Inside, Lita was deep into the hall, searching through the collection of soaked bottles and vials for anything reminiscent of ‘Fenrir’. As Sam and Eldard entered the hall, she smiled. In her hands she held a lockbox with a wolf’s head chiseled into it.
“I don’t hit women, Sam,” Eldard said nervously as she approached them with a confident stride.
“Then don’t hit her,” Sam said nonchalantly, cocking his head. “Kill her.”
Chapter 38
Slokin felt the quiet thud of the blade slip into his back and then came the burning sting. It spread through his lungs and his chest, rendering him breathless and his legs failed him just as the second knife plunged into him. The grass was cold under his face as the knee of the biker thrust down on his back with tremendous force.
“I told you I was going to kill you, Slokin,” he gasped.
“You can just call me ‘Widower maker’,” the imp laughed into the wet dirt, as a final insult to the man who was going to kill him. “My name bears my identity, which you cannot kill.”
When Gunnar thought about it, he realized that the word ‘Loki’ was in the little bastard’s name.
“I’ll just come back in a next life to torment your children. Oh, wait, you don’t have any!” he said and burst out in an infuriating cackle Gunnar could no longer stand.
“That’s okay. The Brotherhood will kick your ass again.”
Gunnar snapped the miscreant’s ribs and exposed his lungs, reveling in his blood-curdling screams. When his wheezing rattle grew quiet, Gunnar cut off his head with one of his silver rune daggers and threw him in a ditch.
“Just in case,” Gunnar panted, wiping the blood from his face.
He made his way back to Valhalla to find the redhead adversary giving Eldard a good fight. Sam was sitting up against the wall to the right, screaming in agony from two broken legs, courtesy of Lita’s devastating roundhouse kick. She did not see Gunnar while locked in Eldard’s fierce grasp. He could not reach his gun while trying to subdue her. Her strength was inhuman, thanks to the genetic engineering of Himmler’s finest and she ran the huge tattooist’s body into a protruding iron spike on the wall. With a painful croon, he hung there, bleeding profusely.
She set her sights on Sam.
“Your turn, you snoopy Scot!” she smiled, hitching her dress to move faster. Her hideous tail filled Sam with fear and disgust, but he could not move to evade her attack. She looked like some demonic wraith in a pretty dress with not a measure of good in her. Sam pinched his eyes shut, waiting to be introduced to death, but it never came.
He heard Gunnar roar with rage and saw him sink one of his rune blades into her stomach. Crouching next to a decrepit cabinet, she never saw him wait for her to pass.
Lita stopped in her tracks, her face twisted in shock for but a moment. Sam sighed in relief. Gunnar had saved him from a sticky end. He could not warn Gunnar soon enough when she pulled the blade from her body and rammed the back of the hilt down on the Sleipnir leader’s head, instantly cracking his skull. Gunnar’s eyes froze, his mouth fell open, and he felt the warm blood trickle down over his face.
Outside the sound of the singing bowls resumed, but this time far less powerful. Eldard gathered his strength and crawled towards Sam and Lita.
“Hey! Nazi bitch!” he panted, dangling the lockbox at her. She had abandoned it to fight.
Without a word, Lita came for him while the ground started to shake again, but the bowls sounded wrong. Their discord caused the water to elevate. Lita had been stabbed with the same blades Erika wielded, thus suffering real injury. Because she could not feel pain, she had no idea that she was bleeding profusely from the damage the dagger had done. As she reached Eldard, she passed out.
Gunnar felt Sam reach for him, barely grazing his face with his hand. His brain was hemorrhaging and he knew he would never leave Russia. As Sam and Eldard flanked him, their living words mute to his dying ears, he saw the spectral apparitions of striking warrior women around them. From their midst came one, walking straight towards him. Her sword and shield glimmered like the sun and her red robes fell lightly against her sheepskin boots.
When she came closer, Gunnar wept with joy.
“I–I can see you,” he cried, looking at something in mid-air Sam and Eldard could not see, but they were comforted that their friend was smiling.
Before him, Val kneeled, her face intact again and more beautiful than ever.
“Come, love. Time to come home,” her loving voice echoed as she leaned in to kiss him. As their lips met, Gunnar breathed no more.
“What is that?” Sam asked the giant tattooist as he lifted Sam and carried him out of the hall. He secured the doors again and broke off the handle. In his hand he had one of the bottles from the shelf, filled with Lita’s blood.
“Just something I want to try on Nina,” he explained with labored breath, trying to ignore his own injury as much as he could.
“What?”
“Shut up, Sam. Jesus, I’m in agony!”
The river raged in cascades from its temporary tomb and started to fill once more, undoing the revelation of the Great Hall of Odin. Hastily, the big man and the journalist fled from the sinking structure, which now contained greater evil than before. Furiously came the thundering rumble of the water, thrashing down on the sinking hall and drowning it once more. It fell deeper and deeper back into the burial chamber where it had been slumbering for centuries. Gary was holding two mallets, while the barely conscious Nina was hammering against the third.
In the moonlight, the water swallowed Valhalla and topped it with a cold lid of liquid silver.
Once Gary had elicited some medical assistance, Nina received a special transfusion in a country clinic outside Novgorod. Lita’s regenerative blood helped her combat the damage done by the arsenic. Eldard, Gary, and Sam made a pact never to tell the feisty, little thing that her enemy’s blood coursed through her body. It reversed the effects of the poisoning and astounded medical staff, but being a superstitious lot, it was written off to a miracle of St. Blod.
‘Another incident of the three day festival was the reports of a giant horn heard throughout the countryside, where religious parties readied themselves for Armageddon. Authorities say that a thorough investigation was launched, but so far, no evidence of any abnormal activity has been found,’ the reporter’s shrill voice came from the TV speaker.
Sam was high on painkillers while Nina and Erika discussed rites conducted in Germanic Heathenism at length. He looked at the two women in amazement, “Excuse me, ladies, but this is a hospital room, not a symposium on arcane studies or history or… whatever…” he sighed. “I thought you were here to cheer me up.”
“With all those narcotics, you should be the poster boy for cheer,” Nina said. Sam could not look at her enough. Her color had returned in spades and she was her old snappy self again. After her ordeal, she was inspired to write a book about the perversion of Norse Mythology by Nazism and she decided to spend some time with Erika and The Brotherhood to assist her in the feat.
They did not know what the Order had planned for the recovery of Lita’s dangerous collection of Nazi research, most of it having been destroyed in the fortress fire, but they hoped the quest for Valhalla was deemed hearsay after Lita’s dismal failure at locating it.
With Alex and Erika leading the clandestine responsibilities of the organization, Nina and Sam were convinced there would be no reason to fear the coming of Ragnarök anytime soon.