by Tim Waggoner
“Go on,” he said. “Get out of here.”
The kid lost no time in complying. He fired up the pickup’s engine and roared into the street, already breaking the speed limit again.
Shaking his head, the Wechselbalg turned his attention to the downed officer. She stirred a little, but she made no move to stand, and while her eyelids fluttered, she didn’t open them. Working swiftly—and drawing on Nick’s memories for help—the Wechselbalg removed the officer’s Glock and a pair of handcuffs. He considered taking her cruiser, too, but decided against it. A police cruiser would be too conspicuous, too easy to trace. He laid the officer in the cruiser’s backseat, cuffed her hands behind her back, and then closed the door. He didn’t consider killing her. As long as she was unconscious, there was no way to tell if she was Wesen. Besides, she was an officer of the law. A fellow cop. No way would he kill her.
Sufficiently armed, he walked off into the night’s shadows, ready to get back to work. He needed a vehicle, one that wasn’t as noticeable as a police cruiser, and after that… well, he was a cop, wasn’t he? He’d stop by the station and fill out a report on the Skalengeck graffiti artists he’d dealt with earlier. He didn’t look forward to doing paperwork, but Nick Burkhardt always made sure to do his, so that’s what the Wechselbalg would do, too.
Right after he found himself a car to steal.
* * *
“Somebody in this town seriously hates street art,” Wu said.
Nick and Hank stood at Wu’s side, all three of them shining flashlights to illuminate the scene. Nick focused his beam on the two bodies—a couple of teenage taggers—before raising the beam to the image they’d presumably painted: a large stylized lizard.
“Kids had some talent,” Hank said.
“The operative word in that sentence is had,” Nick said. He looked at the lizard more closely.
The lizard’s body was green, but part of the wall was daubed with red. Then Nick realized the red wasn’t paint. Hank must’ve come to the same realization, for he too was looking at the red smear. Together, Nick and Hank turned their flashlight beams to the bodies. The back of the girl’s head was tacky with blood.
“Nasty way to go,” Hank said.
The girl’s head was lumpy and malformed, and Nick didn’t need a coroner to tell him her skull had been crushed—and how. The blood on the alley wall told the story.
There was no blood on the male, but his head canted at an odd angle, and the skin on his neck was bruised.
“Broken neck,” Nick said.
Hank nodded. “That’d be my guess.”
“He probably died faster than the girl,” Nick said.
“That’s something,” Hank said.
“Maybe,” Wu said. “But it’s not much.”
Nick couldn’t disagree with the man.
He swept his flashlight beam across the ground near the bodies, saw some cans of spray paint scattered around, but that was it. There wasn’t even any trash—no discarded fast-food wrappers, empty coffee cups, or items of a less savory nature, like used condoms or hypodermics. Only a few cigarette butts. As alleys went, it was remarkably clean. Or had been until someone had decided to leave a couple of dead bodies in it.
“Let’s bag those cigarettes for the crime lab.” Nick’s gut told him the butts had been here before the murders had taken place and most likely didn’t belong to the killer. But as important as hunches were in police work, being thorough and making sure were even more important.
Wu nodded. Nick knew he’d make sure CSU took care of it once they were at the scene.
“So what are we looking at here?” Hank said. “Some kind of gang thing?’
“You’re thinking the lizard might be some kind of new gang symbol?” Nick asked.
“Yeah.”
“It’s a possibility,” Nick acknowledged. “I’ve never heard of a lizard gang in Portland, though.”
“Hence the word new,” Hank said.
