Grimm - The Icy Touch

by Shirley, John

  “Hold your fire!” Denswoz told The Icy Touch.

  Then Nick put his hands up and walked into the Wesen’s den.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “I, uh, guess you saw some weird stuff, Lily?” Monroe asked, as the car bumped over the country road.

  She nodded dazedly. “Yeah. I did see some weird stuff. Some hella weird stuff.”

  “Right, but—they drugged you, so you only thought you saw...”

  “No.” She looked at him and shook her head firmly. “I wasn’t on that stuff all the time. I saw Nick kill a cobra dude. And Nick told me about it—a little.”

  “Oh. He did. Well. We got to have a talk about that, and, uh, keeping things kind of under wraps—”

  “This is just wrong,” Hank interrupted as the Eisbiber turned onto the access road for the highway. “It’s crazy to leave Nick there.” He felt sick to his stomach thinking about what Nick was trying to pull off.

  “Hank,” Monroe told him. “Seriously, man, I know what Nick’s planning sounds crazy, but I’ve been thinking about it and he’s right—this has to be taken care of under the radar, kinda sub rosa. If the feds raid the place, or even the Sheriff—we can’t know what The Icy Touch will do!”

  “If we can’t get backup then—we should go back,” Hank said.

  “Are you nuts?” the Eisbiber asked, laughing and moaning at once. “If we go back you’ll put this girl at risk! Not to mention me! I’ll let you out of the car, if you want, but...”

  “I can’t leave him back there,” Hank said grimly, suddenly convinced of what he had to do. “Stop the goddamn car!”

  The Eisbiber pulled up.

  Lily looked at Hank, awestruck.

  “You really going back there?” she asked.

  “He’s my partner.”

  “You mean you’re, like, a couple?”

  He looked at her. She wasn’t joking. Monroe, though, laughed softly

  Hank showed her his badge.

  “We’re police detectives. He’s my partner. Monroe, get her to Wu, he’ll make sure she’s protected. And he’ll get her mom there, too.”

  Hank jumped out of the car, grimacing at the pain in his cracked ribs, and started back toward the Icy Touch mansion. As he went, he drew his Glock, checked to see if it was fully loaded. He didn’t bother to holster it again.

  Behind him, the SUV drove away. And then Hank was alone on the dark road.

  * * *

  Nick let a woged Lowen, one of the lion-like Wesen, force his hands behind him. He felt ropes tighten around his wrists—and he felt the Lowen’s hot breath, smelling of raw meat, on his neck.

  “I should be the one who fights you,” the Lowen growled. “But I would make such short work of you...”

  “I’ll see if I can fit you in later,” Nick said. But he didn’t feel as jaunty as he sounded.

  The Wesen pushed him through a crowd of onlookers; he saw a Coyotl, a Steinadler, three Blutbaden, a Mauvais Dentes, a Wendigo, a Hasslich and a Siegbarste. The Mauvais Dentes, like a man combined with a saber-tooth tiger, was as dangerous as Wesen came; the Hasslich, a troll, and the Siegbarste, an ogre, were powerful and murderous. And over there, a vulturous Geier standing beside three Hundjager. Most were woged; a few weren’t but Nick could see their Wesen aspects anyway

  They all looked like they’d simply love to kill Nick Burkhardt.

  There were likely other Icy Touch Wesen here. And all The Icy Touch in this place knew by now that he was a Grimm. And that Grimm, historically and typically, lived to kill Wesen.

  It was not a good place for a Grimm to be alone.

  One of the Hundjagers stepped up to Nick, and transformed to his human appearance.

  It was Denswoz.

  His tone was urbane, but anger simmered in his eyes as he spoke.

  “Almost impressive, what you’ve done here tonight, Nicholas Burkhardt. But... really, it was just freakish chance. Someone allowed a young fool to take a guard post and... you suckered him. Not sure exactly how you managed it, but I can guess. I do congratulate you on getting the girl out of here intact—and eliminating a number of my men. I find I admire it.”

  “Admiration?” Nick said. “From you?” He laughed softly. “How flattering.”

  “Prattle away,” said Denswoz, eyes glittering. “You’ll soon discover there really is an afterlife. I plan to send you straight to Hell, first thing in the morning.”

