The Valkyrie's Guardian (16 page)

Timed as perfectly as ballet, the front two shooting pairs rammed down the door just as Memphis cleared the north side. Bursts of gunfire sounded from the other sides then waned. Chief confirmed the all-clear — the other thirteen guards all down. Then he focused his attention on the four soldiers inside the shack. It seemed Chief would call
mission accomplished
only thirty-eight seconds after the
go,
a fast success. Cassie wondered where Jack had gone just as she heard his frantic shouting through the radio.

Shots fired inside the shack.

The woods echoed with more gunfire, the sound disorienting as it seemed to come from all directions. They'd been ambushed. How had neither Jack nor Cassie heard any thoughts from the enemy force?

A chorus of staccato curses came through the radio. Chief shouted
SITREP!
and took a quick inventory in a desperate attempt to regain control. The squad dove for the tree line and took cover, returning fire in sporadic bursts. Cassie heard noise in the foliage at her five o'clock. She shot through an entire magazine before she realized she'd just dropped three soldiers in all black stalking her and Chief. She'd killed three men, had felt the threat and reacted instinctively.

Chief nodded with a grim smile and turned back to the radio. He ordered the pairs to lay cover fire and leapfrog to the extraction point —

Cassie was nearly struck unconscious by a sickening wave of dread. The oppressing deluge blackened her vision and made her stomach lurch. She blinked until her eyes cleared, focusing on her shaking hands. Her fingers strained into claws, her skin crawled with the torment of a million insects swarming her.

Movement caught her eye — something in black blurred through the doorway and darted for the tree line. A strange silhouette, bulky on top with an odd rhythm to its gait. Cassie leaped to her feet and dove over the hedges to follow before consciously deciding to do so. Instinct drove her at full speed on a course to intercept.

She ran a straight line across the clearing, with only one second and forty-two feet until impact — then lurched sideways and hit the ground with a rude force that ground her face into the grass. She rolled over her shoulder and landed on her hands and knees, sucking gasps of air. Her lungs screamed under a sharp pressure as her brain processed that she'd been hit on her side with three bullets. The Kevlar. It didn't keep the rounds from breaking her ribs, but it kept her in the game.

She yanked the tattered vest off and scrambled to her feet. She caught sight of her target, now clearly a dark-haired Jack-sized man running with a bundle hoisted over his shoulder. She couldn't say why, but she was desperate to catch him, seized by a crazy impulse she couldn't deny. The compulsion thrummed in her pulse, and her feet obeyed. Her pace dragged while she mended her cracked ribs. Lucky her damage report was only grass stains.

She gained on the dark-haired man as he darted through the forest, and in her periphery, Cassie perceived another blurred form approaching from her left, also on course to intercept the giant. Jack, barreling full speed with shredded foliage blasting behind him. He was faster, but she was closer. She couldn't understand his shouting even if he'd used English, but they seemed to have the same idea to corner the man against the steep hillside rising to her right. Cassie growled and yanked hard on the giant's upturned foot the same moment Jack tackled him from the side. They all went down in a jarring crash. Cassie skidded several yards then tucked into a roll. Her frenzied mind burned over any report of pain.

“James,” the man grunted, recognizing Jack, then cursed in Russian.

“Krav,” Jack growled back, his voice deepened in the throes of his berserker rage.

Cassie landed on her feet, crouched and ready for action. Jack beat her to it, already engaged in an unearthly knife fight that looked like a cloud of blurred limbs and flashes of black and silver. The giant appeared to match him blow for blow. She would have watched the lethal battle for an opening to help Jack, but her attention locked onto a heap lying motionless on the ground except for the miniscule up-and-down motion. It drew her eye the same moment she caught its scent, and her brain went supernova.

The sound of her breath lowered into bass thunder in her ears. Her heart rolled in mighty peals, like war drums. Electric static crawled up her spine and traveled slowly through her limbs to tingle in her fingers and toes. The energy snapped as it filled her, and Cassie spread her feet to ground the energy in a satisfying harmony with earth and sky.

She stared, her vision narrowed, and bloodlust sang fierce and ravenous through her veins. She flexed her shoulders, drunken with the ecstatic sensation of the volatile energy crackling through her muscles, hardening her bones, sharpening her senses.
Power.

