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

Begone, vile creature. This sacred place is not meant for you.

Hilda frowned at the voice. It had a strange accent, and it sincerely pissed her off. “Fuck you,” she muttered and stepped through the museum’s entryway.

She was met by a blast of pure white light. For one second, she felt weightless.

Then she crashed down on her ass, butt cheeks raw from sliding across the asphalt. Well, that was unexpected.

Hilda stood and brushed the grit off the curves of her butt, swished her tail to be sure it was still intact, and eyeballed her target. She had to get inside the Boneyard; the ring’s presence called out to her from somewhere near the center of the property. Someone was guarding the thing, though, and meant to keep her out.

“We’ll see about that,” Hilda grumbled. She backed away from the Boneyard and took a seat on the curb across the street. She considered the power that Hyrrokkin had granted to her and realized she had the solution at hand.

Hyrrokkin’s smoke leaked from Hilda’s mouth and nose, drooled down over her body in undulating coils that erased her from the street. One moment she was a seven-foot-tall jötunn with black hooves, and the next she was as ephemeral as a wisp of fog ahead of a storm wind. She leapt nimbly over the wall that surrounded the Boneyard, clenching her fists and jaw in expectation of the damnable white light.

This time, though, nothing stopped Hilda. She landed between towering walls of old Vegas signs and fixtures, their shadows falling over her in slanting bars. It was strange to see these ancient memories up close. They seemed both quaint and threatening, a grimier, darker slice of Vegas life.

Hilda liked it.

Unfortunately, she had no time for sightseeing. The cloak of smoke and shadows took a lot of energy to maintain, and she was running out of go juice very quickly. She had minutes, maybe less, before the well ran dry. Something told Hilda that would be followed by another blast of white lightning. Probably more than one.

The vision Hyrrokkin had shown Hilda had featured the big skull that had once hung above the entrance to the Treasure Island Casino, before the owners rebranded the place as the blandest, most boring hotel on the Strip. Hilda’s memory told her that enormous artifact was just ahead. She slowed, careful not to slip on the sand-strewn concrete beneath her feet, and crept up on a bleached-out jawbone taller than she was. The skull lay flat on the gravel, empty sockets aimed at the sky. As Hilda got closer, the air prickled with static electricity, and unpleasant waves of current rolled over her skin. Whatever had shot her when she tried to waltz through the gate earlier was close by.

And so was the heart-aching tug of Draupnir. The golden ring glowed from where it rested between the skull’s teeth. All Hilda had to do was climb up there and grab it. Easy as pie. Piece of cake. You scream, I scream, we all scream—

Hilda had scrambled up onto the skull’s cheekbone, food sayings dancing through her thoughts, when her cloak of smoke and shadows failed.

And the ring’s guardian saw her.

A beautiful woman, easily six feet tall, crouched beside the ring. Her face was covered in cuts and bruises, her golden hair had been burned down to prickly patches of stubble. Her chain armor was scorched, whole sections of chain links had been torn away, leaving behind jagged, broken rings, and the scabbard on her hip was empty. But the worst injuries were on her shoulders. Stubs of gnarled tissue and broken, hollow bones jutted up from her back. They’d been wings, once, but were now tragic reminders of her lost glory.

A dreadful chill ran through Hilda as she realized this creature was one of Odin’s chosen. A Valkyrie.

“How dare you,” the woman snarled as she tried to stand up. “Begone, jötunn. You are not worthy.”

“Fuck you,” Hilda shot back.

She was tired from maintaining the cloak, but she’d rest when she was dead. Hilda sized up her foe.

Even wounded, the formerly winged woman looked like she could eat coals and breathe fire. The crackling ball of lightning gathering in her hand also told Hilda that she could put a serious hurting on the jötunn if she got the chance.

The jötunn didn’t intend to see if she was right.

Hilda charged forward, throwing herself to the right as the ball of lightning sizzled past her hip. The jötunn hit the Valkyrie at hip height, looped her arms around her foe’s waist, and wrenched the wounded warrior off her feet. As the Valkyrie squawked in outrage and pummeled Hilda’s back with angry blows, the jötunn straightened and raised her even higher. Then, with a bestial roar, she slammed the ring’s defender down onto the skull with all the force she could muster.

The Valkyrie’s shoulders cracked and popped out of their sockets on impact, and her neck wrenched grotesquely to the side. The mortally wounded creature’s body shuddered in the jötunn’s grasp, and her eyes filled with tears. She stared up at Hilda, unable to move, her breathing labored. “You were human once,” the warrior spirit said, voice choked. “Why would you forsake that to be a beast?”

Hilda knelt down next to the Valkyrie and plucked the ring from between the skull’s teeth. She held it up and looked through the golden band at the fallen warrior. “It’s more fun this way,” she said.

Then she slipped the ring over her finger and raised her fist overhead.

“For Hyrrokkin!” she screamed, her voice wild and untamed. With a triumphant grin, she slammed her fist down through the center of the Valkyrie’s face, the ring shattering bone and shredding flesh as the dead creature’s skull split open like a rotten gourd.

Power flooded through Hilda in a turbulent rush. It rocked her back on her heels, and the jötunn nearly toppled down the side of the skull. She