The Soul Eaters (The Thin Hex Line Book 1) by Gwyndolyn Russell (100 best novels of all time .txt) 📗

"We must hurry! You don't want to miss all the action, do you?" The geihildra took off, headed for the natural ramp down to the bottom of the fjord.

"Liam, you all right?" Reaper asked.

He swallowed. "Yes, sir. I...had no idea eos could talk. Fenris said they were mindless."

"You heard it?"

"Yeah."

"Get your mask on. We need to go."

They ran back to their trucks and jumped in. Jackal took the lead and followed Vactubstein down the path.

Fenris was already on the ground. As they made their descent, they could see smaller eos flying this way and that. They couldn't see Fenris very well, but it was carving a path through the horde.

When they got down there and near the crowd, the vehicles slowed down from max speed to about a quarter of it to let everyone, but the drivers and gunners out. Boots on the ground, the young soldiers were ready, crying out for blood as they charged head first into the rear of the horde. Vactubstein seemingly led the charge, holding his rifle over his head and roaring out. Tunaaka called as well, reared up, and charged in.

Just as expected, the eos were heavily distracted by Fenris. They tried to surround the valkyrie. They stomped on one another. Threw each other around. They had no care for their brothers and they hardly noticed the humans. They wanted the valkyrie's head. They wanted the power that would come from it.

The soldiers paused for a moment. What the hell were they doing here? Not a single eos so much as glanced at them. They were focused on each other, themselves, that valkyrie. The soldiers didn't exist.

One of the soldiers, startled, opened fire. Then they all did. The eos still gave them no attention. Even when their brothers next to them fell in a hail of gunfire, no one cared.

The trucks charged into the fray, bulldozing through the smaller monsters and dodging the feet of the larger ones. The gunner's held down their triggers lighting up the nearby creatures in projectiles and fire.

It was too easy.

They mowed right through fifty, or more without any turning on them.

Explosions of bigger weapons rang through the fjord, reverberated from the cliffs. Roars of anger and challenge thundered through. Shrieks of pain and fear pierced into the stench of the air. Black smoke, presumably Fenris' khexide, fogged the field at waist height.

Through the chaos, they could see the valkyrie leaping from one large eos to the next, giving fatal blows to the head, neck, and stomach. Limbs were ripped off. Smaller monsters and the dying were crushed under the careless weight of their betters.

They were piling on Fenris, multiple jumping and latching onto it's back only to be torn off and thrown into the waiting mouths of the skaginvar, and other theropods.

"How's it looking in there?" Reaper said into the radio.

"Something's weird." Jackal answered. "They're ignoring us."

"They're fighting Dragonborn," Reaper stated.

Vactubstein, still upon Tunaaka's saddle, was in the middle of the fray. He had the reins wrapped tight around his wrist while he fired his rifle. The tamed beast had exposed spikes on its tail, the biggest of which was three feet long. It smacked the eos around, impaling them upon those spikes and throwing them off. The two were surrounded just like Fenris and fighting for their survival.

"Yeah, something ain't right, Captain." Jackal stopped the truck.

A sitting duck and still nothing paid them any mind. All around them were corpses.

The ground shook, throwing some of the soldiers off balance. Then came the sound. A low growl. Thumping feet.

Nearby valkria, the theropod eos tall enough to look a man in the eye, shrieked and ran in all directions. One, in its panic, jumped onto the hood of Jackal's truck. One look over its shoulder and it ran across the roof, right passed Yaaranam in the gunner's seat.

"Oh, fucking Christ!" Jackal said, not realizing he still had the button held down on the radio. "Hold on!"

He slammed the stick in reverse and stomped on the gas.

A skaginvar, the one with the mangled face, was coming for them. It stomped towards them, tail swinging behind it. One of the guns on its side whirred to life, littering the ground in a hail of bullets moving up towards the truck.

"Fucking shit!" Yaaranam shouted. "Is that the same bastard from before?!"

"Yeah, and she's pissed!" He yanked on the wheel, sending the truck sharply to one side and over the corpse of an eos. Back into drive, he hit the gas again and took off with the beast on his tail.

"What's it have against us?!" Yaaranam pulled the trigger to send a burst of flames into the monster's face.

Jackal suddenly slammed on the brakes. They skidded to a halt. The beast kept going. No brakes of its own, it stepped right over them a few more steps before stopping and turning around.

He took off towards the beast this time. Just as it was about to bite down on them, he gave another sharp turn, drifting off to the side. He nearly hit the driver's side against a tree.

The beast, unable to turn as sharp, followed them with a growl.

"Do that again!" Yaaranam knocked on the roof of the truck.

Back on the brakes, he spun the truck around, narrowly dodging a tree, and another eos he could only see the ankle of. This time when they went past the skaginvar, Yaaranam lit it up with the flamethrower.

The beast cried and turned in the opposite direction, its flesh scorched into charcoal down an entire side.

Snapping its jaws, it continued to turn right into the truck as it came for another sweep. It shoved the side of its head into the vehicle, flipping it off its wheels and sending it into the horde of eos still screeching and clawing at each other to get to Fenris.

The truck rolled several times, sending Yaaranam flying out of the hatch. When it stopped, it laid on its roof. Yaaranam cried out, laying just a few feet away.

Jackal groaned from