The Ghoul Vendetta

by Lisa Shearin

  Kenji grinned. “I think I just might be able to help with that—the you-getting-some-sleep part. After you hear what I have to say, you just might be feeling relaxed enough for a nap. I think I’ve found our boy, Ian.”

  “You what?” I nearly jumped out of my seat and kept jumping. “Who needs sleep? Not me.”

  Moreau arrived and was studying the elf’s handiwork on screen.

  “I’ll put this on the monitor wall, sir,” Kenji said. “Then everyone can see.”

  The far wall of the IT department flickered to life and a satellite map of the Hudson River Valley came into view. Overlaying the map were bright green, blue, and red lines.

  “Okay, there are your ley lines. Greenies are weak, blues can pack a punch, but I think the Fomorians wouldn’t want to bother with anything except the red ones.” Kenji hit a couple of keys, and the green, then the blue lines faded away, leaving only the strong ley lines in red. “Fomorians need water, so we can eliminate those that aren’t on the Hudson.” A few more key clicks, and most of the red lines faded.

  “That’s still entirely too many lines,” I noted.

  “Agreed,” Kenji said. “That’s when I called Amelia Chandler for some local folklore. Hauntings, spirits, places of power.” His fingers flew over the keys, leaving only two ley lines that intersected over the Hudson River, but almost on shore.

  “Lady and gentlemen, may I present Pollepel Island, a place ancient Native Americans wouldn’t be caught dead on at night because of evil spirits, an island at the northern edge of the maybe-not-mythological realm of the Heer of Dunderberg—the king of Thunder Mountain, also called the Storm King. Coincidentally, Storm King Mountain is directly across from Pollepel. The island also happens to have the ruins of an actual Scottish castle, likewise reputed to be haunted. I think our swamp men would feel right at home there.” He sat back with a flourish. “Ta-da.”

  “I would say ‘I could kiss you,’ but I think I’ll just go ahead and do it.” I did, and threw in as much of a bone-crushing hug as I was capable of.

  “All in a night’s work. And by the way, there’s more. Those gem JPGs?”

  “Yes.”

  “The little guys are cursed.”

  I gave a little fist pump. “Knew it!”

  “A few had been cut down from larger stones, but judging from what had happened to the owners, it didn’t decrease their bad mojo one bit. It was hardly surprising they all ended up for sale. Their owners—or the surviving relatives—wanted to get those things as far away as possible.”

  Kenji got rid of the ley lines on the map and clicked in until we could clearly see the island and the surrounding area.

  “Pollepel Island is about fifty miles north of here,” he told us, “and is six miles north of West Point, to give you a closer reference. Back when our little patch of home was known as the colonies, Dutch seafarers going up and down the Hudson believed that the river was haunted in a fifteen-mile stretch from Dunderberg Mountain to Pollepel. When he was feeling particularly insulted by trespassers, the Heer of Dunderberg—aka the Storm King—would send his storm ship manned by his goblin minions—”

  “Excuse me?” Rake interrupted. “Minions?”

  Kenji spread his hands and grinned. “Hey, just relaying the local lore. The minions would wreak havoc on that stretch of the river. So down through the centuries, anything bad that happened on Pollepel and the surrounding area was the doing of the Storm King.”

  Kenji zeroed in on the satellite photo of Pollepel Island.

  “Short story in a nutshell, Pollepel is a rocky island of a little less than seven acres about a thousand feet from the eastern shore of the Hudson. And if we move in a little closer, we can see the ruins of Bannerman Castle. Interesting guy, Francis Bannerman. Born in Scotland in 1851. His family immigrated to the States when he was three. He was a Brooklyn boy with a wide entrepreneurial streak. When he was fourteen, he founded a military surplus company, and as he grew, so did his business. He went from collecting and selling scrap he found in the harbor to buying full ships at Navy auctions. It’s said that about half of those cannons in town squares around the country were bought from Bannerman. He outgrew his business in the city and his son was canoeing on the Hudson one day and saw Pollepel Island. Bannerman bought it in 1900 and soon after started building the castle and a summer house for his family.” Kenji scrolled down through some information he had on another monitor. “Let’s see . . . he died in 1918. Two years later, two hundred pounds of munitions exploded and destroyed a goodly chunk of the castle . . . In 1950, a storm sunk the island’s ferryboat.”

