Valhalla Virus by Nick Harrow (best management books of all time TXT) 📕

And he knew what he had to do.

The rest of the night passed in a flurry of fighting, fucking, and feasting. He’d commanded respect from the monsters who’d emerged from the dead and soon had himself a gang of others just like him. By dawn, Bogie and his bloodthirsty buddies had claimed a chunk of the city as his fiefdom. He was no longer Bogdan Demezerov, failed entrepreneur, failed gambler, and disappointment to his overbearing parents.

He’d become Bogie, the bloodthirsty terror of Fremont Street. His little gang of a dozen other jötnar had seized control of the Golden Nugget. His minions had raided the nearest dispensary for some party favors, a couple of smoking-hot jötnar women had fallen under his protection, and life was looking up.

The jötunn warlord stood just outside the main entrance to the Golden Nugget and surveyed his new empire. He imagined the defenses he’d put in place to block the roads and the guard towers his new army would occupy to protect his headquarters. He was the King of Fremont Street.

“We oughta put some porn up there,” Bogie’s lieutenant, Raj, a hulking freak with a barbed tail and a single lopsided horn, gestured at the projection screen that ran down the center of Fremont Street. “You know, set the mood.”

While enormous fuck flicks would send a message, Bogie wasn’t sure it was the right one for his territory. He was about more than sex, drugs, and whatever passed for rock-and-roll these days. He had bigger dreams. Hyrrokkin had given him a mission. He wouldn’t fail her.

“Nah,” Bogie said. “That’ll just attract the riffraff. The only people we want in our territory are our soldiers, our bitches, and our slaves. Anyone else who pokes their nose in gets it shot off, clear?”

“Yeah, sure, boss,” Raj said with only a slight grumble. The oversized freak slung the shotgun they’d liberated from the EZ Pawn that morning over his shoulder. “You think we’ll find any more slaves?”

Bogie didn’t have an answer for that. Most of the regular humans he’d seen since the sun came up were already corpses. They just weren’t cut out for this brave new world.

On the third hand, Bogie might need some humans down the road. His gang was made up entirely of jötnar who claimed to have crawled through corpsegates opened by Hyrrokkin between Jotunheim and Earth. Or Midgard, as the monsters liked to call it. That operation had taken their mistress a very, very long time to engineer. According to Raj, the odds of getting any reinforcements was highly unlikely.

That meant the only way Bogie could grow his army was to recruit existing monsters or find some humans to turn to his cause. He was thinking about his options when Raj nudged him with an elbow.

“Who the fuck is that?” the big monster asked, nodding his head toward a human leading a pair of jötunn through the intersection.

“Hello, gentlemen.” The normie, a tall, slender guy wearing an expensive suit and designer sunglasses, wasn’t armed. His allies, though, cradled AR-15s in their huge mitts. The whole group strolled right up to the Golden Nugget’s entrance like they didn’t have a care in the world. “I’m looking for Bogdan Demezerov.”

Bogie’s lips pulled back from his teeth at the sound of that name. His eyes narrowed into hateful slits, and he stepped out of the shade of the Golden Nugget’s entrance to ram his long, gnarled finger into the man’s chest. He smiled when he saw the smudge his finger left on the human’s white shirt. Served the fucker right for coming into his place acting all high and mighty.

“Ain’t no one here with that name,” Bogie said, his voice still carrying traces of his Eastern European ancestry. “Now get out of here before my boys rip your arms off and feed them to your bodyguards.”

Some of Bogie’s boys had drifted out of the casino when they heard the shouting. The mismatched guns and knives they’d taken from the pawn shop were enough to scare the shit out of unarmed punks, but the bodyguards behind the human were far from that. Even Raj, the dumbest of Bogie’s supporters, couldn’t ignore the professional way the newcomers carried themselves.

“My apologies. Allow me to introduce myself.” The human gave Bogie an elegant bow, low enough to reveal the pair of twisted black horns that encircled the top of his head like a crown of burned laurels. “My name is Arthur Drake. I am, as they say, the new sheriff in town. I’ve been making my rounds this morning, extending the same offer to every jötunn war chief. Pledge your forces to support my cause, or I’ll carve your cock off with a rusty grapefruit spoon and stuff it up your festering asshole.”

Bogie’s temper flared, a white-hot spark of rage that burned all rational thought out of his skull. He’d dreamed of a new future in a lawless world where twats like this Arthur Drake wouldn’t dare tell him what to do. If this little prick believed he could steal that dream away, he was in for a very nasty surprise.

“Fuck off,” Bogie said, his hand resting on the titanium gold Desert Eagle Mark XIX holstered on his hip. He’d picked up the weapon years ago but had been too afraid the damned thing would rip his shoulder out of socket if he dared to shoot it. Until, that is, he’d gained a foot and a half of height and a couple hundred pounds of muscle thanks to the transformative powers of Hyrrokkin’s titty juice. He’d fired the enormous gun a lot since then. “Fremont Street belongs to me. You and your pair of butt buddies can fuck right off back to New York City or San Francisco or wherever you came from.”

Arthur chuckled and gave Bogie a sarcastic golf clap. “Oh, my friend, you will make a delightful addition to my team. Such enormous balls and tiny brains are exactly what her army needs. Now, take your hand away from