by Lisa Shearin
The delegates coming from another world or dimension were arriving via the small portal that was a permanent fixture in the hotel basement. Vivienne Sagadraco was doing the welcoming at the portal. Kitty was overseeing the hotel mage operating the portal itself.
Inside the hotel, SPI and hotel security had eyes everywhere, both electronic and magical.
Rake and Ms. Sagadraco weren’t taking any chances.
Speaking of Rake, he was out of the penthouse and about the hotel—all about the hotel. Ms. Sagadraco was the head of SPI, but Rake was the owner of the hotel, and he was playing his role as host to the max.
Rake and our boss had spent a lot of time behind the closed doors of her office over the past few weeks, working on the room assignments and meeting the exotic needs of each delegate. From what Rake had told me, determining room assignments was like crossing the UN with an MMA cage match. There were delegates who would be fine in rooms on the same floor or even next to each other. Others couldn’t realistically be trusted not to kill each other in the same hotel.
None of them wanted to be surrounded by SPI agents and commandos, but that was exactly what they were going to get.
Representatives from SPI’s diplomatic corps had been assigned to each delegate, to act over the coming days as a combination of chaperone and referee, ensuring that the delegates behaved themselves while in town. Considering who was on some of those delegations, and how little they liked some of the other delegates, none of my coworkers were holding their breath for a peaceful week.
Fun times ahead.
The commandos were housed on the same floors as the delegates to provide near-immediate response to any situation day or night. One room on each floor closest to the stairs and elevators had been designated as a guard post to be staffed by two SPI commandos 24/7 with duty rotated. That way, there were always qualified personnel ready to step in and keep any disagreement or altercation—or attempted assassination—from escalating from mild disruption into an inter-world incident.
That list now included buka sighting.
We didn’t know if the buka incursion had been a one-time event, or the first of more. The boss wasn’t taking any chances. The summit had to happen. We would continue to do what we’d planned to do—take every precaution we could to ensure the safety of the delegates and the summit’s success.
We’d do the best we could, and that would be all we could do.
But would it be enough?
The delegates began arriving at the Regor Regency for the Centennial Supernatural Summit right on time.
Some races had sent diplomats and ambassadors. For others, the rulers themselves attended. These were beings who were used to entering a room to an announcement and everyone either bowing, kneeling, or saluting—with horns and fanfare. They weren’t getting any of that here, and you could immediately tell those who had gotten way too used to having their egos fed.
Then there were their entourages—or as it was now, the lack thereof.
Vivienne Sagadraco had limited the number of retainers each delegate could bring to one assistant and one bodyguard—guards who had to do their jobs while operating within our rules. The boss knew that wasn’t going to go over well, but it was her party, her rules. The delegates would grumble and push our limits, but they’d toe the line.
The delegates arriving for the signing of the accords covered the full range of supernatural and alien races. Fangs, fur, and fins. Tentacles and talons. Air or water breathing. Sky, surface, or subterranean dwelling. The Centennial Supernatural Summit welcomed them all.
Rake had taken up station in the middle of the lobby. His undisguised goblin self, immaculately attired in a dark suit, and in my opinion hot as hell, personally welcomed each and every guest. Many of them had stayed at the hotel before, so Rake’s greetings were turning into “let’s catch up on old times.” He was striking an impressive balance between making each guest feel welcome without offending anyone who wanted to talk further. It turned out he really was the perfect host.
The two races that had the potential to cause the most trouble were the elves and goblins, who had been at war in one form or another for a couple of millennia.
Old habits were hard to break.
Coming from mountain people, I understood that. Though back home, it was called a feud. Problem with feuds was, after you’d been fighting them awhile, you forgot what had caused all the ruckus in the first place.
When the elf and goblin representatives walked into the lobby from their trip through the hotel’s portal, they stunned every being in the room into silence.
Not only were they walking together, they were chatting like old friends.
