Project Hyperion (A Kaiju Thriller) (Kaiju #4)

Agnarsson had known his men all his life. They feared nothing. No God and no man. But now they were weeping and blubbering like babes. Some of the men—his men—started to flee into the woods. So complete was their panic that not one of them realized they were running toward the sound’s source, rather than away.

That’s when he caught a glimpse of the thing moving like a breeze through the snows, leaping between the trees and even up onto the sides of them before springing away, almost too quickly for Agnarsson’s eye to follow. Then it was gone in the shadows.

The first of his men to reach the trees was torn apart. Agnarsson didn’t see it happen, but the sounds of tearing flesh and muffled screams were fodder for the mind’s eye. Then the lower half of Magnus Trondheim’s red-haired legs flew through the air and tangled in the lower branches of one of the half-eaten trees. Other men had bolted at that sight, but Agnarsson had stood stock still, staring in wonder. He knew whatever the creature was, it wasn’t human.

The roar came again, but this time from inside the monastery.

There is more than one, Agnarsson realized.

The few men still rooted in place came unglued, and with shouts of horror, they ran without mind or any sense of where they were going. Only Agnarsson remained in place, not because he was brave, but because he was petrified. He kept a firm grip on his axe while warm piss trickled down his inner thigh.

His mind—spurred by lessons taught by a remorseless father, fought for control. It is too cursed fast to be a bear or a wolf.

The roar came again, dropping him to one knee.

The sound was closer, bouncing back at him from the trees and the falling snow all around him in the early morning gloom. A few of his men yet lived, but whimpered in terror. The vibration in Agnarsson’s eardrums was intense. His bones felt as if they rattled in his body. He couldn’t see the creature, but he knew it was near.

Then he heard the movement. Fast. Coming right for him. He whirled around and swung his double-bladed axe wide, hoping he might strike the beast out of sheer luck and force.

Instead, the world before him transformed into the sun.

Brightness assaulted Agnarsson’s sight—so intense and painful that it scorched his eyes even through his tightly shut eyelids. Thunder shouted and lightning crackled again, this time blasting out from all around him.

Guarding his eyes with his hands, he chanced a look and witnessed the giant ball of light collapse inward. Silence sucked the thunderous din away like a thirsty man slurping up the last of his mead, and Agnarsson was left alone in the dull light of early morning.

His men lay dead in the shallow snow all around him. Some of them, caught half within the sphere of light and half without, had been cut cleanly in half.

He looked down to see that his own body had been cleaved as well. His axe was gone and so was most of his axe arm below the shoulder. The wound had been closed with searing heat, the fire so hot he hadn’t even noticed he was injured. Now he looked down at his blackened stump in shock.

The creatures were gone. Nothing moved in the snow. The ball of lightning and fire was gone. Everyone around him was dead. But even more shocking was that the monastery itself, along with the ninety-odd raiders and scores of monks, had vanished. All that remained was a large bowl-shaped indentation in the ground.

He stumbled away from the site, looking back at the devastation. He did not know what it was that had attacked him, or where they had come from. But at the last moment, just before the blast, he had seen it. One of the creatures. He lacked the language to describe what he saw, but he would never forget it.

Agnarsson lost all of his men, his axe and his arm, but he had been spared his life for some unknown reason. And he did not understand why. But he would remember this night for the rest of his life. It would haunt him. His father had been wrong, there were things in the world that mortal men simply could not fight.





THE SOUND OF FEAR




ONE

S?o Paulo, Brazil

The Present, 2 November, 2200 Hrs



S?O PAULO WAS the largest city in Brazil and the largest in the southern hemisphere. It was also the sixth largest in the world in population. After today, it would be fourteenth.