While Nick thought his partner had a point, nothing about this scene said “gang-related” to him. The kids didn’t have any obvious gang signs on their bodies or clothing, and the lizard painting didn’t look especially menacing. But the biggest indication to Nick that the taggers’ deaths had nothing to do with gangs was the way they’d died. Gang members’ weapons of choice were knives and guns—weapons they could use for intimidation first and for violence second. Whoever killed the teens had done so barehanded and had possessed enough strength to kill quickly—witness the boy with the broken neck—but had also possessed the sadism to make a victim suffer first, as the girl had. From the way her blood was smeared on the wall, Nick was pretty sure she’d endured multiple blows before dying. And while he supposed there could’ve been more than one assailant, that didn’t feel right to him. The alley was narrow, which meant not a lot of room for more than three people to fight, plus both murders had been committed by hand, and both had required a significant amount of strength to accomplish. All that, plus the animalistic savagery of the killings, told him that there was an excellent chance that a Wesen was responsible. Was this the work of the Wechselbalg?
Nick pointed his flashlight at the graffiti and examined it more closely. He made out a word, partially obscured by the drying blood, that sent a chill rippling down his spine.
Grimm.
At once Nick knew what form the Wechselbalg was wearing: his. He didn’t know how it was possible—he hadn’t died during the duplication process—but he knew it was true nevertheless. He could feel it.
“Anything?” Hank asked.
“Nope.” He couldn’t tell the truth in front of Wu, but he gave Hank a look that said, I’ll explain later, and Hank nodded.
Nick looked at the two dead taggers again and wondered what sort of Wesen they were. They had to be Wesen, or at the least one of them did, or else they wouldn’t have known what a Grimm was. Based on the wall painting, he’d guess Skalengecken, but he supposed it didn’t matter. They were dead, and their killer needed to be stopped.
He wondered what they’d thought when they saw a being they took to be the city’s Grimm approaching them. Had they been scared? Probably, out of reflex, if nothing else. And what had they thought when the “Grimm” attacked them? Had they thought that Nick Burkhardt had gone insane? Or had they thought he’d finally dropped the pretense of wanting to help Wesen and reverted to the monster he’d always been inside? Nick had worked hard the last few years to gain some measure of trust from Portland’s Wesen community. And that trust, tentative and fragile as it was, was in danger of being destroyed, perhaps forever, by this demented shapeshifter.
As before at the Webbers’ home, CSU and the Deputy Coroner arrived, and because the alley was so cramped, Nick and Hank stepped onto the sidewalk to give them room to work. Wu remained with the bodies to supervise evidence collection. But Nick didn’t need any more evidence. He was contemplating his next move when his phone rang. He took it from his pocket and saw that Juliette was calling.
“Hey,” he answered in a soft voice.
“You need to come to the trailer, Nick. Fast. I found an entry about a Wechselbalg in one of Marie’s books.” She paused. “You’re not going to like what it says.”
CHAPTER SIX
Rosalee looked up as Monroe entered the shop.
“How did it go?” she asked.
A number of books were piled on the counter, and Monroe noticed that she’d removed her sweater and was now wearing a Portland Fire T-shirt. A light sheen of sweat coated her skin. The perspiration intensified her natural scent, and he found himself responding to it. Down boy, he told himself. We have work to do.
As he headed for the counter, he slipped off his jacket. It was still too warm in here, almost sweltering, really.
“No luck,” he said.
He went into the back room, tossed his jacket onto a chair, and then joined Rosalee at the counter.
“Turns out Wechselbalgen don’t have a scent,” he said.
Unlike y
ou, he thought. He sidled closer to her without being fully aware he was doing so.
“Don’t stand so close!” she snapped. She was immediately apologetic. “Sorry. It’s just so hot in here.”
Monroe did as Rosalee requested and moved a couple feet away from her. Something inside him bristled at having to give up the territory he’d claimed, even if it was only a handful of inches.
“What’s up with that anyway?” he said. “Did you turn the heat up full blast while I was gone?’
Rosalee gave him a withering look. “Now why would I do something stupid like that? I actually turned the heat off. And it’s still hot in here.”
“Maybe you only thought you turned it off. Maybe you really turned it up higher.”
“Seriously? Are you saying you think I’m too dumb to read a thermostat?”
What’s her problem? he thought. Aloud, he said, “I’m saying that anyone can make a mistake.”
