The Valhalla Prophecy (57 page)

“We have to go through it to follow the directions on the runes,” Nina reminded him. “If we’re on the right track, that’ll be the vale of Fenrir.”

“Wolf Valley, eh? Bet you’re really glad I brought my gun now, eh?” He gave her a brief grin, then returned his attention to the task of guiding the snowmobile up the steepening ridge.

Several more minutes brought the team to the top. The landscape ahead vanished into a pale nothingness, mist shrouding everything. Kagan again signaled for everyone to halt and stop their engines. Silence descended. “I cannot hear the helicopter,” he said.

“Can’t hear
anything
,” said Eddie. They were now mostly sheltered from the wind by the valley’s sides. Any other sounds seemed to be swallowed by the fog.

“If they have found the pit and landed, we must catch them before they leave. Dr. Berkeley, where do the runes say we must go?”

Berkeley checked his notes again. “Through the vale of Fenrir, then there’s a rock formation they called ‘the broken finger’ pointing up the mountain. We follow that until we get to a plain they called Vigrid—‘the place of battle.’ If this pit exists, that’s where it is. Just a couple more miles.”

“Then we must move as fast as we can.” Kagan restarted his engine.

“Careful in the fog,” Eddie warned. “If you hit a boulder at fifty miles an hour, you’ll be fucked.”

“We know what we are doing,” the Russian told him tersely. He shouted orders to his men, then set off again, considerably faster on the flat than during the climb. The four soldiers followed at equally high speed.

“Fuck’s sake,” Eddie growled as he restarted his own
vehicle. “If he flips his snowmobile and breaks open his jar of evil crap …”

“Try not to drive through the puddle,” said Nina, cringing at the thought.

They entered the valley. The fog quickly enveloped them, first sapping all color from the other vehicles and their riders, then leaching away detail to reduce them to nothing more than silhouettes. Even these soon faded—not solely because the fog was getting thicker, but because they were pulling away. “They’re going too bloody fast,” complained Eddie as he eased back the throttle, then made a small but urgent course change to avoid a football-sized rock that materialized in his path. “See? If I’d hit that, it might have tipped us over or even ripped off the front ski.”

“You’ve still got your lightning reactions,” Nina assured him. “Although those Russian guys are probably even faster. I mean, they
are
about twenty years younger than you …”

“Tchah!”
He made a rude gesture, then looked at the snow ahead. “What the fuck are they doing?” he said as he saw the weaving skein of treaded ruts split apart into three separate tracks. “They’re spreading out. They won’t be able to see each other.”

“I can hardly see them now.” Nina squinted into the fog, experiencing an unsettling moment of disorientation as she realized it was now so dense that it had blotted out all points of reference, stranding her inside a featureless gray void. “No, wait—I
can’t
see them now! Damn, I thought it was London that was supposed to have all the pea-soupers?”

“Nah, London just stinks of diesel,” said Eddie. He peered ahead, but the other snowmobiles were completely lost to sight, even the rasp of their engines muted. Reducing speed still further, he picked one of the three diverging tracks and followed it. “Hope whoever this is has a clue where they’re going …”

They both strained to see through the surrounding nothingness. The ground became indistinct a mere twenty feet away, the blank snow making the effect
even worse. Occasionally it seemed that there were dim shapes at the very fringe of visibility, but they vanished the moment they were focused upon.

Nina stiffened in her seat at a dull noise from somewhere ahead. “What was that?”

“What was what?” Eddie asked.

“I just heard—I don’t know, a bang or something.”

He brought the snowmobile to a rapid stop, trying to listen over the putter of the idling engine. “Can’t hear anything.”

“It’s gone, but … I can’t hear any of the other snowmobiles either.”

Eddie shut the machine down. Silence fell upon them like a wet cloak. “Nor can I,” he said after a moment, “but if we keep following their track, we’ll—”

A scream cut through the empty stillness.

“Okay, I heard
that
,” he said, restarting the engine and revving to full power.

“What the hell happened?” Nina shouted.

“They must’ve crashed. Fucking
told
’em not to go too fast in this fog!”

It was not long before he slowed again. The track he was following suddenly veered sharply—but there was no sign of a rock or other obstacle. “Where’d they go?” he asked, turning to follow.