The elf was the younger of the two by many years, and he had slowed his pace to match that of the elderly goblin. There were five stairs leading up to the main floor of the lobby, and the elf extended his arm to assist the goblin.
As Grandma Fraser would have said, “His momma raised that young man right.”
“Has Hell frozen over?” one of our agents whispered.
I’d been there recently—at least in its anteroom—and could personally attest that Hell indeed had not frozen over and was in no danger of doing so anytime soon.
There have always been elves from the Seven Kingdoms on Earth, albeit in limited numbers. A hundred years ago this week, they had negotiated an increase in their population here as a way to disperse their people on worlds other than their own. At that time, they were at war with the goblins and facing extermination at their hands. Elves and goblins didn’t get along here, and Rake had told me those feelings were even more prevalent back home. His home.
Now the representatives of both races had arrived in the hotel virtually holding hands.
I could understand why people would think that Hell had frozen over.
At the boss’s insistence, all SPI agents on duty during the talks had been briefed on all the delegates, with the most attention paid to those who were likely to need the most protecting.
This elf and goblin were at the top of the keep-safe-at-all-costs list.
Yet they had arrived with no bodyguards or attendants.
Rake met them both, greeting the goblin with a wide smile and open arms. “Dakarai, what sorcery is this? You do not age.”
The elderly goblin laughed as he hugged Rake. “Then I must have aged twice as much inside.” He turned to his elven companion. “Rake, this is the new elven ambassador, Mago Nuallan. Mago, this rascal is the goblin version of Markus Sevelien on this world—that is, if your employer had the morals of a randy Nebian sea snake.”
Mago Nuallan was as tall as Rake with a similarly lean build. The elf had dark hair, dark eyes, and swarthy skin. Not exactly the pale, forest-dwelling skintone Tolkien led us to believe was the elven norm. His dark hair was shoulder length and tied back at the nape of his neck, which went nicely with his neatly trimmed beard and mustache.
But what really made him stand out was that he looked like he’d stepped out of a high-class Ren Faire, complete with a doublet, breeches, and high leather boots, all in midnight blue. From what I’d read in the briefing materials about him, the rapier that swung at his side had seen a lot of action. From the way the women and some of the men were looking at him, I imagined Mago Nuallan saw a lot of action himself. Dashing would be a good one-word description.
Dakarai Enric looked like a kindly goblin grandfather, if you overlooked the fangs. His long hair was white against his dark blue robes, and his eyes appeared to be a warm brown instead of the usual goblin black. I couldn’t tell his age, but from what Rake had told me of the goblin court, any goblin who lived to be that old had to be cunning beyond belief. And his presence here indicated that he was also trusted without question by the new goblin king. According to the briefing, Dakarai had signed the original accord one hundred years ago, so the goblin was over a century old. How much older, our people didn’t know.
Rolf Haagen was making a quick beeline for me, and trying to be
casual about it.
There was nothing casual about a six-foot-six Norwegian commando with a cyborg arm. Yet as the delegates parted to let him through, the Viking and his bionic arm was the most normal thing I saw.
Rolf didn’t say a word until he was close enough to speak without being heard. There were no screams or explosions coming from the hotel pub where he’d been, so it couldn’t have been all that bad.
“Mac, where’s Ian? We have a situation in the pub.”
Or I could be wrong.
Chapter Nine
The dwarf delegation had arrived back at the hotel hours ago, after their SPI-approved and -protected field trip to New York’s abandoned subway tunnels. They were now gathered in the one place in the hotel where they felt truly comfortable.
The hotel pub.
It was a beer-lover’s dream. We’d already discovered that for dwarves, communing with a good brew was a near-religious experience, and the dwarf delegation was seriously devout. The lighting was dim, which appealed to their mountain-interior-dwelling sensibilities. And the beers were many—which appealed to everything else.
