Gretchen
If a member of the monster squad is going to pull me out on a Friday night, the least it could do is pick a better club than Synergy. It’s bad enough I have to spend all day with the hormonal sheep at school, I’d rather avoid them in the off-hours. But this seems to be a favorite freakazoid haunt lately. I’m practically a resident.
Nightclubs give me the snooze in general, and Synergy is more nondescript than most. It’s on a side street in the industrial section of Potrero Hill—which might as well mean completely sketchy after dark—and from the outside it looks like any other warehouse building. The big, thuggy-looking guy at the door and the occasional line along the sidewalk are the only clues to the raging party inside.
Leaving Moira double-parked behind a Hummer in the empty lot next door, I do my mental gear check as I stifle a yawn. Hunting three nights in a row is tough, especially on back-to-back-to-back weeknights. I feel like I might never catch up on sleep again.
My boots crunch on the gritty sidewalk as I head for the front door. I hand my ID to the bouncer. He’s six four, about two eighty, with a buzz cut and bug eyes that indicate one too many steroid cocktails. A dead ringer for the Gegenees giant I took out a few weeks ago, only without the two extra pairs of arms. Even though I’ve been here a lot lately, he scrutinizes my driver’s license like he’s trying to read Plato in the original Ancient Greek.
“Gretchen Sharpe?” He eyes the photo, then me, and then the photo again.
This one is my actual ID. Synergy is all ages, which means my sixteen-year-old self is perfectly legal. On occasions when I have to track into an alcohol-serving, twenty-one-and-up club, I’ve got a collection of fakes to get me in the door, with my hypno powers as a convenient backup.
Bug boy takes his job a little too seriously. If I were in search of underage drinking opportunities, I wouldn’t be here. They don’t even serve alcohol.
“That’s me, Jocko,” I say, giving him my best I’m-not-trying-to-do-anything-even-remotely-illegal smile. He probably wouldn’t appreciate my I’m-just-trying-to-get-rid-of-the-deadly-monster-you-let-inside smirk.
After cross-checking my license and my face a few more times, he hands back my ID and says, “Ten dollars. Pay inside.”
I breeze past him and push open the door. The nauseating rotten-garbage scent of the griffin is worse than the overused fog machine. It’s so strong, I can’t immediately pinpoint the source. Guess I’ll have to rely on other senses this time.
After handing my cover charge over to the cashier, I step into the giant black box that is Synergy. The space is wall-to-wall people, most of them under twenty-one. It’s a sea of bumping and grinding, penned in on one side by the virgin-beverage-serving bar and on the other by a raised stage that is a favorite of PVC-pants-and-eyeliner-wearing boys who like boys. And the occasional girl who likes boys who like boys, despite their obvious lack of interest in what she has to offer.
Tonight there’s a DJ set up at one end of the stage, shouting out dance instructions and tweaking the bass on the unidentifiable music pounding through the speakers. Permanent eardrum damage in the making.
With the added filter of my sunglasses I mostly make out shapes and outlines. The lights hanging from the ceiling grid turn the throbbing masses into a sea of yellow, teal, and hot pink. A normal girl would be nauseous. I’ve never claimed to be normal. Putrid eau de griffin and the revolting color combination are everyday hazards of the job.
“If I were a bloodthirsty half-lion, half-eagle, where would I be?” I muse.
Being a few inches taller would definitely be a benefit at this point. I need line of sight, which means I need a better vantage point. Higher ground.
Shoving through the labyrinth of bodies, I make my way to the elevated stage. I place one hand on the front edge and vault myself up onto the platform. From my new perch I can see the entire room. I lift my shades to get a better look.
Plenty of gyrating hips, glitter-enhanced cleavage, and titanium body piercings, but no griffin.
After winding across the stage to the back wall, I leap down, landing Doc Martens–first in the doorway that looks onto the techno room. It’s almost as full as the main room, but with a tenth the lighting.
“Why do they always go for the back rooms?”
Easier to lure some lonely, heartbroken, or otherwise desperate human into a dark corner, I suppose. Synergy’s back room is darker than the deepest corner of Hades. Even if the monsters had no veil, no one would notice them standing two feet away in this black hole.
I sniff test the room and discover that the smell is coming from outside, from the open door leading onto the small courtyard to the right. As soon as I step out under the stars, I see it. Prowling around a pair of girls at a picnic table who look like they’ve been drinking something that didn’t come from the alcohol-free bar.