“There.” Nina pointed off to one side. A faint shape resolved itself into the overturned snowmobile as they approached. “I don’t see either of the guys on it, though.”

Eddie stopped a few yards from the other machine. “Hey!” he shouted. “Anyone hear me? Are you okay?”

There was no answer. “Maybe they don’t speak English,” said Nina, concerned.

“Oi! Vodka, free vodka!”

“Very funny.” But she was not smiling as she dismounted, and nor was her husband. “Can you see them?”

“No, but something happened here,” he replied, crouching. The snowmobile’s track revealed the spot where it had crashed and rolled over; from the sudden
change in direction, the driver had obviously been trying to avoid a collision—but again there was nothing except snow in the machine’s path. “Go to the snowmobile and see if you can spot ’em. I’ll check if anyone got thrown off over here.”

Nina went to the crashed snowmobile. The engine had stalled, its cargo spilled out across the snow. There was no sign of the case containing Thor’s Hammer. “It wasn’t Kagan and Logan,” she called to Eddie before turning to check the surrounding area. At first she saw nothing—but then a shift in the drifting fog revealed a faint shape, darker than the surrounding snow and mist. She advanced a few steps, then broke into a jog as she realized it was a person. “Eddie! Over here!”

The young man lay on his side, one arm splayed out behind his back. Nina reached him—then jumped back in horror.

The Russian was dead. But he had not been killed by falling from the snowmobile. His throat had been torn open, ragged strands of flesh hanging out into a splattered pool of bright red.

Eddie reached her. “Jesus
Christ
!” he gasped on seeing the hideous display. “What the fuck did that to him?”

Nina had looked away—and in doing so saw something else. “Eddie, there are some tracks over here. I think the other guy crawled away.”

“He didn’t crawl,” he said, grimly examining the churned snow. “He was
dragged
.”

“By what?”

An answer came as a new sound reached them: a low growl.

But it was not the mechanical rasp of a snowmobile.

Nina and Eddie turned to find the source of the noise. Something appeared through the fog, advancing on them with a fearless arrogance. A wolf.

But not like any they had ever seen before.

It was huge, at least a foot taller than a normal wolf, its hunched back reaching easily to the height of Eddie’s chest. But it was monstrous in more than just size. As it
drew closer, they saw that it was deformed, swollen growths bulging beneath the dense fur. One eye was almost squeezed shut by a tumor on the side of its face.

The deformities had not lessened its abilities as a hunter, though. Its mouth and fangs dripped with blood, the fur down its chest stained a deep crimson where it had ripped out the soldier’s throat.

“Oh my God,” Nina whispered. “The Vikings were right. It’s Fenrir …”

The wolf curled back its gore-stained lips and snarled, advancing on the couple. “Get behind me,” Eddie told Nina, eyes locked on to the predator as he slowly unzipped his coat. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”

Nina cautiously sidestepped around her husband—only to turn in fear at a new sound. “Shit!” A second wolf, as large and twisted as the first, faded into view through the fog. It too was smeared with the fresh blood of its latest kill—the second Russian soldier. “Eddie, there’s another one!”

Eddie’s hand closed around his Wildey. The first wolf was about twenty feet away, padding closer with a measured, almost mechanical relentlessness. He started to draw the gun, looking away from the approaching animal to check the position of its hunting partner. It was farther away, head low as it advanced.

He looked back—

The wolf charged.

The gun was out of its holster—but the beast had already leapt with shocking speed, knocking Eddie over. Nina shrieked as she jumped out of the way.

The wolf weighed as much as a man, and was easily as strong, claws raking his clothing as it lunged for his
throat. Eddie managed to whip up his right arm and force the creature’s head back just as its jaws snapped, twisted teeth mere inches from his face.

He pulled the Wildey’s trigger. The huge handgun’s boom was almost deafening; he expected the noise to scare off both attackers.

It didn’t. The wolf flinched away from the retort and muzzle flash, but then continued its attack with even greater ferocity, bloodlust overpowering fear. The second animal hesitated, only to resume its advance when it saw its companion was not harmed.

“Nina!” Eddie cried, struggling to hold off the writhing monstrosity. “Get out of here, run!”

