Grimm: The Chopping Block E-Book

John Passarella

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

A BRAND-NEW ORIGINAL NOVEL BASED ON THE HIT NBC SERIES GRIMM There once was a man who lived a life so strange, it had to be true. Only he could see what no one else can: the darkness inside, the real monster within. And he's the one who must stop them. This is his calling. This is his duty. This is the life of a Grimm. When a pile of human bones is discovered in ?a Portland forest, severed and stripped of flesh, homicide detectives Nick Burkhardt and Hank Griffin quickly rule out an animal attack, but suspect the killer is something other than human. Soon more skeletal remains are unearthed and tests reveal that the human bones were cooked before burial. As the body count increases, Nick, Hank and reformed Blutbad Monroe must track down a Wesen with a taste for human meat, before the killer can butcher their next meal...

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Historian’s Note

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

Grimm: The Icy Touch by John Shirley

Grimm: The Chopping Block Print edition ISBN: 9781781166567 E-book edition ISBN: 9781781166574

Published by Titan Books A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd 144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

First edition: February 2014 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © 2014 by Universal City Studios Productions LLLPGrimm is a trademark and copyright of Universal Network Television LLC. Licensed by NBC Universal Television Consumer Products Group 2014. All Rights Reserved.

Cover images © Universal Network Television LLC. Additional cover images © Dreamstime

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, not be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

TITANBOOKS.COM

To my wife, Andrea, for understanding my need to dive down the rabbit hole of odd hours, frequent distractions and occasional forgetfulness.

HISTORIAN’S NOTE

This novel takes place between “The Waking Dead” and “Goodnight, Sweet Grimm.”

“He called them to the grand feast and gathered them in celebration, to remember and enjoy the finer things.”

CHAPTER ONE

Brian Mathis wondered if he’d made a mistake bringing Tyler, his twelve-year-old son, to Claremont Park. Their little adventure had been fun and cheerful and full of father-son-bonding promise until they left behind the paved path and picnic tables, and wandered into the woods on a course prescribed by the virtual compass in the GPS app on Brian’s smartphone. The overnight rainfall had turned what would have been a reasonable hiking path into a treacherous endeavor. Lagging behind his father, Tyler had already fallen twice on gentle inclines slick with mud. And now the boy was coated with the stuff—hands, knees, shoes, and a caked spot on his chin he’d rubbed the same moment his patience had expired.

Victim of his own clumsy misadventure, Brian proceeded on a twisted ankle—which continued to throb in counterpoint to his heartbeat—and reminded himself to take his eyes off the compass now and then to pay attention to his footing. Minutes later, head down and cursing under his breath, he walked right into a low-hanging branch. Hell of an example he was setting for his kid.

“You said we were close, Dad,” Tyler groaned, prefacing that indictment with a prolonged sigh.

“We are close,” Brian said. “But I told you before. The coordinates aren’t exact.”

“So what’s the point?” Tyler hurled a rock the size of a ping-pong ball at the nearest tree trunk. The thwock of the impact startled a squirrel, which scampered along one branch, jumped to another nearby and scurried out of sight.

“Don’t throw rocks.”

“Nothing else to do.”

Ignoring the boy’s complaint, Brian explained, “The coordinates take us to the general vicinity, then we look around until we find it.”

“Why?”

“Because… it’s like searching for buried treasure.”

“I’m keeping it.”

“No,” Brian said. “We sign the logbook and leave the container where we found it. The honor system. If we take it, the next person will go through all this trouble for nothing.”

“You said I could take something,” Tyler reminded him.

“Swap something,” Brian said. This particular geocache supposedly contained small toys. If you took something, you were supposed to leave behind an object of equal value. “You brought a soldier?”

“Yeah,” Tyler said, rolling his eyes at his father.

It had been years since Tyler played with toy soldiers, which was why he had no qualms about leaving one behind. Tyler hoped for an upgrade, maybe a used video game or something equally unlikely. So his father had spent most of the car ride to the park trying to quash those expectations.

