Viking Warrior Rising

by Asa Maria Bradley

  Rubbing the back of his neck, he steered his mind to yet another problem. Someone had given information to their enemies. Someone who lived in this house. Leif still couldn’t believe one of his warriors had betrayed him. They were handpicked by Odin and Freya. A traitor among them went against every law of the universe. As he stepped out of the office to get a drink from the kitchen, the massive front doors slammed open and his warriors burst into the entryway. Harald led the way for Sten and Ulf carrying Per between them, his body battered and bruised. Torvald limped behind them, holding his shoulder. Astrid brought up the rear, loaded down with bags of guns and other weapons.

  Carrying her medical bag, Irja came running from the passage that led to the lab. She cradled Per’s head in her hands. The young Viking gave her a weak smile.

  “Upstairs,” Irja commanded.

  Sten hoisted Per over his shoulder and ascended the stairs, nodding to Leif as he passed.

  Irja examined Torvald. “It’s just a flesh wound,” the older warrior insisted.

  “I’ll tell you what kind of wound it is,” Irja snapped. She prodded his arm. “I want you upstairs too.”

  “What can I do to help?” Astrid asked.

  “Get more sterile pads and bandages,” Irja said over her shoulder as she kept a firm grip on Torvald, almost dragging him up the stairs.

  Harald grinned at Leif before he lowered his head in a more formal bow. “Min kung, the wolverines didn’t know what hit them. Astrid disposed of the only two guards with her throwing blades.”

  “Was Per injected with anything?”

  “Irja will know better. But he’s been worked over good. I’d bet at least a few broken ribs and a bruised jaw.”

  Leif allowed himself a slight smile. “Probably from mouthing off too much.”

  Harald’s grin spread. “Four wolverines guarded the stash of weapons. We had a bit of trouble with those fellows. One of their bullets grazed Torvald, but that was our only injury.” He wiped his forehead, tracing grime and dirt across the skin. “Also, we were able to bring back a sample of the wolverine blood for Irja.”

  Leif sent a silent thank-you to Freya for the success of the mission. Maybe this would rein in Loki for a while. He nodded to his marshal. “Great job as always. Please email me an official report.”

  Harald’s grin crumbled. “Yes, min kung.” He ambled down the hall to the computer room and the hated administrative work.

  Leif went to Per’s bedroom and looked down on the Viking as he slumbered. Irja washed his injuries. “I’ve given him a mild sedative. All we can do now is wait,” she said and left the room with her head bowed.

  Leif nodded, hating how defeated the medical officer looked.

  Per’s bruises and cuts showed how the wolverines had used him as a punching bag, but at least they hadn’t drugged him. Leif shuddered as he remembered his own body purging the poison.

  The door opened and Harald entered the room. “My king, Per is going to be fine. He’ll have a few battle scars, making him even more popular with the girls.”

  Leif ignored the attempt at cheering him up. “How can I protect my people if one of them is a traitor?”

  Harald sobered. “We will find who is to blame for this and for the attack on you. And he or she will be punished.”

  They stood in silence for a while.

  “My king,” Harald said, “we should also discuss…that is, I wonder if we might talk about—”

  “Naya,” Leif interrupted.

  Harald exhaled a long breath. “Yes, your själsfrände. What are your plans?”

  “I have none.”

  His friend frowned. “Have you explained the situation to her?”

  Leif laughed bitterly. “Not exactly. I managed to seduce her, but then she took off like a spooked horse.”

  Harald scratched his beard. “She’s not like other humans. Maybe that would make it easier for her to understand.”

  “Or harder.”

  The ceiling was suddenly of great interest to his stallare. “So you…er…bedded her?”

  “No,” Leif ground out.

  Harald muttered something and continued to study the ceiling. “Strange. You’ve always had great success with human women.”

  Leif leveled a look at his stallare, but Harald still watched the ceiling and the silence stretched between them again.

  This time Leif broke it. “Let’s work on things we have a chance of changing. A woman’s mind not being one of them. How do we find our traitor?”

  “I’ll gather everyone in your office and we’ll share what we know.”

  “Is that wise? If there is a traitor, he or she will be in the room.”

  “This way we can watch everybody’s reaction.”

  Leif gave his stallare a curt nod.

  Harald left.

  After one more long look at Per and his injuries, Leif did the same. The gods would do what the gods would do. Worrying about what would happen didn’t change this.

  Frustrated, Leif shook his head. He wanted action, preferably in the form of a good fight.

  Or a good fuck.

  * * *

  Naya surveyed her client’s office as she waited for him to arrive. Luke Holden had taste.

  Rich burgundy drapes covered the windows and matched the plush sofas. A massive dark cherry desk sat in one corner, so well polished she could see her reflection in its surface. A low bass vibrated through the floor from the dance club below. She checked her cell phone clock. Holden had asked for a late evening meeting, but was fifteen minutes late. She sighed.

  He was the client, and therefore got some leeway, but she still didn’t like her time being wasted.