  The other Wesen laughed at that.

  “Easy enough for you to do,” Nick said, looking him in the eyes. “Seeing as you’ve got my hands bound behind my back.”

  “I’ll keep my word, Grimm, and you’ll have your chance. Because I swore on the blood of my ancestors—I swore on all blood spilled by your kind! And not spilled just in fair fights—how many times have Grimms killed Wesen who had no recourse, no defense; creeping up on them and cutting off their heads as they slept? And how many times have Grimms killed Wesen children? Children, not even woged, shot and stabbed and burned by Grimms!”

  “No Wesen child has ever been harmed by me,” Nick said. “I count many good Wesen as friends, and I have been protecting them from your kind. And how many Wesen have you murdered? Doug Zelinski, the Blutbad who—”

  “Shut up, butcher!” And with the word butcher, Denswoz slapped him hard across the face.

  Nick was stunned for a moment, then he smiled.

  “Again—that was easy enough for you to do. While my hands are tied.”

  “Take him to the ground-floor holding cell,” Denswoz said to the Lowen. “As per the rite, he will die at dawn. Do not cut the ropes till I tell you! He’s a Grimm! Do not turn your back on him! Don’t trust him for an instant!”

  “That’s almost funny,” Nick said, as they pushed him through the gate toward the house. “I’m surrounded by the kind of Wesen who kidnap innocent girls and drug them, who murder decent Wesen—but I’m the one who can’t be trusted?”

  With that, the Lowen roared, picked Nick up, and threw him bodily through the open front door.

  * * *

  Sitting behind the driver, Lily spoke to her mother on Monroe’s cell phone, her eyes bright with tears.

  The Eisbiber, Howie, was just now driving his SUV past the sign for East Portland city limits. But Monroe was feeling pensive. He was worried about Nick and Hank. What if Renard didn’t come through? Nick was a tough Grimm—he knew what he was doing. Didn’t he? Maybe he should’ve stayed with Hank. But that’d mean leaving Lily. He owed her father...

  Smiling, Lily ended the cell call.

  “She’s going to meet us at police headquarters,” she said. “By the time we get there she should be already be there!” Her lower lip buckled. She wiped her eyes. “I thought I was going to get raped and... probably end up killing myself. But it’s really over now.”

  “You’re going to be okay, Lily,” Monroe said. “Um... we should talk about what to say to Wu. He doesn’t really know about my part in all this. Or about Wesen. It’s kind of complicated...”

  “But what about Nick? It’s really just him and his partner against all those... those things?”

  Monroe winced at her use of “things,” but decided to wait on that.

  “Better them than me,” the Eisbiber muttered. “Me, I’m a big coward—I can’t believe I came along this far.”

  Monroe said, “You came along this far, Howie, because you’re not a coward. But not many people can be like Nick. The guy’s got a great big pair of...” He glanced at Lily. “Uh, he’s really brave. Take the next exit, we’ll head straight to police headquarters, hand Lily over to her mom there. Then you drive us about half an hour east, back toward your place, and you can drop me off. In fact, Howie, you can stop in, have a beer and some vegetarian chow at my cabin. Got some primo microbrew chilling there. Well, it’s not exactly my cabin, really, but... Anyway you can meet Rosalee. She may adopt you. Here’s the exit.”

  They took the exit onto a circular off-ramp, when Howie suddenly asked, “Wait,
why’s that guy right up on my tail?”

  Monroe glanced in the side mirror on the passenger side—and saw a big semi-truck without a trailer, looming up.

  “He’s really taking tailgating to new levels! It’s like—”

  Then the semi-truck rammed the back of the SUV, jolting it hard.

  Monroe grabbed at the dashboard, Lily screamed, and the Chevy fishtailed—then went out of control, bouncing off the ramp and into the soft wet grass by the road.

  The SUV came to a stop—and stalled.

  “Oh crap,” Howie said.

  “That truck do that on purpose?” Monroe asked.

  His question was answered when he turned his head, his neck aching after the jolting, and saw the semi-truck angling toward them. It was clearly planning to run them down.

  “Get this damn thing started,” Monroe said urgently, unbuckling his seatbelt. “I’m gonna see what I can do.”

