Grimm - The Icy Touch

by Shirley, John

  I waited, trying to concentrate on rebuilding old timepieces, and then a couple days later the local news guys interviewed the ranger’s colleagues, and people were really, really sincere about what a great guy he was. Of course! Naturally I’d hoped that maybe he had a shady past, something I could use to ease my aching guilt. But nope. He just had to be a paragon. A family man. Wife, kids and friends adored him. A terrible tragedy, and so on.

  I knew where his family was. The family of Alvin Richard Perkins. I checked on their situation. Not too bad, but not great either. I started to save up money so I could get it to them anonymously, under one pretense or another. I made up a long-lost cousin of Alvin’s to be the donor, someone too far away to see personally. “Cousin Jeff.” And cousin Jeff, wanting to help out dear cousin Alvin’s family, has supplemented their income. Plus, I’ve kept an eye on the kids in my free time, in case they were being bullied or threatened or victimized. I waited to see how I could help them. I go there at night, look the place over. They’re under my protection. They don’t know, of course...

  But the biggest thing I did for them, and for myself, was to go into recovery as a Blutbad predator. It wasn’t enough to just go all Wieder, and swear it off. I’d tasted too much blood in my time.

  I asked around, found the meetings for predators in recovery, and started going. That was for the Perkins’ family... but it was for me, too. I had to be in command of myself. I had to master myself. The wolf in me had to be domesticated. I respect Blutbad nature, Fuchsbau nature—most Wesen have my respect. It’s a wonderful thing, feeling that authentically close to nature. Nothing wrong with our animal natures in themselves but... they have to be kept in their place. Something higher has got to be in charge.

  So, I had to make it really decisive, make it a lifestyle change. That’s why I went vegetarian. And I don’t regret it.

  But sometimes, the Blutbad side calls to me. The other day, in that tunnel, I had to woge and use my Blutbad side to survive a fight. Nick was there and, like I told you—I bit him. I didn’t mind taking an Icy Touch guy out—these are bad Wesen. But still... the whole thing brought up memories of Alvin Perkins. And his wife, his kids...

  Anyway, that’s the story. You’re Fuchsbau, not Blutbad, and Fuchsbau—I mean, a fox will bite, but... you aren’t so likely to be a physical danger to people. So I worry that you won’t, you know, feel good about being with me now, Rosalee. I felt like I had to tell you and...

  * * *

  “Monroe—it’s all right.” Rosalee touched his face, the caress whisper soft.

  He took her hand and kissed it.

  “It’s all right? Really? Because it doesn’t have to be all right, if you need time to decide if I’m this awful guy or not... I mean not that I am an awful guy, but you have the right to make up your own mind—”

  Rosalee silenced him with a finger on his lips.

  “Monroe—I’m an ex drug addict. I’m not likely to be all crazy judgmental about your past. And I knew you were a Blutbad when we got involved. You made a mistake and you learned from it. And you changed the direction of your life. You’re a good man, Monroe.”

  He felt as if a hundred pound weight had been lifted from his heart.

  “Thanks, Rosie.”

  “I think it’s sweet that you go and check on them.”

  “Sweet, not creepy?”

  “Not at all. You’re, like, their Zorro, watching over them from the shadows. You go there a lot?”

  “Just now and then. Sometimes I get a feeling I should look in on them, see how the kids look. They’re doing pretty good. I just wish... their dad was there.”

  She leaned back and frowned.

  “Monroe—you said you went Blutbad to help Nick?”

  “Yeah. Not the first time.”

  “But—you said someone was killed? Did you have to attack someone as a Wesen? I mean...”

  “It wasn’t quite like that. I was wrestling around with the guy, trying to get the gun from him, and he squeezed the trigger. He ended up shooting himself.”

  “Oh. So you didn’t, um... you didn’t bite the guy who was killed. Like you bit the ranger.”

  “No. But... I bit Nick!”

  “You didn’t really hurt him.”

  “That’s true. I didn’t.” He shrugged. “He didn’t hold it against me. The bite hardly broke the skin.”

  “Hardly? It’s a good thing that old werewolf stuff about spreading it to regular people isn’t true...”