They’re sitting ducks.
I’m about to step through the doorway and introduce the griffin to a shiny pair of fangs when I catch a new scent.
I stopped my scan of the courtyard when I spotted the griffin and the party girls, but as I complete my survey, I see the second beastie. A great big serpent thing covered in dark green and brown feathers.
“What?”
Before they spot me—or notice that I’ve spotted them—I duck back into the techno room to regroup. Two monsters? That’s impossible. They can only get out of their realm one at a time. It’s one of the first things Ursula taught me when I followed her out of that warehouse four years ago.
She’d led the way to a nearby diner, not uttering another word to me until the waitress set a steaming bowl of stew at my place. Ursula waited until I had a spoonful in my mouth before saying, “I know you see monsters.”
My only response was a brief hesitation before swallowing and taking another bite. If this lady was going to tell me I was nuts, just like Phil and Barb always did, I’d just take the hot meal and then take off.
“I also know you are not insane.”
At that point I didn’t think anything could shock me more. I set down the spoon and asked, “How do you know that?”
“Because,” she said with a warm smile, “I see them too.”
I was wrong. That shocked the life out of me.
“You—” I couldn’t even speak. Someone like me. I never knew how much I wanted that—needed that—until right then. I balled my fists in my lap and asked, “What are we?”
“You belong to an elite lineage of guardians,” she explained. “Destined to hunt down the monsters that escape into our realm and send them back to theirs.”
I can’t remember how long we sat in that diner, me asking questions and her answering. It felt like years. Sometimes her answers were cryptic; some questions she refused to answer at all, promising all would be revealed in time.
As she explained about my heritage, about my destiny to keep the human world safe from the kind of monsters most people think exist only in ancient myths, I was scared. Fine, terrified. How could I, a lone twelve-year-old girl, stop all these awful things from prowling the streets?
She smiled at me, her gray eyes full of caring and compassion—two emotions that had been in short supply when she found me living on the street—and said, “You are stronger than you think.”
“But what if they surround me?” I asked. “What if a bunch of them gang up on me? I could never win.”
She reached out with her elegantly wrinkled hand and gently patted mine. “Millennia ago, when your ancient ancestor Medusa was slain, the doorway to the abyss was left inadequately guarded and the world faced the great danger of being overrun by monsters. The gods convened a council to decide how to proceed.”
The gods. Like the ones in action movies and old myths. She said it like they were real, like they were sitting around somewhere deciding people’s fates. And, as crazy as it sounded, I somehow knew she was telling me the truth.
“Some wished to see that realm sealed completely,” she continued, “though doing so would have caused the death of every creature inside.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Didn’t seem like such a bad plan to me, considering the kind of nasty beasts I’d seen prowling the streets. “The monsters are bad. Why shouldn’t they die?”
Slowly shaking her head, she said, “Things are not that simple.” She let out a small sigh. “Others thought the gateway should be thrown open, allowing monsters of all varieties to walk free among humans.”
What morons thought that was a good idea?
“To appease all sides, the gods left a gap.” Ursula smiled at me. “A tiny and ever-moving window that allows but a single monster at a time to leave their realm. The gods knew there would always be one of our kind on hand to defend the opening.”
I sighed with relief. That was somewhat reassuring. One at a time seemed a lot more manageable than all at once. For the first time, I believed that I could actually do this, I could actually be the huntress. For the last four years, Ursula has been right. The rules have remained in effect, and I’ve never seen more than one creature per night. Ever.
Until tonight.
“Something’s out of whack.” First Ursula takes off out of cell phone range without leaving a note. Now two monsters are prowling the same club at the same time. “Something is definitely—”
“Gretchen!”
For the love of Medusa. I’d forgotten number three on my list of out-of-the-ordinary. Nick. The boy who won’t leave me alone.
At least this one doesn’t have anything to do with myth.
My first instinct is to ignore him. Any normal male would read that as a neon sign saying Go away!, but Nick has proven himself incapable of common male normalcy. If I ignore him and get on with my fight, he’ll probably follow me out into the courtyard and wind up getting himself killed.
I need to throw him off the scent once and for all so I can go about my business in peace. Direct orders don’t seem to work. Instead, I try for disdain.
“What do you want?”
“Nice to see you too,” he teases, unfazed by my verbal venom. “Funny running into you here. I didn’t know you—”
“Yeah, it’s a riot.” I jab my fists to my hips. “Look, I was just—”
“Can I get you a drink?”
