Requiem for the Dead (17 page)

Normally this close to the gremlins' nests, I'd hear the scratchy scampering of thousands of small clawed feet, the chattering of their guttural language. That many gremlins in an enclosed chamber created a hell of a lot of noise.

Marcus nudged his big furry body up to the front, then crouched down, ready to leap at anything that might be on the other side of the door. Kyle pushed Alejandro into the rear. I grabbed the door handle and pulled.

The nightmare we found inside was unimaginable.

The gremlins hadn't just been slaughtered, they'd been destroyed. A layer of blood had congealed on the factory floor like gelatin, its surface roughly dotted with arms, legs, pointed ears, bit of hair, and other meaty, disgusting things. Nothing inside moved. The smell nearly made me double over. My eyes watered, and I told myself it was the stink and not actual tears.

I made it five steps inside, my sneakers squishing on the blood, before I froze and couldn't go any farther. There was no point. All we'd find were more filleted gremlins, more blood and gore.

"Jesus Christ," Tybalt said. "All of them?"

"A lot of them," I said. It was impossible to know if they'd all been killed or if some had managed to escape.

"One goblin couldn't do all this."

"No, but one goblin is all it takes to open up sewer access and allow a horde inside."

"Stone," Kyle said. He pointed at the high wall of a metal vat that was probably full of gremlin piss. "There."

I shined my flashlight in that direction. Written in gremlin blood was the word Kelsa. "Well, shit," I said.

The goblins were definitely making a statement. I took a few pictures with my phone.

Marcus backed out of the factory floor. Kyle and Shelby were both looking a little green. I recalled the way Phineas had reacted to the gremlins several months ago—an instinctual revulsion, he'd said. He'd run outside and vomited in the grass. Looked like all Therians had a similar allergic reaction to goblin piss.

"Take a breather," I told them. "Tybalt, Ale, and I will check for an entry point."

"We will?" Alejandro said.

"Suck it up, Junior, this is part of the job."

We didn't find an entry or exit point, for all of our searching. The closest we came was a trail of bloody footprints leading into a basement room full of metal pipes of all shapes and sizes. More blood had been splashed around the floor and walls, making it impossible to track the footprints into any single pipe.

Alejandro and I sat on those pipes while Tybalt retrieved something from the car. He set the explosives to go off in that room, then put the timer on five minutes. We were a block away from the factory when we felt the ground shake. Tybalt pulled off into an empty parking lot and we watched the flames rise high into the night sky.

The fire probably wouldn't go far enough into the sewers to touch the goblins, but we couldn't leave that sort of mess around for the human authorities. We may have very well wiped away all proof that gremlins had ever existed in the world, but I couldn't think about that. I wanted to imagine some had escaped and were searching for a new place to live—or better yet, had fled to another city altogether.

Thanks to their affiliation with me, another species of creature was facing total extinction.

"This wasn't your fault," Tybalt said, as if he could read my thoughts.

"Something tells me the gremlins wouldn't agree with you," I replied, unable to mask the bitterness in my voice. "And that little love note the goblins left behind tells another story."

He quit trying to change my mind, and since we still had the matter of Alejandro to deal with, I called Astrid. Explained who Alejandro was, the information he'd given us, and the results.

"Do you trust him?" Astrid asked.

"He hasn't given me a reason not to." I turned to give Alejandro a pointed look, and he went a little wide-eyed.

"Blindfold him and bring him in."

"All right."

"Have you heard from Truman recently?"

"Not in the last hour or so. He's made some progress on that, uh, pet project of his."

She didn't have to be so cryptic on her end. "The Lupa?"

"Yeah."

"He has them?"

"Made contact."

"Stone—"

"That's all I know. He didn't want me directly involved."

She made an all-too-familiar noise of frustration. "Fine. Bring the newbie to Ops when you get back. I want the others to stay out in the field."

"Will do."

I gave Alejandro the good news and relayed Astrid's orders. My next call was to Wyatt, who didn't pick up. I left a terse message to call me or else. Alejandro didn't protest being blindfolded. We didn't talk on the drive back across town to the Watchtower. Tybalt dropped us off inside the parking area.

