Chapter Text
The ring fit.
It was everything she’d ever dreamed of - no, better than everything she’d ever dreamed of in a ring. The design might have been simple, and the diamond was small, sure, but it fucking fit her now that it had been resized and it looked perfect on her finger and she was never taking it off again.
Nicki held her hand up in front of her face, a helpless smile gracing her lips.
She was going to get married.
“It looks perfect on you,” the man behind the counter of the jewelry store said.
Nicki flashed her smile at him, her cheeks hurting from the force of it. “It does, doesn’t it?”
She was humming softly as she left the store, a jaunty little tune from a commercial that kept playing on the radio. Her humming turned into a huff of laughter as she strode over to a woman waiting for her next to a parked car, waving at the camera the woman had aimed at her face. “What are you doing, Hannah?”
Hannah lowered the camera with a grin of her own. “Just thought I’d capture that pretty smile of yours. Come on. Show us the ring!”
Nicki turned her head to the side slightly and put her hand on her cheek, displaying her ring next to her smile. Hannah made approving noises, moving the camera around as if she were a paparazzi and making Nicki laugh again.
“Okay, stop.” Nicki waved her off. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
Hannah clicked her tongue and propped one hand up on the curve of her hip. “You’ve been waiting for Julian to propose for how long now? I never let any of my ex-husbands wait that long to propose to me.”
“Yeah, but you’re like, you.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
Nicki raised a brow. “You picked out all of your own rings and brought your exes to the store to buy them, and then planned your own proposals.”
Hannah shrugged. “I know what I like.”
“I’m not saying that’s bad. I’m just saying we’re different. I wanted to wait for Julian to do it.”
“Well now he finally did. Good thing, too, or I would’ve done it for him.”
Nicki grinned at her. “I’ll let him know he has competition.”
“Oh, he knows.” Hannah tugged the passenger door open and waved her inside with the camera. “Your chariot awaits, Mrs. Silverton.”
Her breath caught in her throat.
Mrs. Silverton. The name had a certain ring to it.
She nodded, mute, and got into the car. Hannah chuckled under her breath and shut the door after her, and Nicki rubbed her thumb over the diamond on her finger as her heart thudded in her chest. Hannah slid into the seat next to her with a sigh, and tucked the camera away before turning on the car. She didn’t put it into reverse, though, instead pointing out the window and saying, her voice low, “I’d like a minute alone with him.”
Nicki flicked her gaze in the direction she was pointing. A man was walking out of one of the buildings, a cellphone to his ear and a suitcase hanging from his other hand, his strides long and brisk. His suit was worth more than anything Nicki owned - except for her ring - and looked tailored to fit the toned lines of his frame. The cut of his jaw and cheekbones were fit for the front page of magazines, and no doubt he had stunning eyes under his fringe of golden hair to match them.
Nicki hummed. “He’s fucking his secretary.”
Hannah cursed under her breath. “How? How would you know that?!”
“Or he wants to,” she mused. “Maybe she’s not interested.”
“Not interested? In that?!” Hannah jerked her hand in a wave at the man.
Nicki opened her mouth to reply, but her voice died in her throat as the man’s face decayed before her eyes, rotting away, twisting into something straight out of a zombie horror film. She stared at the monster, her eyes wide, her fingers digging into her thighs as a high-pitched note rang in her ears, but the vision disappeared as quickly as it came, and the man’s handsome face returned.
A hand landed on her shoulder, and she jerked hard and whipped to face Hannah’s small frown as she said softly, “Hey. You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Nicki’s gaze darted back to the man just as he was disappearing into a car.
He looked normal.
Perfectly normal.
She let out a slow breath and nodded, but her voice came out shakier than she’d meant it to, “Yeah. I’m fine. Let’s just- go.”
Hannah didn’t stop pestering her the entire drive over to the crime scene they’d been called to, but Nicki didn’t know what to tell her that wouldn’t make her sound like she was losing her mind, so she just shook her head and kept quiet.
