by P. W. Child
As streaks of lightning spelled the name of God in the dark grey heavens, Erika roared in rage. By the thundering song of Thor, she readied her runic weapons to rip the heart from the red-maned daughter of Ragnarök…and bring the Order to its knees.
Chapter 31
From the comfort of his home, he traveled across Spain and through France to reach Germany. Carlos Oliveira had contacted his friend and colleague of old, Miro Cruz, asking to accompany him. They would meet in Frankfurt, and from there they would take a train to Bavaria, where they were told The Brotherhood was headed. Another bit of intelligence reached Carlos that morning as he waited for his friend – Lita Røderic’s stronghold in the Hebrides was under attack by the very same people he thought he was pursuing
“God, I hope I did not travel all this way for nothing. If I find out that I took this trip on a wild goose chase, Oliver, I will have your fucking head,” the old, Portuguese snarled into the phone. He coughed from the exertion, his heart flaring a bit too much at the disappointing news. From the distance, he recognized the more robust physique of his associate appear as he sauntered along the edge of the platform.
“I shall be waiting for your information. But you have no more than three hours to get back to me. I am almost 85 years old. I certainly do not have the luxury of wasting precious time on shit like this! Now, get the intelligence I want,” he scowled and hung up the call. He chewed his lips in vexation and waited for Miro to join him on the bench of the platform where they would catch the train together.
“Wife?” his friend asked, groaning under the strain of seating his old bones.
“Oliver. My informant on The Brotherhood in Edinburgh. You know, he had always been quite accurate, but this sounds like a huge mess to me. He says that the Templars are currently wiping the floors of Lita’s den on Loch nan Cinneachan with her staff , but here we are, on his tell that they were on their way to Bavaria,” he complained.
Miro took it all in, finding it all too strange at they would operate in two different places instead of employing their German faction to do the dirty work here. He nodded to himself as his mind sifted through the probabilities, explanations and reasons for their actions while his perpetually ill friend blew his nose loudly into a blue handkerchief already creased from the trip here. He looked up at the information board which announced in red lettering that their train was still on time. Another 10 minutes.
“Perhaps they divided to get more done sooner,” he finally suggested. “We know that that insufferable little prick who came to accost us in search of the Brotherhood and his madam Führer managed to get their hands on the Vision of Kvasir. I suppose that is what The Brotherhood is searching for in the fortress?”
“How the hell did they get the vial without crippling bloodshed? The Brotherhood would never relinquish that damned relic. We know this, you and I. How many years did we try to locate it and no matter how many of them perished, that artifact stayed elusive to the Order,” Carlos argued, his voice laden with bitterness.
“I don’t know, old friend,” Miro answered, “but if we encounter them in Regensburg, it is best we do not reveal who we are. I think we should befriend their leader and so find out where they are headed, find out where Valhalla is.”
“I agree. I agree,” Carlos nodded with weary eyes staring ahead of him into the crisp morning light. “We have been deceived too many times. This time we only follow them to Valhalla – the real location, not the mound in Iceland they use as decoy.”
“Yes,” Miro concurred. “Especially now that we know Lita Røderic is expendable.”
“She is?” Carlos asked, surprised.
“Yes, the order wants her to lead the way, but she can never be in power. You know that she is in no state to usher in the new world order. Her greed for power makes her dangerous, disloyal and corrupt,” Miro assured Carlos. “She would eradicate us all with the rest of the impure races for her own consolidation.”
“She definitely has the means to do it. Why did they not just refuse her membership?” Carlos sighed. His friend gave him along hard look of utter disbelief. “What?” Carlos shrugged.
“You do know that she is the purest of Aryans, right? You are aware that she was raised by Himmler’s people, aren’t you? My god, Carlos, Lita Røderic is the product of the SS elite, the pet of the Order!” Miro scoffed, alarmed at his colleague’s apparent indifference towards the very real threat that she represented. Carlos sank his face and shoulders at his colleague, evidently ashamed of his ignorant opinion.