“The search is the fun part, not the prize at the end.”

“Some fun,” Tyler grumbled loud enough for his father to hear.

Secretly, Brian regretted not selecting a cache with the lowest level of difficulty for their first attempt. Instead, he’d chosen a cache closer to home, but with the next highest level of difficulty. A cache with toys, even cheap toys, he’d thought, would appeal to the boy. Brian’s second mistake was misjudging the rapid pace of Tyler’s maturity. At his current age, things transitioned from “cool” to “lame” in a hurry. Since the divorce, Brian saw his son less than he would have liked. The boy’s growth spurts took place in the uncompromising strobe light of his meager custody schedule.

As a bank of rain clouds passed overhead, the woods became prematurely dark. Shadows deepened like an ink spill soaking the ground around them. The odor of moist earth rose like a clinging mist, enveloping them.

Brian stopped, rubbed the back of his forearm across his damp forehead and said, “We’re here.”

Tyler stood beside him, turned in a circle and shrugged. “Nothing.”

“It’s here somewhere,” Brian assured him, but worried somebody before them might have removed the cache in violation of the honor system. If they left the park without finding anything, his son would never let him forget it. “Remember that time you dragged me through the woods in waist-deep mud for nothing?” Because exaggeration would become a key component in this particular trip down memory lane.

“What about the clue?” Tyler asked.

“Oh—right! The clue.” In his growing paternal anxiety, Brian had almost forgotten about the clue associated with the cache. He checked his phone. “It says, ‘Fall up the hill.’”

They both cast expectant gazes around, as if expecting a hillside to magically rise from the surrounding forest, crowned with a glowing treasure chest like a reward in one of Tyler’s video games.

“That hill?” Tyler finally asked, pointing straight ahead. Brian looked behind them, then straight ahead. They had been following an incline for a bit, something he might have noticed if he hadn’t been mesmerized by the compass on his cell phone. Ahead of them marked the top of the rise, surrounded by an irregular ring of deciduous trees in various states of decay.

“Must be it,” Brian acknowledged. “So how do we ‘fall up’?”

We both figured out the falling down part easily enough, he thought, with a chagrined shake of his head.

Tyler scrambled up the slope, littered with broken branches, twigs, and clumps of dead leaves well on their way to mulch that nevertheless rustled underfoot. He slipped once and caught himself on both hands before his knees touched the muddy ground again.

“Careful,” Brian said, making his own way upward, mindful of his tender ankle.

Tyler picked up a stout branch the length of a cane and swung it around to disperse the leaf mounds. When he reached down to flip over a football-sized rock, Brian caught his shoulder.

“Watch out for snakes,” he cautioned.

The possibility of encountering a snake, poisonous or otherwise, seemed to excite the boy’s imagination, but he took extra care as he grabbed the edge of the rock and flipped it over, poised to spring away to avoid the threat of fangs. Instead, he grunted in obvious disappointment as several freshly exposed worms coiled in the dirt.

Tyler circled to the left, poking and sweeping with his branch, while Brian wandered into a tangle of dried brush and broken tree limbs at the edge of the clearing. Brushing away twigs and dried leaves, he discovered a jagged tree stump and, angling away from it, on the far side of the rise, the decaying length of the entire tree trunk, which retained only a few scattered branches.

“A deadfall,” Brian whispered, then again, louder. “A deadfall.”

“What?” Tyler called, glancing briefly over his shoulder.

“This downed tree,” Brian called to his son. “It’s a deadfall.”

“So?” Tyler replied, more preoccupied with a section of tangled underbrush and loose mounds of dirt—excavated, no doubt, by some burrowing woodland creature—than his father’s pronouncement.

“Don’t you get it?” Brian asked. “The clue: ‘Fall up the hill.’ It’s a deadfall—on this hill.”