They inspected the sundered body and the blood splattered trees, collecting as much evidence as they could before turning it over to forensics. They returned to the precinct, spitballing theories and discussing who was going to do what. Nicki had just managed to brush the Zombie Incident off as a sleep deprivation induced hallucination when she glanced over at a woman cuffed to one of the officer’s desks.
The woman looked back, and turned into a lizard person.
Nicki jerked back, slamming into someone else hard enough to make them grunt. She whipped a hand out to steady the woman she’d bumped into, and was leveled with a flat glare.
“Sorry Wu,” Nicki muttered. “I was just…”
But when she looked back the lizard person looked normal again.
Completely normal.
Wu snorted and trudged off, calling back over her shoulder, “Next time we play bumper buddies remind me to bring my airbags.”
Nicki just nodded slightly, her heart still thudding hard in her chest.
The lizard person’s face remained firmly lodged in her mind. She kept catching herself staring at people as if she was expecting their faces to change, too, which was ridiculous because nobody’s face could actually change. She was hallucinating. It was a side-effect of overdosing on caffeine finally catching up to her.
There was no such thing as lizard people, or zombies, or any kind of monster at all.
Monsters did not exist.
A balled-up piece of paper hit the side of her face and then fell to the floor. Nicki frowned down at it, and then frowned at Hannah, who had a frown of her own on her face.
“What is with you right now?” Hannah asked.
Nicki shook her head and muttered, “Nothing.”
Hannah raised one perfectly plucked brow. “Mhmm. I just got a hit on a missing person. You ready to work, or are you going to space out on me the rest of the day, too?”
“No, I’m good. What’ve you got?”
She rallied herself throughout the rest of the day, and did not allow herself to think about monsters again as she went through the motions of the case with Hannah. When it was time to go home she sat in her car for a moment, staring at the ring on her hand where it rested on the steering wheel. With a small smile and a huff she threw the car into reverse and pulled out of the spot she’d parked in and headed home to her fiance.
The driveway was full when she arrived.
There was a trailer in it, hitched to the back of a truck she very much recognized. The sight of the truck made her steps falter, made her come to a full stop on the path adjacent to the driveway before she could reach the front door.
That truck never meant anything good.
She took a deep breath and went inside her house.
The lights were off, the interior lit only with a faint glow from the kitchen in the back. Voices drifted over to her, too faint to decipher. She stood in the entryway listening to the hum of indistinct conversation for a long moment before she managed to convince her feet to move forward. One step, then another, they took her closer and closer to the kitchen.
And then she rounded the corner, and the two men inside the room turned to face her.
“You’re back!” one of the men said, and dried off his hands on the towel bunched up on the counter before sweeping up to her to press a sweet kiss to her cheek. He hooked his arm over her shoulders and tucked her close to his side, tilting his head at the other man sitting at the table. “Your uncle was just telling me some great stories.”
“Oh?” Nicki’s smile was strained. “Frog in the microwave?”
Her uncle returned her smile with a small one of his own. His head was bald when it hadn’t been before, and he looked small and frail when he’d always filled a room with his presence. His hand was skeletal where it wrapped around his glass of water, his veins standing out stark against his ashen skin. A cane rested against the table next to him. Her uncle had never used a cane before, either.
“Sorry for the unexpected visit,” he said. “I meant to call.”
Nicki nodded, once. He never called.
This wasn’t a social visit.
The arm around her squeezed slightly, and the man attached to her said, “It’s no problem. We’re happy to have you here.”
Nicki turned her smile on him. “Julian, can you give us a moment?”
Julian’s smile dropped into a small frown. “Yeah, of course. I ordered us all dinner from that place you really like, but they won’t be here for a while. That should give you guys some time to catch up.”
Nicki melted against him, the strain in her smile disappearing. “From the little Chinese place?”
Julian laughed softly with a nod and bent down to press a chaste kiss to her lips before pulling away from her completely. He waved at her uncle, who nodded at him, and then disappeared out of the kitchen.
