Grimm - The Icy Touch

by Shirley, John

  Her gaze was expressionless as it settled on him. In her slender hands was a brown stoneware gin bottle, without label or mark. David found himself staring at her fingers— she had unusually long fingernails. She passed the stone bottle to the toothless costermonger who cocked his eye at David and made a croaking sound that might’ve been an invitation to buy whatever wares he kept in his basket.

  David smiled, and shook his head at the old man.

  “If I may be so bold as to observe,” David said, walking closer, widening his smile for the young lady. “You, madame are far from—”

  But the old man interrupted him with a raw sputum-thick noise that must have been laughter.

  “Eff ’e may be so bold! Why, they’re all bold with ’er!”

  The girl gave a tinkling laugh and jabbed the old man with her elbow.

  “Don’t listen to him, sir,” she said to David. She had a soft accent he could not place. “I am perhaps wayward, but I do not permit boldness—not of just anyone.”

  “I... I am gratified to hear it,” David said. The young woman fascinated him. “May I ask where...?”

  “I hail from Japan, sir,” she said. Her voice was high pitched, lilting. Her lips were curiously rouged so that they appeared to be forever pouting. He could see no other makeup on her.

  The old costermonger creaked out something else, unintelligible. After mentally processing the remark, David decided he’d said something about the young woman having been away for “nigh to five year or more.”

  “Five years away from here, and soon going away for five more,” the woman said, her voice sounding dreamy.

  “And did you return to Japan, in those five years, madame?” David asked.

  “Ooh ’e’s got fine airs wif his ‘madame,’” the old man muttered, gin dribbling from the corner of his mouth.

  “Return to Japan?” She looked at him in something like surprise. “No, I cannot travel so far alone, sir. There is one who has given me shelter, in Normandy... to that one I return. But, now and then, I must...” She shrugged and waved a hand to indicate the grubby vicinity.

  “May I ask your name?” David inquired.

  “Akemi, sir.”

  “And how came you to Britain when first you arrived? Was it your benefactor who brought you?”

  “Why, so it was.”

  “May I ask his name?”

  She gazed vaguely up at him and reached up to twist one of her errant hairs.

  “His name? I don’t suppose it will matter, now that I have chosen you. His name is... Denswoz.”

  “A Frenchman?”

  “Just so. He was impressed with geisha, on a visit to Japan, and wished for one of his own. He bought me from a geisha house. Sometimes I remain with him and sometimes I do not.” She shrugged. “He rarely beats me.”

  “He is to be commended for that.” David cleared his throat. “I am making inquiries... there was a young gentleman, by the name of Perdue—Roger Perdue. His remains were discovered not far from here two nights ago. Had either of you encountered the gentleman before his passing? He was a young man, running to stout, with curly blond hair and a rather extravagant mustache. He hailed from Glasgow, where he lived with his mother, who had married a Frenchman. I can pay for fruitful information regarding his... demise.”

  She just stared at him, still twining her hair around a finger.

  The old costermonger said, “’Ere, ye’ll pay for talk? But what is this fruitful? I do not sell fruit but me brother Dim, ’e does—”

  “I mean—the information must bear fruit. I must discover something of use to the... to my inquiries.”

  The girl’s lips parted. He saw that her teeth were a dark brown, and very small, like a row of dirty pearls.

  After a moment she asked, “Are you a... Peeler?”

  “I am not a constable, madame.” Not yet. “I am merely making inquiries for... the family of Mr. Perdue.”

  She stood with a suddenness that made him take a step back.

  “I will take you to a girl who knew him,” she said. “But you must pay.”

  “Certainly. Half a crown?”

  “That is not enough.”

  “A crown, then.”

  “Two!” she declared, eyes glinting.

  He saw she would not be swayed.

  “So be it!” He agreed and paid it over.

  “’Ere, what about me?” the costermonger demanded, shoving a blackened hand out to him.

  Annoyed, since the old reprobate had done nothing for him, David nonetheless tossed him a shilling.

