by Nick Harrow
The intruder glared at her. His calm, cool demeanor burned away in a fiery rage that threatened to burn down anything that got near. He turned his gaze outward, to the other jötnar who’d gathered to watch the beating. Hilda prayed her people would come for her, but they stood silent, watching as she was torn down again and again.
That moment was all it took for Hilda to recover. She regained her feet, heedless of the new damage that caused to her trapped arm. She stared into the fucker’s eyes, letting her hate twist her face into a feral mask.
Hilda howled and attacked with everything she had. Her claws ripped away the side of the man’s face, revealing the black bones beneath his blue-tinged skin. A snap kick cracked two of his ribs and pushed him back to the extent of his arm’s length, tearing muscles and tendons in Hilda’s limb.
“Kill him, you cowardly fucks!” she screamed at her mute war band.
The order jolted her warriors into action. They threw themselves into the fight, howling in victory, invigorated by the miracle of Hilda’s recovery. They fell on the intruder, screaming with rage, their fangs clashing, fists pounding. Tons of meat and claws fell on the intruder, eager to tear him to pieces.
And it wasn’t enough.
A single punch shattered her lieutenant’s skull. An open-hand chop crushed another jötunn’s windpipe so savagely it also shattered his cervical vertebrae. A punter’s kick detonated another jötunn’s testicles like bloody bombs and shattered his pelvis in a hundred places.
Hilda could only watch in horror as the intruder destroyed every one of her warriors in a flawless display of martial prowess without ever releasing his vise-like grip on her wrist. Blood soaked them both, but he didn’t lay another hand on her. When the last of her warriors had fallen, he turned to face her.
“This was not my wish,” he said. “But you have defied me. You are no longer worthy of Hyrrokkin’s grace.”
“No,” Hilda gasped. “You can’t take this from me. She chose me. I followed her words.”
The man shook his head sadly and seized Hilda by her right hand. His iron grip bruised her skin and made the hard bones beneath creak in protest.
“Hyrrokkin chose many of us,” the man said. “Most failed. But I will not. I am Arthur Drake, Hyrrokkin’s jarl, leader of the jötnar. Those who will not follow me must be destroyed. Those who fall in line will be rewarded when we destroy the pawn and claim this place for our mistress.”
“Please,” Hilda begged. “Please. Let me serve her. Don’t deny me this.”
The intruder’s eyes burned into Hilda’s. She was sure this Arthur Drake was about to eat her soul. Then he smiled as if he’d heard a mildly amusing joke.
“One final chance,” he said. “Prove you are worthy.”
“I am the ring bearer,” Hilda said. “I am Hyrrokkin’s völva.”
Arthur tilted his head to the side, then nodded. “Prove it.”
Hilda summoned the cloak of smoke and shadows. She breathed a sigh of relief as the darkness embraced her. For a moment, she thought Arthur’s grip on her wrist might slip. If that happened, she’d run like hell.
Then Hilda would gather another, bigger army and kill this motherfucker. Or, maybe, she’d slip into his bed one night, hidden by Hyrrokkin’s gift, and drag her claws across his throat.
“Interesting,” Arthur said, his hand tightening around her. “Show me the ring.”
The jötunn knew as soon as Arthur had the ring he’d tear her head off and piss down her throat. Her only chance of survival was to keep it hidden beneath her cloak. Eventually, she’d have to reveal it, but only when the time was right. Until then, it would be her secret.
“No,” she said. “It is Hyrrokkin’s treasure, not yours. When the time is right for the ritual to destroy it and open the bridge, I’ll reveal it. But not a second sooner.”
Arthur crushed her wrist in his grip. The bones ground together beneath her skin, ripping and tearing at her flesh. He squeezed until jagged shards emerged from her blue-black hide, then kept up the pressure until Hilda’s blood splashed onto the ground between them.
But she didn’t whimper or cry out. She kept her eyes locked on Arthur’s. If she showed weakness, he’d kill her. She could feel it in his predator’s gaze.
Finally, Arthur nodded. “Swear fealty to me. Swear your service to my cause until your death.”
Hilda took a deep, shuddering breath. She’d live another day. “I swear to serve you and Hyrrokkin. Command me, my jarl.”
