Valhalla Virus, Nick Harrow [simple ebook reader txt] 📗

examination of the walls didn’t reveal the model’s source either, which left Gunnar uneasy. Rotating three-dimensional scale models didn’t just appear as if by...

Magic.

Mimi let out a long, low whistle as she pushed Gunnar into the room and got a good look at what it held.

“Holy shit,” Mimi grumbled. “Where did this come from?”

Bridget was the next to enter the dimly lit room. The floating model lit sparks in her wide eyes as she took a spot across the table from the bodyguard and Mimi. She reached out to touch the nearest wall, and the whole model rotated on its axis. “I feel like I ate one too many bites of a magic brownie.”

That sounded about right to Gunnar. His head felt strange. Not fuzzy, but as if someone had both sharpened his focus and pointed it at a part of the world he’d never seen before. Even Ray seemed far different as she entered the low-ceilinged room to join the rest of the crew. Her eyes were sharper and brighter. The healthy glow of her skin now seemed like a pure energy that shone through from the center of her being.

His feelings, always fierce where Ray was concerned, had heightened to a level he’d never experienced before. He’d loved Ray from the moment they’d met, but now he felt bound to her more tightly than ever before. He’d die for her, there was no doubt of that, and it didn’t end there.

Because he felt the same about Mimi. And Bridget, who he hardly knew. His bodyguard instincts were to keep them safe, but he also wanted those three by his side for whatever came next. And as Ray entered the long, narrow room, those feelings ratcheted up to all new heights. The way she looked at him, her eyes smoldering with a barely restrained need, told Gunnar she felt the same. She brushed his hand as she took the spot to his right, and a jolting current passed between them. The bolt jumped around the table, lighting up Mimi’s eyes before bounding to Bridget. The holes in their foreheads flashed with light, pink from Ray, gold out of Mimi, and a deep purple from Bridget.

“Well,” Ray said, her voice low and smoky, “that was something. Is this your new model train set, Gun?”

“Something like that,” Gunnar said with a chuckle. “It feels like it belongs to me, somehow.”

Gunnar couldn’t shake the sense of ownership that came over him when he looked at the hologram. Odin had told him about it in his dream. Something about making a base, holding down a fort. Protecting the innangard from the utangard.

“This is insane,” Mimi said, tugging at the hem of her T-shirt. “I feel it, too. This is your place, Gun. This is the lodge.”

The bodyguard concentrated on the model until it shifted, then rotated slightly, and three glowing rings appeared above and to the right of the model’s edge. The first ring held the three interlocking triangles, the center ring showed a stylized spear, and the final ring surrounded a smaller, more ornate ring at its heart. He recognized that these represented the three relics Odin had told him to find: the Valknut, Gungnir, and Draupnir.

Gunnar touched the Valknut, unleashing a rippling wave of energy through the room. A trio of spokes speared away from that first ring and sprouted three additional circles. Each of those held fine lines of script, which Gunnar could read despite their tiny size.

“The Hall of Heroes,” Ray read, as if on cue, “a sanctuary for the forces of Order.”

“The Hall of Feasting,” Mimi continued, reading from the second ring, “to supply those who would stand against Ymir’s fell children.”

“The Hall of the Forge,” Bridget intoned, in a voice as clear and pure as a crystal bell, “to fashion arms and armor for Midgard’s new heroes.”

Something had changed in each of the women as they spoke. Their eyes burned with an unearthly light, and their voices had flowed and merged together, like the burbling convergence of three mountain streams into a single, powerful river. Gunnar felt the bond between them snap into place, and then an even more powerful connection leapt from each point of their triangle back to him. It was breathtaking and awe-inspiring.

“I think we’ve all gone nuts,” Mimi said, “but it looks like we’re saving Vegas. When do we go after Corso?”

Chapter 7

BOGDAN DEMEZEROV HAD lived a charmed life. He grew up in a wealthy family, his every need cared for, his every whim catered to. He breezed through college thanks to timely donations from his parents to the school’s administration and burst onto the internet entrepreneur scene by transforming tens of millions of his family’s dollars into hundreds of thousands of dollars in his bank account. Apparently, ultraluxe beauty accessories for hairless dogs was not a thriving market. With the sting of that failure driving him out of the business world, Bogdan hauled ass to Vegas and dumped most of his dwindling funds into becoming the greatest Texas hold’em player of all time.

His brief gambling career had failed even more spectacularly than the internet venture. He’d had to take out loans to cover his losses. First from the banks, then the casinos, and when those wells ran dry, he dug deeper to find creditors who operated on the shady side of the law. That had led Bogdan to Cal Corso’s operation. The poor little rich boy had borrowed a couple million from the gang lord.

And promptly lost every penny at the tables.

Bogdan had spent the next several weeks dodging his loan shark and scrambling to raise another stake. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone left in his life that he hadn’t burned. In less than eight hours, he’d be kicked out of the hotel and have to explain to his loan shark why he couldn’t pay up.

The rich kid’s sad story of a life would end in a gutter.

Then, to add insult to injury, he’d gotten sick. His nose wouldn’t stop running.