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

the end of its arc, Gungnir returned to the jarl’s hand with its tip steaming and dripping sparks. He was surprised that the attack hadn’t harvested any hamingja. He’d worry about why not later.

The spear’s onslaught had weakened the atrium even further. The platform shook beneath Gunnar’s feet, and the concrete floor cracked and rumbled. Chunks of the walkways overlooking the open area broke free and plummeted to the ground, pulverizing more of the jötnar on impact. It wouldn’t be long now until the whole place came crashing down.

“Nice job,” the raven crowed as it burst through an entrance on the platform’s far end, the völva hot on its heels. “Don’t get too carried away with that. Every power has a cost.”

“One I’m willing to pay,” Gunnar said. He pointed his spear at the rail line. “Follow that. Hurry.”

He wanted to sweep the völva into his arms and smother them with kisses. His blood still boiled from the battle, but the sight of the women had changed his desire for violence into something more pleasurable. He promised himself to act on that soon and followed them through the shattered doors and onto the tracks. The group marched up the incline and toward the Excalibur. The line rose twenty feet into the air. From that height, Gunnar could see up and down the Strip.

He did not care for the view.

Packs of jötnar rushed down the streets and sidewalks, loping like wolves on the hunt. They navigated the crush of cars that clogged the road with ease, their bloodthirsty howls goading one another to move faster. The Behemoth must have called every jötunn in the city to join in the fun.

Gunnar’s only hope of survival was to hide somewhere safe, as soon as possible.

But what worried the bodyguard was the growing shadow that hung a few hundred feet above the Strip. The insectoid vehicle moved much faster than the jötnar, and its whirling rotor made it far nimbler. As the chopper drew closer, Gunnar recognized it as a Black Hawk.

He doubted the jötnar could fly a helicopter. It had to be an Army or National Guard unit. Gunnar hoped they had enough sense to stay out of the city. He wasn’t sure if the Valhalla Virus was still hanging around in the air, but the last thing anyone needed was a bunch of soldiers getting infected and going on a rampage with the big guns.

“Can you run?” he asked the völva.

“Not for long,” Bridget said with a weak smile. “That little trick took a lot out of us. Not even all the hamingja you fed into Mimi and Ray could replace what they lost.”

The platinum-blond völva looked like she was running on empty. Her eyes were sunken and hollow, her shoulders slumped. Gunnar cursed silently. He should have known Bridget wouldn’t take the hamingja he’d harvested from the jötnar. She’d explained it could interfere with her abilities, though the jarl didn’t really understand everything Bridget had told him.

“Okay,” he said, “then you’re getting a ride.”

He scooped Bridget off her feet and slung her over his left shoulder to keep his spear hand free. Then he took off at a dead run to cross the distance to their destination.

Mimi and Ray kept up with Gunnar’s pace. The group descended along the rail to the tram’s last station at the Excalibur.

A hellish roar rose from the block behind them, and they turned back, frozen in place by the spectacular implosion of the Luxor. Its structure, weakened by the battle, had given up the ghost. The top crumpled inward, followed by gigantic sections of the outer walls. Plumes of concrete dust shot into the sky like a mushroom cloud, spreading its dark shroud above the Strip.

“This way,” Gunnar urged the völva. They raced down a broad hallway from the tram station to an elevated pedestrian bridge that carried them across the Tropicana to New York-New York. The extra time in the open was dangerous, but Gunnar hoped it would pay off. He knew a place they could hide, one which the jötnar were unlikely to search.

If he reached it in time.

Running through the deserted casino was an eerie experience. Something had torn many of the machines from the floor and had slammed a few through the green felt of the table games. Millions of dollars in chips crunched under their feet, now as worthless as the clay they were made from. The Hershey’s store had been ransacked. Its racks and shelves stood empty of clothes and candy. Coyote Ugly certainly lived up to its name once the jötnar had finished with it.

Finally, Gunnar found the stairway he needed and rushed up to the casino’s second floor. He followed the fake boardwalk around the elevated walkway, coming at last to a replica of a Coney Island boardwalk.

“Is that a roller coaster?” Ray asked.

Gunnar couldn’t help but chuckle at her excitement. “I promise we’ll take a ride another day.”

Ray looked behind Gunnar and swatted his ass. “Good, you didn’t cross your fingers.”

“I’m no cheat,” the bodyguard said with a wink. “Now, let’s get ourselves somewhere safe.”

He led the völva to a prize counter beside an arcade. To Gunnar’s surprise, the case had survived the looting. Cheap plastic junk that cost hundreds of tickets won from skeeball machines or crane games hung from plastic racks or lay atop shelves. Gunnar felt a pang of loss when he glanced at those items, as if they were a time capsule from a world hundreds of years in the past rather than garbage from a few days ago. Even as he watched, they changed, transforming into polished clay bead bracelets and shards of colored stone. The cabinets changed, too, sleek chrome and glass giving way to rough-hewn planks and twisted lengths of black iron.

The changes were coming faster now. He wondered how long it would take the whole Strip to vanish beneath the primordial Viking chic.

“Where are you taking us?” Mimi asked.

They’d gone behind the prize counter to a storeroom. Gunnar