She stifled a sob of relief when he released her wrist. Arthur hadn’t noticed her fingers crossed behind her back.
Hyrrokkin’s my queen, she thought, and you’ll never be my king.
Chapter 20
GUNNAR LED THE TEAM around the landing that encircled the Luxor’s atrium. He tensed at every hotel room door they passed, certain a mob of jötnar would burst out to attack them. This wasn’t the way the mission should have gone down. He’d thought there’d be more time to plan their assault once they got a look at the threats inside the casino. They’d only come so high above the atrium for recon. Now he was a couple hundred feet above the crowd with only minutes to stop the monsters from completing their ritual.
He had no idea how he’d pull that off.
“That is one big boy,” Mimi muttered when they’d reached a point overlooking the Behemoth. “Really wish I’d brought that sniper rifle from Deke’s. One shot, right to the skull.”
“Even a bullet might not do the trick,” Ray said, a faint glimmer of pink light visible in her forehead. “That’s the Behemoth. One of Hyrrokkin’s chosen lieutenants. I can’t see much of its past, but she sent it here to do something very, very bad.”
“The ritual,” Bridget whispered. “They plan to destroy Gungnir and use the relic’s power to forge a bridge between Midgard and Jotunheim.”
The bodyguard didn’t need an explanation for what would happen once then. An army of jötnar would storm across, armed to the teeth. They’d sweep aside any force that opposed them. Vegas would fall under their conquering boots in a matter of hours. Nevada would follow in days. The country in weeks. Hyrrokkin had an unstoppable and nearly infinite supply of supernatural soldiers at her disposal. All she lacked was a way to reach Midgard.
There was no time left for planning. Gunnar had to act or the world was utterly fucked. “That trick you did back at the lodge,” Gunnar said to Bridget. “Can you do something like that again to pin that big freak down?”
The völva looked down on the jötunn, her eyes gone white, fingers clenched around the guardrail. “It’s hard for me to see the future unaided,” she explained. “But when Ray and Mimi pinpoint a specific time and place using their powers, it’s easier for me to find my position in the weave. That’s why I could see Gungnir without needing a long nap afterward. But destiny is often uncertain. Events cause ripples through the skein of fate, changing the version of the future that will come to pass. What I did at the lodge was tie a few stitches into the web to hold the version I saw in place. I could do something like it again, but I’m not sure how long it would last.”
Gunnar watched the jötnar, fires of rage burning in his belly. While he wanted to destroy them all, there wasn’t time to blast that horde apart with his shotgun. He needed Gungnir, and there weren’t many options to get his hands on it before the Behemoth wrapped up its ritual. “Make sure the big guy doesn’t move.”
“For how long?” Bridget asked.
“Ten seconds,” Gunnar responded. His plan was just short of suicidal, but it was the only way to interrupt the ritual. This was his chance to stop Hyrrokkin’s invasion dead in its tracks. He had to take it.
Mimi was the first of the völva to respond. She grabbed hold of Ray’s left hand and Bridget’s right. “Let’s do this, ladies,” she said firmly. “It’s time to fuck unto them before they can start fucking us.”
The women clasped hands and sank to the floor. They sat cross-legged, facing one another, the lights in their for
eheads growing brighter and more intense with every breath they took. Gunnar felt a pulse of energy flow through their circle, coming to rest on Ray, whose eyes shifted color to match the pink light pouring from the hole in her forehead. Her lips moved in a silent chant, and the Web of Wyrd appeared in the center of their triangle. She released Mimi’s and Bridget’s hands, then reached out and traced a vibrating thread that ran deep into the weave with the tip of her finger.
“The Behemoth feasts on the worship of the mutants. His power waxed with their adulation.” Her hand fell back into her lap, and the last point on the web she’d touched glowed bright pink.
Mimi picked up where Ray had left off. The tip of her finger touched the pink blaze on the Wyrd. “Here it stands, the power of Hyrrokkin guided through its massive form. It is swollen with potential, a blight upon the face of Midgard.”
