Through the nightmarish daze of fading consciousness and draining life, the last thing Daekwon saw was the hellish maw of the polar bear’s canine-studded jaws lunging for his face.
***
After Sigurd had transformed back into his human form, he stood nude and silent on the killing floor, his pale body sprayed, as if decorated with warpaint, with the blood of his vanquished opponents. He squatted down and picked up his watch, intending to check the time, and that was when he heard it: the pulsing, sonic whir of a helicopter cresting the distant horizon.
With an ease of manner that was almost nonchalant despite the immediacy of gore and death around him, Sigurd slipped on his trousers and strolled over to where Daekwon’s body lay. He stared at the corpse for a few moments, marvelling at the damage his claws and teeth had done to the young man’s formerly sculpted torso.
‘You fought well, boy,’ he muttered, and then peered up the final set of stairs. ‘But all who oppose me will die. Time to finish this mission off,’ he whispered to himself, switching to his mother tongue, Old Norse, his guttural utterings reverberating around the crimson-sprayed walls of the eerily silent space. ‘Fuck them all. None of them can comprehend what I am capable of, and none can understand what is coming. A great storm, a maelstrom that will engulf the whole world! Yes … the world of mortals will fall into chaos. Soon, soon it will begin. No, today it has begun.’
Sigurd picked up his Desert Eagle and pointed it ahead of him, punctuating his vision with the pistol’s sights, his finger resting lightly on the trigger and ready to squeeze off a semi-automatic volley in seconds if need be. He wanted to exchange words with his final adversary – he wanted, no, needed the hit of power that would course through his veins as he spoke those words, as he saw in his enemy’s eyes the crushing despair and complete loss of hope – by all the gods in Valhalla, he needed that hit, that hit that was so much more powerful than even the purest opiate known to mortals. However, staying alive while ending the life of his enemy and taking the prize was, of course, the primary concern in this mission, and should he be required to do so without that conversation … well, it would have to be done.
The throbbing pulse of a helicopter descending from the sky was growing alarmingly loud; he did not have much time left.
Up the stairs he travelled, moving with a deadly stealth and swiftness. He reached the top of the stairs in a few seconds, but before his arrival an uncanny tingling bathed every square inch of his skin and sent its static crackle into the very marrow of his bones. This unmistakable feeling evinced the presence of another of his kind, or, rather, others of his kind. Surely enough these beings would likewise have felt the same sensation, alerting them to Sigurd’s presence – although, of course, the wall-shaking spattering of gunfire that had echoed up through the mansion a few minutes earlier would long before have told those above of the immediacy of enemies.
Sigurd was about to get into the most dangerous part of the mission; behind the door ahead of him was the prize, but there was also a mighty foe, or foes, to best. Foes who were doubtless heavily armed – heavily armed and expecting him. Still, he was confident that with his own ferocity, keen intelligence and raw power he would destroy them.
‘It’s been many years since I last looked into your eyes, you fool,’ he muttered to himself, ‘and many years since you last laid eyes upon me. But for you, this will be the last time you lay your eyes on anyone, or anything…’
A sense of sudden urgency – or possibly a tingling of fear – stirred the blood in Sigurd’s veins. How fast would he be able to get through the door? How quickly would his opponents react? What if his enemies managed to place a lethal shot before he could reach them?
The increasing volume of the nearing chopper’s blades spurred urgency into his blood. He had to make a choice, immediately; there would only be one way to do this, and it would not involve the gun. Yes, there was a way to protect himself against all but the most powerful of firearms, but it would also mean that he would not be able to use his own gun.
It was a trade-off he was willing to make. He set the Desert Eagle down on the floor and stripped down as quickly as he could, and then enacted the change that shifted his form from that of a man into that of a polar bear.
It was time to do or die; he tensed every muscle in his polar bear body, readying himself to detonate a titanic explosion of power. He drew in a final breath of air and focused all of his attention on the hell he was about to unleash. When he expelled the air from his lungs he was ready.
Uncoiling his taut-sprung muscles in a nanosecond of unadulterated intensity, he barrelled headlong at the barrier that stood between him and the prize. The immense momentum of his seven-hundred-kilogram bear body utterly obliterated the door in an explosion of wooden shards, shattered fragments, flying woodchips and billowing sawdust.
The reaction from within the room was instantaneous; Maksim, crouched behind an
