by Sam Subity
“It’s simple, really,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for the right moment to extend you an invitation. You see, I’ve been looking for someone with your unique qualities for ages. I hope you didn’t mind my little game that brought us here together like this. But I thought my journal might prove an excellent test of whether I’d finally found the right individual.”
“Wait.” Gwynn spoke up. “The journal? That was yours?”
I reached back and retrieved it from my backpack. The final rune flashed white-hot before settling into a deep red color. Then the entire journal started to crumble apart and fall like ashes through my fingers.
“I’m happy to report,” he said, “that you passed with flying colors.”
I looked up from the remains of the journal on the ground and narrowed my eyes. “Wh-who are you?”
He stared at me intently. I thought I saw a weird sort of reptilian cast to his eyes and then it was gone. Then the raspy voice again, slow and soft: “You know. Deep down in yourself, you know.”
That’s when I had a second revelation. This wasn’t the first time I’d heard his voice. It was the same voice I’d heard whisper from the shadows outside my kitchen in North Carolina when all this started. And with that memory returned the same feeling of utter dread. The certainty that death itself was reaching for me. Grasping. I fought to push back the darkness that threatened around the fringes of my vision. My head swam.
“You’re a … you’re a …” My brain wouldn’t let my mouth complete the thought.
Gwynn stepped in front of me protectively and finished for me. “A Grendel.”
Without looking at her, he said, “Some have called me that.” He studied my reaction. “Are you surprised, Abby? Not what you were expecting, am I? How do the stories describe us? Misshapen, hideous creatures with fangs and scales? All lies. Lies to make them feel better about themselves. Why? Because it is so much easier to hate something that is nothing like you. To detest what you do not understand. But after all these years, I am no longer interested in labels and words. I am only interested in stopping this senseless cycle. I grow weary of the battle.”
I moved forward to stand beside Gwynn. Even with a voice that sounded like it came from beyond the grave, the Grendel’s words were oddly compelling. Almost … hypnotic. I found myself wanting to believe that maybe we’d been wrong. And that maybe there was another way out of all this. “So what is this invitation you mentioned?”
“Don’t listen to him, Abby,” Gwynn said, grabbing my arm. “You can’t trust him!”
Her hand on my arm was like a splash of cold water, waking me from a dream. I looked down at her hand, then back at the Grendel, now wary of the siren-like lure of his voice. He continued to ignore her and keep his gaze on me.
“Merely this,” he said. “To join me. Like many others have. In fact, it is the same invitation I gave to your mother.”
My chest tightened. “My mom? What do you mean? She … was working with you?”
He coughed again and lifted the rat from his shoulder, setting it down on the ground, where it scurried out of sight. “She was indeed. And for that she was labeled a traitor. Her legacy tarnished. But you can change that. You can set the record straight.”
I was momentarily breathless with shock. My mom working with a Grendel? “I … can’t believe that. How could she possibly work with you? Her sworn enemy?”
But then, there was her whole secret life at Vale that she’d never told me anything about, and it didn’t seem quite as hard to believe. Was there a chance he could be telling the truth?
A tremor ran through the ground, like the earth was shifting. There was a low rumbling noise, and I looked up warily at the ceiling.
“Oh, I think you’ll find that adults are full of secrets,” he said. “Secrets that accumulate over a lifetime like barnacles on the hull of a ship, slowly multiplying out of sight just below the water’s surface. In fact, do you want to know a little secret about the Grey Council? Doc … as you know him?” He said the name with derision.
I shifted my gaze from the ceiling back to his face. The candlelight flickered over his features, giving him a frighteningly sinister look despite the gentle face and jumpsuit that he was still wearing with “Glen” stitched on the front pocket.
He smiled. “They didn’t bring you to Vale for your protection. No, you were brought here as one thing.” He paused, then spat out the word: “Bait.”
He watched my face as I processed this information. This was all happening too fast. I felt something brush past my foot and jerked it back in surprise, but when I looked down, the only thing there was a thin tendril of vapor.