When she withdrew her touch from the pattern, a pulsing, golden shell surrounded the pink sphere. Bridget let go of Ray’s fingers and reached out with both hands to pluck at the strands that encircled the point the other völva had identified. “Here it shall remain for as long as my strength lasts,” she intoned, her voice creaking like glacial ice grinding across the Earth’s face. “By my word and bond, it is so.”
“Here goes nothing,” Gunnar barked.
And with that, he vaulted up to the edge of the guardrail, double-checked to make sure his shotgun was still secure on the strap around his neck and shoulder, and threw himself off the balcony.
He plunged toward the Behemoth, boots first. His eyes never left Gungnir, which glowed with electric blue power. The weapon vibrated as if straining to get free of the monstrosity that held it. Gunnar’s rage rose to meet the spear’s desperate plea. The relic belonged to him, and he would take it back no matter the cost.
One of Gunnar’s boots slammed into the Behemoth’s face, shattering its nose with the brittle crack of a dead twig. His other boot caught the creature on the shoulder, twisting its torso to the side. The impact buckled the bodyguard’s legs and sent jolts of pain shooting from his ankles to his hips. But the Valknut had made them stronger than he’d ever believed possible, and his knees absorbed the shock. Gunnar seized the monstrosity’s horn with his left hand and lunged up to grab the spear with his right.
“You cursed maggot,” the jötunn snarled and tightened a fist the size of Gunnar’s head around the spear’s dark haft. “Hyrrokkin told me you would come. I am the Behemoth, chosen of the burning goddess, the earth shaker.”
“What’s that?” Gunnar asked as he tried to rip Gungnir from the Behemoth’s clenched fingers. “You’re shaking in your boots?”
The beast unleashed a furious roar that reeked of rotten meat and old fires. It jerked the spear hard to its right and swung an oversized fist into Gunnar’s side from the left.
The maneuver knocked the bodyguard away from the gigantic monster. He hung in the air above the writhing crowd of jötnar. The women on the back of the Behemoth continued the eerie chanting that made the jarl’s head ache. The ritual was almost complete. He had to get Gungnir away from this monster, soon.
The momentum from the Behemoth’s blow knocked Gunnar around in a half circle. He pumped his legs and used the spear as a pivot to launch onto the beast’s back in front of one of the naked shamans. Gunnar grabbed his shotgun in both hands and rammed the weapon’s muzzle into her chest.
The AA-12 barked three times in quick succession. Its first shot ripped through the jötunn shaman’s sternum and exited through a fist-sized crater between her shoulder blades. The second widened the gory wound and slammed into the shaman behind her. The third bounded away from the curve of one rib to pulverize her lung before opening a new hole through her right armpit.
The dead shaman slumped backward onto her screaming ally. Her demise had disrupted the ritual with catastrophic results. The ritual’s power erupted from the gaping crater in her chest, and arcs of lightning chewed into the Behemoth’s flesh. The other shamans cried out in a desperate attempt to hold the spell together. One of their eyes burst from the pressure and fired a scalding spray of blood into the jötunn in front of her. Another stabbed her hand toward the sky, and raw lightning raced up her arm and blasted her fingers into scarlet confetti.
Gunnar didn’t escape unscathed. He bowed his head and braced himself as jolts of sorcerous energy lashed his back like demonic whips. The mystic assault opened long gashes in his clothes and raised ugly red welts on his skin. It was like being beaten with red-hot wires.
That was all right. He’d gladly endure this pain to stop Hyrrokkin’s army from marching on Midgard.
“You disgusting worm,” the Behemoth howled when it had recovered from the stunning attack. “How dare you disrupt our sacred rite? I will devour you.”
The creature lashed out at Gunnar again, swinging the spear back in an awkward swipe that missed the bodyguard by inches. Furious that its foe had escaped its grasp, the Behemoth twisted the opposite direction and raked the air with thick claws. Two of those snagged on Gunnar’s tactical vest. The attack didn’t wound him, but it yanked the jarl off his feet and pitched him into the mob around the monster.
Jötnar instantly pounced on him. The monsters kicked and stomped him, and when he tried to stand, they punched him back to the ground. Blows hammered his body. His bones were on the verge of breaking. Gunnar knew he wouldn’t last more than a few seconds. Once he was dead, the Behemoth would go back to business as usual. The bridge would go up, the world would end. All Gunnar’s life had bought was a few more minutes of violence and pain.
