Free My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon by Jim Butcher, Kelley Armstrong, P. N. Elrod, Katie MacAlister, Rachel Caine, Marjorie M. Liu, Lilith Saintcrow, Caitlin Kittredge, Ronda Thompson Page A

sensed any stirring of any kind that would indicate some kind of malevolent presence.
    If knowledge is power, then it follows that ignorance is weakness. In my line of work, ignorance can get you killed. Gard hadn't said anything about any kind of mystic connection between herself and this beastie, but it was the most likely explanation for how she could sense its presence when I couldn't.
    The problem with that was that those kinds of connections generally didn't flow one-way. If she could sense the grendelkin, odds were that it could sense her right back.
    "Whoah, wait," I said. "If this thing might know we're coming, we don't want to go rushing in blind."
    "There's no time. It's almost ready to breed." There was hint of a snarl in her words as the ax came down off her shoulder. Gard pulled what looked like a road flare out of her duffel bag and tossed the bag aside.
    Then she threw back her head and let out a scream of pure, unholy defiance. The sound was so loud, so raw, so primal that it hardly seemed human. It wasn't a word, but that didn't stop her howl from eloquently declaring Gard's rage, her utter contempt for danger, for life—and for death. That battle cry scared the living snot out of me, and it wasn't even aimed in my direction.
    Gard struck the flare to life with a flick of a wrist and shot me a glance over her shoulder. Eerie green light played up over her face, casting bizarre shadows, and her icy eyes were very wide and white-rimmed above a smile stretched so tightly that the blood had drained from her lips. Her voice quavered disconcertingly. "Enough talk."
    Holy Schwarzenegger.
    Gard had lost it.
    This wasn't the reaction of the cool, reasoning professional I'd seen working for Marcone. I'd never actually
seen
anyone go truly, old-school
berserkergang
, but that scream… It was like hearing an echo rolling down through the centuries from an ancient world, a more savage world, now lost to the mists of time.
    And suddenly I had no trouble at all believing her age.
    She charged forward, whipping her ax lightly around with her right hand, holding the blazing star of the flare in her left. Gard let out another banshee shriek as she went, a wordless cry of challenge to the grendelkin that declared her intent as clearly as any horde of phonemes:
I am coming to kill you
.
    And ahead of us in the tunnels, something much, much bigger than Gard answered her, a deep-chested, basso bellow that shook the walls of the tunnel in answer:
Bring it on
.
    My knees turned shaky. Hell, even Mouse stood with his ears pressed against his skull, tail held low, body set in a slight crouch. I doubt I looked any more courageous than he did, but I kicked my brain into gear, spat out a nervous curse, and hurried after her.
    Charging in headlong might be a really stupid idea, but it would be an even
worse
idea to stand around doing nothing, throwing away the only help I was likely to get. Besides. For better or worse, I'd agreed to work with Gard, and I wasn't going to let her go in without covering her back.
    So I charged headlong down the tunnel toward the source of the terrifying bellow. Mouse, perhaps wiser than I, hesitated a few seconds longer, then made up for it on the way down the tunnel, until he was running a pace in front of me, matching my stride. We'd gone maybe twenty yards before his breath began to rumble out in a growl of pure hostility, and he let out his own roar of challenge.
    Hey, when in Cimmeria, do as the Cimmerians do. I screamed too. It got lost in all the echoes bouncing around the tunnels.
    Gard, running hard ten paces ahead of me, burst into a chamber. She gathered herself in a sudden leap, flipping neatly in the air, and plummeted from sight. The falling green light of the flare showed me that the tunnel opened into the top of a chamber the size of a small hotel atrium, and if Mouse hadn't stopped first and leaned back against me, I might have slid over the edge before I could stop. As it was, I got a