“He’s nice,” her uncle said.
Nicki’s smile dropped. “Why are you here?”
“I’m dying,” the blunt words made her reel back as if physically struck.
She’d known. She'd known the moment she'd seen him. But hearing him say it like- like that, so definitively, as if he'd made the decision himself made her suddenly feel like she was twelve again, finding out her parents had just died.
She sank into the seat across from him, her lips pressed tight against the protests trying to break free. She knew better than to let them out - if he said he was dying, it meant he was dying, and there was nothing she or anyone else could do about it. Crying about it wouldn’t do anything either, so she didn’t. Instead, she nodded slowly, and forced her tongue to form the words she didn’t want the answer to, “How long?”
“Two months, two weeks, two days. Your guess is as good as the doctors’.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping low and hushed, “I don’t have much time. There’s so much I have to tell you. So much you don’t know.”
Nicki scrubbed at her face and cleared her throat. “There’s a lot I don’t know about you. You’ve never really been the talkative type.”
His face pinched. “For good reason. Have you been seeing things? Things you can’t explain?”
Her breath froze in her lungs as ice shot through her veins.
Her uncle nodded. “So you have. When you didn’t present earlier I thought you never would, but it seems I was mistaken. I’m sorry.”
“What-” she cut off. She couldn’t fucking breathe. The air in the room had become thin, and it escaped her attempts to suck it in.
“The family curse has passed down to you now, too. I know you love Julian, but you have to break things off with him and never see him again. It’s too dangerous.”
She was starting to get light headed. “No- Uncle Martin, I don’t-”
She cut off, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling.
“Julian?” Uncle Martin called out, his gaze focused on something behind her now, his hand reaching for his cane.
She glanced over her shoulder.
A woman stepped out of the shadows of the dining room behind her, a large scythe raised high above her head aimed right for her.
She threw herself out of the chair, landing hard on her arm on the tile as that scythe sliced the back of the chair in half. Her hand had already clamped around her gun when Uncle Martin - frail, dying Uncle Martin - slid over the table with a fucking sword in his hand and engaged the intruder. Nicki aimed her gun at them, but Uncle Martin was too close for her to get a clear shot, so she cursed and pushed herself up.
“What-?!” Julian appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “Nicki!”
Nicki shouted, “Stay back!”
He did not. He threw himself into the fray as Uncle Martin struggled with the intruder, their weapons locked. Julian grabbed the woman from behind, wrapping his arms around her neck in a chokehold as Nicki surged up from the floor. But before she could do anything the intruder’s face changed, turned inhuman, and she knocked Uncle Martin back into the wall nearby and slammed her heel into Julian’s knee in rapid succession. Julian released her with a yelp, stumbling away a few steps, and the woman brought her scythe up and turned as if to swing it at him.
The world sucked in, narrowed down, became one pin-prick point of focus locked on the woman in front of Nicki.
She unloaded the entire magazine of her gun into the monster.
Her finger remained on the trigger, her gun still aimed at the woman’s chest even as she lay still and silent on the floor, her face human once more. A slight tremor rolled throughout Nicki’s body.
She had never shot anyone before.
She had never killed anyone before, either.
Julian groaned, and the sound snapped her back to herself. She reloaded her gun with the extra clip on her belt before shoving her gun back into its holster, and then froze, her gaze darting between her uncle and her fiance. Julian was holding himself up against the kitchen counter and was not putting weight on one of his legs. Uncle Martin had slumped down on the floor against the wall, and was not moving.
She went to her uncle.
“Uncle Martin,” she said, crouching down beside him and feeling for a pulse.
It was weak, but it was there. Her breath rushed out of her, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
She startled as a hand caught hers, her eyes snapping open again. Uncle Martin blinked at her a few times, slow, and asked weakly, “Did you kill her?”
Nicki nodded, her stomach churning.
