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

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The family classic, Grimm's Fairy Tales, is not the collection of bedtime stories Nate Temple thought it was, but actually the keys to a veritable prison housing the most dangerous bloodthirsty hit men of the supernatural community. Nate must find a way to lock up the prison for good before his people become a buffet table for the Brothers Grimm…

Discover Nate’s origin story, and get a sneak peek into the events that lead up to GRIMM, Book 3 in the Nate Temple Supernatural Thriller Series. To get your copy of FAIRY TALE as well as a free copy of OBSIDIAN SON (share it with someone who loves to read!), and lots more exclusive content, all for FREE, you just need to tell me where to send them. Click
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Nate Temple Series

Obsidian Son

Blood Debts

Fairy Tale (Your FREE Book)

Grimm

Chapter 1

A
lot can happen between
now
and
never
.

I once read that the phrase
it’s now or never
was first coined to describe that moment that if one doesn’t act upon right
now
, that they will
never
again get a second chance to do so. They would miss their one opportunity. Usually through their own fault, but sometimes that vindictive bitch named Karma could ninja flip out of a closet to give you a solid monkey fist to the stones.

You know…

Perhaps you had been facing a once in a lifetime opportunity – saying hello to the cute girl at the bar before anyone else; or maybe you had stood in silence for twenty seconds too long during your oral presentation in front of the classroom and desperately needed to formulate words that even closely resembled anything intelligent.

Basically, you needed to do the thing
right freaking now
.

Carpe Diem.

Like me.

Right
now
I was standing in the chilly sewers beneath the fine city of St. Louis in order to check off something on my
to-do
list. Something that was likely going to get my fancy new coat all smelly and icky in the process. Still, getting my coat
smelly
and
icky
was better than getting it
bloody
and
hole-y
. That’s why I had brought backup. But the night was young. And I never counted my chickens before they hatched.

Especially when hunting vampires.

But I’ll get to that in a minute.

Right
Now
, I was getting ready to do something marginally dangerous, and even with accomplices to watch my back, I wasn’t quite ready to strap on my big boy pants. I was stalling.

I was here –
hopefully
– to save some lives. The victims didn’t have Batman coming down to save them, or even the fine police persons of St. Louis. None of those upstanding people knew anyone was in danger down here, or would have even believed the intel that had led me here: a Greek hero gossiping at the bar over a beer. And all those victims had was one scraggly wizard, a disgraced werewolf FBI Agent, and a vanilla mortal to come save them.

Now
was a brief period of time that was full of choices that would later result in more choices – harder ones – that would lead to penultimate consequences. The
now
part was pretty cut and dried for me. It was the
consequences
I was thinking about.

This whole mess had all started because of a favor I thought I owed to Achilles.

Yes.
The
Achilles. The legendary Greek hero with – what some may call –
vengeance issues
.

And when one smashes up his place of business – allegedly – he could be known to display said vengeance issues by inflicting gratuitous amounts of pain upon the accused.

No thanks.

So I wanted to make it up to him before the thought crossed his mind. It wasn’t like I could blame the
Angel
for fluttering into Achilles’ bar and picking a fight with Death – one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse – and I a few months back. Angels were Holy, above the law, beyond reproach,
blah, blah, blah ad nauseam
.

So.

Rather than tattling on the
pigeon
, I had nervously waited months for the chance to gain his gratitude by doing him a solid.

Over drinks at his bar earlier tonight, Achilles had idly mentioned rumors about a vampire kidnapping young girls to bring them down to the sewers, after which they were never heard from again. The most recent disappearance was one of Achilles’ own bartenders, and he feared the worst for her.

That was how I found myself in the sewer with my girlfriend and my childhood best friend on a perfectly cold November night. To possibly prevent my sad rear end from being dragged across St. Louis behind Achilles’ chariot.

I glanced at my dismal surroundings. Maybe the vampire was just looking to
Netflix and chill
in his spacious tunnel home. I studied the slick, slimy walls with a look of disgust. No, not a
home
… a
lair
. Definitely a lair.

But this was par for the course in my experience. Find bad guy. Exterminate bad guy. Keep young pretty girls safe.

Or avenge them.

It’s what we wizards did for a living. Well, most of us. The one’s who didn’t make millions of dollars per year on interest income from their daddy’s technology company.

Ahem
.

So maybe I was just doing it for the thrill. The challenge. Or maybe even to do the right thing. I grunted.
Who knows these things
, I thought to myself reproachfully. I shook my head before my inner Freud could psychoanalyze that too much further.

After the
Now
comes the
Never
part of the phrase. You know, the part where you won’t be
here
anymore. The part where all of your family and loved ones have moved on and left you six feet under while your soul is astral projected to the afterlife. Heaven. Hell. Atlantis. Nirvana. Or on a nice long boat ride with the Charon – the chatty drunk Greek
Boatman
– who ferried souls on their trip to Hades in his Underworld funhouse.

Been there, done that. It didn’t stick.

The point is, you’re
dead
, so the consequences of your actions won’t be your problem anymore. They will be felt by others, or by no one at all, leaving you with the peace of mind that you did all that you could, that it was worth it. That you made your move. Kissed the girl. Muttered something vaguely English in your speech class.

But you know what’s in the middle of
now
and
never
?

Life
.

Or in my case, annoying questions that interrupted my well thought out inner philosophical monologue.

“Remind me why we are standing in the literal filth of St. Louis in the middle of November, rather than back at
Chateau Falco
tipping one back before a roaring fire. Or why I’m here instead of curling up with my fiancé looking at wedding magazines and drinking a glass of wine.” Gunnar complained. He lifted his boot with a disgusting squelch, emitting a whole new level of foulness to the brittle air. The dingy environment only seemed to amplify the stunningly royal bearing of my Viking friend. His golden hair was tucked up in a golden man bun, and his beard was impressively thicker than usual, as he had been growing it out for his upcoming wedding. Or so he had told me. I had recently had a nightmare where we were wrestling over a
Monopoly
argument involving my rapid construction of hotels, and I discovered that he was actually growing the beard out in order to hide a secret guardian inside – a leprechaun-sized werewolf willing and able to defend his master’s honor in the event his master lost the wrestling match.

In my dream, I had lost to the violent little bastard.

So far, Gunnar’s sniffer hadn’t located any vampire scent at all, so I was appointed navigator based upon my eidetic memory of the scant information Achilles had provided.

“Well, if we’re speaking of the latter, you should thank me.” I muttered.

Indie punched me in the arm, scowling. I shook it off with an idle grin, glad that she had accepted my jibe at surface level. After all, I had been reading over every damn wedding magazine ever printed these past few weeks, which seemed to make my mother deliriously happy.

Yes, even a mother who recently died still went bonkers mad at the topic of gowns and weddings. You just had to find a way to talk to her spirit. Which I had. And she had commanded me to use her engagement ring when I asked Indie to share my life.

Which was the other reason I was down here, and the biggest reason I was stalling.

I was distracted. Conflicted. The vampire part of the trip was secondary in my mind.

Which wasn’t good.

But I couldn’t seem to shake it. I was going to ask Indie to marry me!