Marcus didn't seem particularly pleased with having to leave right away. As I climbed out of the SUV, I met his worried copper eyes and mouthed "I'll check on him."

He nodded.

After the SUV left, I yanked off Alejandro's blindfold. He stared all around us as I led him down the old mall's corridor to Ops. If he recognized the place—and no reason he should, since he'd have been a toddler when it was last a functioning retail site—he didn't say so. People stared as we passed, suspicion in their eyes, directed at the stranger in their sanctuary. Therian noses twitched because we had to stink to high hell from our walk through the factory of death.

Astrid and Rufus met us inside Ops. Alejandro did an admirable job of not looking like he wanted to shit his pants when Astrid politely asked me to let them take it from here. I knew she only wanted to question him about Boot Camp and everything he knew about the goblin Queen he'd tracked, but he didn't. Poor kid.

Wyatt still hadn't called me back, so I took a few minutes to shower off the odor of death and change my clothes. Feeling a lot less grungy, I headed for the infirmary to check on Milo—not only for Marcus, but for my own peace of mind, too.

One person was in the infirmary waiting area when I walked in, curled up in a chair, looking as lost as I'd ever seen her. Gina Kismet didn't wear helpless well, and worse, she didn't try to hide it when I spotted her. She blinked at me through blurred eyes, cheeks streaked with tears.

My heart nearly stopped, and I stared at the door that led into the private rooms, panicked, until she said, "Milo's resting. Dr. Vansis is keeping him sedated for now."

That strangling fear loosened enough for me to get a solid breath. Damn her for scaring me like that. Milo wasn't dead, so—oh wait. I sat in the chair next to her, unsure what to say about Baylor's death. They'd been close for many years, and Kismet and I had just established a friendly truce a few months back. I wasn't any good at comforting grieving people, but the other people closest to her (Wyatt, Tybalt, Rufus) were busy elsewhere.

So I told her about Alejandro and the gremlin warehouse. She didn't have any particularly warm fuzzy feelings for the gremlins, but she'd helped relocate them to that location. A slaughter of this magnitude was affecting, no matter your species.

"When it rains, it pours," she said.

"I'd say we've left downpour and hit hurricane force weather."

She grunted. "It's funny, but I always kind of expected Adrian to outlive the rest of us. And by us, I mean me, Wyatt, and Rufus. We were the Mercy's Lot Handlers, the four of us."

"I remember."

"Carly and Paul are taking it pretty hard." They'd both been members of his Triad before the Triads ceased to exist, so I could imagine their grief.

"A Hunter never expects to outlive their Handler."

"Losing Hunters was never easy for us, either."

She didn't have to convince me of that. I knew how much she cared about the Hunters in her care—how much Felix's death last month had hurt. "We lose people we love," I said. "It's the life we chose."

"But when does all of that loss stop being worth it? When do we say enough?"

I slid my arm across Kismet's shoulders and pulled her in a sideways hug. "When there's no one left that we love to keep fighting for. Until then, we fight. It's who we are, Gina. Adrian knew that. He lived it every day."

"At least he can finally rest." The corners of her mouth quirked. "Did you know that when Adrian and Wyatt first met, they got into a fist fight?"

"No." The mental image made me laugh out loud. "Tell me."

She did. Reliving the past, and what must have been a pretty funny moment for the witnesses, loosened her up. Remembering her friend returned some of the brightness to her eyes and the light to her face.

After a while, Dr. Vansis shooed us out with orders to get our own rest while his patient got his. Since we weren't going to be able to visit Milo anytime soon, we both headed back to our sleeping quarters. I'd be going out with the hunting teams later, but could probably squeeze in a cat nap before we had to prep.

I woke in my bed with a warm hand gently shaking my shoulder. Before I opened my eyes, I knew it was Wyatt. He had sense enough to look ashamed of himself before I figured out what time it was. I punched him in the chest anyway.

"That's for not calling me for two fucking hours," I said.

"I'm sorry, Evy. I had to get the boys to trust me."

"Did you?"

"Yes."

"Where are they?"

"I set them up in a place with money and food. They're going to help us look for Vale and his family."

