Grimm: The Killing Time

by Tim Waggoner

  “I’m Nick,” he said. His words were spoken softly, and were all the more threatening for it.

  “Yes. I’m sorry. It’s just that this is all so new to me.”

  The Wechselbalg continued scowling, and she knew her words hadn’t placated him.

  “You don’t think I’m Nick. You’re just pretending you do because you’re scared of me.”

  Juliette struggled to think of something, anything she could say that might allay the Wechselbalg’s suspicions, at least for a little longer, but nothing came to her.

  She heard the front door open then, and the relief that washed over her was overwhelming.

  “Juliette?” Nick—the real Nick—called out. “Are you okay?”

  She wanted to jump up off the couch and run to him, but she feared what the Wechselbalg might do if she made any sudden moves. So she stayed where she was and called back, “We’re in here.”

  The Wechselbalg didn’t react upon hearing Nick’s voice, other than to cock his head slightly to the side, like a puzzled dog.

  Nick came into the living room, followed closely by Hank. Both men had their guns drawn and pointed toward the floor. When they saw the Wechselbalg—and especially saw how close he was sitting to her—they stopped. Nick locked gazes with the Wechselbalg, and Juliette saw his eyes widen in surprise upon seeing an exact likeness of himself in his own home.

  The Wechselbalg rose to his feet, and Juliette saw that he had a gun tucked into his pants against the small of his back.

  “This isn’t possible,” the shapeshifter said. “You’re dead, and I’m Nick Burkhardt.”

  “Wrong on both counts,” Nick said.

  The Wechselbalg looked at Nick for a long moment, his thoughts unreadable. Then in a single swift motion he drew his gun. Juliette started to cry out, intending to warn Nick. But instead of firing on Nick or Hank, the creature pressed the gun’s muzzle against the side of her head.

  Juliette stiffened and the Wechselbalg’s mouth curved into a cruel smile.

  “Your move,” he said to Nick.

  * * *

  Nick had known what the Wechselbalg would look like, but knowing and seeing were two different things. He’d experienced so many strange things as a Grimm, but seeing himself sitting on the couch next to Juliette was perhaps the most bizarre. He experienced an unexpected moment of disorientation, as if he were looking into a funhouse mirror.

  The Wechselbalg stood and told Nick it wasn’t possible for him to be here. Nick disagreed, but before he or Hank could make a move, the Wechselbalg drew a Glock and pressed it against Juliette’s temple.

  Nick had heard other cops talk about how time seemed to stand still during a tense or traumatic situation, but it was an experience he’d never had. He always seemed to be able to do what needed to be done without hesitating, and if he had any emotional reaction, it would be later, after the situation was resolved. But now that he was seeing a version of himself holding a gun to the head of the woman he loved, time seemed to slow to a crawl. Even worse, he had no idea what to do. If he made a wrong move—maybe any move—the shapeshifter might pull the trigger, and Juliette would die. But he felt another, competing impulse. The Wechselbalg was a threat, not just to Juliette but to anyone unfortunate enough to catch his attention. The shapeshifter might be confused, maybe even mentally ill, but he was a killer and he had to be stopped. The part of Nick that was a Grimm—a part so deep, so essential to who and what he was—urged him to take action and slay the beast. Now. His hands tightened on his Glock, and he experienced an almost overwhelming urge to raise his gun and aim it at the Wechselbalg.

  As if sensing the struggle taking place inside his partner, Hank said, “Easy, Nick.”

  Nick nodded almost imperceptibly, and he kept his gun pointed toward the floor.

  “He won’t hurt me,” Juliette said.

  The Wechselbalg glared at her. “Be quiet,” he said.

  Juliette ignored him and kept her gaze fastened on Nick. “He has too much of you inside him,” she said. “He may be an imperfect copy, but he can’t hurt me because you never would.”

  “I don’t know,” Hank said. “He’s hurt plenty of people already tonight.”

  “Trust me, Nick,” Juliette said, still holding his gaze.

  “Shut up, shut up, shut UP!” the Wechselbalg said, his voice rising with each word.

