Valkyries chosen hit wor.., p.1
Valkyrie's Chosen: Hit World: Valkyries Book 1, page 1
Published by Hit World Press
Copyright © 2024 by Marisa Wolf
Cover and images copyright © 2024 by William Alan Webb
All rights reserved.
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Author’s Note
Numbering series is a weird endeavor, and shared universes make it extra exciting. If this is your first book in the Hit World Universe, awesome! Welcome! Start right here! The stage will be set and the shenanigans will all make sense – as much sense as they make to the characters, at any rate.
If you want an explanation of where we’ve been so far… well, how about a sum up?
The Trashman: Assassin for hire Duncan Steed is very good at what he does, and a little clueless about the whole Women-of-it-All part of the world. But it turns out there’s a whole lot about the world Steed doesn’t know. Unfortunately his ex-wife is in a position to read him in… or not.
Bullet for Shooter, Skinwalker, Wendigo: A trilogy following Luther Sweetwater and his (mis)adventures in a world determined to make him see way more than he wants to see.
The Spider: Everyone is the hero of their own story, and this book has four who are anything but the hero of the others’ stories. Shockingly, the international murder squad of LEI has made an enemy they may not be equipped to face head on, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. If it can get better…
The Valkyries Initiative: An anthology introducing the first fifteen women who may be tapped for the Valkyries Initiative. Through murder, magic, and mayhem, these women might save the world… or end it.
Dedication
To anyone who meets hard times with humor and snark – you’re my people.
Table of Contents
Author’s Note
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the reward for being good at your job is more work.
This is bullshit.
Bullshit I fell for more than once in my career, though none quite as spectacularly as when I agreed to become the director of the Valkyries Initiative.
I had a lot of time to think about exactly how many bulls were producing exactly how much excrement given I was on perpetual reconnaissance to build a team that could stand up to an interdimensional threat. It was a task I’d been given by the absolute asshole who was my boss’s boss, and the worst part of it—the absolute worst—was that I actually wanted the job.
Which meant I had played right into Cynthia Witherbot’s hands.
Which meant I was an idiot.
An idiot with a whole lot of new work and responsibilities that would most likely get me killed.
I’d been perfectly happy in my old job. Bryn Siegmund, specialty recruiter for specialty Shooters. For over a decade I’d sourced, charmed, and secured some of the world’s most talented operators to join Life Enders, Incorporated—LEI—both for its First Class Shooter program, handling the legal, contracted assassination everybody knew about, and the trickier Second Class, dealing with magic and the weird shit everybody very much didn’t know about.
When I thought about it that way, my new job wasn’t so different.
Except that once I assembled this team I’d have to run it. While going up against the most dangerous woman I’d ever encountered in the course of my surrounded by dangerous people life.
So that was promising.
I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to make my eyes sting, yanked my thoughts back on track, and continued strolling down the sidewalk as though I had nothing on my mind beyond lunch.
Very few parts of Dallas allowed people to walk to anything, but thankfully my current target could nearly always be found in this cute, expensive, walkable little neighborhood, and so my interminable stakeout allowed me a few chances to stretch my legs while my thoughts spun.
Three weeks ago, my boss’s terrible boss had sent me on a standard information-gathering assignment.
Shockingly, it had in fact turned out to be not at all an information-gathering assignment. It had been a complete and utter shitshow from start to finish, and also something of a test.
In that time, I learned a few things. One, the world was even stranger than I, a deeply experienced Second Class qualified Shooter for LEI long steeped in magic, had believed it to be. Two, there was a woman out there who was even more terrifying than Cynthia Fucking Witherbot. Three, Cynthia Fucking Witherbot—one of her many formal names—was still The Worst. Four, the pressing threat to LEI from the terrifying woman and her organization, the Spider, could not be addressed within LEI’s current modus operandi.
Which left me walking the streets of Dallas, tailing a potential asset Cynthia Fucking Witherbot, assistant director of the entirety of LEI, the head of Field Operations and the Special Activities Division, had identified as a top candidate for the Valkyries Initiative.
My potential asset had not yet realized I was following her—not a great sign. While I was very, very good at what I did, I wasn’t an active Shooter. I stayed in practice, given the realities of my job, but hadn’t murdered anyone for hire—LEI’s legal, public business—and a Shooter, contracted and in LEI’s pay, should have at least shown some awareness of me.
So either I was better than I thought, my target was worse than Cynthia thought, or most likely of all, the woman had noticed me and was deciding what to do about it.
Which meant it could be a trap. Or a prank.
I didn’t really have time for either of those options—I had an entire team to build and so far Cynthia’s list had been fifty-fifty in terms of what and who I’d decided I needed, given the constraints of what the Valkyries Initiative was meant to be.