  I grinned. “Probably those pesky goblin minions.”

  “In 1957, the last superintendent retired, and the island was left vacant for the next three decades. It was sold to the state in 1967, and a very suspicious fire in 1969 destroyed much of what the explosion had left standing . . . However, there’s now a Bannerman Castle Trust that’s working to preserve what’s left. Oh cool. It says here they give tours May through October.”

  Rake smiled and stood up straight from where he’d bent to get a better look at the summary. “Hmm, they need money; we need to get on that island. I think I’m about to make a substantial donation.”

  28

  TOMORROW—well, tonight since it was closing in on three in the morning—would be the summer solstice; and at midnight, the veils between the worlds would be at their thinnest, and the power of the earth’s ley lines would be most easily accessed. It’d also be a full moon.

  Rake would arrange a tour of Pollepel Island and Bannerman’s Castle for in the morning. I would be going with him, along with Kylie, our portal expert Kitty Poertner, commando team leader Roy, and of course, Yasha.

  Alain Moreau would be standing by once Kitty and I confirmed the presence of a portal on the island to arrange what would be needed to go and get Ian before midnight.

  There was one thing I could do over the next few hours that would greatly improve my chances of surviving a confrontation with Janus, his kraken keeper, or any of his Fomorians.

  Sleep.

  With Kenji’s news and a plan for rescuing Ian quickly coming together, my appetite came back with a vengeance. So before trying to get a few hours of sleep, or at least rest, I headed down to the cafeteria to fuel up. Rake went home to contact his goblin allies for some extra muscle when the time came to go in. My job was to get my head back in the game by having it spend some quality time on a pillow. I felt in my gut that Ian was on Pollepel Island, and with that knowledge, I could sleep.

  • • •

  I had thought it’d take me a while to wind down my thoughts enough to fall asleep. I was wrong. All it took was my head being on a pillow long enough to make a dent—approximately one point three seconds. And once asleep, I’d slept so hard that I woke up in a tiny pool of drool, and nearly overslept for Alain Moreau’s eight a.m. briefing.

  Kenji plopped down next to me in the big conference room. “Whoa, you slept hard.”

  I quickly swiped the back of my hand over the corner of my mouth. No drool there.

  He flashed a crooked grin. “Pillow prints embedded in the side of your face.”

  We were assembling in the meeting room just off the bull pen. There were folding chairs stacked against the wall just inside the door. If you wanted to sit down, you grabbed one on the way in. Most of the agents chose to stand. We all knew why we were here. We didn’t want to sit down; we wanted our orders so we could get this show on the road.

  While we didn’t believe Janus would sacrifice Ian until the full moon reached its zenith tonight, I wanted him safe and off Pollepel Island. Now.

  Yasha would be listening to the meeting via the speaker system down in the motor pool. As soon as the boss dismissed us, Yasha would have the engine on and ready to go.

  Alain Moreau stepped up to the front of the room, a map of Manhattan an
d the other boroughs projected on a screen behind them. There were a lot of red dots on that map. It’d been my experience that many red dots had never been anything but bad.

  “You all have heard what happened yesterday. One of our own, Ian Byrne, has been taken captive by the Fomorians. Until a few hours ago, we thought Janus’s desire for revenge against Agent Byrne stemmed from an incident a few years ago when Agent Byrne—then Detective Byrne of the NYPD—put an end to a string of robberies by Janus and his accomplices. We now know Ian has been targeted because he is the last of his line. A line that dates back thousands of years to Lugh Lámh-fhada, a king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, a supernatural race considered heroes and deities by the ancient Celtic people, and a bloodline that leads to Ian.”

