Grimm - The Icy Touch (12 page)

He let out a long slow breath.

“Yeah. I mean—you’re Wesen, you had drug problems, you’ve got your dark side. But it’s not like this. And maybe you should know. All of it...”

“I’ll get us some wine. And you can tell me...”

* * *

It didn’t start with Angelina. But she brought out the predator in me. Big time...

You remember hearing about Angelina. Kind of a tough Blutbad bitch. I used to take her out on my motorcycle— you didn’t know I had a motorcycle, did you Rosie? I used to love that old rebuilt Indian bike so much I could kiss her. She ran like a fine Swiss watch. It was a Chief, with a 105ci PowerPlus, two-into-one stainless steel exhaust, really stripped down and beautiful. Angelina loved it even more than I did, and I gave it to her, eventually, as a goodbye present. Anyway, we’d take it out into the mountains for long rides, her holding onto me behind, and we’d wear those full-head helmets that cover you right up... and we’d woge during the ride, right? Just go all ‘full moon werewolf’ astride this motorcycle, barreling along at sixty miles an hour on a mountain road. But our Blutbaden state was hidden beneath our jackets and helmets and inside our gloves and boots. People would drive right by us in their RVs and not guess those bikers had fangs and fur.

See, the whole ride was different, that way, when you’re woged and riding a motorcycle. It was something really savage. Talk about “Born to be Wild!”

And then come sundown, I’d drive it up some old gravel fire road, way into the woods, park it off road somewhere, and we’d take off our helmets and gloves and boots and just... woge. We’d go looking for dinner. You know, al fresco, and I mean truly fresh.
Raw.
We’d chase down a couple of rabbits, even a small deer, and we’d...
kill.
And feed! And then we’d get crazy, make love all bloody from our prey. Don’t get that
look
, Rosalee, I’m not going to go into it. I don’t miss her at all. Really. No, I really don’t. And you probably had some experience like that as a Fuchsbau.

So anyway—sometimes we’d encounter a bear, or a wildcat, and we’d have to drive it off. Those critters could be pretty territorial. We were hyper aware of the dangers out there and we got even more savage because of that.

One night we’d slept out in the wild, and next morning we woged, drank from a stream, went hunting for breakfast—you know how it can be, out there. You get almost drunk on the smells and the textures and the sheer
life-force
of the forest. You go all primeval—you almost forget words! We pretty much used no spoken language, on these trips. We were just in this almost frenzied state of alertness—and then one time we encountered a cougar. Or he encountered us. The old canine versus feline, wolf versus wildcat thing was in the air. It was hissing and roaring and slashing at us with its claws and we were snarling and growling and snapping back at it. I finally drove him off but it was touch and go there for a while and we were, like,
so
adrenalized, after that. Our blood was up.

And then Angelina ran into the forest ranger.

The ranger was just hiking up a creek, doing his job. I think he wanted to drag out some dead elk supposed to be polluting it, farther upstream. Angelina was a little ways away from me, sniffing for prey—she just blundered into him, while she was still in this hot blood state. She slashed at him and snarled. Later on she claimed he was reaching for a pistol.

I heard her yip like she was in danger, I ran over there with my pulse just
slamming.
And when I saw the two of them facing off, I guess I lost it.

I leaped off a boulder, and attacked the guy.

Maybe I had in mind I’d just knock him down and we’d run off and he wouldn’t know what had hit him, but he’d gotten hold of his gun, and it went off. It didn’t hit me, he was just twitching his finger on the trigger... But I guess it freaked me out.

And I...

Rosie, I ripped out his throat with my teeth.

Let me have a glass of that white wine. No, definitely not the red wine, not right now.

Okay. I bit through his jugular—and he died. You can say, natural mistake. Angelina said as much. I
tried
to think of it that way. But I know if I had come upon the scene when I wasn’t all worked up in full-on woge, if I wasn’t in that
state
, I’d have handled it differently. And the guy would still be alive.

I had a sick physical reaction, afterward, when I spit out the flesh of his neck, spat out his blood, brought myself back to a default human state... and saw what I’d done. I threw up. And then I wanted to run, to just leave him there and try to pretend it hadn’t happened. But I made myself kneel beside him, and go through his pockets, try to get a sense of who he was. Angelina all the time urging me to just turn away, to let it go.