Nina stumbled back, caught between the urge to flee and the desire to help her husband. She chose the latter, drawing back a leg to kick the wolf off him—

The other animal made its move, rushing at her. Nina broke off her attempted attack and ducked sideways. Its momentum carried it past her—but it immediately scrabbled around for another try, growling and slavering.

She ran for the overturned snowmobile, but could already hear the wolf closing fast from behind—

Nina dived over the vehicle, landing hard among its scattered equipment. The animal veered away to circle the snowmobile for a clear run at its prey.

Eddie yelled as the wolf’s claws slashed at him again, ripping through his hood and gouging his jaw. A couple of inches lower, and it would have torn into his neck. “Fuck off, Cujo!” he growled, clenching his free hand into a fist and punching the animal in the face.

Pinned by the monster, he couldn’t put his full force into the blow—but it was still enough to startle it. The wolf let out an angry growl, pulling back before making another lunge.

The momentary retreat gave Eddie the chance to move his arm. He brought the Wildey to bear—

The wolf’s huge jaws clamped around his hand. Sharp fangs tore through his coat’s thick sleeve. They dug into his skin, about to slash tendons and arteries—

Another Magnum round boomed—and the entire back of the creature’s head exploded.

The Wildey was
inside
its mouth—and Eddie had pulled the trigger.

The wolf collapsed on top of him. He pulled open the animal’s slack jaws to extract his gun, then shoved the corpse away. “Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf
now
?” he muttered as he got to his feet—only to freeze at a sound from the void.

A long, keening howl.

More shadowy shapes loomed through the drifting fog. The rest of the wolf pack.

They circled, closing in. Eddie turned, tracking them—then remembered there was another, much nearer. “Nina!”

The gunshot had again caused the second wolf to freeze, but now it resumed its charge at Nina, still on her hands and knees beside the wrecked snowmobile. She desperately snatched up a baton-shaped piece of fallen cargo, about to wield it as a club—

It had a better use.

The baton was a flare. She yanked off the protective plastic cap and slapped her palm against the striker as the snarling predator raced in for the kill. The flare sizzled to life, blazing bright red at its tip.

She brought it up—

The wolf sprang.

It slammed her back against the snowmobile with an almost triumphant snarl—which turned to a shriek as she stabbed the burning flare into its neck. The beast leapt away, jumping and spinning as it tried to escape the searing pain, but the intense heat had set its fur alight. With a horrible wail, it raced away into the fog, flames spreading over its body and turning it into a running torch.

Eddie scrambled across the snow, vaulting the snowmobile to land beside her. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” she gasped, still winded. She saw his torn and bloodied clothing. “Jesus! What about you?”

“I’m fine—the blood’s from Mr. Wool-uff.”

“What happened to it?”

He held up the Wildey, drool still glistening on the polished metal. “It bit off more than it could chew.” A very brief smile, which disappeared as he looked back at the approaching pack. “There’s more of the fucking things, though.”

“Okay, so shoot them!”

“I will, when I get a clear shot. But they’re not daft.” The other wolves had clearly recognized that their prey was far from defenseless, and changed tactics. They were now circling the couple and drawing away to fade into the fog before darting back into view as if daring them to react. “I don’t even know how many there are. Three, four—I can’t tell.” He tracked one of the running shapes, which sensed the danger and retreated into the void, only for one of its companions to appear off to the side, moving in the other direction. “And I’ve only got five shots left in this mag—if I miss, it’ll take me a few seconds to reload, and that’ll give them a chance to come at us.”

“Would this help?”

She had picked up one of the soldiers’ AK-12s and flicked off the safety, raising the assault rifle to firing position. He grinned. “And I thought you didn’t like guns.”

“I don’t, but sometimes they’re useful!” Nina looked down the sights, following one of the wolves as it ran at her—and fired. The gun was set to fully automatic, unleashing a thudding fusillade of bullets. The monster screeched and tumbled to a stop in the blood-speckled snow.

“Over here!” Eddie warned. She spun as two more wolves charged toward the snowmobile from the opposite direction. Another burst from the Kalashnikov brought one of them down, the other felled by a single cannon-fire blast from the Wildey.