The Grendel Affair: A SPI Files Novel (32 page)

THIS was bad.

The eggs had been here and now they were gone.

Liz’s swearing was doing her Marine training proud; it was almost poetic. I wanted to scream a few choice words myself, but it’d be like throwing out a dirty limerick after a Shakespearean sonnet. I’d just embarrass myself.

Not only was the room empty, it was also worthless to us. It would have been a good place to barricade ourselves in until reinforcements arrived. However, the room didn’t have a door—at least not anymore. It was metal, thick, and should have been standing until the second coming. It wasn’t standing now. It’d been ripped off its hinges by something that had sunk its claws into the steel, gotten a good hold, and let ’er rip.

Like a certain female grendel desperate to get her eggs out before we got in. I looked around. This didn’t strike me as a particularly good nesting spot. I shrugged inwardly. What did I know about monster maternal urges? Compared to a Norwegian ice cave, this place might have looked like a five-star resort. Odd behavior aside, the bottom line was that she’d known we were coming. Though she could’ve easily heard or smelled us. After a certain point in the tunnels, stealth was no longer at the top of our list of concerns.

“Sir!” Calvin shouted to be heard over the fighting.

Roy finished hacking the head off the ghoul closest to him before sparing a quick glance back at us.

We’d thought that the ghouls had been protecting the nest, but judging from the lack of eggs and the number of ghouls, it appeared they’d been funneling us down to this room. My helmet light showed me that going past where we were would only get us so far. Beyond the dark was a dead end.

It was an ambush.

The fighting was entirely too close to the empty nest room. Ian and the others were being pushed back with the intent of forcing them into this room and then turning where we stood into a death chamber.

I looked down. Other than our boot prints, there were no tracks leading in or out.

“Anything?” Liz called back. After her initial crème brûlée treatment of the room’s interior, Liz had stationed herself at the door, lighting up any ghoul her flames could reach.

I scanned the room with my light, making sure nothing waiting to eat me was lurking in a dark corner. Dark, dank, and mildewed. I sneezed. Great. I had everything I needed to survive a monster attack, but I didn’t have a Kleenex to my name. And encased in body armor the way I was, I didn’t even have the option of using my sleeve, disgusting as that would have been. I just sniffed and carried on. I moved around the room, searching for some sign or smudge of slime to tell me the way those eggs had been taken out. Even though they weren’t here anymore, I didn’t want to turn my back on that nest, even if it was empty.

Then I saw it. A seam in the concrete wall that didn’t line up, and dirt that had been scraped away when this section of wall had been opened. Not that long before, it seemed, due to lack of new dust. Hopefully it was a way out.

“Bingo,” I whispered.

Calvin quickly joined me. “Find something?”

“Possibly.” I crouched down to get a closer look. A tiny piece of broken pipe had gotten stuck down near the floor, keeping it from closing completely. I wedged my fingers in between the slabs of concrete and pulled.

It didn’t budge.

One of Calvin’s big hands reached around me and took a try. Even he had a hard time getting that loose section to move. It ended up taking both of Calvin’s hands and all of his effort to open it, confirming that whatever had carried those eggs out—or played doorman for whatever did—was probably stronger than Calvin. I shoved that thought aside, and pressed my back against the wall next to the opening. Calvin stood opposite me, using the door as a shield, and when nothing jumped out, he stepped quickly into the opening, shining both helmet- and gun-mounted lights inside, showing an area even smaller than the room we were in, almost like a bomb shelter. With Calvin covering me, we went inside. There weren’t any cracks or seams in the wall indicating anything remotely resembling another way in or out. Just crumbling and flaking concrete.

I took a step back from the wall, snagged my heel on a chunk of concrete, and not used to the extra weight of body armor, fell flat on my ass. The floor cracked and broke beneath me. I yelped and kept falling—at least part of me did. Next thing I knew, I’d plugged a hole in the floor with my butt, floundering like I was stuck in an inner tube float—from my chest up and my knees down were the only parts of me sticking out.

I looked up at a surprised Calvin. “Found something.”

 • • • 

The ghoul attack ended as fast as it’d begun. The male grendel had vanished before that.

No one on the team liked or trusted what either of those things implied.

