The Grendel Affair: A SPI Files Novel

by Shearin, Lisa

  When I made no move to comply, the ghoul that’d cuffed Ian embedded his fist hard in Ian’s stomach, sending him to his knees.

  I complied.

  “Now couldn’t that have been accomplished without discomfort to your partner?” The humor vanished from his eyes and Charles Fitzpatrick looked like the cold reanimated corpse that he was.

  “I see your fang grew back,” I noted. “Sorry I had to do that, but you didn’t give me a choice.”

  “I do not believe that you are truly remorseful, Miss Fraser,” Fitzpatrick said, his voice soft and low, his words for me only. “But I guarantee that you will be truly sorry before the sun rises tomorrow, and beyond—if you manage to last that long.” He stepped up close to me and trapped my chin between two cruel fingers. “You’re quite small and from the pallor of your skin, I imagine that you’ve never been a good blood donor. It’s tradition to drink to the arrival of the New Year with a champagne toast.” The vampire’s eyes lingered on my throat. “I never liked champagne.”

  “That ghoul thing scared the hell out of you outside that liquor store, and now you’re partners?”

  “Mister Fitzpatrick was not supposed to be there that night, Agent Fraser,” the creature called out, as he and his ghoul henchmen hauled Ian and the others onto the platform. “And yes, I can hear you. Nor was he given permission to feed from you. He was duly chastised for his disobedience and has worked most strenuously in an attempt to regain my favor.”

  The creature put just the slightest emphasis on “attempt,” but I caught it, and so did the vampire, who’d gone a shade or two paler. Looked like somebody wasn’t quite back in good graces yet.

  We were waiting for Rolf and Calvin to be hauled up onto the platform. They were big guys, and even with ghoul strength, it wasn’t a fast process.

  I lowered my voice to the barest whisper. “Why?” I asked the vampire.

  In response, Fitzpatrick raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  “Why all this? The grendels? Slaughtering innocent people on international TV?”

  The vampire glanced back at the creature, but apparently decided that he didn’t care who overheard him. “Because, Miss Fraser, I am sick of hiding in the shadows, living among cattle such as yourself, pretending to be like them, meekly submitting to the wills of my ‘superiors.’ After tonight, I and those like me, will answer to no human, will no longer be dictated to by a species that is my food, not my master.” He smiled. “And what I want, at least for tonight, is to play with my food—and soon to be paid handsomely and live like a prince while doing it. Times Square is merely the beginning.”

  “And with the world’s eyes on Times Square, every last one of your potential allies will either see your demonstration tonight as it happens or hear about it within five minutes.”

  Charles Fitzpatrick smiled. “It will give a new meaning to the word ‘viral.’”

  “This is nothing but a live TV commercial for you.”

  “And we didn’t have to spend millions on airtime.”

  I could see the crazy in his eyes. Bat-shit crazy. The evil kind. The kind with a business plan.

  “Why kill Adam Falke?” I asked him.

  “His loyalty was in doubt, so the male grendel was sent after him.”

  “And why did he have a picture of me?”

  “Originally he was to be the contact for your doppelganger. He needed to know what you looked like.” The vampire scowled. “After his fall from grace, the job fell to me.”

  “And Kanil Ghevari?”

  “The device needed to be tested against a supernatural that was known for recognizing when a veil was in use. Goblins fit the bill.”

  Vivienne Sagadraco’s friend had been gutted for a test.

  Fitzpatrick checked his watch, slender, gold, and elegant. He raised his voice so the creature could hear. “Sir, it’s fifteen minutes until midnight.”

  “Thank you, Charles.” The creature crossed the platform to the stairs leading up to the closed pedestrian passageway—and the surface. “Guard our guests until midnight, then feel free to celebrate with them—in any manner you choose. All I require is that Agent Byrne remain unharmed until my return.” He smiled at Ian, though it was more like a baring of fangs. “You will have to be patient only a few more minutes, Agent Byrne. But rest assured, this time, you will be next.”

  Essentially the same thing he’d told Ian in the pawnshop while he finished devouring Ian’s partner.