My brain screams. Nothing works with this boy.
“Are you deficient?” I ask, throwing off all pretense of any kind and being as straightforward as I can without telling him my secret. “What about me has ever said, ‘Yes, please keep hitting on me’?”
A slow, suggestive smile spreads across his frustrating lips.
“Your mouth may not say that,” he says, stepping close. “But your eyes . . . well, they’re saying something else altogether.”
I roll those eyes behind my sunglasses, resisting the urge to knock him out with a solid punch to the left temple and be done with him. “You can’t even see my eyes.”
“Can’t I?”
“No, you—” Then it hits me like a thunderbolt. My eyes.
I am such an idiot. I can’t believe I haven’t thought to use my hypno powers on him. That only proves the boy messes with my brain. He needs to be gone, now, before something terrible happens.
In a heartbeat, I flick my shades up, stare deep into Nick’s dark gaze, and say, “You have somewhere else to be.”
His brows fall and he gets a blank look on his face. Success! Finally he’ll be out from underfoot. What good is having superhypnotic power if I don’t use it for my own benefit every now and again? Consider Nick a memory.
As I turn away, ready to forget him and figure out how to face the pair of monsters outside, Nick grabs my arm.
“Nope,” he says with that annoying smile on his utterly unhypnotized face. “I think I’m exactly where I need to be.”
You have got to be kidding me. The one guy who won’t take the hint that I’m not interested, and he’s the one person immune to my hypno-eyes? Something is not right about that.
I add it to the list of recent abnormalities and then file it away. No time to dwell on that at the moment. Right now, I have a pair of beasties with hungry eyes outside playing with their party-girl food. I need to take care of them before they decide they’re ready for their meal. And Nick needs to be gone before I do.
Pushing him away doesn’t work, and knocking him out would draw too much attention, so I’m left with only one option.
“Fine,” I say with a sigh, as if I’m giving in to his advances. “You can get me a drink.” I try to think of something that will take the most time, giving me the biggest window to send my unwelcome friends back to where they belong. “A virgin strawberry daiquiri.”
Surely the mixing and the blending will take more than half a second.
With a wink, he’s gone, and I’m heading through the court-yard door.
Thanks to my hesitation at seeing double, the pair of monsters has now bracketed the two drunk girls, and the critters are practically salivating at the prospect of a juicy snack. There are quite a few other people out in the courtyard, which means strategy is going to be critical. I evaluate my targets and quickly decide that, between the two, the serpent thing—Ophis pterotus is its official name, I think—will be the easier fight. No limbs or claws to fight back with. Fangs, of course, but I’ve got a pair of my own.
What I don’t need is a bunch of teen party hounds thinking they need to break up a fight. Or, worse, stepping in to defend me. Now is not the time to let the ordinary humans think for themselves, so I fold my sunglasses into a cargo pocket and walk over to the nearest group.
“Hey guys,” I say with a bright smile. Scanning my gaze over the several pairs of eyes now looking at me, I instruct, “Whatever you see going on over there”—I gesture toward the beastie-occupied picnic table—“you don’t need to get involved. We’ll just be playing around.”
Their blank faces nod, and I hurry on to do the same to the handful of groups scattered around the courtyard.
As I move to the last, a gaggle of giggling girls in the far corner, my heart begins to race, not out of fear but out of anticipation. This is going to be a good fight.
Not that I’m thrilled about the sudden change of rules, but monster hunting has become pretty routine lately. Sniff, find, fight, bite. Go home and take a shower. Repeat.
This fight should present a welcome challenge.
Everything will be fine as long as I follow the two carved-in-stone commandments of monster fighting.
First rule, never let them bite the right wrist, or the superhealing powers of the blood in that artery will give them a period of enhanced abilities and invincibility. The last thing I need is a monster that can’t be sent home. The left wrist is fine, because blood from that artery is deadly. But because humans are so often annoying bystanders, it’s best to keep that one protected too. Hence the Kevlar wrist cuffs.
Second rule, go for the pulse point. It’s different on every monster, but there is always a critical vein, one that feeds directly to the heart—or hearts—and assures an instantaneous trip back to their murky abyss. Other blood vessels work too. Eventually. But who knows what might happen to me or the innocent humans involved in the time my monster-transporting venom takes to make its way to the pumper. One stab in the key vein and the fight is over in a heartbeat. Literally.