Most of the team stood guard against a probable and reinforced second-wave attack, while waiting for our own reinforcements. Ian, Calvin, and a momentarily back-in-human-form Yasha worked quickly to literally pry my armored butt out of that hole. It would have been beyond embarrassing if it hadn’t been for the terror. In an inner tube floating down a river, usually the worst that could bite you would be a fish. I was presently having a flashback to the grendel spawn in the HVAC room, and my vivid imagination had them scurrying up from below right this very moment to attack my posterior parts.

Once the guys had popped me out, we saw that the hole was a shaft—or a chute that, for all we knew, went straight down to Satan’s sitting room.

It was also where those eggs had gone.

Before we’d left headquarters, Yasha had taken big sniffs of the grendel spawn and their eggs. That’s what he smelled now.

“So something just threw them down there?” I asked.

Yasha sniffed again. “Nose says yes.”

“Anderssen said grendel eggs are tough,” Ian said. “So I imagine a trip down a hole in the ground wouldn’t be a problem. Heck, the kiddies might even enjoy it.”

I barely heard him. My eyes were locked on that opening in the floor. The hole was small. Everyone on the team was big, at least bigger than the hole was wide.

Except for me.

Everyone looked at me.

I looked back.

“Nobody’s going down there yet,” Roy said to everyone’s unspoken conclusion. “Calvin, you got any information on where that goes?”

The big commando shook his head. “According to the maps we have, there’s not anything down there. However, the old Forty-second Street subway station is on the level above us.”

That got everyone’s attention.

“Old?” Roy asked.

“Built in 1932, but only used from 1959 to 1981 for rush hour trains. Abandoned now.” He paused meaningfully. “The present-day Forty-second Street/Times Square station is almost right on top of it.”

“It’d be packed at midnight,” Ian countered. “Our grendels need direct access to the street—without thousands of witnesses until they get there.”

“I said
almost
right above it. There’s a pedestrian tunnel and station entrance a quarter mile to the south. Back before Times Square got Disneyfied, it was a favorite hangout for junkies, pushers, and the homeless. After a crime spree down there back in 1991, they closed the tunnel and sealed it off. The homeless still find their way in.”

“Providing an out-of-the-way, steady food source,” Roy noted.

Calvin nodded. “Especially in the winter. And there’s a stairway that goes straight down from that tunnel to the abandoned Forty-second Street station. Also ‘sealed.’ Once the grendels get to that closed station entrance on the street level, if that handiwork’s any indication”—Calvin jerked his head back at the steel door that’d been torn from its hinges—“they’d have no problem accessing Times Square.”

Roy indicated the shaft at our feet. “If those eggs are down there, we’ve got our likely access point. But we’re running a camera down first.” Roy popped open a pouch on his utility belt, taking out what looked like a drain snake with a knob on the end.

I shot a quick glance at the door. “Do we have time to—”

“We sure as hell don’t have time to lose our seer down a hole in the ground,” Roy said. “I ain’t going back to the dragon lady with that story.”

He unwound and lowered the camera into the hole, using the same viewer he had for the GPS. I looked around his arm. The sides of the hole were rough as if they’d been scooped out by a hand, a big hand, one that had even larger claws. It reminded me of a burrow.

Rolf stuck his head through the doorway. “Still no ghouls, no grendel, and no Lars.”

Roy nodded absently, eyes intent on the camera screen. “The shaft’s clear down to fifty feet. It goes farther, but our cable doesn’t.”

Everyone looked at me again.

“Can’t we just toss down a pair of grenades?” Rolf asked.

Roy shook his head. “Not until we know for sure the eggs are down there. No disrespect to Yasha’s sniffer, but we need a confirmed kill.”

Meaning I was going down. Hopefully just in the spelunking sense rather than that of impending doom.

“No grendel could’ve dug that,” Rolf said. “It’s too small.”

“I’ve seen this before,” Roy said. “It’s ghoul work. They’re like rats; there’s nothing they can’t fit through. Damned things just flatten out and squirm their way in.”

“Ghoul nannies protecting the babies,” I muttered. I leaned over and peered into the hole. “From the looks of things, I’ll fit, but my armor won’t.” I took a deep breath. Down a pitch-black hole in the depths of subterranean Manhattan was the last place I wanted to go, but there was no other option. “Ian, get me out of this; we’re wasting time.”

