If it worked, then the experts at putting real bullets where they needed to go would be able to see him.
The worst the boss could get from me was wet. Normally it’d be a bad career move to shoot your boss with a paintball gun, but I figured that if it got her out of her present predicament, Vivienne Sagadraco wouldn’t mind an accidental splatter or two—or six.
I slung the rifle’s carrying strap over my shoulder and grabbed an extra bag of balls. Apparently my plan was obvious to Ian. My partner hadn’t asked any questions, and was at his desk stuffing things in his pockets too fast for me to ID them.
“Second floor catwalk?” he asked me.
I shot a glance at the combatants. “I was thinking third. Let’s go see if we can’t paint ourselves a grendel.”
Ian charged up the stairs four at a time. With my shorter legs, it was all I could do to take two. He paused at the door to the third floor, waiting for me, his back to the wall beside the closed door.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded.
Ian quickly opened the door, paused a fraction of a second to make sure nothing was waiting to take his face off, then darted around the corner, gun held low and ready.
Getting closer to the fight—and the grendel—only made it even more obvious that a twelve-gauge shotgun might get this thing’s attention, but it wasn’t gonna do much else. The grendel was only about twenty feet away, and Vivienne Sagadraco’s eyes were level with the catwalk’s railing. When the grendel’s hands opened to slash, I saw nails the size of steak knives. And judging from the boss’s injuries, the thickest dragon hide was obviously no match for razor-sharp grendel claws.
A powerful downdraft from Vivienne Sagadraco’s wings nearly knocked me over the railing. I swore. I hadn’t considered wind strong enough to send my itty-bitty paintballs all over creation, but it wasn’t going to keep me from firing every last one I had.
While I wasn’t all that picky about where I landed my paint, ideally I wanted them where a direct hit by real ammo would do the most damage.
Head, face, and throat.
The cloaking device was at the base of the grendel’s neck. Number one target. If our shooters could destroy the device, the boss could destroy the grendel. And for a backup target, splattering paint in the thing’s eyes would have the double benefit of marking two of the only visible places that weren’t armored, as well as temporarily blinding the thing.
I aimed, fired, the combatants shifted the battle a foot to the left, and my first volley of paintballs hit the boss in the back, smack-dab between her wings.
I winced and aimed again. “Sorry, ma’am.”
The grendel looked at me, and made a sound I instantly recognized. The same wet, coughing laugh we’d heard in Ollie’s office.
It was unnerving as hell, though him looking at me gave me the best chance I was likely to get to paint his face. I snapped my rifle up to my shoulder.
Primitive or not, the grendel realized on some level what I was doing. Giggles turned to growls, and I became his number one target. His powerful legs pushed off from the floor, propelling him straight at me.
I instinctively squealed and jumped back, my hands gripping the rifle. That gripping included my trigger finger, and paintballs popped from the muzzle in a rapid-fire stream, busting open on contact with the grendel’s face, head, and chest, and forming a fine-looking bull’s-eye splatter pattern if I did say so myself.
“See that?” I shouted to Ian. In response, my partner grinned, raised his gun, and opened fire.
My handiwork made the boss right happy, too. A triumphant roar split the air enough to shake the catwalk as Vivienne Sagadraco tore into her attacker, and from below, SPI’s commandos opened fire.
I was so intent on the goings-on below that I didn’t see the arm come around from behind me until it pulled tight in a choke hold around my neck.
My doppelganger.
In all the commotion over the grendels, I’d forgotten about her.
With a snap of her other hand, she easily knocked the paintball rifle out of my hands and over the railing, leaving them numb and even more useless than they already would have been against her. Moreau had been right about a doppelganger’s strength. With one arm around my throat and the other gripping my upper arm, she started dragging me backward, using me as a human shield, to where the grendel and Vivienne Sagadraco still battled.
After a moment of confusion followed by realization, Ian raised his gun, panning the area behind me, desperate for something to shoot at.
The doppelganger jerked me back against her. I couldn’t breathe, let alone fight back. Something the size of a hockey puck pressed between my shoulders, almost against my neck, and I knew the grendel wasn’t the only monster wearing a cloaking device. As she pulled me along with her, I caught sight of a holster strapped to her thigh.
In an instant, I knew what she was going to do. I was the only one who could see her. She could put a bullet into one of Vivienne Sagadraco’s eyes at point-blank range. If that didn’t kill the boss instantly, she’d fall to the floor where the still-in-the-fight grendel and what was left of his brood would finish her off.