I’ve put in my time studying the binders full of monster files Ursula has in the loft library, to memorize the target on every creature I might encounter. But I can’t remember everything. And they must be reproducing like bunnies in their realm, creating hybrids and mutant freaks no one has ever seen before, because there are always new, unknown and unidentified monsters showing up. Keeps the job interesting, anyway.
Before tonight, since it’s only ever been one monster at a time, knowing the pulse point never seemed imperative. Now, as I turn to face the pair, I kinda wish I remembered where to chomp down.
“No!” I shout as I watch the serpent thing bite down on the blond girl’s neck.
No time for strategy. In a flying leap, I launch myself onto the serpent thing’s back. It releases the girl with a shove, sending her to the ground. Twisting to get a look at its un-welcome passenger, the serpent thing unwittingly gives me a choice opportunity to introduce it to my fangs.
Reaching my head around what I can only guess is its neck region, I aim my bite right below its jaw. Before I can sink my fangs, the two girls formerly known as dinner start screaming. Arms clamped around the serpent’s writhing body, I struggle to make eye contact with the girls, hoping to quiet their attention-drawing screams before the unhypnotized masses inside catch wind of the trouble out here.
Even if they did, though, all they would see is me hanging on the back of some beefy slimeball, not some feathery snake.
I focus on the monster prey, trying to get the girls out of harm’s way. Not an easy task while clamped onto a giant snake that’s trying to violently dislodge me from its body. I hold on with a death grip and keep my eyes trained on the screaming girls, waiting for one to look at me directly.
Finally, one of them throws her wide-eyed gaze at me. Score one for eye contact. Before she can look away, I say, “Run! These guys were about to assault you. Get out of here!”
She screams louder. “They tried to assault me!”
The other girl looks totally confused, like her friend has gone instantly insane. Kind of true. But the hypnotized girl grabs her by the arm and drags her out of the courtyard at full speed.
By now, monster number two has realized what’s going on and has circled the picnic table vacated by the fleeing girls. It tries to grab me off the serpent’s back, but the serpent is moving too wildly for the griffin to grab hold. Besides, lions’ paws aren’t exactly dexterous. Still, it has poisonous claws I’d rather avoid.
The griffin clamps both paws around one of my ankles, yanking hard to pull me off the snake’s back. I manage a fierce kick to its beak with my other foot, sending it reeling back. It doesn’t lose its grip on my ankle.
“Come on,” I mutter, wondering if maybe I should have let one or two of the human guys help me out.
No, of course not. They’d end up getting hurt or killed, and I’d have to do a lot of hypno cleanup. And since the hypno power isn’t permanent, eventually there would be questions.
Telling myself to stay on track, I ignore the lion-bird behind me and try again for the serpent’s feathered flesh. If I can get one of them gone, I’ll be able to focus on the other. As I’m about to bite down, the griffin snatches my other ankle and tries to twist me around. My spine feels like it’s going to snap from the torque.
“Hey!” Nick shouts, running back into the courtyard. “Let her go!”
I should send him away too. Normally I would. But I’m feeling at a bit of a disadvantage—my training has never covered how to face two attackers, because we never thought I’d need to know. If Nick wants to save me from this pair of goons, then maybe I should let him. Can’t save the world from beasties if I become monster food tonight.
“Get the one off my feet!” I shout. If Nick can keep himself from being eaten for five seconds, I can get rid of snake thing and then take out the griffin before things get really out of control.
In a flash, Nick is across the courtyard and landing a solid punch in the vulnerable spot between the griffin’s eyes. Pretty good aim for someone who can’t see the monster’s true face. Stunned, the griffin lets me go. I take the opportunity to bite the snake’s neck. It disappears out from under me, flashing back to the prison realm where it belongs, and I fall to the ground, barely getting my feet under me to land in a crouch.
Guess I got that pulse point right.
I don’t understand all the details about the process. Ursula’s tried to explain it to me, but there’s too much magic and physiology involved for it to make any sense. All I really know is that something in my venom is a GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL card for monsterkind. Don’t really need to know the details, do I? I’m fine with calling it a mystery of mythology, so long as they go away for a good long while. Too bad there are always more to replace them.
With the serpent creature gone, I turn to help Nick.
He’s actually holding his own pretty well for a guy fighting an eagle-headed lion. The griffin is pinned beneath him, roaring and lashing out with four paws full of skin-slicing, poison-tipped, razor-sharp claws.
