Grimm: The Killing Time (6 page)

“I… don’t think so.”

Wu frowned.

“What do you mean, didn’t you see who it was?”

“It was a man.” Nick was confident of that much, at least. “Dark hair, about my height.”

“That narrows it down to several thousand people in Portland,” Wu said. “Should be easy enough to find.”

Wu holstered his gun, and Nick did the same. Whatever appearance the creature had assumed, the thing was long gone by now. There was no telling which direction it had taken, and since Nick hadn’t gotten a good look at its new face, he probably wouldn’t recognize it if he saw it again. And he had no idea how often it could change appearance. Even if he managed to track it down, it might look like someone else entirely by then.

Wu frowned again and stepped closer to Nick.

“What happened to your neck?”

By the time Hank had finished with Mr. Delgado and rejoined Nick and Wu, both CSU and the Deputy Coroner had arrived, and Nick took Hank aside as the men and women began their work. Wu looked a little put out not to be invited to join them, but he didn’t say anything. Nick didn’t like excluding Wu. He was a good cop, and he deserved to know the truth about the bizarre cases he sometimes found himself on the periphery of. But Nick had placed both Hank and Juliette in danger by introducing them to the world of Wesen and Grimms, and while he knew they wouldn’t have had it any other way, he wanted to keep Wu out of it if he could. For the man’s own safety, if nothing else. Besides, it was nice to have one friend he didn’t have to worry about all the time.

“What’s up?” Hank asked.

“I don’t know for sure, but whatever it is, it’s not good,” Nick said. “Something was in the Webbers’ house. It looked like Dana Webber, but it wasn’t her. It started to… to lose its shape, almost like it couldn’t hold onto it anymore. It attacked me. That’s how I got these.” He pointed to his neck.

Hank made a face. “Looks like a bunch of bug bites. You okay?”

“Yeah. I was weak at first, almost like I’d been drugged or something. But I feel all right now. A little fuzzyheaded, maybe, like when you’re coming down with a cold, but that’s all.”

Hank frowned. “You say the thing stuck you?”

“Yeah. It grew needles on its fingers, kind of like hypodermics.”

“Ouch. I hate needles.” Hank shuddered before continuing. “So what does it look like now?”

“I don’t know, as it left it started to take on a new shape. A man’s. I didn’t get a good look at it, though.”

“You think this thing is responsible for the pile of goo over there?”

“Could be. I know one thing, though. When I asked the creature where Dana’s husband was, it told me that he’d gone to the store, even though she’d just gotten home with groceries.”

“There’s a car in the driveway. You think the Webbers have another?”

“I don’t know, I’ll ask Wu to run a search.”

“I think we’d better go back into their house and find out what happened to Mr. Webber,” Hank said. “How much do you want to bet that whatever it was, it wasn’t pretty?”

“No bet.”

Together the partners headed for the Webbers’ house, guns drawn.

* * *

The Wechselbalg ran through the night, cutting across backyards, hurdling short fences and climbing the higher ones with almost ridiculous ease. The creature had worn many faces during the course of its long life, and it had possessed many bodies. But it had never experienced such strength and energy before. It was almost intoxicating, and it—no,
he
—couldn’t help laughing with exuberance as he ran.

Normally after a transformation, the Wechselbalg’s mind was a jumble of information as the new memories he had acquired from his latest host settled. But his current confusion was far worse than usual. A riot of sights, sounds, thoughts, and emotions swirled inside the creature’s brain, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make sense of the deluge. He wasn’t even sure why he was running, only that it was really important that he do so. Eventually he found himself jogging down a sidewalk, and he slowed to a walk. He didn’t feel tired in the slightest, and he wasn’t breathing hard either. Extraordinary!

He maintained a brisk pace as he walked, and was soon out of the residential area and entering a business district. Nothing fancy, just gas stations, fast-food restaurants, and convenience stores. The street was busier here—more pedestrians and vehicles—and the Wechselbalg felt more relaxed. Camouflage was the creature’s primary defense, and his kind always felt more comfortable when lost in a crowd.

He wasn’t sure how long he continued walking, but eventually his mind began to clear and he was able to start making sense of the newfound data crammed into his skull. The first thing he realized was that something had gone wrong this time. The information he possessed was fragmentary and incomplete. Was something wrong with the man he’d duplicated? Was he ill, or worse, insane? But as the Wechselbalg continued sifting through the imperfect memories, he realized what had happened. The man he’d copied—a police detective, as it turned out—was a Grimm. The realization came as such a shock that he stopped walking. People gave him strange looks as they moved around him, but he paid them no attention.