I got my hands up to the doppelganger’s arm circling my throat, trying to get my fingers around her forearm and pry it off my windpipe. I twisted and struggled and rammed the heels of my combat boots down on her insteps. You name it, I tried it; nothing worked.
My doppelganger merely tightened her arm around my throat. “I wanted to kill you from the first, but she wouldn’t let me. Stupid human cattle,” she spat. “Only good for feeding the beasts.”
“Shoot her!” I croaked to Ian.
“Yes, clumsy human, shoot me,” she called mockingly to Ian. “He can’t hear or see me.” The doppelganger jerked me back against her. “Shoot me and blow your partner’s brains out, or what little there are.”
She dropped one hand down to her holster and I let go of the arm about to crush my windpipe. I had one chance before I passed out or she snapped my neck like a Sunday dinner chicken. I reached behind my neck and grabbed the collar that held the cloaking device and pulled with every bit of strength I had left. I had to get it off of her.
At that instant, Ian’s hand came around from behind his back, and a round and dark object came flying directly at my face. What the hell?! Instinctively I winced and closed my eyes. A second later, I heard and felt a wet splat followed by an enraged scream from my doppelganger.
Black spots bloomed on the edge of my vision, and I suddenly pitched forward as the collar snapped off and into my hands. I felt myself falling, the thought only half registering through my air-starved brain; so fortunately I was only half-conscious when my face hit the floor and broke my fall.
I groaned and rolled to see the doppelganger’s face and head splattered with what I could only call chicken-shit green. I knew then what Ian had gotten out of his desk drawer.
Paint grenades.
As Ian opened fire on the doppelganger with bullets instead of paint, something slammed into the catwalk, and suddenly I was rolling and sliding. I didn’t know which way was up, down, or sideways. But when I no longer felt the cold metal of the catwalk, I knew I was going down. Way down. Falling through three stories of empty space toward a pack of hungry baby grendels. By the time my survival instinct kicked in, I was screaming and it was two inches too late to grab the edge of the pitching catwalk.
My scream was cut short when a massive clawed hand snatched me out of the air.
Vivienne Sagadraco.
I instinctively grabbed one of the boss’s scaled fingers that was the size of my arm, and held on, prayed, screamed, and fought the urge to be sick, all at the same time. The boss spun to intercept a grendel attack from behind, swinging me around to give me a quick and blurry tour of the entire bull pen like I was on the Scrambler from Hell.
I was beyond nauseous with all the dropping, swooping, and flying; but I’d rather be sick than eaten by the grendel spawn that were leaping up to grab my legs whenever I came within reach. All the monster scenery flew back and forth before my eyes as nauseating streams of color.
Ian was shouting at me from somewhere above, but I couldn’t hear a word he was yelling while being whipped around. I groaned, dropped my head to the boss’s scaled finger, and tried to hold on to her finger and my barbeque dinner as tightly as I could.
The sudden stench like rotten fish made me look up to see where I was.
The male grendel’s bloody face was inches from mine.
I drew breath to scream and the boss yanked me away just as the grendel’s steak knives raked through the air where I’d just been.
Vivienne Sagadraco flung her right arm out full length and dropped me on another section of catwalk. This one wasn’t moving or even tilting.
Oh God, I loved this catwalk. Rather than kiss it, I just tried real hard not to throw up on it.
The weight of someone running toward me pounded and vibrated the catwalk against my aching head. The pounding stopped and strong hands pulled me up.
I forced my eyes open. Ian’s face came into focus, then out again.
“Stop moving,” I said blearily.
“I’m not moving.”
I clutched at his arms. “Then stop me from moving.”
“I’ve got you; you’re not going anywhere.”
Too bad nobody told the catwalk.
The only warning we got was groaning metal and the popping of support cables as the rest of the catwalk went down, and us with it.
Something hard and cold whapped me in the head and everything went mercifully black.
19
I think it was the quiet that woke me up—and the dark that freaked me out.
Dark could mean any number of things, and in my mind right now, all of them were bad. That is, until I felt the pillows under my head and a blanket snuggled around me. I couldn’t imagine Papa Grendel tucking me in, unless it was to roll me up in the world’s biggest piece of bacon.
There was a click and a small light came on. A bedside lamp. I blinked my eyes into focus and saw Ian sitting on a cot next to the narrow bed I was on. He appeared to be in one piece. Tired, scruffy, with a mild case of bed head, but in one piece.