  He opened the car door, ran back toward the still-turning semi-truck, and woged as he went. He knew, somehow, there was another Wesen behind the wheel of that truck. The Icy Touch must have sent vehicles out to look for them, and somebody had seen the girl in the SUV

  Feeling his only partially healed wounds, Monroe raced directly toward the semi-truck as if he were planning to run it over and not the other way around. It was bumping along slowly in the wet, lumpy ground, just starting to pick up speed—and he took his chance to leap up onto its front end.

  It was a Mac truck, complete with the little bulldog on the hood. He climbed up on the front of the truck, thinking the driver was going to shoot at him if he couldn’t run him over—the windshield glass did shatter but not with bullets.

  A fist came smashing through it. The fist drew back and was quickly replaced by a jet of red flame.

  Monroe swung to the side, dodging the flame, somehow holding on to the frame of the windshield.

  He heard the SUV’s engine start, behind him.

  Good for you, Howie, you kept your head.

  The semi-truck was stuck in the mucky ground, its wheels spinning. The engine shut off as Monroe jumped to the ground—and the driver’s side door opened.

  Monroe looked up to see a fully-woged Daemonfeuer jumping down. The Wesen’s head was scaly green, swept back from its forehead into hornlike extensions of the armored skin, something like a horned toad’s. Monroe figured that maybe this was the one that killed that Drang-zorn in the vacant lot.

  The dragon-man narrowed his green, reptilian eyes and opened his scaly lips, exposing a red maw that suddenly exuded small licking flames and smoke—Monroe threw himself aside just in time to avoid the blast of flame.

  He rolled, his Blutbad reflexes snapping into play, leaping up as the Daemonfeuer took a deep breath, the creature preparing for another burning exhalation.

  Monroe ducked below the scorching plume, the flame searing just over his back, and he tackled the Daemonfeuer, slamming him hard against the edge of the open car door. The Daemonfeuer grunted, stunned, falling onto his side, and Monroe let his instincts have their way.

  He ripped into the creature’s throat... just as he’d killed the ranger, Lily’s father, long ago.

  The scales were hard to penetrate—but he bit deep and hard, and felt blood spurt into his mouth. The dragon man thrashed, and hissed—but soon it was done. The Daemonfeuer shuddered, and expired.

  In death, it morphed back to human appearance. An ordinary man, pale and bloody in death.

  Monroe spat blood, wiped his mouth, then shifted back to his own human form. But when he turned to the SUV, now driving onto the ramp, its wheels spinning with the slippery purchase—Monroe knew. Lily had seen him woge; she’d seen him turn Blutbad...

  And she’d seen him kill as a Blutbad.

  The SUV stopped on the roadside as another car drove by; the family inside stared at the stuck semi and the man with blood on his face as they went past.

  Inside the Chevy, Monroe could see Lily turning to argue with Howie, waving her arms.

  It began to rain, again, as he jogged over the wet ground as best he could. He reached the SUV and opened the back door.

  Lily turned and, seeing him—she screamed and shrank away from him.

  “Lily, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.

  “I saw what you did—what you are!” she whimpered.

  “That was a bad guy...”

  One I killed the same way I killed your father, he thought, feeling ill. But that was different...

  “You have blood on your mouth!” she cried in horror.

  “Sorry.” He wiped his mouth again, using rainwater. “Some of us... we’re called Wesen. We’re mostly good people. There are bad ones—just as there are bad, uh, ordinary humans. Right? I mean, Nick wouldn’t trust you with me and Howie if we weren’t good people... Right? You trust Nick, don’t you?”

  “Howie?” She turned to look at the Eisbiber.

  The Eisbiber sighed and said, “My people, we’ve got kind of a beaver thing going. We’re not dangerous except to trees.”

  He woged—and she gasped.

  Howie morphed back into his human aspect again.

  “Monroe’s right—most of us aren’t bad sorts. These scumbags that took you... they’re different. They’re bad. Well, some are just... misled. You know?”

  “That one I killed, that kind are always pretty rough characters,” Monroe put in. “Source of the dragon legends, those guys. Daemonfeuer, we call them. Me, I’m kind of a wolfish sorta guy. There are trolls, ogres—like, from the fairy tales, you know? But we’re another variety of people, really, is all we are. Most of us. Only, if you talk about this stuff, people will either think you’re crazy and try to give you medication—or they’ll believe you and come after us.”