Rolf knew the dwarves, and with Lars Anderssen’s approval had assigned himself as the delegation’s SPI bodyguard. It was the perfect arrangement, since the dwarves went everywhere together in a tight-knit pack. No strays for Rolf to round up.
I’m sure the fact that Rolf loved beer as much as the dwarves had nothing to do with requesting the assignment. The last time Rolf had been in town, he and Yasha had gotten into a bit of a drinking competition after the grendel mission. Yasha had come out on the losing end of that one. Rolf had left our werewolf friend whimpering like a puppy, though no one had forced Yasha to try to keep up with a Viking demigod at the bar.
Ian was in an intense conversation with Ms. Sagadraco, so I’d whispered “problem in the pub” in Rake’s ear as I passed where he was speaking with the fey ambassador.
The dwarf delegation had taken over the half the pub.
Yes, Ms. Sagadraco had limited each delegation to an official representative, one staff member, and one bodyguard. However, the dwarves considered each clan to be a kingdom unto itself. So, in the interests of diplomacy, the boss had had to issue an invitation to each of the four European chieftains, which meant four staffers, plus four bodyguards, giving us a grand total of twelve dwarves in a pub.
The Regor Regency had two restaurants and three bars. In addition to the pub there were a sophisticated art deco bar that catered to the wine and cocktails crowd and what looked like a turn-of-the-last-century English gentleman’s club where guests could go to enjoy fine cigars and a selection of single-malt scotches. Judging from the waft of eau d’cigar that met us at the door, the dwarves had been barhopping their way around the hotel. I had to blink my way to the back of the pub where the dwarves had gathered around a shiny steel keg on the floor.
“Isn’t that supposed to be—”
Rake appeared, moving past me. “Not on the floor.”
The elven bartender intercepted his boss. “Sir, I tried to stop them, but—”
“It’s alright, Judson. I’ll handle this.”
“There’s something inside that’s not beer,” Rolf whispered to me.
Rake’s goblin ears picked right up on that. “I beg your pardon?”
“When Judson here tapped this keg, it tasted a bit . . .” Rolf paused awkwardly. “Skunky.”
Judson the bartender looked horrified.
“We just got that keg in, sir, and we’ve never had a problem with that distributor. It must be—”
Rake held up a hand for quiet and tilted his head toward the keg as if listening.
Kegs of beer didn’t make noise. At least I didn’t think beer kegs—
Scratch. Scratch.
It came from inside the keg.
Oh my God. How did—
Then it chittered, and it was all I could do to keep from jumping up on the bar.
“That’s what we heard,” Rolf said.
Rake was the ultimate goblin, and goblins were masters at concealing their emotions. In two seconds, Rake’s expression cycled through shock, disgust, and anger, to land on utter mortification.
Skunky beer was one thing, but it sounded like there was an actual skunk in the keg.
“Grimtog,” an elderly white-bearded dwarf said knowingly.
The rest of the delegation nodded and murmured in wise agreement.
“What’s a grimtog?” Rake asked.
“A dwarf beer skunk,” Rolf replied.
“Skunky beer doesn’t mean there’s a literal skunk in the beer. It’s when—”
“Dwarves have an actual beer skunk, sir. They’re hairless, they’re ugly, they’ve got entirely too many sharp teeth, and they love ruining a good barrel of ale. They kind of look like gremlins.”
Rake’s expression settled on hotelier neutral. “We don’t have any such creature here.”
“With all respect, sir. I think you do now. Ambassador Soren and the boys don’t mind. Finding a grimtog in a keg is a lucky thing, like finding a …”
“Prize in a box of Cracker Jacks?” I took a step to the left as the chittering started to sound angry.
“Though the luck only applies if you can catch the grimtog after breaking the barrel.” Rolf glanced down at the shiny steel keg, his brow furrowed in confusion. “And they’ve always been inside wooden barrels. Odd.”
Rake picked up the keg and carried it into the pub’s back room. The chittering had stopped, but that didn’t make me feel any better.
