The Grendel Affair: A SPI Files Novel (25 page)

“HOW many?” Sandra asked.

“A dozen,” Ian said, wincing as her team medic cleaned yet another slash on his back. “Probably more.”

We’d moved to a more easily defendable—and drier—part of the bottom level of the complex. It’d been only minutes since the grendel hatchlings had vanished, though I knew they couldn’t be gone. Since we knew nothing about what grendel bites and scratches did to humans, Sandra had ordered her people to stand guard while the team medic quickly saw to the worst of our injuries and at least cleaned the others.

Ian had stripped off his soaked shirt and sat on the floor next to me in his jeans and boots. Dry clothes would have to wait. Most of Ian’s injuries had been from the waist up. Mine had been pretty much everywhere, though the worst was a gash on my right thigh. The medic had cut off the right leg of my jeans near my upper thigh so he could stop the bleeding. I felt like a lopsided Daisy Duke.

“This needs stitches,” he told me, “but butterfly bandages will hold it for now.” He was putting a bandage over the butterflies. “Try not to tear them loose in the meantime.”

“I don’t plan to; but I’m pretty sure the hatchlings have other ideas.”

“I can’t believe those things had just hatched,” Sandra said.

“Considering when the doppelganger brought them in,” Ian said, “they probably hatched in the last twelve to twenty-four hours. Their armor’s still soft, which is the only reason bullets can still hurt them. I don’t know how long it takes for it to harden.”

I couldn’t get the image of the dead grendel out of my head. Its mouth gaped open in death, revealing not three, but four rows of triangular, sharklike teeth. The arms and legs were spindly and hadn’t developed the heavy musculature of an adult, but that didn’t mean they were weak. Far from it. I hurt all over from numerous bites and scratches, a hurt that had escalated to a three-alarm blaze after the medic had swabbed what felt like alcohol on all of them.

Sandra Niles was listening intently on her headset. She scowled. “Let me put you on speaker.”

Kenji’s voice came over a tiny speaker set somewhere near the shoulder of Sandra’s body armor.
“Mac, you there?”

“Yes.”

“According to the security scanner, you just came in through the north tunnel entrance.”
He paused.
“Holy shit. You brought a friend.”

Suddenly sirens went off and red flashing lights strobed all around us. An automated voice came over the wall speakers.
“Intruder alert at the north tunnel access. All security personnel immediately report to the north tunnel access.”

Ian got to his feet and had to help me to mine. It isn’t easy to stand when you’re trying not to move one of your legs.

We were at the south tunnel entrance. Going north would take us away from the baby monsters and toward another, larger one. Though right now, I’d take one monster on the other side of the complex over an unknown number of smaller ones that were right here with us. We passed several wall-mounted air vents. They all still had their screws, but if those things started unscrewing and dropping to the floor, I was running, butterfly bandages be damned.

Sandra had sprinted to the nearest corridor intersection—and its wall monitor. They were placed throughout the complex for things like announcements and briefings. At the moment, it showed a rotating 3D SPI logo.

“Kenji, I’m at monitor A-5,” Sandra told him. “Give me a visual on the north tunnel.”

The live video feed came on almost immediately. Static cut in and out for a few seconds, then cleared to give us a good view.

The camera looked down on my doppelganger. She was wearing a sweater identical to mine. Again. A massive shadow moved directly in front of the camera, blocking the lens.

“How high up is that camera?” I whispered to Ian.

“It’s in the corner, back section of the loading dock, it’s ten feet.”

And the thing my doppelganger had let in blocked the camera completely. As it moved away, the camera pivoted to follow, and refocused.

Those of us who’d been in the conference room briefing knew what it had to be, but when it moved into view, we all watched in stunned silence.

It was a grendel. An adult. The conference room hologram brought to terrifying life. And everyone could see it.

It was gigantic, with small armored plates completely covering its body. They were steel gray edged in black, which was what had given it a tattooed appearance. The grendel was corded with muscle, but wasn’t bulky with it. This was lean and powerful muscle, the kind made for speed and strength. It was a predator, a skilled and lethal hunter of its preferred prey—humans. The grendel’s arms were as big around as my waist, maybe more. One hand could easily engulf my entire head and flip it off my shoulders with its thumb like popping the top off a bottle of beer.