“You see,” he continued. When I looked up, he’d taken a step toward us. I automatically took a couple of steps backward.
“The problem is that Vale is full of rats. Enemies that surround the Vikings and even now close in from all quarters. And how do you draw out the rats?” He inclined his head toward me. “You bring in some cheese. The one thing the rats want most of all: you.”
The sick feeling was back in my stomach.
“N-no. Doc wouldn’t lie to me.”
“Oh no? Surely he told you, then, that I cannot be defeated? That my flesh is impervious to harm from mere iron or steel?”
“Well, no, not exactly …” I said.
“Surely he told you that our fates—yours and mine—are inextricably intertwined?” As he talked, he pulled a loose thread from the hem of his sleeve. “That as the strength of the Aesir wanes, my own grows stronger? That, in fact, the fate of the Aesir now hangs by a single thread.” He held the thread in front of him. “One. Little. Girl.” With a sharp yank, he tore the thread in half and let it fall to the floor.
“I … I …” I staggered backward, suddenly feeling dizzy as the stakes hit me with such stark brutality. So it was true. The Aesir had been hunted down. Eliminated. And now he was going to kill me too. Unless I joined him.
“Join me now and together we will reunite the thread that was severed so long ago. This is what your mother truly wanted.”
Mother. I clung to that one word like an immovable stone in the hurricane that swirled inside me. I knew in my heart that she had loved me with her entire self. That whatever secrets she may have kept from me must have been because she was trying to protect me. But was there any way she could have had a secret like this? That she had partnered with a Grendel? Any way at all? Any …
“No,” I said in barely a whisper.
The Grendel tilted his head slightly. “What did you say?”
“NO!” I shouted. “I don’t believe you. And I won’t join you.”
As my words echoed through the underground chamber, I silently prepared for whatever would come next. If he wanted to kill me, then he would get a fight like … Hold on. A thought had struck me, and I clung to it like a final hope.
“And anyway, you were wrong. I’m not … an Aesir.” There. I finally said it. Finally admitted what I’d known in my heart already for so long.
The Grendel stared hard at me, as if peering all the way into my soul. Was he going to let me live? Even if I failed to stop him now, we still had the svefnthorn. We could escape somehow. Could still save my dad. All wasn’t lost yet.
A smile slowly spread across his face. “Then killing you should be even easier than I expected.” And he stepped toward us.
Gwynn and I scrambled backward, searching frantically for a way out. A weapon. Anything to save us from becoming the Grendel’s next victims. Then, for the first time, I noticed a strange heat in my back pocket. I slid my hand into it, and my fingers closed around the spoon my mom had made. It was surprisingly warm to the touch. What? I heard Fenris’s words in my mind: Give me the weapon. If it was some sort of weapon, then this was the moment of truth.
I closed my eyes and yanked the spoon out of my pocket, thrusting it in a trembling fist toward the Grendel. For a few seconds, nothing happened.
“Abby, look!” Gwynn shouted.
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There was a sudden hiss from the Grendel’s direction. My eyes snapped open to see him cringe away from the spoon like it was a deadly weapon. I looked from him to the utensil in my hand and back again. That’s when I noticed that if the light hit the spoon at just the right angle, its form seemed to shift. Like it wasn’t just a spoon, but something much larger and more dangerous. Its shape flickered between a spoon and … a Viking battle-ax.
In that instant, all the pieces seemed to collide in my head with a flash of comprehension. The holograms. My mom’s work on the virtual reality chamber. The discovery Doc mentioned. No one ever found out what the discovery was because she’d disguised it as a simple kitchen utensil.
My hands tightened around the ax handle as its warmth seemed to flood through me, burning away my doubts and fear. “My mom,” I said to the Grendel. “She was able to re-create the process the ancients used to forge iron. That’s why you didn’t kill me back in North Carolina. Because you needed my help. To find this.” I thrust the spoon-ax toward him. “The one way to kill—a Grendel.”
