Grimm: The Chopping Block

by John Passarella

  Nick picked up almost immediately and confirmed they’d lost the tail, but they were tracking Hank’s cell phone GPS and expected to arrive momentarily.

  “Hurry, Nick,” Monroe said. “There’s a Hundjager here and he plans to kill everyone.”

  Monroe sprinted across the woods, backtracking the path he’d taken with Decker until he reached the unpaved driveway. As he looked toward the county road, the Land Cruiser turned into the driveway, headlights off as it rumbled across dirt and gravel, halting inches from the white van’s rear bumper.

  Nick and Renard jumped out of the SUV, guns drawn, and followed Monroe as he raced toward the expansive log cabin home.

  In the distance, they heard a bell ring three times.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The man called Chef by the guests in the cannibal house wheeled his serving tray lined with carving knives beside Hank’s X-shaped table. He raised his hands and the background music faded. Immediately, all conversations stopped and everyone gave him their undivided attention.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Chef said. “After twenty-five years of anticipation and planning, the time has finally come for us to conclude our festival with the Straffe Kette Abendessen.”

  Those holding wine or champagne glasses raised them. Others clapped or cheered. A few chanted, “Tight chain supper!”

  “Wait!” Hank said. “The other one—your host—he said to wait.”

  “These people have waited long enough!”

  Cheering erupted. Hank saw one elderly man, hands clasped together under his chin, actually lick his lips.

  Chef picked up a knife with a serrated six-inch blade, grabbed the bottom of Hank’s V-neck sweater and sawed upward to the collar. He repeated the cutting motion on Hank’s shirt, mostly to rip the buttons free, and exposed Hank’s chest.

  More than a dozen cannibal Wesen edged closer.

  A wide-eyed man, who might have been a stockbroker or a bank manager, leaned toward Hank’s torso and said, “Should I use a knife or”—he woged into Geier form, holding claws up for Hank to see—“or simply rip a hunk of flesh off with my bare hands? The latter, I think. It’s a night for the old ways.”

  “Get away from me, you sick bastard!” Hank gasped.

  The man’s clawed hand darted out and raked a narrow furrow in Hank’s chest, then he brought the tip of the claw up to his tongue and tasted the blood. Hank thrashed, snapping his chains back and forth, but with no real hope of freeing himself. If I get my hands on any of these Wesen psychos, I’ll rip off their damn fingers and shove them down their throats!

  Chef raised an arm, blocking the man from a second strike.

  “Now, now, sir! I haven’t given the rule or the word yet.”

  “The only rule is, no individual feeding frenzies,” Chef said. “When you get a hunk of meat or fistful of organ, you step back and allow the next guest his or her turn. That way everyone gets a taste before we reach loose chain. Understood?”

  They all nodded, but their eyes stared hungrily at Hank, at the line of fresh blood trickling down his side.

  Hank had his doubts that they would restrain themselves, but he also understood that “loose chain” meant the moment he went into shock from pain or blood loss—or died.

  Chef held up one hand.

  “For those who prefer blade to the claw, I’ve laid out an assortment of carving knives. Please take one and let me know if we need more.”

  Several people near the serving cart hefted knives, while those on the other side of Hank’s table held out their hands and waited for someone to pass them a blade, handle first.

  “After the triple-bell sounds, you may begin,” Chef instructed. “Health and circumstances permitting, I hope to see you all again in twenty-five years!”

  With that, he lowered his hand—

  —and the familiar bell rang, three times.

  Despite Chef’s admonition, a feeding frenzy began. Men in tuxedos and women in evening gowns rushed forward, woging en masse, pushing and shoving indiscriminately to get the first hunks of Hank’s living flesh.

  A gunshot rang out.

  Hank saw the carving knife slip from Chef’s hands before he saw the bullet hole in the center of the man’s forehead. Blood trickled down either side of Chef’s nose before he toppled over. The cannibals recoiled from the unexpected death among their own ranks. Several shouted in fear.

