by Tim Waggoner
She gave them a last wave and continued toward the bar.
“Yeah,” Nick said. “I get that a lot.”
* * *
Hank pulled the Dodge Charger out of Blind Bill’s parking lot, Nick riding shotgun. Even though it was cool out, Hank lowered the driver’s side window a couple of inches.
“Do I offend?” Nick asked jokingly.
“Are you kidding? You barely broke a sweat with those two. I just like the smell of fall, you know? How’s your shoulder?”
“Fine. The scratches weren’t deep. I’ll need to get the rip sewn, though.”
Luckily for Beverly, Nick and Hank had been working the late shift. There had been a robbery at a liquor store the night before, and the clerk behind the counter had tried to stop it and got himself killed for his attempt at heroism. Nick and Hank had been canvassing the neighborhood, showing around a photo of the robber that had been captured by the store’s security camera. They’d been at it an hour or so without any luck when Beverly called, and they’d rushed to Blind Bill’s.
The liquor-store robbery had taken place on the other side of town, and Hank headed back in that direction. They had a couple more hours of showing photos and asking questions ahead of them until their shift was over.
“Ready to go back to pounding the pavement?” Hank said.
“That’s where real police work gets done, right?” Nick said.
“That’s what they told us at the academy, anyway.” Hank paused before going on. “Tell me something, do you ever get bored with regular police work?”
Nick glanced over at his partner. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Well, one minute you’re walking the street, asking people ‘Have you seen this man?’ and the next you’re fighting a pair of drunk bear-creatures mano-a-mano-a-mano. Waving blurry photos around in front of people seems pretty dull compared to that.”
“I don’t know. I guess I haven’t really thought about it. In a way, it’s all the same thing to me, you know?”
“To serve and protect,” Hank said.
Nick smiled. “Something like that. When it first started happening—all the Grimm stuff, I mean—I would’ve loved for all of it to have gone away so I could have my normal life back. Most of all, I hated lying to you and Juliette about it.”
Nick still felt guilty whenever he thought about how long he’d concealed the truth from both his partner and fiancée: that the world was filled with creatures called Wesen who appeared human but could change into bestial forms when they wished. These creatures were responsible for many of humanity’s myths and legends, and a special breed of humans called Grimms hunted them—Nick was descended from this ancient line of monster killers. He’d told himself that he was hiding his identity as a Grimm to protect them, and while that was true, a small part of the reason was so he could hold onto a remnant of his normal life. Hank and Juliette had been like refuges from the craziness, even though they’d both got caught up in it eventually, despite his best efforts. But they knew the whole truth now, and they’d understood why he’d lied to them and, more importantly, they’d forgiven him. He was glad. He didn’t think he could do this without their love and support.
His ancestors—the Grimms of old—had been known and feared as merciless slayers of Wesen. They were supposed to hunt only “bad” Wesen, but from the accounts Nick had read in his Aunt Marie’s books, some of his ancestors had a pretty loose interpretation of the word “bad.” He sometimes wondered if those Grimms had been that way because they lacked the kind of support he was lucky enough to have. Not just from Juliette and Hank, but from Monroe and Rosalee, too, and he supposed even from Captain Renard—although he wasn’t completely sure about him—and even Wesen like Bud Wurstner. Without all of them in his life, would he become a hard-hearted killing machine like the Grimms of legend? He thought of the man he’d killed while in the grip of the Cracher-Mortel venom. Maybe, he thought. He just hoped he’d never have to find out.
With effort, he turned his mind away from this dark train of thought.
“How about you?” he asked Hank. “I was born to this kind of thing. In a way, I’m like the Wesen, just following my true nature. I’m not sure I could stop if I wanted to. Do you ever wish I hadn’t dragged you into my weird world?’
“You may be my partner, but you didn’t drag me into anything. I may be a garden-variety Homo sapiens, but once I learned what the world was really like… well, I just couldn’t turn a blind eye to it, you know?’
Nick knew very well indeed.
