A garage-door-sized section of the wall rolled up. Beyond was the combat teams’ briefing and staging area. SPI commanders Roy Benoit and Sandra Niles came out into the parking area along with their teams. They’d already fought round one of the battle. Two hadn’t survived, and others had been injured, but they were all here. The New Yorkers and Vikings stepped up to greet each other—but mainly to size up the competition.
“I love the smell of animosity in the morning,” Ian murmured.
One of the Scandinavians, who was slightly older than the others, crossed the parking area floor to meet Vivienne Sagadraco. They exchanged handshakes and did that double-cheek-kissing thing then spoke in low tones. Judging from the Scandinavian director’s serious scowling, he was getting the expanded version of our rapidly growing problem. At one point, the man turned his head and looked directly at me, and his eyes narrowed appraisingly. Seems I’d just been introduced as the agency seer and self-appointed painter of monsters. Without further expression, his attention went back to the boss, leaving me with no idea if he approved of what he’d seen, though I suspect he was less than impressed. I had that effect on people. His blond hair wasn’t long, but it wasn’t buzz-cut short, either. His beard was neatly trimmed. He looked fit, but not in a brawny way. He was the shortest among the Scandinavians, but he towered over Vivienne Sagadraco. Though mere hours ago, she would’ve towered over every last one of them combined.
“Director Lars Anderssen, I presume?”
“In the flesh,” Ian confirmed. “Good man. Knows his business. I’m going to assume that he wouldn’t have brought those men and women with him unless they knew the same. Considering our situation, I’m going to be very disappointed if any of them prove me wrong.”
The boss lady and Anderssen handled the team leader introductions, and our people helped the visiting team get their gear inside. The briefing room had chairs lined up in rows with a table, screen, and whiteboard at the front of the room. Everyone quickly found a seat.
“Based on the data from the DNA samples we were able to provide from the claw and lock of hair,” Vivienne Sagadraco told us, “Director Anderssen’s science team in Oslo has narrowed the age of our two grendels to less than a hundred years old, which confirms that they are of prime mating age, and were probably selected by our adversary because they are a breeding pair.”
I wondered if she had told Lars Anderssen who the adversary was. Regardless, she still wasn’t sharing that information with anyone else.
Anderssen stepped forward. “The way in which the first victim, the goblin Kanil Ghevari, was killed and the relative absence of blood found at the scene, suggests that the attack was by the female. Female grendels must consume blood for weeks after spawning to replenish their strength; and as they are large creatures—larger than the males—they require an equally great quantity.”
Holy crap. I turned to Ian. “Larger?” I mouthed.
Then with dawning horror, I recalled the photos in the folder from Kanil Ghevari’s autopsy. There’d been teeth marks around the stub of the goblin’s remaining arm. The female grendel must have used it like a straw and drained him like a freaking juice box.
Sandra half raised her hand. “Director Anderssen, how many eggs are we talking about?”
“Anywhere from twenty to thirty eggs—in each clutch.”
Silence.
Roy Benoit swore. “There’s more than one clutch?”
“Grendels lay three clutches of eggs over the course of three days, with one clutch expelled every twenty-four hours. The incubation period is approximately forty days.”
Several of our experienced people began to mutter. Roy softly swore again. I completely agreed with his word choice. The doppelganger had put the grendel eggs in the air duct a day before they’d hatched into armored killing machines. Nothing had any right to grow that fast and be that deadly mere hours out of the egg.
“Twenty plus thirty equals bloodbath in Times Square,” Ian murmured.
“As each clutch hatches, the parents move the spawn to a section of the nest cave where they’ve been stockpiling food,” Anderssen continued. “The food usually keeps the hatchlings from eating their brothers and sisters that are still in their eggs. If there’s enough food, everyone lives. If there’s not enough, that’d be good news for us and we could be looking at a much smaller problem—quite literally, as grendel growth rates are dependent on their food intake. More food available equals maximum growth potential. However, I can’t see anyone going to all the trouble to import a pregnant grendel, and not ensure there’d be plenty of food for everyone.”
“Preferred food?” one of our people asked.