  The assembled agents murmured. They knew Ian was the best of them all. He had their admiration and respect. Everyone liked Ian, and if a job went to Hades in a handbasket there was no one they’d trust more to have their backs. Knowing your coworker was a monster-killing badass was one thing. Being told he was the direct descendant of a Celtic god was something else entirely. These people knew their mythology; you had to in our line of work. They’d experienced firsthand just how real those so-called mythological critters were.

  So when Alain Moreau said Ian was the last descendant of a line that began with Celtic gods and heroes, we believed it.

  The murmuring ended with a single prolonged and impressed whistle.

  “Ian’s ancestor, Lugh, killed Balor, the last Fomorian king. The Fomorians were driven into the sea. As the last of Lugh’s direct line, Ian’s death is the last element in a chain reaction that will release the Fomorians from their exile. Janus was the captain of Balor’s personal guard tasked with finding Lugh Lámhfhada’s descendant and sacrificing him so that the Fomorians could once again emerge from the oceans and walk the earth.”

  No impressed murmurs or whistles followed that pronouncement.

  “Tonight is the summer solstice, when the veils between our world and others are at their thinnest. We believe the ritual will be conducted on Pollepel Island at Bannerman Castle, a place of power where two of the major ley lines on the East Coast intersect. To further power the ritual, Janus has collected objects of power to fuel his rite. To rescue Agent Byrne will require all of our teams.”

  Roy raised his hand.

  “Commander Benoit?”

  “Sir, I’ve been up to Bannerman. It’s not a big place, and the castle is a ruin. There’s not many places where they could be keeping Ian, let alone have some high-and-mighty ritual, and not have us be able to pick them off like opossums on pavement.”

  “Pollepel Island is a place of power and supernatural activity,” Moreau said. “The ley lines that intersect beneath it are only part of its allure to the Fomorians. They have chosen not only the place but also the time, to take maximum advantage of all of that power. You could be standing next to the altar and never see or hear what is happening. Janus is a master of portal and dimensional manipulation. We could be dealing with an opening into an established dimension or even a world, or a pocket dimension of Janus’s creation. The dimension where Agent Byrne is being held could very well be separate from where the ritual will be worked. We must not only rescue Agent Byrne, but also recover the artifacts stolen from those safe deposit boxes. Those are the keys that will release the Fomorians. Our mages have theorized that if Agent Byrne’s blood comes in contact with the artifacts it will be too late—for Ian, and to prevent the Fomorians from returning.”

  Silence.

  “We have commando teams flying in from Toronto and Chicago to be on duty here to deal with any issue that may arise in the city. They will be paired with drivers and guides who know the areas they’ll be working.” He paused. “I want our two teams on Pollepel Island. It’s one of our own who is in the worst kind of danger. I know you will do everything that can possibly be done to secure his freedom and preserve his life. Ian has endured much these past few days, and I want the faces of his rescuers to be those of his friends.”

  After Alain Moreau dismissed the agents, he asked that Roy and Sandra remain. That was when he told them about getting assistance from Rake and his dark mage friends—though from the reaction that news received, a more accurate description would be “dropped a bomb.” Ian wasn’t the only one at SPI who distrusted Rake Danescu, and that was putting it mildly.

  Our commando teams were professionals and professionals wouldn’t dispute an order, but that didn’t mean that they would like it. It would be up to Roy and Sandra to brief their teams and smooth over any problems.

  “This is about necessity, Commanders. Not camaraderie.”

  In other words, they didn’t have to like it, they simply had to do it.

  Sandra gave a terse nod. And after blowing his breath out his nose like an angry bull, Roy did the same.

  “I trust Rake,” I told them both. “At least for this.” I glanced at Moreau. “Should I tell them about my new skill set?”

  He nodded once.

  “I can see portals and detect dimensions.”

  Roy whistled.

  “How?” Sandra asked me.

  “Good question. I wish I knew. But there’s no doubt that I’ve got the skill. Kitty Poertner has agreed to go with us. If it’s like Mr. Moreau says and Janus has Ian in a pocket dimension, I can detect it, but I don’t have the skills to get in. Kitty does.”

  My phone beeped with an incoming text.