“You found it?”

“Not yet…” Brian pocketed his phone and swept both hands across the brittle and decaying debris piled around the deadfall. He omitted telling Tyler that this was a more likely spot for a hidden snake than the underside of a rock. Besides, if Brian had unraveled the clue to the cache’s location, he wanted to find it before leading the boy to yet another disappointment. Once he unearthed it, he’d call Tyler over to claim the prize. He might just salvage the day after all.

Crouching, Brian caught a glint of color in the natural pocket formed between the tree stump and its fallen trunk; something metallic, painted bright red. Gotcha! he thought in an unexpectedly strong moment of satisfaction.

Before calling his son over to claim the small square tin, he leaned forward to examine the shadowy depression. He swept the ground with the beam of his keychain flashlight. Though he doubted he’d find broken glass or rusty nails or even an irritable snake, he wanted to be sure, lest their excursion end on a sour note—or a trip to the emergency room.

“Tyler, come here,” Brian said. “Think I found something.”

“Me too,” Tyler said, his voice hushed with something akin to awe.

“No,” Brian said, standing and brushing off his knees. “Pretty sure this is it over here.”

He looked at his son, who was poking and prodding something with his makeshift cane. Brian’s first thought was that his son had found a snake after all and that poking a snake with a stick was a very bad idea.

“Tyler,” he called. “Step away!”

“No, Dad,” Tyler said. “It’s okay.”

The boy crouched beside the tangled brush and mounds of dirt and clawed at the earth with the tip of the branch, deepening the hole and exposing a length of something white. As Brian circled around his son cautiously, a dark thought began to form. A thought that was confirmed when Tyler reached down into the hole and gripped the length of dull white in his mud-caked hands and pulled it free.

“Look,” he said, eyes full of pride at his discovery. “Animal bone. A big one.”

Brian was an investment accountant, not a doctor, but he’d seen enough skeleton illustrations over the years to entertain the disturbing possibility that his son was not holding an animal bone. The rational part of his brain kept suggesting and rejecting other explanations: maybe the leg bone of a large mammal… a deer or a bear or…?

Something was wrong. He could sense it at an atavistic level. Some detail that refused to register—until he was near enough to his son’s outstretched hand to notice the cleanly severed end of the bone.

“Put that down,” Brian said. “Drop it.”

“But Dad—!”

“It might be—could be diseased—parasites,” Brian muttered. But, another word came to mind. If the bone was human, with a break that clean.

Evidence.

Disappointed, Tyler dropped the bone, but he reached over to push aside some brush and said, “Look! There’s more.”

Brian took a hesitant step forward and looked down at a jumbled pile of bones. No flesh or organs, no muscles or tissue. Bare bones. Enough bones to make…

He noticed something rounded toward the back of the pile, with the telltale curvature of a hemisphere. Then Tyler disturbed the mass of bones with an exploratory poke with the tip of his branch. Disconnected rib bones slid aside, exposing the dark circle of an empty eye socket, twin nasal passages and a row of teeth. There could be no other explanation.

Brian was staring at a human skull. He’d led his twelve-year-old son into the woods to discover human remains. His ex-wife would never forgive him.

He fumbled for his phone and stared at the screen for a few punch-drunk moments with no idea why the display showed him a compass. Finally, he remembered how to quit the app and use his damn smartphone as a phone.

Meanwhile, the geocache search—the whole reason they’d come to the park in the first place—had become a distant, confusing memory.

Instead, two other ominous words popped into his head.

Shallow grave.

CHAPTER TWO

Detective Nick Burkhardt parked his Land Cruiser on a narrow access road overlooking Claremont Park, behind a row of official city vehicles headed by a pair of police cruisers with flashing light bars. Judging from the rest of the stalled procession, paramedics, crime scene techs and someone from the coroner’s office were on site.

He turned to his partner, fellow detective Hank Griffin, and said, “Gang’s all here.”

