With shaking hands, I fumbled for my mike. “The female isn’t coming. He’s holding us here ’til she can get to the surface.”
Calvin spat a curse. Ian and Rolf didn’t say a word, but they’d all heard me.
It didn’t make any difference. None of it would. I’d emptied my gun to no effect. The guys were doing everything they could. None of it was working, but if they lessened by one iota the intensity of their attack, the male would slice them to shreds. Meanwhile the female was making her way to the street with its million people. When she got there, she’d probably send the “supper’s ready” message to her mate, and it’d be all over.
We were trapped here. The amount of time we had to live would be determined by how quickly the female got to the surface. I knew it wouldn’t be long.
As if the grendel could read my thoughts, a low, eager growl rumbled from the depths of his chest.
“Unfortunately, my aromatic friend,” Rolf called out to the grendel, “we don’t have all night. Playtime’s over.”
I stared in dumbstruck horror as Rolf Haagen released the catch on his spear, telescoping it to half its length, and spread his arms to the monster.
“Come and get me.”
“No!” Ian roared.
The grendel grabbed Rolf by the front of his body armor, and held him up so that they were face-to-face. Then the grendel slowly licked the Norwegian from chest to face with a black serpentine tongue. He probably didn’t care what the Norwegian tasted like; he was just enjoying licking him like a Kevlar-coated lollipop while bullets ricocheted off his armored scales. The grendel smiled and opened his mouth, a gust of rotten air from his exhale blowing the Norwegian’s blond hair back.
Neither Ian nor Calvin could get a clear head shot without risking Rolf, so they took anything and everything else they could get.
“That’s it,” Rolf was coaxing the monster. “Open wide. Show me where your gullet is.” He shoved his right hand and forearm into the grendel’s mouth. The grendel bit down and coughed, causing his mouth to open enough for Rolf to pull his now mangled mechanical hand and arm free.
The grendel’s next cough was more like a hairball heave.
Rolf covered his head and twisted away . . .
. . . as the grendel’s head and upper torso exploded.
Bits and pieces rained down including all that was left of the cloaking device and collar.
The headless corpse toppled forward, smacking with a ground-shaking thud onto the tracks, pinning Rolf under it.
I jumped down onto the tracks, grabbing a section of grendel, doing what I could to help Ian and Calvin move the remains. The thing shifted enough for Yasha to get his front fangs into the pull straps on Rolf’s armor and drag him free.
Calvin was laughing; Ian was swearing—both at Rolf Haagen.
Not only was the Norwegian alive, he was beaming. He staggered to his feet, surveyed the destruction, and let out a loud whoop. “My last grenade. Never go into a grendel’s maw empty-handed.” He looked up. “Beowulf, my brother,” he called, apparently toward Valhalla. “Now that’s a kill.”
Flashlights and the sound of running booted feet were coming toward us down the tracks. Fast.
More booted feet from the opposite direction.
Backup. I exhaled in relief.
Calvin was more vocal. “It took you long enou—”
“FBI! We have you surrounded.”
The men appeared out of the tunnels and passed the dead grendel with barely a second glance.
I had a horrible, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. The leader stopped and I could just make out his profile in the light.
The vampire ex-CIA agent.
27
THE feds weren’t feds, either—unless the FBI had started recruiting ghouls.
I didn’t dare make a sound. I touched Ian on the shoulder. When his eyes met mine, I tapped one of my incisors with my index finger, hoping that was the universal symbol for vampire. Now, how to pantomime “ghoul”? They were veiled, and to the guys, they’d look human. They needed to know they weren’t. Screw it. I stood on tiptoe and put my lips to Ian’s ear. “And ghouls.”
Ian leaned in even closer, then went absolutely still.
I did the same for exactly the same reason.
We both had guns pointed against our heads.
“The young lady said ‘ghouls,’ Detective Byrne,” came an urbane voice from behind me. “Or I believe it is now Agent Byrne, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t see the speaker, and with a gun to my head, fear trumped curiosity. Ian looked as if he’d seen a ghost, the kind that haunted, day and night, and never left.
“Those sibilant consonants will betray you every time, Agent Fraser,” the vampire, Charles Warrenton Fitzpatrick III called to me across the tracks as we were all disarmed. “Even without preternatural hearing, they’re nearly impossible to miss. But don’t blame yourself for your capture; like our grendels, we’ve long known you were here.” With exaggerated distaste, he stepped around the remains of the male grendel. “Even without the barbaric fireworks display.” He looked to where Rolf Haagen was slowly getting to his feet, blood that hadn’t been there thirty seconds before running down his temple. I’m certain our female guest will want to meet and eat the one who killed her mate.”
