Grimm: The Chopping Block (33 page)

“No time,” Hank said. “Go! I’ll guard the basement door. Prisoners’ keys should be in the butcher’s room.”

* * *

Despite Dominik Koertig’s insistence that she stay clear of the house, Ellen Crawford had come to the Silver Plate Society feast. Worse, she’d brought her son with her. Between her and the police raid—led by a Grimm, no less—the operation had spiraled out of control. But all was not lost. Simply a few more tasks on his to-do list.

While the police were preoccupied with the surviving banquet attendees, he ascended the stairs two at a time and sprinted along the upstairs hallway. The butcher, a hulking Dickfellig in a bloodstained apron, lay in the hallway, moaning, fingers wrapped around a knife protruding from his right eyeball. A fresh bloodstain had spread across his abdomen. At the moment, he represented no physical threat.

Koertig stood over him, aimed his automatic at the good eye, which widened at the sight of the gun barrel, then disappeared when he fired. The butcher’s head jolted backward with the bullet’s impact, bits of scalp, skull and brain matter rupturing outward on the hardwood floor.

Ejecting the spent magazine, Koertig pulled a fresh one from his pocket and slammed it home, pressing the slide release to cock the gun.

Turning on his heel, he entered the upstairs office and looked left to right. Kurt Crawford lay unconscious, propped up against the wall. Ellen Crawford, her face drawn and pale, mascara-streaked with spent tears, had one arm wrapped around him. Her chest was covered with her own blood, which had begun to pool around her. A broken desk lamp sat on the floor beside her, also streaked with blood. Slumped in his desk chair, Widmark stared at him, stunned, blood gushing from a scalp wound that seemed to have been inflicted by Ellen with the broken desk lamp.

“You’ll kill them all?” Ellen asked, her voice strained. “As promised?”

“Everyone,” he said, walking toward Widmark. “This ends here, Host.”

“Who—?”

Koertig raised his weapon and fired at the old man’s forehead in one smooth motion. The chair rocked backward then came forward, and Widmark’s body fell face first on the desk, exposing the ruin of the back of his skull.

Koertig walked across the room and stood over the Crawfords.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Ellen. “Everyone.”

He fired two more kill shots.

From the ground floor, he heard shouting, screams, gunshots and general pandemonium. He doubted the society members would allow the police to arrest them, part of their rumored “death before disclosure” oath. But he would make sure that option was denied them.

He left the office and stealthily descended the stairs. He had to attack swiftly, without warning, for maximum effect. As soon as the dinner guests came into view, he opened fire, taking headshots to conserve time and ammunition.

* * *

With Hank waiting in the kitchen at the top of the stairs, Nick descended to the basement and found a locked metal door at one end of a hallway, an open slaughtering room door at the other end.

As he approached the open doorway he heard faint sounds: the clink and clank of metal. Pausing at the threshold, he took in the horrifying scene: an open walk-in cooler with a headless and gutted human corpse hanging from a hook, a winch rigged to a gambrel in the center of the room, trails of dried blood leading to a drain in the corner. But he couldn’t see the source of the metallic rustling.

Gun high, braced with the palm of his left hand, he moved forward, sweeping the sights of his gun right—
nothing!
—to left—a large man in a white apron, his back to Nick, standing at a butchering table covered with severed body parts, an assortment of carving knives, and a meat saw. The Wesen used the flat side of a meat cleaver to sweep chunks of human flesh and bone into a large bucket he’d positioned beside the table.

Getting rid of evidence?
The thought flashed through Nick’s mind.

“Freeze! Portland Police!” he shouted.

The man froze, as instructed, still clutching the cleaver.

“You are not permitted here!” he said.

“You’re kidding, right?” Nick said. “Party’s over. Drop the cleaver, butcher!”

“I am Sous-Chef,” the man said indignantly. “Not Butcher!”

“I don’t care,” Nick said. “Drop the damn—!”

The sous-chef moved fast for a big man. Instead of dropping the cleaver, he flung it backward, spinning sideways with deadly accuracy, right at Nick’s head.

With no time to duck, Nick deflected the heavy blade with his raised gun. The cleaver ricocheted off the open walk-in cooler door, but Nick lost his grip on the Glock.