When he set it down, Rake tapped the keg with the toe of his shoe.
The grimtog growled, the sound echoing in the steel cylinder, and I started looking around for more weapons than I was already carrying. I also was not comforted to see that there were only two exits: back out into the pub, which was presently plugged with curious dwarves, or a door that might have been to a storage room without an exit. But if that thing came out of that keg and launched itself at my face, I’d make my own exit.
“You’re gonna open that keg, aren’t you?” I guessed.
Rake casually waved a hand across the top of the keg, encasing it in a shielded bubble. “Modern kegs can only be tapped; the top does not come off.”
“Then how did it get in there?”
“It shouldn’t be possible.”
We shared a quick glance. Like bukas in a ballroom shouldn’t have been possible.
“At least it’s smaller,” I muttered. “And there’s only one.”
For now.
I resisted the urge to inch closer to the door.
Rake sensed it. “Your confidence in my skill is a comfort to me,” he said dryly.
I jabbed my finger at the keg. “Ugly, toothy, and mean. And after soaking in a keg of beer, probably a mean drunk. I’m just being cautious.”
Rake pointed his hand at the top of the keg and made a quick, slicing motion. The top of the keg simply vanished—and “ugly” took on a whole new meaning.
The thing that dragged itself dripping over the rim of that keg looked entirely too much like the baby demons whose eggs had been smuggled into my apartment and left to hatch, with yours truly playing the part of baby food. When they’d attacked me in my apartment, I’d had my single-girl-in-New-York trifecta of weapons: a gun, a baseball bat, and a can of Raid.
I didn’t have any of those here. Yes, there was a goblin dark mage, a bionic Viking, an elf bartender, and a dozen armed and tipsy dwarves with me, but my lizard brain still insisted on estimating how many of them I’d have to trample to get out of here.
Big monsters didn’t scare me half as much as the little fast ones. Those buggers creeped me out, up one side and down the other.
The grimtog was about eight inches tall, hairless, with pale skin tight on what I assumed was a beer-bloated frame. Its eyes were the shade of a pale ale, which thankfully, I’d never liked all that much. I was a dark ale girl.
The grimtog opened a wide, fang-filled mouth.
And belched.
The force of it rippled its skin from its fleshy lips down to its swollen feet, and there was a good chance I’d never drink beer again, of any color.
The skin wasn’t all that rippled; so did the surface of Rake’s shield-bubble.
I took a step back. “Should that be doing that?”
“No.”
In an instant, Rake’s hands went up, palms out, fingers spread toward the keg. His intent was to reinforce his shield, but it wasn’t quite working out that way.
This morning, Rake and his crack security team had thrown everything including the magical kitchen sink at a pack of bukas, and none of it had worked, at least not for long.
The same was happening now, with the most powerful dark mage on our world against one little dwarf beer skunk.
Worst of all, the dwarven delegation was standing right there watching the entire, humiliating thing.
I couldn’t let that grimtog get away, so the instant Rake’s ward buckled and the grimtog scuttled over the edge of the keg, I lunged for the little bastard, my fingers sinking into its squishy, beer-slimed body.
It squealed, I screamed, and the dwarves cheered.
And in the chaos that followed, I slipped in the beer that’d spilled, fell against the keg, knocked it over, and dumped even more skunky beer on the floor.
The situation went south from there.
That was when the white-bearded dwarf ambassador tapped his inner Gandalf and cut loose with some magic of his own. I recognized the spell. It should’ve wrapped up the grimtog like a mummy in glowing web-like threads.
It didn’t.
The spell sputtered and failed just like Rake’s.
It was already next to impossible to maintain my grip on the squirming grimtog. Then it snarled and lunged at my face, making me drop it. It chittered and leaped for the small drain in the middle of the floor. Then, to the dropped jaws of everyone there, it shimmered and with an audible plop, its body went straight through the drain grill and into the pipe below the floor, vanishing with a happy cackle.