She cared about only two matters. One, the heap on the ground was an injured child. An extra-sentient child, whom she vowed would not suffer a moment longer. Two, the man fighting Jack was the source of the nauseating evil, and she was going to turn his skin inside out, using his own bones like an ice pick.

Humorless mirth bubbled in her throat and she opened her mouth to laugh. A dark, macabre sound escaped, resonating with unnatural volume — crashing thunder interrupted. The sky deepened in shadow. Everywhere raw electricity hummed, it vibrated in her skull. Steam wafted from the pine needle beds covering the ground, emitting a delicious roasted nut scent. Jack and the soon-to-be-dead man broke apart. Jack heaved, staring with glowing green eyes, and Cassie met the black gaze of the dark-haired man as her mouth twisted in a cruel smile.

Her world narrowed to the space her enemy occupied. Her palms itched, her shoulders tensed in anticipation, but otherwise she stood still. Focused on her prey. Her instincts chanted her obsession, swallowing her mind with one desire: to protect one and decimate the other.

Valkyrie,

Shield maiden,

Her spear a lightning bolt,

Her form as a raven, her spirit as the falcon.

Goddess of battle,

Lover to the worthiest warrior in Valhalla.

Servant of Odin, beautiful and terrible as the Northern Lights,

Omen of death should you sight her on the eve of battle,

Harbinger of victory should she fight at your side.

Valkyrie.

Every second ticking past confirmed it as the static charge in the air heated his blood and prickled the back of his neck. Jack had suspected but still couldn't believe it even as Cassie's body thrummed with electrostatic energy. Seeing the child had set her off. She had withdrawn completely into her instincts, in the throes of a rage he understood the power of. He had no way to pull her back, and he wasn't certain he should try.

The charge gathering in the air singed the hair on his arms, made his lungs squeeze for breath. It affected Krav more severely — he hunched over, wheezing for air through a swollen throat.

Cassie's helmet had been knocked off when she fell. Twin sheets of jet-black hair hung over her shoulders with strands floating in the static. Energy crackled in her eyes, the lightest ice-blue like faceted gems against her painted face. She shifted her weight back and forth on her feet, slowly, like a cobra dance. Krav watched, hypnotized. Cassie crouched and stepped one foot over the other, a prowling motion to place her in position to defend the child.

The kid stirred as he woke and registered the pain from his broken legs. Snapped clean through at the shin, by Krav. The shock had knocked the boy unconscious. Disgusted, Jack listened to the kid replay the memory of the abuse, and the air heated with ash-smelling steam as Cassie fumed with anger. Her fingers curled into claws. Her pistol was missing from its holster, and she didn't seem to think about drawing a knife, even though Krav faced her grasping a nasty Blackhawk Tatang. Clearly she meant to rip him to shreds with her bare hands.

Krav muttered low in Russian. His nostrils flared and he sniffed the air in her direction. He grimaced in distaste then crouched. The black void of his gaze shifted from the child and centered on Cassie, his strained breath blowing like a heart-shot ox. Jack shifted to keep himself between Krav and Cassie, but neither paid him any attention.

Cassie,
he tried to push through to her.
Careful, love. Krav is a force shifter.
Her mind sounded like a thunderstorm, none of her thoughts could be translated into words.
These are his landslides. Let's take him together, okay? I don't want you —

Still focused on Krav, Cassie raised her hand and crooked two fingers in invitation. Thunder rumbled then cracked, apparently sympathetic to her anger. Krav lunged, and Cassie met him halfway. The collision rocked him back; Krav flailed and dropped his knife. Jack smelled the stench of burning flesh. Krav cursed as he flapped his hand, his skin steaming. That was the last reprieve Cassie granted Krav.

She let loose, slicing across his face with her nails, crushing his jaw with a palm jab. She struck his ear and burst the membranes, ruining his balance. That was only in the first few seconds. Krav darted a punch at her head, but she caught his fist and locked her grip on it, and Jack heard splintering as she crushed Krav's hand. Cassie yanked his arm the same moment she chambered her knee and kicked hard at his side. Krav roared, the sound mingled with the sickening wet crunch of snapping tendons. Jack had taught her that move, although he'd never imagined this application.

