Grimm - The Icy Touch (11 page)

“Shoplifting jewelry.” The man laughed softly at his own foolishness. “Trying to impress a girl when I didn’t have any money. Picked expensive jewelry—felony stuff.” He sighed. “Might have to do some time in the state pen.”

Doug nodded sympathetically. “Tough luck. You missed dinner, too.”

“Oh, they fed me when I was being processed. Hey— that a deck of cards? You wanta play some hearts?”

“Where? I didn’t see any cards. I’d be playing solitaire...”

“On the lower bunk there...”

Doug jumped down off the top bunk, turned to look, saw there was nothing on the lower bunk...

And then he smelled it. Reptile musk.

Snake.

He’d detected something earlier—but all the anxiety had blurred his senses. This guy was Wesen. This guy was...

Doug felt the damp, teasing probe of a forked tongue on the back of his neck.

He snarled, hands balling into fists, he started to woge—but rough scaly fingers jerked his prison shirt up from behind and, before he could turn, fangs sank into the meat of his back, between his shoulder blades.

He shrieked and thrashed, feeling the burning venom pump into him. His back arched, going rigid of its own accord, as if his flesh was itself revolted at the depraved contact.

As the fangs let go and as the room went all murky red, Doug managed to half turn before he fell, so that he tipped onto his back. So rigid his body was like a statue that had lost its base. He struck the floor, but hardly felt it, he was so suffused with pain—and then the pain melted into something even more petrifying: the numbness that was spreading out from the bite.

Venom was invading his nervous system, its icy touch closing over his heart, tightening, squeezing.

Stopping it in mid beat.

He just had time to see the
Königschlange
in full woge as it stood triumphantly over him. Its cobra’s hood spread out, the diamond patterning of its scales seeming to pulse with malevolence; its scaly hide, the color of old Greek coins, rippling as it shifted; its fangs still dripping venom; its slitted yellow eyes gleaming with sick delight. Where before he’d resembled a pharaoh, now the creature looked like some ancient snake god.

And the god’s forked tongue darted out from its grinning mouth.

“Ssssuffer and despair,”
the creature hissed.
“Ssssshake and sssssuffer and die, traitoroussss Drang-Zorrrrrnnn...”

Then it began to transform back into the form of a normal man.

Doug didn’t see the transformation finish—darkness fell like a blizzard of jet black snow, drawing a funereal curtain over the scene. But he was still able to hear for a few moments more.

“Guard!” shouted the Wesen who called himself Colney. “I think this man’s had a heart attack! We need help in here! Hey! This man’s having a heart attack, for real! Hey!”

It didn’t matter what lies the cobra Wesen told. Not now. They both knew that Doug would be dead long before medical help came.

The pain receded into an endless night. It was a relief to let the darkness enfold him...

* * *

Nick pushed through the door of Rosalee’s shop in time to hear her say, “Monroe, calm down! You can
see
I’m okay.”

She and Monroe were standing by the front counter, Rosalee smiling and patting his cheek. She did a little pirouette, whimsically showing herself off.

“See? I’m fine. New dress even,” she said smiling.

“I...yeah,” Monroe said, looking at her shapely form in the clinging gray silk dress. “I like the dress. Very, very... nice. It’s like... really
tight.
Not that, uh,
that
is all I like about it. I mean, it’s a great dress. It’s got real... Sorry. I’m not a fashion guy.” He nodded at Nick, then looked back at her more seriously. “But... Rosalee...”

“But what?” she asked.

Nick leant on the counter, looking at a twisted, blackened homunculus in a half-gallon jar. What
was
that, dried dwarf fetus?

Monroe went on, all in a rush, “But all I can think about is—I don’t think you’re safe here alone right now.”

“Oh you are so full of it. You get so— Nick, tell him!”

Nick smiled at Rosalee.

“She’s not in any imminent danger that we know of, Monroe,” he said.

Monroe snorted. “‘Not in
imminent
danger.’ Oh, hey, dude that’s
so
reassuring.” Monroe turned to Rosalee and took her in his arms. “Rosie, you don’t understand. If you knew what was going on... Stuff that would make your head explode... Well, my head hasn’t literally
exploded
, no, but—”

“It’s
all right,
baby,” she said softly, returning his embrace. He nuzzled her neck.

Nick suddenly felt a bit awkward.

