Mother of Monsters, page 1
MOTHER OF MONSTERS
URBAN MAGICK & FOLKLORE
BOOK IV
C. GOCKEL
CONTENTS
About the Book
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Also by C. Gockel
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Contact Information
ABOUT THE BOOK
ONCE UPON A TIME, BEOWULF DEFEATED THE BLOODTHIRSTY VAMPIRE GRENDEL IN THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY … HE CAPTURED HER HEART.
Grendel has mixed feelings about this. Beowulf is as brave and self-sacrificing as he is arrogant and stubborn. She fears his idealism will be his undoing—and maybe hers as well.
After freeing enslaved Ember miners, Beowulf and Grendel are escorting the former captives on a desperate dash to safety, traveling deeper into Beowulf’s homeland, where Vampires are staked on sight.
Unknown to Grendel or even Beowulf, greater dangers than slave traders or Vampire hunters wait for them. Dangers neither of them can begin to imagine.
A new human king is rising, with dreams of empire. A Fae King sees a great game afoot and won’t be denied a play. Meanwhile, the trickster god Coyote has motives of his own.
Grendel and Beowulf will have choices to make. Choices larger than the life and unlife of a Vampire hunter and a Vampire … Choices that will affect mortals and gods, the living and dead.
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Copyright © 2023 C. Gockel
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, subject “Attention: Permissions,” at the email address below:
cgockel@cgockelwrites.com
Print ISBN: 9798391654209
Created with Vellum
ALSO BY C. GOCKEL
URBAN MAGICK & FOLKLORE
Snow So White
Blood So Red
Grendel & Beowulf
Mother of Monsters
Monsters & Empire
I BRING THE FIRE (A LOKI SERIES)
Wolves: I Bring the Fire Part I (free ebook!)
Monsters: I Bring the Fire Part II
Chaos: I Bring the Fire Part III
In the Balance: I Bring the Fire Part 3.5
Fates: I Bring the Fire Part IV
The Slip: A Short Story (mostly) from Sleipnir’s Point of Smell
Warriors: I Bring the Fire Part V
Ragnarok: I Bring the Fire Part VI
The Fire Bringers: An I Bring the Fire Short Story
Atomic: A Short Story
Magic After Midnight: A Short Story
Rush: A Short Story
Take My Monsters: A Short Story
Soul Marked: I Bring the Fire Part VII
Magic After Midnight I Bring the Fire Part VIII
Last Wish: A Short Story
THE ARCHANGEL PROJECT
Archangel Down (free ebook!)
Noa's Ark
Heretic
Carl Sagan's Hunt for Intelligent Life in the Universe: A Short Story
Starship Waking
Darkness Rising
The Defiant
Android General 1
Admiral Wolf
Supernova
Mech
OTHER WORKS
Murphy’s Star: A Sci-fi Short Story
Friendly Fire: A Sci-fi Short Story
Let There Be Light: A Sci-fi Short Story
CHAPTER 1
Grendel’s front door burst open. Beowulf rushed in, a streetlight haloing his sun-bleached hair, the expression in his dark eyes deadly. He wore the armor of his Order, a sort of SWAT meets cyber-Magick-punk affair that blurred with the world around him. He’d pulled the hood back, and she could see his face. She wouldn’t have needed to see him to recognize him. The sound of his Magick, ocean waves pounding the shore, echoed through her basement apartment.
Grendel rose from her cozy chair. Leaving him had been the hardest thing she’d done in her unlife. He’d been what had kept her going in the caves, the only light in darkness too deep for Vampire eyes. The first blood he’d given her had been to save his own life, but later … later, it had been something else. She remembered his kiss, and her mouth watered and skin heated.
God, she’d missed him. Her home felt empty without him, even though the last time he’d been here, he’d almost killed her. He had a stake in his hand. He might try to kill her again.
She should be afraid or angry. Instead, her heart leapt. “Bayo,” she whispered. Somehow, his gaze did not connect with hers.
A woman whispered, “So this is him,” in a voice as soft as starlight. Mizuki, Grendel’s adopted granddaughter, rose from her own chair, her body clothed in a yukata-inspired dress with a starscape pattern—shimmering, semi-translucent, and fading. Only her pale face and almond eyes, sparkling beneath straight dark bangs, appeared solid.
Mizuki’s Magickal talent was not invisibility.
Grendel’s skin prickled. Her gaze slid over the fading Mizuki to Bayo, still standing by the door, scanning her apartment. She glanced at the room’s only Magickal adornment, a window-sized tapestry. Normally, it displayed the scene outside her home: a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood of bustling Magickal Chicago. Now it displayed thunderclouds over a shattered slope. The low, forested, rolling mountains around the slope suggested West Virginia or maybe Eastern Kentucky. Grendel recognized the place—it was where slaves mined Ember, the source of the Magickal world’s power. She’d helped Beowulf liberate the mine’s laborers and then …
And then … She hadn’t left him.