  The door to the stairwell opened and closed on rusty, unused hinges, and the creature was gone.

  After he’d rung the dinner bell for the ghouls and Charles Fitzpatrick.

  “Better bring him over here away from the others,” the vampire ordered the pair of ghouls on either side of Ian. “You know he doesn’t like someone else’s blood splattered on his dinner.” He turned to me. “Finicky eater,” he explained. “Over there against the wall,” he told them. “It’ll be the best view in the house, Agent Byrne.”

  The ghouls brought Ian past where Fitzpatrick stood, and as he walked past me, he winked.

  I tried to keep my face expressionless, but it wasn’t easy when I wanted to drop my jaw.

  What the hell was a wink supposed to mean? He had a plan? Was I supposed to have a plan? Was I supposed to be able to read his freakin’ mind?

  Then Ian made his move.

  He crouched and pivoted, catching the ghoul at his right side with an uppercut to the midsection powerful enough to lift the ghoul’s feet off the floor, and probably drive his stomach up into his chest.

  It took me a stunned two seconds to realize that Ian had gotten out of his handcuffs. The “How the hell . . . ?” didn’t matter now.

  I made a move of my own.

  I dove to the floor, grabbing what I’d had my eyes on since Fitzpatrick had dragged me over here—and since I’d tripped over them.

  Cans of aerosol paint.

  I came up with a can in each hand, and as Charles Fitzpatrick reached for me, I tagged the bastard smack-dab in the eyes with shamrock green and flamingo pink. He went to his knees, screaming, hands clutching his face. I kneed him in the nose and was rewarded with a sharp snap.

  The ghoul writhing on the floor after Ian’s fist had put him into a fetal position was my next arts and crafts project.

  Ian was wrestling with his former captor for possession of his gun. Black blood oozing from the ghoul’s left ear was testament to the effectiveness of my partner’s left hook. Ian’s lock on the ghoul’s wrist changed from wrestling to aiming, shifting his weight to pivot the ghoul’s body—and the gun—toward another ghoul running at Ian just as the gun went off, hitting it in the chest.

  “Spin him,” I shouted to Ian, aiming a paint can at it.

  My partner obligingly spun the ghoul’s face toward me and I gave him a bad case of pink eye.

  I turned my attention where Calvin and Rolf were being held and stopped.

  They most definitely did not need my help, or anyone else’s.

  Calvin had lowered his head, and like a linebacker, had hit a ghoul in the midsection with one massive shoulder, slamming it into a column. The big commando was still handcuffed, but he wasn’t letting that slow him down one bit as he seemed intent on grinding the now unconscious ghoul into the concrete.

  Yasha had rejoined us and had turned the three other ghouls into squeaky toys that weren’t squeaking anymore.

  Rolf Haagen was still handcuffed, but was sitting back against a wall bleeding, grinning, and just enjoying the show.

  “How’d you get out of—”

  “I always carry a pair of handcuff keys in my back pocket,” Ian told me. “Never know when you’ll need ’em.”

  I ignored everything that implied.

  After all that scuffling, Ian was barely breathing heavy. I was gasping for air. Maybe it was the paint fumes
.

  Ian ran to Calvin, unlocked his handcuffs, and then handed him the keys.

  “Yasha, you’re with us.” Ian grabbed my hand and all but yanked me off my feet toward the stairs.

  There was only the three of us. Ian had a couple of guns and had snagged Rolf’s sword; I grabbed my paintball gun; and well, Yasha was a werewolf, which was about the best thing we had going for us right now.

  The stairs up to the closed and abandoned pedestrian walkway were only wide enough to allow two people to walk side by side or, in our case, run. Normally, when you had a sadistic mystery creature waiting for you at the top of the stairs, stealth would be the way to go. We had no time for stealth. Ian let Yasha take the lead since he was more qualified in werewolf form to take on anything of the paranormal persuasion. The stairwell ceiling was tall enough not to feel claustrophobic, but low and dark enough to be oppressive. The concrete had been bare and the only color came from steel pipe railings anchored to the walls along both sides of the stairs. That was then. Now, every square inch had been tagged by graffiti artists. The only light came from a pair of bulbs at the top stair of each landing. The walls were damp and glistening with water that had seeped through the concrete. Sections were splattered with rust-colored stains that I suspected were recent and had nothing to do with rust.

