Then he dropped his shorts, and buck naked, turned right there in front of everyone. Muscles stretching, bones popping, claws extending, hair growing. When he’d finished, he threw back his head and neck—that had enough dark, rich red fur to qualify as a mane—and cut loose with a bone-chilling, triumphant howl.
The Scandinavian woman had sat back on her haunches with a panting, wolfy grin to enjoy the show.
Yasha the werewolf shook himself vigorously, settling his reddish brown fur around him, and grinned back.
“We’re ready, sir,” called out a voice from just inside the tunnel access doors. Two of our people each held a spray nozzle connected to a tank.
I looked over and groaned. Others groaned and swore. The Scandinavians just looked confused.
Roy grinned. “Time to get spritzed with some of that fancy New York City toilet water.”
Back home, toilet water could mean perfume. Roy meant toilet water. Literally. Though with my luck, the grendels would think it was seasoning.
Our people reluctantly lined up to get sprayed down front and back.
Rolf caught a whiff of what was in those tanks. “What is—”
“Eau de Sewage,” Roy told our guests. “Not the real stuff; it just smells like it. Can’t have the beasties picking us out from anything else down there. Least not until we’re close enough to give ’em a proper welcome to town.”
“Okay, teams,” Anderssen said. “Let’s form up, get coated, and move out. The clock’s ticking.”
• • •
You could get anywhere in the city via the subway. Using the tunnels, so could monsters—and so could we.
We boarded the two troop transport trucks SPI kept in its fleet for getting commando teams closer to where they needed to be without being seen by the public.
The abandoned subway tunnel SPI had paved and adapted for its use led to the Hudson River in one direction, up toward Midtown in the other. The Midtown section ended just before West Twenty-third Street. From there, the tunnel narrowed, and we were on foot. Grendels were nocturnal, but in the New York underground, it was always night. Man-made electricity was all that held primeval darkness at bay. Topside it was just after eight o’clock on what’d been forecasted to be a bitterly cold morning. New Year’s Eve morning. Under Manhattan, it was always dark and warm, at least warmer than it was out on the streets.
Ideally, we’d find the nest with the adult grendels in one of the nine target sites, catch them both by surprise, and the bionic Viking and his spear would do their thing and he’d get his name on a plaque back in Oslo.
Roy Benoit led our team; Sandra Niles headed the second, and Lars Anderssen the third. Roy was a lead-from-the-front kind of guy—or as was the case now, a lead-from-beside-the-werewolf kind of guy. Yasha had tracked the male grendel earlier, so he and his nose had the point. I was behind Yasha and Roy with Ian at my left shoulder, Calvin at my right. Rolf and the second Scandinavian spearman, a third Scandinavian, and one of our commandos, a former Marine named Liz brought up the rear with the flamethrower. If anything tried to sneak up on us, Liz would turn it into something resembling the gooey center of a s’more.
I’d been in subway tunnels before, but not in what was below. Yasha led us through the levels with the garbage, bizarre and otherwise, and into passages that looked like no one had been there since they’d been scooped out of whatever the underbelly of Manhattan was made of. The tracks in the subway tunnel we were in had been abandoned, but only by trains. Trash was expected. An office chair on casters sitting perfectly level in the middle of the tracks? Not so much.
Over the next who knew how many hours, we paused for quick MREs and brief breaks for the trackers to scout ahead. We found one of the likely nest sites. Empty. Sandra’s team located two more. Likewise empty. At this rate, by the time we found the actual nest, we’d be too exhausted to do anything about it. As we continued the search, Yasha and Roy took us past tunnels that branched off into what could have been uncharted darkness, and around shafts in the floor that could have fallen all the way to Hell’s waiting room for all I knew. Left to my own devices, I would have been lost after the first two levels. Who was I kidding? I’d have been hopelessly turned around as soon as I got out of the truck.
I didn’t know how far we’d gone or how much time had passed when Roy called a halt and keyed his mike that was linked to the comms we all wore in our ears. “We’ve got a junction here. Both eventually get us to one of the possible nest sites. Mac, I need your eyes and Yasha’s nose. Tell me if our visitors have recently used either one. Let’s go to low lights, people.”
Yasha and I moved forward, Yasha slightly in front, but still giving me a clear view. The Russian werewolf padded several paces into the tunnel—far enough to register scents that weren’t us—and stopped. His deep breaths frosted the air. I stood back far enough to give him room to work and took a good look around. The tunnel descended like a boarding ramp for an airplane and then curved slightly at about the same distance. If Yasha couldn’t smell it and I couldn’t see it, there was nothing there.
