Grimm: A Novel In The Nate Temple Supernatural Thriller Series (The Temple Chronicles Book 3) (6 page)

So essentially, I had a new imaginary girlfriend rather than my usual wizard’s magic. And my imaginary friend was an invisible, unquenchable river of power coursing beneath my feet at all times. A river that I was confident actually came from the cosmos, or the
Big Bang
. It didn’t feel terrestrial. It felt… alien. There had been times in my experimentation where the force had done things that completely went against every Law of Physics that I knew. And doing those things had been easier than trying to make a ball of fire, for example.

My hired thug, chauffeur, and cook – Mallory – had spent quite a bit of time with me in an attempt to help me learn. We had met with marginal success. I had discussed it with my parents – who now resided in an Ancient Armory hidden in
Chateau Falco
– my ancestral home. The librarian of the Armory, Pandora (yep, that one) had also been of little help as a teacher. No one knew what to tell me.

The last Maker had died many, many years ago, leaving me no one to learn from.

My mind snapped back to focus as Indie squeezed my arm excitedly. I stared out the window to see the apartment in question now had it’s light on. Indie’s breath was fogging up the backseat as she watched, eyes twinkling with mischief and anticipation.

“Any second now. What do you think they’ve been doing for the last ten minutes? I had figured he would have made his move by now.” She spoke softly.

I blinked.
Ten minutes?
I needed to get my head back in the game. The Grimms were out there somewhere. I would be pretty easy meat if I zoned out like that again.

“You sure it wasn’t too much?” She whispered.

Gunnar’s face twitched. “Sure
what
wasn’t too much?
Nate…
what did you two-
”

The front door of the building suddenly slammed open and the drunken girl came stumbling out, yelling angrily over her shoulder as she struggled to toss her coat back on. Only one of the straps on her shirt was attached correctly, and it seemed to be tangled up with her arm because she was having a hell of a time putting the coat on. Her bra was also openly on display, and it too wasn’t completely attached, flashing a pale expanse of skin to the peeping toms in our car. Indie slapped my arm with an anxious laugh, one of the guys, making sure I zeroed in on the almost escaped boob.

I grinned.

A half naked man appeared in the doorway to the building, pleading with her to come back so he could explain. We could hear it through the windows, so he had to be shouting. But she shambled on down the street, storming off into the night and forcefully flipping the man the middle finger. His bare chest didn’t seem to register the cold.

Then again, with what he had planned for the night so suddenly imploding on him, I could understand his mindset with the no doubt near superhuman spike of adrenaline and testosterone blocking his cold receptors.

I watched as his face slowly began to darken in anger, his eyes scanning the street like only an assassin could. His eyes landed on our car for a second, but then flicked past. I called him on my new phone – one that managed to encrypt calls, texts, and emails – from both ends of the line. Only retailed for $17,000. A steal. I had gotten one for all my friends earlier this year. With us occasionally taking on questionable jobs – legally, that is – I wanted as much security and deniability as possible. It was also designed and built by my own company, Temple Industries, so R&D took on the expense for it.

I spoke casually, bubbling with enthusiasm. “Hey, man. I was driving in your neighborhood and wanted to see if your plans had chang-”

“You miserable son of a bitch.” He growled. “That was low. Even for you.”

“If I don’t ruin someone’s day I don’t sleep very well. It’s one of my gifts.”

He grunted, still scanning the street. Gunnar rolled his eyes and finally flashed his lights once. The man acknowledged us with a fiery glare. He flipped us off, and then motioned for us to come inside before doing so himself, deciding not to wait at the door.

“See you in a minute, bastard. Keep a low profile on your way in.” He said cryptically before he hung up.

Gunnar merely shook his head at me. “You are a real piece of work. How did you manage to get the girl to leave so fast?”

“Oh, you’ll see.” Indie burst out laughing as we opened the car doors to follow my friend, the dragon hunter, inside his apartment.

