“Brother and sister?” Roy asked.
“Grendels do not share taboos that are common to humans.”
“Apparently.”
“Grendels keep the corpses of their dead,” Anderssen said. “This head and arm—if they are from their father—would be of great value to them as a tribal relic.”
“Could those have been used to lure them here?” Sandra asked.
“A lure would not have been necessary,” Anderssen replied. “Grendels have been hunted for as long as humans have known of their existence—and grendels have fed almost exclusively on humans for at least that long. They now live in the most inhospitable parts of Norway and Sweden. There are not sufficient humans in those areas to sustain them.”
“And New York City has over eight million humans,” Sandra said.
Anderssen nodded. “And countless places in the tunnel and sewer system in which to hide and thrive. Warmth, shelter, and a nearly unlimited food supply. If grendels had a heaven, this city would be it.”
22
IT was three months until Easter, but I was going on an egg hunt. And instead of baskets, the SPI NY and Scandinavia commandos were carrying guns, knives, flamethrowers, and spears with tips that went boom. The men looked like they’d been chiseled from solid rock; and the women could’ve been stunt doubles for Sigourney Weaver in Alien. Every last one of them was badass to the bone.
Me? Well, I was a Sigourney wannabe.
We were divided into three teams, each assigned to a slice of the pie that was the likely nesting zone. Two of the three teams had a seer and a werewolf tracker. All three teams had one flamethrower, one subway tunnel expert, and two Viking types packing the grendel-gutting spears.
My first mission underground was going to be searching for a creature that was as smart as a human—and that had little ones to feed. Little ones that could eat enough human flesh to be adult-sized monsters within two days.
We were in the team locker room gearing up. Earlier I’d worn a bulletproof vest, but this was my first time in full body armor. It was hot and heavy, and not in a good way. The thought of going into the claustrophobic sewers wearing claustrophobic armor made me want to hyperventilate, and I wasn’t even wearing the helmet yet.
“This doesn’t bode well,” I told Ian who was helping me get strapped and buckled in. I gave him the condensed version of my phobic triggers.
“Just think of it as a claw-resistant shell against grendels,” he said.
“Yeah? Well, then I know how a lobster feels.” I poked myself in the chest. It did seem sturdy enough. “Not claw proof, huh?”
“It’s not in the plan for you to be finding out.”
“But what if the plan—”
“Then you run.” Ian indicated a switch on the suit’s belt. “There’s an oxygen tank built into the back. Press this button here if you need a hit.”
“Need?”
“Air can get nasty down there with fumes that aren’t lung friendly. If your brain’s not getting enough oxygen, you can start seeing things that aren’t there.”
“Just as long as I can still see things that are there.”
“If you start seeing little flickering lights, flip the switch.”
“And the tanks are safely under the bulletproof armor, right?”
“Right.”
“’Cause it’d really suck for a stray bullet to hit that tank and blow me up.”
“I got news; it’d suck for the rest of us around you, too.”
I was armed with one gun and one knife, both in shoulder holsters: the gun was loaded with silver-peppered bullets, the knife with silver-infused steel. And I’d been forbidden to use either one unless I found myself separated from the rest of the team with a grendel about to bite my head off.
However, I had full permission to use my other weapon.
My paintball rifle was slung over my back.
Before she returned to the bull pen that would be the communications center for our mission, Vivienne Sagadraco had told the assembled teams what we could be up against in regards to the cloaking devices. Since we had no idea how many were in the adversary’s possession, we would not be taking any chances. I could see any grendel or ghoul that might be making use of the newfangled technology. The look she’d given the assembled commandos dared any of them to make a joke about my armaments. However, that didn’t stop the Scandinavians from ribbing their seer who was sporting a paintball rifle of his own. Poor guy. Ian had offered me paint grenades, but I turned him down. To say that I throw like a girl was an insult to girls everywhere.
Ian noticed my wistful glances at everyone else’s Rambo-ready real weapons. “You’re not trained yet.”
“And if I get gutted down there, I never will be.”
“Your job is to see the monster, and mark it if we can’t see it. Our job is to kill it. You’re qualified to do your job; we’re not. We’re qualified to do our job—”
“I get it. It doesn’t make me feel any less naked, but I get it.”
He finished fastening my armor, his hands lingering on my shoulders. “We’re not going to let our seer get killed—and I’m not about to lose my partner. Speaking of which, you have a tracking chip in your armor.”
