Grimm - The Icy Touch

by Shirley, John

  Monroe nodded, closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating—and then became, visibly, a Blutbad, sprouting fur, fangs, his eyes becoming feral. And not a moment too soon.

  A gruff voice spoke from around the corner.

  “I smell someone—visitors. You guys getting that scent? Someone close...”

  “Yeah, that’d be me, fellas,” Monroe said, chattering as he stepped out into view. His voice was altered, made more guttural by the transformation. “Ha, shoulda taken a shower this morning. Got all kinda smells on me, from, uh, fighting humans, and... you know how it goes. I guess I shoulda called ahead. But, hey, no cell phone service down here.”

  “Who the hell are you?” asked the gruff voice.

  “Boss sent me to tell you guys the stuff here’s going to be picked up sooner’n planned. The other guys are coming pretty quick to get it...”

  “We were told we’d be standing guard for a few hours. Only been an hour.”

  “Sure, that’s why I’m here...”

  “I don’t remember you from the meetings,” the gruff voice went on.

  “You don’t remember this?”

  Nick looked around the corner in time to see Monroe grab the submachine gun hanging on the Blutbad’s shoulder. He broke the snap, but, before he could turn it against the Icy Touch Wesen, the guard had lunged at him, knocking him back...

  Nick and Hank darted around the corner, guns in hand.

  “Police!” Nick shouted. “Get down on the ground!”

  Only the Drang-zorn obeyed. Near the Drang-zorn, in mere seconds, the other man transformed, a full-on woge into Hasslich: his ears went pointier, tufted; his face became chiseled and gaunt; his eyes turned red, pupils slitting; his teeth became serrated as a saw blade; and fingers extended claws, muscles stretched, ripping his clothes.

  The Wesen troll charged at Hank.

  Nick ran to help Monroe who was rolling across the ground, fighting with the other Blutbad, both of them snarling and snapping. No way to shoot the guy without risking shooting Monroe, so Nick reversed his Glock and hammered at the Icy Touch Blutbad’s head with the butt. The Blutbad howled and tried to twist away.

  Nick reached between them with his free hand to try to get a grip on the Icy Touch Wesen—and a mostly feral Monroe bit his hand.

  “Ow! Dammit, Monroe!” Nick said, snatching his hand back.

  The submachine gun, compressed between them, went off—and Nick looked on with horror as blood splashed, bits of bone flew... Then he saw with relief that it wasn’t Monroe who’d been shot. The bullets had smashed up under the Icy Touch Blutbad’s jaw, and out through the top of his head.

  Another gunshot made him turn—he saw Hank struggling with the Hasslich, his arms pinioned in the creature’s talons, gun firing uselessly into the ceiling.

  Nick swung his gun hard, cracking the Hasslich in the head with all his strength.

  The troll roared, shook his head, stunned, and Hank jerked his gun hand free and fired four times, point blank, into the Hasslich’s chest.

  Nick sighed, as the troll staggered backwards, and fell. Another possible interrogation subject gone to meet the devil.

  “Fellas, don’t shoot me, don’t shoot me, I didn’t want to do any of this stuff!” whimpered the man lying face down by the bricks of powder. Nick looked at him, saw his Drang-zorn appearance showing in his distress.

  “Take it easy, no one’s gonna hurt you if you don’t resist,” Nick said. “What’s your name?”

  “Doug. I mean—Douglas Zelinski.”

  “Your hand’s bleeding, Nick,” Hank said, holstering his gun.

  Nick looked at his left hand. There were only a couple of fang marks on it but Monroe had broken the skin.

  “Yeah, sorry about that, Nick,” Monroe said, getting to his feet. He was back in human form, brushing blood and brains from his shirt with evident distaste. “You stuck your hand too close to my mouth when I was in full Blutbad fighting mode... kind of a reflex... A little antiseptic and it’ll be fine. I’m gonna need some too. This scumbag’s blood is all over me... ugh.”

  The Icy Touch Blutbad had shifted back to human form in death.

  “You know that guy, Monroe?” Nick asked.

  “Naw. Out of town Wesen, be my guess.”