Fact: LEI existed, as far as the public was concerned, to enforce properly filed and paid for contracts taken out to end specific people’s lives. We did what it said on the tin: Life Enders, Incorporated.
Fact: LEI’s actual, more pressing, purpose involved keeping the world safe from the many, many interdimensional threats that bled through on a far too regular basis.
Fact: The Spider, a multi-pronged criminal outfit equally international in scope, had taken insult with at least one, if not both, parts of what LEI did with its time and resources. As such, they were organizing more and more shady people to take us down. Not forthrightly, not some kind of gang war, but like their namesake creature, digging their fangs in and sucking LEI dry from the inside. The Spider… also did what it said on the tin. Headed by a mysterious figure, seconded by the woman soon to become the bane of my existence: Alida Polk.
Fact: the Spider was in the process of flipping, corrupting, or removing as many LEI assets as they could get their fangs into, and they’d had a surprising amount of success.
Fact: Cynthia Fucking Witherbot—whom some referred to as the British Bitch for reasons including her being British and a bitch, but whom I far preferred to refer to as Cynthia Fucking Witherbot—had decided the best way to counter the Spider was an outside taskforce, one she could disavow and have no connection to. And she put me in charge of it.
Fact: I kept turning these facts over and over in my head because I’d been bored, but now my target was finally, finally, on the move.
She had ducked into a small shop that I passed, crossing the street to keep an eye on it—however, the shop was a super modern boutique with very few displays and I had a correspondingly clear line of sight.
My target was no longer in the shop.
Which meant my target was likely circling back behind me, because a Shooter wouldn’t run. A Shooter would want to know who was tailing her and why.
I ran some quick math, counted to three, and spun on my heel while shifting to the side, my gun on the wall side of the sidewalk, held low and hidden from other pedestrians.
Face to face with my target, I smiled. “Asset Jenkins, I presume.”
“Why are—recruitment? What are you tailing me for, Siegmund?” Audrey Jenkins, tall and striking, had her own gun low and semi-hidden between her body and the brick wall of the building next to us. Her face brightened and she cocked her gun straight toward the ground. “Oh shit, is there a Level Three?”
I didn’t laugh, but it was close. Successfully fighting the urge, I asked, “When did you clock me?”
“The turn after the alley. All the shops down this way are uber touristy or drug fronts. You didn’t seem the t ype.”
I let the laugh out and holstered my weapon. “I’ve been following you since McKinney.”
“I mean, in my defense, you blend with the general traffic.”
“Not much of a defense, Jenkins. Let’s get some coffee. Is that Moon place any good?”
“They have really fancy lattes, but the coffee itself is decent.” Jenkins also put her gun away, but she kept her hand closer to it than I did. Fair enough. It had been years since we’d spent much time together, and while I knew what she was doing here I’d made zero effort to help put the other woman at ease.
“Guess I could go for a snazzy drink. We’re talking LEI business, Jenkins. All approved, but not all above board. So relax, but keep a better eye on our surroundings.” I tugged on a hint of the energy surrounding us—kaval, the thing that made magic happen. Or was magic, depending on your perspective.
“I noticed you’re not confirming or denying a Third Class. I mean, Second Class was mindfuck enough.” Audrey fell into step with me, leaving enough distance that she could twist away easily, not close enough for subtle stabbing.
“Yeah, you got read in to the woo-woo stuff after you fell through a monster’s illusionary pit and clawed your way out of swamp thing’s house. I remember those days. Rough start.”
“Was yours any better?” Jenkins had asked me that question before. We’d worked together a long time ago, though never actively in the field. As usual, I evaded the question.
Because I, unbeknownst to most people, had never had to be read into the inner workings of the world by LEI. I continued to keep that from being knownst; I laughed again instead. “It was a hell of a lot cleaner, I’ll tell you that for free.” We swung around the corner, Jenkins looking to her left, me to the right, as though we’d been in the field together for years. “What’s your drink of choice?”
“Coffee with more coffee in it. Maybe a vanilla latte if I’m feeling precious.”
“You might want to feel a little precious, Jenkins. We’re going to be talking a while.”
“Hell, if it’s on you, I might go for two.”
“It’s on me. You can have all the caffeine you can take.”
Jenkins opted in for the Valkyries, which I’d figured. The thing about recruiting for a disavowed team spinning up to address an interdimensional threat was that I couldn’t show my hand before I was sure they’d say yes.
I mean, I could if I wanted to kill anyone who said no, but even Cynthia Fucking Witherbot would probably frown on my lessening her asset count through recruitment or murder, eventually.
It’d be harder to recruit new ones without me, for one.
For two, these were Shooters she’d recommended, and not because they were easy fodder. I’d picked through various divisions of LEI for many reasons to pick my top candidates and all they really had in common was their overall solid performance. I’d dismissed three candidates and was severely doubting CFW’s judgment by the time I moved on Faith Oberson.
