by Tim Waggoner
The knocking came again, louder this time.
“Coming!” she shouted, and hurried to the door, grinning in excitement. She wondered who she was going to be next.
But when she opened the door to find a man in a police uniform standing there, her hopes died away. A police officer meant trouble. Perhaps someone had seen her duplicate Dana Webber and had called in a report. She knew better than to take someone out in the open like that, but she’d been so desperate… Her instincts for self-preservation kicked in, and she decided to hide in this identity for the time being rather than risk taking the officer. She’d already made a couple of serious mistakes by being impulsive tonight. She didn’t want to risk making another.
“Good evening, ma’am,” the officer said. “My name’s Sergeant Wu, and I’m with the Portland Police Department. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
She forced a smile.
“Not at all.”
* * *
“That’s supposed to be a body?” Nick said.
Nick, Hank, and Sergeant Wu stood on the sidewalk, looking down at a colorless, viscous mass containing bits of solid material that Nick had to admit looked uncomfortably like pieces of bone.
Sergeant Wu was an Asian American man, lean and athletically built, dressed in a police uniform. He had a permanently wry expression on his face that made him look equal parts cynical and amused.
“According to the man who called in the report, yes.” Wu referred to his notebook. “A Mr. Ernest Delgado called 911 at 8:27 p.m. to report that he was taking out the trash when he saw a woman lying face-down on the sidewalk in this exact spot. According to Mr. Delgado, she was unconscious and wasn’t breathing. He went inside to call an ambulance, but by the time he’d hung up, she was gone.”
“Anyone else see anything?” Hank asked.
“I spoke with the neighbors. One Mrs. Dana Webber was of the opinion that Mr. Delgado is, and I quote: ‘A crazy old bastard who needs to mind his own business.’ So no.”
“But diligent law officer that you are, you decided to check the sidewalk,” Nick said.
“I am known for my thoroughness,” Wu said. “And I found this.” He nodded to the liquid mass and grimaced. “Reminds me of something a cat would yak up. A very big cat.” He flipped his notebook closed and looked at Nick. “That’s when I called you two.”
Wu didn’t know about Wesen or Nick’s identity as a Grimm, but he was highly intelligent and one hell of a cop. He might not suspect there was a possibility that something unnatural had occurred here, but he knew better than to completely dismiss Mr. Delgado’s story when there was some kind of physical evidence at the scene.
“Did you call in CSU yet?” Hank asked.
“Honestly, I was waiting for you guys to make that call,” Wu said. “Do you really think there’s a chance that glop is human remains? Acid couldn’t dissolve a body in the timeframe we’re talking about, right?”
“I don’t know,” Nick said. “Let’s let the crime lab figure it out. And have the Coroner’s office send someone out, too. Just in case.”
“You got it.” Wu took out his phone and stepped off to the side to make the calls.
When Wu was out of earshot, Hank said, “You know anything that can do this to a person?”
Hank didn’t speak the word Wesen, but Nick knew what his partner meant.
“No. This is a new one on me.”
“But you think it is something,” Hank pressed.
“Maybe.”
Wu finished his calls and rejoined them.
“CSU’s on the way, along with the Deputy Coroner.”
“Good,” Nick said. “Do you mind staying here to keep an eye on this… stuff until they get here? Hank and I need to talk to Mr. Delgado.”
“And Mrs. Webber,” Hank added.
“Sure,” Wu said, a sarcastic edge to his voice. “There’s nothing I’d love more than to babysit a giant puddle of phlegm.”
“Then this is your lucky night.” Nick clapped Wu on the shoulder, then he turned to Hank. “Which do you want?”
“I’ll take Mr. Delgado. It sounds like he’ll have the better story.”
Nick smiled. “I’ll take Mrs. Webber then.”
Wu directed Hank across the street toward Mr. Delgado’s house, and Nick headed to the Webbers’. He walked up the driveway, past the car and up the front steps to the door. He knocked, waited for a response, and when he didn’t get one, knocked again.
