bodies, long claws, and gleaming fangs. It was impossible for Gunnar to see past his foe well enough to know how many enemies had joined the battle, but he’d heard far too many new voices join the fray for comfort.
“You tell your bitch boss she’s welcome to come after me herself, if she’s not too chickenshit,” he growled and thrust the shotgun into the snaky jötunn’s chest. Gunnar was dimly aware the thing’s claws had opened a nasty trio of gashes in his left shoulder, but the pain was a distant annoyance. The rush of combat was on him, and the lust to annihilate the monsters who’d invaded his lodge flooded his veins with adrenaline.
Before the half-snake monstrosity could get its hands on him again, Gunnar rammed the shotgun’s barrel under its chin and squeezed the trigger. The buckshot blew through the top of the jötunn’s head and painted the ceiling with its brains.
A rush of energy flowed out of the dying creature, and the Valknut showed it to Gunnar. The light soaked into his skin, illuminating the blood rune he’d drawn on his arm. Now that the Valknut was bonded with him, Gunnar could even tell that the rune was a combination of Dagaz, meaning awakening, and Kenaz, which could be interpreted as vision, or revelation. That made sense for a mystical eye. The power flowed into his wounds and stitched them closed, leaving only angry red welts.
Gunnar cycled the weapon again and drew a bead on the next jötunn headed down the hall. The hulking gorilla-like creature had dagger-like tusks curving up from its lower jaw, and a single horn curved forward from the right side of its misshapen skull. Dull eyes glowed orange under the red emergency lights, and its breath gusted out of its gaping nostrils in steaming clouds.
With a bellowing roar, the creature closed with Gunnar. Its left fist, a knotted mass of bone and callused muscle the size of a bowling ball, crashed across Gunnar’s jaw. The jötunn was much faster than the bodyguard had given it credit for, and its right cross caught him behind the ear. The beast plunged its head forward behind the punch in an attempt to skewer him with its horn.
The Valknut had to burn away the last of the life energy Gunnar had harvested from the dead jötunn to clear the savage concussion he’d just received. The fog lifted from his thoughts, and the world snapped back into focus. The bodyguard rammed the shotgun’s business end under the lower edge of his opponent’s barrel-like rib cage and fired. The jötunn’s body muffled the Mossberg’s roar, and it jerked up onto its toes when the buckshot obliterated half its internal organs.
But even that shot wasn’t enough to take the thing down. It responded with a savage backhand that would’ve taken Gunnar’s head off his shoulders if he hadn’t ducked beneath its arc. The jötunn kept coming, the blood that rained from its wound hardly slowing it. It swung its fists in a flurry of blows that forced Gunnar to step back out of the hideous monster’s reach. It roared a challenge that echoed from the walls, blasting scalding breath and rancid saliva into Gunnar’s face.
“Down!” Mimi shouted.
Gunnar reacted without thinking. He threw himself backward, cycling the shotgun’s action when he crashed onto the floor. Mimi’s slug ripped through the air above the bodyguard and hammered into the jötunn’s wounded side. Tattered flesh and shattered bone exploded away from the jötunn and splattered the painted wall next to it. Gunnar raised the barrel of his shotgun and fired, splaying open the creature’s rib cage and revealing the pulped mass of its blackened heart.
The beast fell backward, its arms curled into its chest, legs buckled.
The victory was fleeting, though, as another jötunn leapt over the body of its fallen cousin, screaming with unholy rage. Hooves the size of dinner plates stomped toward Gunnar, tearing holes in the fake grass and chipping the concrete floor beneath it. The monstrosity’s tongue slung saliva in every direction as it lashed the air like a third arm, its bulbous tip a deadly mass of muscle studded with jagged teeth.
Gunnar rolled to the side and used the edge of the house for cover as he scrambled back to his feet and pumped the shotgun to chamber another shell. Mimi had slipped around the house to get a better angle on their attackers, and her weapon’s explosive roar shook the air. He heard the sharper pops of small-arms fire and wondered whether that was Ray or Bridget shooting a pistol.
