by Nick Harrow
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 held her ground, though, and looked out over the fence. Monsters had gathered out there, curious and fearful. They stared at Hilda’s raised fist, radiating with the raw power of the relic she’d stolen and the hamingja of the Valkyrie she’d slain.
“That’s right,” she whispered. “Bow down. Your queen has arrived.”
Chapter 16
IT TOOK THEM AN HOUR to make their way to the top of the hotel after they’d crossed the lobby. The casino’s slot machines had changed into strange altars strewn with wooden tokens painted gold. The elevators were crypts stuffed with the dead. Seeing those corpses, dressed in modern clothing, their faces twisted into masks of horror or rage, crammed into those twisted cells left Gunnar dizzy and out of sorts for minutes after. What worried him wasn’t the changes he saw. What tugged at his nerves was the certainty that he remembered all of this.
And he had no idea how he could remember things he’d never seen before.
The völva were quiet as they climbed one flight of stairs after another. Bodies—mostly humans, though a few jötnar, too—gathered flies on several landings. Gunnar hated the carnage, and his rage built with every floor he ascended. Mimi was right. The jötnar had to die. All of them. From the lowliest footsoldier up to Hyrrokkin.
The group finally navigated their way to the penthouse villas perched on the casino’s roof. While much of the building had changed and warped, the upper floors seemed mostly untouched by the transformation.
Fortunately, the finest of MGM’s rooms weren’t occupied when all the badness went down. They looked exactly as they had when the maids had last cleaned them. Crisp white sheets covered firm mattresses, bowls of mostly fresh fruit waited on counters. They even had power in the villa Gunnar chose, which made the bodyguard wonder if there were generators somewhere nearby, still churning away to provide electricity for guests who would never come.
“I hope they have hot water,” Mimi said. “And one of those fancy cloud showers with mood lighting and aromatherapy. I need to get the stink of that stairwell out of my nose.”
“Let’s find out,” Bridget said. The völva oohed and aahed over the fancy furniture and kicked off their shoes to walk barefoot on the opulent carpet.
Gunnar headed for the glass doors across the living room from the rest of the villa. There was a patio out there, complete with a fire pit, some small trees for privacy, and a powerful telescope for looking down on the little people. It took him a few minutes to get the telescope lined up properly, but once he did Gunnar enjoyed a perfect view of the Luxor’s main entrance.
And all the jötnar cavorting there.
Not even the telescope allowed Gunnar to count the number of blue-skinned freaks on the steps leading into the casino. It had to be close to a hundred, with no telling how many more were inside.
He and the völva would have to be very stealthy, very lucky, and very well-armed to have any chance of pulling this mission off. Gunnar watched his enemies, the rage growing with every passing minute. He searched for entrances that would let them slip past the monsters until his eye ached from the strain. He hadn’t found anything when Ray called to him from the doorway.
“Hey,” she said. “Come here for a second. Mimi wants to talk to you.”
GUNNAR’S SHOULDERS and neck were tight from bei
ng hunched over the telescope. He welcomed Ray’s distraction. Even if “she wants to talk to you” was a sentence that rarely ended up being a good thing in his experience.
“Is she okay?” he asked.
“I think so,” Ray said. “We were talking about witchy stuff, and she told Bridget to get out and sent me to find you.”
Gunnar didn’t like the sound of that. “What am I supposed to do for her?”
Ray grabbed his hand and pulled him through the enormous suite. “Talk to her. She needs you.”
They stopped at the hallway that led to the bedrooms, where Bridget was waiting. The two völva gave him quick kisses on the cheek, then walked away. Gunnar straightened up and rapped on the door. This felt so weird, and he was more nervous than he wanted to admit. Mimi didn’t have problems. That wasn’t her thing.
So what was this?
“Hey,” the bodyguard said, “can I come in?”
After a moment’s pause, he heard the door’s lock click, and it swung open. Mimi, looking distinctly uncomfortable in the fur vest and skirt that had replaced her concert T-shirt and jeans ensemble, looked up at him. “Okay.”
