The Ghoul Vendetta

by Lisa Shearin

  If anyone could clean up and enhance that video to show me what I needed to see, it would be Kenji. I slid into an empty chair next to where he was already working intently on the bank surveillance tape.

  “Please tell me you can do something with that.” I paused. “Was someone sitting here?”

  The elf never looked away from his monitors. “I had it waiting for you, honey.”

  “Thank you.” It came out shaky. I couldn’t help it. “Just don’t ask me if I’m all right, or I’m liable to completely lose it right here in front of everybody.”

  “Duly noted.”

  I had no idea what it was about being asked if you were all right that suddenly made you anything but all right.

  “No one blames you,” Kenji said, eyes still glued to his monitor, fingers a blur on the keyboard.

  “They don’t have to, because I do.”

  “Then let’s see what I can do to help you push it aside and do something about it.”

  I couldn’t help it; I leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. “Great plan.”

  Kenji had zoomed in on the five ghouls. “Those are some ugly bastards.”

  “Wait till you see what they really look like.”

  “Display case,” Kenji said. “Fourth shelf, second from the right.”

  I looked and there it was—the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

  “How many movie monsters turn out to be real?” I asked.

  “Entirely too many of them.”

  Kenji did some rapid-fire mouse clicking and the image magnification and resolution changed at the same too-fast-for-me rate. I had to look away until it’d finished.

  “Is that what you were expecting to see?” he asked me.

  I opened my eyes, and leaned closer, though I didn’t need to. I could see it just fine, and it was beautiful.

  Waves of pixilation.

  “High-five yourself, darlin’,” I told him. “You did it.”

  Kenji grinned and held up his non-mouse hand. “How about you help?”

  I returned his grin and the high five.

  “Can you pull some stills from the Diamond Mart case?” I asked him.

  A couple of months ago, there’d been a robbery at a Forty-seventh Street gem dealer, where trolls glamoured as three wealthy women had walked out with half a million dollars’ worth of rare, colored diamonds. It was my first experience seeing glamoured supernaturals on surveillance cameras. In that case, the proof had turned out to be in the pixilation.

  “Already done,” Kenji told me. “Now let’s download some of these pretty pictures to take to your meeting.”

  • • •

  I had more than pixelated photos of Fomorians disguised as ghouls for show and tell. With Ian not here, it was my responsibility to make sure that Alain Moreau knew what we’d already found out. As the senior agent, Ian was responsible for sending reports to Moreau on any investigations we did together. More than once, I’d seen Ian putting together those reports at the last minute. Now, not only had he been kidnapped in the middle of the case, Ian was somehow critical to the villain’s evil master plan.

  That was a first. So was me making sure Moreau was up to speed on what we’d discovered.

  I caught up with our manager outside of the conference room.

  I broke into a jog to catch up. “Sir, a quick word.”

  “Yes, Agent Fraser?”

  “I don’t know if Ian had a chance to update you on our findings. Did he send you a report about meeting with some of the Hudson River’s merfolk?”

  “No.”

  “Uh, how about talking to one of Ambrus Báthory’s chief bodyguards?”

  His expression darkened. “Also, no.”

  Oh boy.

  “Though it appears the two of you have been busy,” he added.

  “Yes, sir, we have.”

  “Perhaps you should tell me what you and Agent Byrne learned.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I told him about the merfolk witnessing the kidnapping; that initially, Bela had been taken farther up the Hudson; and when the merfolk went to investigate, they discovered the pair of hydras guarding the passage upriver at Yonkers. Then I quickly summarized the meeting with Vlad Cervenka, his theory on why Bela had been taken, and his promise to try to get more information for us.

  Moreau was silent for a few moments once I’d finished.

  “I’m sorry about the delay, sir. Ian always does—”

  Moreau raised his hand to stop me. “I am aware that Agent Byrne always does the reports for your joint investigations. What you learned would not have prevented his abduction. However, it could be invaluable to our impending discussion. I want you to include what you just told me in your presentation.”

  Presentation?

  “Sir, I—”

  “Ian’s bloodwork came back from the lab.”

  Those words stopped my protest in its tracks. “What’s wrong with Ian?”

  “I didn’t say anything was—”

  “You didn’t need to. What did that spearhead do to him?”

  “We believe the readings Dr. Stephens is getting are due to the spearhead awakening something latent in Agent Byrne’s physiology. Traits that his ancestors possessed, but that have decreased with each subsequent generation. Decreased, but still present. Touching that spearhead simply activated it.”

  “Activated what?”

  “Contact with the spearhead didn’t damage or injure Ian in any way. He’s perfectly healthy—just different from what qualifies as healthy for humans.”

  “Are you saying Ian’s not human anymore?”

  “He’s still human, only now he’s something more.”

  20

  ALAIN Moreau was running the meeting, but right now, I was doing the presenting.

  It was one of the most difficult things I’d ever done.

  Not only was my partner in the hands of his worst enemy, he wasn’t entirely human anymore.

  I did what I had to do: I pushed those thoughts out of my mind and put my full concentration into doing my job.

  Finding Ian.