The bodyguard backed up farther from the house’s corner, his weapon trained just beyond its edge. He held steady until the jötunn emerged from behind the house, then fired at its head.
The blast caught the thing full in the mouth, shattering teeth and severing the grotesque, flailing tongue. Blood sprayed from the pulverized muscle. The jötunn had lost an eye and most of its nose in the bargain. While the creature was far from dead, its injuries had taken a lot of the fight out of it. The jötunn screeched and clasped its hands to its face, leaving it momentarily defenseless.
A point-blank blast to the bridge of its nose from Gunnar’s weapon dropped the jötunn. Its brain sloshed out across the floor in a sticky, black mass. Gunnar wasn’t taking any chances, though. He blasted its head again, then snatched shells from the bandolier and fed them into the weapon’s loading port.
It only took a handful of seconds to reload the weapon, and he heard Mimi’s shotgun discharge twice more in that time.
“The lodge needs you,” Bridget said from behind Gunnar’s shoulder, her voice frosty, eyes gone wintry white. She held a pistol awkwardly in one hand and a bandolier of shotgun shells slung over her shoulder. “And we need it. There are too many jötnar for mere weapons to repel.”
A skinny jötunn with spikes for feet and hands skittered around the corner of the house, and Gunnar blasted its chest into a fine red mist. “I can’t leave Mimi and Ray out here alone with these freaks.”
Bridget grabbed his arm with one white-nailed hand. “You need the lodge to save them.”
Her clear, confident words were accompanied by a vision of the model he’d seen earlier behind the wooden door. He hated to leave Mimi alone with the beasts, but Bridget was right. The jötnar were too tough to kill in a straight-up fight. The home team needed any edge they could find. He took off, Bridget racing along beside him, his bare feet skidding across the fake grass. He reached the door and caught himself on its frame, then wrenched it open and plunged into the narrow room. He remembered to duck his head just in time to avoid knocking himself senseless on the low support beams that ran across the ceiling.
The model was where he’d last seen it, floating above the table. The Valknut symbol that hovered above the miniature lodge glowed with golden power waiting to be put to use. Gunnar considered his options. The armory would be nice, but it wouldn’t save them from the immediate threat breathing down their necks. The feasting hall would be great down the road, but it didn’t do shit for them at the moment.
“Fuck it,” he growled. “Give me the Hall of Heroes.”
The blood rune he’d scrawled on his arm blazed to life. The hamingja he’d absorbed fizzled and popped as it flowed out of the rune and into the symbol that hovered above the model. The Valknut symbol’s golden light shifted, slowly turning silver. When the last of the gold had vanished from the symbol, the blood rune vanished right along with it. Gunnar held his breath, waiting for a miracle.
Nothing happened.
“What the hell, Odin?” Gunnar asked. “I did the thing. Do something. Because if you don’t, I will find you and wring your scrawny neck.”
The image shuddered, and the electronic announcer’s voice cut off. A ball of cold white light appeared at the heart of the model. It grew brighter, more intense, for a handful of heartbeats.
And then it exploded.
A wave of power flooded the lodge. Gunnar’s muscles b
ulged with newfound strength and a shimmering haze surrounded him. Next to him, Bridget seemed to swell with power, and the aura that surrounded her was cold as deep winter’s breath.
Gunnar instinctively knew it was an effect of the Hall of Heroes. The energy had sheathed him in armor that would protect him from the worst of the jötnar’s attacks. This was no longer a mere house hidden beneath the earth. This was Gunnar’s lodge, the seat of his rule, a jarl’s fortress against the chaotic powers of the uttangard.
“All right, Odin,” Gunnar said. “You’re off the hook this time.”
Mimi and Ray were outside the door as Gunnar and Bridget exploded out of the hall. They were splattered with blood that seethed under the shifting light of the auras that surrounded them both. The dots on their foreheads gleamed with pink and gold light, and threads of the same color drifted from them toward the ceiling.
“Whatever you did knocked them back,” Ray said.
“They’re gathering near the elevator,” Mimi said, her voice distant and alien.