  A Portland police cruiser was driving up, lights flashing. The people in the car that had driven past on the off ramp must have called them. They’d seen some kind of fight, the stranded semi-truck...

  “The police are here,” Monroe said. “You can tell them about me if you want, Lily. It’s up to you. But... I hope you won’t.”

  “What was the guy you killed going to do?”

  “He was trying to kill us. Maybe take you back to that place Nick just risked his life to get you out of.”

  She wiped her eyes, and sniffled. Then she said, “Nick saved my life. You saved my life again. I won’t say anything you don’t want me to say.”

  “What about that guy’s throat?” Howie whispered, as the cop got out of the cruiser to walk over to them. “How we explain that?”

  “His head went through the windshield,” Monroe muttered. “It’s broken out. He cut his throat on it. Then I pulled him loose. Tried to give him CPR... Too late. Rain’s washed the blood from the windshield.”

  “Works for me.”

  The cop walked up to them.

  “Somebody want to tell me what happened out here?” he asked.

  No, Monroe thought. We don’t.

  But he said, “Glad to, Officer! Well, it was like this... This trucker lost control of his semi, right behind us... and uh...”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Dawn. They’d be coming for him at dawn.

  Nick sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, and looked around him. He had been thrown into an empty back room on the first floor, with bars across the windows. There was a Persian carpet on the floor, and nothing else. The only light came in through the windows from the security lamps behind the mansion.

  He rubbed his wrists where the ropes had nearly cut into them, looked over the cuts on his arms, touched the bullet-scratch on his shoulder. He was bashed up, but his injuries weren’t critical. He wondered if he had made the right decision in coming back to challenge Denswoz. It had felt right... and he’d learned to go with his gut, when it came to being a Grimm.

  But this wasn’t looking good.

  Still, he had to get the coins away from the Icy Touch chieftain. He could feel their corrupting glow around Densw
oz.

  And he had to be here, to make sure it got done.

  He’d managed to doze for a few hours after they’d taken off the ropes, his dreams fitful and dark. He’d awakened in this dark room, alone, thinking of Juliette. Was she really safe? Was she scared?

  Soon it would be time to get up and stretch, and prepare for what was coming...

  A few more minutes passed. Then he heard footsteps outside the door. Boots, several pairs. Low growling laughter.

  He heard the turn of a key in the lock, and the door opening... Light from the hallway silhouetted several men.

  They were early.

  But then the familiar shape of Hank Griffin stumbled into the room, hands tied behind him, face tense with pain.

  He fell to his knees, and then Denswoz, non-woged, came in behind him with two Wesen, a Blutbad and a Hundjager, both of them carrying AR15s.

  Denswoz’s eyes seemed to glow, just faintly. He had one hand in his coat pocket, moving restlessly in there. Nick assumed he was toying with the Coins of Zakynthos.

  “Okay if I stand up?” Nick asked. “So I can help my friend here?”

  “Go ahead,” Denswoz said. “There’s no help for either of you. Even if the police come looking for you. I have plans for your friend, here, as well as for you. We can kill you both and dispose of the bodies. We have a well-concealed place for that they’ll never look in.

  “Our bellies.”

  Nick ignored the revolting threat.

  “Can I untie him?” he asked.

  “Just as you like. I don’t think he’s going to be much good to you.”

  Nick could see that Hank looked dazed, was staring into the middle distance. There was blood on his shirt.

  Seeing that, he had a strong impulse to lunge at Denswoz, and simply break his neck. But there were two AR15s pointed at him and Hank.

  Nick took a deep breath and concentrated on untying his partner.

  Hank moaned when the ropes came off, and tipped over—Nick caught him, easing him to the carpet.

  “You cut into our very expensive supply of Seele Dichtungsmittel, with your intrepid action in the tunnels,” Denswoz said, his voice heavy with mockery. “We’re rather short on Seele, this month. We should’ve dosed the girl, when she got here, and we held off. But we haven’t neglected Detective Griffin here. And we’re fairly certain he didn’t lie to us... was unable to lie to us. He told us that there is no police action on this facility that he knows of, no raid, nothing of the sort.”