“I should go,” he said. “I just wanted to suggest— maybe you should go see a relative, or something, Rosalee. Just for a few days. Take a trip, till this Icy Touch thing is over. They’ve been forcibly recruiting Wesen. Monroe can call you when it’s all clear...”

“What?” She drew back from Monroe. “No! I just got back from a trip, I’m behind on the bills; I’ve got work to do! No one’s going to want me to join a gang! Do I look like a gangbanger?”

Nick pretended to look her over doubtfully.

“Um... I guess not.” To Nick she looked like sweet-faced, brown-haired Rosalee Calvert, in a new blue silk dress. Nick had seen her fox-faced Fuchsbau form—and it was almost as sweet as her human form. “But—they make a point of recruiting a certain number of people you wouldn’t expect in a crime cartel. And you’d be valuable.” He nodded toward the crowded shelves of her herbal apothecary shop. “Those skills—your herbal knowledge, your Wesen lore, all the supplies. This shop used to be... kind of shady. Before your time here, I mean. You know? Wesen working the dark side of the street are going to remember that.”

“Oh, look, no one’s going to make me do anything I don’t want to...”

“Rosie, honey,” Monroe said, taking her hand. “They have a policy about people who don’t want to play along. They make an example of them.”

“Well... stay here with me, watch my back, then, Monroe.”

“Hey—I’ll camp outside the door if I have to.”

“That won’t be necessary. I
might
just find a spot for you with me...”

Nick’s phone buzzed.

“Your pants are ringing again,” Rosalee said. “You ought to get that looked at, Nick.”

He laughed and fished the phone out of his pocket.

“Burkhardt.”

“Nick...” Hank’s voice said. “That Drang-zorn of yours?”

“Yeah?” Nick felt a sinking sensation.

“He’s dead. Looks kinda like a heart attack but... he had some marks on his back.”

“Two marks, about fang distance apart?”

“You guessed it.”

“Shit. Königschlange.”

“Don’t speak German to me, man. Just—get over here.”

* * *

“I seem to be spending a lot of time in morgues lately,” Renard remarked.

Renard, Hank and Nick were standing around the body of the Drang-zorn. The morgue was cold, and smelt medical. The odor of the place, a mix of chemicals and decay, always made Nick’s stomach twist.

He was bent over the body, a ruler in his hand, measuring the distance between the puckered bite marks on Doug Zelinski’s back.

“Just right for a Königschlange,” he said after a moment, shaking his head. He stepped back, and stared at the dead body lying face down on the steel table. “Juliette says she likes pretty much all animals. Königschlange— even she’d find that one a challenge.”

“Are
they animals?” Hank asked. “They’re people, who can shift to...” He glanced at the door to make sure it was closed, and no one was listening. “...to become more... animal.”

“Yes and no,” Renard said. “But then ordinary human beings are animals—they’re primates. Related to apes. Human beings are animals and something higher than animals all at once.”

Nick set the ruler down on the steel table.

“Lot of people turn into beasts without having to be Wesen. Serial killers. The worst kind of drug dealers—all the basest of animals.”

“True,” Hank admitted, frowning at the body. After a moment he asked, “The transformational thing Wesen do, the woge thing... Is it magic? Or evolution?”

“I don’t know,” Renard said. “Maybe it’s mutational, but... no one’s done any real thorough biological study of Wesen that I know of.” He looked at Nick, his eyes going flinty. “Not even Grimm. They mostly research how to kill them.”

Nick noticed that Renard never spoke of Wesen as “we” or “us,” though he was part Wesen himself. But maybe that was only because he happened to be talking to a Grimm. Renard was stuck with Nick, for now—but it seemed he could never fully trust him.
Well
, Nick figured,
that feeling is pretty mutual
.

“How did the Königschlange get into the cell?” he asked. “Who booked him in? We gave an order that nobody but Zelinski was supposed to be in that cell.”

Renard rubbed his chin. “Technically, it was Brian Murphy. But Murphy says he
can’t remember
who gave him the paperwork to book the Königschlange into the cell...”

“He can’t remember?” Hank said, in disbelief. “Murphy’s not that flaky.”

“Hexenbiest, maybe, controlling him while the assassin was booked in,” Nick said. “Possibly using
Seele Dichtungsmittel
—so Murphy just goes with it.”

