Grimm: The Killing Time (13 page)

Renard stopped talking and let out a long breath, and with it, much of the tension drained out of him.

“We’ve worked together a long time, Nick. Even before either of us knew who and what the other was. I’m going to give you the opportunity to explain yourself, but right now I have to tell you—this doesn’t look good.”

Renard moved behind his desk, pulled out his chair, and sat. He folded his hands on the desk before him, and looked at the Wechselbalg, waiting for him to start talking.

The Wechselbalg understood that the protocol in this situation would be for him to also sit. There was a chair in front of the Captain’s desk for this very purpose. Sitting would’ve been the smart thing to do. It would be a sign that he recognized the Captain as his superior and was willing to submit to his authority. But the Wechselbalg didn’t want to do that. Renard might not know what the Wechselbalg was, but he clearly knew too much. And that made him even more dangerous than he already was. Instead of sitting, the Wechselbalg paced as he spoke.

“I came across the Skalengeck teens when they were in the process of defacing private property. At first I only intended to talk to them, maybe scare them into thinking twice about going out and tagging again. But they became belligerent.”

“So you decided to kill them?”

“That’s not how it happened. They woged in an attempt to frighten me off. When it didn’t work, they became aggressive.”

The Wechselbalg walked in a circular pattern around Renard’s desk as they talked. He wanted the Captain to become accustomed to having him standing behind him in order to make sure he kept his guard down. Until it was too late.

“I didn’t have to tell them I was a Grimm. They sensed it. And while that initially gave them some pause, they came at me, claws and teeth bared. I tried to defend myself without hurting them, but you know how resistant to pain Skalengecken are. No matter what I did, they just shrugged it off. So I had to get tougher with them. I guess things just… got out of hand.”

The Wechselbalg had continued his slow circuit of Renard’s desk, and the Captain continually turned his head to keep his gaze focused on “Nick” as he spoke.

“You slammed the girl’s head into the wall at least a half dozen times. And if you were attempting to exercise restraint, I’d say you did a pretty lousy job. And if the Skalengecken attacked you as you said, how come your clothes aren’t torn or your face scratched? You may be fast, but so are Skalengecken, and there were two of them. And where was Hank during all this? Was he in the alley, too?”

At this point, the Wechselbalg was once again standing behind Renard, and as the Captain began to swivel in his chair to keep his gaze trained on the Wechselbalg, the shapeshifter grabbed hold of the man’s head with both hands and slammed his head down onto the desk. Since the Wechselbalg wasn’t sure what kind of Wesen Renard was, he slammed his head against the desk several more times until the man’s body fell limp. The Wechselbalg placed his fingers against Renard’s neck to check for a pulse. He found it, and although it was a bit uneven at the moment, it was steady enough. Renard might be unconscious, but he didn’t appear to be in any danger of dying soon. But that was easily remedied.

The Wechselbalg lifted Renard off the desk and pushed him back in his chair. He then wrapped his hands around the man’s throat and began to squeeze. The Captain might fall into the “good’ category of Wesen, but the Wechselbalg couldn’t let him live. As the saying went, he knew too much.

The Wechselbalg squeezed harder, but as Renard’s face reddened, he began having second thoughts. Nick Burkhardt might not consider the Captain a friend, but he didn’t think of him as an enemy, either. The man had done a lot of good as a police captain—
and
as a Wesen in a position of authority. Nick couldn’t have accomplished as much as he had without Renard’s support.

The Wechselbalg’s grip began to loosen until he removed his hands from the man’s throat. He watched as the Captain’s face—which had been edging toward dark purple—slowly returned to its normal color. Reassured that the Captain would recover, the Wechselbalg left his office. But instead of returning to Nick’s—to
his
—desk, he headed for the lobby. In time, maybe he could come up with some kind of explanation for why he’d assaulted his superior officer. But right now he needed to get out of the building and away from Renard. When the man returned to consciousness, he was
not
going to be happy, and the Wechselbalg didn’t want to be around when Renard woke up pissed and started looking for him.

As the Wechselbalg headed for the lobby, Wu crossed his path once more. The officer was holding another manila folder containing papers, but this time the sticky notes affixed to the pages were purple.

