Grimm - The Icy Touch (22 page)

Hank got to his knees, sucking his breath through his teeth, pain shooting up his side. Seemed like he had a cracked rib.

He struggled to his feet, pushing the pain aside, and moved to the corner just in time to see the Mordstier’s bare feet climbing the ladder into the ceiling... The Wesen had shifted back into human form.

“Stop!” Hank shouted, limping closer. But the Wesen climbed out of sight—and before Hank could reach it, the Mordstier was drawing the ladder up after him. Then the light from above abruptly cut off, and Hank was in deep darkness.

Cursing, he got the flashlight out, and directed it upward to the hole in the ceiling.

A wooden trapdoor blocked the exit.

He turned away, and sloshed back to the other tunnel. Remembering that girl’s footprint in the mud...

“Maybe you’re the one who should be in a hospital bed,” Nick said, as he and Hank walked down the hallway to Monroe’s hospital room.

Nick had seen Hank grimacing with pain.

“Rib’s just cracked. Not a big deal.”

“Hurts like a bitch though, I bet,” Nick said, remembering some of his own injuries.

“You win the bet.”

“So, no prisoners to interrogate.”

“Nope. One shot dead, the others got out. I guess four in all. I had a bullfight with one. And the matador lost.”

“The girls been... used by customers?”

“Nah, we got there soon enough. But they weren’t much help. Too out of it on that stuff. But we lost the Perkins girl... The other girls said two of these creeps took Lily into the tunnel.”

“Why her?”

“Seems like one of the bigshots came around and took an interest in her.”

“Crap. Not going to be good, telling Monroe we lost her.”

“We’ll get her back.”

But Hank didn’t sound convinced.

Nick knocked on the door to Monroe’s hospital room.

Rosalee answered. “Nick! And Hank.” She didn’t seem terribly happy to see them. She looked at Hank. “You okay?”

“Just a little bruised. Maybe from having to spend a lot of money on dry-cleaning. How’s Monroe?”

“See for yourself.”

She opened the door for them, and they found Monroe fully dressed, muttering to himself as he packed a small bag.

“Should I take these hospital slippers with me or not?” he said.

“Hey Monroe,” Nick called.

He glanced up at them. “There they are. And I don’t see good news in those eyes. Please tell me I’m wrong.”

Hank shook his head. “It’s bad—with some good. Bad news is, Icy Touch still has Lily Perkins. Good news is—we got the others out. And we rolled up that operation, at least for now. Seized a lot of that Seele stuff.”

Monroe closed his eyes. “She wasn’t there?”

“She was the only one they took with them when they got out,” Nick said. “Somebody in the organization took a fancy to her. Maybe that’ll keep her safe for a while.”

“I’d guess that’s not much consolation for her mom.”

“No. It isn’t. I’ll find her, Monroe,” Nick said.

“We’ll both find her,” Monroe said.

Nick looked at him questioningly. “You look better, but...”

“Nick?” Monroe zipped his bag shut and turned him a look that fairly throbbed with emotion. “We. The term is
we.
As in you and me, Detective Burkhardt.”

Hank shrugged. “Maybe working outside official channels, you guys can do more than the PD can...”

* * *

Burkhardt... .

Kessler.

There it was. The Icy Touch’s documentation on Grimms made the lineage quite clear...

Denswoz leaned back in the leather chair of his den in the Red Lodge, and looked at the family tree for the descendants of Johann Kessler. There were some question marks on the breakdown but what he needed was there. Kelly Kessler had married a Grimm named Burkhardt. Her whereabouts were unknown. But it was she who’d taken the Coins of Zakynthos to other Grimm for safekeeping.

Denswoz grinned at that. “A safe deposit box is really not terribly safe, Mrs. Burkhardt,” he murmured.

It was late, and he had been tired, thinking of going to bed. But not now. Now he was energized. He’d been coached by his father about the ancestral vendetta against the descendants of Johann Kessler.

More than once they’d struck down members of the Kessler family. One, he remembered, had been fed to a Spinnetod in London. And then there was another encounter, in the following century. Berlin...

He scowled, remembering that story. Only a partial victory...

So. Kelly Kessler was the mother of Nick Burkhardt, the most troublesome detective in the Portland Police Department. Not only was he related to the Kesslers— Detective Burkhardt was a Grimm.