  Whipping his head around, Hank located the shooter: a man dressed in black, an automatic handgun raised in each hand. A moment later, the man fired both guns, dropping one cannibal after another. Before the mass of Wesen around Hank could disentangle themselves and scatter, the man-in-black’s shots fell with deadly accuracy, reminding Hank of the old expression, shooting fish in a barrel.

  Next Hank heard a crash from farther away and guessed that someone had kicked in the front door.

  “Portland Police!” Nick’s familiar voice shouted into the panicked crowd. “You’re all under arrest.”

  * * *

  Ellen Crawford flinched at the sound of gunfire. For a split second, she thought Widmark had shot Kurt. But she recovered her wits quicker than Widmark or the Dickfellig who throttled her. They hadn’t expected gunfire to interrupt their festivities.

  She swung her right arm backward, with all the force she could muster, and drove the tip of the steak knife into the right eye of the butcher. Releasing her, he stumbled backward through the open doorway, into the hall.

  Another gunshot rang out, this one much too close.

  Her gaze flicked toward Widmark and saw the savage expression on his face, before she looked to the left—and screamed. Kurt staggered backward, crashing into the wall before sliding down into an awkward sitting position. A look of agony twisted his face as he peered down at his hands, clutching his stomach, covered in blood.

  * * *

  As soon as Nick raised his foot to kick in the front door, he heard gunshots from inside. Monroe had told him about the Hundjager armed with two automatics who’d vowed to kill everyone in the house. And Hank was in the house, along with an unknown number of abductees. With the tight chain supper and a murderous Hundjager on the loose, they’d run out of time for subtlety.

  Nick burst through the doorway first, gun raised in a Weaver stance. Renard followed and shifted to the right, Monroe to the left. Before Nick could register the layout of the rooms on the first floor, the members of the Silver Plate Society rushed toward him, most of them wielding knives of various sizes, eyes wide with panic.

  “Freeze!” Nick shouted, his finger tightening on the trigger.

  “Nick!” Hank’s voice called, from another room.

  “Stop them,” Nick yelled over his shoulder. “I’ll get Hank.”

  An old man in a rumpled midnight-blue tuxedo lashed out at Nick with a carving knife as long as his forearm. Nick dodged the blow and clubbed the man on the back of the head with the butt of his gun.

  Captain Renard shoved a woman in a glittery silver gown carrying a thin silver knife back into a chair, knocking the chair over, and her with it.

  Monroe woged and slammed a young man with a knife into a hutch, smashing the glass doors.

  “Hank!” Nick called.

  “In here,” came Hank’s reply.

  Nick veered down the hall to a main dining area, and registered the bizarre tableau in an instant.

  A woged, ambidextrous Hundjager shot an old woman cowering in a corner, hitting her in the back of the skull. When the gun’s slide locked open, signaling an empty magazine, he tossed the gun away.

  Nearby, Hank lay spread-eagled on an X-shaped wooden table, chained at wrists and ankles, a locked iron band wrapped around his waist. His shirt had been ripped open and blood ran down the side of his bare chest.

  Nick stood in the doorway, but the room had another door in back, through which some of the guests had slipped out, unnoticed by the Hundjager. But he spotted Nick, pivoted, and fired with his other automatic.

  Nick had
jumped back at his turning motion and felt bits of drywall spray his face as the bullet ricocheted past his head.

  Abruptly, the Hundjager lowered the barrel of the gun to Hank’s face—

  From upstairs, they heard a woman scream—

  Startled, the Hundjager looked up—and retreated to the rear archway, shooting defensively at Nick to provide his own cover fire.

  Crouching low, Nick crossed into the room and fired two shots at the Wesen. But he couldn’t risk pursuit, as that would leave Hank chained and helpless.

  “Glad you made it before they served the entrée,” Hank said. “Now get me the hell off this cannibal table.”

  Nick glanced around the room. “Keys?”

  “The hell should I know?” Hank asked. “Improvise!”

  Nick located the padlocks on the iron rings securing his partner to the table. He chose the safest angles and fired bullets into each lock, then wrenched the locks from the rings. The final lock held the iron waist band in place. Hank still had manacles and chains on wrists and ankles, but they were free of the table.