  Yasha burst snarling through the double doors. What lay beyond smelled like a slaughterhouse, with the sickly sweet, coppery odor of blood. Nearly every surface of the passageway wore a coat of graffiti. In fact, some graffiti had been painted over to make room for later additions. Over the graffiti, blood was smeared and streaked on the walls of the abandoned passageway. It’d dried to a dull brown. Ahead was a pool of red, not fresh, but not old, either.

  It had gone from a winter refuge for the homeless, to the grendels’ and ghouls’ own private meat market.

  “You are resourceful, Agent Byrne, I will give you that.”

  The creature stood between us and a pair of open steel doors. Beyond, a short set of stairs led up to the street. The cold wind swept down the stairs, carrying the voices and shouts of hundreds of thousands of people.

  “The female grendel is already out on the street,” the creature said. “No one can see her, nor will they see her until midnight, when she’s been instructed to disable the device that she wears. Once again, Detective Byrne, you’re too late and too ineffective to save anyone. Such continued failure must be disheartening.” He began leisurely walking toward us.

  “Mac, go back downstairs,” Ian said, never taking his eyes from the creature.

  The creature extended one arm, fingers spread, and the doors behind us slammed, and the chains took on a life of their own quickly snaking between and around the door handles.

  “Let her go,” Ian said.

  “I think not,” the creature said. “What is it you humans say? The more the merrier?”

  “Let her go, and the wolf—and I’ll stay.”

  My heart kicked me in the chest. “No. You can’t.”

  Ian never took his eyes from the creature that’d slaughtered and eaten his partner. “The offer stands. You said you wanted vengeance.” His eyes glittered in challenge. “How bad do you want it?”

  “You do drive a tempting bargain, Detective Byrne.” His thin lips creased in a vulpine smile. “Agreed.”

  “Ian, no!”

  The creature stepped aside with a flourish, clearing the way to the street. “But they will only have one choice of exit.” His smile broadened. “And she will be waiting for them.”

  Ian hefted Rolf’s broadsword. “Mac, go. Yasha, stay with her. When you get to the street, get the hell out of Times Square.”

  Yasha took my hand in his huge mouth. His fangs went beyond massive, but he never broke my skin. I also couldn’t pull away.

  The moment we were on the stairs, the steel doors slammed at our backs, the chains rattling on the other side as they wrapped the handles.

  Leaving Ian alone with his worst nightmare.

  28

  ME and Yasha were alone on Forty-second Street with a million people.

  The noise levels were deafening. My stomach lurched, and my breath came in gasping puffs in the freezing air. The shouts and cheering of a million people forced their way inside my head, the happy and blissfully ignorant cheering of people who had no idea what was stalking among them.

  My partner was sacrificing himself to give us a chance to escape. I saw it as a chance to stop an invisible and virtually indestructible monster from wading into that crowd and turning those cheers to screams. I wasn’t going anywhere. The cops might have the firepower to bring it down, but they couldn’t see it. And once the blood started flowing and bodies flying, panic would spread from the epicenter that was the grendel. People would die who weren’t anywhere near her as a panic-spawned stampede started in the desperation to escape Times Square.

  And all that could keep those people from becoming corpses was a seer and a werewolf. I didn’t have a plan, but I wasn’t going to stand by and let innocent people be slaughtered and trampled.

  The stairs up to the surface from the pedestrian passageway had led to a now-mangled grate that the grendel had torn off and tossed aside. Yasha and I were in a fenced and boarded-up construction site where there didn’t look to be any constructing going on. I wondered if Tia had arranged with any city businessmen she might have had in her pocket to have it cordoned off as a staging area for her special guests. The crushed padlock on the inside of the boarded-up chain-link gate, and the steel chains that had been pulled apart like so much taffy turned my theory into a safe bet.