Hank continued. “Sometimes I wonder just how many Wesen there are. There’s something like seven billion people in the world, right? How many of those do you think are Wesen? A fifth? A quarter? More? There’s no way to know. They can see each other for what they are, and you can see them, but ordinary humans like me can’t. When I first leaned about Wesen, I was pretty paranoid. I kept looking at people and wondering, ‘Is he one? Is she?’ It started driving me crazy after a while.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything to me about it?”
Hank shrugged. “You adjusted. I figured I would, too. And I did. You know what helped? I realized the reason Wesen hide from humans isn’t so that they can prey on us more effectively—although admittedly that’s what some do. It’s because they know how humans would react and what they would do if they ever learned the truth.”
Nick thought about his ancestors’ attitude toward Wesen. They’d lived in very different times, when prejudice, racism and classism were far more prevalent than they were today. But however enlightened the modern world might be, Nick knew the majority of the human race wasn’t ready to accept the existence of Wesen. Maybe one day it would be different, but for now, it was a good thing they could hide so effectively.
They drove in silence after that for a time, Nick gazing out the passenger window and watching the city go by. Eventually Hank broke the silence.
“Something’s bugging you. I can tell.”
Nick smiled. Sometimes he wondered how he’d ever managed to keep his being a Grimm secret from Hank.
“It’s just a little strange to get a call like that, you know? From Beverly, I mean.”
“You talking about getting asked to break up a bar fight? I admit, it’s not the usual sort of thing highly skilled and devastatingly handsome homicide detectives like us do.”
“That’s not it. I’m a Grimm. The Wesen think of my kind as cold-hearted killers, almost monsters. You’ve seen how they react when they realize what I am.”
“Yeah. Some of them are pretty damned scared.”
Nick nodded. “I was never comfortable with that, but it proved useful sometimes. But I’ve been, for lack of a better word, ‘out’ as a Grimm for a while now, and some of the Wesen in town—like Beverly—are starting to treat me differently. Like a… I don’t know exactly.”
“A protector,” Hank said. “Someone they can turn to when they’re in trouble.”
“Yeah. I mean, that’s a good thing, right? But for some reason, it makes me a little uncomfortable.”
“That’s because you’re too modest. You need to accept the whole hero thing, maybe get yourself a tricked-out Grimm-mobile.”
“It’s not modesty. I don’t know what it is.”
“Maybe it’s a Grimm thing. You know, like with cats and dogs.”
Nick frowned. “I’m afraid you lost me there.”
“Dogs and cats don’t get along in general, right? It’s an instinct thing. In the wild they’re competing predators. Maybe you’re not comfortable with Wesen reacting positively to you because deep down, the Grimm part of you expects them to be afraid. Who knows? Maybe it even wants them to be.”
“Great. So you’re saying I am a monster.”
“I’m saying that whatever else is going on, you’re a man named Nick Burkhardt, and you get to make your own choices about who you want to be.” He smiled. “Besides, my family had both cats and dogs when I was growing up, and they got al
ong well enough. It just takes some adjustment.”
“I suppose. But what if—”
Nick’s phone rang then, and he removed it from his pocket and answered it.
“Burkhardt.”
“Wu here. I know you guys are working that liquor-store homicide, but I’ve got something strange over by the community college. And since you and Hank kind of specialize in strange, I figured you’d want to come check it out.”
Nick glanced at Hank.
“Give me the details.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Maybe you should slow down, honey. You don’t want to make yourself sick.”
Rich Webber stood in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, a bottle of beer in his hand. He hadn’t opened it yet, and in truth, he’d forgotten he was holding it. He was too concerned about his wife.
