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.
“There’s no dressing rooms,” he said, “and no time for modesty. Just strip and change.”
Ian pulled out identical clothing and shimmied out of his wet jeans and skivvies, right there in front of God and the world.
And me.
“Sandy,” Ian called, standing there showing what had to be the best set of buns in the tristate area. Damn, you could bounce a quarter off those things. “Mac needs a vest.”
“On it.”
Seconds later, Sandra was pushing something into my hands. A bulletproof vest. She flashed me a quick smile. “Concentrate, Mac.”
I was concentrating. On my partner who was flashing more than a smile.
Sandra’s team had grabbed body armor, bigger guns, and more ammo. The second half of the team came in while the newly armed and armored folks took their place standing guard, and I hadn’t even taken off my boots.
Body-hugging jeans were nice, but not when they’d soaked up three times their weight in water. I’d gotten them unzipped, but they weren’t going any farther. Then there was my bandaged thigh to contend with.
As I struggled, Ian appeared next to me, dressed and armored.
I gaped at him. “How’d you do that so fast?”
“Repetition. And motivation not to have those toothy bastards catch me with my pants down. We’re out of time.” Ian grabbed the waist of my jeans on the side of my bandaged leg in one hand, pulled them as far from my hip as he could, whipped out a knife, and sliced the Daisy Duke side of my jeans clean off—including panties.
“You need help with the other side?” The words were all business, but his eyes had darkened.
I quickly held up my hands. “No, no. I got it.”
One tug from me sent the rest of my jeans—with undies—to the floor in a wet plop.
Meanwhile, Ian had grabbed the fatigues and unzipped the legs from the ankles to midcalf, then went down on one knee in front of me, eyes steadfastly on my feet.
“Don’t need to take off your boots,” he said, “just stick your feet in.”
I did before he decided to cut anything else off of me.
“Does going commando make me one?” I asked hopefully.
Ian let out a low laugh. “I wish it was that easy.”
While Ian took care of the zippers and ties on the bottom of my pants, I got my wet sweater over my head and wiggled into the dry one so fast that if anyone saw anything, they didn’t see it for long.
In the minute it took Sandra’s folks to grab their gear, Ian had changed his clothes and mine. He held up the vest for me and I stuck my arms in and fastened the front.
“No time to find armor for you,” he said. “But that’ll at least protect your vitals. Let’s go.”
18
THE grendel might have been a present for the boss from her sister, but it had left presents for us.
There were five deep gouges down the length of the walls of the corridor leading to the bull pen. It was obvious what it had done. The grendel had reached its arms out and scored the walls at least an inch deep as it had stalked toward the bull pen doors and its destination. The corridor was easily ten feet across.
The grendel’s claws had raked through that wall like it’d been a piñata.
“It’s marking its new territory,” Ian growled.
That wasn’t all it had done.
There were two bodies in front of the bull pen doors. They’d been torn open, gutted, and dismembered. The arms and legs had been carefully placed next to the trunk of the body they’d been torn from—but facing the wrong way. The heads—a man and a woman—had been cleanly severed and set on their own chests, the dead eyes facing us. The bodies had an uncountable number of small bites taken out of the flesh.
The spawn had been here. They’d gotten ahead of us.
Sandra spat a curse. “They were Roy’s people.”
It was a warning.
But most of all, it was meant to terrify, to paralyze.
It sure as hell worked for me.
It also really pissed me off.
I hadn’t known their names. Like me, they’d been relatively new. They had been standing guard at those doors to prevent what was now beyond those doors from getting in. From the bullet holes pocking the walls, the amount of blood saturating the carpet under the bodies from one side of the wall to the other—and up the walls and onto the ceiling—they had stood their ground, determined to do their jobs.
They had been butchered for doing them.
They were heroes.
I didn’t want to die.
I didn’t care about being a hero.
But, like those two fallen security agents who’d been slaughtered and staged in front of those doors, I was going to do my job.
With Sandra’s team leading the way, we went in.
• • •
Vivienne Sagadraco was a dragon.
I’d known it, I’d seen the aura of her true form, and I’d known it was big.
&nb
sp; But damn.
The SPI bull pen extended five stories above the main floor.
Vivienne Sagadraco’s head came to the third story, and the width from one side of the atrium to the other was enough to accommodate her wingspan. By having the complex built with five stories, she’d allowed herself enough room to take off and hover.