“Good. I thought I’d lost her.” He reached into the collar of his shirt, pulling out a small green piece of metal on a chain. He ripped the chain off with a grunt and pressed it into her hand. “Don’t ever lose this. Guard it with your life. They’ll be after it. After you, now, too.”
“Nicki…” Julian grunted behind her. There was the rustle of fabric as he moved. “Are you okay? Did that crazy bitch hurt you?”
She glanced over her shoulder and shook her head as Julian hobbled over to her. He slowly eased himself down beside her, and then wrapped his hand around her head and pulled her close to press a kiss into her hair, murmuring, “I’m so glad you’re okay. How’s your uncle?”
She looked back at Uncle Martin. His eyes had slipped closed, and he didn’t respond when she shook him gently. She cursed under her breath, her numb fingers fumbling with her phone. She nearly flung it across the kitchen tile, just barely managing to keep hold of it as she yanked it out of her jacket pocket. Her fingers shook as she dialed for an ambulance, and she relayed the information to the dispatcher.
The call ended, and Nicki let her phone drop into her lap. They both startled as the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Julian said, and even started pushing himself up as if he actually thought she’d let him do that.
Nicki gently pressed him back down. “No. I’ll get it.”
“What if it’s another crazy woman with a scythe?”
“Then I’m the best person here equipped to handle her. Stay. I’m going.”
But Julian caught her by the arm when she started getting up. “Nicki…”
She frowned at him. “We’ve been over this. I’m the cop. You’re not. Just watch Uncle Martin for me, okay?”
He frowned back at her, and muttered a soft, “Be careful.”
She forced her lips into a strained smile, and then trekked through their house to the front door with her gun drawn. The front door seemed ominous now - she’d always felt safe in her home, but that monster had broken in without any of her family noticing. It left an itch under her skin, made her clench her teeth so hard it hurt as she approached the door. She wasn’t tall enough to see out of the window at the top like Julian was, so she used the peephole like a normal person.
It was the delivery person with their bags of food.
The air in her lungs escaped her in a strangled laugh, and she reholstered her gun and opened the door. The man smiled a very tired smile at her and held out the food, and she took it and paid him and triple checked the lock on the door after she closed it before returning to the kitchen with her bounty.
Julian took one look at the bags of food and let out a soft snort, tossing the piece of the decapitated chair he had in his hand back onto the floor. “Guess we’re going to have to postpone our dinner.”
Nicki just nodded and put the food into the fridge before joining him on the floor again. He sighed and wrapped his arms around her, and held her silently until the sirens came. Nicki left his arms to follow them to the hospital, and when her uncle was awake she was allowed to step into his room to speak with him.
“How’re you feeling?” she asked softly, wrapping her arms around herself as she stepped up to his bedside.
“Good enough.” He studied her. “You saw her, didn’t you. You saw Hulga change.”
“Hulga?”
“The woman who attacked us. She was following me.”
Nicki’s brows furrowed. “Why would she have been following you?”
“Because of what I’ve done. Because of what I gave you.” He shifted slightly in the bed with a soft grunt. “We are the last of a dying breed. Grimms. That’s what they call us.”
“What who calls us?”
“Those people whose faces you saw change. When they lose control we see them for what they really are.”
“No- Uncle Martin,” Nicki let out a rough sigh, “You’re sick-”
“But you’re not.” He might have appeared even more frail than he had before lying in that hospital bed, but his gaze was all steel. “You can’t play that card on me and you know it. You know what you saw. You’re a smart girl, Nicole. You’ve always been more perceptive than most. It’s in your blood.”
Nicki pursed her lips, shaking her head slowly. “I don’t know what I saw.”
He snorted. “You can’t hide from what you are. It’ll just come and bite you in the ass, one way or another. Accept it, or die feigning ignorance, the same way your parents did.”
Every muscle in Nicki’s body tensed. Her voice came out small, “My parents died in a car crash.”
“No.” Uncle Martin’s cold, pale green eyes arrested her, locked her in place as he said, “They were murdered. You will be, too, if you don’t learn fast. Go to my trailer. Everything you need is in there.”