I keyed my mike. “Nothing, sir.”
Yasha growled low in his throat, which I took to be a frustrated no.
We proceeded to the second tunnel. After about fifty feet, there was a concrete landing with metal stairs descending into darkness, stairs only wide enough for one person at a time. If we went this way, we’d have to go single file. Yasha stepped out onto the concrete landing and went perfectly still. I could just make out the fur bristling along the ridge of his spine.
I stood off to the side. I didn’t need—or want—to go any farther. I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel it. Something was below. Waiting. That feeling had nothing to do with my seer ability; it was the primitive instincts of a human in the presence of a predator. I trusted those instincts. I turned my head toward Roy and nodded.
Roy stepped between me and Yasha and onto the first stair. It creaked. It wasn’t loud, but for what we were hunting, it was loud enough.
“Looks like the surprise party’s over, folks,” Roy said. “Yasha and I will take point. Calvin and Rolf, you and your pig sticker cover our six. Mac, wait until we’re at the bottom before you follow; these stairs don’t sound stable. Keep your senses wide open and sweep that floor for anything that even thinks about moving. The rest follow after you. When we reach the bottom, we’ll go bright. I want to see every rat turd down there.”
They quickly made their way down the staircase. Roy and Yasha in the lead, Calvin at his back, followed by Rolf. I scanned below and beyond for any sign of ambush, but saw nothing. I started down, Ian protectively behind me, and the other three kept watch on the tunnel behind us.
Our helmet lights pierced the darkness. The stairs went down at least two stories; the floor at the bottom mostly hidden in shadow. To our immediate right was a concrete wall; to our left a vast open space, interrupted midway by a catwalk roughly even with the halfway point of the stair. I couldn’t see where it came from or where it went. I aimed my light down and could just make out the shape of torn-up subway tracks. Still no visual confirmation, but I was still getting that primeval warning system thing that scrawny dinosaurs must have gotten right before a T-Rex came charging out of the trees.
Or in our case, a whole forest worth of concrete and steel supports.
We all made it to the bottom without the stairs collapsing or walking into an ambush.
Roy’s sharp eyes were determined to see where his high beams couldn’t. “Talk to me, Mac.”
“Still no visible targets. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m sure that’ll change any second now. Yasha?”
The Russian indicated the junction of the tracks with his nose.
Roy gave a curt nod. “We’ll cover you.”
Yasha moved silently to the center of the vast space, stopping where the tracks merged—and where he was in full view of the four tunnel openings. He faced each of the four in turn, letting the air, and the scents they carried, wash over him. Then without any indication of what he’d sensed, he quickly trotted back to where we waited.
As Yasha approached us, his eyes glittered amber and gold. It was no trick of the light.
A werewolf’s nose knew blood when it whiffed it.
When he reached us, he turned in the direction of the tunnel opening in the left corner.
The pitch-dark left corner.
“Estimate of our location?” Roy asked Calvin.
The big commando studied a device attached to his forearm armor. “Less than three hundred yards to the next possible nest site.” He nodded in the direction of the left corner. “That way.”
23
AFTER no more than fifty feet into the tunnel, the heat and humidity felt to me like they were climbing to sauna levels. Grendels might have liked it here, but I sure didn’t. I would’ve loved nothing more than to strip down to my tank top, but only Sigourney could survive a monster attack wearing nothing but her skivvies.
We could all smell it now. A sharp odor, a combination of ammonia and copper. My nose instantly told my brain what those two smells were—and more importantly, what they meant, but to avoid scaring myself any more than I already was, I pushed the babbling realization into a closet in my head and slammed the door. Similar realizations were happening to the rest of the team—minus the babbling.
It was urine at a level that couldn’t possibly be human, and blood that probably was.
As we followed the tunnel downward, the air grew hotter. And stinkier.
Rotten meat.
“There’s a scent difference between things that wander down holes and die,” Rolf said quietly, “and things that are dragged down holes and slaughtered.”
As food for grendel spawn.
He shined his light on an object lying on the tracks.
A running shoe. It wasn’t as bizarre as the office chair, but it made me wonder why only one?
I wondered until I saw the bloody sock lying flat on the left rail, still in the shoe—and a snapped-off leg bone still in the sock.