“Leaving? Good thing I caught you. We just got the Coroner’s preliminary findings on the tapioca we recovered near the Webbers’ house. You want to take a look at the report, or do you want me to give you the Cliff Notes version?”

The Wechselbalg frowned. This man spoke too fast, and he had trouble understanding the words he used. The Wechselbalg had no time to stand here and listen to the man’s prattling. He was tempted to punch the man in his throat and crush his trachea, but he restrained himself. Wu was a fellow cop and a friend. The part of the Wechselbalg that was Nick Burkhardt wouldn’t allow him to hurt Wu any more than he’d been able to hurt Renard.

“Neither,” the Wechselbalg said, then turned and continued toward the lobby.

He didn’t look back, but he heard Wu mutter to himself. “Looks like someone gets cranky when he stays up past his bedtime.”

The Wechselbalg went outside and into the parking lot. He headed for the Cherokee and pulled the key out of his pocket. He wasn’t sure where he would go, but he’d figure that out once he was on the road. Right now he just wanted to get out of there.

“I see you got a new ride,” Renard said.

The Cherokee was less than ten yards from where the Wechselbalg stood. He debated whether he could reach the vehicle before Renard attacked. He didn’t think much of his chances, so he turned around to face the Captain. Renard’s forehead was swollen and already in the process of bruising, but otherwise, he didn’t seem much the worse for wear.

“What happened to your Toyota?” Renard asked. He glanced around the deserted lot. “For that matter, what happened to the Charger you and Hank took out?’

The Wechselbalg strugged to think of a reply, but the questions came at him too fast. Renard didn’t let up on the pressure. He took a step closer and said, “You didn’t tell me how the investigation into the shapeshifter murders was going. How about it,
Nick
? Do you have any idea where the shapeshifter might be—or
who
it might be?”

The Wechselbalg’s instincts—both Wesen and Grimm—told him that the Captain’s true intent wasn’t to talk, but rather to keep his opponent off-balance and stall for time to get close enough to attack. But the Wechselbalg wasn’t going to continue playing this game. Renard had just proved himself to be a clear and persistent threat, and whether or not the Nick part of the Wechselbalg liked it, the man had to be eliminated.

He reached around to draw his Glock from where it was tucked against his back. But before he could bring the weapon around and train it on Renard, the Captain twisted his head from one side to another, and patches of ravaged crimson skin erupted on his face. Renard lunged forward, moving far more swiftly than a human, and as he came, he let out a sound that was a cross between a shout of fury and an animalistic roar.

The Wechselbalg was just raising the Glock for a shot when Renard slammed into him, grabbed him by the shoulders, and drove him backward against the Cherokee. The impact crumpled metal and drove the Wechselbalg’s breath from his lungs. It also caused him to lose his grip on his weapon. He heard the sound of the Glock clattering to the ground, but he didn’t see where it landed.

Before the Wechselbalg could do anything else, Renard pulled him away from the vehicle and then slammed him back into it again. The Captain had hold of his arms, so since the Wechselbalg couldn’t strike the man with his fists, he was forced to improvise. He drove his forehead into Renard’s, and although he’d never attempted such a blow in his life, his new body knew what it was doing. The blow hurt far less than he expected, and it had the desired effect on Renard. The man’s head snapped back and he released his grip on the Wechselbalg’s shoulders. He staggered backward a couple steps, shaking his head as if to clear it. The Wechselbalg wasn’t about to give him that chance. He stepped forward, curled his right hand into a fist, and struck Renard on the jaw. Once more Renard’s head snapped back and he took another couple stagger-steps backward.

The Wechselbalg pressed his advantage, stepping forward and following up his first punch with a hard left. This time Renard went down on one knee, and the Wechselbalg grinned. Whatever type of Wesen Renard was, he didn’t seem to be all that tough. The Wechselbalg took a quick look around for his Glock, but didn’t see it. He realized then that he’d lost the Cherokee’s key as well. He’d been holding it when Renard had first attacked. He must have dropped it the same time he’d lost his grip on the Glock. He looked for the key, but couldn’t see that either. To hell with it. He’d finish Renard off with his bare hands, just as he’d done with the two Skalengeck teens.

He turned to Renard and saw that the Captain stood upright. And he’d drawn his own Glock. His facial features had returned to full humanity, and he fixed the Wechselbalg with a deadly serious look.

