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

What had Ray called him back at the lodge? A jarl. Those people out there weren’t merely victims. They were people, and they needed help.

His help.

The lodge was his domain, but Odin had made it clear that Gunnar was meant to save much more than that one house. The urge to go out there and tell the cops to take those people straight to his underground base nearly overwhelmed him. But he couldn’t. He had another mission, and that had to come first. When they’d improved the lodge some more, maybe then they could search for more survivors.

“We’ll go around,” Gunnar said to the völva. “Carefully, quietly. We can’t get stopped by the cops.”

Ray frowned at his words. She and Bridget were crouched down behind Mimi, hidden from the police by the trees that lined the university’s border. “What if they see us?”

“Then we’ll run,” Gunnar said.

“I don’t like it,” Bridget added.

Gunnar didn’t, either. But he wasn’t about to pick a fight with the police if he had any chance to avoid one. They were doing their job, protecting the city as best they could. And even if they weren’t, this wasn’t his fight. He couldn’t save everyone.

No matter how much he wanted to try.

“I’m not asking,” he said. “Come on, let’s go.”

The four of them skirted the police encampment. Gunnar couldn’t keep his eyes from flicking toward the prisoners. He hoped they were all right. He hoped the police would find some place for them before night fell and the jötnar rampaged again. Because not even those armored people movers could stop the freaks that had attacked the lodge.

“Almost there,” Gunnar assured the völva as they passed a towering hotel that had begun a metamorphosis into a cavern-pocked mountain. Stunted trees rose from the ridges that lined its surface, and the scent of fir trees drifted on the wind.

After a tense few moments running down a wide-open street flanked by a parking garage on one side and a former banquet hall on the other, both marked by strange changes that had transformed concrete walls into mud-daubed logs, they reached the back of the Grand.

Gunnar guided them up the stairs from the streets to the monorail, which was becoming a long, snaking bridge fashioned from wooden struts and crude iron bars. One car was still at the station, though it had become something like a long, wide mine cart rather than the sleek transport it had been three days before. Signs that once guided tourists to casino attractions were now crude wooden planks with runes hacked into their surfaces. Gunnar closed his left eye, and those unfamiliar symbols jumped into focus.

“This way.” He headed down a flight of stairs.

The metal steps had shifted into wooden slats, chipped and worn with age. They entered a long hallway that led from the monorail platform to the MGM Grand’s lobby. In Gunnar’s memory, the passageway had a marble floor with enormous inlaid compass patterns. What he saw were worn flagstones stained with blood. Heavy timbers had replaced the wallpaper, and the shops and restaurants that once lined the hall were cramped cells filled with bones and scraps of old leather and fur.

“This is not the Vegas I remember,” Ray said.

“It won’t be like this forever,” Bridget responded. “Things change, the cycle goes ever on. When the jarl is safely on his throne, and this territory is rid of the agents of chaos, peace will reign again.”

“Not comforting,” Ray answered. She’d stuck close by his side since they’d left the police behind, as if she worried Gunnar would need her protection. “Where are we going?”

“Up,” Gunnar said. “We’re near the lobby. Let’s not alert any jötnar that we’re on the way.”

They’d gone another fifty yards when Gunnar’s nostrils widened at the foul stench carried on an icy breeze blowing down the hallway. “This won’t be pretty,” he said quietly. “Stick close.”

The völva followed Gunnar down a passage that ended at a short flight of stairs he knew from his past trips to the Grand led to the hotel’s lobby. He headed up, past a battered statue of Brad Garrett, and peeked around the corner. His stomach hitched at the sight of the slaughter.

Someone had nailed bodies to the long arc of the reception desk with spears. Where had they gotten the spears? More bodies were piled around the golden lion at the center of the lobby. The corpses were splayed open, their organs scooped out. The lion statue was smeared with blood and gore. Its mane was so dark with the stuff it was nearly black.

Gunnar held his breath against the stench and watched for any signs of movement.

But the jötnar had moved on to other hunting grounds after slaughtering the hotel’s occupants. Gunnar let out a sigh of mixed relief and disgust.

“Looks like they’re gone,” he said.

“Good lord,” Ray murmured. “These poor people.”

Mimi stiffened her spine and scanned the carnage. Gunnar watched her take in every inch of devastation. “They’ll pay for this,” she promised. “We’ll make them pay.”

Chapter 15

OTHER JÖTNAR GAVE HILDA a wide berth. Whether that was because they sensed the mark of Hyrrokkin on her or because Hilda strode through the streets kicking doors off cars and singing a mangled version of Disturbed’s “Indestructible” was a matter for debate. In either case, she didn’t encounter any problems as she made her way up to the north end of the Strip where her target lay.

Symbols of old Vegas, the rusted frames of neon signs, weathered sculptures, and other cast-off decorations, had all been gathered into an outdoor museum known as the Neon Boneyard. And while most of the Strip now looked like a war zone, this collection of decades-old memorabilia seemed untouched. Hilda admired the junk as she approached it.

Then stopped dead at the edge of the property. Her teeth ached as if the air pressure had just jumped a few hundred percent, and a trickle of dread ran down her spine.

Along with a tiny bit of pee down