Ragnarok

SIXTY-ONE

Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway

4 November, 0230 Hrs

Rook fired four shots-hitting a lumbering dire wolf in the head with each-and then ran across the massive chamber, remembering Asya’s warning to stay far from the glowing orb that stretched to the ceiling behind the creatures. Asya stayed at his side, firing as she ran. He didn’t have to tell her what to do, she just did it. Once again, the thought that there was more to this woman than she was letting on flitted through his brain. He wondered if she was a Russian spy or something. She certainly moved like it.

A dire wolf made it past the barrage of 9 mm fire that Rook and Asya sprayed around the room. It lunged low for Asya’s legs, and Rook marveled to see her deftly sweep her legs up and over the creature, with the fingers of one outstretched hand resting on the back of its head. It looked to Rook like a gymnastics move. Then, while still in the air, in mid leap over the beast, she pointed the Walther down and fired a round into the back of the dire wolf’s head-inches from where her hand balanced her entire body above it. She followed through on the graceful leap and landed lightly on her toes before the dire wolf’s now inert body slumped to the concrete floor of the huge room.

Rook fired his eighth shot and the breech locked back, telling him his Walther was out of ammunition. Another dire wolf reached him, swiping its glassy claws across his midsection. Rook jumped back, narrowly avoiding being eviscerated, as the claws traced shallow red lines across his stomach.

Barely noticing the wound, Rook punched hard, mashing a tennis-ball sized eye into the muscle and bone beneath it. The creature howled and twisted violently, swiping at Rook with its clawed hand, but he stepped back out of its range. He was about to go for its other eye, when the orb burst into a spray of sticky white liquid. Asya had used her last bullet to shoot the thing, and while the eye had detonated, the creature wasn’t dead-the bullet had not penetrated the beast’s skull. It rolled on the floor in agony and blindly swept out its claws at Rook and Asya.

They were both out of bullets and the rest of the dire wolves were still coming at them from across the huge room. They were no more than thirty feet away. “The stairs!” Rook ran as fast as he had ever run in his life. He might be able to take one of these things down, but he didn’t think he could take the horde, not even with Asya’s Ballet-Fu.

She reached the metal stairs before him. They led up to the catwalk, over a hundred feet above them. She raced up the stairs to the first landing, the metal steps clanging with that bong-thap sound metal stairs always made. Rook raced up the first flight behind her, then suddenly swiveled around, holding the railing, and swung his booted foot down the stairs to smash into the face of the first dire wolf on the steps behind him. The creature instinctively turned its head so the large eye on the side of its cranium could see him better.

Bad move, Bonzo. Rook had identified the large eyes as the dire wolves most obvious weak spot. So he aimed for it when he kicked. His booted foot hit the delicate eye. It squelched like a smashed grape. The creature’s body sprawled backward away from the assault and it slammed into the next beast behind it, sending them both flying to the floor.

Rook raced on up the stairs. He made it past the second landing before another dire wolf nearly reached him on the steps. Asya was a few flights above him. Rook glanced up the stairwell. Too many friggin’ steps.

The dire wolf swiped at his back and he felt the claws tear through the thick fabric of his wet coat. Then instead of taking another step, he threw his body backward, slamming into the creature. They both plunged down the flight of steps.

The dire wolf hit the landing hard.

Rook landed on top of it. He turned and slammed both hands on either side of the dire wolf’s head, pounding its eyes, and then scrambled to his feet. The dire wolf pistoned its legs where it lay on the landing and clawed at its now blinded face. The body turned slowly on the landing and Rook thought of the Three Stooges. He shoved hard with his foot and the beast’s body slid to the edge of the landing and under the knee-height guardrail. With a second shove, the creature fell away from the stairs.

He saw another beast coming up the lower landing and turned to sprint back up, but stopped in his tracks as another of the creatures finished climbing over the railing onto the steps several feet above him. Tricky bastard. He was trapped between them. He swiveled his head back and forth so see them both and took two steps toward the upper beast. Then he moved against the outer railing, still turning his gaze back and forth as quickly as he could. Neither creature moved. They tensed instead, both about to pounce. He placed his hands on the railing behind him. They sprang for him, the lower creature diving for his legs and the upper creature coming for his torso.

Rook pulled his legs up and stamped his boots onto the railing, then lunged upward, using his legs like springs. He shot up and grabbed the metal side of the flight of stairs above him, his legs swinging widely out over the 25-foot drop to the floor. The two dire wolves crashed into each other, rolling down to the metal landing below. A loud cracking noise punctuated the creature on top smashing its head against the metal railing. The one under it was unhurt from the crash, but it was pinned under the weight of the heavier creature on top.

Rook pulled hard and moved a leg up, climbing the side rails on the outside of the stairwell like monkey bars. He flipped over the top rail and onto the steps. Below him on the other side of the stairs, he saw two more of the dire wolves climbing and leaping up the outside of the stairs as he had just done. Beyond them, he saw another one racing up the wall of the room, now several flights higher than him. They were circling around to get to Asya.

He ran higher and stopped above the two dire wolves climbing up the outside of the railings. He grabbed the rail and flipped over it, to the outside of the stairs, landing feet first on the head of the first of the two dire wolves. The impact thrust the creature off the stairs and it fell to the floor. The other creature saw what was happening and shimmied to the side.

With Rook dangling by one hand from a railing thirty feet above the floor, the creature scrambled up and across the metal steps and rails to reach him.

Rook tried to pull himself up with his one injured arm-the shoulder he had injured first in the incident with Edmund Kiss, and then again in the fight at Peder’s farm and most recently when the hybrid poked four fresh holes in it. No good. Between those injuries and the similar stunt he had just pulled on the other side of the stairs, he was lucky his arm could hang on preventing him from falling.

The dire wolf leapt to dislodge him, its body flying upward through the air. Rook did the only thing he could think of.

He let go.