Roy indicated the shaft at our feet. “If those eggs are down there, we’ve got our likely access point. But we’re running a camera down first.” Roy popped open a pouch on his utility belt, taking out what looked like a drain snake with a knob on the end.
I shot a quick glance at the door. “Do we have time to—”
“We sure as hell don’t have time to lose our seer down a hole in the ground,” Roy said. “I ain’t going back to the dragon lady with that story.”
He unwound and lowered the camera into the hole, using the same viewer he had for the GPS. I looked around his arm. The sides of the hole were rough as if they’d been scooped out by a hand, a big hand, one that had even larger claws. It reminded me of a burrow.
Rolf stuck his head through the doorway. “Still no ghouls, no grendel, and no Lars.”
Roy nodded absently, eyes intent on the camera screen. “The shaft’s clear down to fifty feet. It goes farther, but our cable doesn’t.”
Everyone looked at me again.
“Can’t we just toss down a pair of grenades?” Rolf asked.
Roy shook his head. “Not until we know for sure the eggs are down there. No disrespect to Yasha’s sniffer, but we need a confirmed kill.”
Meaning I was going down. Hopefully just in the spelunking sense rather than that of impending doom.
“No grendel could’ve dug that,” Rolf said. “It’s too small.”
“I’ve seen this before,” Roy said. “It’s ghoul work. They’re like rats; there’s nothing they can’t fit through. Damned things just flatten out and squirm their way in.”
“Ghoul nannies protecting the babies,” I muttered. I leaned over and peered into the hole. “From the looks of things, I’ll fit, but my armor won’t.” I took a deep breath. Down a pitch-black hole in the depths of subterranean Manhattan was the last place I wanted to go, but there was no other option. “Ian, get me out of this; we’re wasting time.”
My partner’s hand gripped my arm. “Roy, I need a minute.”
“Make it a fast one.”
Ian’s hand slid down from my upper arm and took my hand in his and pulled me away from the others and went to the corner of the bunker.
I beat him to whatever he was going to say. “No.”
“No, what?”
“Whatever you’re going to say. Save it. I have to go. You heard Roy; he needs a confirmed kill. So I go, confirm they’re down there, you guys pull me back up, Rolf chucks in a couple grenades. Boom. Besides, there could be a veil over those eggs. No one else would be able to see them. I’m just taking a peek and getting the hell out.”
His hand squeezed mine through my glove. “If you hear, see, or smell anything alive down there, you say the word and we’ll have you out of there so fast you’ll—”
“To quote Rolf: ‘Would a girly scream work?’”
He smiled. “I’ll take anything.”
He and Yasha helped me out of my armor, and into a rappelling harness. I got to keep my helmet with the light.
“Uh, I’ve never rappelled.”
Roy grinned. “You ain’t rappelling. We’re dropping; you’re hanging on.”
“I can do that.”
Ian picked up my shoulder harness with my real gun and knife, and held it up for me to slip on. I did and he adjusted the harness so that it’d fit just me rather than over me plus my armor.
I met his eyes. His were grimly resigned, mine were questioning.
“If you need them, use them,” he told me.
“They’d work even better than a girly scream.”
“Damn straight.” Ian tapped the top of my helmet. “Use your night vision until you get a look at what’s down there. Don’t let anything know you’re there unless you have to.”
Roy chipped at the wall nearest the pit with a gloved finger; bits of concrete flaked off. “Wall’s not strong enough to hold even your little bit of weight.”
“I’ll anchor,” Ian told him.
Roy nodded. “I’ll pitch in. Calvin, you, too. No insult, son,” he told Ian.
“None taken.”
I was in black fatigues, combat boots, and Under Armour tank top. At least I got to keep my helmet with its ghoul-retina–frying light.
I tried a grin; it probably looked like a grimace. “Sigourney, eat your heart out,” I muttered to myself.
“When you tell us to pull you up, tuck your upper arms to your sides and cross your forearms and hands tight against your chest, like this.” Ian demonstrated, and I mirrored his action. He nodded. “Good. We’ll be pulling you out of there fast, and I don’t want to leave your skin on the walls on the way up.”
I sat down on the rim of the hole with my lower legs dangling over the edge. I looked up. “You guys got me?”
“We’re not letting go,” Ian assured me.
They lowered me over the side, my weight entirely supported by three of the men I trusted most. That was the only thing I felt confident about.