  “Miss? Shall we...” He indicated for her to lead the way.

  Akemi headed to a passage David hadn’t seen, a short alley between two buildings, with scarcely enough room to pass through in single file. He stepped carefully over the usual muck, and suddenly found they were on a fairly wide lane.

  “Why, that rascal!” David said. “This is Grumman’s Lane! Just where I was when I asked for directions! It could not have been more than a hundred steps from here that he sent me into that labyrinthine warren...”

  “Me, I never go the way you came here,” Akemi said. “So bad, that way. You’re lucky someone didn’t murder you. I only go to that stoop to drink and then I come back out here...”

  She led him down a hill to a pub. The wooden sign, waving in the coal-darkened breeze, read, “The Ill-Favoured Captain’s Inn.”

  “Come along...” she said.

  He ducked his head to step through the door and into the gloomy pub interior. Soot-blackened beams further lowered the already low ceiling. A sagging bar lay at the other end of the narrow room. Several tattooed, sunburnt men, their hair tied back in long, greased, and braided sailor’s cues, glanced up from a table where they played at mumblety pegs. They struck David as unemployed deckhands of the King’s Navy. One of them leered at Akemi and removed the clay pipe from his mouth to call an improper invitation to her, the words accompanied by tobacco smoke.

  “I have a gentleman,” she answered simply, walking by the sailor.

  Embarrassed, David followed her to the bar.

  “Really, I don’t think we need give the impression that... ah... well... no matter.”

  The barmaid was a blowsy red-faced Irish woman with a cast in one eye.

  “Eef yer want a room, that’s two shillings in advance,” she said.

  Akemi looked at him expectantly

  David bit off the automatic protest. His uncle had warned him that the work would entail disguise, “Both disguise of appearance, at times, and purpose.” So David dug for the money in his waistcoat, and laid it on the sticky bar. When he turned to Akemi she was already starting up the narrow, twisting staircase to one side of the bar.

  David followed, feeling an odd, premonitory fluttering in his breast. He reached into his sash to see if he still had the small muzzle loaded pistol tucked away.

  One shot only... Best hope there’s only one of them...

  He frowned to himself. His uncle had coached him to be respectful of his instincts as a Grimm. But surely it was his own fear whispering to him, and not a Grimm’s insight...

  When he got to the constricted hallway at the top of the stairs he stopped—the girl had gone.

  He swallowed, wondering why his mouth was so dry, and took several steps more—then found that a door along the left side of the passage was open.

  She waited within, sitting on a bed, its ticking scarcely wide enough for one, let alone two. At the foot of the bed was a chamber pot. There was a small curtained window, and little more.

  He stepped into the room but left the door behind him open.

  “Miss—Madame... perhaps you have misunderstood.” He cleared his throat. “I am not here for your—your services. Perhaps you thought my enquiries a pretense. You said you knew a girl who knew him. I am, truly, looking for information about Mr. Perdue and his...”

  “His demise?” She was leaning back on the bed, propped up by one hand, the other toying once more with
her hair.

  “Yes.”

  “That is what I offer you. I mean—what you seek to find out. I am the girl I spoke of. I was with the gentleman when he died.”

  “Were you indeed?” He opened his coat, and put a hand, as if casually, on the grip of his pistol. “And who killed him?”

  “He was killed by...” She spoke a Japanese word. It sounded like Jorogumo.

  “And that is the person’s name?”

  “Ah, no. That is the person’s nature. I will tell you more. But only if you come to me.”

  “I... you have told me quite a lot, really. I will give you another crown, and perhaps we might go downstairs to...”

  “You can pay me later. You shall give me all you have and willingly...”

  “...to have a glass of... of wine and talk a bit...”

  His words seemed to evaporate from his lips, to drift away before he could speak them.

  It was her eyes. He couldn’t look away from them. They’d gone so very dark. They glittered and drew him closer.

  Somehow he crossed the room, and took her in his arms.

  They kissed. A strange smell seeped up from her mouth, but he didn’t care. She was a fountain of ecstasy; the touch of her lips, her shoulders, overflowed with a glory that seemed to flow into his hands.