“But-”
“Mrs. Burkhardt?”
Nicki whipped around at the voice to find one of the nurses standing in the doorway. The nurse smiled at her and said, “Visiting hours are over.”
She turned back to Uncle Martin, who simply repeated, “Go to my trailer.”
So she left, and went home. She stood outside her house once more, staring at the trailer. It sat there on her driveway, completely nondescript in every way, and yet she could not bring herself to go near it. Instead, she turned away from it and went into her house, and buried herself in Julian’s embrace for the rest of the night.
She found herself in the precinct the next day staring down at the scythe that had nearly taken her head off. The inscription on it raised its own set of questions, but Hannah dragged her away from it and filled her in on the details about Hulga’s criminal record. As they spoke another woman approached them and Hannah left Nicki in her clutches with a quick farewell.
“Captain Renard,” Nicki said. “What did you need?”
Renard studied her, her vivid green eyes piercing. Nicki forced herself not to shift under their scrutiny as Renard said, her voice low and smooth, “A first shooting is a big deal. How are you holding up?”
A small smile graced Nicki’s lips. “I’m fine.”
“Your uncle is in the hospital, correct? I believe his name is Martin…”
“Kessler.” Her smile became strained. “Yeah, he’s, it’s fine.”
Renard nodded once, slow, and tucked a thick curl of long dark hair behind her ear. “My condolences. You’ll be expected to see the police psychologist, of course.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“If you need time off, let me know,” the words were heavy with their implication, and they made Nicki grit her teeth. She quickly made her retreat, Renard’s gaze boring holes into her back until she rounded the corner out of sight.
Paperwork consumed her day, and Hannah bought her lunch and donuts and coffee from the little place they both loved. The effort to cheer her up was appreciated, and Nicki rallied herself for the second time that week in an effort to focus on the forms on her computer, counting down the hours until she could visit Uncle Martin again.
He was sleeping when she did visit, and she didn’t wake him, just sat by his bedside watching him sleep until the nurse came by to kick her out. Julian had a plate of leftover Chinese food and her favorite beer already ready for her when she returned home, which along with his cuddles afterwards helped alleviate some of the itch under her skin that had plagued her since the break-in.
A nightmare tore her out of his arms, but thankfully he did not wake, and she was able to slip out of their room and down to the trailer Uncle Martin had left in their driveway in solitude.
The books and weapons she found inside brought the itch under her skin back full-force.
Julian found her pouring over the books, and she hurriedly ushered him out of the trailer, brushing off his questions and tucking back in against his side in bed, kissing him until his questions finally died on his lips and his hands wandered instead. She let them, let him attempt to scratch that itch for her. It didn’t help, but she did fall back asleep afterwards and did not have another nightmare.
The hospital called the next morning.
Her uncle had slipped into a coma, and the doctors weren’t sure when he’d wake. She wasn’t able to linger at his side in the hospital, though, as she was called away with a new case.
A young boy hadn’t shown up to his grandmother’s house. Every available officer had been assembled to find him, and that included Nicki and Hannah. They drove out to the park to canvas the path the boy was supposed to take to his grandmother’s home, and Hannah stopped her and pointed out a shortcut the boy might’ve taken through the forest.
So they delved into the forest. It proved fortuitous, and as Hannah called in the evidence they found Nicki followed a set of tracks to the edge of the forest, which opened out onto a house-lined street.
The woman that morphed into a werewolf as two little boys in red rode by her on their bikes was not what she needed that day. She did not need anymore monsters in her life. None. No more. Especially werewolves, who could turn her into one with one bite. She did not need to become a werewolf, too. But it would make sense that a werewolf would eat a little boy. A lot of sense, actually.
Fuck.
She needed backup if she was going to take on a werewolf. And silver bullets. Or whatever the fuck was used to kill werewolves.
“What’d you find?” Hannah asked as she came up behind her.
Nicki jerked her hand at the house the werewolf had disappeared into, because apparently fucking werewolves were homeowners. “I think I found our perp.”
