Behind him, on the periphery of the room, were three vampires. They were a normal size, but next to Grendel they looked like toddlers.

The girl started crying when she saw us, gasping sobs that racked her whole body. Grendel gave her a rough shake to silence her.

“I was beginning to wonder if you fools were just going to tromp around in the hall all night, or if you’d ever knock.” His voice was a deep, booming rumble, and it made me imagine the whole floor quaking with each word.

This guy was scary.

I’d killed scarier.

Chapter Four

“You.” Grendel shook the girl at Shane, her small head whipping from side to side. “You think you can triumph over me with these tiny women?” The giant vampire laughed loudly, and if there’d been any windows left in the complex, they would have broken.

The way he said tiny women was how I imagined a god might say puny humans. He clearly thought Siobhan and I were no threat, and that could only benefit us. If Grendel focused all his energy on Shane and Holden—the “real” threats—the petite druid and I could teach him why tiny women were just as tough as burly men.

Holden waltzed into the room with the casual ease of a man who was looking for ties at Bergdorf.

“Tiny women and a gay?” Grendel’s laughter contained a note of concern. He hadn’t been expecting another man, and now our numbers were throwing him for a loop.

Holden smoothed the lapels of his suit and glanced down at his ensemble. “This says gay to you?” He seemed genuinely interested in the barbarian’s opinion of his attire. “I was going for ’50s chic. Interesting.” The vampire looked at me like he was waiting for a second opinion.

I wanted to remind him of the more pressing issue at hand, but the whole routine was having an interesting effect on Grendel. The giant vampire lowered his captive to the floor and glared at Holden with determined anger.

“Which of you wants to die first?” Grendel boomed.

How original.

Beside me, Siobhan was nocking up an arrow, her focus not on Grendel but rather the girl he was holding. I licked my lips, dry from the dusty interior of the building, and spoke quietly to her. “If you get the chance, you grab the girl. Understand?”

“Don’t need to tell me twice.”

“How good is your aim with that thing?” It didn’t really matter if I whispered. With Grendel this close, he’d hear everything we were saying. I was counting on him being distracted by Holden’s cheeky disregard, though.

Siobhan winked at me. “Very.”

“Great. Can you shoot him in the neck for me?”

She blinked, as if surprised by the request, but collected herself, posed like an elf right out of Lord of the Rings and released the arrow without seeming to adjust her aim at all. I pivoted my head in time to see the arrow cross the room and lodge itself in Grendel’s neck.

The giant vampire dropped the girl, and both hands flew to the projectile now sticking out the side of his neck. His thick flesh had stopped the arrow from piercing all the way through to the other side, but there must have been a barbed edge on Siobhan’s arrowhead, making it extra difficult to remove. Grendel was struggling and grunting with discomfort and annoyance. He didn’t seem to be in a great deal of pain, but distraction had been my primary motivation.

He ripped the arrow out, taking a large chunk of skin and flesh with it, and hurled it back at Siobhan with staggering force. Still, an arrow thrown isn’t the same as an arrow fired, and she easily deflected it with her bow.

Heeding my previous instruction, she took her opportunity and ran for the girl. Shane and I responded quickly, leveling our weapons at Grendel and keeping steady watch in case he tried to attack Siobhan. It wasn’t a question of if he attacked, but when.

The moment the druid had her arms around the girl, Grendel swung for them both. Shane fired first, the bullet snagging Grendel in the wrist and making him jerk back before he could swipe at Siobhan. She must have known she wasn’t going to get another lucky break because she held fast to the fallen girl and dragged her out of easy squishing range.

Shane chambered another bullet, and Holden stepped in front of the other women, blocking Grendel’s path to them. “Take the girl and get out,” he instructed Siobhan.

The redhead glanced towards Shane as if unsure she wanted to leave him, but the sobbing child beside her took precedence. Siobhan helped the girl to her feet, and they ran from the room. Hopefully to safety.

Grendel’s henchmen, the pitifully normal-sized vampires, had been frozen in mute stupidity up to that point. They must have assumed no one in their right minds would fight their boss, giving them a slack job. Now they weren’t sure what to do about us and were slow to retaliate.

The first to act—a gray-haired vampire who looked like he’d stumbled out of a Crocodile Dundee movie—barreled towards me at full speed. Apparently they’d already stopped dismissing me as the weakest link. So much for our advantage.