She closed her eyes. She’d gotten aboard a train with him. A train taking them deeper into the United Magickal States, where the passengers, former slaves, could receive medical care. In the United Magickal States, they staked Vampires without trial or remorse. She’d gone with him because humans from her homeland rode with them. She needed to make sure they reached their destination and received the medical care they needed.
The starving, sick, and injured miners weren’t the only reason she’d boarded the train. She’d come aboard because of Bayo, Beowulf, the Nemesis of her namesake. The mine was an evil place. Memories of it had haunted her for hundreds of years. Bayo had destroyed it but had almost killed himself in the process. He’d looked like death warmed over this morning. She hadn’t been able to leave him like that.
But then, how was she here?
“This is a dream,” Grendel said, comprehension dawning.
“Yes, but I am here with you,” Mizuki said, one of her delicate hands solidifying and touching Grendel’s. Her light, cool touch tugged at Grendel’s heart. Mizuki’s Magickal talent was controlling dreams, and a consequence of that talent was that she could enter the dreams of others at will. She was the saddest and loneliest of Grendel’s adopted family. The most lost. The most generous. Grendel hated to see her fade.
“I know where you are, Grendel—we know where you are,” Mizuki said, her words fast and urgent. “Penelope found you in her threads.”
Grendel nodded in understanding. Penelope, another one of her adopted grandchildren, had woven the Magickal tapestry on Grendel’s wall. Penelope could focus on someone dear to her and capture their present in the threads of her weavings.
“Grendel, I need you,” Bayo whispered.
“Oh,” said Mizuki, her focus shifting to Bayo. Her eyes went wide.
Grendel looked, too. Bayo still frantically scanned Grendel’s basement abode. Behind him loomed shadowy figures with empty eyes. They wore gray military uniforms that Grendel did not recognize.
Flinging aside his stake, Bayo spun, slammed her door shut, and bolted every lock. Pounding came from the other side. The door trembled. Pressing his body against it, Bayo shouted, “Grendel!”
Mizuki squeezed Grendel’s hand. “Go to him. He’s here.”
“In the dream?” Grendel asked.
“Yes!” Mizuki said.
Sprinting to the door, Grendel flung her body next to Bayo’s. The door shook against her side. “Is this my nightmare or his?” she asked.
Mizuki whispered over her shoulder, “His. Grendel, I can’t stay. We’re trying to help you in real life. Find a mirror!”
Mizuki left them then. Grendel knew without looking. While Mizuki had been in the dream, there’d been light, ambient music, the sort that came from electric synthesizers. Synthesizers had vanished years ago. During the Change, when Ember had swept the world, all electronic devices had failed, and Magick had returned. When Mizuki left the dream, the dreamy score vanished with her. Grendel’s stomach fell at the loss. She wished with a frightening intensity that she’d been able to introduce Bayo to a member of her family. But Bayo hadn’t seen Mizuki.
His eyes shot side to side, unseeing and fearful. Grendel gulped. He couldn’t see her, either. Beowulf’s name meant “War Wolf,” and he was never afraid—not when captured by slave traders, trapped in a cave-in, facing horrific beasts, certain death, or a small army alone and unarmed.
Keeping her side pressed to the door, Grendel focused on him, willing him to see her. “Bayo,” Grendel said.
He didn’t react.
The door shook and groaned. Grendel swallowed. Who were the shadow-men pounding at the door? The uniforms they wore suggested military, but she didn’t recognize them from the armies of Earth or any other realm.
She gritted her teeth. It didn’t matter. “Bayo!” she said. “This is a dream!”
“Grendel?” he said, cocking his head, as though hearing a distant sound.
He heard her! “I’m here.”
He leaned sideways against the door and finally met her gaze. “You are here,” he said. The door shook and groaned. Near the bottom, a piece of it cracked, broke off, and skittered across the floor.
Grendel nodded cautiously. Bayo’s eyes slid to the trembling door. “This is a nightmare,” he said. His brow furrowed. His jaw got hard. “It isn’t real.”
He stepped away from the door and scowled fiercely at it, his body tight as a bow.
A hair-raising wail echoed from the other side, and the door shuddered. The locks rattled, and Grendel feared they’d snap from the wall.
Snarling, Bayo held out a hand and dipped his chin. His Magick roared, and the veins in his neck bulged. He made a cutting motion … and the pounding abruptly stopped. After a moment, his shoulders relaxed. He cocked his head, expression a little arrogant, a little brash, definitely more himself. “I knew if I found you …” His voice trailed off. Looking uncertain again, he blinked at her.