I perked up. "Well, that's something. Three more noses on the street is always helpful when we're looking for were-cats on the lam. What's Astrid think about it?"

"She isn't completely happy to be out of the loop, but she isn't fighting me for now. She's more concerned with finding Vale before he does any more damage to the Pride."

"Good."

"I hear you made a new friend tonight."

"Something like that."

I told him about my night while we both changed into hunting gear—black shirts and black cargo pants, boots, and plenty of hidden weapons. After four years of prepping while he watched from the sidelines, it still felt a little strange to head out hunting with Wyatt instead of leaving him behind. But we worked well together, and we'd always watch the other's back. Period.

All of the volunteered pairs met in the parking area, humans carrying all kinds of weapons and Therians dressed for easy stripping and shifting. Wyatt pulled out a map marked up with the site of each of the most recent attacks, plus Alejandro's sightings. The circle was kept mostly to Mercy's Lot and downtown, centered on the peninsula of land between the Black and Anjean Rivers. The goblins were rarely known to cross those rivers, so our hunting grid didn't surprise me.

"Report in every twenty minutes," I said. "If you can't verbalize, then text. The goblins attacked in broad daylight today, guys." I didn't have to tell them how significant today's events were; they knew.

"Is this kill or capture?" Paul asked. He was as cold and angry as I'd ever seen him, and it was a scary thing on someone who I'd accused only four months ago of being too young and twitchy to be allowed around live ammo.

"Goblin warriors are not big on talking or thinking. Even if we captured one it wouldn't tell us anything useful."

"So kill?"

"Kill or follow. If you can track a goblin that isn't about to murder or maim someone, do it. Find out where they're hiding."

"Queens are definitely in the capture category, but we aren't likely to see one," Wyatt added. "Questions?"

No one spoke. Mostly we were itching to get out there, do some goblin hunting, and avenge our friends.

"Then be careful," I said. "And happy hunting."

Tuesday, September 2

12:10 a.m.

Wyatt and I probably could have divided our collective knowledge and resources better by partnering with other people, but we worked best as a team. Plus Wyatt was still getting to know his Lupa side, and since Lupa society used to be matriarchal, as his mate I was the only person who could get him to stand down if his temper started to get the best of him. I think he also wanted to keep an eye on me, even if he'd never admit it out loud.

Goblins still make my stomach hurt.

Our search grid was the north side of Mercy's Lot, near the old Anjean River waterfront that was slowly being renovated and brought back to life. Goblins had been spotted there pretty frequently until the disaster that was Parker's Palace, and it was one of Alejandro's sighting spots. I hadn't been back to this particular area of the city since a bunch of half-Bloods tried to murder a theater full of humans during an Arts benefit. The evening was topped off by a four-story drop out a window in an attempt to save Phineas's life.

That had hurt like a son of a bitch.

It was the same night Tybalt had lost his hand.

We dropped two pairs (Marcus/Kismet and Paul/Autumn) off in their search grid on the way to ours. Wyatt parked in an alley at the edge the grid, and then we hit the pavement. Sometimes this sort of covert work was boring as hell—a lot of walking, watching and waiting for what could amount to absolutely no payoff. In my Hunter days, no payoff meant I was going home alive and sans injury. With the slaughter of the gremlins so fresh in my mind, tonight I was craving a little mayhem.

We moved through the streets without speaking, our actions communicating for us. A head tilt here, a jacked thumb there. I'd developed that sort of thing with Jesse and Ash back in our Triad days, and I loved having it with Wyatt. I loved everything about him, as a matter of fact, and it still startled me when thoughts like that bubbled up. I wasn't used to this kind of total love, and I wanted it as long as I could have it.

Older brick and stone buildings were mixed with steel and glass. Some were homes, other businesses and restaurants in what was as close as the city got to an historic district. We were still a good eight blocks from Parker's Palace, and a big system of sewer tunnels existed below us that had once housed goblins and allowed them to travel freely in daylight. As Hunters we'd avoided going into those tunnels. Entry points were difficult to find, the quarters were too close for fighting, and the chances of getting lost were high.