“Humans,” Anderssen said. “With our female being less than a hundred years old, this could very well be her first nesting. If so, the first clutch will be smaller in quantity, with more eggs being laid in the second clutch, and the greatest number coming in the third.” The Norwegian inclined his head in the boss’s direction. “I understand from Director Sagadraco that part of a clutch had been planted here and hatched, but has been eradicated. Also, the male gained access to the complex, but was injured and escaped. Unfortunately for us, these creatures’ rate of healing is as prodigious as their strength. The male should be fully regenerated by the next time we encounter him.”
“And really pissed,” Yasha muttered.
That earned some chuckles.
“Can you tell which clutch we’re dealing with by examining the eggshells and remains?” Sagadraco asked.
“My science officer can,” Anderssen replied with a nod to the long-braided Valkyrie type. “You kept both?” he asked the boss.
“Naturally.”
“Not refrigerated?”
Sagadraco shook her head once. “Contained in a triple-thick kill bag to contain the blood and scent.” She reached down to the floor behind the table, and using only one hand, lifted and plopped an honest-to-God body bag on the table. Apparently grendels weren’t the only supernaturals who healed quickly.
The Scandinavian science officer extracted some latex gloves from her pack, and snapped them on before unzipping the body bag. She studied the contents, and then carefully shifted through the bits and pieces.
The bag had done a fine job of stifling the stink—until it was opened. I was glad we’d chosen to sit toward the back of the room.
“These spawn were approximately twelve hours old when they were killed,” the science officer said. “Apparently these specimens lacked sufficient food; they should be larger than this.”
Ian and I exchanged glances. We were the “sufficient food” the grendel toddlers had lacked.
“They appear to have been dead a little less than eight hours.” The blonde lifted one of the eggs out of the bag. It was brown and leathery looking, and the shell, if you could even call it that, appeared to have been torn from the inside rather than cracked and broken.
“These are definitely from the first clutch,” she said. “The shells from subsequent batches will be softer, and quicker to lay.” She held one of the more or less intact bodies in her hands. I tensed. The thing’s yellow eyes were open and it didn’t look dead to me. “Had this one survived, it would have been three-quarters the size of its parents by this time tomorrow.”
The Scandinavians didn’t react. We Americans sat in stunned silence.
“Which means we have bad news and not-so-bad news,” Anderssen said. “The second clutch has likely already hatched, and is feeding and growing, but the third clutch is still in their eggs.”
“After hatching,” the science officer continued, “the young must feed at least every two hours. Should their food source be plentiful, the young ones can easily grow to adult size within forty-eight hours, but with five times their appetite during that time. As to possible locations of the nests, the parents would want their young to have quick and easy access to a food source. However, they would also want their nests to be in a perpetually dark and warm place. They also cover their nests in whatever organic matter is available.”
Roy snorted. “There’s plenty of organic matter where we’re headed. It’s like a swamp down there.”
Anderssen nodded. “The spawn will feed on what they can find in the sewers then quickly be drawn by the scent and noise of prey to the surface. The eggs themselves aren’t easy to destroy. A flamethrower can do the job. Or exposure to concentrated acid.”
“Since our adversary is so confident of her success,” Vivienne Sagadraco said, “we can assume that the nest has been well hidden or veiled from sight—and that they are being heavily guarded.”
“She?” Roy asked.
“We have recently discovered that our adversary is a woman.”
“Pack it up, boys and girls,” Roy drawled. “We’re screwed.”
That earned a couple of snorts.
“Our adversary has much at stake,” the boss continued. “For her, the show starts at midnight on New Year’s Eve.” She paused. “That’s tonight. If there are additional killings today, the city still has time to cancel the celebrations. She cannot afford that. She has gone to too much trouble to let the grendels disrupt her timetable. Regardless of the actual scenario we are faced with, we will accomplish nothing and fail the citizens of this city—human and supernatural—if we do not find the grendels and their spawn and eliminate them before they make their presence even more known to the public.”
I wondered if Vivienne Sagadraco would be sharing the whole story with Lars Anderssen. Though as Ian would no doubt say, it didn’t change the mission: go, find, kill.
The boss nodded and an agent who I could have sworn hadn’t been there moments before opened a door on the other side of the room, and a familiar aroma wafted through. In anticipation of what was to come, my mouth curled upward in a smile of pure bliss. Our two monster hunter teams wore the same expressions. The Scandinavians sniffed the air and nodded approvingly.
