by Nick Harrow
Frustrated, Gunnar pushed back from the table. He finished his sandwich in a pair of vicious bites, then guzzled down the last of the bottled water in front of him. After all the craziness that went down the day before and the bizarre dream that wasn’t a dream, being cooped up underground was pushing Gunnar over the edge. He needed fresh air and sunlight. Barring that, he’d settle for a walk around Bunklerland.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s stretch our legs and figure out our next move.”
Mimi led the way outside and gave them all a walking tour of the grounds. The ranch-style home the women had spent the night in was parked in the center of the low-ceilinged bunker with painted walls and a green-carpeted floor. The ceiling was made up to look like the sky, though the painted-on clouds couldn’t hide the air conditioning vents or sprinkler heads. A kidney-shaped pool ran down one side of the house, its length framed by fake rocks surrounding a hot tub overlooking the water. A boulder beside the pool hid a barbecue grill in its guts, complete with a ventilation system that carried the smoke out through the nearby fake tree to the surface. The opposite side of the house had a parquet dance floor with a rotating disco ball, and mood lights helped complete the illusion that they weren’t buried under thirty feet of concrete.
“This is wild,” Rayleigh said, her fingertips brushing against the bark of a fake tree. “Hard to believe someone would go to so much trouble to make something so godawful ugly.”
Bridget laughed. “This is pure Vegas. I love it.”
“It may not be pretty, but it’s safe as hell. My bosses went all out on this place,” Mimi explained, “to help this place survive a direct hit from a bomb. They also did some excavation to increase food storage. There are enough canned foods and MREs hidden under that dance floor to keep four people fed for a couple of years. Wouldn’t be the tastiest thing you’ve ever eaten, but you wouldn’t die. Water tank access lines are hidden in those cabinets there. They buried a couple of five thousand gallon jobs under the concrete, so the water will last as long as the food if we cut out showers.”
Despite the pangs of claustrophobia picking at the edges of Gunnar’s thoughts, this was the perfect place to ride out the virus. Even if bad guys tried to fight their way down to the subterranean bolthole, Gunnar knew he’d be able to hold them off. Especially if his suspicions about what was behind the big wooden door he’d just found were correct. “What’s this thing?” he asked Mimi. “Gun safe?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Mimi asked. She made her way around the corner of the house to catch up to Gunnar, and her jaw dropped. “I have no clue what that is.”
“How did you miss something this big in your super-secret underground love bunker?” Gunnar asked. He grabbed hold of the heavy ring set in the door’s center and gave it a pull. The crude barrier swung open, its rusted hinges squealing like a stomped-on cat. “Holy shit.”
Mimi bumped into Gunnar’s back when he pulled up short on the threshold of the room he’d revealed. She grabbed the bodyguard’s shirt to regain her balance, then peered around his oversized frame to get a look at his discovery. “That was not here last night.”
“Looks old for new construction,” Gunnar said. The door itself was worn and weathered, like it had been exposed to the elements for decades, not tucked away in an underground bomb shelter. The interior of the room looked every bit as old as the door. Guttering candles nestled in the wall sconces provided some light, thick trails of wax dripping down the stones beneath them, but most of the illumination in the room came from the primitive table planted at its center. The furniture’s legs still had bark on them, as if they’d been hacked from a tree then split lengthwise into quarters to support the warped and knotted planks of the table’s surface. The wooden structure didn’t provide any light, but what rested atop it did.
A scale model of the bunker, its long elevator to the surface, and the two-story home that hid all of it from the surface took up most of the table’s center. It floated in the air, like a hologram, but the luminous walls looked perfectly solid. He looked under the table and felt along the ceiling for a projector but found nothing. A careful examination of the walls didn’t reveal the model’s source either, which left Gunnar uneasy. Rotating three-dimensional scale models didn’t just appear as if by...
Magic.
Mimi let out a long, low whistle as she pushed Gunnar into the room and got a good look at what it held.
“Holy shit,” Mimi grumbled. “Where did this come from?”