“I just hope I can see it in my lifetime,” Miro envisaged with a crack of a smile.
“The calculations all point to the festival of St. Blod, this year. And that happens in a week from now. If the bitch leads us to Valhalla in time, you can wager well we will still see the eclipse in our lifetime. And with her denied power we will establish ourselves in the society as high masters, you and I,” Carlos chimed, rubbing his rheumatoid hands together. “We will live out our days in lavish authority, overseers of nations.” He imagined the glory that would come after the world had been subjugated by their order. It would come to pass with the aid of the superior beings that spawned the Aryan races eons before social integration and insidious religions diluted their supremacy. And the three day eclipse would announce their irrefutable entry into power, but only if they released the ancient evil slumbering inside the Hall of the Slain. Although the Nazis had no idea what the malevolent thing was, it would facilitate the coming of the Wolf Age. During this time of transition, lethal changes in the earth’s atmosphere would be the genesis of their reign. Physics beyond human understanding would be employed to bring into our dimension the old gods, the celestial fathers of the master race. It would all be powered by the inexhaustible and invisible radiation of the black sun resident inside the earth. Said to be the void of creation, from which the earth unfolded itself by the laws of sacred geometry, it would swallow all light and interfere with electro-magnetic frequencies across the planet.
With the new power source, the superior beings would exert their dominion over a world populated only by advanced humans. Efficient and intelligent, they would be liberated of the burden and ineptitude of inferior breeds and genetically deficient species. At the top of this ideology sat the self-proclaimed heiress, bred especially for the New Kingdom of humans that would live by the laws of the Supreme Beings.
“Do you know what I think is subdued inside Valhalla?” Miro asked his friend, who was again wiping his nose vigorously. Carlos just shook his head, again striking his associate as way too apathetic. “Fenrir,” Miro answered.
“The big wolf of Norse Mythology,” his friend affirmed in disbelief bordering on ridicule.
“Yes, of course.”
“Miro, there is no wolf inside the Hall of the Slain. There is no Hall of the Slain, full of fallen warriors and sassy Valkyries serving mead and all that shit. Not in the Valhalla we are looking for anyway.”
Miro’s expression hardened, but he bit his tongue. He was not a fool. It was obvious they were looking for an actual council hall from ancient history and he knew full well that Fenrir would not be an actual wolf, living on the bones of unwary travelers the locals would feed him with. His wrinkled brow sank into an awful scowl, but he remained quiet. Carlos did not even afford him the privilege of a glance and it drove him crazy. His once black eyebrows, now infested with wild and wiry greys, stirred as his beady eyes darted over his associate. Carlos, however maintained his unmoved countenance, ignoring Miro’s projection of disdain founded on the patronization he was dealt.
Before the two old men yielded to argument, the train arrived in the terminal. They were now on their way to the Walhalla Memorial near Regensburg, ready to trail the dangerous knights of the Hammer that swore to keep Valhalla’s location secret in order to avert the end of the world as we know it – to avert the rise of the Black Sun.
Chapter 32
“Sam, I don’t feel so good,” Nina complained as she ran
her dainty fingers through the moist hair line of her forehead and temples. Casually her body fell against him. Her white cotton shirt clung to her back and chest, drenched in perspiration, even in the cold of the season.
Sam tried not to express the true extent of his concern, but when she closed her tired eyes, he glanced up at Gunnar and Eldard who carried equally worried looks. The four of them were aboard the ‘Teufelchen’, a private boat Nina had chartered to take them to the Walhalla via the Danube from Regensburg to the town of Donaustauf, where the majestic marble structure beamed. It sat atop a hill rising from the banks of the Danube, like a silent sentinel of heroes.