“What?! In there?!” Hannah waved at the same house.
Nicki nodded. “Yeah.”
“How do you know?”
“I-” She could not tell Hannah that she’d seen a werewolf. “I just know.”
Hannah jabbed her finger into her face. “No. We’re not playing that game right now. Tell me what you saw.”
“You trust me, don’t you?” she said softly, in that vulnerable tone of voice that always made people weak for her.
Hannah recoiled, her lips pressed tight together. Her eyes narrowed, and she bit out a rough curse under her breath before she crossed her arms with a shake of her head. “We’re going to lose our jobs if this goes south.”
“Renard loves us. She wouldn’t let us go for anything.”
“She would if we made her look bad.” Hannah sighed and dropped her arms, sweeping one out toward the house. “Let’s go prove you right, again.”
“You love it when I’m right,” Nicki quipped, and set off toward the house, the itch under her skin settled somewhat by the presence of her partner. Hannah was more than capable of handling herself - she was a good shot with a gun, and could lay out men twice her size in hand-to-hand combat. That might not be enough to take out a werewolf, but there were two of them now, and together they just might be able to do it.
Of course, Hannah had no idea she was facing a werewolf, but she was a seasoned detective with more years of experience on the force than Nicki herself. She would notice that there was something different about the woman in the house, and would act accordingly.
Nicki stopped in front of the door, squinting up at the stained glass window at the top depicting a wolf howling up at a moon. It must’ve been some kind of joke, which she actually would’ve found funny had she not been preparing to be eviscerated.
The door opened soon after she knocked, and the werewolf stared back at them. She did not look like a werewolf anymore, though. In fact, she looked extraordinarily normal. Long brown hair pulled into a messy ponytail draped over her shoulder, of which one loose strand fell in front of narrowed brown eyes. The soft, slight curve of her cheeks did not have any fur on them anymore, and there were no fangs poking out of her frown. Her clothes hung loose on her frame, and she tucked her cream-colored cardigan tighter around herself as her gaze darted between Nicki and Hannah.
“Can I help you?” the werewolf asked.
Hannah flashed her badge. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Oh- oh…?” The werewolf’s eyes went wide, and she shrank in on herself. Nicki’s frown deepened.
She did not seem like a werewolf at all.
They were allowed into the werewolf’s house, and offered coffee - along with a stuttered explanation about coffee beans, which Hannah cut off before it could go far - and Nicki looked around at the many, many clocks in the living room while Hannah interrogated their suspect.
There were a lot of clocks. Werewolves shouldn’t have this many clocks. They would break them when they transformed during the full moon.
“I’m a clockmaker. I repair them, too,” the werewolf - Monroe, she’d called herself - replied to Hannah about her profession.
Which didn’t make sense either. Werewolves were supposed to be too violent to do something like repair clocks.
Hannah produced the picture of the boy they were looking for. “Have you seen this boy?”
Monroe peered at the picture. “No. Never.”
Hannah hummed and tucked the picture away again. “You wouldn’t mind if we take a look around, would you?”
“Wait- you don’t think that I…?” Monroe’s gaze darted between them again, and she held up her hands in front of herself. “Look, I have never seen that boy.”
“Then you won’t mind if we take a look around,” Nicki said.
Monroe turned her attention on her, her lips twisting down.
She blinked, and her eyes went red.
Monroe jerked away from her with a full-bodied gasp, her face twisting back into her werewolf form and holy fuck it was so much worse up close and Nicki yanked her gun out of her holster and she didn’t have any fucking silver bullets and Hannah was shouting and not pulling her gun out and they were going to fucking die and-
And the werewolf was not attacking her.
“You’re a Grimm!” she was shouting instead, her clawed hands now above her head in the universal sign of surrender. “Don’t- don’t kill me!”
“Nicki!” Hannah was shouting, “Lower your gun!”
Everyone was shouting, so Nicki shouted too, “What the fuck is a Grimm?”