Bridget was the next to enter the dimly lit room. The floating model lit sparks in her wide eyes as she took a spot across the table from the bodyguard and Mimi. She reached out to touch the nearest wall, and the whole model rotated on its axis. “I feel like I ate one too many bites of a magic brownie.”
That sounded about right to Gunnar. His head felt strange. Not fuzzy, but as if someone had both sharpened his focus and pointed it at a part of the world he’d never seen before. Even Ray seemed far different as she entered the low-ceilinged room to join the rest of the crew. Her eyes were sharper and brighter. The healthy glow of her skin now seemed like a pure energy that shone through from the center of her being.
His feelings, always fierce where Ray was concerned, had heightened to a level he’d never experienced before. He’d loved Ray from the moment they’d met, but now he felt bound to her more tightly than ever before. He’d die for her, there was no doubt of that, and it didn’t end there.
Because he felt the same about Mimi. And Bridget, who he hardly knew. His bodyguard instincts were to keep them safe, but he also wanted those three by his side for whatever came next. And as Ray entered the long, narrow room, those feelings ratcheted up to all new heights. The way she looked at him, her eyes smoldering with a barely restrained need, told Gunnar she felt the same. She brushed his hand as she took the spot to his right, and a jolting current passed between them. The bolt jumped around the table, lighting up Mimi’s eyes before bounding to Bridget. The holes in their foreheads flashed with light, pink from Ray, gold out of Mimi, and a deep purple from Bridget.
“Well,” Ray said, her voice low and smoky, “that was something. Is this your new model train set, Gun?”
“Something like that,” Gunnar said with a chuckle. “It feels like it belongs to me, somehow.”
Gunnar couldn’t shake the sense of ownership that came over him when he looked at the hologram. Odin had told him about it in his dream. Something about making a base, holding down a fort. Protecting the innangard from the utangard.
“This is insane,” Mimi said, tugging at the hem of her T-shirt. “I feel it, too. This is your place, Gun. This is the lodge.”
The bodyguard concentrated on the model until it shifted, then rotated slightly, and three glowing rings appeared above and to the right of the model’s edge. The first ring held the three interlocking triangles, the center ring showed a stylized spear, and the final ring surrounded a smaller, more ornate ring at its heart. He recognized that these represented the three relics Odin had told him to find: the Valknut, Gungnir, and Draupnir.
Gunnar touched the Valknut, unleashing a rippling wave of energy through the room. A trio of spokes speared away from that first ring and sprouted three additional circles. Each of those held fine lines of script, which Gunnar could read despite their tiny size.
“The Hall of Heroes,” Ray read, as if on cue, “a sanctuary for the forces of Order.”
“The Hall of Feasting,” Mimi continued, reading from the second ring, “to supply those who would stand against Ymir’s fell children.”
“The Hall of the Forge,” Bridget intoned, in a voice as clear and pure as a crystal bell, “to fashion arms and armor for Midgard’s new heroes.”
Something had changed in each of the women as they spoke. Their eyes burned with an unearthly light, and their voices had flowed and merged together, like the burbling convergence of three mountain streams into a single, powerful river. Gunnar felt the bond between them
snap into place, and then an even more powerful connection leapt from each point of their triangle back to him. It was breathtaking and awe-inspiring.
“I think we’ve all gone nuts,” Mimi said, “but it looks like we’re saving Vegas. When do we go after Corso?”
Chapter 7
BOGDAN DEMEZEROV HAD lived a charmed life. He grew up in a wealthy family, his every need cared for, his every whim catered to. He breezed through college thanks to timely donations from his parents to the school’s administration and burst onto the internet entrepreneur scene by transforming tens of millions of his family’s dollars into hundreds of thousands of dollars in his bank account. Apparently, ultraluxe beauty accessories for hairless dogs was not a thriving market. With the sting of that failure driving him out of the business world, Bogdan hauled ass to Vegas and dumped most of his dwindling funds into becoming the greatest Texas hold’em player of all time.
