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

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.

A hellish wave ripped through the Behemoth and its shamans. The enormous creature howled in a desperate denial of the power that stripped the flesh from his bones in long, ragged strips. All the naked jötnar on its back were obliterated before they could cry out, their bodies blasted to shreds of bloody tissue and shards of pulverized bone.

The shock wave hammered through the other jötnar, hurling them away from Gunnar. Their bodies sailed through the air and splashed against the atrium’s walls or crashed through the windows at the front of the building. Tremors pounded the casino’s thick walls and sent deep cracks racing through its infrastructure. Concrete shattered, steel twisted, wires whipped free of their anchors and fell like dead serpents.

A flood of hamingja roared into Gunnar’s body. The unfettered energy filled him to bursting, and the Valknut blazed like a new sun in its socket. The jarl clung to consciousness. He’d killed a shitload of jötnar, but there were far more just outside, ready and willing to tear him apart. There was also the little matter of the Luxor’s atrium being structurally fucked up beyond all recognition.

He had to stay awake. He had to get out of there.

But he couldn’t. The spear held him fast to the floor.

Gunnar sagged against the weapon, eyes flickering closed.

Chapter 21

AN ANNOYING CROAK DRAGGED Gunnar back from the depths of unconsciousness. His eyes flickered open, the right one throbbing with arctic cold. “Oh, good,” the raven squawked from where it fluttered above his head. “You’re awake. You might want to find your feet before more of those bastards show up to eat your kidneys.”

Gunnar tried to stand and groaned at the pain from the spear stuck through his shoulder. “Fuck,” he grunted. There was only one way out of this mess, and it would hurt like a motherfucker.

The jarl grabbed the spear’s butt with his right hand and held on tight. Then he bent his legs and twisted to wrench the weapon’s tip out of the ground. Burning pain ripped through his flesh, but he didn’t relent until Gungnir’s head popped loose from the concrete.

“That looked painful,” the raven croaked. It dodged around a falling shard of glass from the Luxor’s failing ceiling. “Look out below!”

The black pane slammed into the concrete ten feet from Gunnar. It exploded in a shower of deadly splinters that bounced off Gunnar’s jeans and jacket. “Thanks for the warning,” the jarl grunted and started in on the really painful part of this operation.

Jötnar had entered the front of the casino. They looked around at the carnage, unsure of what had dropped the Behemoth and its shamans. When their eyes picked Gunnar out from their dead, they headed in his direction in slow, cautious groups.

“Fuck this shit,” Gunnar grumbled. The jötnar would soon realize he was a fucked-up mess and charge. He had to get himself off the spear or he was finished. With an agonized grunt, the jarl pushed another foot of the spear through his wounded shoulder. “Fucking Odin never told me I’d have to get impaled for this job.”

The raven croaked an ugly laugh at that. “He plucked out his own eye and crucified himself. That little scratch of yours probably didn’t even occur to the old man.”

“Figures.” Gunnar steeled himself and reached around with his good hand to grab the spear where it jutted from the back side of his shoulder. “Here we go.”

The last of the spear tore free of his body in a gout of blood. The pain seared Gunnar’s thoughts like a blast of lightning. Then the agony faded, and the energy he’d stolen from the dead monsters went to work stitching him back together. Within a handful of breaths, and at the cost of most of the hamingja he’d earned during the battle, he was good as new.

The jötnar who’d come into the atrium after the first battle had gathered into a nervous mob. It wouldn’t be long before their rage got the best of their fear.

The shotgun still dangled from its strap around Gunnar’s neck and shoulder, but he didn’t know how many shells were left in the drum, and the tactical vest and attached magazines had gotten lost among the dead. It was time to get the fuck into the wind.

“Tell the völva to meet me at the tram,” he commanded the raven.

“I’m not a goddamned messenger pigeon,” the bird shot back as it swooped down from the sky to beat its wings at his head.

Gunnar snatched it out of the air, his hand curled around the corvid’s neck. He’d gotten taller again, his shoulders wider. That was nice for fighting, but the bodyguard wasn’t sure he wanted to keep growing. If he lived up to Mimi’s nickname, people would have a hard time telling the good guys from the bad guys. “You’re gonna be a goddamned chicken pot pie if you don’t tell them,” he snarled at the bird. “Go.”

The instant he released the raven, the creature flapped its wings and