She stepped back to let Gunnar into the room, then closed the door behind him. The bodyguard thought about sitting on the edge of the bed but worried Mimi would take it wrong. Instead, he pulled a plush chair away from the corner and plopped down in it. The frame creaked under his weight. “What’s going on?”
Mimi fidgeted, her back to the door. Her hair was still damp from the shower, and her furs clung to her body in ways that made Gunnar want to sweep her into his arms. She smelled clean and fresh, like a spring morning after a gentle rain.
But there was something in her eyes that was not gentle at all. A hunger that called to Gunnar on a deep, primal level.
“Mimi—” he started.
“Don’t talk,” she whispered.
The völva stepped forward and put a hand on Gunnar’s chest. She advanced another step, pushing him back into the chair, and clambered into Gunnar’s lap.
She was shaking like a leaf when she kissed him.
Her lips were warm and soft. The curly coils of Mimi’s hair brushed across his cheeks. Her fingers tangled in Gunnar’s beard, which had grown like weeds since the Valknut had taken up residence in his head. Her gentleness gave way to a greater urgency as the kiss went on, and Mimi whimpered with every breath. She slipped her legs through the chair’s arms to straddle Gunnar, pressing her body tight against his.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
Because the last time they’d done anything like this was the night Gunnar had shown up on Mimi’s doorstep and told her about his falling out with Corso. They’d gotten good and wasted on whiskey and weed, fucked until morning, and Mimi had told him it wouldn’t happen again until Hell had frozen over.
“Shh,” she replied, her breath hot against his lips. “Just be with me.”
Apparently, the cold weather had finally hit the nether realms.
Gunnar’s tongue chased Mimi’s between her lips, then pulled back so she could catch her breath. When her hands pressed against the ridged muscles of his stomach through his shirt, he cupped her ass in one hand. Her hips ground down on him, and he raised his own to meet her.
Mimi cursed and ripped one arm free of her vest, revealing her left breast, and then her right. She took Gunnar’s hand and pulled it up to cup her. “Harder,” she urged him.
Gunnar squeezed Mimi’s firm flesh and kneaded the stiff bud between his index and middle finger. He worried he’d hurt her with any more pressure until she pinched her other nipple and pulled it taut, squeezing it until a whimpering gasp tore loose from her throat.
“Make me feel it,” she panted through clenched teeth. “You won’t hurt me.”
She ground against him, urging Gunnar to answer her need. He pinched her between his fingers, pulling the stiff nub until her back arched and her jaw hung slack. Damp warmth from her crotch soaked his pants as the feverish motion of her hips excited them both. She tore her belt loose, shedding the fur skirt and revealing herself to Gunnar’s touch.
“Bite me,” she urged him, tilting her head to the side to reveal the smooth expanse of her neck. “Fucking eat me alive, Gunnar. Do it.”
She pressed her throat to his mouth, a low growl rumbling against his mouth. Gunnar sucked at her neck until she moaned and writhed in his lap. The taste of her flesh and sweat ignited something primal between them. Gunnar teased her with the edges of his teeth, just grazing her skin. Mimi tore his hand away from her breast and shoved it between her legs, pressing the length of his middle finger against the slit of her sex.
“Harder,” she groaned.
Gunnar increased the pressure on her throat, bit by bit. He teased her with his finger, gliding up and down, the tip circling her opening before rising back up to caress her sensitive bud. She trembled against him, her pulse throbbing against his tongue as his teeth tightened on her skin.
“Don’t stop,” Mimi demanded, her voice shaking with need. “Don’t you dare stop.”
Gunnar laughed against her throat as she wrapped her arms around his head. Her fingers pulled his hair, harder and harder, urging him to push her over the edge. His hand and mouth worked in unison to keep her right there, so close to release without giving her what she needed. Then he pulled his mouth away from her with a wet pop and looked into her wild eyes.
“Don’t,” she started.
“Tell me what you want,” Gunnar demanded.