  Our top agent having been kidnapped by our top suspect in two major cases was cause for all hands on deck.

  Moreau was here, of course, along with Sandra Niles and Roy Benoit, the commanders of SPI’s two quick-strike commando units. Since Moreau knew better than to even try to keep Yasha out of the loop now, our werewolf driver was there as well, leaning against the wall next to the door. There were plenty of seats, but either Yasha felt that precious seconds would be lost if he was sitting down when the call came in with Ian’s location, or he didn’t feel comfortable with all the department bigwigs. It was probably both.

  Normally, I’d have felt the same way, but I’d just successfully connected the robberies to the kidnappings, both Ian and Bela Báthory’s. I was a hound on a scent, and that scent had been literal when it came to those wet footprints in the vault. The lab had just confirmed that the scales found in the Gotham Bank vault were the same as those at the New York Public Library.

  I now had the makings of a trail to follow, and no one—I didn’t care how big their office was or how many people reported to them—was going to take me off of it.

  My job wasn’t to convince anyone in the room. Alain Moreau was convinced, and SPI wasn’t a democracy; no voting would happen here.

  What we were doing was more along the line of a think tank. Putting the facts as we knew them and theories as we perceived them together in an attempt to find Ian. At least that was my first priority. It was becoming apparent that Ian’s kidnapping was only part of a much bigger picture. As little as I liked it—and I didn’t—Ian’s abduction was a piece in an increasingly large puzzle, and it might take fitting other pieces together first before we could determine where Ian was being held
.

  Amelia Chandler had heard back from her contact at the University of Dublin. He had positively identified the creatures from Noel Tierney’s drawings of Ian’s dreams as Fomorians. However, Amelia neither identified the artist as Noel or the source as Ian, because Moreau hadn’t provided her with that information. Like my ability to see portals, that information was being kept on an as-needed-to-know basis. And for whatever reason, Alain Moreau didn’t want SPI’s best and brightest minds to know about Ian’s reaction to the spearhead and his dreams as the source of the Fomorian connection. Moreau didn’t know what it all meant, and anything he said would be mere speculation at this point. Mainly he and Vivienne Sagadraco kept their agents’ secrets until they didn’t need to be secret anymore.

  Moreau had the most analytical mind of anyone I’d ever met. I trusted his discretion, and I also trusted him to be able to realize if that information would be useful in determining where Ian had been taken. That Ian’s dreams had been triggered by his first encounter with Janus, and that he had left the spearhead specifically for Ian, told me that connection was going to be critical to not only determining Janus’s interest in my partner but also finding and rescuing him. Yes, this meeting was a think tank, but Alain Moreau was a one-man brain trust.

  “Agent Byrne’s abductor has identified himself as Janus,” Amelia Chandler was saying. “Our records have a few individuals with that name, or who use that alias. Unfortunately, they have all been eliminated as potential suspects. We believe he may be using the name due to his identification with some of the qualities of the Roman god Janus. We’re examining these for clues as to this individual’s true identity. Janus is considered a god of motion and transitions. Due to this double nature, he is symbolized with a two-headed image in coins, temples, etc. Our Janus could be relating this to his own multi-facial, shapeshifting nature. To the Romans, Janus represented time because he could see into the past with one face and the future with the other. Being the god of transitions, his visage was often found depicted over gates and doorways. This could also relate to this creature’s mastery of portals and disguises.”

  She stepped aside from the podium, taking a small remote with her.

  “This Janus’s allies are the Fomorians, an ancient supernatural race in Irish mythology.” Pictures of both Noel’s drawings and book illustrations flashed on the screen behind her. The last one was the black lagoon creature. Logically, she kept that one up there since those were the ones we’d most likely encounter.

  “Though like many mythological beings,” she continued, “the Fomorians did exist, and as recent events have proven, they still do. In terms of power, they are in the demigod range. They are often portrayed as monsters or demons who come from under the sea. They are the enemies of the Tuatha Dé Danann, another real-life, Irish supernatural race with godlike powers. In the Second Battle of Magh Tuireadh, the Tuatha Dé Danann fought and defeated the Fomorians and drove them back into the sea. That was approximately four thousand years ago. They have not been seen or heard from since—until now.”

  Amelia had made no mention of the spearhead, and Harald Siggurson, SPI’s bladed weapons expert, wasn’t even in the meeting. I guess Moreau wasn’t ready to take the spearhead public, even within SPI.

  Moreau stepped forward. “Whenever a new or seldom-seen supernatural being is spotted anywhere in the world, SPI’s procedure is to file a report so that the entire agency can be notified in case of an emerging pattern. That is precisely what we have here. During the past week, there have been sightings from our own people as well as by civilians of ‘sea monsters.’ Those sightings by civilians are seldom reported except on conspiracy, UFO/alien, and monster websites and chat rooms. However, we have agents who monitor those sites—”

  “Poor bastards,” Roy muttered.