Her relationship with Dave Purdue came in handy, even Sam had to admit. The allowance her boyfriend gifted her by means of a platinum credit card in her name, had served as funding for their urgent mission, with added help from another Purdue lackey named Frida McKay who facilitated visas in an astonishingly quick, and less than legal way if the money was right. They had to find the legendary Hall of Odin before the Order of the Black Sun could invade the sacred place and claim the devastating destructive power locked inside for their own nefarious goals.
Of course the Brotherhood had its own affluent benefactors, both private and corporate in Europe, Asia, America, and even the Balkan States. There were numerous companies who did not want to see their cozy world of capitalism and power toppled. Ensuring that Valhalla and its dreadful demon captive remained concealed from both belief and known topography, The Brotherhood was thus funded generously.
This was a small excursion by their standards, just an unassuming trip for four people who had to keep an eye on the enemy. Such an undertaking would hardly constitute a formal expedition request, and so Dr. Gould thought it best to pay for it herself. While they trekked according to Sam’s visions, the rest of their fellowship endeavored to strike at the head of the serpent, hoping to thwart its evil intentions once and for all. They were adamant to destroy the den of the red haired demoness and all within, uprooting her foothold on the quest for Valhalla and for good measure, obliterate her minions. If they could kill her in the process, they would commemorate it with an extravagant celebration.
Nina suddenly jumped up and bolted toward the railing on the starboard side of the vessel, where she leaned over and vomited profusely into the calm glassy water of the river.
“Go away!” she shouted when she heard Sam rush to help her. “I don’t want you to see me puke, for fucks sake!”
Sam stopped in his tracks and looked at the two bikers. They looked serious and quite sick themselves. Their rough ponytails lashed in the considerable breeze that swept over the deck and their eyes were bloodshot and saggy behind their shades, from where they leered at him. Sam gestured questioningly and Gunnar motioned with his head for the journalist to join him on the far side of the deck, one flight up. The stunning scenery around them, the green long grass fields and the soft glimmer of the water in the weak sunlight, could not cheer them up.
In the hard gusts of wind that battered their hair and faces, tugging wildly at their shirts, the two men looked down on the frail frame of the pretty historian.
“Sam, I don’t know what they implanted in Nina’s arm, but it is not a tracker, my friend. It is something…I think…organic?” Gunnar guessed and looked to the handsome dark eyed journalist for an opinion.
“Organic? Why do you say that?”
“Look, we checked, remember? Nothing. Then I had Tomi get me a small metal detector, like a scanner…that didn’t show anything either. All I can think is, by the looks of her, her system has been contaminated,” the Sleipnir leader suggested, fighting off the loose hair strands that slapped against his face as he spoke softly enough for Nina not to hear and loud enough to brave the hissing of the wind.
Sam swallowed hard, “Contaminated by what? A virus?” Then the most dreadful of thoughts slammed into his psyche and his heart ached momentarily at the idea. “Oh god, don’t tell me they infected her with HIV!”
Gunnar did not look as alarmed as Sam figured he ought to have had. He shook his head.
“It would have been a fucking evil thing to do, but I don’t think that is what they did. The symptoms are too severe already, which has me thinking that it must be something very dangerous, something that rips through a human body like it means to, hey,” Gunnar said as he wiped his hair from his face. His eyes looked past Sam into the background. Slapping Sam on the arm, the biker gestured at the wonderful vision ahead. It was the splendid Parthenon-like Walhalla emerging from behind the trees. Bright white and stately it greeted the travelers from the hillside as the ‘Teufelchen’ pulled into the boat landing. From beneath them, they heard Nina’s voice, “Look! We’re here, lads!” Her cry sounded significantly stronger than a few minutes before when she was peaked and weak.
Steps amounting to approximately 360, give or take a few leaps, ushered them up to the leviathan memorial for German-speaking achievers. It was a strange quest for the group, because they were acting on one vision, but still had no idea where to go once they entered the grand halls and corridors of Walhalla’s brilliant architecture. Sam had not had any subsequent dreams and they were still befuddled by the horses he had seen in his last vision. What it meant, not one of them could decipher. Yet.