Stepping forward, he shook his head, as though shaking away a troublesome mosquito. And then he grinned. Capturing her in his arms, he pressed his forehead to hers. “Grendel,” he rumbled. He pulled her tight. She felt his embrace along the length of her body as electricity and heat, lust and life … Which was very unfortunate. She stifled a grumble. Not only was he a Vampire hunter from a nation that hated hers, but the weird Order he belonged to took vows of celibacy. He’d admitted to breaking that vow before, but that didn’t make her more comfortable. Granted, he’d taken that vow under duress as a child—how could you make any choices about your future sexuality before you even knew what sex was?—but vows were vows until you renounced them, and people often hated the object of their inconvenient desires. She feared he’d blame her for the attraction that flared between them.
“More than attraction,” Bayo whispered, as though reading her mind.
His lips brushed her neck, and she bit her own lip to keep from gasping.
“I could never hate you.” He pressed a kiss to her pulse point. “Never hurt you.” His lips trailed down to the space where her shoulder met her neck. “Never.” His arms tightened around her, his hands slid down her back, and Grendel felt warm and more alive than she had in two centuries.
“I need you, Grendel,” he whispered.
Grendel’s body shuddered. She wanted to hold on to the dream and make it go on forever—outside of the dream was the world, cold and dangerous. They’d rescued thousands of people from what had been essentially a concentration camp for at least a century. It had operated at the borders of the United Magickal States, and Bayo and his government hadn’t known about the use of forced labor. In a world without electricity, where trolls hid under bridges, and other Magickal creatures haunted streams, forests, and mountains, the free flow of information was next to impossible. But for such a camp to have existed for so long without being widely known, meant people in power locally had gone to great lengths to keep it hidden. Those people would strike back as soon as they were able. She had to be ready …
Bayo’s hands slid down and around the backs of her thighs. He lifted her into his arms, and her legs automatically wrapped around his waist. Bayo rumbled deep in his throat, and she felt it in her bones. She felt complete, like she was truly home …
… and then she had a terrifying thought.
In the real world, he was lying next to her. She’d still been missing him. In a dream.
She couldn’t even be without him in a damn dream.
Oh, Unbloody Hell.
CHAPTER 2
Bayo jolted awake without knowing why. A weight curled against his side. It took a moment, but then he remembered. Grendel. He’d fallen asleep with his head pillowed against her breast, in a tiny, windowless compartment in the caboose of the Ember train. Somehow, they’d switched places. He trailed fingers through the air by her temple, not touching her but the Ember between them. At peace in sleep beyond dreams, her head resting on his shoulder, she trusted him. It made his chest ache. He didn’t deserve such trust. He’d contemplated killing her and leaving her behind. She excused all of that as a “failure of intel.”
He closed his eyes and absorbed her peace, wishing only a little that she would dream of Christmas time again. There’d been a different sort of peace in that dream, a sort of completeness Bayo had never experienced. He wanted it again.
The train shook. Bayo put a protective hand over Grendel’s head. What was happening?
Bayo reached out and touched the ambient Ember surrounding him. Letting his consciousness follow it past the sick, the weary, and the suicidal, he seized on the emotions of the alert, the ready, the waiting—the men and women who’d been well enough to help liberate the Ember mine. Bayo sensed no panic or immediate danger in them.
The world shook again, and he realized the train had jerked into motion. In machines powered by Ember, Ember worked its way into the gears and gave the machines personality as they aged. But he’d overheard the miners saying the engine was young and easy to control, and it hadn’t protested its new masters. He’d been in no position to notice. They’d been finishing up loading when he’d collapsed with Grendel at sunrise, exhausted from the effort of helping to heal the sick and bringing a dead man back to life.
… He’d brought a man back to life. It evoked equal amounts of awe and terror in him, like standing at the edge of a cliff or like kissing a Vampire.
The train jerked again. Even if there was no danger at the moment, there would be soon. At least one of the mine’s Magickal overseers had escaped. Pulling the ambient Ember to him, he snapped his fingers. A small Magickal spark leapt into the air and hovered there. He glanced down at Grendel, who wore the same clothes she’d worn through the caves. The Folkt had cleaned and mended them, but they’d been soiled again when they’d freed the mines. Still, her milky pale skin and silver hair gleamed. She’d bathed in Hart Hall, the mine headquarters. Bayo grimaced. He hadn’t. Grime coated the back of his neck and his waist, where dirt had worked its way between the segments of his armor.
Bayo extricated his arm from beneath Grendel. She didn’t stir. Awake, she could destroy men, Magickal and Common alike. Asleep, she was more helpless than a kitten. He should know. He’d killed plenty of sleeping Vampires. She had slept with her head pillowed on his arm. The heat of pride and desire rushed through him.
His Order had an explanation for the desire. Vampires always resembled the most perfect specimens of their sex. They de-aged to appear at the peak of fertility. Their facial features rearranged to be achingly perfect in their symmetry. Grendel hadn’t de-aged completely—her long hair was silver white, and delicate lines crisscrossed the skin at the corners of her eyes, around her mouth, and between her brows—but her heart-shaped face and features were close to that devastating symmetry.
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