I pivoted my gun from Grendel to the charging vampire and fired three rounds into his head. Precision aiming was tricky enough when a human was running towards you, but with a vampire there was the added difficulty of their preternatural speed. My first shot glanced off the side of his scalp, making him turn his head. The next two lodged into his skull above his ear, fanning a cloud of pink mist into the air as he fell.

Vampires could heal most things, but two 9mm silver bullets into the brain wasn’t one of them.

With one of their comrades down, the other two guards were less gung ho to run wild into the fray. Basically, they were the worst guards ever: slow to act and only out for their own protection. Where did Grendel find these guys, Spineless Cowards ’R’ Us?

One of them lunged for the door, intent on making a getaway. Shane fired at him, landing a shot in the vamp’s shoulder, sending him spinning backwards into Grendel’s arms. The warrior vampire had evidently seen his minion make a break for it and was none too thrilled. Grendel raised the guard into the air as if he weighed nothing, then brought him down hard onto his knee, cracking the vamp’s spine.

The broken vampire howled in pain, but the injury wouldn’t kill him. It would take him out of the mix for a while as the fractured bones healed, though, giving us one fewer foe to worry about.

Grendel stepped on the vampire’s head, crushing his skull beneath big shit-kicker boots as if it were a grape.

So…that guy was out of the picture completely then.

“Jesus,” Shane said.

“I know. Try getting that out of your boots after,” Holden replied.

When Grendel stepped back, there was a red smear on the floor with fragments of scalp and brain matter now taking the place of the man’s head. In spite of my many years being exposed to some of the most revolting things imaginable, I fought back the urge to gag.

“I will do this to one of my own,” Grendel bellowed. “What do you think I will do to you?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I muttered. “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. You know what? You’re not a giant. You’re just a big, smelly vampire. And do you know what I do to vampires who go rogue?”

“Kneel before them,” he suggested.

“Kneel?” I arched a brow and contemplated his choice of words. “Not a bad idea.”

I fired two shots into each of his kneecaps in rapid succession. Grendel roared, and this time there was no disputing the anguish in his tone. I’d hurt him. He crashed down and landed on both knees, bringing the clamor of his wailing to greater heights.

I’d never been shot in the knee, but I had experienced the agony of having a fresh wound exploited, and given how he was writhing on the floor, he enjoyed the experience as much as I had. Adding insult to literal injury was the fact he was squirming around in the liquefied brain matter of his former colleague.

“You have two choices as far as I see it,” I told him, though I doubted he was listening to anything other than his own squalling. “Either I kill you here and now—and I am fully vested with the power of the Tribunal to make those decisions—or you let me bring you in.”

“I’d rather—”

“Be mindful…this is one of those situations where you want to be careful not to say I’d rather die. I’ll take it literally.”

He fell silent. A normal man might be breathing hard through his nose, trying to keep from hyperventilating, but since Grendel didn’t need to breathe he chose to scowl darkly at me instead.

“They will lock me up, and then what? A year from now, maybe two, someone will make a mistake and I will be free. And I will come for you. That is, if you’re not dead by the hand of another.”

Everyone fell silent, but my heart throbbed and my pulse was as loud as a bass drum in my ears.

“What did you say?” Holden ignored the presence of the final guard, positioning himself between Grendel and me. “What did you say?”

Grendel laughed, but the sound was strained and cut short. “You might as well kill me, you foul borborygmite, because if you let me go, I’ll kill you. And if you take me to the council instead…someone else will find you.”

Holden took the gun from Shane—who was still too stunned to do anything—and aimed it at Grendel’s forehead. The warrior vampire rolled onto his back to relieve the pressure on his knees and looked at us both upside down.

“You going to shoot me? I know you, Holden Chancery. I know you.”

“Oh do you? Did you ransack my village in its youth?”

Grendel snorted and struggled to get into a sitting position, wincing the whole way up. The three of us took a step back, and the remaining guard danced uneasily from foot to foot. After seeing what had happened to the other men he probably wasn’t going to make a break for it, but he also didn’t seem keen to rush to Grendel’s aid.

“You’re the trained dog, aren’t you? The bitch’s bitch.” Grendel spat on the floor. “You know something, though? I have bitches too. And mine are better trained.”