The Grendel Affair: A SPI Files Novel (14 page)

The drawers—or whatever they were called—for the coffins were also stacked three high. Three on one wall, three on the other. The back wall had a total of six, stacked three high and two across, like the urn niches.

The only thing that didn’t come in matched sets was the single square column in the exact center of the room. Each of the stone column’s four panels had to be at least two foot across.

I slowly walked around it, scanning it from top to bottom. “Is it just me, or is this column needlessly big?”

Ian looked up at the ceiling. “And it doesn’t appear to be structurally necessary.”

On each panel, at points exactly between the floor and the ceiling, were stone replicas of the bronze horned lion’s head that was on the door. Their mouths were open like they were roaring. The lions were more or less at eye level, on a person of normal height. Ian had to duck his head to see inside the mouths. He aimed the flashlight’s beam inside.

“Nothing there,” he said. He repeated the exam on the next two, leaning to look closer at the last lion. “You might be on to something,” he murmured. “There’s a place in here for a key.” He took the mausoleum key out of his pocket and stuck it and half his hand into the lion’s mouth. “I’m thinking that . . .”

There was a click and the entire panel opened on silent hinges.

Ian shone the light inside and then down. The column was hollow, with a hole in the floor just wide enough for one person, with what looked like a modern aluminum ladder descending into darkness.

“Being in a mausoleum’s not bad enough,” I said, “now we get to find out what’s in a dark pit underneath one.”

“A chamber under a mausoleum is called a crypt,” Ian told me.

“Lovely.”

“I’ll go first.”

“I’ll let you.”

Ian began his descent.

“Why would anyone have a second way out in a mausoleum?” I asked.

“Could be the same reason the Tarberts left oil lamps and an extra key.”

He reached the bottom of the ladder, shining the flashlight around. There weren’t any shouts or gunshots, so it must not have been too bad. My skin started prickling when I realized that my only source of light was two sputtering oil lamps, and my company was seventeen dead Tarberts.

Ian’s voice echoed eerily from below. “I think we need a bigger truck.”

I quickly knelt on the floor next to the hole. “What is it?”

“They say you can’t take it with you, but one or more of the Tarberts sure tried.”

Curiosity may or may not kill cats, but it motivated me. “I’m coming down.”

“I thought you would. Put out those lamps before you do.”

I did, and on my way down the ladder, I heard a click like a switch being flipped, and honest-to-God lights came on down below. Ian gave an impressed whistle.

I reached the bottom and looked around. I was impressed, too. Impressed and intrigued. The room was twice the size of the mausoleum above it, and the floor, walls, and ceiling were concrete, like a bomb shelter or a bunker. There were sturdy metal shelves containing wooden crates and locked metal cases. Some of the crates smelled like new wood. There was a door at one end. It was steel. Serious industrial steel.

Ian saw me looking. “Yeah, this is new. Probably within the last few years. From the looks of that door, they didn’t want anyone getting in.”

“Or anything getting out.”

“I’m betting one of the other keys on the ring unlocks that door.”

I looked up at the way we’d come down. “It must. All this couldn’t have been brought here through that hole.”

Ian continued his examination. “There’s no dust. This place almost qualifies as sterile.”

Every crate had what looked like brown duct tape over words that had been paint stenciled onto the wood. The same tape was on the same place on every crate—possibly covering the same words. Ian peeled back the tape on one of the crates.

“Property of U.S. Government.”

A second and third crate said the same thing.

“At least none of these crates are big enough to hold the Ark of the Covenant,” I said.

“Good, because I didn’t bring my fedora and bullwhip,” Ian said, smoothing the tape back into place.

I spotted a crate that wasn’t big enough to hold the Ark, but it was plenty large enough for a monster head. “How about this one?”

“Looks like the most likely candidate.” He pulled out what looked like a Swiss Army knife on steroids. One of the blades wasn’t a blade at all, but a thick, flat piece of steel. He stuck it under the corner of the crate.

I gave it a dubious look. “You’re sure that thing can—”

Ian responded by popping the wooden corner straight up. “Easy as a bottle cap.”

Under the obligatory packing peanuts was a wooden box, more like a chest, actually. Really old and really fancy.

There was a word carved into the lid. At least I assumed it was one word; all of the letters were together.

“You wouldn’t happen to read ancient whatever, would you?” I asked.

Ian took out his phone and snapped a quick picture. “Nope. But I know a guy at headquarters who does. Two guys, actually.”

“Bob and Rob?”

“That’s them.” He scrolled down a list of numbers and tapped the screen once. “And . . . no signal.” He quickly climbed the ladder and stuck his hand with the phone through the hole and up into the mausoleum. From up there, it probably looked like Thing from
The Addams Family
was trying to make a crypt-to-headquarters call.

Ian ended up climbing all the way up into the mausoleum. “There we go. Sending now.” Then he called Yasha and gave him a quick rundown of our situation. About a minute later, he came back down.

“Going to wait for Bob or open it now?” I asked.

“Now.”

There weren’t any locks on the wooden chest, just an iron latch. I wasn’t the only one who stood as far back as I could, while still being able to get a good look at what was inside. I didn’t think standing on tiptoe and raising my eyebrows would help me stand back farther and see higher, but I did it anyway. I couldn’t imagine anything hidden in a crypt with “Property of U.S. Government” stamped on its crate being anything good.

Ian opened the box.

We looked inside.

Holy Mother of God.