“They’ll attack again,” Bridget said with a shiver. “Soon.”
“Then let’s kick these freaks back to Hel before they get a chance,” Gunnar said.
They raced toward the front of the bunker to meet the charging jötnar.
Mimi clubbed the brains out of a jötunn with her shotgun’s stock. Blood splashed into the air as she swung the weapon, and Mimi screamed a banshee’s cry as the broken monster fell before her.
“You’re turning into quite the badass,” Gunnar said with a bloodthirsty grin.
“You better believe it,” Mimi laughed and fired her shotgun in unison with Gunnar.
Ray fired her weapon in a steady, precise rhythm. The smaller rounds couldn’t easily kill the jötnar, but she did solid work taking out knees and elbows. When she staggered a monster, Mimi or Gunnar finished it with point-blank shotgun blasts.
In a handful of seconds the trio had shredded five of the monsters.
More jötnar poured out of the hallway. Their howls faltered, though, when they saw the carnage splattered across the floor in front of them and the trio of resolute warriors who blocked their path.
“This is a private party,” Gunnar quipped. “And I don’t see you ugly freaks on the list.”
He charged forward, seized a jötunn’s muscled arm, and wrenched it free of the creature’s shoulder in a spray of blood and gore. He swung the makeshift club in a vicious arc, shattering the monster’s jaw. The second swing hit so hard the arm tore in half, revealing the bloody, jagged ends of the exposed radius and ulna. Gunnar rammed those sharp bones into the jötunn’s throat and ripped them sideways, severing his trachea and jugular vein. Before the beast fell, Gunnar moved on to its neighbor.
That jötunn tried to bite him, but it was too slow. When his jaws swung wide open, Gunnar thrust his hand down its throat and grabbed the base of its tongue. He tore it free, then punched the creature in the throat, once, twice, three times. Its windpipe collapsed under the blows, and it fell to its knees, drowning in its own blood.
The remaining jötunn tried to run but never had a chance. Ray and Mimi rushed past the bodyguard and pounced on the creature. Mimi grabbed the thing around the throat with one arm and took hold of its horn with the other. She rammed her knee into its back and wrenched its head hard to the side.
Ray tore the wickedly curved horn from the fallen gorilla monster’s head. She leapt into the air and rammed her makeshift weapon into the side of the jötunn’s exposed neck, shredding the flesh into ribbons and unleashing a bloody spray from severed blood vessels.
The jötunn took one step, then another before it collapsed.
The rush of energy from the dead jötnar heightened Gunnar’s senses. He felt more of the vile creatures in the house above him. He charged for the elevator, nimbly leaping over Ray and Mimi. He tossed the shotgun aside. It wouldn’t help him here. He would rip and tear and pull the jötnar apart with his bare hands. This was his place, and those who dared to defile it would die.
A single jump carried him up through the maintenance hatch to the elevator’s roof. He climbed the ladder with ease and reached the surface in seconds.
The unfortunate jötunn guarding the elevator shaft spun around, a compact submachine gun cradled in its oversized hands, eyes wide and staring at the naked, bloodsoaked nightmare that had appeared before it. The monstrosity tried to squeeze the trigger, but it was far too slow for Gunnar’s amped-up reflexes.
He swatted the weapon’s barrel to the side and ignored the bullets that stitched holes across the living room wall. His hands closed around the jötunn’s horns and twisted its head to the left, then back to the right. The creature’s vertebra gave way with a sound that reminded Gunnar of the time he’d stomped on a packet of saltines he left on the floor after a bender. He hurled the body across the room into another jötunn, who’d just realized the shit had hit the fan.
The surviving creature scrambled from under the body of its friend, snatched a radio from its belt, and keyed the mic. “Hork is down!” he howled. “I repeat—”
Gunnar hoisted the jötunn off the floor by its bulletproof vest. He lifted it into the air and stared deep into its sunken yellow eyes. “Tell Hyrrokkin I’m coming for her,” he snarled.