A Grimm… He knew about them, of course. What Wesen didn’t? But he’d never see one before, let alone interacted with one. And he’d done much more than that, hadn’t he? He’d
joined
with one, taken on his shape and copied his memories. Some of them, at any rate.

Although he hadn’t witnessed it, he assumed the Grimm had undergone the
Auflösen
, the dissolving process, just as all his other victims had. But the Wechselbalg’s new memories told him the Grimm hadn’t worked alone. He had friends, allies, some of them quite powerful. He experienced a surge of fear accompanied by a powerful urge to shed this form and don another so the Grimm’s companions wouldn’t recognize him. Without thinking, he flexed his hands and black spines began to emerge. He would grab hold of the next person who came within reach—man, woman, young, old, it didn’t matter—and he would assume their identity right here in the open, regardless of who might see.

A tall, redheaded woman wearing a tight, long-sleeved black dress came toward him, and he started to raise his hands. But then he hesitated. The bodies he took these days didn’t last long at all, but so far this one was showing no signs of wear. It was strong, far stronger than any he’d ever had before. Did he really want to give it up so soon?

The redheaded woman passed by, giving him a glance and a smile as she did. He watched her go, his finger spines retracting.

The Grimm’s allies didn’t matter, he decided, for the simple reason that
he
was the Grimm now. He could fool them into thinking he was their friend. After all, he’d had many years of experience at pretending to be something he wasn’t. All he had to do was get to know who the Grimm was and become him. Simple as that.

A memory came to him then, the sound of a woman’s voice, so strong and clear it was almost as if she were present and speaking right next to him.

You have to hunt down the bad ones.

He remembered the woman’s name. It was Aunt Marie.
His
Aunt Marie. And with her name came his own. He was Nick Burkhardt. He was a Grimm. And he had work to do.

The Wechselbalg started walking down the sidewalk again, humming happily to himself.

* * *

“At least this one’s still solid,” Wu said.

Nick and Hank looked at him.

“I’m just saying it’s a lot easier to work with an actual body.”

Wu was one of those cops who sometimes took the whole professional detachment thing a bit too far, Nick thought. Then again, he had to admit that practically speaking, Wu had a point.

Crime-scene technicians were processing the kitchen, while the Deputy Coroner knelt next to Rich Webber’s corpse. One of the CSU techs had remained outside with what Nick was fairly certain were the liquefied remains of Dana Webber. Everyone else had relocated to the Webbers’ kitchen after Nick and Hank had discovered Rich’s body.

“I know that look,” Hank said.

“What?” Nick asked.

“You’re thinking that if you’d known Mr. Webber was in the kitchen when you were talking with—” he paused “—
Mrs. Webber
, you might’ve been able to get to him before he died, maybe even save his life.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” the Deputy Coroner said. He was a stocky man in his mid-thirties, with curly black hair, glasses, and a thin mustache. He wore a coroner’s jacket, slacks, rubber gloves on his hands and blue cloth booties over his shoes. “Even if you’d been standing in the kitchen when he was attacked, you couldn’t have saved him. The way he was cut, he was basically dead before he hit the floor.”

Nick had seen enough murder victims to know the man spoke the truth, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

Nick turned to Hank. “Now that this is officially a homicide investigation, I think we should have another chat with Mr. Delgado. If nothing else, I’d like to get a look at him.”

Wu raised a questioning eyebrow at that comment, but Hank nodded in understanding. Nick wanted to meet Mr. Delgado and see if he might be Wesen. If so, they’d be able to talk to him openly about what he witnessed.

Nick looked at Wu. “Can you hold down the fort here?”

“Consider it held,” Wu said.

Nick thanked him, and he and Hank left the kitchen, walked down a short hallway to the living room, then out the open front door. As they made their way to the sidewalk, Nick glanced toward the lone CSU tech and saw she was collecting samples from the goo puddle.

“So we’re dealing with some kind of shapeshifting Wesen that kills people by turning them into tapioca,” Hank said.

“Looks like.”

The partners stepped into the street and continued walking as they talked.