I tried to smile. “Y’all are just afraid I’ll pull a Barney Fife and shoot somebody’s foot off.”
“That, too.” He took my gloved hand and moved it to another switch on my utility belt. “And this is for your headlamp.”
“I’ve got a light? Excellent.”
Ian patted the top of my head. “It’ll be right up here, built in to your helmet. Low, medium intensity, and retina frying. The switch is there.”
“Let me guess, when you have to wear something like that, it’s a given that your hands will have better things to do than hold a flashlight. Like hold a gun.”
He gave me a flat look. “Right—for the rest of us. Nice try, though.”
I shrugged. “I may not be trained, but I am persistent.”
“That you are.” He continued with my equipment inventory. “You have an emergency light here, mounted to the forearm of your gun hand, which you will—”
“Not be using for anything other than a paintball gun,” I said for him.
“Right again. But as a point of instruction for the future, the more distance you can keep between you and your target and still take it out, the better.”
“That’s why our spears are so damned long,” said one of the Scandinavians. He stuck out his gloved hand that wasn’t holding a spear. “Rolf Haagen. I’ll be with your team.”
Ian shook it, then I did. It felt like shaking hands with a steel mannequin.
“It’s not mine,” he said. “Neither is most of the arm up to my elbow. Finnish ice dragon took a taste of me a couple of years back. I took his hide for this,” he said cheerfully and kicked his gear bag. “Payback pays, or at least it makes a great set of luggage.” He held up his arm. “If I lose my hardware, I’ll just get a new one. I’m due for an upgrade. Maybe I can make a grendel choke on it.”
An up-close look at the spear showed four thick hooks spaced around the shaft about ten inches below the point.
“Keeps what you’ve got on the business end from pulling its way down to eat your face,” Rolf said with pride.
“Helpful feature,” I said.
“More than once.” He grinned and clicked the two sections of the spear’s shaft together. It was solid sounding.
“That’d definitely hurt sliding through someone’s guts,” I noted.
“We didn’t come here to tickle them. A lot of Old World monsters needed old kill methods. Tonight we make SPI history.” The Viking commando looked entirely too eager. “No one has ever killed a grendel in the dark—except for some Danish guy named Beowulf, and he just tore off the beastie’s arm and it bled to death at its mother’s house.” He snorted with derision. “That’s not a kill. So that ‘First Dark Kill’ position is open. I think my name would look good on that plaque in Oslo.” He gave us a maniacal grin and clapped Ian on the shoulder, hard enough to rattle my teeth. “Let’s go, kill, and return to drink to our victory.”
Sounded simple enough, and the last part sounded fun, at least the returning part.
My job was even simpler.
If the grendels were wearing Tarbert’s cloaking devices, my job was to find them before they found us, point them out or paint them up, get the hell out of the way, and let the shooters and stabbers do their thing. If the grendels weren’t cloaked, just get and stay the hell out of the way.
Yasha came over to us wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. I knew what that meant. The Russian would be going werewolf for our expedition.
“Listen up,” Anderssen boomed and I jumped. “My people line up over here to get fitted with your comms. Our New York hosts have gear designed to work in the tunnels. We’ll all be on the same secure channel. Once we’re inside, no unnecessary chatter. Team leaders will check in with me every ten minutes. Report any sightings as they happen.”
“Will a girly scream work?” Rolf asked.
“It’s always worked for you in the past,” a huge, blond-bearded commando shouted good-naturedly. “Why change now?”
Chatter was good. Chatter kept me from thinking about going down into unknown miles of tunnels to hunt down monsters that only I’d be able to see—armed with a paintball gun.
“By the way, people,” Roy said, “try to avoid shooting anything vital that will cause maintenance people to come down to fix. That includes anything that looks like an electrical switching box or anything with a pipe. We don’t need civilian company.”
The Scandinavian woman leapt down from the back of the truck that’d brought their equipment from the airport. She’d turned wolf in the privacy of the back. Her fur went from dark blond to silvery highlights. Yasha smiled slowly, liking what he saw. The female wolf stood preternaturally still, regarding the Russian, her amber eyes glittering in what I swear looked like playful challenge. By now, everyone was watching. Yasha smiled, kicked off his flip-flops, and smoothly stripped out of his T-shirt, earning catcalls, wolf whistles, and applause.