Or maybe it was my judgment because… ow.
The breezeway of a kitschy motel is no place to get shot.
Neither is the shoulder, but I’d managed both on a day that was supposed to have zero shootings at all.
I’d been very happy in recruitment. I very rarely got shot at on my former side of the house. I mean, as mentioned, I kept up on my training because time in LEI’s lane often got what we call “hands on,” and that tended to mean shooty, stabby, and/or explodey. So, sure, sometimes my trips got a little spicy, but I, personally, had kept my own bullet-related injuries to a minimum, until that moment.
And at that moment—blood winding down my arm and sticking to the airy linen of my shirt, my back against a prickly wall, gun up as I scanned for a target—at that moment, I had no idea how easy this precise time in my life would feel once I had the privilege of looking back.
It was just a flesh wound, after all.
Bright day, clear lines of sight, straightforward job to do—take down international crime cartel on behalf of legalized murder organization—normal day at the office for the newly named director of the Valkyries Initiative.
In the actual moment though, I was more frustrated than anything. If it had been Faith Oberson shooting at me I might have even felt kind of okay about it, it meant she was alert, action first, and had caught me out way faster than Jenkins had managed. But no. It was some goon in an oversized hat who’d fired and disappeared.
Not actually disappeared. My light touch on kaval indicated the available pool of power hadn’t dipped or pulled in any particular direction. Maybe I was a little overconfident, because a bullet could kill me as easily as, say, a magic spear, but the glimpse I’d seen of the idiot hadn’t given any particular glow of my imminent demise.
Still, ow.
With excruciating slowness, I peeled away from the artificial turf decorating the breezeway’s walls and sidled toward the bank of allegedly vintage vending machines. Nothing happened for a long stretch of time and I risked sliding to the other side of the aggressively pastel machines—one chimed a motion sensor-activated little jingle that almost got it shot—and to the end of the semi-open corridor. A bit more nothing, which my rapid heartbeat indicated was just fine.
My ebbing adrenaline and the crash waiting just beyond it didn’t entirely jive with things being “just fine,” so I ignored my shoulder, took a shallow breath so I could continue to ignore my shoulder, and cleared the other side of the short breezeway. Behind me was the courtyard, adorned in a truly impressive variety of fake flamingos and a non-functional mini-golf course, where I’d been shot. In front of me was the parking lot, where I supposed Mystery Goon could have found a way through the notoriously paper-thin walls of the Hole in One.
I hadn’t heard a car peel out, nor the impact of a body making its way down from the third floor, and there was no movement whatsoever in the bare lot. The current patrons of the Hole in One had heard the shots and wisely kept under cover in their rooms, though the four cars parked in various corners of pitted concrete didn’t suggest there were a lot of them to begin with.
Faith had come here because the owner owed her a favor, but there wasn’t much in the grand town of Whatever, Whereabouts (population like 300, and slightly more mini-golf courses) to draw folks to the graveyard of where mini-golf obstacles gone to die at the Hole in One. So Mystery Goon had been here in order to do… what?
Besides shooting me, I had no idea. After several minutes of shallow breaths and a steadying increase of heat in my right shoulder, I yanked real hard on kaval, fishing for a reaction from either Mystery Goon or Oberson.
The remaining pool of magic swirled and eddied in the space I’d left it, but no corresponding pulls disturbed its motion. Faith was a Second Class Shooter with some pretty impressive offensive knacks, and whether or not she’d decided the shots were her business, she was well-trained enough to fortify herself with kaval if someone was out here firing weapons willy nilly followed by someone drinking up a fair percentage of the available power.
Her not doing that didn’t so much give me pause as fill my gut with cement, which had to be the reason it plummeted to my feet.
I swallowed, eased my way back toward the courtyard with my head on a swivel, and decided I’d rather get shot at in the Courtyard of Wayward Pink Birds than the Breezeway of Singing Vending Machines and Astroturf Walls.
I’d like to tell you I was extremely cautious throughout the courtyard, but at that point humidity, sweat, and my own drying blood had me sticky, cranky, and hovering on the edge of a post ‘getting shot and not entirely resolving the issue’ crash, so I wasn’t. I didn’t charge through the middle of the sand and astroturf studded square, but I didn’t hug the sides quite as well as I could have, nor did I give the empty open-air hallways more than cursory glance. For the former, the various looming inflatable, concrete, fake stone, and plastic long-necked birds interrupted the edges of the courtyard and meant I was forever side-stepping and scooting around impassive sculptures with blank stares. For the latter, they were empty and remained so.
Faith’s room was on the ground floor next to the neon sign for the office and the door was closed, as it had been since she got here a few hours ago.