His brief gambling career had failed even more spectacularly than the internet venture. He’d had to take out loans to cover his losses. First from the banks, then the casinos, and when those wells ran dry, he dug deeper to find creditors who operated on the shady side of the law. That had led Bogdan to Cal Corso’s operation. The poor little rich boy had borrowed a couple million from the gang lord.
And promptly lost every penny at the tables.
Bogdan had spent the next several weeks dodging his loan shark and scrambling to raise another stake. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone left in his life that he hadn’t burned. In less than eight hours, he’d be kicked out of the hotel and have to explain to his loan shark why he couldn’t pay up.
The rich kid’s sad story of a life would end in a gutter.
Then, to add insult to injury, he’d gotten sick. His nose wouldn’t stop running. A fever chewed its way into his brain and made a nest there, shredding his thoughts with burning claws. He’d curled up in the bathtub and turned the shower on full blast in a vain attempt to force his temperature down with cold water.
Then the screaming had started. Frantic cries for help clawed their way into his suite, followed by animalistic bellows and the shrieks of the mortally wounded. Bogdan had dragged his sorry ass to the window and watched as Vegas burned.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” the burning woman asked as she appeared from the shadows, her reflection smirking at Bogdan in the mirror.
Smoke swirled around her long, lean frame, but it couldn’t hide the fiery fissures that split her skin or her terrifying, alien beauty. A rack of antlers rose from her brow to gouge furrows in the ceiling, and her feet left charred outlines on the plush carpeting.
“Who the fuck are you?” Bogdan whirled to face her, sure she’d vanish, just one more hallucination from the depths of his fever-addled brain.
“Hyrrokkin,” she answered, licking her lips as if to savor every syllable.
She didn’t stop until she was nearly on top of Bogdan. Her smoky aura enveloped him; the burning tips of her breasts scorched his chest. Her left hand fell on his shoulder and held him fast, while her right traced a line down the center of his naked chest. She cupped his balls, rolling them on her palm, the heat of her skin and her terrifying presence drawing beads of sweat from Bogdan’s body.
“What do you want?” he asked, his voice shaking. His mind insisted she couldn’t be real even as his prick stiffened and jerked to attention.
“You,” she said with a leering smile.
She lowered her face, sniffing at him, her antlers scraping along the glass of the window behind him with an ear-piercing screech. Her tongue lashed out, licking the sweat from his forehead and eyelids. Smoke rolled out from between her teeth to envelop him. She shifted her hand, long, hot fingers curling around his member, squeezing until his breath caught in his throat.
Bogdan shuddered. He was afraid to move, afraid to even breathe. He wanted her to leave. But he also wanted her, no matter how much it would cost him.
“That’s my good boy,” Hyrrokkin purred, her smoky breath choking Bogdan. “You want to bury that little cock in me. You want to suckle the sweet milk of chaos. You can. But you have to do something for me first.”
She seized Bogdan’s jaw and pulled him to her breast, finger and thumb digging into his cheeks, forcing his mouth open. Her nipple, hot as fresh coffee, grazed his lips.
“Be mine, Bogdan,” she moaned. “Give up your useless, pathetic life. Cast off this weak little boy’s form and become a man. Let me change you, Bogdan. Let me make you a monster.”
A drop of something salty and sweet splashed onto Bogdan’s tongue, and he saw two paths open before him. One was hard and long, a difficult journey that could end in pain and death at any time. He saw himself shivering on that road, pink and naked, afraid of the beasts that howled in the shadows.
In the other, though, he was the thing in the darkness. He saw the world cast in the warm red glow of raging fires and knew that he had been the one to set it alight. On that road, Bogdan was no longer afraid.
And that was more than enough for him.
“Yes,” he pleaded, his lips closing around the hot nub of Hyrrokkin’s flesh. He drank from her, sucking down a flood of scorching milk, heedless of the blisters it raised on his tongue, the channels of fire it carved down his throat.
“That’s right, little monster,” Hyrrokkin moaned. She pushed Bogdan down and crouched over him, the slick sleeve of her sex engulfing his dick, squeezing around him like an iron vise. Her hand held his head to her chest, spurting the milk of chaos into his mouth in a burning flood.