  “Hey, Blutbaden aren’t werewolves anyway. We’re probably the source of the legend, and sometimes we talk about ‘going werewolf’ but that’s not a literal thing...”

  “I know, but...” She kissed him lightly. “...you’re still my wolfy guy.”

  He took her in his arms.

  “And you’re my foxy lady.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Albert Denswoz walked into the meeting with other West Coast bosses of La Caresse Glacée with his mind made up.

  The Icy Touch would step up its Vernichten—the assassinations he’d long contemplated would go ahead...

  Federico Malo was already seated and waiting patiently, a dark-eyed young man from Los Angeles, in a tautly tailored black-and-white Italian suit. He had long curly black hair and a neatly trimmed black mustache—a Hundjager and eager to follow Denswoz into Hell. Or so he’d like me to think.

  Beside him was Danielle Lanive, a Hexenbiest who appeared to be about thirty years old, thanks to Hexenbiest potions, but was probably closer to fifty. She was a queenly, tanned woman in a tight white dress; she had long golden hair tied back into one immaculate braid. She was French but with German antecedents, like him— and she was totally loyal to him. There was a physical intimacy between them, when they were alone; they were careful not to show it around the others.

  Marque Garnick sat at the other end of the oblong table in the office conference room, tapping his fingers on the oak finish with irritation. Garnick was an ambitious Steinadler Wesen in his early forties. The eagle-like Steinadler were proud, magisterial creatures, to the point where some felt themselves above other Wesen. Garnick didn’t like to be kept waiting for a mere Hundjager. So Denswoz made sure to keep him waiting a little more. He paused deliberately to look out the big window of the conference room.

  Below the rented office suite, just on the other side of a parking garage, Denswoz could see a tugboat pushing a barge up the Willamette River. He took his time admiring the view.

  As a Hundjager, Albert Denswoz thought of La Caresse Glacée as his “extended pack,” and he was very conscious of pack leadership. A pack leader frequently had to let the others know who was boss...

  Finally, he gave the room his attention.

  “Garnick—do you have the report I asked you for?” Denswoz demanded, as he put his briefcase on the table.

  Garnick’s scowl deepened.

  “Naturally,” he replied.

  Denswoz would have growled at him, had he been woged. Instead, he merely glared.

  “Don’t take that tone with me,” he said coldly. “You’re as fallible as anyone else, Garnick. Let’s have the report.”

  Garnick tossed the folder on the table disdainfully.

  Denswoz wished for a moment that he had the coins with him. Garnick would melt, would fall entirely under his sway, if he used the Coins of Zakynthos. That would change the arrogant Steinadler’s attitude. But Denswoz had used them only once since he’d had them stolen from Grimm safekeeping, a few months earlier. They’d given him power over La Caresse Glacée ritualists—a sublime authority he’d never experienced before.

  He was determined to use the coins sparingly. He knew they could destroy the fool who overused them. They were empowering—but they were dangerous.

  Denswoz decided to let Garnick’s bad attitude slide for now.

  “Danielle—could you set up a paper shredder?”

  “Mais oui,” she said mildly. She got up, went to the corner, and pushed a wheeled paper shre
dder over to the table.

  “As usual,” Denswoz said, “we will practice information hygiene. All these documents are to be shredded— computer files are to be kept as encrypted as possible. Has the room been swept for bugs, Danielle?”

  “Bien sur. It is clean.”

  He looked around. “Where is Grogan?”

  “Here,” a voice said.

  Jase Grogan was just coming in the door. He was a big, red-haired man with a wide sunburned face, green eyes, a mild Dublin accent. His hair had receded well back from his freckled forehead but he let it grow past his collar to his broad shoulders. He wore a rumpled brown suit that barely contained his hulking barrel-chested frame. There was a peculiar tattoo involving a mermaid and a Christian cross on the back of his right hand. Grogan was a Mordstier Wesen, and a bull-like man he was.

  “You’re late, Grogan,” Denswoz told him. “Sit down.”

  “Rather do that than stand,” Grogan said, typically facetious.

  He sat to Denswoz’s left, leaned back, laced his fingers and cradled the back of his head. He liked to appear above it all, to the point of seeming almost to ooze contempt.

