It looked like . . .
It couldn’t be.
A baby grendel.
I opened my mouth, to shout, to scream, but nothing came out, not even a whimper.
The grendel’s eyes focused on us and it hissed, a hood of folded skin flaring around its neck.
Ian shot at the slick face. The grendel was gone before the bullet got there. Simultaneous attacks came from the open air vent and the sound of claws on metal scrambled by inside the ductwork directly overhead. I was sure that every last one of them would star in my next nightmare, if I lived long enough to have another one.
Ian reached out, prepared to throw me toward the door, but I was already running.
We escaped into the hall, and Ian slammed the reinforced steel door.
I was all but jumping in place. “Lock it! Lock it!”
Ian spat a curse. “The dead bolt’s been broken off.”
I desperately looked around for something to block the door with. There was nothing, absolutely nothing in that hall that would do us any good.
The door handle began to rotate downward.
On the other side of the door came the scrabbling of claws on concrete—a lot of claws.
Ian and I stared.
Then we ran like hell.
The male and female grendels had been busy since they’d arrived in town, and they hadn’t been seeing the sights. My doppelganger had brought grendel eggs in that bowling bag.
“Kenji, we’ve got grendels,” Ian was shouting into his headset. “Repeat, grendels. Little ones, spawn. Unknown number. Eggs were in the HVAC vents, and the sons of bitches are fast. We’re in the hall coming away from—”
Ian skidded to a halt and I plowed into him from behind. Then I saw why he’d stopped.
Countless glowing yellow eyes, and the baby monsters they belonged to, were completely blocking our only way out.
Ian raised his gun, his voice low and steady. “Mac, get your gun, pick your targets, and go for head shots.”
I swallowed, and drew my gun. My hand was shaking so badly I almost dropped it. I gripped it tighter. Ian saw.
“Relax your grip and your shoulders. Pull the trigger on the exhale. You can do this.”
Agent Ian Byrne. Poster child for calm.
Me. Poster child for panic.
I heard clicking behind us. I spun, going back-to-back with Ian, gun leveled.
Four grendels had stopped about twenty feet away, watching us, chittering amongst themselves.
“Four behind us,” I managed.
“Okay. I’ll take these. Those are yours.”
As if by unspoken signal, the grendels rushed us.
I only got off one shot before the first grendel reached me.
A clawed hand clutched my ankle, latching onto my boot, trying to pull itself up. I stomped on the hand, and fired at another grendel skittering across the floor at me. It squealed as a spray of pink erupted from its side, but kept coming, its eyes brightly glowing like sunstruck flame, eyes shining with a single-minded hunger.
Squealing, hissing, eyes gleaming with a yellow light. I fired at every last one of them. I could’ve sworn my shots were on target, but the spawn were fast. Too fast.
A grendel latched onto my leg, above my boot, its claws raking their way up my leg through my jeans, hooking into my skin. I wanted to scream, but the only sounds I could make were choked gasps, as if the thing was clutching my throat, not my thigh. It was that high now, and coming faster toward my face. It got a grip on my belt and launched itself onto my shoulder, the throbbing pulse in my neck within reach of its jagged, razor-sharp teeth, teeth that were clicking together in eager anticipation.
My right hand was slick with blood and my gun slipped out of my grip and landed on the floor. I grabbed the grendel with both hands, trying to keep it away from my face, its squirming body cold and slick in my hands. I held it out away from me as it twisted and wriggled to get at me. I gripped it tighter. It squealed. So did I.
It took both of my hands and all of my strength just to hold on to the thing. I wanted to kill it. I needed to kill it, but if I let go, just with one hand, even for an instant, the grendel would be at my throat, claws and the barbed spurs that curved from its bony heels slicing me to ribbons.
If I was lucky, I’d bleed to death before the whole pack started to eat me.
I didn’t dare turn to check on Ian, but gunfire and squealing grendels told me he was at least holding his own.
Which was better than I was doing.
I threw the grendel, slamming it into the wall. Not even dazed, it clung there, defying gravity and then physics as it scampered up the wall and across the ceiling like a freaking gecko, launching itself again at my face with chittering glee.
It exploded in a single bullet-induced spray of pink mere inches from my face.
Ian.
Ian had looked away from the grendels attacking him to help me. It was the opening the things had been waiting for.
They swarmed him.
Then I saw it. Recessed in the wall was one of those fire hose boxes—with an ax.
I scrabbled and stumbled toward it, clawing desperately to get the glass door open, my hands fumbling at the handle. I got it open and pulled at the ax.
It was latched to the back wall of the case.
I screamed in terror and frustration.
A grendel dropped from the ceiling onto my shoulders, and I fell forward into the coiled fire hose. The whole thing came loose, wrapping me in hose. The nozzle came free last, hitting me in the head. I grabbed at the nozzle and the grendel that was holding on to both it and me.
And somehow I turned on the water.
Instantly a blast as big as my arm shot from the end of that nozzle, the water pressure slamming the grendel that’d been holding on to it into the far wall. The hose whipped around me like I was wrestling the world’s biggest snake, knocking me to the floor, sending the spray to the ceiling, walls, and floor. I held on to the nozzle for dear life, and aimed it directly at the grendels swarming Ian.
The water blasted the grendels and sent them rolling down the hall, end over end. Then as quick as they’d come, they vanished.
I loosened my grip on the nozzle, releasing the lever that I’d been holding down, and the hose slowly deflated. I was sprawled in the middle of the hall, soaked to the skin, teeth chattering, and gasping for what air I could find. I still clutched the nozzle in a double-fisted, white-knuckled grip. Ian climbed to his feet and staggered over to me, dripping blood from multiple wounds, and dropped into the puddle by my side.
“Nice shootin’, Annie Oakley.”
I tried to suck in enough air to make words. I finally just gave up and nodded.
Sandra Niles and her team came charging down the hall, guns held at the ready.
Ian stood. I staggered to my feet.
Sandra’s sharp, dark eyes were taking in everything at once. “Where are they?”
For all that, there were only two dead grendels on the wet floor. That meant there were at least nine others in the complex. Though if my doppelganger had Tarbert’s device, there was no telling how many eggs she’d brought in.
SPI headquarters had been turned into a monster nursery.
17
“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.
