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

the sun. “She said—” The young woman hesitated, then ran her fingers through her brown hair. “She said I could come with you. If you’d let me.”

Bridget looked back down at the necklace in her hands and shook her head sadly. A single tear leaked out of the corner of her right eye as she spoke. “That’s not a great idea,” she said. “We’ll need you at the lodge, okay? To keep your dad and brother in line until we get back.”

“Yeah,” Erin said, a little of the light leaking out of her smile. “Dad said you probably wouldn’t want me along. I get it. I’m a skinny girl, who—”

“Hey,” Ray said. “Don’t say that. This isn’t anything about being a girl. This is a war, Erin. We’re sending you to the lodge today because we might need you to pick up the spear if something goes wrong. If we all go into the Luxor, and something happens, who’ll avenge us?”

That little speech lit a fire in Erin’s eyes. She raised her chin and nodded briskly. For a second, Gunnar thought she was about to salute Ray. Instead, she stuck out her hand and shook with each of the völva. She looked so small it was hard to believe she was only a few years younger than Bridget.

When she got to Gunnar, she lowered her eyes and extended her hand like she was afraid he might bite it. He considered kneeling down but decided to treat her like a young lady, not a kid. She’d been willing to stick her neck out to go to war with the jötnar even though she was a skinny little twig hardly taller than Ray.

“Thanks for delivering the message to Bridget,” he said, carefully taking her hand and giving it a gentle shake. “It means a lot to us.”

Erin’s cheeks flushed, and she lifted her eyes to meet Gunnar’s gaze. “I’ll help any way I can. I’ll go to the lodge. I’ll keep it safe. And if you need me to do anything, anything, you just tell me.”

“Here’s the key,” Mimi said. She fished a heavy key and a keycard out of her furs and handed it to Erin. “The key will unlock the front door. Then you’ll...”

Gunnar let Mimi explain the details to Erin. The kid was sharp. She didn’t need him watching over her shoulder while the völva explained her duties. Instead, he went over to Deke and thanked him again.

“Erin’s a hell of a girl,” Gunnar said quietly. “I’m glad I found you guys. You’ll all be safer in the lodge than here.”

“Not much of a girl,” Deke laughed. “She’s dang near twenty. But you’re right. It’ll be nice to have other folks around. Staying holed up with these two was about to drive me nuts.”

They all laughed at that, and Gunnar nodded. He told Deke how to find the underground house and warned him to listen to Erin, as she had the only way inside. The range’s owner drew a tattered notebook and a stub of pencil from his back pocket and scribbled down the information Gunnar had given him. He read it back to the bodyguard, who nodded, and they shook once again.

“We’ll be seeing you,” Deke said. “Count on it.”

Gunnar and the völva left the range. The setting sun threw their shadows out ahead of them like long, black fingers. Gunnar kept his pace slow enough for Ray to keep up without jogging. He wanted his allies fresh when they arrived at their target, and he needed time to lay his plan out in his head, step by step. They’d only get one shot at this, and if he screwed it up, they were all dead. Fortunately, he still had an ace in the hole if things spun out.

As long as he got his hands on gungnir, they’d win.

If he didn’t get that chance, though, they were fucked in all kinds of unpleasant ways.

That reminded him of something he’d meant to ask Mimi after their time together at the Grand. He caught her hand midstride and gave it a squeeze. “Did you get any, uh, power-ups after our little rendezvous?” he asked.

“I feel stronger,” Mimi said. “Closer to all of you too, if that makes sense. And I think—”

She squinted her eyes in concentration for a moment. Waves of distortion pulsed around the völva, like the heat haze rising off a sunbaked desert highway, and the world swam out of focus for Gunnar. A moment later, he caught a glimpse of Deke and Mark wrestling quadzilla into the back of a battered old pickup truck.

The vision vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared, and Gunnar felt his legs wobble a bit. He caught himself against the side of an abandoned car, and Bridget steadied Mimi with a firm hand.

“Be careful with that,” Bridget cautioned Mimi as they moved down a narrow street lined with the shells of dead houses. “It can take a lot out of you. You don’t want to end up on your back in the middle of a fight.”

Gunnar couldn’t help himself. With a wicked grin, he scooped Mimi off her feet and slung her over his shoulder. He slapped her ass and said, “I’d like to put this one on her back just about anywhere.”

“You wish,” she snorted, shaking her hips.

Gunnar threw his arms around Ray and Bridget. “That’s all right, these two are enough to keep me plenty busy.”

“We’d never leave Mimi out in the cold,” Ray said. “We need her to keep you in line.”

They all chuckled at that, despite the dangerous hours that loomed ahead of them. Gunnar knew they were all walking into the lion’s den, but he couldn’t help but feel confident that they’d succeed. He and the völva were bound by purpose, tied to each other in ways no one else would ever understand.

They were unstoppable.

THEIR CAREFUL APPROACH to the Luxor took longer than Gunnar would’ve liked, and it was long past sundown when they