Rolf spit out a mouthful of blood, and made sure every ghoul within reach shared the bounty before being knocked back to the tracks and his hands secured behind his back.
“We received word that a team of ‘Scandinavian terrorists’ had entered the country,” the vampire continued. “I would think that to be an oxymoron. It was most accommodating of your comrades in arms to pay a visit to our nursery. It made collecting you all so much easier.”
Calvin had been subdued, but a ghoul had paid for the privilege with its life, or whatever it was that ghouls had.
There was no sign of Yasha. That fact, and that fact alone, kept hope alive and kicking.
A pair of ghouls wrenched Ian’s hands behind his back—or they tried to. One earned a head butt for his efforts. The ghoul guarding Ian pressed the muzzle harder into Ian’s temple, and I heard the double click of handcuffs.
“Please don’t make him shoot you, especially not in the head,” the man behind me said. “It would be a needless waste of such a delicacy.”
A shiver ran through me. Humans—at least normal ones—didn’t consider people brains to be food, much less a delicacy. Zombies did; but zombies weren’t much for conversation. Damn the gun. I turned my head and looked.
The urbane speaker was also a ghoul.
At least that was what it wanted to look like. The face was a blur of images, layered one over the other, constantly shifting. Only the dark eyes remained constant.
Eyes I recognized—as well as the seemingly endless layering of faces. The last time I’d seen them was from beneath a tattered hat in front of a liquor store in SoHo.
The homeless man. The man who’d told me to give my regards to my partner. He knew Ian, and Ian knew him, and not in a good way.
I should have shot him in those eyes with tequila when I’d had the chance.
Either the creature could read minds or my recognition was obvious. His dark eyes sparkled in pleasure and he gave me a broad smile.
“You do remember me, Miss Fraser.” To my seer vision, his dental work was an ever-changing array of teeth and fangs—from two incisors to four, from a mouthful of seemingly curved needles to human teeth. They had all been real enough at one point in time or another. The images were layered one upon another, stretching back into infinity, like looking into a wall of fun-house mirrors.
“You’re not a ghoul,” I said.
“Oh, but I am. At least to Agent Byrne. Please tell me you remember our encounter,” he said to Ian. “I look back upon it with great fondness. Is she aware that your partners have shortened life expectancies?” Then those now black eyes were on me. “Agent Byrne believes that he has unfinished business with me. I perceive it as an interrupted meal.”
“God damn you to hell,” Ian snarled.
“You already tried to expedite my trip, remember? I certainly have not forgotten, as I am equally certain that you have not forgotten me. It was so very flattering to hear that I was instrumental in putting you on a new and exciting career path. Those of my kind are rather like cockroaches—a distasteful comparison, but an apt one. We can come back from virtually anything.” The soul of murder was reflected in his flat black eyes. “What you did to me was extraordinarily difficult to recover from, but I found the thoughts of exacting prolonged vengeance from you to be the best curative of all.”
Ian’s hard face was carefully expressionless but I could feel the barely contained fury radiating off of him in waves.
In that moment, I knew who the creature had to be. “The leader of that gang of pawn and jewelry shop robbers.”
“Agent Byrne, your newest partner is both delectable and perceptive. Gang is such a common term, Miss Fraser. I prefer to think of us as entrepreneurs with a common business goal. I am surprised that you told your new partner about me, Agent Byrne. I don’t usually frequent base establishments such as pawnshops; however, this particular merchant had an item I had long searched for.”
“What are you?” I asked. “You’re not a doppelganger.”
He laughed, a mixture of voices, none of them natural, all of them monstrous. “Not even on my worst days. Tonight, I’m a ghoul. Tomorrow?” He shrugged elaborately. “It depends on who or what the situation requires.”
Charles Fitzpatrick gripped the back of my neck in a hand that felt more like a steel vise, and half carried, half dragged me away from Ian. With a gun muzzle in my back, he forced me up the ladder and onto the platform, then all but threw me against the bars of the old subway booth. I tripped over some discarded aerosol paint cans and went down hard.
“Get up and lace your fingers behind your neck,” the vampire ordered. “Unfortunately, we are short of restraints, but I know I can count on your full cooperation.”