He was very aware, though, of the compound in his veins. It constantly battered him with migraines and he suffered from nightmares of the sinister variety. Now that he saw the place from his vision in living color, he felt overwhelmed.
Inside the magnificent monument erected by King Ludwig I in 1842, the party of four seekers walked in absolute awe of their surroundings. Sam led them along the oddly familiar path of the vision horses up to where the two split up.
“Jesus, it’s going to take us a week to read through all these stones, man,” Eldard moaned as his eyes scanned the vast layout of the building and its seemingly countless tributes, all lined against the walls and placed ornately on marble and decorative stone features.
“I know, but what choice do we have?” Nina said, dwarfed next to him. “Wait!” she exclaimed suddenly. Motioning to them to stay put, Nina went in search of some tourist information booth where she could acquire a pamphlet or printed guide to all the historical figures honored within the tall walls.
While she was absent, the men could discuss her. Sam nervously chewed his lip as she walked away, “I don’t like not knowing what is ailing her. Couldn’t we get her to a doctor for blood tests?”
“We could, I suppose, but what do you think is going to happen if they find something illegal or suspicious in her platelets?” Gunnar whispered. “They’re fucking Nazis, Sam.”
Eldard nodded in agreement while giving a gawking security guard an intimidating look.
“I get it, Gunnar, but the longer we don’t know what this is in her system, the closer she gets to dying from it!” Sam whispered hard, his frustration evident. “Do you seriously want to tell me your extensive organization doesn’t have any doctors working for you?”
“Shut up. Here she comes,” Eldard reported as Nina approached with a smile, guide in hand.
“We’ll pick this up later,” Sam assured his two male accomplices.
“Okay, I have a list of names here. Sam, you say the horses stopped here?” she asked, paging to the section where this particular hall was listed. Sam nodded, but his head was somewhere else, somewhere where he could get Nina a doctor that would not report any suspicious compounds discovered slowly killing his friend.
“I have been thinking about the vision,” Gunnar said as he stood behind Nina, reading the names over her shoulder. “There is a reason Sam saw horses, specifically. I think we’d have to look for anything equestrian, any figures represented here who had something to do with horses.”
Eldard and Nina shot him a confused glance.
“What?”
Eldard answered, “You do realize that most of these lads here were horsemen, Gunnar?”
Nina chuckled at the boyish e
xchange of face-pulling the two big men gave one another.
“One wore a crown, correct? So we have to look for a king, I suppose,” Nina said softly.
“There!” Eldard pointed at a name on the printed list. Being the archivist and scribe of the Scottish faction of the organization, he knew a thing or two about ancient history, particularly that of ancient Britain. He continued before she could ask, “King Hengist. He was a 5th Century Anglo-Saxon king, a heathen. Worshipped Odin and Freya. Hengist and his brother, Horsa, these lads served as mercenaries aiding Vortigern, the a warlord in Britain.”
“So?” Sam asked, clearly impatient.
“So,” Eldard roared just a little, sending a jolt through the security guard who still watched him with quick unobtrusive glances, “One horse had a crown, the other not, just like the two brothers. And so…” he deliberately mocked Sam’s lack of patience as well as his lack of historical knowledge, “the two horses in your vision has to be these two. It’s all in their names – Hengist means ‘stallion’ and Horsa…”
“Means ‘horse’!” Nina snapped her fingers.
“That is correct, my dear Dr. Gould,” Eldard flashed her his warm smile again.
“Okay, so to save time, let’s check out both of their plaques at the same time and see if they say anything about Valhalla,” Gunnar suggested and immediately he sauntered over to where Hengist was said to be.
Sam took Nina gently by her arm and as they located Horsa’s memorial, he whispered, “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine, Sam. Really. Just a bit under the weather. Fuck knows what those freaks did to my arm. All the more reason to do this,” she reassured him, placing her hand upon the hand he held her arm with. She looked deep into Sam’s eyes and she could see how troubled he was by her condition.