“Makes us fashionably late.”

They climbed out of the SUV, Hank taking a few moments longer to maneuver on his cast as he reached over the seatback for his crutches. While in Kauai on a long overdue vacation, he’d taken a bad fall—“landed a little too enthusiastically” in Hank’s own words—from a zip line, tearing his Achilles tendon. In the past few weeks he’d become quite nimble on the crutches, but he left the foot chases to Nick.

Hank joined Nick at the side of the access road and frowned.

Nick understood his partner’s consternation. Glancing down the irregular slope of the makeshift path delineated on either side by crime scene tape looped around tree trunks, he had the impression of facing a woodland obstacle course.

“Maybe you should sit this one out, Hank.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Sure?”

“I’ll get there,” Hank said confidently. He cleared his throat. “Eventually.”

Nick started down the path, paused to look back and saw Hank prodding the ground with the tip of one crutch. Nick raised a hand to point at some overhead branches and smiled.

“I could ask them to install a zip line.”

“Funny, Nick,” Hank said, with a sweep of the crutch as though it was an extension of his arm. “I’m laughing on the inside.”

Though Hank had joked that his doctor had told him to leave all the work to his partner, he was too proud to easily admit any limitations. Nick hoped his good-natured ribbing would keep his partner’s spirits up, so he was less focused on what he couldn’t do in his current condition. At the same time, he hoped Hank remained cautious enough to avoid further injury. He knew his partner was counting the days until the cast came off.

Nick turned his attention to the path ahead, noting the presence of techs and a few uniforms. Farther ahead, two paramedics stood talking to each other in low tones with an occasional glance at the techs taking measurements and photographs.

On the other side of the crime scene, Sergeant Wu spoke to the father and son who had reported the human remains. A tall, birdlike woman with a long gray ponytail, dressed in a blue denim blouse and khaki slacks, interrupted the group to speak with Wu. A forensic anthropologist who consulted with the medical examiner’s office, Nick recalled. Her exact name escaped him. Yolanda Candella or Canders.

Angling toward the mound of bare bones, some of which had been laid out for measurement and photographs, Nick crouched for a better examination. More than a few of the bones had clean breaks. And that raised all sorts of questions.

He’d been a Portland homicide detective long before he discovered he was a Grimm—descended from a long line of Grimms that included his mother and his late Aunt Marie. As a Grimm, Nick had the ability to “profile” what he had always assumed were mythological creatures, most of whom were at odds with humanity. They called themselves Wesen, and in moments of stress or extreme emotion, they transformed—woged—and revealed their true nature. But the transformation was visible only to a Grimm. Other humans were unaware of the change in appearance—unless the Wesen chose to reveal its true face to them. Not something that happened often because the Wesen hid in plain sight, wolves in the fold of humanity.

So Nick’s job description had changed. In addition to apprehending human murderers, he was, as a Grimm, uniquely qualified to find and stop Wesen killers. The only difference was that not all Wesen killers received due process. Sometimes off-book solutions were necessary.

Staring at the severed bones, Nick had to consider the possibility that the killer—and he had no doubt the victim had been murdered and buried here in a shallow grave—was not human, that the perpetrator was Wesen. He recalled the Fuchsteufelwild, a goblin-like Wesen who had slaughtered employees at the Spinner Corporation with bone blade hands that dripped acid. He’d sliced their bodies in half, cutting easily through flesh and organs and bones. Dissatisfied with his speculation, Nick shook his head. This MO was clearly different. The cuts were cleaner here, artificial, not natural or supernatural. And the flesh and blood and organs were absent, leaving only the bones.

He snapped a few photos with his cell phone, then scanned the immediate area for clothing or personal effects that might have been dumped with the remains. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Wu approaching, and stood.

“What’ve we got so far?”

“Father and son geocaching,” Wu said, glancing down at his notes. “Brian and Tyler Mathis. Tyler finds the bones of the vic. Not the sort of father-son outing dad had in mind.”

