Embrace of the Damned by Anya Bast

of the room, and she cast a final suspicious look over her shoulder, wondering like crazy what the hell was going on in this place. Was it a halfway house for wayward underwear models? Some secret organization of crime-fighting superheroes? Oh, crap, the set of a Norwegian porn movie?
     
    He led her into a huge industrial-style kitchen. She could probably fit her entire bedroom into the enormous stainless-steel refrigerator alone. She guessed she shouldn’t be all that surprised. After all, men as built as these guys must need to consume a lot of calories.
     
    Broder set some bread, jam, and butter on the table, then went for silverware and plates.
     
    She eased onto a chair at the center island. “Are you an Olympic sports team of some kind?”
     
    He returned to the island and set a plate in front of her. “Is that what you think? Do you always pair bobsleddingwith vicious monsters that move like snakes, have irises that turn jet-black, and sprout retractable fangs?”
     
    She gave up her attempt to make rational sense of it all. Swallowing hard, she pushed the plate away, suddenly not very hungry anymore. “So you’re saying those things and the men in this house are connected?”
     
    “Blight.”
     
    “Excuse me?”
     
    “The fanged monsters, they’re called the Blight. Yes, we fight them.”
     
    She digested that. “So this is like some kind of superhero club.”
     
    He frowned at her. “Super to a human, maybe. Definitely not heroes.”
     
    “Blight are demons. Correct?”
     
    He nodded. “Spawned from the depths of icy Hel, which holds the same name of the goddess who keeps that realm. Hel is Loki’s daughter and she’s imprisoned there. You could say she and Loki have a troubled relationship.”
     
    “You mentioned Loki before. I remember him from my mythology class at school. He’s a Norwegian god, right? A trickster god. Kind of a prick?”
     
    “You sum him up nicely.”
     
    “So the Blight are trying to kill me.” She chewed on that for a moment, breathing deep and trying to remain calm. Apparently demons and Norwegian gods were real. Shock was keeping her from running around the room, holding her head in her hands. “So what do they want? Why are they here?”
     
    Broder selected a piece of bread and began to butter it. “The mission of the Blight is to bring about Ragnarök.” He glanced up at her. “Sort of like the Christians’ version of Armageddon. Ragnarök is an apocalypse for the gods.”
     
    “Apocalypse for the gods,” she repeated numbly. This just got weirder and weirder.
     
    “Yes.”
     
    “Do we care if the gods have an apocalypse?”
     
    Broder shrugged. “I hate all the gods I’ve ever met, so Idon’t care if they live or die. However, their war would be bad for the world. There would be a series of natural disasters that would result in the destruction of the planet. Basically, Hel is trying to kill her father. Humanity is in the way.”
     
    A little puff of air escaped Jessa. She gave him a slow blink. “Are you fucking crazy?”
     
    “I wish I was. I also wish I didn’t have to tell you this next part, which is likely to blow your little human mind.”
     
    “My little hum—wait a minute, you’re trying to make me angry, aren’t you? Well, forget it. You can’t. Tell me the rest of your whacked-out story.”
     
    He set the butter aside and moved on to the jam. When he was finished with that, he folded over his piece of bread and calmly dipped it into his glass of milk. “We are the Brotherhood of the Damned, a group of men who committed brutal acts in our days as Vikings and have been punished by the god Loki to an immortal life battling the Blight.”
     
    Jessa stared.
     
    Broder took a bite of his bread. “Why aren’t you freaking out right now?” he asked around the mouthful.
     
    “I’m freaking out on the inside.” At least now she knew why her mojo hadn’t worked on him. He wasn’t even human … if he was telling