No. It wouldn’t end like this.
It couldn’t.
The jarl reached out for the völva. He felt their warmth and strength through the threads of fate that bound them together. “Show me the way out,” he thought. “Lend me your aid.”
Instantly, the Valknut went ice cold in Gunnar’s head. Power crackled and popped within his skull. The world shifted and the colors leached away from it. All that remained were golden outlines of his enemies and faint purple shadows.
The völva’s gifts showed him where his enemies were in gold, where they would be in violet. It was a precious gift, but it came at a cost. The energy the völva spent would drain them quickly. If Gunnar didn’t end the fight in a few seconds, they’d be too weak to run when it was over.
Time slowed to a crawl as berserker fury consumed the jarl’s mind. He saw where his foes would attack and moved away from their blows, rolling up into a crouch. He swung the shotgun’s barrel in a narrow arc and squeezed the trigger to clear some space. The jötnar fell back, their blood misting into the air from the hellish injuries that Gunnar’s weapon carved into their bodies. The golden glow that outlined his enemies’ current positions seemed to draw the shotgun’s muzzle like iron filings to a magnet, and every shot landed with unerring precision.
The fiercest amongst Hyrrokkin’s minions threw themselves at the jarl to bury him under their weight. But Gunnar saw their attacks coming before they reached him, and flowed through the crowd like water. They couldn’t touch the death dealer that walked amongst them, and terror filled their ranks.
With every death, Gunnar absorbed more hamingja from his foes. He let it flow back to the völva and hoped it would offset the terrible cost their gifts demanded. The vision allowed him to carve a bloody path through the jötnar to reach their leader before the völva were exhausted and the chill faded from the Valknut.
“Give me the goddamned spear,” Gunnar roared up at the massive creature. He squeezed the AA-12’s trigger, tearing a chunk from the beast’s side.
“Gladly,” the Behemoth snarled.
Gungnir descended in a sparking flash too fast for Gunnar’s eyes to follow. The spear’s tip impaled him through the left shoulder. Jolts of electricity radiated away from the weapon, bolts of lightning that opened steaming wounds in the jarl’s chest and back. The pain stunned him and drove him to his knees. An icy wind howled across his flesh, sapping the heat from him.<
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He tried to move, but the weapon had nailed him to the floor.
“This is the fate of all mortals who stand in Hyrrokkin’s path,” the Behemoth roared. “Not even Odin’s pawn can stop us.”
The jötnar who’d survived Gunnar’s explosive assault unleashed a ground-shaking howl of victory. They chanted the Behemoth’s name, their words like physical blows in the jarl’s ears. The Behemoth whipped his followers into a frenzy. The enormous beast praised Hyrrokkin’s guidance. It spat curses at Gunnar and Odin.
The shamans who were still alive scrambled up onto Behemoth’s back, raising their eerie chant toward its finale.
“I will break those who resist our dominion,” the Behemoth shouted, a whirlwind gathering around him as the renewed ritual neared its end. “You will rip the balls from their men and roast them over our fires. You will fill their women with your seed and train their whelps in the ways of chaos. You will find everyone who ever aided this pathetic, useless pawn, and you will torture them as an example to any others who might raise their hands against us. The bridge is nearly open, my friends, and a new world is upon us.”
Gunnar’s fury built with every filthy word that fell from the jötunn’s mouth. The threats against the völva were like jet fuel on the fires that burned inside him. He strained to pull the spear away from the creature, but he couldn’t shake the Behemoth’s grip it. Maybe he didn’t have to.
Maybe having the relic embedded in his flesh would be enough.
The Valknut showed him the runes for Uruz, life force and vigor, and Tiwaz, sacrifice and victory. While the Behemoth raged, Gunnar drew the blood rune on his left arm with his right index finger dipped in his own blood. The upward pointing arrow of Tiwaz pierced the angular arch of Uruz.
In the instant before the ritual ended, the jarl had claimed its focus for himself. The relic’s stored power blasted away from Gunnar in a circle of destruction.