This time the door opened, but only a crack.
“Yes?” said a woman’s voice.
Nick could only see one eye and part of her face.
“I’m Detective Burkhardt.” He took hold of the badge her wore around his neck and held it up so she could get a better look at it. “Are you Dana Webber?”
The woman didn’t bother looking at his badge. Instead, she kept her gaze fixed on his eyes. There was an unsettling intensity in the way she looked at him, almost as if she were sizing him up somehow. Judging him.
She opened the door the rest of the way and smiled. “That’s me.”
Nick let his badge drop.
“You spoke with Sergeant Wu earlier. I’m just here to follow up. One of your neighbors reported seeing something out of the ordinary outside earlier tonight, and I was hoping you might be able to answer a few questions for me.”
He watched the woman closely to gauge her reaction to his request. A person’s response to a cop showing up at their door could tell you a lot about them. She didn’t appear nervous; if anything, she seemed happy to see him. Maybe too happy.
Her smile widened until it was almost a grin, and she opened the door the rest of the way and stepped aside.
“Come in, please.”
As he entered, a snatch of nursery rhyme drifted into his mind. Come into my parlor…
He told himself that he was being paranoid. Suspicion was an occupational hazard for a cop, and it had only gotten worse since he’d become aware of his identity as a Grimm. He had a tendency to think that, until proven otherwise, everyone he met was Wesen and potentially dangerous. He didn’t want to think like this, though. It wasn’t a healthy way to live, let alone do his job properly. “Innocent until proven guilty” wasn’t just a legal maxim when you were a cop. It was an important reminder, and he did his best to live by those words as both a cop and as a Grimm. Maybe if his ancestors had done the same, they wouldn’t have the bloodthirsty reputation that they did.
So there’d been a report of something weird happening in the neighborhood tonight, and there was a strange puddle of goo on the sidewalk. That didn’t necessarily mean Wesen were involved. Then again, it didn’t mean they weren’t, either.
Dana closed the door and locked it. Nick found that odd. In his experience, most people didn’t lock the door after letting the police inside. It might just be a habit, though, especially if she was security-conscious. But this wasn’t a dangerous neighborhood. He mentally shrugged. Who said he was the only one allowed to be a little paranoid?
The Webbers’ front door led to an open hallway, to the left of which was a small living space consisting of a couch, chair, chrome-and-glass coffee table, and a medium-sized flat-screen TV sitting on top of a wooden stand.
Dana gestured toward the couch. “Would you like to sit down?”
“Sure.”
He took a seat on the couch, and she sat in the chair next to it.
“According to Sergeant Wu’s notes, you’re married,” Nick said. “Is your husband here?”
She hesitated. Not long, only a split second, but enough for him to notice.
“He went to the store.”
“Really? Because there’s a sack of groceries out in the hall.”
Another hesitation, a bit longer this time.
“We needed more ice cream.”
There was something off about her reply. Not the words themselves, although they were strange enough, but rather the way they sounded. They sounded slurred, as if her mouth
had trouble forming them.
“All you all right?” he asked.
“Fine. Never better.” It sound like she said “Ffffine. Neffer bedder.”
Her voice was lower now, the words garbled and drawn out, as if it were a recording that was slowing down. Her facial features slacked, the skin sagging as if she were aging before his eyes. No, not aging. More like melting. He thought of the goo puddle on the sidewalk that Wu was guarding.
He stood. “Mrs. Webber, I think you should—”
“Sorry,” she said. “I tried to keep myself together. I’m so glad I restrained myself and left the other officer alone. You’re a strong one. Stronger than anyone I’ve ever met before. I could sense it when I opened the door. You’ll do just fine.”