Dana sat at the small table—there was only the two of them, and they didn’t need anything larger—hunched over an open carton of ice cream. Butter pecan, to be exact. She was shoveling huge spoonfuls into her mouth and swallowing them down without bothering to chew. Rich was afraid she might choke, but if she was aware of the danger, she didn’t seem to care. The lower half of her face was smeared with ice cream and blobs of it were melting on the table around her. When she’d arrived home, Rich had been in the front room watching pro wrestling on TV. He knew it was fake, but he loved it anyway. The colorfully named characters, the heroes and villains… It was like watching a comic book come to life. Dana hated wrestling, though. No, hate wasn’t a strong enough word for it. She loathed it, so he only watched it when she wasn’t home. When she arrived tonight, carrying a bag of groceries, he’d been so caught up in the match—a showdown between two archrivals—that at first he didn’t hear her come in. When he finally noticed her standing there, front door still open and staring at the TV screen, he’d expected her to make some sort of disparaging remark, something along the lines of, “Aren’t you too old to be watching this junk?” or, “Glad to see you’re making yourself useful while I’m out.” But she hadn’t said anything. She’d just closed the door—without locking it, which was weird because she was almost OCD when it came to locking doors—and then headed to the kitchen without saying a word.
He’d tried returning his attention to the match, but he couldn’t get back into it, not after Dana’s strange entrance. So he turned off the TV, got off the living room couch, and went into the kitchen. He’d found the groceries sitting out in the hallway, as if she’d been too impatient, or maybe just absent-minded, to put them on the kitchen counter. She was sitting at the table, just starting to dig into the ice cream. That had been only a few minutes ago, and in that time he’d taken a beer out of the fridge and held it while Dana devoured butter pecan. As near as he could tell, she’d managed to polish off three-quarters of the container so far, and she showed no signs of stopping before she’d eaten the entire thing.
Something was wrong, that much was obvious, but he was hesitant to ask her what it might be. She wasn’t the type of person who ate when she was upset or depressed. She was more the hold-me-while-I-cry type. So whatever had happened to make her want to go on an ice-cream binge, he figured it had to be pretty bad.
He raised the beer bottle to his mouth, intending to take a sip and stall for another moment, but he’d forgotten he hadn’t opened it, and he hit one of his eyeteeth on the cap.
“Ow! Damn it!”
Dana was usually so attentive to her husband that she hurried toward him whenever he hurt himself, even if only in the smallest of ways. But she didn’t even look up, just continued gorging herself, oblivious.
Rich put the bottle on the counter, stepped over to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat.
“Did something happen in class tonight?” he asked. “Or on the way home? Maybe when you stopped for groceries?’
She kept eating, one heaped spoonful after another. He could hear the spoon scrape the bottom of the container now, and he knew she’d almost polished it off. He wanted to reach out and take her hand, but he couldn’t bring himself to. For the first time since they’d been married, hell, in the entire time that he’d known her, he was scared of her.
“Dana, please talk to me.”
She lifted the last spoonful of ice cream, swallowed it, and then licked the spoon clean. She examined the inside of the empty container, and her lower lip protruded in a pouty expression that made her look like a disappointed child. Then finally, Dana looked up at Rich.
“I like ice cream,” she said.
“Yeah, I can see that.”
And now that her face wasn’t lowered over an ice-cream container, Rich could see something else as well. She looked sick. Her skin was pale, the flesh around her eyes so dark it almost looked bruised. The eyes seemed to have receded into their sockets, too, and her cheeks were sunken in. Her hair looked dry and stiff, like straw. As he watched, several strands detached from her head and fell to the tabletop, where they became mired in melting smears of butter pecan.
“I like ice cream,” she repeated. She smiled this time, revealing yellowed teeth and sore, bleeding gums.
Equal parts fear and revulsion swept through him. “Oh my God, Dana, what happened to you?”
He rose and hurried to her side. He took her hand now, and found it sticky with ice cream, but beneath that, it felt frail and fragile as a baby bird. He was afraid the bones would break if he grasped it too tightly.