The burning woman pounded against Bogdan, her hips breaking his bones, the nails of her free hand tearing his flesh. She molded him in a cauldron of lust and hatred, filled him from one end and drained him from the other. She cursed and cajoled him, terrified and enchanted him. Bogdan was sure he died a dozen times, only to emerge from the fires of Hyrrokkin’s lust stronger and angrier.
Finally, she stood, sizzling milk leaking from her tits, Bogdan’s juices leaking down her thighs in sticky streams. “Sleep, little monster,” she whispered as she stood. “But not too long. You have work to do.”
As she walked away, Bogdan tried to crawl after her. But his unfamiliar new body wouldn’t listen to his mind’s commands. “Wait,” he croaked. “What do I do now?”
Hyrrokkin didn’t even look over her shoulder. “Be a monster, Bogie. Prove yourself to me. Gather the others like you, my jötnar. Take the city for me.”
She vanished, leaving behind a thick, swirling cloud of wood smoke. Bogie wept for her to return until sleep claimed him.
He woke a few hours later to the smell of smoke and the sound of screams. Once that would have terrified him.
But, for the first time in his life, Bogie found he wasn’t afraid. He left the hotel and walked into the madness, reveling in the chaos that swirled around him. The streets were filled with bloody fights that left corpses piled in the gutters.
He embraced the insanity. He gave in to every base impulse and desire, tore through the weaklings who dared to cross his path. Bogie watched in awe as the bodies of the dead split open like rotting fruit. Things emerged from the dead, beasts covered in gore and slime, horns and claws bursting from their blue flesh.
Once Bogie would have run shrieking in terror from those monsters. But he didn’t have any room for fear in his heart. Not anymore.
Because Hyrrokkin had changed him. He was one of the monsters.
And he knew what he had to do.
The rest of the night passed in a flurry of fighting, fucking, and feasting. He’d commanded respect from the monsters who’d emerged from the dead and soon had himself a gang of others just like him. By dawn, Bogie and his bloodthirsty buddies had claimed a chunk of the city as his fiefdom. He was no longer Bogdan Demezerov, failed entrepreneur, failed gambler, and disappointment to his overbearing parents.
He’d become Bogie, the bloodthirsty terror of Fremont Street. His little gang of a dozen other jötnar had seized control of the Go
lden Nugget. His minions had raided the nearest dispensary for some party favors, a couple of smoking-hot jötnar women had fallen under his protection, and life was looking up.
The jötunn warlord stood just outside the main entrance to the Golden Nugget and surveyed his new empire. He imagined the defenses he’d put in place to block the roads and the guard towers his new army would occupy to protect his headquarters. He was the King of Fremont Street.
“We oughta put some porn up there,” Bogie’s lieutenant, Raj, a hulking freak with a barbed tail and a single lopsided horn, gestured at the projection screen that ran down the center of Fremont Street. “You know, set the mood.”
While enormous fuck flicks would send a message, Bogie wasn’t sure it was the right one for his territory. He was about more than sex, drugs, and whatever passed for rock-and-roll these days. He had bigger dreams. Hyrrokkin had given him a mission. He wouldn’t fail her.
“Nah,” Bogie said. “That’ll just attract the riffraff. The only people we want in our territory are our soldiers, our bitches, and our slaves. Anyone else who pokes their nose in gets it shot off, clear?”
“Yeah, sure, boss,” Raj said with only a slight grumble. The oversized freak slung the shotgun they’d liberated from the EZ Pawn that morning over his shoulder. “You think we’ll find any more slaves?”
Bogie didn’t have an answer for that. Most of the regular humans he’d seen since the sun came up were already corpses. They just weren’t cut out for this brave new world.
On the third hand, Bogie might need some humans down the road. His gang was made up entirely of jötnar who claimed to have crawled through corpsegates opened by Hyrrokkin between Jotunheim and Earth. Or Midgard, as the monsters liked to call it. That operation had taken their mistress a very, very long time to engineer. According to Raj, the odds of getting any reinforcements was highly unlikely.