His reaction was all I needed to show me I was right. He shrieked, his once-gentle face transforming into a mask of anger. Then, all pretense gone, he whipped his mop out of the bucket. With a flick of his wrists, the mop end spun off to reveal a wickedly sharp spear.
“You had your chance to join me,” he said. “Now I am afraid I am done negotiating.”
He hurled the spear, and in the same moment Gwynn crashed into me from the side, shoving me behind one of the limestone columns. I heard her grunt, then the sound of the spear clattering against the floor. I pressed my back against the rock column, heart pounding.
Gwynn sank against the column with her hand clamped over her arm.
I shot a quick look around the other side of the column, then looked down at her arm. “What happened? The spear … It hit you!”
She winced. “It’s nothing. I’ll be okay. But we need to get out of here. Now.”
Even as I started to protest, I knew she was right. We had the ax, but the Grendel was too quick. And Gwynn was already hurt. Then I remembered … “Okay, but we’ve got a problem.” I pointed. “Grimsby.”
She followed my gaze to where our friend lay halfway across the cavern, crumpled on the floor. “He’s not moving. The poison must have finally knocked him out.”
I spotted a collection of mops, buckets, and other cleaning equipment to one side of the room. I guessed this was where the Grendel stored his supplies for when he wasn’t being, well, a Grendel. Among these were a pair of wheeled trash cans that looked like they had seen better days. That gave me an idea.
“See if you can get Grimsby into one of those,” I said. “Then try to find another way out. I’ll keep the Grendel busy.”
“How? You can’t—”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got this.” I think.
Gwynn nodded. “Okay, but be careful. We don’t know what he’ll do. He’s still in here somewhere.” She rose unsteadily, then took a deep breath.
“Be safe,” we said at the same time.
She smiled. “Jinx. You can buy me a Coke when this is all over.” Then she turned and sprinted across the chamber.
I looked down at the weapon in my hand. Somehow now that I understood what it was, I could hold and use it like a real ax. It was up to me. This was the one moment I’d been training for my whole life. I flexed my fingers on the ax handle, counted to three, and spun away from the column to the last place we’d seen the Grendel.
Only the flicker of shadows filled the space where he’d just been. The strange vapor I’d seen earlier seemed to be getting thicker, curling lazily around the floor of the chamber.
“Yes, your mother had the chance to join me.” The Grendel’s eerie voice came from behind me.
I whirled. Nothing. I stood listening to the echo of his words fade into silence. Limestone columns stretched out in every direction into darkness. Each column’s shadow danced tauntingly in the flickering candlelight, making it impossible to detect a real threat.
“But she chose violence. So I gave her … violence.” Again behind me, but for a second time I spun only to find empty air and echoes. Violence … violence …
I turned in a slow circle on the balls of my feet with my ax raised, ready to spring. Expecting an ambush at any second.
“And now you will suffer the same fate as your mother.” Your mother … mother … mother …
“What do you mean?” I called. Where was he? I had to keep him talking long enough to find out. I started moving across the cavern, trying to draw him away from Gwynn and Grimsby.
“Oh, my. Do you not remember how she really died?”
There was another bump against my foot, but my eyes flicked downward to see only vapor there. I kept moving.
“She perished protecting you. But look what that got her. Nothing.”
I froze, feeling like I’d been clubbed in the gut by a knattleikr stick. My mom had died in a fire. The same one that I’d somehow miraculously survived. But that fateful day was a blank in my mind. Was there more to the story?
“No, I can see you didn’t know. Interesting. Your father was very clever. He hid you well. I guessed that poisoning him would be the best way to motivate you to help me in my own quest.”
“So Fenris was working for you!” I shouted.
A disembodied cackle echoed around me. “Alas, it did not go exactly as I’d planned, but in the end I think it worked out even better than I’d hoped. After all, you hand delivered your mother’s weapon to me. However, if you perish now … your mother. Your father. Their deaths will have been meaningless. All three of your lives. Meaningless.” Meaningless … meaningless …
His voice seemed to come from all around me now. I could feel a slow rage building in my chest. I was done with this game. “Show yourself!” I shouted.