  Grogan was a valuable man; had trained their primary West Coast enforcers. His people had taken out the Shadow Heart gangsters working in Canby. He’d made his point.

  “I have decided,” Denswoz said, “that we will move ahead with the Vernichten list. And I suspect we’ll add a few more to it.”

  “I’m all for removing those people,” Garnick said. “But I think we should wait for the right moment—the right chance. You’re talking about assassinating the governor of Oregon, for starters.”

  “We’ll use our cobra-hooded ami,” Danielle said. “The governor has had some heart trouble. They’ll call it a heart attack.”

  Denswoz nodded. “Good. He has to go. The man is going to sign this new law enforcement bill. The lieutenant governor is... a friend of ours. He’ll veto the bill, once he’s governor. We don’t want Oregon overrun with police. And we want a new governor we’ll have in our pocket.”

  “There have been a lot of targets lately,” Garnick said, chewing the inside of his cheek.

  “Things getting too hot for you?” Denswoz asked, calmly. “There is an expression about kitchens—when they’re too hot.”

  “That’s unfair, Denswoz,” Garnick said. For a moment irritation made him drop his mask and his eagle-like Steinadler visage showed through. Then his face snapped back to human. “We should vote on this.”

  “Pointless, man,” Malo said. “Mr. Denswoz has the final word.”

  “To put it on the record. For the council bosses.”

  “I am one of the council bosses,” Denswoz pointed out. “I’ll let them know how you feel. We’ll wait a few weeks on the governor, however. He won’t sign the thing for more than a month. Now, as for that private investigator in San Francisco...”

  “Him you can kill as soon as you like,” Garnick said, dismissively.

  “Good. Why don’t you take him out?”

  “Me? I’ll have it done, if you like.”

  “Don’t like to get your hands dirty?”

  “I did my share in my time,” Garnick said, his voice tense, creaking with eagle-like overtones. “And I think those three should be moved up your list.” He pointed at the file he’d tossed on the table.

  Denswoz opened the folder and read out the names.

  “Nick Burkhardt, Portland PD detective. Hank Griffin. Partner. And a Blutbad named... Monroe? Where’s the rest of his name? That first or last?”

  “Ah, we haven’t yet secured that information,” Garnick said. “He was seen leaving the late Lemuel Smith’s place with the two cops who found the body—Burkhardt and Griffin. And our Wesen watching the place said he recognized the guy with the cops as a Blutbad named Monroe. But that was all he could tell us. Our guy then followed him to a house... the address is there in the briefing. Apparently he watched the place for a while. Must have some kind of connection with the people in that house. Name of Perkins...”

  “We need to find this guy, lure him out in the open,” Malo said. “If he’s working with the cops, he’s got to go down. Hard.”

  Grogan chuckled. “Federico, you’ve been watching too many mafia movies.”

  Malo’s cheeks reddened. “I just mean—if ever we had to make an example, this is the time. These guys took half a ton of Seele Dichtungsmittel off us. That much scopolamine... took a long time to get that much pure enough.”

  “Talk to our friend in the PD, get it back,” Denswoz said. “We have more coming in. There are already three pounds here, in town.”

  “What about Griffin and Burkhardt?” Grogan asked.

  “It’s risky, eliminating cops,” Denswoz admitted. “But add them to the list. We just wait to implement their Vernichten till the time is right—ideally we can take them out together. Grogan—think of something. Now, what can we do to provoke this Monroe character into coming out into the open?”

  Grogan straightened up, stretching his arms.

  “I get a good moment to take the cops out, maybe their car ran into that river out there—you want me to just go for it?”

  “Check with me first—unless it’s too perfect to wait on, then it’s your call. Sooner or later I want these detectives...” He looked at the report. “...Griffin and Burkhardt... to be thoroughly done for and gone. They’re sticking their snouts into way too much. Malo’s right. They hurt us already—and the word will get around.”

  Grogan nodded. “There’s something else. They might’ve seen our boys flying their Wesen colors.”