“Let’s try this again,” Renard said.

The Wechselbalg didn’t take his gaze off Renard’s eyes. Looking into them, he saw no doubt, no wavering. If the Wechselbalg so much as twitched a finger, the man would start firing. Renard had the upper hand, and the Wechselbalg knew it. There was no way he would be able to beat the man in a physical confrontation now. If he hoped to defeat Renard and escape, he would have to find another way.

He rapidly searched through Nick’s memories, but he couldn’t find anything in the Grimm’s repertoire that would serve him now. But he had other skills to draw on, honed from a long lifetime of pretending to be something he wasn’t.

He lowered his head and reached up slowly with trembling fingers and ran them through his hair.

“I’m sorry, Captain. I… Something’s not right with me. The shapeshifter attacked me. Injected me with some sort of chemical. I think it was trying to copy me, but something went wrong.”

He ran his hand down his face and rubbed his stubbled chin.

The Wechselbalg snuck a quick glance at Renard. The man hadn’t lowered his Glock so much as an inch. But his gaze no longer seemed quite so certain.

“Nick told me that,” he said evenly.

These words shocked the Wechselbalg. Nick
couldn’t
have spoken with Renard. He’d died when the Wechselbalg duplicated his form, just as all the Wechselbalg’s victims had over the years. Hadn’t he?

Did you see Nick die? Did you stay to watch his body liquefy?

No, he hadn’t.

The Wechselbalg would worry about that later. Right now he had a performance to finish. He rubbed the back of his neck, then curled his shoulders forward and drew in his abdomen to make himself look weaker, less of a threat.

“I think the process, whatever it is, goes both ways. At least it did this time. The shapeshifter took something from me, but it also gave me something of itself. It…”

The Wechselbalg allowed his knees to buckle, and slumped to the ground. He put out a hand to catch himself and fell into a sitting position.

Renard lowered his weapon. Not much, but it was a start.

The Wechselbalg raised his eyes, looked directly at Renard, and spoke in a near whisper. “I’m having trouble remembering who I am.”

Renard lowered his Glock a bit more.

“If you really are Nick Burkhardt, then you’ll come with me peacefully, and you’ll let me put you into a holding cell until we can figure this out.”

The Wechselbalg nodded.

“Yeah. Sure.”

Since collapsing to the ground, the Wechselbalg had been slowly edging his hand beneath the Cherokee—toward his Glock, which had slid underneath the vehicle when he’d dropped it.

“Okay,” Renard said. “Get on your feet. Slowly.”

The Wechselbalg took hold of the Glock and brought it up with him as he rose unsteadily. He angled his body slightly to hide the weapon from Renard. He had hold of the gun by its barrel, and he doubted he’d be able to maneuver it into firing position before Renard could shoot his.

Time to improvise again.

As he stood he hurled the Glock toward Renard as if it were a shuriken and immediately dove to the side. Renard managed to squeeze off a single round which exploded through both the Cherokee’s driver and passenger side windows. The butt of the Wechselbalg’s Glock struck Renard dead center between the eyes. He staggered for a couple seconds before finally going down.

Smiling, the Wechselbalg walked over and retrieved the Glock from where it had fallen. Renard had managed to hold onto his weapon when he fell, and the Wechselbalg removed it from his limp fingers. He briefly considered using Renard’s own weapon to kill him, and he even went so far as to aim the gun at the man’s head and put his finger on the trigger. But now that the Captain was unconscious and no longer an immediate threat, the Wechselbalg didn’t feel the same pressure to kill him. Knowing it was probably a mistake, he took his finger off the trigger and lowered the weapon to his side. He turned away from the Captain and there—lying on the ground several yards from the Cherokee—he saw the vehicle’s key.

Time to go. Good thing it wasn’t too cold out tonight. Thanks to Renard’s bullet, the Cherokee now had permanent air-conditioning.

* * *

Nick drove, while Hank rode shotgun.

“What do you think we’ll find when we get there?” Hank asked.

As they approached an intersection, the light turned yellow. Nick checked to see if any cars were coming, and when he saw the way was clear, he hit the gas and the Charger passed through the intersection just as the light turned red.