He heard footsteps outside the door; a soft, familiar knock.

“Come in.”

Malo opened the door and entered pushing a disheveled, dazed teenage girl ahead of him. The teenager’s wrists were cuffed behind her; there was duct tape over her mouth. She looked around the book-lined den, her reddened eyes finally resting on the ornately barred windows.

“You wanted to see the Perkins kid?” Malo asked.

“Yes. Is she the only one we got out?”

“Afraid so. And Grogan was lucky to get her out. Just her and a couple of our sentries.”

“Burkhardt was in on the raid?”

“Nope, Burkhardt’s on suspension. It was his partner. The black dude, Griffin. And he was the one asked about the girl, too, when they detained Hergden.”

Denswoz nodded thoughtfully. First had come indications that a Wesen connected to Burkhardt had a special interest in this girl. Then Hank Griffin had asked Hergden about the Perkins girl
specifically.
If she was of interest to Burkhardt and Griffin, she was a valuable lure. Denswoz was glad he’d told Grogan to make absolutely sure she was kept out of police hands.

“Keep her under lock and key, downstairs,” he told Malo. “Remove the gag and the cuffs, feed her. See she’s comfortable but quiet. She’ll prove valuable yet...”

He looked the girl over.
Seele Dichtungsmittel
had glazed her eyes—but there was a glint of defiance there, too.

She was a strong one. And that was good.

When it came time to kill and eat her, that would make it all the more delectable.

About four in the morning, Renard gave up trying to sleep. The greatest challenge of his career was out there in the world, just beyond his reach; The Icy Touch was humming in the darkness like some sinister dynamo, and he didn’t have a handle on it. Sleep wasn’t an option tonight.

He got out of bed, put on his bathrobe, went to the kitchen. When he turned on the lights the room seemed too bright to his tired eyes, at first. Beyond the window, a distant siren sang mournfully. He might get a call about whatever that was about...

He unlocked the drawer that contained his Hexenbiest essences. He wasn’t as up on Hexenbiest “potioning” as most. As he took out the relevant bottles and small jars of rare herbs and dried fungi, he thought wryly that maybe he had half the expertise because he was only half Hexenbiest.

But was there such a thing, really, as half a Hexenbiest? When he woged, he was full Hexenbiest. And the potions seemed to take shape under his fingers with an instinctive, intuitive ease.

Renard quickly concocted the fatigue neutralizer, and drank it down. He felt himself woge as it hit him, his face contorting. He let the woge take its course, for a moment, his back arching with the energy of the transformation, combined with the power of the potion. Then he shook himself and shifted back to ordinary human appearance.

He needed to stay calm, to think...

He made himself a cup of green tea, found some scones, and took this light breakfast into the extra bedroom he used as an office when he was at home.

He sat at the desk, his nervous system buzzing with the Hexenbiest remedy, and his mind riding a white-water course of possibilities. He switched on his computer and checked the time in Europe. Lunchtime in France, now— maybe it was time to talk to Beatrice. Would she feel safe talking on the phone? Probably not. Not the usual way.

He went into his files, looked at the information he’d taken from the last time he’d seen his second cousin in Paris. Where was the code? There it was, in both English and French:
“C’est très jolie après
the wind musses your hair.” Franglais. Nonsense.

He opened his cell phone, and sent her the message as a text.

Then he sipped tea, nibbled scones, and waited.

Just as he was about to call the department to check on major cases, his phone chimed:

“Oui, pour l’éternité,”
the message said.

He activated the webcam on his computer, and the encryption program. Then he spoke, “Beatrice. Encryption.”

He waited.

Another full minute. Then Beatrice’s face appeared in a window on his monitor. Her dark blond hair was up in fringe braids and her skin was the color of a well-stirred latte; she had her mother’s almost catlike green eyes; she wore a diamond stud in one nostril, and her luscious lower lip was also pierced. She was a lawyer, an assistant prosecutor in Paris—and a Hexenbiest. Even on webcam she looked enticing. It was strange, when she woged from this beauty to Hexenbiest “deformity”. But perhaps even stranger, Renard reflected, was the fact that a Hexenbiest couldn’t see anything deformed in the contorted witch manifestation. To Renard and other Hexenbiesten, both appearances were beautiful, seductive.