  And she didn’t like having time to think about what had happened with Leif in his office. Instead of pulling answers out of the Viking king, he’d seduced her and now her mind buzzed with even more questions. About the wolverines, about her attraction to Leif.

  She pulled her laptop from her bag and plugged in the USB flash drive she’d packed full of data from the Vikings’ computer. She didn’t for a minute believe Leif’s story about being the king of some kind of sovereign nation. That was just nuts. She knew he was holding out on her, but she had her own important secret to guard.

  She scanned the data scrolling on her screen. While in the mansion’s computer room, she’d not only pinpointed Per’s location, she’d also copied a crap-load of files and mirrored the hard drive to an untraceable server. She was now able to read all computer traffic. So far, she’d found out they were investigating her. They were also running a license plate number. She made a note of finding out who the owner was.

  Holden stepped through the door. “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.”

  Naya closed her laptop and pulled out the memory stick. “No problem at all,” she said while slipping the small device into her pocket. She’d stopped by her apartment to get dressed for the meeting. Her black jeans, black silk shirt, and black ankle boots had looked professional when she headed to Desire, but compared to Holden, she felt shoddy.

  A charcoal suit jacket covered broad shoulders. The garment looked expensive and obviously tailor-made. The color highlighted Holden’s silver-blond hair and gunmetal eyes. He moved with catlike grace. Naya swallowed. His body language screamed predator. The man was over six feet, but still a little shorter than Leif.

  Why she had to make that observation, she didn’t know. She clamped down on any more thoughts of the Viking. She needed to focus on business.

  Holden took a seat behind his desk.

  Naya heard the door click closed and the lock turn. She turned.

  An African American man, skin so dark it had a blue tint, blocked the exit. He assumed the standard bodyguard pose. Wide stance of the legs, arms in front of his body, one hand gripping the other wrist, eyes straight ahead. Not looking at anything, but seeing everything.

  She recognized him as the same man that had guarded the door last time. “Hello, Rex,” she said and hid a
chuckle when she saw the black man’s eyebrows rise. She turned back around.

  Holden watched her with hooded eyes. “You remember my bodyguard’s name?”

  “You hired me to look over your security. It’s my job to know your team.”

  Something like respect flickered in his eyes.

  She pulled a binder from her bag. “Here are the schematics and plans for the club’s proposed security upgrade. I also recommend that you hire me, or someone like me, to integrate your home into the plan.”

  “Why do you think I need extensive security at my house?”

  “Anybody who wants to protect his property to the extent that you do has enemies. They don’t always attack during business hours.”

  Holden leaned back, placing one ankle over the other knee, and smoothed out an invisible wrinkle on his pant leg. His black Italian loafers gleamed. “And you want me to name them so you can safeguard me.”

  “Not at all. I don’t need to know who they are. My job is to design a system that protects you from all your enemies.” She flashed a smile. “Old and new.”

  Holden watched her for a moment. “I see.” He reached for the binder and then leaned back again, turning the pages. “You could have couriered these plans over.”

  “You would have had to contact me with questions.”

  “Who else is on my team, Ms. Driscoll?”

  Naya had given him the name on her driver’s license. She recited the names of his other three bodyguards and considered mentioning the Glock he carried in a side holster under that impeccable suit, but refrained. Sometimes clients spooked when they found out exactly how much Naya learned about them.

  “Why are your cameras three times as expensive as my other quotes?”

  It didn’t worry her that he had contacted other consultants. She was the best, and he could afford to pay for quality.

  “The cameras I suggest have no indicator diodes and take high-resolution images under extremely low light conditions,” she answered.

  “They will be almost invisible,” Holden said.

  She nodded. “If you want to cut corners, you can always switch to regular cameras in the public areas.”

  “But you don’t recommend that.”

  “I don’t,” she confirmed. “In my experience, the people you want filmed know how to avoid cameras.”

  “Impressive.” Holden threw the binder on the desk. “Draw up plans for my house as well. When would you like to see it?”

  “Email me the blueprints and we’ll only have to meet there once, maybe twice, before my final estimate.”

  She stood.

  Holden did as well. He reached out his hand. “Good to do business with you, Ms. Driscoll.”

  She shook his hand and walked toward the door. Rex slid out of her way. She grinned at him and was rewarded by a quick wink as he held the door open.

  Naya took a taxi to the storefront she rented under another assumed name. She unlocked the door to the fake comic shop that never opened and walked through the dusty room until she reached the back. Walking down a set of stairs, she continued through an enormous basement, tunneling under three city blocks. At the end, she popped out in an apartment building.

  She slipped out the back of the building and walked four more blocks, then through an alley and up a pair of back stairs. Once inside her apartment, she flipped all the locks and took a look at the footage her own security cameras had recorded while she was gone. There was nothing to see but the empty hallway outside her door.

  Satisfied, she went into her bedroom and changed into yoga pants and a tank top. Irja had given her some tablets to counteract any reoccurrence of fever spikes. Like a malaria virus, the poison could lay dormant then attack again. Naya hoped it wouldn’t. Sick didn’t fit in with her lifestyle. Just thinking of how weak she’d been scared her.