She was doing that now.
It still didn’t put her out of the grendel’s reach. Propelled by its powerful legs, the grendel leapt and sank its claws into Vivienne Sagadraco’s hip, the force of impact and the grendel’s weight pulling her down almost to the floor, where not one piece of office furniture or equipment remained intact.
It’d all been stomped to bits.
The spawn waited below, leaping impatiently for dad to bring down dinner. And yep, it was definitely male. When your skin doubled as armor, clothes were kinda redundant.
And I was the only one who could see him.
Ian swore a blue streak.
I snarled in frustration. “When this is over, you’re gonna train me with a gun ’til I can shoot the ticks off a bear.”
“Count on it.”
The boss had to know what was attacking her, but she couldn’t see it, and barring a lucky slash or bite, there was only so much she could do against a monster assassin she couldn’t see or hear. She could only fight back when it latched onto her, and the grendel was too smart to stay in one place for any longer than it took him to add another wound.
The spawn surrounded its parent, putting a ring of baby monster death between Vivienne Sagadraco and any possible help.
Roy and the rest of his team were killing the only things they could see to aim at—grendel spawn—or at least they were trying. They were highly trained and their bullets hit what they were shooting at, but there were no explosions of pink this time. The spawn’s armor was hardening. Our folks had to be using everything in their arsenal. Silver, lead, brass—the metal didn’t seem to matter. The spawn were either too fast to hit or too armored to penetrate.
“How the hell did they get ahead of us?” Sandra shouldered her weapon and took aim at where she thought the adult grendel was. “Just what we need, the little bastards are problem solvers fresh out of the egg.” Her dark, sharp eyes were trying to pinpoint the adult grendel’s location based on Vivienne Sagadraco’s reactions and counterattacks. She held her weapon ready, but didn’t dare fire for fear of hitting the boss. “Talk to me, Mac. Help me out here.”
I didn’t know what to do, or what was even possible. The grendel wasn’t mindlessly attacking. Any shot taken would risk going through the grendel and into the boss. He never presented himself as a clear target. The boss’s body was always behind him, so there wasn’t a good or even a decent shot to be had. How was I supposed to direct fire at that?
It wasn’t like I could point and scream “Shoot!” Quick as our people’s reflexes were, by the time they fired, the grendel would be gone and their bullets would tear into the boss. We couldn’t take even the slightest risk of hitting Vivienne Sagadraco with bullets.
I stopped.
Bullets.
Perhaps I didn’t need to use bullets to help the boss.
The grendel was both invisible and buck naked. My budding theory—and hopeful plan—didn’t involve putting a natty dressing gown on the monster, but it might work just as well to help our shooters see their target. I didn’t know if it was possible—based either on the laws of science or woo-woo crap—but there was only one way to find out.
I sprinted to my desk, which by being in a corner had escaped being squashed. What I was looking for was right where I’d left it, leaning against the wall beside my desk.
And it was loaded.
Grandma Fraser always said a gun ain’t gonna do you a lick of good if it ain’t loaded for what’s most likely to come lookin’ for you.
My semiautomatic paintball rifle had a hopper full of neon yellow paintballs, ready to take down the Research Department—or hopefully tag the grendel that was trying to eat the boss one bite at a time.
If it worked, then the experts at putting real bullets where they needed to go would be able to see him.
The worst the boss could get from me was wet. Normally it’d be a bad career move to shoot your boss with a paintball gun, but I figured that if it got her out of her present predicament, Vivienne Sagadraco wouldn’t mind an accidental splatter or two—or six.
I slung the rifle’s carrying strap over my shoulder and grabbed an extra bag of balls. Apparently my plan was obvious to Ian. My partner hadn’t asked any questions, and was at his desk stuffing things in his pockets too fast for me to ID them.
“Second floor catwalk?” he asked me.
I shot a glance at the combatants. “I was thinking third. Let’s go see if we can’t paint ourselves a grendel.”
Ian charged up the stairs four at a time. With my shorter legs, it was all I could do to take two. He paused at the door to the third floor, waiting for me, his back to the wall beside the closed door.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded.
Ian quickly opened the door, paused a fraction of a second to make sure nothing was waiting to take his face off, then darted around the corner, gun held low and ready.