Her head tilted to one side and then the other in a gesture Nick had become very familiar with over the last few years. Her hair withdrew into her skull and her sagging features disappeared as her flesh became a silvery liquid mass. She no longer had eyes, ears, nose, or mouth—just a rippling quicksilver surface that was unlike anything he had ever seen before. If she was Wesen, she was a type new to him. All of her skin had taken on a silvery cast, and she—if she even was a she anymore—raised her silver hands and flexed all ten of her fingers in a single spastic motion. Needle-like spines extended from her fingertips, and she leaped out of the chair and came at him.
Nick had no idea what those finger spines could do, but he didn’t want to find out. Moving with inhuman speed, he grabbed hold of the metal-and-glass coffee table and swung it toward the faceless creature. Glass shattered as the table struck the creature’s outstretched hands, and the impact knocked her to the side. She stumbled and hit the TV, knocking it off the stand. Only the metal frame of the coffee table remained in Nick’s hands, and he threw it aside and reached for his Glock.
The creature recovered quickly and lunged toward him again, hands outstretched once more. The impact of the coffee table had broken off several of her finger spines, but most remained intact. Nick had barely freed his gun from its holster when the creature hit him. It grabbed hold of his neck with both hands, and he felt piercing pain as the black spines sank into his flesh.
The creature knocked him back onto the couch, and their momentum caused the entire thing to fall over backward. As they fell, Nick grabbed hold of the creature by the upper arm, raised his knee to its stomach, and as they rolled, he thrust it away from him. The creature flew through the air, and Nick grunted as the finger-spines tore free from his neck. The pain ebbed as soon as he felt it, though, as if the creature had injected him with some sort of anesthetic.
The creature hit the far wall, bounced off, and landed face-first on the hardwood floor. Nick rolled to his feet, Glock still in hand, and as he spun around, he flicked off the safety and drew a bead on the creature.
“Don’t move or I’ll…”
A sudden wave of weariness washed over him, so intense that it was almost crippling. His weapon seemed to increase in weight until it was too heavy to hold. It slipped from his fingers and dropped to the floor. His legs could no longer support his body, and he fell onto his side, his head thudding against the wood. A not altogether unpleasant sensation of numbness spread throughout his body, and it became a struggle to keep his eyes open. He wanted to sleep so badly, just for a little bit, until he could get his strength back. He almost did, but at that moment the creature—which had lain still after hitting the floor—bucked violently, as if a high voltage current surged though its body. It flipped onto its back and with a single motion, rose to a sitting position.
Can’t sleep, Nick thought. Have to… stop it.
He got his hands beneath him and struggled to push himself up. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so weak before, but he kept at it, and he began to feel a measure of his strength return.
The creature had been wearing what Nick presumed were Dana Webber’s clothes, but now the sweater and pants took on the same silvery color as its flesh. The clothes seemed to sink into the creature’s body, to merge with it, until it became a single smooth surface. There was no hint of gender to the form, and it no longer had separate fingers or toes. Spines still jutted from its hand, but they retracted now, and the creature turned its featureless face toward Nick. Despite the fact that it had no eyes, Nick had the sense that the creature was regarding him somehow. As he watched, features began to emerge from the silvery substance, but before it could resolve into an actual face, the creature looked away from him, stood, and started toward the door.
It gripped the knob and tried to open it, but the door was locked. It tried the knob again, as if it had forgotten it had locked it earlier. As Nick rose to his feet, he saw the creature’s hands had grown fingers again, and its silver skin was changing color. Black hair emerged from its scalp, and it grew taller, its shoulder broadening. A jacket, shirt, jeans, and shoes formed—or at least the appearance of them. The creature’s back was to him, so Nick couldn’t see its face, assuming it had one yet. The creature finally remembered to unlock the door, then it opened it and stepped out into the night.
Nick was feeling stronger by the second, and he quickly retrieved his Glock from where it had fallen and hurried out the door after the creature. He still felt a trifle lightheaded and unsteady on his feet, but the cold night air drove away the last of the weariness, and his mind felt sharp and alert once more. The puncture wounds on his neck stung like crazy now, but he didn’t bother to check to see if he was bleeding, and if so, how badly. He had work to do.