My hands were shaking so much I barely managed to find his wallet. I memorized his name, his address from his ID. And I found something else in his wallet—pictures of his wife and kids. I memorized those faces.

“You’re just beating yourself up, staring at that stuff,” Angelina said.

I didn’t respond to that. I wiped my fingerprints off the ID and pictures, and put them back in the wallet, put the wallet back in his pocket. He had a map of the area in his jacket, and I worked out exactly where his body was on the map. I took the ranger’s cell phone so I could call it in on that. Then we got rid of all trace of our being there, as much as we could. We literally covered our tracks. And we walked back to my bike. All the way there, Angelina was telling me it wasn’t my fault, I’d saved her life and we were in a wild place and a ranger takes his chances in a place like that. She said it was part of his job to risk encountering dangerous wildlife and that’s what we were.

When I didn’t respond to that she said something that really ticked me off.

“He’s just one of them, anyway. A human. He’s not
Wesen.”

“You’re a sick little wolf bitch,” I told her. “We’re
all
humans. We’re just a different branch of the human race.”

She said, “Not all Wesen agree with that.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” I said. “I have to take responsibility for this.”

At this point I started to think maybe I should turn myself in. I wouldn’t have to break the code of silence. I could say I’d been on drugs or something. Like that “Bath Salts” stuff. Tell ’em I tore out his neck in a state of insanity and they could go ahead and incarcerate me.

But there was too much risk that Angelina would be dragged into it. And anyway, I couldn’t face jail or a mental hospital. I’d probably kill myself in there.

So I found another way to live with it.

First I called the rangers, gave them a phony name, and said I was a hiker, and I’d come upon a dead ranger. I gave them an exact description of where he was. The creek was on a map and they had no trouble finding his body. I used his cell phone and then tossed it away. I checked the news that evening, and sure enough they found his body before the scavengers had gotten to it. Authorities figured a cougar had killed the guy. They didn’t look too closely at the wound. What else could they conclude? They don’t know about Blutbaden.

I broke up with Angelina over this. But I gave her the motorcycle. I wanted her to know I didn’t blame her for what happened. I just couldn’t be with her. She was too feral.

I waited, trying to concentrate on rebuilding old timepieces, and then a couple days later the local news guys interviewed the ranger’s colleagues, and people were really,
really
sincere about what a great guy he was. Of course! Naturally I’d hoped that maybe he had a shady past, something I could use to ease my aching guilt. But nope. He just had to be a paragon. A family man. Wife, kids and friends adored him. A terrible tragedy, and so on.

I knew where his family was. The family of Alvin Richard Perkins. I checked on their situation. Not too bad, but not great either. I started to save up money so I could get it to them anonymously, under one pretense or another. I made up a long-lost cousin of Alvin’s to be the donor, someone too far away to see personally. “Cousin Jeff.” And cousin Jeff, wanting to help out dear cousin Alvin’s family, has supplemented their income. Plus, I’ve kept an eye on the kids in my free time, in case they were being bullied or threatened or victimized. I waited to see how I could help them. I go there at night, look the place over. They’re under my protection. They don’t know, of course...

But the biggest thing I did for them, and for myself, was to go into recovery as a Blutbad predator. It wasn’t enough to just go all Wieder, and swear it off. I’d tasted too much blood in my time.

I asked around, found the meetings for predators in recovery, and started going. That was for the Perkins’ family... but it was for me, too. I had to be in command of myself. I had to
master
myself. The wolf in me had to be domesticated. I respect Blutbad nature, Fuchsbau nature—most Wesen have my respect. It’s a wonderful thing, feeling that authentically close to nature. Nothing wrong with our animal natures in themselves but... they have to be kept in their place. Something higher has got to be in charge.

So, I had to make it really decisive, make it a lifestyle change. That’s why I went vegetarian. And I don’t regret it.

But sometimes, the Blutbad side calls to me. The other day, in that tunnel, I had to woge and use my Blutbad side to survive a fight. Nick was there and, like I told you—I bit him. I didn’t mind taking an Icy Touch guy out—these are bad Wesen. But still... the whole thing brought up memories of Alvin Perkins. And his wife, his kids...