Without waiting for her to reply, he went into the back room to check the thermostat. The heat was off, and the readout said the temperature in the building was currently sixty-two degrees. He stared at it for several moments. He felt an urge to slam his fist into the damned thing and knock it off the wall, but instead he turned away and walked back out to the front.
“Maybe there’s something wrong with it,” Monroe said. “Maybe it just looks like the heat’s turned off, but it’s really still going.”
Rosalee looked down at one of the books open on the counter. “Maybe there’s something wrong with you,” she breathed. The words were almost inaudible, but Monroe heard them clearly.
He scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She didn’t look up from the book as she replied. “What’s what supposed to mean?”
Monroe heard a low rumbling sound then. At first he had no idea where it was coming from, but he realized with a start that it came from his throat. He was growling. At Rosalee. His Rosalee.
She looked up at him then, and he saw anger flash across her face. Her eyes narrowed and her upper lip curled. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d growled back. But she didn’t. After a moment her anger drained away, and she looked shocked.
“I’m… sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. Again. It’s the heat. It’s put me on edge.”
The irritation that had built inside him vanished when he saw the regret in Rosalee’s eyes and heard the upset tone in her voice.
He stepped toward her once more, not thinking about territory, thinking only of being close to her, to give and seek comfort in equal measure.
“I’m sorry, too. I don’t know why I growled. Maybe I’m just frustrated that I couldn’t help Nick.”
She reached out and squeezed his hand. “The full moon is less than a week off. You usually get a big more growly around that time.”
He gave her a sheepish smile. “I suppose. So, you find anything new while I was gone?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Want to help?”
“Of course. Which books haven’t you looked through yet?”
Rosalee slid a stack toward him. “Here you go.”
She smiled at him, he smiled in return, and they started reading. But despite their apologies, tension still lingered in the air between them, and Monroe felt sweat began to bead on this forehead. Why was it so damned hot in here?
* * *
Juliette sat at the table in Aunt Marie’s trailer, a small volume the size of an address book sitting before her.
“I’m not surprised you missed this one earlier,” she said. “Not only is it small, it was tucked beneath one of the bookcases. I think Marie used it to keep the case level.”
Nick and Hank stood on either side of Juliette, looking down at the small book.
“Aunt Marie had her own way of organizing things, that’s for sure,” Nick said.
“You told Nick we weren’t going to like what you found,” Hank said. “On a scale of one to ten, with one being a minor irritation and ten being complete disaster, this is…?”
“It depends,” Juliette said. “If what’s recorded in this book is just a legend, we have nothing to worry about. If it’s an historical account, we’re looking at a ten-plus.”
“Great,” Nick said. “Okay, give us the bad news.”
She opened the book and flipped to a page that she’d bookmarked with one of her business cards. She removed it and set it to the side. Nick gazed down at the open pages, and although the text was written in cramped handwriting, the ink faded by the years’ passage, he was relieved to see that it was written in English.
“This account tells the story of a Grimm named Soffya who encountered a Wechselbalg in a small village in Hungary in the late 1800s. Soffya tried to kill the Wechselbalg, but the creature attempted to duplicate her to protect itself. Soffya didn’t die, but she was weakened long enough for the Wechselbalg to get away. The Wechselbalg survived, but it ended up duplicating Soffya’s form.”
“That’s pretty much what happened to you,” Hank said.
Nick had informed both Hank and Juliette of the word he’d found in the Skalengeck graffiti, and what he believed it meant.
“Yeah,” Nick said. “But bad as that is, it doesn’t sound like a ten-plus yet.”
“Here’s where it gets bad,” Juliette said. “The Wechselbalg, acting as if it were a distorted version of a Grimm, became an indiscriminant killer of Wesen. Good, bad, it didn’t matter. And it gets worse. Something else happened to both the Wechselbalg and Soffya. Some sort of weird side effect of their very powerful but very different physiologies coming into contact. They both became carriers of a disease—or at least what the people of the time thought of as a disease.”
Nick tensed. “What sort of disease?” Was he in danger of infecting Juliette and Hank? Should he get away from them? Without thinking about it, he took a step backward.