The video feed flickered and then came back.

I gasped and froze.

Sandra bit off a curse. “They’re gone. Both of them. Where the hell did they go?”

I looked at her in disbelief. “They’re right there.”

“What?”

“Right there.” I spread my hands wide in front of my face. “The thing’s head fills up the entire screen.” That wasn’t all it was doing. The grendel’s glowing eyes felt like they were staring straight at me, then its lips pulled back, exposing teeth like triangular razors. A knot formed and twisted in my stomach. It wasn’t just showing me its teeth.

My eyes locked on the scene before me. “It’s smiling at us.”

“Kenji, pull up the loading dock camera,” Sandra ordered. “Aim it on that hallway.”

“It’s empty,”
Kenji reported.
“Nothing there.”

“We can’t see them,” Ian said quietly. “But Mac can.”

He believed me. I was beyond grateful. “It’s wearing a collar or necklace with a round, thick disk. Here.” I reached up and touched the hollow of my throat. “And it knows we’re watching. I got a glimpse of the doppelganger, but now the grendel is blocking the entire lens.”

As if the thing could hear me, the grendel put its hand in front of the camera lens, flexing its hooked claws into a fist and then extending them, like a boxer before a fight, giving me a good up-close look at what it would be using as it slaughtered its way through the complex. A wet coughing sound came from deep beyond the rows of teeth, then another, and another. I recognized his voice. I’d heard it before, in Ollie’s office after it had gutted Adam Falke.

The grendel was laughing.

“Can you hear it?”

Ian shook his head.

Damn. So much for whether my seer abilities extended to mechanical/woo-woo devices. I knew I should be grateful they did, but watching a monster invade SPI headquarters was the last thing I wanted to see.

The grendel reached out, wrapped its massive hand around the camera, and plucked it right off the wall.

“Great,”
Kenji spat over the speaker.
“The camera picks now to futz out on me.”

I found my voice. “The camera didn’t go out, Kenji. The grendel ripped it off the wall.”

“Excuse me?”

“The grendel ripped the camera off the wall. I can see it. I wish it wasn’t there, but it is. Kenji, is Tarbert’s device about the size of a hockey puck?”

“Yeah.”

“The grendel’s wearing it on some kind of collar. Metal. My doppelganger is probably wearing one, too.”

As far as I could tell, the grendel was naked, but my doppelganger had been wearing clothes. My clothes. So that shot down the possibility that you had to be naked for the cloaking device to work. What a relief. If my doppelganger had to be naked to be invisible, and turned off her device in front of anyone at SPI, since she was an exact copy of me, my coworkers would know what I looked like starkers. If that happened, I’d have to resign out of sheer mortification.

“Kenji, for God’s sake, shut down those sirens,” Sandra said. “We know we have a shit storm on our hands; we don’t need sirens telling us. And get rid of those flashing red lights. The damned things are going to give somebody a seizure.”

That was when the lights went out.

All of them.

A few seconds later, the battery-powered emergency lights came on. They were spaced down the hall, leaving some awfully big patches of dark.

Sandra keyed her mike. “Dammit, Kenji, not all the lights. Just the red ones.”

Silence.

Silence so complete that I could hear the buzzing in my ears. I remembered Kenji saying that we were ten stories underground. We were now three stories below that.

Thirteen stories below Lower Manhattan.

In the dark.

With monster toddlers who wanted to eat us. And one massive monster who’d probably eat any and every SPI agent it came across.

“My comms are out, too,” Ian said. “And the air system just went.”

My mind raced for answers. One grendel. One doppelganger that looked like me. Why had they been sent here? Inflicting violence and gruesome death was a given, but against who? The doppelganger now knew SPI like the back of its shapeshifting hand. Was it a guide for the grendel? If so, where was it taking it? The instant that question popped into my head, I knew, or at the very least I had a damned likely theory.

“Tia sent her sister a present,” Ian murmured next to my ear, nearly reading my mind.

“And the spawn are just a distraction,” I said.