Before he could track it, the Wesen—woged to reveal his Schakal nature—charged him, wood-handled meat hooks gripped in both hands.

Nick unleashed a waist-high kick, driving the heel of his shoe into the man’s solar plexus. The Schakal’s forward momentum increased the severity of the blow. He staggered backward, wheezing.

“First, I kill you, Grimm,” he snarled hoarsely. “Then the livestock.”

Nick darted to the side, scooped up the cleaver and faced his opponent in a wary stance, balanced to duck either way.

He didn’t have long to wait.

The Schakal bull-rushed him again, alternating overhand swings with the meat hooks. Dodging the blows, Nick ducked right, then leaned to the left. A whistling meat hook snagged his jacket. Nick smashed the butt of the cleaver into the back of the Schakal’s elbow.

Bone cracked and the Schakal roared, doubled over in pain. With the cleaver in a double-handed grip, Nick swung the blade as if it were an axe and he was chopping wood. His arms met momentary resistance at the Wesen’s spine, but the stroke was powerful and the sharp blade burst free with a spray of blood.

The Schakal’s head spiraled down to the floor and rolled to a stop beside the winch. The lifeless body toppled over—the neck spurting blood for several seconds—and sprawled awkwardly beneath the gambrel.

“Nick?” Hank called from the top of the stairs.

“Everything’s under control!” Nick yelled back, breathing heavily.

Circling around the mess, Nick located an old iron key ring hanging from a peg on the wall.

Quickly, he unlocked the door at the far end of the hallway. There he found nine survivors—five men and four women—all chained to the walls, in various states of exhaustion. Upon his arrival, several cowered in fear.

“Don’t—please don’t kill us,” pleaded one woman, favoring her ribs. “Please!”

“It’s okay,” Nick said. “I’m Detective Nick Burkhardt. My partner, Hank Griffin, sent me to rescue you.”

“Is he—is Hank still alive?” the woman asked, incredulous.

“Yes,” Nick said, offering a reassuring smile. “And you’re all getting out of here.”

He took the key ring and, one by one, unlocked their collars and chains.

* * *

Monroe and Renard had succeeded in herding the formally dressed cannibals, along with a few in casual clothes, away from the exits. Most sat on or near sofas and chairs, or leaned against tables.

Renard had shot and killed one murderous Geier, armed with a machete, with two rounds in the chest. That got the attention of the others, who dropped their weapons and seemed resigned to their arrest.

One indignant man spoke of his high-priced attorney on retainer, and proceeded to convince the others that the man could legally extricate them all from “this unfortunate situation.” Monroe wondered if that was legalese for a mass-murdering cannibal gathering. In the distance, he heard approaching police sirens. Renard had called for back up as soon as they’d gotten the crowd under control.

Renard heard something and called, “Nick!”

At that moment, the Hundjager opened fire, and the society members panicked anew. One after another, they dropped, most with instantly fatal head wounds. Flipping a banquet table on its side, Renard ducked behind it and returned fire, but he had a bad angle.

Monroe, on the far side of a coatrack, stood beyond the Hundjager’s line of sight as the man stepped off the bottom of the staircase, killing everyone in his path. He strode into the room to take out a woman crouching beside a coffee table, then an old man cowering behind a gold settee with a fleur-de-lis pattern.

Monroe woged and charged the Hundjager.

He felt a spike of panic as the man’s arm swung around, the barrel tracking toward him in the blink of an eye. Diving under the sweep of that arm, Monroe knocked down the Hundjager.

They both struck the hardwood floor and rolled in opposite directions. Monroe sprang to his feet, but the Hundjager beat him to it and aimed the automatic at his chest. The second time that had happened to him in the last ten minutes.

Monroe froze.

A gunshot roared.

Flinching, Monroe reflexively clutched his chest.

But he hadn’t been hit.

Renard, now with a clear line of sight, had shot the Hundjager in the side, below the right armpit, spinning him around. The Wesen assassin staggered back a half-step, fighting for balance.

Renard fired again, drilling him in the center of the chest. Another stagger-step backward, before Renard fired a third time.