  There was a narrow crack between two of the boards. Yasha stuck his snout to the opening and started sniffing. I looked through.

  Scaffolding flanked both sides of the building site. TV camera towers. The crowds had been blocked off from the area underneath, giving me and Yasha the cover we needed. The space between the two towers led right into the section of street kept cordoned off and open for emergency vehicle use. If something went wrong in a crowd of a million people, the good folks of the NYPD wanted a way in and out.

  We started scanning the pens the NYPD always put in place on New Year’s Eve to keep the crowds contained in manageable clumps. It looked like herds of cattle in a stockyard to me, and I imagine the grendel saw it much the same way.

  If we couldn’t stop that grendel from appearing at midnight and wading into the nearest crowd pen, adding a werewolf to the mix wasn’t gonna make a hill of beans worth of difference. I was wearing my armor, which was good for personal protection, but bad for blending in with a crowd. Then I saw two of the law enforcement folks patrolling Forty-second Street. Their gear was similar enough to mine that I could look like I belonged. However their armor had NYPD on the back.

  Something akin to an electric shock ran up my arm that had been touching Yasha’s fur, and in place of Yasha the werewolf was Yasha the kinda/sorta German shepherd. I could still see Yasha’s werewolf aura, but it was like a nimbus around his dog disguise. Good call. The only way Yasha could conceivably fight the grendel was as a werewolf, but to get out into Times Square called for every SPI werewolf’s less threatening disguise—K-9 cop.

  Yasha looked up at me with golden eyes, eyes that told me that whatever I was going to do to try to stop this, he’d be right there with me, and he’d go werewolf in the most public place imaginable if necessary to kill that grendel and save lives. I prayed it wouldn’t come to that, but I had no idea how it could possibly go any other way. Then with one emphatic downward nod of his muzzle, a dog told a human to stay. Yasha pushed the gate open with his muzzle, squeezed through, and was gone.

  Apparently, he had a plan or at least an idea. The clock was ticking, and it wasn’t in our favor, but I stayed put.

  Only a minute or so later, Yasha padded back to me; in his mouth was a dark blue ball cap with FBI in bright white
on the front. I was already dressed more or less like a commando in solid black, with body armor that was similar enough to what I’d glimpsed through the fence to blend in. I took off my helmet and put on the hat, running my ponytail out the hole in the back. Not as good a disguise as Yasha’s, but I was as official looking as I was going to get.

  We quickly went out onto Forty-second Street.

  Yasha stood tall, his head held high and alert, like a K-9 officer on patrol who belonged there. Hopefully, I was the only one of the million people here and billions watching who could see that the upstanding K-9 trotting purposely in front of the cameras, God, and the world, not only wasn’t on a leash, but in reality was a nearly seven-foot-tall werewolf.

  Finding our target would be the easy part. Even among a sea of humanity, a towering monster would stand out to me, even if she was invisible to everyone else.

  Then I saw her.

  The mother grendel.

  I was ashamed to admit it, but I stood there and gawked in open-mouthed horror.

  The female was a head and a half taller than her mate, her shoulders broader, her arms and legs more heavily muscled, her fangs bigger, her claws longer.

  Better, stronger, faster.

  Rolf and his bionic stump would hate that he missed out on this one. I wished the crazy Viking was here; he’d have a plan. It’d be just as crazy as he was, but at least he’d have one.

  The grendel was taking full advantage of her invisibility to do a little window-shopping before midnight, stalking down the emergency vehicle access path, perusing the people in the metal pens like they were cattle for the slaughter. I wondered if the NYPD knew how accurately those metal pens helped make the comparison.

  A voice reached me. The voice of a small child; small, but loud. A little girl in red coat and hood was perched on top of her daddy’s shoulders, hitting the top of his hatted head to get his attention where she wanted it. On us.

  “Daddy, Mommy, look at the big puppy!” she shouted. “What big teeth he has!”

  She wasn’t fooled by Yasha’s K-9 disguise. Just our luck. A little seer in the making.