“Geocaching,” Nick said. “That some kind of sport?”

“Mash-up of scavenger hunt with hide and seek,” Wu said. “You find the item with GPS coordinates posted online.”

“Somebody put human remains in a geocache and posted the location online?” Nick said.

Hank swung forward on his crutches and took up a position facing Nick and Wu, his expression one of relief at having arrived at the crime scene without incident.

“Bad coincidence apparently,” Wu said. “They found the real cache over there—the little red tin box on the tree stump.”

Nick said, “Don’t suppose it’s been dusted for prints.”

Wu nodded. “But we’re not optimistic,” he said. “Son had his hands all over it. Father let him have it to draw his attention away from the human skeleton. Speaking of which, Doc Candelas—”

Ah, Candelas, Nick thought.

“—was none too happy the kid had been poking the bones with a stick.”

“Anything she can tell us?” Hank asked.

“Looks like one vic.” Wu glanced at his notes again. “Adult, female, approximately five-foot-six, possibly under twenty-five years of age. Skull features consistent with Asian ancestry.” He looked up at them. “Won’t know if all the bones are present until they’re sorted at the lab.”

“No ID?”

“No personal effects at all,” Wu said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll get a match off the dental records.”

“Witnesses?”

“We’ve got uniforms canvassing the area, nearby homes, structures. Maybe somebody saw something. I’ll let you know if anything turns up.”

“COD?” Hank asked.

“No definitive cause of death indicated. But, judging by the lack of, well, the rest of her body, she was probably killed off-site and dumped here.”

“What about these breaks?” Nick asked, indicating a femur that had been removed from the pile. “They’re clean. Almost precise.”

Wu nodded. “Doc ruled out animal attack. Something with a fine edge, lots of force. Could be man or machine. Wounds could be pre- or post-mortem.”

“Meaning our vic could have been chopped up while she was still alive,” Hank said somberly.

“No matter how bad you think your day is,” Wu said, shaking his head as his voice trailed off.

“Thanks, Wu.” Nick turned to Hank. “Let’s talk to the father and son.”

When Tyler saw the detectives approaching, he unconsciously took a half step behind his father. Nick noticed something yellow, green and rubbery propped on the boy’s thumb like a mutated thimble. He smiled briefly to put the boy at ease.

“What have you got there?” he asked.

“It’s an alien,” Tyler said, waggling his thumb from side to side so the alien’s tiny rubbery hands shook up and down. “I swapped it for my soldier.”

“A toy from the geocache,” Brian Mathis explained with a glance toward the red tin box on the rotted tree stump. “The reason why we came here. For the geocache.”

“Don’t imagine you anticipated a murd—an investigation,” Hank said.

“Of course not,” Brian said, wrapping an arm protectively over his son’s shoulders. “Geocaching… it’s like a scavenger hunt. Harmless. I never thought something like this would happen.”

“How did you come to this exact location?” Nick asked.

“GPS coordinates.”

“From which direction? The service road?” He pointed toward the line of first responder vehicles. “Or the park?”

“The park,” Brian replied. “Thought the cache would be closer to the picnic areas.”

“Mr. Mathis, is it okay if I ask your son a few questions?”

After a moment of hesitation, the father nodded.

“Okay, thank you.” Nick turned his attention to Tyler, flashed another brief smile to put him at ease. “Tyler, how did you locate the bones?”

“We were looking for the geocache.”

“Both of you?”

“Yes,” Tyler said. “My dad’s GPS got us close, but not to the exact spot, so we… poked around. I searched over there. My dad was over here.”

“Nothing led you to the bones?”

“No,” Tyler said. “Well, it looked like an animal might have dug up some dirt, near those bushes. I pushed the bushes back, saw the white—the bone, I mean. The first one, that big one”—he pointed to the isolated femur—“and I pulled it out. That’s when I saw there was more of them.”