The monster’s head was lying faceup, surrounded by a nest of the same matted and coiled hair that I’d found clutched in Adam Falke’s dead fist. The head was gigantic, the face easily the size of the top of a fifty-five-gallon drum. Its features were vaguely human, partially reptilian, but it was the teeth that I couldn’t look away from. The closest I’d ever seen was while watching Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. The lips had dried and pulled back from a mouthful of teeth that were triangular like a shark’s, but that went to a sharper point. Behind the first row of teeth was an equally large second row, followed by an only slightly smaller but even sharper third row. Supporting the demonic dental work were massive jaws that looked like they could easily bite a man in half. The scent coming off of it was musty like Ollie’s mummies, but there was also a hint of fishiness.

“It’s the same smell that was in Ollie’s office.”

Ian nodded. “And the same hair.”

“Ollie said the arm he had came from this thing,” I said. “If the hair matches what I found with Falke, the claw found in Kanil Ghevari’s body probably does, too.”

My left brain was working out the logical part of what that meant. My right brain had already figured it out and had started whimpering. This thing’s descendants had gutted and ripped apart Adam Falke and Kanil Ghevari.

This thing’s descendant had been on the other side of the door from us in Ollie’s office.

Ian’s jaw tightened. “Let’s see if the boys have anything for us. One word couldn’t take long to look up.” He climbed the ladder and his hand repeated its Thing impersonation. Almost immediately, his phone buzzed with an incoming text.

“Shit,” Ian swore softly.

“I take it they knew what the word was, and it wasn’t a very nice one.”

Ian came down the ladder and showed me the screen. “Said it was Old Danish.”

I stared in disbelief at the name glowing on the screen.

Grendel.

9

“WHERE’S Beowulf when you need him?” I managed.

“A name on a box doesn’t mean that this is the actual Grendel,” Ian said. “Or even if there
was
a real Grendel.”

“It doesn’t mean it’s not—and that there wasn’t. And whoever sent the boss lady that letter mentioned monsters from literature. According to my high school English teacher,
Beowulf
is literature, and Grendel most definitely was—or is—a monster.”

Ian gave me a flat look. “I’m trying to be optimistic here.”

“My optimism went bye-bye when you opened that lid.”

I suspected Ian’s had at least taken a brief sabbatical, but since he didn’t say anything else, neither did I.

“How we going to get it out of here?” I asked.

“Certainly not the way we came in. Which leaves whatever’s behind Door Number Two back there. It’s wide enough for every crate in here.”

I threw a wary glance in the door’s direction. “Whoever made this room didn’t want what was behind that door getting in here. And considering what’s in here, that doesn’t say good things about what’s out there.”

Ian crossed the room and lifted the bar. “Only one way to find out.”

I had the urge to have my gun out and leveled at that door when it opened, but since Ian didn’t seem to feel the need, I squelched mine. I didn’t want another gun-related screwup today.

It was a narrow room. Ian’s flashlight showed it to be arched, bricked, and old. Cobwebby old.

“There’s your cobwebs,” he said. “Happy?”

“Thrilled.”

There was a switch on the wall inside the vault next to the door. Ian flipped it. A long line of bare lightbulbs hanging from a single cable stretched as far as I could see.

It wasn’t a room. It was a tunnel.

“Interesting,” was all Ian had to say.

“At least there’s cobwebs,” I said. “It means nothing’s been down here in a long time.”

“We
are
under a cemetery,” he replied. “Not everything moves cobwebs.”

“Funny.”

“Not funny. Accurate. Not everything we hunt moves cobwebs.”

I stood absolutely still. “That wasn’t in the company manual.”

“Not everything is.” He pocketed his flashlight. “Let’s see where this goes, then I’ll get Yasha and Calvin to help move the head.”

We left the door open behind us and I counted the paces as we went. It gave me some idea of how long the tunnel was, but it did an even better job of helping me focus on something besides being in a narrow, decrepit tunnel that ran under a nearly two-hundred-year-old cemetery. I walked in the exact center of the tunnel, and if I could have pulled in my shoulders, I would have. The hair on my arms knew without a doubt that there were bodies buried on both sides of us.

“Are we going away from the cemetery or deeper into it?” I asked.

“Actually we should be almost out by now.”

Another fifty-seven steps put us at the end of the tunnel—and in front of another door, if you could call it that. It looked more like a hatch on an old battleship. It was metal, the rust blending in with the surrounding brick wall. Instead of a knob, there was a latch that looked like it’d snap in half if you tried to use it.

A low rumble shook the walls around us, followed by dust falling from the brick above our heads.

“Subway,” Ian said. He carefully gripped the latch and turned it. The door opened with a pop and a hiss of air—air that in comparison made the monster head smell like the roses I’d carried around Green-Wood.

“Dang.” I wrinkled up my nose and tried to breathe through my mouth.

Ian stopped. Being directly behind him, I had no choice. Then he stepped aside, giving me a view that I could have done without.

“Looks as bad as it smells,” he said.

A men’s room.

At least it used to be. The urinals were still on the walls, but the rest of the space appeared to have been converted to a storage room. It didn’t look like it’d been used for its original purpose for years, but apparently some smells never completely go away.

Ian noted my confusion. “Not many public restrooms in subway stations anymore.”

“Too gross?”

“That and too little funding and too much crime.”

The other side of the hatchway we’d come through was basically a door-sized section of tiled wall, the grout perfectly aligned with the edges, so that when it was closed, no one would ever know that there even was an opening there.

Ian was doing an up close and personal examination of the door, lightly rapping on the tiles with his knuckles.

“What are you doing?”

“There’s got to be a lock or latch on this side,” Ian said. “I can’t see someone going to all the trouble to put an exit here that they couldn’t get in through as well.”

A couple more knocks revealed what sounded like a hollow tile. Ian used his fingertips to press around the tile’s outer edge. He found the magic spot, and the tile popped open on silent hinges revealing a keyhole and a small door handle.