My words rang off the limestone columns.
Silence.
No, not complete silence. From somewhere came a low sort of whispering noise that made the hairs on the back of my neck tingle. What was that?
Just then something slammed into me from the side. I recognized the trash can as it toppled to the floor with a loud clatter. The blow knocked me backward into a nearby stone column. My breath exploded from my lungs with the impact.
In the same instant, a figure leapt at me out of the shadows. I put my hands up in surprise and tried a desperate swing with the ax. But strong hands locked around my wrists.
The Grendel pressed me backward into the column of rock, his face drawing so close to mine that I could smell his rancid breath. At this distance, I could see that his pupils were little reptilian slits. I tried to work one hand free to swing the ax at him. But instead he slammed my fist against the column so hard that small bits of rock dislodged and fell to the ground. Again and again. But I held on. Because I knew that if I let go, I was dead.
But he was too strong for me. And in that moment, with the Grendel slowly closing his grasp on me, I realized one thing with an aching certainty: I had lost. A parade of faces flashed before my eyes. My parents. Grimsby. Gwynn. Doc. All bearing witness to my lifetime of failure, culminating now in my ultimate failure to stand in the way of this evil that wanted to overwhelm us all. As my muscles strained against the crushing force of the Grendel’s arms, tears sprang to my eyes, even as I pressed them tightly closed.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry …”
The Grendel hissed, his raspy laugh mere inches from my face. “It’s too late for that now. Now you can die just like your mother: pleading for your life. Just like she begged for yours.”
Another image took form in my head. A room lit only by a small lamp. Me tucked in bed, my mom sitting beside me reading the story of Beowulf’s defeat of the Grendel: “ ‘Against Beowulf the demon stretched his claw; and swiftly Beowulf laid hold on it. Straightaway that master of evil deeds perceived that never had he met within this world in earth’s four corners on any
other man a mightier grip of hand.’ ”
As my mom’s words echoed in my head, deep down inside myself I felt a change. Years of emotions—fear, anger, sadness, frustration—combined into a pinpoint of energy.
Through clenched teeth, I said the next line of the story out loud: “ ‘In heart and soul … the Grendel. Grew. Afraid.’ ”
My eyes snapped open.
“AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
I screamed and threw him backward, feeling the pinpoint of energy explode through my limbs in a shock wave. In the same motion I slashed across his body with the ax.
He cried out and crashed to the cavern floor ten feet away, wheezing and snarling. A deep red slash oozed across his shoulder. His arm hung limply at his side. His eyes shot downward, then back at me in disbelief. “No. Noooo. How?”
I stood there panting, looking down at him, then at my hands in awe, wondering where that burst of energy had come from. The ax rapidly became white-hot. Too hot to hold. I dropped it to the ground, where it started to sizzle and dissolve from the Grendel’s blood, just like in the Beowulf legend.
Crrraaack!
The nearest column snapped in half and crumbled to the floor.
“Abby!”
I turned my head and spotted Gwynn about twenty yards away, struggling to scoop the limp form of Grimsby into the trash can with her injured arm.
Then a glint caught the corner of my eye. When I looked toward it, my heart sank. The svefnthorn bloom was lying there on the cavern floor. Grimsby must have dropped it. I was such an idiot. I should have held on to it myself. And then I realized that even in this moment of triumph, I had managed to fail.
There was an ominous rumble from the ceiling again. This time little chunks of rock dislodged as the whole thing shivered like gray pudding.
I heard a noise from the Grendel and spun back toward him, both hands reaching for my ax until I remembered I no longer had it.
But he still lay on the ground, alternately laughing and gasping for breath. “What will the hero do now?” he sneered. “Save your friends, and let your father die? Or save the flower, and leave your friends to be crushed to death?” He looked up at the crumbling ceiling. “You don’t have time for both.”