  Nick grimaced, rubbing his wrists. He nodded towards the body of the troll.

  “Man that son of a bitch was strong. Nearly cracked my bones.”

  “He would’ve, in another second or two,” Monroe said.

  “Fast too. Rushed right past my gun. Thanks, Nick,” Hank said.

  “Sure, Hank but—you have to kill him? I wanted to question him.”

  “You kidding me? He was about to eat my face!”

  Nick shrugged. “Probably tear out your throat instead.”

  “Oh well, that’d be fine then.”

  “You’re not going to kill me?” The Drang-zorn asked again.

  “No,” Nick said. He knelt to cuff the man’s hands behind his back.

  “They will, though, you know. They’ll get to me in jail,” the man said sadly.

  “We’ll protect you,” Nick said, feeling a stab of guilt as he said it because he wasn’t sure he could guarantee the guy’s safety at all. “What’s the stuff in the bricks here? Heroin?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so. But I don’t know what it is. They called it Seele Dicht something. I don’t know what that means. I don’t speak German.”

  Monroe perked up at that.

  “Seele Dichtungsmittel?”

  “Yeah, I think that was it. How long I got to lay here on my stomach?”

  Nick helped him to his feet.

  “What’s this Seele stuff?” he asked.

  “Did he say seal dicks?” Hank asked.

  “No, I didn’t,” Monroe said, picking a chunk of brain matter off his shirt. “I said Seele Dichtungsmittel. Soul sealant. Legendary. Didn’t know if it was real... I don’t know that much about it. Rosalee’d know more.”

  Nick took an evidence bag from his jacket pocket, got out a pen knife and cut into a powder brick. He scooped a couple of grams into the bag, sealed it, careful not to get any on his hands, and tucked it away.

  “We’ll have Rosalee look this stuff over...” he said.

  “Not going to look good if anybody finds out you took that kind of evidence in advance of forensics,” Hank pointed out.

  “Just one of several things we’re going to have to keep quiet about on this one,” Nick said. “We’ll have to get our stories straight now... And then you go up and call for forensics and the bodybaggers.”

  “They’re gonna love coming down here...” Hank muttered.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was dark out and Monroe was wearing his second best pair of loafers as he walked up the side street to the shady little cul de sac where the Perkins family lived. Dorine Perkins, Lily Perkins, Alvin Perkins, Jr., residents of 1300 Shady Court. Alvin Perkins Senior was dead. He’d died in a forest, at the base of Mt. Hood, some considerable time back. Years now. He’d died out there with his throat torn out.

  Died just trying to do his job. Leaving a widow and two children.

  Monroe reached the corner and paused, half hidden by a rhododendron bush hanging over a broken down fence from an overgrown yard to his right. Hands in his pockets against the growing chill, he gazed at the cottage across the cul de sac. The lattice on the front of the little white building was dark with thick ivy and honeysuckle; a sugar maple, gone orange, was slowly shedding leaves over the mossy roof. The front windows glowed with yellow light. It was like a cottage in a fairy tale.

  And the big bad wolf had attacked someone from that fairy tale cottage. But not here. It had happened in a forest miles away, on the clay bank of a small creek, with ferns all around...

  The front door opened, and a girl came out. Lily Perkins. She was fourteen, Monroe knew, though he’d never met her. He knew her birthday—he knew her mother’s birthday, and her brother’s too. He’d never met a
ny of them. They didn’t know who he was.

  Lily had brown-blond hair bobbed at her jawline. Monroe smiled, seeing she’d added some neon-pink highlights to its tips.

  Stylin’. You go, girl.

  She was wearing a coat trimmed with faux rabbit fur. It looked a little too small for her, like the family was short on money for clothes. Maybe it was time he found another way to get the Perkins family some extra money. He could manage a thousand dollars. Last time he’d arranged for them to be told they’d won a contest. Time before that, he’d made it look like a gift from a dotty, aging relative. A scribbled note in the mail, with a money order. The dotty relative gag would work again, he decided.