  Juliette was clearly upsetting the shapeshifter, but he wasn’t showing any indication of violence toward her. In and of itself, that wasn’t surprising. A violent criminal in the Wechselbalg’s position who was seeking to establish control over a situation would be reluctant to kill a hostage, especially with two armed cops standing only a few feet away. Cops who’d start firing at him before his victim could hit the floor. But there was more to the Wechselbalg’s agitation that that. He wasn’t demanding that Nick and Hank drop their weapons, nor was he insisting that he was serious, he’d really do it, so they better give him what he wanted if they didn’t want to see Juliette’s brains splattered all over the couch. Instead, his primary concern seemed to be urging Juliette to quit insisting he wouldn’t harm her. That, more than anything else, convinced Nick that Juliette was right. The Wechselbalg didn’t want to hurt her. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t, even if only by accident, if this standoff continued any longer.

  “I’m going to put my gun down on the floor,” Nick said, “and my partner is going to do the same.”

  “I am?” Hank said, making it very clear from his tone that he did not approve of this development. But Nick knew that Hank would back his play, no matter what.

  “So just take it easy, okay?” Nick kept his gaze locked on the Wechselbalg as he slowly crouched down and gently placed his Glock on the floor. He didn’t take his eyes off the Wechselbalg to check, but he didn’t need to see Hank to know he did the same.

  Nick straightened. “Your problem isn’t with Juliette. It’s with me.”

  The Wechselbalg’s gaze shifted back and forth between Nick and Juliette, but his gun hand never wavered.

  “She acted like she was my friend. Like she understood me. But she told you I was here, didn’t she? How else would you and Hank have known to come here and enter with your weapons drawn? I don’t know what she did. Probably called or texted you when she was in the kitchen. It doesn’t matter how she did it. She did it. She doesn’t care about me, and she never did.”

  The Wechselbalg sounded more hurt than angry, like a child rejected by a beloved adult. But if he truly felt betrayed by Juliette, he might go ahead and shoot her despite whatever emotional programming he’d picked up when he’d copied Nick.

  “Your problem with me is much bigger,” he said. “Something obviously went wrong with the duplicating process. You look like me, and you have my abilities, but you don’t have all my memories. Besides, how can you even hope to become me all the way as long as I’m still alive? The only way you can truly be Nick Burkhardt is to finish what you started.”

  The Wechselbalg gave Juliette one last look before taking his gun away from her head and pointing it at Nick.

  “If I shoot you, there will only be one of us,” the Wechselbalg said.

  “Yes, but you won’t get the rest of my memories then. They’ll die with me.”

  The Wechselbalg looked at Nick for several moments. Nick could see the warring impulses at work on the shapeshifter’s face. Nick honestly didn’t know which way it was going to go, and he was readying himself to leap to the side if the Wechselbalg started firing. But the shapeshifter tucked his gun against the small of his back again, and he started walking toward Nick, spines extending from his fingertips.

  Nick figured he had a fifty-fifty chance of snatching his gun off the floor and putting a bullet into the Wechselbalg before the shapeshifter could reach him. But he wanted to avoid killing his doppelganger if he could. Rosalee had said she might need some of the Wechselbalg’s substance to create a cure for the Ewig Woge. She might still be able to extract it if the creatu
re was dead, but Nick didn’t want to take that chance.

  Nick’s first priority was to lure the Wechselbalg out of the house and get it away from Juliette and Hank. But before he could turn and run, the Wechselbalg put on a sudden burst of speed and came rushing toward him. Nick intended to repeat one of the moves he’d used on the Wechselbalg when it had attacked him at the Millers’ house. He grabbed hold of the Wechselbalg’s wrists with the intention of falling backward, planting a foot on the creature’s midsection, and using the shapeshifter’s momentum to throw it into the air. But it seemed the Wechselbalg wasn’t going to fall for the same trick twice. When Nick tried to fall backward, the Wechselbalg braced himself and swung his arms to the left. Nick maintained his grip on the Wechselbalg’s wrists, and the creature’s momentum pulled him off balance. The Wechselbalg continued spinning to the left, pulling Nick stumbling with it. The Wechselbalg picked up speed, and snapped his arms as if they were whips. The action broke Nick’s grip on the shapeshifter’s wrists and sent him stumbling toward the wall face-first. He managed to angle his body in time so that his right shoulder slammed into the wall instead of his face, and the impact sent a fiery jolt of pain all the way down to his hand. His arm went partially numb, and he hoped that nothing was broken or dislocated.