Chapter 5

I
wasn’t sure what I had expected, but as we stood in the dingy hallway outside the apartment door, I guessed I could have summed it up in one word.
More
. Tomas was a dragon hunter, a hit man. Surely he made better money than the building led me to believe.

Tomas opened the door, scowled at me for good measure, and then while leaning out of the doorway to glance both ways behind us, he swiftly darted in to plant a quick wet smooch on Indie’s cheek. I instinctively tensed up, my inner alpha male growling at the challenge, but Indie burst out laughing, calming my beast. She jabbed him playfully in the ribs as she forced her way past him and inside the apartment, darting immediately to the back room to inspect the masterpiece we had recently erected. Well, if that hadn’t given us away I didn’t know what would.

He quickly let Gunnar and I in the door, grimacing at our stench before locking and dead bolting the door behind us. But he didn’t question our smell, just accepted it. I wasn’t sure what that said about me. Or him.

Tomas seemed nervous underneath his calm demeanor. Perhaps I thought so because he had asked us to be discreet upon entering the building, or because he had scanned the hallway before letting us in. Or maybe it was because he was now hurriedly dashing to the windows to close the thick curtains. Regardless, he wasn’t a nervous guy. Hit men were notoriously calm, cool, and collected. I was pretty sure it was part of their job description. I raised an eyebrow at him, but he didn’t explain. “Phones.” He growled, holding out a beefy palm. Which pretty much confirmed my suspicions.

We complied and he carried them over to the microwave, carefully tucking them inside and shutting the door. Gunnar frowned at me as if attempting to telepathically ask me if Tomas had lost his marbles at some point.

“Faraday cage. Blocks the UHF frequencies.” Gunnar continued staring at me.

“I hear words coming out of your mouth, but I don’t know what they mean.”

“No one can use them to hear us.” Tomas clarified, striding towards us.

Indie returned from gloating over her masterpiece, instantly catching onto the tension as she watched the men folk stare each other down. Tomas pointed at the kitchen.

Her face clouded over in a heartbeat. “You think that because I’m a woman I’m going to go make you men sandwiches? Fat chance, dragon hunter. I have half a mind to-”

“Indie, can you put your phone in the microwave, please?” I interrupted her tirade.

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” She answered sheepishly, but Tomas was barely repressing his laughter as she made her way to the kitchen.

“While you’re at it, I’ll take a BLT.” He finally burst out, roaring with laughter. An apple sailed out of the kitchen and clucked him on the back of the head, abruptly halting his laughter. My laughter began the millisecond his ended.

He sat down into a worn leather recliner with a grunt, picking up the projectile in his scarred hands. “I suppose I asked for that.” He murmured, grinning. I nodded, and the room slowly began to fill with idle banter as they caught up with each other. I merely watched, mind combing the facts as I planned out my next moves.

Indie, dancing on her toes with anticipation finally convinced Tomas to let her show Gunnar the artwork in the bedroom. We spent a few minutes chuckling over it, even Gunnar. A hundred pictures of the same girl, all taken from different angles, formed a serial stalker collage that took up a good six-foot tall by four-foot wide section of the wall. They had been taken from some random woman’s social media account. It had no doubt made Tomas look, at best, like a crazy ex-boyfriend; and at worst, an obsessive stalker. Indie and I had efficiently
slaughtered
the mood. In my eyes, the elaborate joke made me feel that all was right with the world. Some good to balance the dire news I had learned today.

Pranks were soothing to the soul. They reminded you that if such an infinitesimal event like being cock-blocked by an extremely well thought-out master plan was the worst thing to happen to you that day, things were probably going to be more or less OK.

Also, my empathy factor was at an all time low at the moment. We had just survived a beating by two different supernatural groups in the sewers, but Tomas had been too busy planning on getting busy to spend five minutes of his time to talk with me. I had real world problems going on. I didn’t have time for Tomas to get all twitter-pated for a few hours while I waited him out in a constant state of paranoia, anticipating a bullet to the head at any second.