His finger slipped lower, gently probing before pulling back.
“That,” she pleaded. “God, you’re killing me.”
“Say it,” Gunnar demanded again.
Mimi reached between them and pulled at the drawstrings on his pants. She struggled with the knots and glared at Gunnar like he’d just taken away her most prized possession. “This.” Her fingers closed around his throbbing cock through his pants, squeezing it as hard as she could. “I want you to fuck me until I can’t think.”
Gunnar dropped his hands to Mimi’s hips and lifted her off his lap with ease. He turned her away from him and lowered her, slowly, until her dripping cleft slipped and slid across the swollen red head of his prick.
She grabbed him with both hands, guiding him into her.
Gunnar held her, just like that, poised at the trembling edge, his need burning bright as a star. And then he pulled her down onto him and thrust up at the same time, all control lost to the velvet grip of her sex clenched around him.
Mimi threw her head back onto his shoulder and clutched Gunnar’s forearms so hard her nails dug angry red dimples into his skin.
There was no restraint, nothing held back. Mimi bucked on Gunnar. He pinched her breast with one hand and feverishly stroked the swollen pearl of her clit with the other. Their bodies slapped against one another, again and again, a rhythm as wild and unstoppable as the waves slamming onto a beach. She bit Gunnar’s earlobe and pulled his hair, an endless moan pouring from her throat. She licked her lips and drove herself onto Gunnar with bruising force, meeting his every thrust with a desperate movement, eager to feel all of him.
The bodyguard stood up, holding Mimi close to him with one hand, while sweeping the lamp and phone off the desk next to them. The light shattered, and the phone’s plastic exploded against the wall. He lowered Mimi onto the table, her back against the wall, and drove himself into her with slow, steady strokes. The desk’s wooden legs creaked; the Venetian plaster cracked, and chunks of it sloughed off the wall and crashed to the floor.
Mimi laughed, her voice wild, as the table’s back legs finally buckled and the furniture fell apart. Gunnar pulled her tight and spun her around to the bed. She wrapped her legs around his hips, digging her heels in and pulling him down onto the sheets on top of her.
“There,” she moaned as Gunnar sank into her.
She pulled his hair and groaned into his shoulder, biting him, matching his thrusts with raised hips to take all of him. Her voice rose
, the hoarse gasps becoming raw shouts. Mimi’s fingers dug into the pristine sheets, wrenching them around her fists as she writhed beneath Gunnar. The fabric tore under her nails, and she laughed again, her wild abandon driving him insane with lust.
The headboard smashed into the wall again and again, shaking the paintings on either side of the frame loose from their nails. The heavy frames crashed down onto the side tables, glass cracking, wood splintering.
Their ragged cries echoed from the walls, so loud he half expected Bridget and Ray to bang on the door to make sure they weren’t killing each other. The world shrank around them, and their awareness narrowed to slipping flesh and a building ecstasy they chased with no regard for anything else.
The bed was no match for their passion. Its frame crashed to the floor, lopsided, two legs broken and the other two cracked. They reveled in the destruction, Mimi shredding the sheet with her nails, ripping strips of it free with every groan that tore loose from her bruised lips. Gold light exploded from Mimi’s forehead, blinding Gunnar for a moment with its intensity.
Their pace quickened, and the cycle built to a frenzy. She grabbed Gunnar’s hand and guided him to the finish line, her wet fingers entwining with his, her moans louder and louder, urging him to join her. Every muscle in her body stiffened, squeezing his fingers.
He erupted inside the völva, a torrent of sensation ripping his breath away with every thrust. She reached the heights again, quivering under him until they were both spent and limp on the ruined bed, their hearts pounding in a synchronized rhythm.
When they finally came back to Earth, Mimi pushed against Gunnar with one hand. “Hey, that was great,” she whispered dreamily.
“You’re pretty great, too,” he said, tickling her nose with his beard.
“But if you don’t get off me, I will suffocate,” she giggled.
Gunnar grabbed hold of her and rolled onto his back with her astride him. “Better?”