  Steinadler looked startled.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Couple of our guys were staying woged while guarding the shipment, down in the tunnel. They didn’t expect to see anyone but Wesen and if they did see anyone who wasn’t Wesen, they figured to just, you know, kill ’em. Thing is— this Burkhardt might be the guy we’ve been hearing about. Some of our Wesen connections say there’s a Grimm in the Portland PD.”

  “A Grimm!” Steinadler exclaimed. “And...does the Verrat know about him, I wonder?”

  “Chances are they do.”

  “You think he’s working with the Gegengewicht? Supposedly they’re making contact with Grimms...”

  “I don’t know. Not even sure this Gegengewicht thing is for real.”

  “Oh they’re real all right.”

  Burkhardt. That name...

  Denswoz knew that name from somewhere. It troubled him. Hadn’t he seen it in his documentation on the Kessler family?

  Burkhardt.

  Kessler...

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LONDON, ENGLAND, 1843

  Early in a foggy autumn afternoon, in the first years of the reign of Queen Victoria, a young gentlemen strode along a particularly narrow, crooked, and malodorous London byway in search of a murderer. The young man was David Kaspar Kessler, and the murderer was known only as “the Sacker.”

  “The Sacker” was the vulgar term, used by prostitutes and wine shop keepers. David’s father had suggested that the moniker derived from the state in which the victims were found: the bodies resembling an empty leather sack shaped vaguely like a human being, their guts mysteriously emptied out of them. The victims were men and only men. The killer was thought to be female, but David had his doubts.

  David Kessler had hopes, too—he wished to be a detective in Sir Robert Peel’s new police force. The new force of “bobbies” didn’t have a good reputation with the ruck of the populace, since many of the constables were much too free with their truncheons. In fact, most of them were brutes. Still, the bobbies were more comprehensive than Fieldings’ Bow Street Runners. David assumed that, in time, the Peelers would become the framework of a better police force. And being his father’s son, David knew he’d find many an opportunity to turn his police work to double duty.

  For he had another duty, already—that of a Grimm.

  David stepped over
a puddle of filth, and paused to put his perfumed kerchief to his mouth. He was not over-nice about smells, though he’d been raised on a country estate far from the worst of London’s odorous excess, but he’d learned to keep the scented linen with him in some parts of the great city. If one was occupied with vomiting from the reek of raw sewage, rotting offal, and the disgustingly befouled old River Thames, one could scarcely do one’s duty.

  Turning a sharp corner in the street—and what street was it?—David stumbled over a gin-soaked drunk, perhaps a woman, he wasn’t sure. Though it was but three of the clock in the afternoon, he wished he’d thought to bring a lantern. Coal fires darkened the sky, so that a man didn’t know, often enough, if the cloud would yield rain or ash. The cobbled lane was so narrow, its three-and four story structures of blackened brick leaning so ponderously over the alley, it might have been an hour past dusk here. The only light was from lamps shining weakly through grimy windows, and the occasional muted ray of sunlight struggling between the clouds.

  “Turn here, ginnelsor,” the old procurer had told him. “Walk ye back and yet back till yer heart dies in ye and ye’ll come to the Sacker’s ground. May God protect ye.” It had taken David a moment to understand that what sounded like “ginnelsor” meant “gentle sir.”

  David wondered if his half crown had indeed bought him the right directions, or was the old pimp now sitting having a hearty laugh over a pint with his cronies back in his rancid alehouse? “Ooh, I wonder wut is down that reeking skulk of an alley! Damn me if I know!” Quite possibly.

  He came, then, to a small common area between the houses, not so much a courtyard as a widening of the way. Here, there was a bit more light and air.

  Fifteen long steps across the cobbles was the streaked back wall of a house, where an old man and a young woman sat on a back stoop, in front of a cracked wooden door. The man was a toothless costermonger in a half-crushed hat, his basket on the cobbles beside him; the rather dirty young woman wore a grime-gray bodice and skirt, which might’ve once been white or yellow, and curious wooden sandals. Her black hair was piled on her head, held in place with small wooden pins; it tufted out here and there over her ears. But it was her slenderness that first struck him, and then something else—her eyes. They were the dark brown, almond-shaped eyes of an Asian, something one only rarely saw in London.