“Sean! It’s good to see you,” she said in French. “Are you well?”

“Yes and no. Your transmission is fully encrypted?”

“Yes, of course.” She sighed with comic theatricality. “I hoped you were calling to flirt with me, but I doubt you would bother to concern yourself about encryption for flirtation.”

He smiled. They were cousins but that hadn’t stopped them having a fling, five years back. And it had been intense—until their intimacy had been discouraged by the Royals.

“Why do you think I live way over here, Beatrice? It’s safer with an ocean and a continent between us. I have only so much willpower.”

She laughed. “I’ll pretend to believe that bullshit.”

“You feel comfortable speaking freely about those friends of yours you told me about?”

“Gegengewicht... ?” She gave a French lilt to the German term for the secretive Wesen organization that worked beyond the reach of the Verrat and the Royals.

“The same.”

She nodded. “What’s happened?”

“You know about The Icy Touch?”

Beatrice hesitated, a hesitation prolonged even more by intercontinental lag.

“I’ve heard. Rumors. Some say they are Wesen.”

“I can see they’ve got even you spooked.”

“Even me? Lots of people!”

“And the Verrat? They don’t think this cartel could be destabilizing for Wesen, to say the least?”

She gave her best Gallic shrug. “They seem to be in denial that Wesen are significantly involved. Some of them don’t believe the cartel exists. Some of them... I don’t know.”

“You think there are Icy Touch agents infiltrating the Verrat?”

“If Icy Touch is indeed a Wesen organization—I suspect it. We haven’t confirmed they are Wesen. They’re very secretive. And any time that secrecy seems threatened...”

“Someone disappears or someone dies.”

“Or both. What have you found out, Sean? We need to know. If the rumors are true, then Wesen of conscience need to stop The Icy Touch—but the Verrat won’t move. And this is exactly why Gegengewicht was created! Philippe knew this sort of thing was coming. There are hints that the crime cartel is just the beginning. That it’s just a way to finance a bigger agenda.”

“I wondered about that.”

“There’s something else—did you know that the Coins of Zakynthos have once more been stolen?”

A sick chill went through Renard.

“No. I didn’t know that.” That news gave him a dizzying mixture of feelings. He’d been addicted to the coins, at one point, and altered by them. He had found himself going megalomaniacal, intoning veiled threats in a news conference, under their influence. He’d been relieved when the coins had been taken from him... and at the same time he’d felt wounded at their loss.

“They were in a safety-deposit box,” Beatrice said. “Someone in the bank... we think someone under the influence of a Hexenbiest drug... may have taken them.”

“A Hexenbiest drug. Soul Sealant?”

“Seele Dichtungsmittel,
yes.”

“We believe Icy Touch is using it right here in Portland. They’re using scopolamine—that’s not necessarily Hexenbiest. But there are herbs in it associated with Hexenbiest potions.”

“Still—that’s not proof. But if
La Caresse Glacée
is using the Sealant...” She shook her head, and nervously licked her piercing. “That’s very bad. And if they also have the coins...”

Renard nodded. “Exactly. Does your organization have any documentation on The Icy Touch? I mean—not just rumors, or police records. But... anything internal? Something with names?”

“We have exactly one piece. A letter. A man calling himself
Poigne Fermé.
Not a real name obviously. We think it’s a name he used when helping form
La Caresse Glacée
— but we’re not sure this is about The Icy Touch. We only suspect it. We have a scan of a... it’s something like a memo. All their communications since have been encrypted, or destroyed after reading, so far as we can find out.”

“Can I see this memo?”

“I’ll have to ask Philippe.”

Philippe.
Renard had never met the alleged leader of Gegengewicht; he didn’t even know his last name. After a few glasses of wine Beatrice had once hinted that Philippe was a Blutbad who had some sort of religious conviction— and out of this conviction came a belief that not only were Wesen to be protected from humanity, but good Wesen must protect ordinary humans from the darker Wesen. He had been known to work with certain Grimms, it was said, but didn’t trust most of them.

And Philippe, the putative head of Gegengewicht, was as hard to find in person as anyone from The Icy Touch.

“Will I ever meet this Philippe?” Renard asked.

“That depends. Do you wish to join Gegengewicht?”