“The creature seems to have trouble maintaining a stable form,” Nick said. “It was starting to fall apart, almost melting as if it was made of wax or something.”

“But it managed to assume a new body before it left,” Hank said.

“Maybe it just needed some time,” Nick said. “What I can’t figure out is why it cut Mr. Webber’s throat instead of dissolving him.”

“You got me,” Hank said.

“You know, the creature didn’t make a lot of sense when it talked. It seemed off somehow, like it wasn’t thinking straight.”

“You think maybe its brain was melting, too?” Hank asked.

“Something like that. It could explain why it killed Rich Webber instead of dissolving him. It just acted on impulse instead of thinking the situation through.”

“Could be,” Hank agreed. They reached the other side of the street, and he nodded toward a simple house with a black shingled roof and red-brick walls. “This is it.”

Nick looked at it for a moment, then turned to gauge the distance to the Webbers’ house and to the spot on the sidewalk where the CSU tech was working.

“It’s a fair distance,” he said.

“Not to worry. Our man tells me he has eyes like a hawk.”

Nick smiled. “Then I wouldn’t trust a thing he says.”

They headed for the house.

* * *

The CSU techs were still processing the scene at the Webbers’ house when Nick and Hank climbed in the Charger and pulled away from the curb. Mr. Delgado hadn’t given them any information that he hadn’t already passed on to Wu and Hank, and he hadn’t woged in Nick’s presence. That didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t Wesen, but Nick’s instincts told him the man was human.

“Now what?” Hank asked.

“I suppose we should let the Captain know what’s going on.” Nick took his phone out of his pocket and called Captain Renard. The man answered on the second ring.

“Renard.”

“It’s Nick. Hank and I ran into a case that looks like it’s Wesen-related. It’s a messy one.”

“I’m listening.”

Nick gave him a quick rundown of what had happened at the Webbers’. When he was finished, Renard said, “Messy
and
weird. Any idea who—or what—might be responsible?”

“Not yet. I was hoping you might have some thoughts on that.”

“Sorry. Nothing you’ve told me rings any bells. See what sort of leads you can turn up and keep me informed.”

Renard disconnected and Nick returned his phone to his pocket. He filled in Hank on what the Captain said, and then he sat back and thought.

As usual, Nick had felt uncomfortable talking with Renard. They’d had a decent working relationship during Nick’s time with the department, but the revelation that Renard was Wesen—technically half-Wesen and half-human—and a member of the Royal Family to boot had changed things between them. On the one hand, it made working together easier, since they could openly discuss Wesen-related cases. But Renard liked to play things close to the vest, and while Nick knew the man was embroiled in political intrigue with the Wesen royals, he didn’t know much beyond the basics. It was hard to fully trust someone that kept his agenda as well hidden as Renard, and for this reason, Nick tended to view him as an uneasy ally rather than a friend.

Nick turned his thoughts to the mysterious shapeshifting Wesen. It seemed as if the shapeshifter had “copied” Dana Webber, killing her in the process and reducing her body to a puddle of slime. But after attacking him, the creature had assumed a man’s form. Although she’d killed Rich Webber, she hadn’t copied him. His body was still intact. Maybe there had been another man in the house that the creature had copied, and they simply hadn’t located his liquefied remains yet. The creature seemed to change form fairly often, but whether that was by choice or out of need, he didn’t know. Whichever the case was, it might not remain in its current shape for long. And if it changed again, the physical description they had of their suspect—vague as it was—would be useless. They needed information, and they needed it fast. He knew of only one place they might find it.

“Let’s head for the trailer,” he said. “Better stop for coffee on the way, too. We might have a long night ahead of us.”

Hank sighed. “When don’t we?”

* * *

On the way to Forest Hills Storage, the facility where Aunt Marie’s trailer was parked, Nick called Monroe to tell him what had happened and to ask if he and Rosalee had ever heard of a shapeshifting Wesen like the one he’d encountered. Monroe said he hadn’t, but he and Rosalee would head to the spice shop and go through her reference books on Wesen anatomy and physiology to see what they could find. Nick then called Juliette to let her know what was going on, and she told him she’d go to the spice shop to give Monroe and Rosalee a hand. Nick was grateful for their help. He didn’t have an ego when it came to solving these kinds of problems. All that mattered to him was stopping the shapeshifter before it killed again.