Chapter 16
The most defensible rooms in the barracks were the bathrooms. There was only one entrance and no windows. If the cultists had grabbed this instead of the rec room, we wouldn't have been able to dislodge them. We took the women's instead of the men's because it was on the side away from the main building, where the undead seemed to be focusing their attention.
Franks held the ward stone in his big hands and studied it with one black eye and one blue eye, unblinking. The letters were not cooperating. Grant and I covered the doorway. Grant had picked up another Uzi. I had kept the AK-47 and stuffed magazines into every pocket until the weight threatened to pull down my cargo pants. I had found my pistol in the hall and returned it to its holster, but it only had a couple of shots left.
"Any luck?" I asked. Franks didn't answer, intent on the code. "What, they don't teach you this stuff at your fancy academy?"
"Shut up," Grant muttered.
"No, you shut up," I snapped. "I'm not done with you yet. We live through this and I'm going to beat your ass. The last one was just a warm-up."
"You sucker-punched me at gunpoint. Try me in a fair fight, and we'll see how tough you are," Grant responded. He was delusional if he thought that would make a difference. "Torres would already have turned you over to his church if it wasn't for me."
I turned back to the door. "Traitor," I muttered.
Grant was ticked. "You've got no clue. I joined MHI to make a difference. But MHI's all about making money, not about making the world a better place. Myers was just like me once, disillusioned by MHI. He gave me a chance to do something important. MHI let me down, not the other way around. I thought that I had failed you guys, but it was the organization that failed me."
"So you took Myers' job offer?"
"Yes, I did. Best decision I've ever made. He needed somebody who could get on the inside, help catch his spy, and if that didn't work out, at least he had someone undercover to keep an eye on MHI before they did anything really stupid. I got into this to help people. The Monster Control Bureau represent the real heroes. They do a dirty job to protect this country. MHI is just out to make a buck."
"Make a buck? That's right, that doesn't matter when you're born rich."
"Quiet," Franks ordered, tired of our bickering.
I glared at Grant, then went back to watching the entrance. He was a traitor, pure and simple. Myers had used me as bait to clean his own house, and now my friends were paying the price. When this was over, there were some accounts that needed settling.
My face hurt from where the werewolf had clawed me. Touching it indicated that the flesh was rent open in a few parallel strips down my cheek, and I was bleeding badly. Grant had the door covered while Franks fiddled with that stupid thing, so I made my way over to the sink and turned it on. The cold water burned.
Franks looked up from his task and saw me splashing the claw marks. "If you're infected, I'll have to—"
"Kill me? Yeah, I know. That's how we met, remember?"
Franks nodded and went back to the ward.
It was when I looked back in the mirror that I noticed something amiss in one of the stalls. The door was closed, but there was a shadow dangling just under it. Shutting the water off, I approached the stall. I used the muzzle of the AK to push it open.
"G-Nome?"
The gnome had been shoved in the toilet. He was so small that most of his body was squished into the water, and it was awfully pink. One boot was dangling down, and that was what I had seen. His red hat was crunched low on his head, and his white beard was smeared with blood. His breathing was rapid and shallow.
I knelt next to the toilet and removed his hat. His eyes fluttered open weakly. He was badly injured. " 'Sup, tall one," he sputtered.
I reached out and touched his hand. "What happened?"
Black lightning struck and the bathroom vanished.
This time was different than the others. It was the first time that I'd experienced a nonhuman's memories. The thoughts were subtly alien, and it took a moment for my brain to adjust and it couldn't quite settle into the first person, rather I was a spectator in G-Nome's head. He had confided in me Grant's treachery, and he'd left me, confused by how such a physically tough human, a man-mountain of ass-kicking, could be crying and moping like a baby. No self-respecting gnome badass would ever let his homies see him cry. Tall humans were so weird. He knew it came from all of that banging their heads on doorways and ceiling fans and shit.
G-Nome had heard the shower turn on in the girls' bathroom, and though he enjoyed spying on human girls as much as the next gnome, he was excited to watch the Tall One shoot the Snitch. He was from Birmingham, so he'd seen plenty of humans shoot each other, and that never got old. But when he caught the smell of killing on the air, he knew something wasn't right. Suspicious, he'd left the tall human to his business and ported through the wall.
The shower was on when he popped into the bathroom. G-Nome held extra still so the invisibility would hold. He knew from experience that humans freaked out when they caught you looking at them. He could smell which human it was immediately. There was something special about this one. He'd seen her around the compound, and she'd stuck out for some reason, even for a human. It was that younger human hottie, with the redneck accent . . . Dawn. He'd overheard that she was a human beauty queen, and he could see why—that human was smokin'. Momma had warned him about the dangers of human women, what with their tallness and lack of facial hair.
G-Nome noticed Dawn's discarded clothes and he was reminded of the death smell that had gotten his attention to begin with. They were piled up at the foot of the shower, and they were all messy. She'd been splashed with blood. He got closer and checked them out. The red was in splatters, like she'd slaughtered a pig or something.
Now that didn't make no sense. That red beard, Milo, wasn't having anybody do any work with bodies and guts today. And it was the day of the Hunters' big ceremony. So why was Dawn here, covered in blood, and not in the big building with everybody else? She had been up to something.
G-Nome was known as the sharpest gnome on the North Side for a reason, and he knew right away that something was up. He snuck over real quiet and picked up her shirt. He sniffed it. The smell told him that it had come from one of the other new humans, but he couldn't remember the dude's name. G-Nome didn't know how much blood was inside a normal human, but if this much got spilled at one time, he was probably dead. He had to tell Harbinger.
The shower turned off. G-Nome dropped the shirt and padded quickly to the corner. He was extra careful to stay still so the invisibility would hold. Dawn stepped out of the shower.
The sight was enough to take his mind off the murder. Aw hells yeah, baby . . . She had the longest legs of any human he'd ever seen. G-Nome knew he better be paying attention now that he knew some weird shit was going down. She didn't bother to cover herself or dry off. Instead she picked up the clothes and stuffed them into the garbage. Then she stopped and lifted her pretty face to smell the air . . . He'd never seen a human do it like that before. Humans had terrible noses. G-Nome thought about just porting through the wall and getting the hell out of here, but he was too curious. Dawn's nostrils flared. She spun around, wet hair flying around her shoulders and she stared right at him.
How could she see him? Humans couldn't see gnomes when they were still.
Dawn blinked and then her eyes were solid, colorless, clear as ice cubes. "Tomte," she hissed, and her voice was all wrong, low and scary, and she used the old word for gnome. It took him a second to realize that he was dealing with a Fey and another second to realize that it was the worst kind of Fey of all.
"Doppelganger!" G-Nome sputtered as he reached for the gun in his waistband. But by then it was too late. The creature descended on him.