  “It’s Rake,” I told them. “That was fast. I guess if you throw enough money around, time is no object. He has a tour of Pollepel Island set up for us at eleven o’clock.”

  Moreau spoke. “Commander Niles, I need you to remain here and prepare both teams. Commander Benoit, since you’ve been to Pollepel Island before, you are to accompany Agent Fraser and Miss Poertner, and get the lay of the land from a tactical standpoint. Hopefully, Agent Fraser will be able to locate the portal.”

  “Kylie is going, too,” I told him. “She has some kind of supernatural/dryad bond with Ian. They’re, uh, seeing each other, in case you didn’t know.”

  “I was aware.”

  Oh. Awkward. “And so is Yasha.”

  That got a raised eyebrow. “Seeing Agent O’Hara?”

  Really awkward. “Going with us. With Ian not here right now, Yasha has kind of taken over as my shadow.”

  “The full moon is tonight. Monsieur Kazakov might be too—”

  “He’s going in his SPI-approved disguise,” I said.

  Moreau sighed. “Very well.”

  29

  OLDER werewolves could change when they wanted to, but all werewolves, regardless of age, changed on the night of the full moon. Werewolves at SPI automatically got three days a month off: the day before, the day of, and the day after a full moon. But for those occasions when the moon was full, a werewolf agent was needed, and chances were high that the public might accidentally get a glimpse, SPI’s Research and Development department had come up with a disguise for “that time of the month.” Mood swings, cravings, anger, and irritability—trust me, you ain’t seen cranky until you’ve seen a werewolf trying to force down their natural inclinations during a full moon.

  I didn’t understand how it worked, but it involved a little science, a lot of magic, and worked on the same principle as a goblin being able to walk down Broadway while looking just as human as anyone else.

  The disguise R&D settled on? A German shepherd. Readily accepted the world over as police and military dogs. Pair a K-9 with a SPI commando in a flak vest or body armor, and your average New Yorker wouldn’t bat an eye.

  Where we were going, a dog would look right at home. The Hudson Highlands. Home of Storm King State Park and Pollepel Island. Storm King was known for its hiking and hunting. Today and tonight, our plan was to extend the hunting to Pollepel—first for Ian, then for every Fomorian that tried to stop us.
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  Since time was not on our side, Rake had a helicopter to take us to the Hudson Highlands. There, he had rented an SUV to meet the Bannerman Castle Trust representatives for the trip to the island.

  By nine o’clock, we were at the West 30th Street Heliport about to board Rake’s Sikorsky. I’d flown in it before and while the ride was a smooth, sometimes the air wasn’t. Today, I wasn’t about to take any chances. I popped a Dramamine. I could get dizzy from standing up too fast. Traveling by air, water, or the backseat of a car couldn’t be done without my little orange-flavored, chewable buddies. Since coming to work for SPI, I carried three meds at all times: Dramamine, Tums, and Vicks. Tums were for those times when something I saw or smelled didn’t agree with what I’d eaten. The Vicks was to smear under my nose to help me not smell it in the first place.

  For today’s trip, Kitty had said she’d take care of the food. To complete our disguise, we were taking a picnic lunch to Pollepel. Considering what we had planned for this evening, not eating during the day was not an option. Kitty had brought pastries, bread, and one of those carryout boxes of coffee from her bakery, and then she’d popped over to Murray’s a couple of doors down for cheese and lunch meat. The helicopter would be stocked with drinks.

  In accordance with New York’s leash laws, Yasha was wearing one; I was holding the end. The Russian werewolf/German shepherd was sitting on the tarmac on his haunches.

  Rake just looked at Yasha. Yasha stared right back.

  “There’s a ‘no pet’ clause in the car rental contract,” Rake told me, never taking his eyes from Yasha.

  “His human form or that form—either way, right now he’s gonna shed.” I patted Rake on the arm. “We’ll vacuum. And if the rental place raises a stink, well darn, you won’t get your deposit back. You can afford it.”

  “It’s not the rental agency’s stink I’m concerned about.”

  Yasha didn’t growl. He simply peeled his upper lip away from his canines.