My partner’s hand gripped my arm. “Roy, I need a minute.”

“Make it a fast one.”

Ian’s hand slid down from my upper arm and took my hand in his and pulled me away from the others and went to the corner of the bunker.

I beat him to whatever he was going to say. “No.”

“No, what?”

“Whatever you’re going to say. Save it. I have to go. You heard Roy; he needs a confirmed kill. So I go, confirm they’re down there, you guys pull me back up, Rolf chucks in a couple grenades. Boom. Besides, there could be a veil over those eggs. No one else would be able to see them. I’m just taking a peek and getting the hell out.”

His hand squeezed mine through my glove. “If you hear, see, or smell anything alive down there, you say the word and we’ll have you out of there so fast you’ll—”

“To quote Rolf: ‘Would a girly scream work?’”

He smiled. “I’ll take anything.”

He and Yasha helped me out of my armor, and into a rappelling harness. I got to keep my helmet with the light.

“Uh, I’ve never rappelled.”

Roy grinned. “You ain’t rappelling. We’re dropping; you’re hanging on.”

“I can do that.”

Ian picked up my shoulder harness with my real gun and knife, and held it up for me to slip on. I did and he adjusted the harness so that it’d fit just me rather than over me plus my armor.

I met his eyes. His were grimly resigned, mine were questioning.

“If you need them, use them,” he told me.

“They’d work even better than a girly scream.”

“Damn straight.” Ian tapped the top of my helmet. “Use your night vision until you get a look at what’s down there. Don’t let anything know you’re there unless you have to.”

Roy chipped at the wall nearest the pit with a gloved finger; bits of concrete flaked off. “Wall’s not strong enough to hold even your little bit of weight.”

“I’ll anchor,” Ian told him.

Roy nodded. “I’ll pitch in. Calvin, you, too. No insult, son,” he told Ian.

“None taken.”

I was in black fatigues, combat boots, and Under Armour tank top. At least I got to keep my helmet with its ghoul-retina–frying light.

I tried a grin; it probably looked like a grimace. “Sigourney, eat your heart out,” I muttered to myself.

“When you tell us to pull you up, tuck your upper arms to your sides and cross your forearms and hands tight against your chest, like this.” Ian demonstrated, and I mirrored his action. He nodded. “Good. We’ll be pulling you out of there fast, and I don’t want to leave your skin on the walls on the way up.”

I sat down on the rim of the hole with my lower legs dangling over the edge. I looked up. “You guys got me?”

“We’re not letting go,” Ian assured me.

They lowered me over the side, my weight entirely supported by three of the men I trusted most. That was the only thing I felt confident about.

As soon as my head dropped below the surface, I pressed my lips together against the whimpers that desperately wanted to get out—almost as desperately as I wanted to get out of this hole. I was determined not to lose it. If I did, the entire team would be listening while I did. I jumped over terror straight into petrified. I tried to tell myself it was like one of those water park slides, but I’d never liked the thought of going down one of those, either.

I had a comm link in my ear and a helmet and high-beam flashlight on my head, so I wasn’t alone and I had light if I needed it. Scrapes were unavoidable, and twice I almost got stuck. I felt blood on my shoulders and upper arms. Blood that anything below me could smell like circling sharks.

I was chum on a rope.

What was probably minutes seemed like an eternity. I felt like I was being lowered down a monster’s throat, a monster that was going to swallow and gulp me down at any moment. I watched my descent by tucking my chin down to my chest and looking under my arm, while clutching the rope with both hands. At first I didn’t see anything but a whole heap of dark, then it started to lighten ever so slightly. I turned off my night vision, and let my eyes adjust. It was definitely lighter. Dim, but getting brighter as I descended. A light in a hole in the ground? I wasn’t opposed to light, just suspicious until I knew what was making it and why. Being lowered down what was basically a packed dirt shaft was disorienting, so I couldn’t begin to guess how far down the light was. Suddenly I stopped moving.

End of the line. Literally.

The rope couldn’t go any farther, but I had to.

“Guys,” I whispered into my comms. “I need another . . .” I looked down again and made my best guess. “Twenty feet of rope.”