Krav's head spasmed, a reaction to the electric current passing through him from the contact of her skin. Small needles of lightning shot down from the sky while the blue streaks radiating from Cassie danced around her. She was electrocuting him. The metal rivets and buckles on his clothing burned into his flesh, his hair slowly melted. His growling turned into an animalistic cry, keening until Cassie released him. Even Jack felt his stomach churn, and he had seen a lot on the battlefield.

In a blur Krav darted for the child, who had managed to sit up. The kid watched the fight with wide eyes. Jack tackled Krav in time, and Cassie collided with them both. Her hand scalded Jack's neck and he ducked away from the eerie white-hot fire, pulling Krav down with him. They grappled, and Jack landed a blow to Krav's ribs that stunned his breath. Cassie was ready with a sharp kick to the temple that dropped him to the ground. It would have killed a mortal.

“Angel sveta?”

Cassie's head whipped around and her gaze locked on the child, who covered his mouth as though he shouldn't have dared speak. “Vse spokojno, moi milyi,” she purred, and Jack wondered how he didn't know she spoke Russian.

Jack could hardly breathe through the static in the air, and the potpourri of charred smells didn't help. Krav writhed, face-down on the ground. Cassie staggered back, heaving. She doubled over and retched, then crept back toward Krav. He didn't try to stand and defend himself, but Jack felt the familiar stirrings of Krav's power, like being blown sideways by a gust of wind, but without the wind. At the same moment, the child screamed and threw his head back. He arched his back and shrieked, slamming his head into the ground. As abruptly as he began the kid quit. He lay motionless, breathing evenly as though nothing had happened. Weird.

The last time Jack had encountered Krav, it had been from a distance. Eight years ago in Brazil, he had smelled the same stench. Jack had seen what the extra-sentient could do. Krav had altered the flow of a
Marañon
River tributary and broken a dam. He'd flash-flooded Kyros' academy while Merodach attacked. Jack assumed a similar stunt had caused the landslides here, but this was on a much bigger scale.

Low rumbling shook the ground, the source was the top of the cliff towering over them. The first time Jack had felt that gravity-stretching pull, he'd thought his blood sugar had crashed, making him dizzy. Now he knew it was a five-second avalanche warning.

Cassie nudged Krav onto his back with her foot.

“Shalava,”
he spat, showing bloodied teeth and a swollen tongue.

“Goret' tebe s adu,”
Cassie spoke with a flat tone, wishing him to hell in the crudest terms possible. She pinned his head with her foot and bent down. Jack felt her energy throbbing, magnifying, heard thunder clapping in sympathy. Her pointed fingers raised over Krav's chest, blue sparks of electricity shot from her fingertips —

“Chudovishche!”
the kid wailed in a hoarse voice, clutching his head.

Ear-splitting cracking, unnatural thunder, earthquake vibrations came from every direction. Jack meant to snatch Cassie and the kid and run before Krav's landslide hit the ground, but rocks already rained down around them. Jack darted to the kid and scooped him up with one arm, ignoring the tiny cries of agony. He dodged a cow-sized boulder but got beaned in the head with a smaller rock. Blood ran into his eyes as he made his way to Cassie, hunching his shoulders to keep flying shards from hurting the kid.

Strange, but the sight of Cassie finishing Krav hardly affected him. The man was evil. A child killer. Jack would have done it if she hadn't, although he doubted the devil could've matched Cassie's punishment. Her blue lightning sent Krav to hell as she promised. She'd started a small fire, but it didn't matter now — water was coming. Lots of it.

Jack skidded to a halt as a downhill flood of debris jammed against a row of trees to his left. The trunks groaned against the pressure, threatening to give way. Dirty water spilled over the cliff, and the earth around it dissolved in chunks then sheets, rushing a wall of mud in their direction. Two boulders crashed together overhead, and Jack dropped then rolled to avoid the shower of shrapnel.

The kid whimpered at being handled like a football, and Cassie turned to see why he'd made the sound. Jack saw her blink as he fought his way to her side, and finally he heard the beautiful sound of her mind, cleared from her rage. She registered the danger and let him toss her over his shoulder. Jack scrambled out of the way as the tree line on the left was mowed down by a fresh wave of rocks and mud. He kicked away one boulder blocking his path and leaped atop another to avoid a mess of loose rocks sweeping past in the flood.