  He drew back to look into her eyes again...

  And he froze.

  Her eyes bulged, and, as he watched, they became jet black, without any whites at all; dark rings encircled them. Her mouth was parted, and he couldn’t see her teeth at all. Instead, from her mouth emerged something he’d only seen under a magnifying glass at one of his uncle’s lectures on natural history.

  Mandibles. The incisor fangs—yellow and black and coarse—of a spider.

  Her face was transforming, too, becoming bristly around the edges. Her hands also became taloned and black...

  He drew back, the trance broken. Stumbling, he plucked at his gun.

  Then something struck the back of his head and a burst of light was followed by whirling gray dimness...

  * * *

  It must have been but a few moments later that he opened his eyes, and found that he was lying on his back, in the same room, gazing up at the smug face of a man he’d never seen before. And yet the man seemed indefinably familiar.

  “He is mine, the last I will need,” Akemi said, her voice changed, clicking and distorted. “Five years, and he is the last... until five years once more pass by...”

  “You shall have him, my dear,” said the man. “The flesh of one of those sailors will feed me, before the night is done. I merely wished to look into his face... Truly a poor excuse for a Grimm, this one...”

  “If he had seen you first, perhaps you might be lying here, instead,” said the odd, clicking voice.

  “Perhaps. When their instincts are aroused they’re fast, and dangerous.”

  “Who are you?” David asked. With one hand he felt for his gun...

  The man leaning over him smiled nastily.

  “Looking for this?” He held David’s gun where he could see it—and then pointed it at him. “Do not move. I also have your knife. You would be dead already, but... I wanted you to know. Since you are a Kessler.”

  “Wanted me... to know...?”

  “To know that I am Benjamine Denswoz. I am the son of Lukas Denswoz. Your granduncle shot Lukas, whereupon Lukas lost the use of his arm. But that is not the worst crime to be laid at the feet of your line. The Grimm who shot him killed my grandfather and stole the coins that rightly belong to us. And my father swore an oath that your family would forever pay for that perfidy. And so I have lured you here, and given you to my mistress to feed upon. I only wished you to know... the why of it.”

  David looked at Akemi.

  “To...feed?”

  “Yes. She will liquefy your insides, and she will drink them down—and as you are the final young man needed, her youth will be restored for another five years. She is a rare Wesen, I assure you. And you? Your line will become very rare indeed when we are through...”

  “The Sacker...”

  “Quite so.” He bared his teeth in grinning triumph and drew back.

  Before David could move, Akemi pounced, and drove her mandibles into his throat...

  The Spinnetod venom paralyzed him before he could do more than thrash a little...

  And then she put her lips to his... and something flowed from her, hot and thick, gurgling into his mouth...

  To burn its way down to his core.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  PORTLAND, OREGON, USA.

  PRESENT DAY.

  “Detective Burkhardt, Detective Griffin,” Captain Renard said, “this is Agent Don Bloom.”

  Nick and Hank shook hands with the visitor as a morning rain pattered on the louvered window.

  “Have a seat, gentlemen,” Bloom said, booting up his laptop.

  They sat at the dark wood table in the briefing room in the offices of the Portland Federal Bureau of Investigation. Bloom remained standing at the end of the table.

  Nick tried not to let his nerves show. The tension between his life as a cop and his duties as a Grimm was pretty stressful as it was. Walking that line wasn’t easy. But this... facing the feds...

  Nick smiled, hoping he was coming off as a genial, helpful colleague, and cleared his throat as Agent Bloom tapped his PowerBook, bringing up relevant profiles.

  Bloom was a middle-aged man in a neat gray suit and tie. He had thinning black hair, wire-rim glasses over watery blue eyes, and a dour face. He chewed his thin lower lip as he looked for the files he wanted.

  “Ah. There it is. The Icy Touch, aka La Caresse Glacée. Quite a dramatic bunch, this particular cartel.”

  “Dramatic?” Renard asked, pouring a glass of water from a pitcher.