Headlights blazed through the living room’s window and a vehicle’s engine roared. Tires squealed on the pavement, and Gunnar dragged the jötunn to the door.
A van had turned around in the oversized driveway and pointed its nose at the broken front gate. A monster leaned out the driver’s side window and pointed an oversized golden gun at the lodge. The creature fired off one shot after another, but the rounds missed the bodyguard and slammed into the lodge.
Enraged by the damage these assholes had done to his lodge, Gunnar hoisted the jötunn into the air, whipped it in a circle above his head, and hurled it at the vehicle. The monster spun through the air, its arms and legs spread wide like a pinwheel. It smashed into the roof of the van, denting the metal and spraying blood in every direction.
The van’s bumper scraped the asphalt and kicked up a shower of sparks as it whipped around and raced into the street. Gunnar watched his enemies retreat, his hands clenched into fists, his hate for his enemies burning bright in his stone eye.
Chapter 13
GUNNAR CURSED AT THE damage the jötunn home invasion had done to the fence. Half the gate was still upright; the other side was torn off its track. The hinges and chain that had held the broken barrier in place were shattered and useless. The bodyguard pulled the Accord out of the garage and parked it in the gap. It wasn’t much defense if another attack came, but Gunnar didn’t think they’d see their enemies again that night. The survivors had fled to their lairs with their tails tucked between their legs. It would take some time for their balls to drop again.
“Put some clothes on,” Mimi called from the garage. “If you keep walking around here with your dick out, the neighbors will talk.”
“About what?” Gunnar asked. “The hot MILF’s new boy toy?”
“I am nobody’s goddamned mom,” Mimi said. “And you’re hardly a boy, Jolly. Get back in here so we can seal this place up again.”
Gunnar sauntered back to the house, hands on his hip, throwing in a few groin thrusts to irritate Mimi. It was the least he could do since she wouldn’t stop calling him that name in front of the others. When he was safely inside, she lowered the door, then pressed a red button beside it. Thick posts rose from concealed ports in the garage’s floor. That would be a nasty surprise for anybody who tried to ram a vehicle into the garage. The posts would stop anything smaller than a tank dead in its tracks. With any luck, they’d knock a tread off a tank, too.
“How did they get in?” Gunnar asked.
“They didn’t force anything other than the gate.” Mimi frowned. “It looked like they came in through the front door, but there’s no damage there. They could’ve picked the lock, I guess. The new owners haven’t put in all the se
curity they’d planned. Any intruders on the ground floor should’ve set off the motion sensors, but they didn’t. The assholes didn’t even cut the power line. Just flipped the breaker.”
“Hyrrokkin’s pet snake made it clear she wanted us dead, not trapped,” Gunnar said. “Let’s go back downstairs, and I’ll explain.”
Mimi locked the inner door behind them, then snapped the deadbolt in place. The problem with the security on most houses was that it wasn’t really meant to keep anybody out. It slowed the bad guys down, sometimes enough for the cops to get there and make a lot of noise to chase them away. But in a world without rules, most modern doors weren’t much of a defense against invaders. They’d have to figure out something more permanent before the monsters came calling again.
They climbed down the maintenance ladder, dropped through the open top of the elevator, and carefully made their way through the car’s shredded metal doors. The jötnar had really done a number on the lift. The whole damned thing would have to be replaced. Not that there were any elevator repairmen around to do the job. That was the part of the apocalypse most people didn’t talk about. When shit broke down, there was no one left to fix it. Eventually, the world would slouch its way back to a preindustrial age where everyone had to raise their own food and hunt their own game—or starve.
And maybe that was all right. A simpler, more orderly way of life was possible now.
All the bodyguard had to do to enjoy it was save the world.
He chuckled. The thought didn’t bother him as much as he’d thought it would. Maybe this is what he’d always been meant to do.
Ray waved to them as she dragged one of the jötunn corpses toward the elevator. Although she was a third of the creature’s size, she didn’t seem put out by the effort of moving its body. The hamingja she’d absorbed from the fight had given her impressive strength. “We need to lug these things out of here. They’re already starting to stink.”