“Sandra, we have to get up to the bull pen,” Ian told her. “The grendel’s going after the boss.”

“How do you—”

“I can’t explain. Just trust me. The eggs and spawn are a diversion to get your people and Roy’s away from Vivienne Sagadraco. It’s no coincidence we’re on the far end of the complex from where that grendel came in. It was sent after her. She can fight it as a dragon, but not if she can’t see it. That grendel will tear her to shreds. We’ve got to get Mac up there; she can see it.”

My throat caught in midswallow, so I just nodded.

Everyone at SPI knew that the boss was a dragon, but she probably didn’t want it known that her sister was trying to kill thousands of New Yorkers and tourists, and light a fuse that could start the next world war, this time between humans and supernaturals.

I finished my swallow with an audible gulp.

“Not much we can do to help her with what we have,” Sandra said. “Let’s get up to the armory. I don’t know if grendels can see in the dark, but we’ll assume they can—at least better than us—until they prove otherwise. Since we’re some of the only people left in this place, those spawn’ll follow us. To them, we’re food.” She smiled in a flash of white teeth. “So as of right now, we’re fast food. Move out.”

 • • • 

We entered the black hole that was the stairwell.

With the power out, the only way up was the stairs, and what passed for emergency lights were entirely too dim. Ian had brought extra ammo, but I only had what my gun had, which thanks to the spawn was now empty.

That and our injuries had relegated us to the center of Sandra’s team. Though I knew the real reason. I was the only one who could see the cloaked adult grendel. All the extra ammo in the armory wouldn’t do much good without me to tell them where to shoot. I’d never had to do that before, and I had absolutely no clue how to direct the fire of a commando team to hit something they couldn’t see and that would possibly be attacking a dragon they couldn’t risk hitting.

We’d paused while two of Sandra’s team quickly scouted the next level.

I got as close to Ian as I could without getting in the way of his gun arm. He, like everyone else—except for me—carried their weapons lowered but ready. Since mine was empty, I’d holstered it. And if I’d had any bullets left and needed to shoot anything, I would’ve handed it to someone who could reliably hit a moving target.

“Ian,” I said in the barest whisper. I wasn’t afraid of the grendel spawn hearing us. I didn’t want the team to know what I was about to ask.

“How do I tell them where the grendel and doppelganger are? Nine o’clock, three o’clock, left, right?”

“Whatever’s logical. Short is best.”

Logical? We were running toward a ten-foot monster and my evil twin who knew I could see them—or if they didn’t, they’d be clued in real quick once I started telling people with guns exactly where they were standing. They weren’t going to be happy about that.

I think I conveyed all of the above perfectly with one expression, even in the almost complete dark.

Ian’s silence told me that I’d raised a valid concern. “Stay calm, stay focused, do the best you can,” he eventually said. Then he gave me what he no doubt meant to be an encouraging smile. It wasn’t. “I’ll be there with you to watch your back while you protect the boss’s front.”

Not long ago, I’d been chomping at the bit to find me and kick my ass. Now I wasn’t so eager. My doppelganger could do more than kick my ass, and she’d brought the grendel that’d gutted Adam Falke to help her do it. I had no doubt whose name came after the boss’s on today’s to-gut list.

I gave Ian a terse nod that conveyed a lot more confidence than I felt.

Ian smiled grimly and held his fist out.

I sighed, made a fist of my own, and bumped it with as much bravado as I could muster, which wasn’t nearly enough to do what I had to do.

The scouts reported the all clear, and we continued our climb.

 • • • 

We got to the armory on the main level without being attacked by the grendel spawn. Not a one of us trusted it. If we didn’t get ambushed now, it probably just meant the little critters had something more fun in mind.

Sandra had half of her team stand guard while the others geared up. Ian ran to a big metal locker and started ransacking it for whatever he was looking for. When he found it, he threw it at me, and I caught it with my face.

Pants. Better than that, dry pants. With both legs intact.

Ian followed it with a thick pullover shirt that I managed to catch with my hands.

They were both black, the pants had lots of pockets, and the shirt was padded.

“You’re not accessorizing them,” Ian said. “Just put them on. Quick.”

I glanced around. We were in one, big room.