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

The bodyguard didn’t need an explanation for what would happen once then. An army of jötnar would storm across, armed to the teeth. They’d sweep aside any force that opposed them. Vegas would fall under their conquering boots in a matter of hours. Nevada would follow in days. The country in weeks. Hyrrokkin had an unstoppable and nearly infinite supply of supernatural soldiers at her disposal. All she lacked was a way to reach Midgard.

There was no time left for planning. Gunnar had to act or the world was utterly fucked. “That trick you did back at the lodge,” Gunnar said to Bridget. “Can you do something like that again to pin that big freak down?”

The völva looked down on the jötunn, her eyes gone white, fingers clenched around the guardrail. “It’s hard for me to see the future unaided,” she explained. “But when Ray and Mimi pinpoint a specific time and place using their powers, it’s easier for me to find my position in the weave. That’s why I could see Gungnir without needing a long nap afterward. But destiny is often uncertain. Events cause ripples through the skein of fate, changing the version of the future that will come to pass. What I did at the lodge was tie a few stitches into the web to hold the version I saw in place. I could do something like it again, but I’m not sure how long it would last.”

Gunnar watched the jötnar, fires of rage burning in his belly. While he wanted to destroy them all, there wasn’t time to blast that horde apart with his shotgun. He needed Gungnir, and there weren’t many options to get his hands on it before the Behemoth wrapped up its ritual. “Make sure the big guy doesn’t move.”

“For how long?” Bridget asked.

“Ten seconds,” Gunnar responded. His plan was just short of suicidal, but it was the only way to interrupt the ritual. This was his chance to stop Hyrrokkin’s invasion dead in its tracks. He had to take it.

Mimi was the first of the völva to respond. She grabbed hold of Ray’s left hand and Bridget’s right. “Let’s do this, ladies,” she said firmly. “It’s time to fuck unto them before they can start fucking us.”

The women clasped hands and sank to the floor. They sat cross-legged, facing one another, the lights in their foreheads growing brighter and more intense with every breath they took. Gunnar felt a pulse of energy flow through their circle, coming to rest on Ray, whose eyes shifted color to match the pink light pouring from the hole in her forehead. Her lips moved in a silent chant, and the Web of Wyrd appeared in the center of their triangle. She released Mimi’s and Bridget’s hands, then reached out and traced a vibrating thread that ran deep into the weave with the tip of her finger.

“The Behemoth feasts on the worship of the mutants. His power waxed with their adulation.” Her hand fell back into her lap, and the last point on the web she’d touched glowed bright pink.

Mimi picked up where Ray had left off. The tip of her finger touched the pink blaze on the Wyrd. “Here it stands, the power of Hyrrokkin guided through its massive form. It is swollen with potential, a blight upon the face of Midgard.”

When she withdrew her touch from the pattern, a pulsing, golden shell surrounded the pink sphere. Bridget let go of Ray’s fingers and reached out with both hands to pluck at the strands that encircled the point the other völva had identified. “Here it shall remain for as long as my strength lasts,” she intoned, her voice creaking like glacial ice grinding across the Earth’s face. “By my word and bond, it is so.”

“Here goes nothing,” Gunnar barked.

And with that, he vaulted up to the edge of the guardrail, double-checked to make sure his shotgun was still secure on the strap around his neck and shoulder, and threw himself off the balcony.

He plunged toward the Behemoth, boots first. His eyes never left Gungnir, which glowed with electric blue power. The weapon vibrated as if straining to get free of the monstrosity that held it. Gunnar’s rage rose to meet the spear’s desperate plea. The relic belonged to him, and he would take it back no matter the cost.

One of Gunnar’s boots slammed into the Behemoth’s face, shattering its nose with the brittle crack of a dead twig. His other boot caught the creature on the shoulder, twisting its torso to the side. The impact buckled the bodyguard’s legs and sent jolts of pain shooting from his ankles to his hips. But the Valknut had made them stronger than he’d ever believed possible, and his knees absorbed the shock. Gunnar seized the monstrosity’s horn with his left hand and lunged up to grab the spear with his right.

“You cursed maggot,” the jötunn snarled and tightened a fist the size of Gunnar’s head around the spear’s dark haft. “Hyrrokkin told me you would come. I am the Behemoth, chosen of the burning goddess, the earth shaker.”

“What’s that?” Gunnar asked as he tried to rip Gungnir from the Behemoth’s clenched fingers. “You’re shaking in your boots?”

The beast unleashed a furious roar that reeked of rotten meat and old fires. It jerked the spear hard to its right and swung an oversized fist into Gunnar’s side from the left.

The maneuver knocked the bodyguard away from the gigantic monster. He hung in the air above the writhing crowd of jötnar. The women on the back of the Behemoth continued the eerie chanting that made the jarl’s head ache. The ritual was almost complete. He had to get Gungnir away from this monster, soon.

The momentum from the Behemoth’s blow knocked Gunnar around in a half circle. He pumped his legs and used the spear as a pivot to launch onto the beast’s back in front of one of