Ragnarok Read Free Page B

just as one of them tore into Clayton, sending his legs in one direction and the rest of him in the other. All Gina saw was a smooth, white color and the movement of muscles, as if whatever she was seeing had no skin and was covered in skim milk.
    The other shapes tore into the rest of the cruisers. Blood sprayed away from every impacted police officer. Gina could barely track them, but she drew her weapon anyway and focused on one of the creatures. She might not have had a chance to stop it, but it paused suddenly and seemed to sniff the air. What she saw was terrifying. The beast’s eyes swiveled toward her and then it was in motion again, coming right for her. She couldn’t see it that well, but she remembered that eye and fired five times, where she thought it would be. The thing crashed to the asphalt right in front of her, pulling a scream from her lungs.
    A mistake.
    The other three creatures stopped and focused their swiveling eyes on her.
    What the hell are you? she had time to think.
    Then one of the creatures opened its mouth and roared. The sound was so loud it vibrated her body. Sheer terror took hold of her, and her thoughts simply shut down. The gun fell from her hand and she lost all control of her bodily functions as she collapsed on the corpse of the creature in front of her. Her body shook uncontrollably. When her body was pulled by the ankle, back toward the curved, pulsating wall of light, her fear-locked mind never noticed.
     

 
     
     
    TWO
    Fenris Kystby, Norway
    3 November, 0500 Hrs
     
    STAN TREMBLAY LOOKED down at the blood leaking from the puncture wound in his upper arm and said, “Oh, it’s on now, you pecker-noodles!”
    His shoulder had only just started to heal from the trauma a few days earlier. He glanced up at the villagers surrounding him in a semicircle. Most of them were hanging back, but they wielded farm weapons, kitchen knives and even homemade torches. The man with the pitchfork, a villager he knew to be named Roald, was the closest. He reached out his bleeding arm as quick as a snake strike and snatched the pitchfork away from the man. Roald stepped back slightly, in shock. Then the glazed look returned to his eyes. A look all the villagers had.
    A look of hate.
    Roald moved forward to attack again, this time barehanded after the loss of his pitchfork. Tremblay swung the shaft of the pitchfork around in a wide arc and clocked Roald in the side of the head. The man crumpled to the grassy field. The others paused. Just long enough for Tremblay to bring the wooden pitchfork handle across his knee and splinter it like a toothpick.
    “I’m done fuckin’ around with you people.”
    The look of hatred surged in the eyes of the villagers, and then they all rushed at him.
    Stan Tremblay was a pretty big guy. With his blue eyes, long blonde goatee and hulking size, he could have easily fit in as one of the local Norwegian mountain men. But his Russian accent was better than his Norwegian one, so when he had hiked into town looking for some peace and quiet, he had said he was a former Russian soldier. These people all knew him as Stanislav. None of them suspected that he was secretly a former Delta operator, one of five who made up Chess Team, a deep cover black ops group that faced threats to not only the United States, but to the whole world. When his last mission in Siberia had gone south, Tremblay, callsign: Rook, had felt he needed some time to get his head straight. After a journey aboard an Arctic fishing trawler, on his way from Russia to Norway, Rook had come ashore and just started walking. The land was desolate and windswept, and he figured if he couldn’t organize his thoughts in this remote place, then he wouldn’t be able to do it anywhere.
    Instead of solitude though, Rook had found himself helping the locals with a predator that was eating their livestock. He had discovered some of the town’s dirty laundry, but certainly not enough to warrant a mob showing up on