  After helping Hank to a standing position, favoring his casted foot, Nick retuned his shield and sidearm.

  “Prisoners in the basement,” Hank said. “They plan to kill them all.”

  “Can you manage?” Nick asked. “I have your crutches in the car.”

  “No time,” Hank said. “Go! I’ll guard the basement door. Prisoners’ keys should be in the butcher’s room.”

  * * *

  Despite Dominik Koertig’s insistence that she stay clear of the house, Ellen Crawford had come to the Silver Plate Society feast. Worse, she’d brought her son with her. Between her and the police raid—led by a Grimm, no less—the operation had spiraled out of control. But all was not lost. Simply a few more tasks on his to-do list.

  While the police were preoccupied with the surviving banquet attendees, he ascended the stairs two at a time and sprinted along the upstairs hallway. The butcher, a hulking Dickfellig in a bloodstained apron, lay in the hallway, moaning, fingers wrapped around a knife protruding from his right eyeball. A fresh bloodstain had spread across his abdomen. At the moment, he represented no physical threat.

  Koertig stood over him, aimed his automatic at the good eye, which widened at the sight of the gun barrel, then disappeared when he fired. The butcher’s head jolted backward with the bullet’s impact, bits of scalp, skull and brain matter rupturing outward on the hardwood floor.

  Ejecting the spent magazine, Koertig pulled a fresh one from his pocket and slammed it home, pressing the slide release to cock the gun.

  Turning on his heel, he entered the upstairs office and looked left to right. Kurt Crawford lay unconscious, propped up against the wall. Ellen Crawford, her face drawn and pale, mascara-streaked with spent tears, had one arm wrapped around him. Her chest was covered with her own blood, which had begun to pool around her. A broken desk lamp sat on the floor beside her, also streaked with blood. Slumped in his desk chair, Widmark stared at him, stunned, blood gushing from a scalp wound that seemed to have been inflicted by Ellen with the broken desk lamp.

  “You’ll kill them all?” Ellen asked, her voice strained. “As promised?”

  “Everyone,” he said, walking toward Widmark. “This ends here, Host.”

  “Who—?”

  Koertig raised his weapon and fired at the old man’s forehead in one smooth motion. The chair rocked backward then came forward, and Widmark’s body fell face first on the desk, exposing the ruin of the back of his skull.

  Koertig walked across the room and stood over the Crawfords.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Ellen. “Everyone.”

  He fired two more kill shots.

  From the ground floor, he heard shouting, screams, gunshots and general pandemonium. He doubted the society members would allow the police to arrest them, part of their rumored “death before disclosure” oath. But he would make sure that option was denied them.

  He left the office and stealthily descended the stairs. He had to attack swiftly, without warning, for maximum effect. As soon as the dinner guests came into view, he opened fire, taking headshots to conserve time and ammunition.

  * * *

  With Hank waiting in the kitchen at the top of the stairs, Nick descended to the basement and found a locked metal door at one end of a hallway, an open slaughtering room door at the other end.

  As he approached the open doorway he heard faint sounds: the clink and clank of metal. Pausing at the threshold, he took in the horrifying scene: an open walk-in cooler with a headless and gutted human corpse hanging from a hook, a winch rigged to a gambrel in the center of the room, trails of dried blood leading to a drain in the corner. But he couldn’t see the source of the metallic rustling.

  Gun high, braced with the palm of his left hand, he moved forward, sweeping the sights of his gun right—nothing!—to left—a large man in a white apron, his back to Nick, standing at a butchering table covered with severed body parts, an assortment of carving knives, and a meat saw. The Wesen used the flat side of a meat cleaver to sweep chunks of human flesh and bone into a large bucket he’d positioned beside the table.

  Getting rid of evidence? The thought flashed through Nick’s mind.

  “Freeze! Portland Police!” he shouted.

  The man froze, as instructed, still clutching the cleaver.

  “You are not permitted here!” he said.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Nick said. “Party’s over. Drop the cleaver, butcher!”

  “I am Sous-Chef,” the man said indignantly. “Not Butcher!”

  “I don’t care,” Nick said. “Drop the damn—!”