Go Team Temple, crushing single guys’ fantasies, one stalker collage at a time.

Tomas had taken a few minutes to truly calm down, but knowing who and what I was, he also likely knew there really wasn’t anything he could do to me.
Hello
,
Maker
. Other than stealing a kiss with Indie’s nonconsensual cheek. And accepting the fact that it really was quite an impressive prank, more than anything, seemed to cool him off. Also, seeing Gunnar, Indie and I burst out laughing at the impromptu mural had finally allowed him to admit the humor in it.

He sighed in resignation. “Well, I definitely need a few drinks after that.” He chuckled as he made his way into the kitchen. “Anyone else?” Everyone murmured agreement. He spoke over his shoulder as he began pouring drinks. “Bollocks! You should have seen her face. Hell, I’m sure mine looked just as shocked.” He chuckled.

Gunnar pointed. “Where the hell did you get that many pictures of the same person? And who is she?” He asked me.

I shrugged. “Some girl. I have no idea who she is. I outsourced the job. Othello.”

“Oh?” Indie said softly. Everyone knew about Othello and her
skills
… and our past relationship. The room grew brittle at Indie’s tone. Then she let loose a dazzling smile. “Just kidding. She won’t poach. We had a long… talk. Girl talk.” She added as an afterthought. I shivered, wondering exactly what that meant. But I knew Indie had accepted my old college fling. Especially after
Mardi Gras
when Othello had literally died for me.

Othello loved me. But she also knew that it would never work out. And after a few ‘talks’ the girls seemed to get along splendidly, although I did always feel like I was walking on razor blades over a lava pit of fire-breathing ninja lemurs whenever I saw them spending time together. Especially when they grew quiet as soon as I entered the room, and then giggled loud enough for me to hear as I quickly walked away to do important man stuff like check the batteries in the remotes.

Freaking women.

“Anyway,” I continued, “I told Othello a few months ago to gather a slush pile of pictures of the same girl – any girl – so that I could do this to you or Raego the next time you got uppity.” I smirked at Gunnar.

Tomas grunted, shaking his head in disbelief at my admitted depths of depravity. Gunnar merely scowled. “Well, I guess it’s lucky for you it didn’t work out like that…” he warned with a canine smile, letting his fangs lengthen as he partially shifted to his werewolf form. I rolled my eyes.

Tomas let out a belly laugh, watching Gunnar and I rib each other. “At least it’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one on the receiving end of his stunts.” He shook his head and took a deep drink of his wine. “I’m not going to lie. I played my cards right all night, told her suave stories, and made sure we both had plenty to drink. We got back to the apartment and I knew she was a sure thing.” Indie shook her head and rolled her eyes in amusement. “We poured some drinks and took off to make some magic happen in the bedroom. I don’t know who was more surprised to see my stalker collage. Linda certainly found zero humor in it.” He muttered, shrugging his shoulders. “It was a good joke, even though it took me a few to realize it. I take it that this was your subtle way of telling me that your time was more important than my dating life?” He asked, risking a thoughtful look at me.

I smiled with my teeth. “Got it in one.”

“Then I’m going to need another drink. We have some things we need to talk about. Quickly. In case anyone saw you come here.” He spoke over his shoulder, heading back to the kitchen. We exchanged thoughtful looks as he left. He brought over the bottle and we all settled down around his rickety coffee table. My eyes idly roved the apartment and I was reminded again that being a hit man was apparently not a very lucrative career. Either that or Tomas was not a material girl. Or it was a front.

Bingo. That fit better. This was a disguise. A burner home in case he needed to flee.

“Out of respect, you go first, but then I have something important to tell you.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, but I rehashed our night’s events. The vampires, the wolves, and their odd parting comments. As I took a second to wet my lips, he spoke.