  He watched Lily walk down the sidewalk in her scuffed white boots, picking her way carefully across the places cracked by tree roots. She had makeup on. Going to meet friends at the mall. She did that sometimes, Monroe knew.

  Be careful, kid. There are wolves out there. All kinds of predators. Watch where you go. Stay alert...

  Be careful, Lily. For your father’s sake...

  Monroe took a long, deep breath, then turned away, and walked back up the sidewalk.

  He needed to see Nick. Right away. He owed it to Smitty...

  He turned right at the next corner, and walked up to his truck.

  Behind him, someone started a van.

  When Monroe’s truck drove off, the van followed.

  * * *

  It was eight-thirty in the morning. Hank was still sipping coffee, yawning between sips. He and Nick sat across from Renard, in the captain’s corner office. The blinds were shut on the big office window. Renard looked like he was angry and didn’t want to say why.

  “That scene in the tunnel was messy,” Renard said, at last, his voice sharp with disapproval. “Very messy. If we’d had some kind of set up for a raid or...”

  “I knew they were down there,” Nick said. “I didn’t want to lose them.”

  Hank looked at him. “You knew? How?”

  Nick shrugged. “I could feel it.”

  Renard waved his hand dismissively. “I can’t put that in a report. And keeping this Monroe pal of yours out of the report’s not so easy either.”

  “How about the Drang-zorn we booked?” Nick asked.

  “We’ll do what we can to protect him. He doesn’t seem to have much to tell us. Seems like the guys he knew were the ones you killed.”

  He opened a folder on his desk, spun some slick color photos around so the two detectives could see them.

  “Speaking of a messy scene,” Hank said, looking at the photos. “Somebody else made one. Who are they?”

  “Dead gangbangers,” Renard said. “Sombra Corazón— Shadow Heart. Found dumped in a field out near Canby. Killed elsewhere. We don’t know where yet.”

  “This make the news?” Nick asked. This was clearly the work of Wesen. He wanted to keep this investigation as under wraps as possible.

  It was funny—he was a Grimm, and traditionally Grimms killed Wesen. At best they policed the Wesen world, winnowing out the ones who were most dangerous. But often he found himself trying to protect Wesen. He wondered if his Grimm ancestors would approve. Probably not.

  “It will,” Renard said. “These guys were pretty much torn apart. Shredded. Heads ripped off. We’ll claim chainsaws, and whatever. But the Wesen will know...”

  “But what about—” Hank began.

  But he broke off, sharply, as there was a quick knock on the door.

  Sergeant Wu then opened it without being told to, and came in carrying a report. He stopped in the middle of the room and looked from face to face.

  “Wow, everybody stops talking the minute I come in? This some kind of internal affairs thing I’m not supposed to know about?”

  “No,” Hank said. “Captain was giving Nick advice on his love life. Told him to give up on it completely.”

  “I’ve considered that,” Nick said dryly.

  “Very funny,” Wu said, dropping the papers on Renard’s desk. “I’ll tell you a real joke. A cop sees a woman who’s knitting while she’s driving. He figures that’s dangerous, so he shouts at her, ‘Pull over!’ And she yells back, ‘No, it’s a pair of socks!’”

  You could have heard a pin drop in the room.

  “Wu, you need some time off?” Renard asked, finally.

  “Me? No Captain, I’m okay.”

  “Then why’re you wasting time in here?”

  “I—okay, fine. Just... wanted to drop that off. And tell you we got the report on that substance that was smuggled in. If they were smuggling it in—maybe they were smuggling it out...”

  He passed the paper over to Renard, who scanned it.

  “Scopolamine?”

  “Lots of weird toxic goodies in it,” Wu said. “But lab says that’s probably the active ingredient. That grade of scopolamine’s illegal. But what they were going to do with it is anyone’s guess.”

  He turned and walked out, muttering as he closed the door behind him.

  “Pullover. Socks. Seemed funny to me.”

  The moment he was gone, Hank chuckled.

  “Ha. Not a pullover, socks.”

  Nick looked at him. “You thought that was funny?”

  “Sure. But I didn’t want Wu to know that.”

  Nick took the analysis paper from the lab from Renard and peered at it.