Nick wondered how much poking around the kid had done after he discovered the cache of bones.

“Anything unusual about the arrangement?” he asked.

“What?”

“Was anything odd about the bones? A pattern maybe?”

The boy pressed the rubber alien to the underside of his chin for a couple moments then shook his head.

“Except…”

“Except what?” Hank asked, leaning forward as much as his crutches allowed.

“They were all jumbled in a pile,” he said. “In pieces. Not like how you see in movies and stuff. Like the person fell asleep before they died.”

Nick looked at the father and pointed at the geocache tin.

“Do you know who put the geocache here?”

“I don’t recall,” Brian Mathis said. “The person’s username is on the site. She left it over a year ago. It’s been found almost a dozen times.”

“How do you know?” Hank asked.

“On the site,” Brian said, with a shrug, as if the information was obvious. “And there’s a logbook in there.”

“In the box,” Nick asked.

“Yeah,” the boy said. “We added our names.”

Nick reached into the pocket of his black leather jacket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves, slipped them on with practiced ease and picked up the geocache tin. If father and son had both handled the box while waiting for emergency personnel to arrive, they’d probably destroyed any useful prints, and—according to Wu—the box had already been dusted for prints, but until he talked to the crime scene techs personally, he’d rather not compound any errors.

Inside the box, a plastic toy soldier bearing several juvenile tooth-etched scars sat atop a thin notebook, with a preprinted list of geocache etiquette rules. The logbook had been signed by ten people, but most had signed a first name and an initial or a nickname, “Spelunkid” scrawled in red marker stood out. One person had stamped the book with a cartoon image of an owl. A few people had written dates next to their names or aliases, the most recent “find” occurring three months ago. Finally, two stubby pencils had been provided for those without the foresight to bring a red marker. Between the logbook and the website, they might ID several suspects.

Nick glanced toward the bones, then turned to Brian Mathis.

“Where exactly did you find this?”

Brian dropped to one knee and pointed to a sheltered spot between the rotted stump and the fallen tree trunk.

“Under there,” he said. “Might have missed it, if not for the bright red color.”

Nick looked at Hank and gave a brief shake of his head. If the geocache and the bones were meant to be found together as some sort of macabre scavenger hunt, why not put them in the same place. More likely, the killer had no idea the geocache existed.

Nick returned to the buried pile of anonymous bones.

Unless the canvass turned up a witness to the burial or the crime scene techs discovered something not readily apparent, their best lead remained the victim herself. If she knew her killer, her identity might lead them to his doorstep.

CHAPTER THREE

If Monroe hadn’t returned to Shemanski Park Market after his morning grocery shopping run—to pick up some artisanal wine and cheeses for a planned romantic evening at home with Rosalee—he probably would have missed Decker.

Reusable grocery bags once again full, Monroe turned his attention away from the outdoor farm stands sheltered under white canopies and navigated his way through the milling crowd, retracing his steps to where he’d parked his Volkswagen Super Beetle. As he stepped around a mother with her young daughter looking at a plastic container of filet beans and a wicker basket overflowing with red bell peppers, Monroe spotted a familiar face in the crowd, heading in the opposite direction, and pulled up short.

“Decker?” he called. “Is that you?”

“Monroe?” the other man said. He stopped and shook Monroe’s hand in a powerful two-handed grip. Physically imposing whether in full woge or not, Decker had two inches and forty pounds on Monroe. Wearing a black knit watch cap over a riot of curly brown hair, a distressed black leather jacket, ripped jeans and scuffed work boots, he seemed a bit out of his element among the aisles of organic produce. “How the holy hell are you, brother?”

The young mother gave them both a wary and disapproving glance as she quietly steered her daughter away from the red bell peppers to the next farmer’s display. Monroe gave her a little friendly wave, hoping to convey a reassuring message: Don’t worry, ma’am. I’m harmless. Mostly.