  Smooth, Burkhardt, he thought.

  He turned away from the wall, expecting to see the Wechselbalg coming toward him. But instead he saw that Hank had stepped forward and got the creature in a headlock from behind. Hank was strong, but he was still only human. The Wechselbalg’s finger spines remained extended, and he reached up and jabbed them into Hank’s arm. The spines passed through the fabric of Hank’s jacket and into his flesh without resistance, and Hank cried out in agony. At first he managed to maintain his grip on the creature despite the pain, but then the Wechselbalg savagely yanked the spines free. Hank shouted, blood spurted, and he released the shapeshifter. Nick knew that the Wechselbalg’s spines injected a numbing agent, so Hank’s pain would pass quickly, but he had no idea whether the creature had injected any of the super woge hormone into Hank. Even if he had, Nick knew the Wechselbalg wouldn’t stop his attack there. Hank was a threat to the creature, and therefore had to be destroyed.

  Nick started running toward the Wechselbalg as the creature raised its hands for another attack. From the way the creature was standing, Nick figured it planned to swipe the needle-sharp spines across Hank’s throat, wounding him so badly that he’d bleed to death.

  Juliette didn’t merely sit and watch, however. She sprang off the couch and hurried to Hank. She grabbed hold of his shoulder and pulled him backward as the Wechselbalg began to swing one of its needle-hands toward Hank. At the same moment, Nick slammed into the Wechselbalg from behind. The strike’s momentum carried them both to the couch. They hit, bounced off, and landed on the carpet several feet apart. They both rolled to their feet and faced one another, each gauging the other, searching for an opening for their next attack. But before either Nick or the Wechselbalg could make his next move, a gunshot sounded loud as thunder. The Wechselbalg spun from the bullet’s impact and fell to the floor.

  Nick looked toward the shooter, expecting to see it was Hank. But his partner stood cradling his wounded arm. Juliette held one of the Glocks—Nick couldn’t tell if it was his or Hank’s—in a perfect shooter’s stance. Her gaze was calm and focused, and her hands were rock-steady.

  Nick felt a great swell of love for her at that moment. He’d always known how strong and fierce she was on the inside, but it was another thing to see it manifested outwardly like this.

  I’m the luckiest man in the world, he thought.

  Juliette kept the Glock trained on the downed Wechselbalg as she spoke.

  “I tried to shoot him in the shoulder. I hope I didn’t miss and kill him.”

  During her shooting lessons, Juliette’s aim had started out good and had got even better as time passed. But Nick knew that it was one thing to shoot at an inanimate target on a range and quite another to shoot at a living, breathing person, no matter how much of a threat that person might be. Adrenaline and stress altered people’s perceptions and motor skills. Even the best trained and most experienced officer could miss when shooting in a combat situation. And this was Juliette’s first time firing a weapon in a fight.

  “Keep him covered,” Nick said. “I’ll check on him.”

  Juliette nodded.

  “Give me a sec,” Hank said. His right arm was wounded worse than his left, and he tucked that hand into his jacket pocket as a makeshift sling, grimacing as he did so. The jacket sleeve was dotted with dark splotches, but it didn’t look like Hank was bleeding too badly. When his wounded arm was dealt with, Hank walked over to pick up the second Glock from the carpet. Holding it in his left hand, he turned and pointed the weapon at the Wechselbalg. Accuracy declined when a person shot one-handed, let alone when they shot with their weaker hand. But most cops practiced shooting one-handed with both their right and left, just in case. Hank might not win any marksmanship contests shooting with his left hand, but at this range, he’d be able to hit the Wechselbalg if he needed to.

  “Ready,” Hank said.

  Nick gave his partner a nod and then started toward the Wechselbalg. He knew he was taking a risk going so close to the creature. The Wechselbalg wanted the rest of his memories, and he wanted to be the only Nick Burkhardt. But the shapeshifter had remained still since Juliette had shot him. His eyes were closed, and more importantly, his fingers spines had retracted. If he wasn’t dead, there was a good chance he was unconscious. Or playing possum, Nick thought. Only one way to find out.