As he ran onto the Webbers’ small lawn, he swung his head back and forth, searching for the creature—or rather, the person the creature had become. He didn’t see anyone except Wu, who was still standing next to the goo puddle, waiting for the Crime Scene Unit and the Deputy Coroner to arrive. Nick jogged over to him, gun in hand, and Wu immediately drew his weapon.
“Everything okay?” Wu asked.
Nick didn’t bother to explain. Besides, how could he?
“Did you see anyone run out of the Webbers’ home?” Wu shook his head. “Only person I’ve seen is you. Who was it? Mrs. Webber?”
Nick started to answer, but he realized he had no idea what to say.
“I… don’t think so.”
Wu frowned.
“What do you mean, didn’t you see who it was?”
“It was a man.” Nick was confident of that much, at least. “Dark hair, about my height.”
“That narrows it down to several thousand people in Portland,” Wu said. “Should be easy enough to find.”
Wu holstered his gun, and Nick did the same. Whatever appearance the creature had assumed, the thing was long gone by now. There was no telling which direction it had taken, and since Nick hadn’t gotten a good look at its new face, he probably wouldn’t recognize it if he saw it again. And he had no idea how often it could change appearance. Even if he managed to track it down, it might look like someone else entirely by then.
Wu frowned again and stepped closer to Nick.
“What happened to your neck?”
CHAPTER FOUR
By the time Hank had finished with Mr. Delgado and rejoined Nick and Wu, both CSU and the Deputy Coroner had arrived, and Nick took Hank aside as the men and women began their work. Wu looked a little put out not to be invited to join them, but he didn’t say anything. Nick didn’t like excluding Wu. He was a good cop, and he deserved to know the truth about the bizarre cases he sometimes found himself on the periphery of. But Nick had placed both Hank and Juliette in danger by introducing them to the world of Wesen and Grimms, and while he knew they wouldn’t have had it any other way, he wanted to keep Wu out of it if he could. For the man’s own safety, if nothing else. Besides, it was nice to have one friend he didn’t have to worry about all the time.
“What’s up?” Hank asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but whatever it is, it’s not good,” Nick said. “Something was in the Webbers’ house. It looked like Dana Webber, but it wasn’t her. It
started to… to lose its shape, almost like it couldn’t hold onto it anymore. It attacked me. That’s how I got these.” He pointed to his neck.
Hank made a face. “Looks like a bunch of bug bites. You okay?”
“Yeah. I was weak at first, almost like I’d been drugged or something. But I feel all right now. A little fuzzyheaded, maybe, like when you’re coming down with a cold, but that’s all.”
Hank frowned. “You say the thing stuck you?”
“Yeah. It grew needles on its fingers, kind of like hypodermics.”
“Ouch. I hate needles.” Hank shuddered before continuing. “So what does it look like now?”
“I don’t know, as it left it started to take on a new shape. A man’s. I didn’t get a good look at it, though.”
“You think this thing is responsible for the pile of goo over there?”
“Could be. I know one thing, though. When I asked the creature where Dana’s husband was, it told me that he’d gone to the store, even though she’d just gotten home with groceries.”
“There’s a car in the driveway. You think the Webbers have another?”
“I don’t know, I’ll ask Wu to run a search.”
“I think we’d better go back into their house and find out what happened to Mr. Webber,” Hank said. “How much do you want to bet that whatever it was, it wasn’t pretty?”
“No bet.”
Together the partners headed for the Webbers’ house, guns drawn.
* * *
The Wechselbalg ran through the night, cutting across backyards, hurdling short fences and climbing the higher ones with almost ridiculous ease. The creature had worn many faces during the course of its long life, and it had possessed many bodies. But it had never experienced such strength and energy before. It was almost intoxicating, and it—no, he—couldn’t help laughing with exuberance as he ran.