“Actually, I’m doing well, you know,” Monroe said to Decker. “Things have been sane for me. Calm. Living the straight and narrow. No complaints.”

Decker looked around and seemed to realize for the first time where he was.

“Oh, man, that’s right. So it is true, what I heard. You’re living in denial.”

“I guess you could say that, in a manner of speaking,” Monroe said, taking Decker’s arm and leading him a little farther away from any potential eavesdroppers.

Decker had never embraced the concept of discretion. He’d been a fixture in Monroe’s past, before he’d reformed, before he’d given up his savage lifestyle and become a Wieder Blutbad. And just as it wasn’t safe for a reformed addict to hang out with those currently using, Monroe had had to separate himself from his more fearsome brethren, lest he backslide into the old ways.

“I’m convinced—denying some things opens you up to experiencing other things,” Monroe explained. “For instance, a healthier lifestyle. Less rage, bloodshed and blackouts. You should try it.”

“Ha!” Decker exclaimed boisterously. “Where’s the fun in that, brother? I remember when you used to run. We used to run. Back when you hung out with—what’s her name?—Angelina! That’s it. And her brother, Hap. You see them much?”

“No. Not anymore. Not for a while,” Monroe said, feeling a pang of guilt over Hap’s death. “That didn’t end well.”

“No worries, brother,” Decker said, clapping Monroe’s shoulder. “Eyes forward, right? Full bore, no regrets.”

“Hey, man, if that works for you,” Monroe said. “No judgments here. Live and let run, I always say.”

Decker took in his surroundings again. “It is peaceful.”

“What brings you here?”

“To Portland?”

“Yes, okay, that too, but, well, here,” Monroe said. “This market.”

“Passing through,” Decker said. “Rolling stone, you know? Figured I’d spend a week or two and move on.”

“And this market?” Monroe pressed, sensing something his old friend wasn’t telling him, at least not in so many words. Decker had always talked a lot while saying little, a stream of conscious rambling that Monroe had learned to tune out now and then.

“Meeting someone.”

“Someone? Really? What kind of someone?”

Decker looked at him blankly for a moment, then chuckled.

“Just someone, okay. Casual. It’s not a thing.”

“Do you want it to be a thing?”

“I don’t know, man,” Decker said. “It’s always a short shelf life for me. No time to commit.”

“Right,” Monroe said. “Mr. Rolling Stone.”

A few moments passed, and a companionable silence stretched into awkwardness, reminding Monroe that he’d taken the road less traveled and that set him apart from old friends. Most of that had been by design, to avoid temptation and opportunities to backslide into the old ways. He had no regrets about the trade-off. Besides, he had new friends now—one of them a Grimm, of all things! And Rosalee. He led a calm yet interesting life, with enough romance to keep things spicy. The call of his old life, and the friends who filled those wild days, had become little more than an indistinct echo, words in a language that no longer made sense to him. As long as he kept to his regimen of self-discipline, he could keep his eyes forward.

He clapped Decker on the shoulder and said, “Good seeing you, man. Next time you’re in town, give me a call.”

As he turned away—wondering if he had meant either statement, or if his own words had been rote sentiments plucked from another time and dusted off for one last insincere farewell—Decker caught his arm.

Monroe glanced back, surprised.

“Are you for real?” Decker asked.

Briefly, Monroe wondered if his old friend had sensed the insincerity in his parting words and was calling him out. He almost had to shake off the impression to see the real issue. Monroe’s lifestyle.

“Of course. Why do you ask?”

“So it’s not a ‘go along to get along’ situation?”

“It’s for me,” Monroe said. “My choice.”

“You gave up—meat? And running?” When Monroe nodded, Decker added, “Huh! This whole time, I had a different impression. Figured it was for show, you know, an act to fool the natives or something. Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“Well, I’m still a—” Monroe scanned the area to make sure they were as alone as one could be in an outdoor farmer’s market, then spoke in a softer voice “—Blutbad. But I’ve cast aside the—let’s say—more extreme facets of our nature.”