Anyway, that’s the story. You’re Fuchsbau, not Blutbad, and Fuchsbau—I mean, a fox will
bite,
but... you aren’t so likely to be a physical danger to people. So I worry that you won’t, you know, feel good about being with me now, Rosalee. I felt like I had to tell you and...

* * *

“Monroe—it’s all right.” Rosalee touched his face, the caress whisper soft.

He took her hand and kissed it.

“It’s all right? Really? Because it doesn’t
have
to be all right, if you need time to decide if I’m this awful guy or not... I mean not that I
am
an awful guy, but you have the right to make up your own mind—”

Rosalee silenced him with a finger on his lips.

“Monroe—I’m an ex drug addict. I’m not likely to be all crazy judgmental about your past. And I knew you were a Blutbad when we got involved. You made a mistake and you learned from it. And you changed the direction of your life. You’re a good man, Monroe.”

He felt as if a hundred pound weight had been lifted from his heart.

“Thanks, Rosie.”

“I think it’s sweet that you go and check on them.”

“Sweet, not creepy?”

“Not at all. You’re, like, their Zorro, watching over them from the shadows. You go there a lot?”

“Just now and then. Sometimes I get a feeling I should look in on them, see how the kids look. They’re doing pretty good. I just wish... their dad was there.”

She leaned back and frowned.

“Monroe—you said you went Blutbad to help Nick?”

“Yeah. Not the first time.”

“But—you said someone was
killed?
Did you have to attack someone
as a Wesen?
I mean...”

“It wasn’t quite like that. I was wrestling around with the guy, trying to get the gun from him, and he squeezed the trigger. He ended up shooting himself.”

“Oh. So you didn’t, um... you didn’t
bite
the guy who was killed. Like you bit the ranger.”

“No. But... I bit Nick!”

“You didn’t really hurt him.”

“That’s true. I didn’t.” He shrugged. “He didn’t hold it against me. The bite hardly broke the skin.”

“Hardly? It’s a good thing that old werewolf stuff about spreading it to regular people isn’t true...”

“Hey, Blutbaden aren’t werewolves anyway. We’re probably the source of the legend, and sometimes we
talk
about ‘going werewolf’ but that’s not a literal thing...”

“I know, but...” She kissed him lightly. “...you’re still my wolfy guy.”

He took her in his arms.

“And you’re my foxy lady.”

Albert Denswoz walked into the meeting with other West Coast bosses of
La Caresse Glacée
with his mind made up.

The Icy Touch would step up its
Vernichten
—the assassinations he’d long contemplated would go ahead...

Federico Malo was already seated and waiting patiently, a dark-eyed young man from Los Angeles, in a tautly tailored black-and-white Italian suit. He had long curly black hair and a neatly trimmed black mustache—a Hundjager and eager to follow Denswoz into Hell.
Or so he’d like me to think.

Beside him was Danielle Lanive, a Hexenbiest who appeared to be about thirty years old, thanks to Hexenbiest potions, but was probably closer to fifty. She was a queenly, tanned woman in a tight white dress; she had long golden hair tied back into one immaculate braid. She was French but with German antecedents, like him— and she was totally loyal to him. There was a physical intimacy between them, when they were alone; they were careful not to show it around the others.

Marque Garnick sat at the other end of the oblong table in the office conference room, tapping his fingers on the oak finish with irritation. Garnick was an ambitious
Steinadler Wesen
in his early forties. The eagle-like Steinadler were proud, magisterial creatures, to the point where some felt themselves above other Wesen. Garnick didn’t like to be kept waiting for a mere Hundjager. So Denswoz made sure to keep him waiting a little more. He paused deliberately to look out the big window of the conference room.

Below the rented office suite, just on the other side of a parking garage, Denswoz could see a tugboat pushing a barge up the Willamette River. He took his time admiring the view.

As a Hundjager, Albert Denswoz thought of
La Caresse Glacée
as his “extended pack,” and he was very conscious of pack leadership. A pack leader frequently had to let the others know who was boss...