Kelly Meding - Requiem for the Dead

I gave everyone the bullet points.

"A goblin Queen, huh?" Tybalt said. "Impressive."

"Not if you know what to look for," Alejandro said. He even managed a little bravado through his fear. "I was two weeks from finishing at Boot Camp. I haven't forgotten a thing they taught me there."

Tybalt glanced at me, as if to verify the claim. I shrugged. We had no way to check up on Alejandro. All Boot Camp records had been destroyed the day we tore it all down. The last thing we needed was all of that information falling into the wrong hands. Giving it up voluntarily was the lesser of two evils.

"Where to, Junior?" I asked.

He scowled at me in the rearview. "Head west, toward the Black River docks."

As we headed out of the center of Mercy's Lot, the streetlights became fewer and farther between. The area between it and the river was mostly made up of factories and industrial centers, some functioning and most not. It was quiet out there this time of night, with the daytime shifts gone home and the nighttime shifts firmly entrenched in their duties. Nearer to the docks, a sense of wicked familiarity washed over me and not just because I'd been here five dozen times in the past.

I knew where we were going, and it hit me with a sickening kind of clarity.

The last time I came to this area to see the gremlins, I'd been with Baylor, and the memory sent a shot of grief right to my heart. We'd been looking for information on Thackery and his menagerie of Lupa pups. Ironic because the Lupa were now in Wyatt's custody, and I hadn't brought any sort of snack to feed the gremlins' collective sweet tooth. If a goblin Queen had been in the area, they wouldn't tell without a treat.

My instincts proved me right when Alejandro's directions landed us in front of the gremlin factory—a long, narrow building with four stories of papered-over windows. A chain-link fence surrounded it, the only entrance an old guard hut that still worked. They'd let us inside that way before.

Something about the place felt off, though, and I couldn't put my finger on it.

"You tracked the goblin to an old factory?" Marcus asked.

"Yes," Alejandro said. "She went into that hut, and then a few seconds later the fence rolled back a little bit. It closed again before I could slip inside."

"Did you see her leave again?"

"No."

"How long was she inside?"

Alejandro squirmed, and I almost felt sorry for him. Marcus had his full-on intimidation face going, and he could be a scary interrogator. "I'm not sure."

I twisted around in my seat to face them. "Let me guess. You didn't hang around to see what she was doing or how long she stayed, because you didn't know if an entire horde of goblins was inside waiting to eat you, right?"

He blushed, then nodded.

"Good instinct. Death by goblin is not a nice way to go, trust me. But you were wrong."

"What?" he asked. "How do you know?"

"Because a couple thousand gremlins live in there, not goblins. The only things gremlins like to eat are sugar and junk food."

"Oh." Alejandro glanced at Tybalt. "How does she know this stuff?"

Tybalt chuckled.

"So should we try the gate?" Marcus asked. "Or idle here and discuss it further?"

Tybalt drove up to the guard hut. I climbed out and went inside. The controls seemed simple enough, and I hit a red button that said Call. I expected a buzzer or beep, something to indicate the call went through. I held it down and said, "Ballengee be blessed," which is the traditional gremlin greeting.

Nothing.

I tried it again to more silence, which unnerved me. I hit a few other buttons, but nothing seemed to be working. The hut was free of electricity, and then I realized that's what bothered me about the place. It was nighttime and dark outside, and there wasn't a single indication of light or power about the place. It felt abandoned.

Had the gremlins packed up and left town, too?

I went outside and manually tugged on the gate. It surprised me by rolling back on its track. Definitely not good. Tybalt drove inside, picked me up, and we trekked across a narrow strip of parking lot. Last time a garage door on the south side of the building had opened automatically. Nothing happened tonight.

"This isn't right," I said. "Stay on your toes, boys."

Tybalt parked near a side door that had once said Authorized Personnel Only and had faded to only every other letter. We piled out of the SUV. Marcus, Kyle and Shelby immediately turned toward the building and sniffed the air. All I smelled was oil, rubber, and the far away odor of the river. Beneath it all was the familiar, cloying stink of gremlin piss—like whiskey, only more eye-watering and less enjoyable to drink.

"I smell death," Marcus said.

Terrific.

I pulled a knife from my ankle sheath, while Tybalt fixed a wicked double-blade attachment to his prosthetic hand. Marcus stripped and shifted into his jaguar form, while Kyle and Shelby stayed in their clothes. We gave Alejandro a hunting knife from the weapons stash in the back so the kid wasn't completely helpless. The three of us humans, with our poorer eyesight, also grabbed flashlights.

The door wasn't locked, and it opened with a groan when Tybalt pushed. A gust of hot, stale air stole outside, carrying the stink of gremlin piss and rot. My nose tingled with it, and I held back a sneeze.

This isn't going to be good.

I went in first, alert for anything. My yellow beam of light flashed down an empty corridor, its concrete walls and floor stained here and there with indescribable colors. The air became more ripe, more suffocating the deeper into the factory we went. Twenty feet of corridor ended at a large metal door that said Floor. I stopped to listen.

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."