  “Scopolamine. That works with what Rosalee told me,” he said.

  “Which is what?” Renard asked.

  “She says it’s Seele Dichtungsmittel. Soul Sealant. Supposed to enslave people.”

  Renard nodded. “Lot of stories out of South America about scopolamine making people passive. Dose somebody with it, ask them to bring you their money and jewels and they do it, and cheerfully.”

  Hank looked at him skeptically. “Is that really true, Captain?”

  “Seems like some exaggeration’s involved but... With the other ingredients from Hexenbiest recipes, it could work.”

  “There an antidote to that?” Nick asked. He figured the captain might know, since he was half Hexenbiest himself—a witch-like Wesen.

  “Not sure. I never got into the, ah, pharmaceutical side of it all,” Renard replied.

  Nick looked at the photo of the mutilated gangbangers.

  “Killed with real panache,” he said. He showed the photo to Hank. “Shadow Heart was into drugs, and prostitution. Suggests that The Icy Touch is moving in on them.”

  Renard nodded. “They want to sell conventional drugs, they can get them from cartel types like this. And send a message doing it: No one gets in their way. They want to get into sex slavery... and maybe turning Wesen who’d be resistant to them... That’s where the scopolamine comes in.”

  Nick shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. Seems kind of... small time for a crime outfit made up of Wesen.”

  Renard took the photo back, flicked it into a folder.

  “It is relatively small time. That’s what worries me. They have to have a bigger agenda...”

  “Seems to me,” Hank said thoughtfully, “for now, it’s something that’s got to grow. Building up to something powerful. Going to be damned hard to stop. Captain— maybe the time’s come to tell the feds about this. If they don’t already know.”

  “The feds are working on Icy Touch already,” Renard said.

  “I mean—give them the full facts.”

  Nick stared. “About the Wesen?”

  Hank shrugged. “Yeah. Look, how responsible is it not to tell them? They don’t know what they’re up against, they could get killed. You go after one of those ogre things...”

  “Siegbarsten,” Nick said.

  “Right, Siegbarsten. You think you can take one of those down with a .45? You’re going to die, because you don’t have the facts. Or one of those dragon guys. The agent thinks they’re unarmed—and they burn his face off. That’s what the FBI could be up against. They’re law officers—these guys are trying to do their job without the facts. It’s not
right for us to hold back on them.”

  Nick could understand where his partner was coming from. But there were other considerations...

  Renard leaned back in his chair.

  “Are you serious?” he asked. “First of all, the feds wouldn’t believe us.”

  “We could prove it. Monroe could woge for them. Get the Drang-zorn to woge for them too. Let them run some tests.”

  “And bust the Wesen thing open?” Nick shook his head. “Can you imagine the public reaction—the hysteria? There’d be some kind of persecution of Wesen. Witch hunts. Maybe...” He looked at Renard, thinking of Hexenbiests, his mind rapidly calculating the full consequences of what Hank was suggesting. “Literal witch hunts.”

  “They don’t have to tell everyone. Who knows what secrets they keep already?” Hank said.

  “What, you think the Men in Black are real?” Nick said.

  “No. But—maybe there’s a department that knows all about Wesen and keeps it under wraps. We could work with them. But surely any agent working on this has a right to know what they’re getting into.”

  “I’ve sometimes wondered if they know more than we think they do,” Renard admitted. “But here’s the bottom line, Detective Griffin. You take orders from me. Or you fight me. I decide who knows about the Wesen, not you. Not Burkhardt. And I don’t want the feds knowing. Are we clear?”

  “I could resign,” Hank said, looking back at Renard with cold, flat defiance.

  “You don’t get it, Griffin,” Renard said. He leant forward, deadly serious. “It’s not just about your job. It’s about your life. There’s the Verrat to consider. And there are others out there—including a lot of dangerous Wesen, who don’t want you talking about this out of school. There’s a code. And it doesn’t just apply to Wesen—it applies to those who talk about Wesen. Close as you can get is... fairy tales. You let anyone know that some of the fairy tale is real, you put Wesen in danger. And someone might just shut you up—with real finality.”