Getting closer to the fight—and the grendel—only made it even more obvious that a twelve-gauge shotgun might get this thing’s attention, but it wasn’t gonna do much else. The grendel was only about twenty feet away, and Vivienne Sagadraco’s eyes were level with the catwalk’s railing. When the grendel’s hands opened to slash, I saw nails the size of steak knives. And judging from the boss’s injuries, the thickest dragon hide was obviously no match for razor-sharp grendel claws.
A powerful downdraft from Vivienne Sagadraco’s wings nearly knocked me over the railing. I swore. I hadn’t considered wind strong enough to send my itty-bitty paintballs all over creation, but it wasn’t going to keep me from firing every last one I had.
While I wasn’t all that picky about where I landed my paint, ideally I wanted them where a direct hit by real ammo would do the most damage.
Head, face, and throat.
The cloaking device was at the base of the grendel’s neck. Number one target. If our shooters could destroy the device, the boss could destroy the grendel. And for a backup target, splattering paint in the thing’s eyes would have the double benefit of marking two of the only visible places that weren’t armored, as well as temporarily blinding the thing.
I aimed, fired, the combatants shifted the battle a foot to the left, and my first volley of paintballs hit the boss in the back, smack-dab between her wings.
I winced and aimed again. “Sorry, ma’am.”
The grendel looked at me, and made a sound I instantly recognized. The same wet, coughing laugh we’d heard in Ollie’s office.
It was unnerving as hell, though him looking at me gave me the best chance I was likely to get to paint his face. I snapped my rifle up to my shoulder.
Primitive or not, the grendel realized on some level what I was doing. Giggles turned to growls, and I became his number one target. His powerful legs pushed off from the floor, propelling him straight at me.
I instinctively squealed and jumped back, my hands gripping the rifle. That gripping included my trigger finger, and paintballs popped from the muzzle in a rapid-fire stream, busting open on contact with the grendel’s face, head, and chest, and forming a fine-looking bull’s-eye splatter pattern if I did say so myself.
“See that?” I shouted to Ian. In response, my partner grinned, raised his gun, and opened fire.
My handiwork made the boss right happy, too. A triumphant roar split the air enough to shake the catwalk as Vivienne Sagadraco tore into her attacker, and from below, SPI’s commandos opened fire.
I was so intent on the goings-on below that I didn’t see the arm come arou
nd from behind me until it pulled tight in a choke hold around my neck.
My doppelganger.
In all the commotion over the grendels, I’d forgotten about her.
With a snap of her other hand, she easily knocked the paintball rifle out of my hands and over the railing, leaving them numb and even more useless than they already would have been against her. Moreau had been right about a doppelganger’s strength. With one arm around my throat and the other gripping my upper arm, she started dragging me backward, using me as a human shield, to where the grendel and Vivienne Sagadraco still battled.
After a moment of confusion followed by realization, Ian raised his gun, panning the area behind me, desperate for something to shoot at.
The doppelganger jerked me back against her. I couldn’t breathe, let alone fight back. Something the size of a hockey puck pressed between my shoulders, almost against my neck, and I knew the grendel wasn’t the only monster wearing a cloaking device. As she pulled me along with her, I caught sight of a holster strapped to her thigh.
In an instant, I knew what she was going to do. I was the only one who could see her. She could put a bullet into one of Vivienne Sagadraco’s eyes at point-blank range. If that didn’t kill the boss instantly, she’d fall to the floor where the still-in-the-fight grendel and what was left of his brood would finish her off.
I got my hands up to the doppelganger’s arm circling my throat, trying to get my fingers around her forearm and pry it off my windpipe. I twisted and struggled and rammed the heels of my combat boots down on her insteps. You name it, I tried it; nothing worked.
My doppelganger merely tightened her arm around my throat. “I wanted to kill you from the first, but she wouldn’t let me. Stupid human cattle,” she spat. “Only good for feeding the beasts.”
“Shoot her!” I croaked to Ian.
“Yes, clumsy human, shoot me,” she called mockingly to Ian. “He can’t hear or see me.” The doppelganger jerked me back against her. “Shoot me and blow your partner’s brains out, or what little there are.”
She dropped one hand down to her holster and I let go of the arm about to crush my windpipe. I had one chance before I passed out or she snapped my neck like a Sunday dinner chicken. I reached behind my neck and grabbed the collar that held the cloaking device and pulled with every bit of strength I had left. I had to get it off of her.
The Grendel Affair: A SPI Files Novel Page 20