  “To separate actual encounters from overactive imaginations,” Moreau continued. “There have been entirely too many actual encounters. Four days ago, a wave caused by a breaching kraken nearly swamped a cruise ship in the Bahamas. There was a storm in the area, so the media is blaming that for the wave. Last week, a fleet of Russian fishing trawlers vanished in the Sea of Okhotsk in the northwestern Pacific in calm waters and clear skies. Only one distress call was made which reported a creature several stories above the water, taking boats and breaking them in half. This report was intercepted by Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks, and fortunately was not obtained by the media. From the description, a kaiju is the assumed culprit.”

  “Kaiju?” someone asked.

  “Like Godzilla,” Roy replied.

  “Two days ago, contact was lost with an American nuclear sub near the Mariana Trench in the southwestern Pacific,” Moreau continued. “A pair of fishing boats from the Philippines reported multiple large waves in the immediate area. Again the seas were previously calm with no storms, and no report of seismic activity in the area. Sightings of large creatures of unknown origin were reported last night by a research vessel off the coast of Peru, and this morning from an oil platform in the North Sea close to Scotland.”

  “Agent Fraser had a personal kraken encounter three nights ago while a guest on Bela Báthory’s yacht,” Moreau said.

  That earned me some looks.

  I would have jumped in then to say I’d been on a date, but that date had been with Rake Danescu, who, to many here, didn’t rate much higher than the ghoul-eaten nephew of a vampire crime lord. In any case, Alain didn’t give me a chance.

  “Agent Fraser, if you will tell everyone what you and Agent Byrne have learned.”

  I stood and, since Kenji had provided me with visual aids, went to the front of the room. The only good thing about giving a presentation was that holding the remote gave me something to do with my hands.

  In addition to relaying what Ian and I had learned from the merfolk and the meeting with Vlad, I presented the evidence that connected Bela Báthory’s kidnapping and murder to the bank robberies—and to Ian’s abduction. But the information on Ian’s role in all this was scattered all over the place, and I had yet to be able to see the pattern. I prayed someone else could see the picture in what few puzzle pieces we did have, though up the Hudson was looking like the most likely destination for Ian’s Fomorian kidnappers.

  “Hydras in Yonkers?” Sandra Niles was having a difficult time wrapping her head around that one. She wasn’t the only one. “There haven’t been any sightings, of hydras or a kraken, either by our own people or the public.”

  I resisted the urge to shrug; that wouldn’t look very professional. “The merfolk hadn’t been able to investigate further and the hydras were the reason they gave.”

  Sandra turned to Moreau. “Permission to arrange for a sonar scan of the area.”

  “Granted. Extend the search farther up the river.”

  “How far?”

  “Until you find the next set of guards.”

  Roy Benoit leaned back in his chair. “If these Fomorians need to keep to salt water, the Hudson is only brackish up to Troy. If they can’t be out of the water for very long, they can’t get out that way. The only exit to the ocean is back out through New York Harbor. They’ve boxed themselves in, so they must have a good reason. Why the Hudson? And what’s in those vampire safe deposit boxes that a bunch of sea monsters want? Most of all, why Ian?”

  “This morning I received word that there have been similar robberies in several European cities,” Moreau said. “Budapest was first, followed by Vienna, then Prague and Paris. The robbers were not seen on surveillance, and their mode of entry and exit was the same as we have had here: a portal.”

  “Safe deposit boxes belonging to old vampire families?” I asked.

  Moreau nodded. “And as we are experiencing here, the victims have refused to cooperate with authorities, either SPI or mortal law enforcement. Some have even denied owning the boxes in question.”

  “Why the hell would they do tha
t?” Roy asked. “If they put it in a bank, you’d think they’d want it back.”

  “Unknown. But if I had to hazard a guess, it would be that the contents were something so valuable to them that they couldn’t risk keeping it close to them.”

  “Don’t they trust their own people?”

  Moreau gave us a half smile. “No, they don’t. When the potential is there to live as long as vampires, those in power in these families could remain there for centuries. Even for a near-immortal, that is a long time to have to wait for a change in the ruling class.”

  Sandra snorted. “Like getting a crappy president and having to keep them for four centuries instead of just four years.”

  Another smile. “An accurate comparison. And the possibility is there with vampires for that individual to remain in power for even longer.”

  I sensed the warm weight of Ian’s pendant beneath my shirt. I’d fixed the chain, and it was now hanging around my neck. I knew where I needed to go next, and who I was going to ask to get me there.

  I had one stop to make first.

  • • •

  I told Alain Moreau where I was going, what I would be doing, and who would be going with me. I didn’t know if I’d be able to use Ian’s pendant to contact the merfolk, but I wouldn’t know until I tried. If it didn’t work, maybe the mermaid would talk to me anyway. Ian had used some sort of telepathy with them. I hadn’t been able to hear what was said, but I had a little telepathic talent myself. Mine was with dragons, but maybe I’d get lucky and there’d be some crossover there somewhere.

  I didn’t tell Rake what had happened with Ian over the phone; some things simply needed to be done in person. Not because Rake would be upset, but because I needed to see his reaction. I knew he and Ian didn’t like each other, and I was the reason, or at least the main reason. Rake’s reaction to Ian being kidnapped by ghouls who were actually Fomorians could be what was called a deal breaker. In fact, it was potentially the biggest deal breaker I could possibly think of.