How on earth am I going to explain this crazy fight away? Especially since Nick appears to be the one and only human immune to my hypno magic.
“A little help!” he calls.
No time to worry about the aftermath at the moment. The griffin gets some leverage and flips over, reversing their positions so that Nick is pinned to the ground. The giant beak is heading for Nick’s beautiful face. Nick is holding it off—barely—but his arms are beginning to shake. He’s weakening.
No wonder. He’s battling a superpowerful mythical creature.
I push off and leap onto the creature’s back, trying to remember the illustration that shows a griffin’s most vulnerable spot. I know I’ve studied this one—it’s a classic. Distracted away from Nick’s face, the eagle head whips around and tries to peck me off its back.
Why can’t I picture the drawing?
In a flash, Ursula’s diagram of the griffin pops into my mind. I see a bright red circle around the beast’s right rear thigh. Bingo! Target acquired.
In a feat of acrobatic wonder, I spin around on the lion’s back, wrap my arms around its waist, and lunge my head down to sink my teeth into the muscular spot just above the bend in its leg.
The griffin has just enough time to scratch its beak across the back of my neck before vanishing into the dark.
“Ooof!” I land, half on Nick, half on the concrete, with a thud that knocks the wind out of me.
This was the hardest fight I’ve had since . . . well, ever. Even my very first—a giant turtle that was attacking tourists down at the maritime park—was a piece of seaweed-wrapped cake compared to this.
With the adrenaline flooding my bloodstream, I can’t feel any of the aches and pains I know will be there in the morning. But not even a morphine drip could kill the searing pain burning across the back of my neck.
“You okay?” Nick asks.
He doesn’t even sound out of breath.
I roll off him. “Bastard scratched me.”
“Gretchen,” he asks, “are you—”
“I need to go.”
I can’t stick around to answer Nick’s questions because, well, there aren’t any good answers, are there? Besides, thanks to the griffin’s last-ditch effort, some nasty monster venom is now making its way through my circulatory system. Wait too long before treating it and I’m in for several days of excruciating pain—which I know from an up-close-and-personal experience with a cynolycus.
The clock is ticking.
Without waiting for Nick to say or ask or do anything, I jump to my feet and run from the courtyard. As I shove my way through the crowd inside, I wonder how on earth I’m going to explain the fight and the disappearing guys to Nick come Monday at school. I’ve never dealt with a hypno-immune human before, didn’t even know they existed. And I know he’s not the kind of guy to let this go without explanation.
Hopefully Ursula will be back before I have to face him again. She’ll have some suggestions.
I’m halfway through the main club room when I’m hit with the smell of burning sulfur. Another monster? Not just any monster, either. Sulfur means a fire-breather.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I mutter.
That makes three in one night. What is this, the freakin’ monsterpocalypse?
Thankfully, I don’t have to look far to spot the lizard with a spiked tail and smoke curling out of its nostrils. It’s dancing by itself in the middle of the room. Even if they disguise their true appearance, some beasties are less than welcome in a crowd. Bad body odor is bad body odor, no matter the species. I kind of empathize with its loneliness.
“Poor thing.”
Still, it has to go.
I step up behind the lizard, ignoring the throbbing pain in my neck, and grab it by the wrist. It whirls around to face me, sending its spiked tail whipping through the crowd.
Most people don’t react, since all they see is a kind of homely woman in bondage-worthy stilettos and a floral sundress. But as I force its wrist to my mouth, I see the girl behind the creature leap out of the way of the swinging tail.
As I stab my fangs into the creature’s wrist—not the pulse point, apparently, because the lizard doesn’t go anywhere—the girl turns around.
With a gasp, I drop the creature’s wrist. Standing there, in the middle of a dance floor surrounded by dozens of ordinary teens, is a girl who looks exactly like me. I mean exactly like me. And, I realize as we blink at each other, she saw the lizard’s tail.
Just then, a stab of pain sears across my neck. Tick tock, tick tock.
Without stopping to think, I step forward, grab the girl by the waist, and fling her over my shoulder. I don’t wait for anyone to notice or even for the lizard to disappear. It will. I race for the front door, knowing that eventually my venom will reach the creature’s heart and send it home. Right at this moment my two bigger concerns are the monster juice making its way toward my heart and the Gretchen lookalike hanging limp as I run out of the club.