As soon as my head dropped below the surface, I pressed my lips together against the whimpers that desperately wanted to get out—almost as desperately as I wanted to get out of this hole. I was determined not to lose it. If I did, the entire team would be listening while I did. I jumped over terror straight into petrified. I tried to tell myself it was like one of those water park slides, but I’d never liked the thought of going down one of those, either.
I had a comm link in my ear and a helmet and high-beam flashlight on my head, so I wasn’t alone and I had light if I needed it. Scrapes were unavoidable, and twice I almost got stuck. I felt blood on my shoulders and upper arms. Blood that anything below me could smell like circling sharks.
I was chum on a rope.
What was probably minutes seemed like an eternity. I felt like I was being lowered down a monster’s throat, a monster that was going to swallow and gulp me down at any moment. I watched my descent by tucking my chin down to my chest and looking under my arm, while clutching the rope with both hands. At first I didn’t see anything but a whole heap of dark, then it started to lighten ever so slightly. I turned off my night vision, and let my eyes adjust. It was definitely lighter. Dim, but getting brighter as I descended. A light in a hole in the ground? I wasn’t opposed to light, just suspicious until I knew what was making it and why. Being lowered down what was basically a packed dirt shaft was disorienting, so I couldn’t begin to guess how far down the light was. Suddenly I stopped moving.
End of the line. Literally.
The rope couldn’t go any farther, but I had to.
“Guys,” I whispered into my comms. “I need another . . .” I looked down again and made my best guess. “Twenty feet of rope.”
Silence.
I started to panic. “Hello?”
“Sit tight,” Ian said. “We’re rigging it up.”
Soon I started moving again. About a minute after that, my feet touched the bottom of the shaft, and a small tunnel branched off to the right. As best I could figure, the shaft had gone straight down, with the tunnel branching off the bottom of it like the letter L.
I squatted, and ducked my head down as far as I could, trying to peek out. It looked like some kind of room, size unknown. Contents even more unknown. The glow was coming from there, but it wasn’t bright enough for me to see eggs, ghouls, or anything else that might be waiting for me—or waiting for anything warm-blooded and presumed tasty.
After much squirming and wiggling, I got myself turned around, head facing toward the light. Lying flat on my stomach, and using my hands and forearms, I pulled myself forward. I reached the end of the short tunnel, and was getting ready to take a look at what was beyond, when the dirt directly under my front half gave way, dumping me out face-first on a hard floor; fortunately it was only a few feet down, but it was far enough to knock the air out of me.
I must have made an “oof” sound, because the next thing I heard was Ian’s concerned voice as if from far away. “Mac! Mac, can you hear—”
I pulled in some air and grunted as I rolled over on my side. “Yeah.” I winced at the pain in my side. “I hear you. That last step was a dooz—”
I froze.
I was face-to-face with a pile of about-to-hatch grendel eggs. The light in the room came from a pair of Coleman camp lanterns, which shone right through the thin egg casings, showing me what was inside each and every one.
Squirming grendel spawn.
They must have sensed me. Their tiny scythe-tipped fingers clawed at the interior of their eggs. Holy crap, I could hear the things chittering from inside. The grendels in nearby eggs took up the cry, tiny razors clawing at the shells of their eggs.
Muffled sounds of an entirely different kind came from directly overhead. I bit my bottom lip against a scream, and crab-crawled backward until I smacked up against the dirt wall.
Those two lanterns lit up the last thing I expected to see.
Ollie Barrington-Smythe gagged, hog-tied, and hanging suspended over the eggs like an edible crib mobile.
25
ALL I could do was stare in dumbfounded amazement.
When you’re faced with more than your brain can process, you freeze up, probably to keep your body from doing something monumentally stupid while your brain’s otherwise occupied. That was my theory. My fervent hope was that when my brain got past its deer-in-headlights moment, it’d send my body the signal to move.
I really wanted to move. I was nose to eggs with a mound of grendels; all of our mouths were open—mine in shock, the monsters’ in hungry and hissing anticipation. I was probably only frozen there for a few seconds, but that would have been plenty enough time for anything that might’ve been in that room with us to kill and eat me if it was so inclined. Fortunately, the only things inclined were still trapped inside their eggs. Unfortunately, I had no clue how long they’d stay that way.
Remember that scene in Jurassic Park in the dinosaur nursery with the hatching velociraptor eggs? Such cute little sounds had come out of their tiny toothless mouths. Believe me, there was nothing cute or toothless about a nearly hatched grendel.
