“My poor sleepy Beowulf,” she smiles. “Too much mead, too little rest. You are exhausted and confused.” And now she presses herself against him, straddling him, her strength taking him by surprise as she bears him flat against the floor.

“First greed,” she says. “Then lust. Is this not what you would have, my lord? Is this not everything you yet desire?” And she kisses him again, and this time she tastes like the sea, like salt water rushing into the throat of a drowning man, like beached and rotting fish stranded under a summer sun. He gags and tries to push her away.

“Give me a child, Beowulf. Enter me, and give me a beautiful, beautiful son.”

And the air around Wealthow seems to shimmer and bend back upon itself somehow. Beowulf blinks, trying hard to will himself awake from this nightmare, terrified he may not be sleeping. She smiles again, and now her lips pull back to reveal the razor teeth of hungry ocean things, and her eyes flash gold and green in the darkness of the hall. Her gown has become a tattered mat of kelp and sea moss entangling a sinuous, scaly body, and Beowulf opens his mouth to scream…

…and he gasps—one breath he cannot quite seem to draw, the space of a heartbeat that seems to go on forever, his pulse loud in his ears, the sea and all its horrors dragging him down—then he opens his eyes. And Beowulf knows that this time he is truly awake. His chest aches, and he squints into the brilliant morning sunlight pouring in through the open door of Heorot Hall, then shields his eyes with his right hand. He blinks, trying to clear his vision.

The frigid air around him smells like slaughter, like a battlefield when the fighting is done or a place where many animals have been butchered and bled. The drone of buzzing flies is very loud, and there’s a steady dripping from all directions, as though the storm returned in the night and the roof has sprung many leaks.

And now there’s a scream, the shrill and piercing scream of a frightened woman. Beowulf peers out from behind the shelter of his fingers, and Yrsa is sitting nearby, pointing one trembling hand up toward the ceiling. Dark blood streaks her upturned face. Beowulf’s eyes follow her fingertips, and he sees that there are many dark shapes hanging from the rafters, indistinct silhouettes weeping a thick red rain.

And then he realizes what those dreadful, dangling forms are.

The bodies of Beowulf’s men hang head down from the roof beams of Heorot—gutted, defiled in unspeakable ways, each and every one torn almost beyond recognition. Their blood drips steadily down upon the tabletops and floor and the upturned faces of horrified women. Beowulf gets slowly to his feet, drawing his sword as he stands, fighting nausea and the dizzying sense that he is yet dreaming.

If only I am, he thinks. If this might be naught but some new and appalling apparition, only a phantasm of my weary mind…

He moves slowly through the hall, and now there are other screams and gasps as other women come awake around him and look upon what hangs there bleeding out above them. Soon the entire hall is filled with the sobs and curses of terrified women. And soon, too, Beowulf can see that every man who slept there has been slain, that among the men, he alone has been spared the massacre.

There are footsteps at the doorway, and Beowulf swings about, raising his sword and bracing himself for the attack. But it’s only Wiglaf, returned from the beach. He stands framed in winter sunlight, gazing up at the ragged bodies. He has also drawn his sword.

“In the name of Odin…” he gasps.

“Wiglaf, what dismal misdeed is this?” Beowulf asks, and a fat drop of blood splashes at his feet.

Yrsa has gotten to her feet, and she’s pointing toward Beowulf instead of the murdered men.

“Liar,” she hisses. “You told us it was dead. You told us you had killed it.”

“What? Is Grendel not dead?” asks Wiglaf, taking a hesitant step into the mead hall. “Has the fiend grown his arm anew?”

Beowulf does not answer them, but turns about to look at the place where he nailed up Grendel’s severed arm. Nothing hangs there now, and his eyes find only the naked iron spike and the monster’s black blood dried to a crust upon the wooden column and the floor below.

“He took it back, didn’t he?” asks Yrsa, her voice becoming brittle and hysterical. “He came here in the night and took it back! He walked among us while we slept. The demon is not dead. You lied—”

“Shut up, woman!” growls Beowulf, watching a fat drop of blood that has landed on the blade of his sword as it runs slowly down toward the hilt.

“Are you not thinking the same damn thing?” asks Wiglaf from the doorway. “The men are dead, and the arm is gone, and we did not see the creature die.”

“We did not ever say we saw it die,” replies Beowulf, and he shuts his eyes, trying to think, trying to blot out all these atrocities, all the sights and sounds and smells. But she is still there in his head, waiting behind his eyelids, the grinning phantom from his dream, the thing that came disguised as Wealthow…

Give me a child, Beowulf. Enter me now and give me a beautiful, beautiful son.

A cold spatter of blood strikes Beowulf’s forehead, and he opens his eyes again, then wipes it away and stands staring at the crimson smear on his palm.

“Find Hrothgar,” he says. “If he still breathes.”

“It was not Grendel,” Hrothgar sighs heavily. He sits alone on the edge of his bed, wrapped in deer skins and frowning down at his bare feet, his crooked yellow toenails. His sword is gripped uselessly in both hands, the tip of the blade resting against the stone floor. There are four guards standing at the entrance to the bedchamber, and Queen Wealthow, wrapped in her bearskins, stands alone at the window, looking out on the stockade.

“How do you know that?” Wiglaf asks the king, and Hrothgar sighs again and looks up at him.

“I know it, young man, because I have lived in this land all my life and know its ways. I know it because it is something that I know.”

“Fine,” says Wiglaf, glancing toward Beowulf. “But if it is not Grendel, then who is it? What is it, if not Grendel?”

Hrothgar taps the end of his sword lightly against the stone and grimaces.

“We would have an answer, old man,” Beowulf says. “They are carrying the bodies of my men from your mead hall, and I would know why.”

“Grendel’s mother,” replies Hrothgar. “It was the son you killed. I had…I had hoped that she had left this land long ago.”

Wiglaf laughs a hollow, bitter sort of laugh and turns away. Beowulf frowns and kicks at the floor.

“How many monsters am I to slay?” he asks Hrothgar. “Grendel’s mother? Father? Grendel’s fucking uncle? Will I have to hack down an entire family tree of these demons before I am done?”

“No,” says Hrothgar unconvincingly, and taps his sword against the floor a second time. “She is the last. I swear it. With her gone, that demonkind will finally slip into faerie lore forever.”

“And you neglected to mention her before now because…?”

“I have already said, I believed that she had deserted these hills and gone back down to trouble the sea from whence she came. I did not know, Beowulf. I did not know.”

“Listen,” says Wiglaf to Beowulf. “Let us take our dead and take our leave and have no more part in these evil doings. If he is not lying,” and Wiglaf pauses to glare at Hrothgar, “then Grendel’s dam has claimed her wergild and has no further grievance or claim upon this hall. We can sail on the next tide.”

“And what of her mate?” Beowulf asks Hrothgar, ignoring Wiglaf. “Where is Grendel’s father?”