“Hexenbiest?” Renard looked coldly at him for a moment, then he conceded. “Maybe. Murphy booked Colney out, too—but he doesn’t remember that either. And Colney’s nowhere to be found now.”

“Colney’s the cobra guy?” Hank asked.

Nick nodded. “That’s what he called himself when they booked him in.” He felt bad about Zelinski’s death. He’d thought the Drang-zorn would be safe in custody until something else had been worked out.

Don’t assume.

“So—any documentation on this Colney? Fingerprints in the cell, rap sheet,
anything
?” he asked.

Renard shook his head.

“He was careful. And Murphy’s got nothing. Not one sheet of paper. Being pretty defensive about it. Claiming someone broke into his files. Maybe he thought he saw paperwork that wasn’t there.”

Hank looked at Renard, eyebrows raised.

“This
Seele Dichtungsmittel
—it can do that?”

“It could.”

“Not a lot they couldn’t get away with, using that stuff...”

“What bothers me most,” Nick said, turning away from the corpse, “is how many different kinds of dangerous Wesen are turning up in this town. It’s like a convention of the nastiest barrel scrapings of Wesen-kind.”

“We done here?” Renard asked.

The detectives nodded, and the three of them left the corpse, heading gratefully into the warmth of the corridor.

“What’s their next move?” Hank wondered, as they walked.

“We need prisoners to interrogate,” Renard replied, glancing down the hall. Sergeant Wu was coming toward them. In an undertone, Renard added, “If we have to use
Seele Dichtungsmittel
ourselves... so be it.”

Monroe lay shirtless on Rosalee’s bed, as she fussed over him. He enjoyed the attention as she changed the dressing on the Blutbad bitemarks. She’d put the bandage on a few hours earlier, after they’d gotten undressed—he’d hardly noticed the wound on his shoulder, hadn’t even mentioned it to Nick after the fight in the tunnel, or done much for it besides spraying a little Bactine on it. He’d been thinking more about how he’d bitten Nick’s hand while his friend was trying to help him.

“You’re lucky this didn’t get infected,” Rosalee said, tightening the bandage. “Ignoring it like that.”

“I’m lucky I didn’t give
Nick
an infection. You know I bit him?”

“What? On
purpose
?”

“No, of course not. His hand got in the way when I was fighting the other guy. Nick was just trying to help me. Wasn’t that bad a bite but... it worries me that I’d bite him at all. I was woged, feeling about as Blutbad as I ever have, and there was a hand in front of my choppers and maybe I thought it was the creep I was fighting—or maybe I didn’t care.”

“I don’t believe you wouldn’t care, Monroe. Not you.”

He smiled sadly. “You haven’t known me very long.”

“If you feel bad about nipping Nick, apologize to him.”

“I did. But see—it’s not just that, Rosie. I’m worried that being involved in all this stuff with Nick, advising him, getting caught up in investigations... that it might be making me, I don’t know... prone to
relapse.
To falling back into what I was. It’s like—you ever feel like something’s coming to a head in your life, kind of bubbling up in the back of your mind, and you’re seeing it everywhere? Maybe stuff you haven’t dealt with completely?”

She patted his belly. “Yep. Been there. Felt that.”

“That’s how it is now. The other day I was on my porch, checking out the smells from the woods. It was like the forest was calling to me.”

She smiled. “It
was.
It calls to me all the time.”

“But this was like it was saying,
Let go. Go full on Blutbad! Let the wolf out and let the chips fall where they may.
And I was tempted.”

“So... head for the mountains, take off your shoes and have a good run.”

He shook his head.

“You’re Fuchsbau. You can do that.” He sighed with envy. “You can go all fox-woman out there. Me...”

A thought struck him.

“Maybe if you were with me. You know, like a chaperone! I can’t go by myself or with another Blutbad. You Fuchsbau—you might nip a human being. But you wouldn’t...
kill
one.”

She seemed to consider.

“Well... no,” she said. “It’s not very likely we’d kill anyone, as Fuchsbau. But I wouldn’t say it’s never happened.”

“If it did, it was probably the human in the Fuchsbau, not the fox that did the killing. But with Blutbaden—in the old days we preyed on anything that came along. Including people. Most of us know we can’t do that anymore. So, people like me, and Smitty, we work the Twelve Steps, we work on our recovery.”

She looked at him expectantly.

“Seems like there’s been something you’ve wanted to tell me for a while, Monroe...”