NORMANII - RISE OF THE NORTHMEN Novel Excerpt
NORMANII
“Language, Rollo.”
“Apologies, Eric.”
Rollo North stood at the edge of a clearing in the woods outside
of Slydell, Louisiana. He was on my left, two yards apart. On my other side was
Brun.
“Let him curse,” said Brun. “He's right.”
Vampire biker gangs were exactly like the sounded. Bad news all
around. When you take a particularly notorious subset of sociopaths and remove
their humanity, well, that's trouble. With a capital T.
“Is that all of them?” Rollo asked.
It was rhetorical, I knew, because he was counting the Hogs
arrayed in the clearing. Twelve. Vampire nests worked in groups divisible by
three. There was symmetry and religious implications behind it.
Even in ours. There were three of us now, chartered with
protecting and policing the South East. Twelve in the Shield Wall tasked with
the United States.
Too few of us.
Too many of them.
As it ever was.
Behind us, one of the Hellhunds growled.
“Easy Roger,” I cautioned.
Roger was a six foot six inch track coach who turned into a wolf
by choice, or during a full moon by curse.
Beside Roger was Franco. Each of the Northmen had two Hellhunds,
werewolves that served us. It's an interesting partnership, a story best shared
over and a fire and much beer, which is often the best way to share stories.
Later.
At the moment my concentration was on the Nest.
Vampires are stronger than werewolves. Faster. Heal quicker.
Without the Hellhunds, we Northmen wouldn't stand a chance.
“Eric?” Rollo questioned?
I nodded.
Roger and Franco stepped out of cheap tracksuits and shifted from
human form to giant wolves with snapping and creaking as muscle and bone
reshaped. There was no screaming like the movies portrayed.
The two Hunds padded around me, while Brun and Rollo's werewolves
circled the clearing.
We all settled in.
Vampires don't sleep when the sun is out. They go to roost in dark
places, and if caught out in the open by the approach of dawn, they go
underground.
This gang, the Lords of Vice, or Son's of Anachronisms, whatever
name they played with to inspire fear, had been too far from home hunting.
So they burrowed beneath the clearing to wait out the day.
Brun had tracked them here following a train of dead bodies across
Mississippi and Louisiana.
The sun shifted lower stretching the shadows of pine trees like
bars across the ground.
I spoke with a wizard once who explained about magic spells won't
last past dawn or dusk, and that to the well trained mage, they could feel a
slight pop in the air as the sun crashed the horizon.
“Now, “I breathed.
Brun and Rollo surged beside me.
CHAPTER
The soil in the middle of the clearing looked like it was boiling.
Dirt encrusted bodies erupted from the ground, hissing in defiance and
rage.
Roger and Franco leaped from between the trees and ripped the
throats out of two emerging vampires. Black ichor fountained into the
twilight air.
The wounds wouldn’t kill them though.
Brun did that.
His giant seven foot frame moved with the lithe grace of a
ballerina. He swung a silver broadsword forged on Thor’s anvil in a
smooth arc and two heads rolled.
Rollo moved in quickly. He held an axe in each hand that
swirled in a macabre windmill, hacking and chopping through vampires as they
exited the nest.
I heard a yelp and spun around.
An Alpha vampire lifted Roger off the ground and snapped his
spine.
It dropped the wolf body, which dissolved back into the shape of a
man even as Franco ripped out the Vamp’s hamstring.
I threw my sword like a spear and impaled its throat.
The vampire clawed at the metal jutting from its neck and pulled
it out with a sucking sound.
I raced up, grabbed the hilt and twisted. It fell, reached
for my leg, but Franco lunged in and snapped off the hand at the wrist.
The vampire lunged, grabbed Franco with its other hand. It threw
the Hund against a tree in a sickening crunch.
I swung my sword in a circle, kicked the severed head across the
meadow, and let loose the berserker.
CHAPTER
In Norse culture a berserker is a warrior overtaken by battle
lust. It’s been popularized in movies so everyone has seen it.
Basically, it’s an unstoppable killing machine.
Like me.
Except it’s not.
One Northman in each generation gets a gift upon turning
eighteen. Possession by a dead Viking.
Sure that’s the cynical way to look at it. It’s great in
battles with the supernatural, but no so good at cocktail parties.
How do you think that conversation would go?
“Hello, my name is Erik. I kill weird things and when the
shit hits the fan, a two thousand year old descendant of Odin takes over my
body to turn me into an unstoppable killing machine. Like the Terminator.
Can I top off your drink?”
You kind of lose them at killing machine.
When I turn loose the berserker, I black out so I never remember
anything.
Wake up drenched in blood to the fearful wide eyed gaze of your
shield brothers a couple of times though and you learn to establish some
internal ground rules real quick.
Rule Number One: Give me my body back once the fighting is done.
Trust me, it took eight years to establish that rule.
Brun took out two more vampires, Rollo one and my berserker
finished the rest. There was a mental tug of war after I lopped off the
last head but it lasted only seconds.
“How was Leif?” asked Brun with a sideways glance. He
cleaned gore from his blade with the leather jacket of one of the vampire bikers.
Did I mention I was possessed by Leif Erikson?
Yeah, that one.
He colonized North America, fought vampires and made a deal with a
demon that bound his soul to a descendant to carry on the fight between good
and evil for eternity. Why do you think berserker’s are so pissed?
I glanced around at the carnage in the clearing.
“He’s hungry,” I answered.
Rollo started gathering wood to build a pyre. We could leave
the bodies on the ground for the sun to burn off, but we ran the risk of
someone stumbling across them.
A fire and the cleansing sun would do the trick.
Brun performed a quick incantation then stacked the bodies on the
wood and lit it.
Flames quickly flared across the bodies with crackles, pops and
the unforgettable stench of burning rotten flesh.
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