As if sensing his unease, Juliette said, “Don’t worry. It only affects Wesen.”
Nick let out a relieved breath. If he did have this disease, or whatever it was, it sounded like Juliette and Hank were in the clear.
“What are the symptoms?” Hank asked.
“Wesen are normally able to control their transformations, but this condition caused them to woge uncontrollably, and eventually they became stuck in their Wesen forms, unable to change back. What’s more, they were unable to conceal their Wesen appearance from humans. Anyone could see what they truly were.”
“That’s bad,” Nick said. “Really bad.”
“I can see how not being able to hide their Wesen identities would be a problem,” Hank said, “but couldn’t they have just left the village and gone into hiding? I’m not saying it’s a perfect solution, but it would’ve gotten them away from humans. And more importantly, from the kill-crazy shapeshifter.”
“Some tried,” Juliette said. “But they soon realized they could spread the condition to other Wesen. That meant they couldn’t go anywhere, because if they did, they risked breaking the Wesen’s highest law.”
Nick nodded. “The Wesen’s book of law, the Gesetzbuch Ehrenkodex, states that Wesen must keep their true nature a secret from humanity at all costs.”
“Right,” Juliette said. “And the Wesen Council enforces those laws.”
“With an iron hand,” Nick said. “Or maybe that should be with an iron claw.”
“The Wesen Council feared the Woge Plague, as they called it, would spread out of control if they didn’t act swiftly. So they sent an agent to stop the disease.”
Nick had a sinking feeling he knew where this was leading. “This agent was really an assassin, right? He or she was sent to kill the Wechselbalg and Soffya.”
“Yes,” Juliette said. “As well as all the infected Wesen. And after that, this assassin—who’d also become infected—committed suicide. The incident became known as die Zeit Totzuschlagen: the Killing Time.”
The phrase sent a chill through Nick. “Do you think it’s happened again? Am I carrying this… wh
atever it’s called?”
“Ewig Woge,” Juliette said. “According to the entry, it’s German for ‘perpetual wave.’ And there’s no way to know until Wesen you’ve come into contact with start to show signs of being affected.”
“You were around Monroe and Rosalee,” Hank said. “Bud, too.”
“And Bud was going to visit more Wesen to drop off his wife’s thank-you gifts,” Nick said. “If he had the Ewig Woge, he might’ve given it to all of them.”
He thought of how Monroe, Rosalee, and Bud had all complained about how hot it was in the spice shop, even though none of the humans had been uncomfortable with the temperature.
“They’ve got it,” he said.
Juliette’s eyes widened. “They kept talking about the heat.”
“That’s right,” Hank said. “And Monroe mentioned being bothered by how warm it was when we were trying to find the shapeshifter’s trail. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but …”
Nick took out his phone and called Monroe. As it rang on the other end, he waited impatiently for his friend to answer, but eventually it sent him to voicemail.
“I don’t want you to panic,” Nick said, “but there’s a chance that you and Rosalee were exposed to a disease that makes Wesen lose control of their ability to woge. Sit tight. I’m on my way.”
He disconnected and put his phone away.
“Maybe he and Rosalee are busy researching and he didn’t notice you were calling,” Juliette said.
“Maybe.” But he doubted it. Monroe would’ve kept his phone close by since he and Rosalee were helping him with a case. The fact that he hadn’t answered was more than a little troubling. “Come on. Let’s get back to the spice shop and check on them.”
Juliette grabbed the book that contained the account of the Killing Time, and the three of them left the trailer. Juliette decided to ride with Nick and Hank. She’d come back for her car later.
As they left Forest Hills Storage and pulled onto the street, Nick prayed that another Killing Time wasn’t beginning in Portland, but if the Ewig Woge was already spreading, what could they possibly do to contain it before the Wesen Council got wind of what was happening? And once that occurred, would any of the city’s Wesen survive? And if the disease spread outside the city limits, would it eventually affect Wesen worldwide?