  Bloom glanced up. “This thing in Canby. These guys like to leave a calling card. Big bloody mess. They seem to want to call attention to themselves. Maybe that reflects the involvement of Mexican cartel elements. It’s kind of like the mutilated bodies that turn up down there. Corpses left hanging from bridges with signs on them, that kind of thing.”

  “They’re tied in with the Mexican cartels?” Hank asked. “The Zetas, Sinaloa, those guys?”

  “Tied in? Yes and no,” Bloom said thoughtfully, sitting back and tenting his fingers. He squinted at the ceiling as if he could decode the enigma of The Icy Touch from the random hole patterns punched in the acoustic tile. “More like they overlap in some ways. But this is a European-based operation. It’s just... they seem to be moving in on the Zetas, for example, in Guadalajara, and recruiting some of them.”

  “You’d think the Zetas would go to war with them over that,” Nick observed. “Seems like they go to war with other cartels as a regular thing.”

  Bloom looked sharply at him and Nick got a flash impression of the agent—the fruit of a Grimm’s insight into human nature. Bloom was not a man to be trifled with. He was not imposing; he was of bland appearance and slightly fussy mannerisms and probably a family man. Not exactly a hard-core field agent. But the FBI agent’s eyes flickered with intelligence and Nick was quite sure that Bloom didn’t miss much. He hoped to God that, for now, Bloom hadn’t spotted the patterns that might lead him to Wesen. If the Feds found out about Wesen, there’d be hell to pay

  At last Bloom nodded.

  “The Zetas would go to war with Icy if they could find them. As you know, this organization is damned hard to find. Every time we think we’ve got them, the source either clams up, disappears—or we find them dead. It’s something like what happens with inner city gangs—that fear of ‘snitching,’ the fear of retaliation—but writ large, across three continents. And there’s a whole mythology around these people...” He shook his head.

  Renard raised his eyebrows.

  “Mythology?”

  Bloom nodded toward the PowerBook.

  “Stories about wolf people, snake people—I assume it’s some kind of shamanistic
conceit. Could be that Icy Touch itself is spreading this story about their having some supernatural advantage.” He shrugged. “The ignorant are easily bamboozled.”

  Renard nodded. “Wolves and snakes—real fantasy stuff, huh? They’ll be saying they’re space aliens next.”

  Bloom chuckled. “The stuff we put up with at the bureau. We get every kind of eccentric pounding on our doors. People going on about how the Queen of England is a reptilian alien. I figure The Icy Touch is exploiting all the crazier rumor mills out there.”

  “But—The Icy Touch is real,” Renard said, coolly.

  Nick and Hank exchanged glances.

  Renard smiled thinly. “It’s a real crime cartel. And it’s got real ambition. Question is, Don—what do we do about it?”

  “The Bureau is hoping to correlate information with Portland PD,” Bloom said. “Then work up a strategy to find these guys and nail them under the RICO statutes. Homeland Security is interested too.” He sniffed, nose wrinkling as if something smelled bad.

  “Why Homeland Security?” Hank asked. “The international angle?”

  “That, and the stuff they were trying to smuggle in,” Bloom said. He turned the PowerBook around so they could see the screen. “You see that analysis? The most active ingredient seems to be the scopolamine. Which has mind control potential, at least. The other stuff in the mix is obscure. We’re still working on it. Seems like it’s drawn from some kind of herbal mixture. But it’s sure as hell not hippie shampoo. All the compounds seem to affect the nervous system. And there was so much of it—maybe they wanted to dump it in a reservoir somewhere, create chaos in some big city. I doubt it, though, they seem to be more about money than terror; Homeland Security’s not so sure.” He shrugged. “So if we can figure out what they plan on using it for, maybe we can stop them from putting it into effect.”

  “I take it we didn’t get all they had,” Hank said.

  “I’m sure that wasn’t their only supply. But by the way...” He nodded toward Nick and Hank. “Good work, interdicting that stuff. God knows what they might’ve done with it here in town...”