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

heads of their enemies with a hand axe Mimi had found in the garage. He mounted them on the spikes at the top of the gate. That would give the jötnar something to think about if they came this way again.

With that out of the way, Gunnar took a tour of the lodge to see what else the jötnar had wrecked. The walls, floor, and ceiling had suffered damage during the attack, but some of it had already healed. Gunnar found dirt, pounded flat and hard, showing through some patches of torn carpet. Rough timbers had replaced missing chunks of concrete from the walls. Where the ceiling was damaged, Gunnar discovered wooden strips laced together and caked with clay. The pool was still nice and clear, though, so he dropped down on its edge and soaked his feet in the water.

“What the hell did you do this place, Gun?” Mimi asked. She’d wrapped up her part of the cleanup and flopped down in one of the lounge chairs near the pool that had survived the fight. She dangled her feet in the pool and sighed. “It looks like we’re being taken over by Medieval Times.”

“I activated the Hall of Heroes,” the bodyguard said from where he sat on the pool’s stony edge. He didn’t trust the lounge chairs to hold his weight. “It’s changing the place, like the Valknut changed me.”

Ray and Bridget arrived from the main house with a tray of glasses and a bottle of whiskey between them. “Figured we could all use some refreshments,” Bridget said.

Ray poured two fingers into a glass and handed it to Mimi. When everyone had a drink, Bridget set the tray down beside Gunnar, then took a seat on the edge of the pool.

“It’s a really good thing the world is ending,” Mimi grumbled. “I was supposed to take care of this place for some very nasty government people. They’d be very, very pissed if they saw how I’d messed up that job.”

“Finders, keepers,” Gunnar said. “If they want this place back, they’ll have to come give us a hand kicking those monsters out of Vegas.”

“Doubtful,” Mimi said. She kicked one bare foot in the water. “Lines are still dead. I don’t think anyone’s coming, ladies and Jolly.”

Gunnar opened his mouth to tell Mimi not to call him that, then let it go. That was a fight he’d never win. The more he called attention to the nickname, the more likely it was the others would use it. Instead, he cracked his knuckles and started laying out his plan. “We need to find the rest of the relics before Hyrrokkin’s freak show comes back for round two. If any of you have seen or heard about a spear or a golden ring, now’s the time to speak up.”

Ray swirled her glass on the table. “I haven’t, yet, but I think there’s a way for us to find them if the three of us work together.”

“She’s right,” Bridget said. The light from the dot on her forehead glowed a deep, velvety purple. “I caught a glimpse of what to do while you three were killing all the bad guys. We’ll need your help, Mimi.”

Mimi downed her whiskey and put the drink down on the edge of the pool. “Sure, why not. Better move back, Jolly. Women at work here.”

Ray and Bridget slid into the pool. They gestured for Mimi to join them.

She stood, slithered her legs out of her jeans, then stripped out of her shirt. She tossed the clothes off to the side, then turned flashing eyes to Gunnar. “What’re you looking at? I didn’t have a chance to change. I’m not putting bloody clothes in the pool.”

“Just admiring the view,” Gunnar said.

Mimi was a little taller than Rayleigh, and a few years older than Gunnar. She was muscular and lithe, and a scattered constellation of pale, starburst scars the size of nickels dotted her olive skin. She met Gunnar’s eyes as she stepped into the pool, an old heat rekindling in her gaze.

His body responded to the sight, stiffening as the cool water stiffened Mimi’s dark nipples. Desire throbbed in his veins, and he was reminded of the fires hidden in their pasts. He’d once traced the path of those scars with his tongue, tasting Mimi’s sweat, feeling her curves shifting and straining under him...

Bridget took Mimi’s left hand and Rayleigh’s right, and then Mimi and Ray completed the triangle by reaching out to each other. None of them said a word, but light poured from their foreheads and mingled in the center of their gathering.

Gunnar shivered as a cold wind whipped through the bunker, skipping flakes of frost over the pool’s suddenly steaming surface.

Mimi’s eyes opened wide and turned a uniform golden color. Her powerful voice echoed through the underground chamber. “Thence come the maidens, mighty in wisdom, three from the dwelling, down ’neath the tree.”

Gossamer threads that shone with pink, gold, and violet light emerged from the witches and wove a complex pattern in the air above the pool. Odin’s vision informed Gunnar that this was the Web of Wyrd, the tangled skein of fate that only the völva, skilled in the ways of seidr, could truly understand.

“The Valkyries steal the relics from the City of Golden Dreams. They bear the relics to the lands of men,” Rayleigh intoned, her voice cold and distant. She released her grip on the other women and reached up to trace vibrant lines in the pattern. “They spirited these treasures from the halls of Asgard to save them from the fall. The eye to the king who was hanged.”

Gunnar saw the words as much as heard them. A vision of winged women descending from the heavens to hide their treasures played across his thoughts. Before he could see where they’d hidden them, though, a billowing storm front gusted across his vision and banished the images.

It was Mimi’s turn to release Bridget’s hand and run her fingers down a thrumming thread within the pattern.