  He continued toward the Wechselbalg, trying to ignore the eerie feeling that he was approaching his own corpse. His senses were on high alert, searching for any sign of life or activity from the shapeshifter. He could detect no breathing, but that didn’t mean anything. The Wechselbalg could simply be holding its breath, and for all Nick knew, the creature might be able to do so longer than a human. He saw no sign the Wechselbalg was bleeding from his wound—no widening dark splotch on the carpet beneath him. Nick had approached many dead bodies during his career in law enforcement, and one thing they all had in common was a terrible stillness to them. Nick was a rational man, and he didn’t know if something like a soul existed. But he did know that a dead body was definitely missing something vital it had possessed when alive. Something more than could be accounted for by biological processes alone. It was this absence, this lack, more than anything else that Nick was looking for as he drew near the fallen Wechselbalg. It wasn’t something you could see so much as something you sensed. Whatever it was precisely, he didn’t see it now. The Wechselbalg was definitely alive.

  But before he could act on this knowledge, the Wechselbalg leaped to his feet, shoved past him, and ran toward the front door. Nick caught a glimpse of blood on the creature’s left shoulder, and then both Juliette and Hank fired. If either of them hit the fleeing Wechselbalg, it didn’t slow him down. Within seconds, he was through the door, out of the house, and back into the night.

  Nick hurried over to Juliette and she handed the Glock to him.

  “Go get him,” she said.

  He gave her a quick kiss, and then headed for the door. Hank followed, right hand still tucked into his pocket to keep his wounded arm steady. Nick wanted to tell him to stay behind and take care of his wound, but he knew Hank wouldn’t pay him any more attention than he would’ve paid to Hank if their situations were reversed, so he said nothing.

  Nick’s own arm was still somewhat numb from when he collided with the wall, but its condition was improving with every passing moment. He had no trouble maintaining his grip on the Glock as he ran outside. He half-expected the Wechselbalg to be lying in wait to attack him the instant he emerged from the house, but there was no immediate sign of the shapershifter. Nick ran out onto the sidewalk, sweeping his gaze back and forth as he searched for the Wechselbalg. Hank joined him a moment later, breathing harder than usu
al, and Nick wondered if his partner had lost more blood than he’d thought.

  “Taking one in the shoulder doesn’t seem to have slowed him down any,” Hank said.

  “Yeah.” If the Wechselbalg had left a blood trail, Nick wondered if Monroe would be able to track it. Probably not, he decided. If the Wechselbalg didn’t have a scent normally, there was a good chance his blood—or whatever substance oozed from his wounds in place of blood—wouldn’t have a scent either. With Wechselbalgen, it was all about staying hidden. Unless of course they were suffering from their version of Alzheimer’s and had demented to the point where it was almost impossible for them to act rationally and remain unseen.

  Nick almost wished this Wechselbalg was still mentally healthy. If he had been, he would only kill when he needed to assume a new identity. And while that was bad enough, at least he wouldn’t be on a killing spree right now.

  The two men were standing less than a dozen feet from the Charger, and as they cast their gazes around the area searching for the Wechselbalg, at one point they both turned their backs to the car. And that’s when the Wechselbalg struck.

  At the sound of rapid footsteps on asphalt, Nick turned and saw a handful of needle-spines slashing toward his face. He leaned back in time to avoid getting hurt, but Hank wasn’t so lucky. The spines struck the bicep of his good arm and sank deep. The Wechselbalg yanked them free, an expression of savage triumph on his face. Hank took in a hissing breath, and his fingers sprang open. His Glock fell to the sidewalk, and Hank went down on one knee, moaning in pain.

  Nick stepped forward and swung his gun butt toward the Wechselbalg’s head. The creature tried to avoid the blow, but he didn’t move fast enough. The butt of the Glock slammed into the side of his head, and the impact staggered him. Nick knew better than to give the shapeshifter so much as a second to recover. He moved forward, intending to strike the Wechselbalg a second blow. But the shapeshifter jabbed his finger spines forward and stabbed Nick’s gun hand. There was an instant of pain before an almost pleasant sensation of numbness began to spread through his hand. The Glock slipped from his fingers, but right then the loss of his weapon was the last of his worries. When the Wechselbalg had initially duplicated him, he’d plunged the finger-spines into Nick’s neck. Nick had no idea if the Wechselbalg could copy his memories through another part of his body, but he didn’t want to find out.