“Wow,” Decker said, walking a few paces while shaking his head. He dropped down on a bench as if the thought of giving up the wild lifestyle was too difficult to comprehend while standing. “How? How do you change? How do you stay changed? I’d crawl out of my skin.”

Monroe sat down on the bench, setting his bags down between his feet.

“Do you—Decker, are you thinking about reforming?”

“Don’t see how that’s possible, brother.”

“It’s possible,” Monroe said. “I’m proof of that, right? But you can’t do this for someone else.” Monroe nodded in the general direction of the market stalls to indicate the “someone” with “thing” potential that Decker planned to meet here. “You have to want this for yourself.”

“Okay. What if I did?” Decker said. “Then what?”

“Listen, I only know what works for me,” Monroe said.

He ran his thumb and index finger down the sides of his mustache and light beard, considering whether or not he should jeopardize his own reformed status to help a friend. Spending extended time with an unreformed Blutbad presented inherent risks. His last mistake may have cost Hap his life. But Monroe had to believe in the strength of his own convictions, that he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

“If you want to try, Decker, I’ll help. Anything you need. I’ll be your support system.”

“You mean, like an AA sponsor or something?”

“Okay, let’s go with that.”

“So, if I do this, what’s the first step?”

“Cold turkey,” Monroe said.

“Okay, I can do turkey,” Decker said, grinning. “Hot or cold.”

“No meat,” Monroe said.

“Brother, meat is my only food group,” Decker said. “No meat is basically a hunger strike for me.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Monroe said, then frowned. “Someday.” No sense making the transition seem easier than it was. “I’ve had lots of luck with veggie steaks.”

“Oh, man, that ain’t natural. I’m getting ill at the thought.”

“It takes a lot of self-discipline.”

“Not to hurl?” Decker said. “I can believe it, brother.”

“Pilates works for me,” Monroe said. “Every morning. Helps focus the mind. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. You’ll thank me. Well, not right away. First, there’ll be cursing. Yeah, lots of swearing. And breakage. You’ll definitely want to break things for a while. But… someday.”

“I have doubts about that, brother,” Decker said. “Serious doubts. And if you say the word ‘tofu,’ I may have to kill you.” He stood and offered his hand again. “But, I’m in.”

Monroe stood to shake his hand, nodding and smiling encouragingly.

“What say we start tomorrow?” Decker said.

“Sounds good,” Monroe said.

But his smile faltered a moment later. Monroe wanted to help his old friend join the admittedly meager ranks of the Wieder Blutbad. He’d meant what he said: he’d help Decker, as much as possible. And yet, he had his doubts. Self-restraint was as unfamiliar a concept as discretion for the Decker he remembered. How strong was the man’s motivation to change his behavior and entire lifestyle? For someone accustomed to indulging every bloody whim, adapting to a reformed life would be pure hell.

And Monroe had offered to lead the way.

CHAPTER FOUR

Long before her world had been turned upside down by her newfound knowledge of Wesen and the Grimms who hunted them—one of the latter, smaller group included her boyfriend, Nick Burkhardt—Juliette Silverton found comfort in the familiar setting of the Roseway Veterinary Hospital where she spent her days.

Sipping coffee and chatting with Zoe and Roger in the reception area, before office hours officially started, helped ease her into the workday. Checking on any animal patients who’d needed to spend the night in one of the many crates in back provided comfort to the pets while they were separated from their homes. Meeting with loving pet owners and treating their four-legged friends preemptively was the most rewarding part of her day. Even treating those with maladies or accident victims gave her a sense of satisfaction, knowing she made a difference by helping pets and their owners get back to the stress-free enjoyment of each other’s company. But some maladies had no prescribed treatment. Sometimes the conversation was about ending the life to end the pain. Some days were hell.