Rich was on the verge of panic now. “We need to get you to a hospital, honey. Can you stand? Here, let me help—”
That was as far as he got before Dana’s elbow slammed into his chin. Despite her sickly appearance, there was no weakness in the strike, and Rich’s teeth clacked together hard, shearing off the tip of his tongue. His head snapped back, and he staggered to the side. His shoulder hit the refrigerator door, and he slumped into a sitting position. His vision was blurry, pain throbbed in his skull, and his tongue felt as if it were on fire. His mouth was filled with something warm and wet, and he spit it out. At first he didn’t recognize the crimson fluid that splattered onto the kitchen floor, but then his vision cleared and he realized he was looking at blood. His blood. And lying in the middle of it was a tiny hunk of meat that used to be attached to his tongue.
He was still staring at the blood when he heard Dana’s chair slide on the floor. He glanced toward her and saw her rise and walk past him to the kitchen counter.
“I can’t go to the hospital, Rich,” she said. Her voice sounded thick and wet, almost as if she were trying to speak while gargling.
She reached across the counter and removed a large knife from the butcher block. She gripped it tightly as she turned around to face him.
“I’m going to stay right here,” she said. “After all, this is my home.” She paused and then added, “Now.”
Rich pressed his palm to the refrigerator’s surface and used its mass to support him as he stood. He knew he should be afraid. Something had happened to Dana to turn her crazy and violent. She’d already hurt him, and now she was gripping a knife and staring at him with cold, dead calm. And he was scared, sure, but mostly he was worried. The woman he loved needed help, and he had to convince her to let him get her that help before she did something—
The expression on Dana’s face didn’t change as she raised the knife and swung it in a vicious backhanded strike. Rich’s throat opened as easily as if it were made of paper, and blood gushed onto his chest like a waterfall. He took two steps backward, his mouth opening and closing as if he were trying to speak, but no sound emerged. His legs collapsed beneath him, and he fell to the floor. He didn’t feel it when he hit. He lay there, head turned to the side, blood pouring from his wound, pooling on the floor in front of his face. He felt himself slipping away into nothingness, and the last thing he heard was the sound of the freezer opening. He realized that Dana was searching for more ice cream.
And then he was gone.
* * *
The creature that now thoug
ht of itself as Dana Webber closed the freezer door in disgust. Nothing but bags of vegetables and boxes of microwaveable meals. What a disappointment.
She noticed the body lying on the floor and realized she was holding a knife. The blade was slick with blood, and there was more blood—a lot of it—on the floor around the man’s head.
“Rich,” she said. “He’s my husband.”
She remembered what she had done. Had it really been only a few minutes earlier? She knew it was happening again, and much faster this time. She was already losing her grasp on this new identity. Her thoughts were as hard to hold onto as mist, and her body was burning itself out at a rapid rate. She felt lightheaded, feverish, weak. She looked at Rich’s corpse and regretted her impulsiveness in killing him. She could only assume the identity of the living; she should’ve left him alive and saved him for when she needed him. But he’d threatened to take her somewhere. She couldn’t remember exactly where, but it was somewhere she hadn’t wanted to go, she knew that much. So she’d had no choice but to kill him—hadn’t she?
If only she could think straight…
One thing was certain. She needed a new identity, and she needed it fast. If she didn’t manage to change before this body burnt itself out completely, then that would be the end of the road for her. She’d lived a very long time, so long she couldn’t number the years. But she wasn’t ready to die yet. She’d do anything, become anything, in order to survive. It was the way of her kind.
Whatever she was going to do, she had to do it quickly, before—
Her thoughts, scattered and desperate, were interrupted by a knocking at the front door. She grinned. It seemed as if her dilemma was about to be resolved.
“Just a minute!” she called out.
She looked down at her clothing, and was relieved to see she’d managed to escape getting bloodstains on it. She caught her reflection in the toaster and grabbed a handful of paper towels from the counter, quickly cleaning the ice cream off her face. She tossed the used towels in the sink and then concentrated. Her physical appearance shifted as she once more assumed a guise of health and strength. She had to draw on this body’s dwindling energy reserves to effect the transformation, but she could hardly answer the door looking half-dead. The last thing she wanted to do was make her visitor suspicious.