  She’d caught a ride with Irja, who had pressed hard for Naya to stay at the mansion. Or, at least tell Leif she was leaving. Technically, she could have worked on Holden’s plans in the mansion, but she’d had to get out of there. Leif made her forget herself, and intimacy, physical or otherwise, was not something she could afford. She always disappointed people when they wanted to get closer.

  Trust was the one thing Naya couldn’t afford. It gave people too much power, and the Viking king already proved too strong of a lure.

  When she first broke out of the lab, she’d worried about her brother. Alone and anxious, she’d met Zack, a friend of a client. A few years older than her, successful and confident, he’d seduced her, and she’d been inexperienced enough to think sex meant love and that she could trust him.

  One night, she forgot to be careful and had lifted his full entertainment system with an eighty-inch screen on top, one-handed, because she needed the other hand to fish out an earring. Zack had freaked. She didn’t want to think about the ugly things he’d said.

  Leif knew about her strength, but when he found out about her cognitive abilities, he’d also label her a freak.

  Better to go back to quick and anonymous hookups.

  Never mind that her encounter with the blond Viking had blown the lid off anything she’d experienced before. Her nipples tingled and a heaviness settled at the junction of her legs. She quickly ordered her hormones to stand down—not that they listened.

  She sank cross-legged into the computer chair. She searched through the files she’d copied from the Vikings again and entered the license plate into her own search. Columns of numbers scrolled down the screen. After ten minutes and still no match, she yawned and stretched.

  A muffled sound from the bedroom had her hyper alert. She looked for her gun and swore quietly when she realized she’d left it in her bedroom.

  The hardwood floor felt cool against her feet as she crept to the bedroom. She stopped abruptly, one foot inside the doorway, and stared at the gun barrel aimed straight at her.

  “Ms. Brisbane, I was starting to wonder if you would ever grace me with your presence.” The handler’s smile belied the hard glint in his eyes. “I figured you heard me breaking the window lock awhile ago.” Dark purple bruises covered the skin just below his eyes and bled down over his nose where the color ended under a butterfly bandage.

  Her elbow had done some serious damage to his face.

  While that pleased her, she berated herself for being careless and not resetting the alarm and leaving her weapon in the bedroom. She stared at the man seated on her bed.

  “No witty comeback for me today? I’m disappointed,” he said.

  Naya cocked her head. “Nice nose job.”

  His eyes narrowed and he stood. “The pain you caused is nothing compared to what will happen to you.”

  She needed to think. Even when she wasn’t purging poison from her body, her reaction times were slower than a bullet. “I bet you say that to all the girls.” She flipped her hair back and gave him a cocky grin.

  His jaw clenched. “We don’t have time for games, Ms. Brisbane. It is in your best interest to cooperate.” He took a step forward.

  Forget cooperation. She was going to make it as hard as possible for him to remove her from the apartment. She needed to disarm him first, and then she’d elbow him in the face again. “What is it you want?”

  “What we’ve always wanted, you and your brother to return to the lab.”

  She laughed bitterly. “That’s never going to happen.”

  The handler smiled coldly. “If I were you, I’d listen to the alternatives. How old are you now?”

  “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  He kept smiling.

  She cursed inwardly and forced her heart rate to return to normal.

  “According to our records, you’ll be twenty-three in ten months.”

  “Then why the fuck did you ask?”

  He tsked. “Your tendency of cursing when upset is most unbecoming.” He sat down again.

  She made a quick move to the right, but he immediately adjusted his aim.
>
  “I’d be very happy to shoot you, Ms. Brisbane. My orders are only to bring you back alive.” His eyes roamed from her feet up her body. “And my tastes are eclectic; they don’t require your consciousness.”

  She struggled not to shudder. “Your threats are disgusting and unoriginal.”

  He laughed again. “I like your spirit. It will be a pleasure to break it.” He jerked the gun in the direction of the armchair by her window. “Have a seat, please.”

  Gritting her teeth, she sidled over to the chair and sat down.

  “Good girl. As I was saying, you are getting close to your twenty-third birthday. The day when all hell breaks loose in your delectable little body.”

  “What are you talking about?” She forced herself not to include any curse words. It was hard.

  “The chemicals in your bloodstream are tiny ticking time bombs.” He wagged his finger back and forth. “Tick, tock, tick, tock.”

  She wanted to rip that finger off and shove it up his broken nose. “And why would this make me want to go with you?”

  “We have the antidote that will shut off the clock. Without it, you’ll turn into a raging monster in just about ten months.”

  “And why should I believe you?” She studied her nails. “You could be making up this entire thing.”

  “You can’t really afford not to. Without the antidote, you’ll most likely go on a murdering spree before the fever will literally cook you from the inside out.”

  “Injecting your designer soldiers with something deadly is counterproductive.”

  He looked away and brushed some invisible lint off his pants. “Let’s just call it a design flaw in your generation.” He looked at her. “The new soldiers do not have these…side effects.”