  The sous-chef moved fast for a big man. Instead of dropping the cleaver, he flung it backward, spinning sideways with deadly accuracy, right at Nick’s head.

  With no time to duck, Nick deflected the heavy blade with his raised gun. The cleaver ricocheted off the open walk-in cooler door, but Nick lost his grip on the Glock.

  Before he could track it, the Wesen—woged to reveal his Schakal nature—charged him, wood-handled meat hooks gripped in both hands.

  Nick unleashed a waist-high kick, driving the heel of his shoe into the man’s solar plexus. The Schakal’s forward momentum increased the severity of the blow. He staggered backward, wheezing.

  “First, I kill you, Grimm,” he snarled hoarsely. “Then the livestock.”

  Nick darted to the side, scooped up the cleaver and faced his opponent in a wary stance, balanced to duck either way.

  He didn’t have long to wait.

  The Schakal bull-rushed him again, alternating overhand swings with the meat hooks. Dodging the blows, Nick ducked right, then leaned to the left. A whistling meat hook snagged his jacket. Nick smashed the butt of the cleaver into the back of the Schakal’s elbow.

  Bone cracked and the Schakal roared, doubled over in pain. With the cleaver in a double-handed grip, Nick swung the blade as if it were an axe and he was chopping wood. His arms met momentary resistance at the Wesen’s spine, but the stroke was powerful and the sharp blade burst free with a spray of blood.

  The Schakal’s head spiraled down to the floor and rolled to a stop beside the winch. The lifeless body toppled over—the neck spurting blood for several seconds—and sprawled awkwardly beneath the gambrel.

  “Nick?” Hank called from the top of the stairs.

  “Everything’s under control!” Nick yelled back, breathing heavily.

  Circling around the mess, Nick located an old iron key ring hanging from a peg on the wall.

  Quickly, he unlocked the door at the far end of the hallway. There he found nine survivors—five men and four women—all chained to the walls, in various states of exhaustion. Upon his arrival, several cowered in fear.

  “Don’t—please don’t kill us,” pleaded one woman, favoring her ribs. “Please!”

  “It’s okay,” Nick said. “I’m Detective Nick Burkhardt. My partner, Hank Griffin, sent me to rescue yo
u.”

  “Is he—is Hank still alive?” the woman asked, incredulous.

  “Yes,” Nick said, offering a reassuring smile. “And you’re all getting out of here.”

  He took the key ring and, one by one, unlocked their collars and chains.

  * * *

  Monroe and Renard had succeeded in herding the formally dressed cannibals, along with a few in casual clothes, away from the exits. Most sat on or near sofas and chairs, or leaned against tables.

  Renard had shot and killed one murderous Geier, armed with a machete, with two rounds in the chest. That got the attention of the others, who dropped their weapons and seemed resigned to their arrest.

  One indignant man spoke of his high-priced attorney on retainer, and proceeded to convince the others that the man could legally extricate them all from “this unfortunate situation.” Monroe wondered if that was legalese for a mass-murdering cannibal gathering. In the distance, he heard approaching police sirens. Renard had called for back up as soon as they’d gotten the crowd under control.

  Renard heard something and called, “Nick!”

  At that moment, the Hundjager opened fire, and the society members panicked anew. One after another, they dropped, most with instantly fatal head wounds. Flipping a banquet table on its side, Renard ducked behind it and returned fire, but he had a bad angle.

  Monroe, on the far side of a coatrack, stood beyond the Hundjager’s line of sight as the man stepped off the bottom of the staircase, killing everyone in his path. He strode into the room to take out a woman crouching beside a coffee table, then an old man cowering behind a gold settee with a fleur-de-lis pattern.

  Monroe woged and charged the Hundjager.

  He felt a spike of panic as the man’s arm swung around, the barrel tracking toward him in the blink of an eye. Diving under the sweep of that arm, Monroe knocked down the Hundjager.

  They both struck the hardwood floor and rolled in opposite directions. Monroe sprang to his feet, but the Hundjager beat him to it and aimed the automatic at his chest. The second time that had happened to him in the last ten minutes.