The bridge of the Hundjager’s nose exploded in a crimson plume of blood. His body teetered for a long moment, then collapsed at the foot of the staircase.

Monroe looked around in a daze at all the dead bodies, society members and nonmembers, unable to find a single survivor. Then he heard a rush of noise coming from the kitchen.

* * *

Nick heard Renard call, “All clear!”

“Let’s go, people,” Nick said.

He strode from the kitchen, gun against his thigh, leading the bedraggled group of human survivors toward the front of the house. Hank brought up the rear, hopping awkwardly on his good foot but smiling in genuine relief.

Outside, sirens whooped. Red and blue lights flashed through the front and side windows. The chatter of police radios filled the night air.

Nick surveyed the collection of sprawled bodies and busted furniture—a macabre festival in utter ruin—looked back at the human survivors and then, pointedly, at Renard and Monroe.

“It’s over,” he said.

The former captives probably thought his words referred to their ordeal alone, but Renard and Monroe recognized their greater meaning. The Silver Plate Society was over. In twenty-five years, only the urban legends would remain.

Once they had completed what seemed like reams of paperwork, giving a decidedly non-Wesen slant to the slaughter and mass executions at the house in the woods, Nick and Hank stopped by Captain Renard’s office.

But before Nick could ask the question that had been bugging him, Sergeant Wu slipped past them and spread several newspapers across Renard’s desk.

“For your reading pleasure,” Wu said, then excused himself, leaving the two detectives alone with the Captain.

The newspapers featured lurid headlines in bold block type: S
ECRET
B
ANQUETS
S
ERVED
H
UMAN
F
LESH
; M
ASS
G
RAVES
E
XPOSE
C
ANNIBAL
C
ULT
; C
APTIVES
F
REED
F
ROM
“L
IVESTOCK
” P
EN
; S
URVIVOR
: “T
HEY
W
ERE
M
ONSTERS
, W
E
W
ERE
M
EAT
”; R
OGUE
C
ULT
M
EMBER
S
LAUGHTERS
R
EST
.

“Who was he?” Nick asked. “The Hundjager?”

“Traveled under a false identity,” Renard said. “Prints came back as belonging to Dominik Koertig, matching a second ID and passport we found in his hotel room safe. Quite the world traveler. Listed occupation is contractor. Let’s assume that’s a euphemism. Best guess? A freelance fixer hired by the Verrat to put an end to the Silver Plate Society. Not that they’ll ever admit it existed. They either found out when word of the flyers circulated or…”

“Ellen Crawford,” Hank guessed. “Never thought she was involved. When I saw her at the banquet, she looked out of place. And upstairs, she and her son must have squared off against the host, Widmark.”

“Blamed the society for her husband’s involvement and premature death,” Renard said, nodding in agreement. “Revenge is a powerful motive.”

“She sent an assassin,” Nick said. “Why go to the banquet?”

“It was personal with Widmark,” Hank surmised. “She wanted to kill him herself.”

“Frankly,” Renard said, “I’m glad none of them survived to get processed through the system. Lets us spin our own narrative. Explaining a cannibal cult is bad enough. And the human survivors, imprisoned in the basement, witnessed little. They believe the butcher wore a fright mask.”

“Might hold up with the press,” Nick said, “but there’s no mask at the site.”

Renard shrugged. “Evidence destroyed during the raid.”

Nick nodded, trying to take comfort in knowing they’d saved some lives, without forgetting all those who had suffered and perished for a barbaric feasting ritual. Some families would get to experience joyful reunions with their missing loved ones. As for the rest, once the remaining bones were identified they would have closure, if nothing else. Maybe they would find solace in that.

* * *

That evening Nick and Hank stopped at a local bar for an after-work drink. When Nick had knocked back the last of his beer, he looked at his partner, sitting on the stool next to him. Hank looked spooked, as if he had just woken from a particularly disturbing nightmare.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Could’ve been worse,” Hank said, taking the last sip of his bourbon and spinning the ice cubes around the bottom of the glass. Smiling, he shook his head. “And my cast made it through in one piece.”

“Ever regret having a Grimm for a partner?”

“Not at all,” Hank said, pushing the glass away and reaching for his crutches. “In this strange new world, who better to have my back?”