Of course she knew very well that Lita was involved with them, but the sight of the odious emblem just affirmed the tenacity of the all-consuming, power drunk cult and its array of variously unhinged members.
“What do you mean?” Nina asked submissively.
Lita dealt her a hefty wallop across the face, propelling Nina off her chair and onto the moist stone floor. Her knees burned from the impact and within her peripheral vision she could see the subordinate man flinch, but he knew better than to come to her aid.
“What do you mean?” Lita mocked Nina in her most contemptuous little girl voice and planted a devastating kick in the small woman’s abdomen as she tried to get up from all fours. Nina’s breath left her momentarily and her swollen cheek throbbed as her mouth filled with blood.
“Get Slokin and Dr. Krantz!” she roared. Nina vomited on the floor and felt her skin grow cold as the fainting spell possessed her frail muscles. The floor she was crawling on slanted and buckled under her, the hideous Black Sun symbol enveloping her like a giant black spider, sinking from above to catch her. Many footsteps clapped in the hollow hallway and entered the chamber, but Nina could only see feet surrounding her. She felt her body being seized, lifted onto the dining table where she had a decent dinner not 10 minutes before.
Slokin’s repulsive sneer twisted and floated way too close to her face and Nina could hear her own voice, moaning in discontent and hopelessness. It sounded like someone else’s, as if another Nina stood somewhere in the room and watched, just watched and made horrible sounds to suit the pain of the victim on the table.
Too weak to fight, Nina saw an older man in his mid-60s with a white coat and military haircut lean over her. He gently took her left arm and turned her palm upward. She could not see what he was doing, but Lita walked away, pacing impatiently while Slokin’s child rapist smile sickened her.
Nina felt so alone. She felt locked out of the world with not one ally to unlock the door and let her back in. She was locked out with the wolves, naked in a snow frozen night. It started as a faint itch and gradually it grew worse, burning like acid into the tissue of her arm the skin of her arm was peeled back, flayed awake and feeling.
“S-s…” was all Nina’s numb tongue could form against her teeth. Inside her head she was screaming for him, but here at the mercy of these Nazi monsters, his name died in her lips.
But they could not reach inside her mind.
‘Sam.’
Chapter 25
At 6.45am, on the flat clearing between the Port Edgar Yacht Club and the great waters of the North Sea, Sam switched off the engine of the 1300cc Honda he borrowed from one of The Brotherhood’s ladies. He was exhausted, unable to get a wink of sleep since Erika and her sisters brought him back from the mystical world he was walking through after he drank the poison of the vial.
Sam could recall every sound, every scent, and every sensation he felt there, had there been words in this waking world to describe it. But there were none. Not even poets could conjure the imagery of Hel. He knew that was what it was called; he was told by the swans he saw on the black river. Hel, the Other Side of Life. Hel, the Realm of the Dead.
Before this encounter, Sam did not believe in such things, really. From his strange experiences on expeditions and vision quests, he was forced to re-evaluate the lengths his morals, how far his mind and spirit would go to accommodate the things he was challenged to fathom. What happened to him he could not explain, and for the first time, he felt no need to.
It did not matter what he believed now, what he had seen or if it was real. All that mattered was that he took that journey and found his purpose. Sam, for once, did not feel the innate need to report on what he found. Never before had he allowed anything stupendous to go untold. It was his calling to expose the hidden and give individuals the opportunity to judge for themselves what he objectively conveyed.
But not this time.
Sam had seen Hel, the afterlife. It was not the hell of the Christians or the burning circles of brimstone and fire where demons danced to the pen of literature and poetry. Nor was it a place of damnation or tribulation. It was merely the next life; the transcendence from one state to another. Now he understood why spirits of those who had passed over were said to know the future, why they understood the universe and knew the names of babies even before conception. The place through which he wandered was a specific place he was supposed to see, just as Nina had shown him in the book. Gunnar explained that what Sam had seen, the so-called ‘Vision of Kvasir’, was pivotal to locating Valhalla before Lita Røderic would — before she unleashed the corruption of the earth that would have brother destroying brother and have mankind drive itself to extinction.
It was not as if we weren’t close enough already. The night before, Erika and Gunnar told Sam to recount as much as he could remember of the place, so that they could figure out where it was before the Order of the Black Sun could. If they did, they would certainly free the evil that would bring about Ragnarök in a misguided attempt at world domination.
Another problem was that the vial was depleted.
All night long, they all sat around the table, consulting all their scrolls and books, even Googled voodoo recipes for the correct combination of herbs and chemicals that could mimic the consistency and smell of the potion. If Slokin discovered that he was being deceived, Nina would surely be killed, there was no doubt about that. And they could not abandon Val and Sam’s friend.
From government records, they had discovered that Slokin technically did not exist. Sam found it all intriguing. He finally confronted Gunnar about his and Val’s records that did not exist either. The leader of Sleipnir explained that what they did, how they lived, could not be uncovered. Therefore, to avoid their fingerprints and identities being revealed after a battle and landing them in prison, they had Tomi erase their records entirely.
Tomi was Sleipnir’s master hacker and general professional miscreant, a disgraced accountant who was once arrested for forgery and accused of several internet based crimes perpetrated against government officials and corrupt politicians. Tomi was simply opposed to anything and anyone who condoned the power of corporations and perpetuated the control of natural resources to extort tribal councils and indigenous peoples for the value of their land. In short, Tomi hated money. Well, he did not hate money, he hated what the pursuit of it drove people to resort to.
The odd thing though, was that Lita Røderic was on record. One would think that she would do the same thing, to sink her identity under the radar. But she was registered as Gaelita Brunnhilde Røderic, born July 27th, 1935 in the village of Toftir on the coast of the Faroe Islands. And yes, the discrepancy in her year of birth was noticed, but she had access to a whole group of Tomi’s of her own and they took care of her records every 20 years, adjusting it to match the constant of her perceived age. This was one of the reasons why The Brotherhood had to stop her once and for all and dispatch as many of her misbegotten associates with her. First, they had to recover Nina from the claws of the Black Sun’s disciples and for that they needed to effectively fool Slokin into believing the contents of the vial was genuine.
The sun was up, but its full splendor was obscured by the dark clouds that gathered over Queensferry, hovering above the Forth Road Bridge and deterring the morning rays from casting a silvery sheen on the water. Erika had warned Sam, after his awakening, that any form of pain would induce visions of Valhalla, therefore he would have to steer clear of any violence whilst alone. After the accidental consumption of the vial, Sam swore off alcohol binges. Dugal thought it was an excellent idea and he wished Sam well on whatever he was supposed to embark on with the bikers, because they refused to share any information with him or Terry.