That made the werewolf turn back into a human, her face scrunched up. “What…?”
Hannah barked, “Nicki! Lower, your, gun!”
“No- Hannah- I know this sounds crazy-” she braced herself for the look she was about to receive, “but that woman is a werewolf.”
Hannah’s face went blank.
“I’m not a-” Monroe cut off, paused, and then muttered, “Oh no. You’re new. I’m so dead.”
“Nobody is dying,” Hannah said, cutting her arms through the air in front of her. She turned to Nicki and pointed at her gun. “Drop. It. Now. Or I will arrest you.”
Nicki let out a rough noise and lowered her gun, because Hannah absolutely would make good on her threat. She jerked her hand in a wave at Monroe. “Didn’t you see it?! She changed just a moment ago!”
“See what?!” Hannah scowled at her. “All I see is a terrified woman who probably doesn’t have the boy we’re looking for. This has been a waste of time, and you’ve just threatened an innocent civilian. What the hell are we doing here, Nicki? What did you see that I didn’t?”
“I just told you! She’s a werewolf! The boy isn’t going to be here because she ate him!”
“Really? Now that’s just uncalled for,” Monroe said.
Hannah shook her head, her face pinched. “You’ve been acting jumpy all week. I thought you’d tell me what was going on eventually, but this…? This isn’t you, Nicki.”
The words were like a punch to the gut. Nicki swallowed hard around the lump in her throat and choked out, “No… Hannah…”
Nicki whipped around to face Monroe, snarling out, “You. You called me a Grimm. My uncle called me that too. What does that mean?”
Monroe stared at her with wide eyes.
“Tell me!” Nick snapped.
“Uh- uh- yeah, it’s, you’re,” she stuttered, her hands rising back up in front of her from where they had fallen to her sides, “a Grimm alright. Yup. That’s you. Boogeyman- boogeywoman, sorry, of the night for all Wesen like me.”
Nicki held up her own hand, ignoring the sharp glance Hannah cast Monroe. “Wait. What is a Wesen?”
Monroe blinked at her. “Oh. Wow. You’re very new.”
“Assume I know nothing.”
“Right… Should we…?” Her gaze darted between Nicki and Hannah, and she gestured at Hannah vaguely. “We shouldn’t really be having this conversation right now-”
“Talk,” Hannah said.
Monroe rocked back on her heels as she nodded. “Yup, right, okay. So. First of all, I’m not a werewolf, I’m a Blutbad.”
Nicki squinted at her. “A Blutbad?”
“No, not a bludblud. A Blutbad.” She eyed her with a wrinkle of her nose. “Did your family not teach you anything? Aren’t you supposed to be like- I mean, not that I’m not grateful that you haven’t cut my head off, but isn’t that kind of your guys’ thing?”
“I’m a detective,” Nicki said, her voice faint. “I don’t… kill people.”
Except she had. And she’d been prepared to do it again.
Monroe snorted. “Yeah, about that. How are you a detective? It should be illegal for a Grimm to become one.”
Hannah held up her hand. “Wait. You’re saying you believe her? That… you’re a… Blutbad?”
Monroe sighed and scrubbed her hand over her eyes. “This is so messed up. A Grimm and a Kehrseite working together as detectives, and neither know anything about Wesen.”
“Do not tell me that now both of you think this is real,” Hannah said. “Werewolves don’t exist.”
Nicki frowned at her. Hannah still didn’t believe either of them. And she wouldn’t without proof. Nicki turned to Monroe and asked, “Can you show her?”
Monroe’s lips went thin, her voice flat, “Show her?”
“That you’re a- a Blutbad. There has to be some way you can show her, too.”
“That’s-” Monroe cut off with a groan, muttering, “What is happening…”
“Look,” Nicki said, “just show her, and we’ll leave.”
“That’s not-! You can’t just woge in front of a Kehrseite!”
Hannah took a step forward, the look on her face the one she always got when she caught whiff of a promising lead. “Kehrseite? You said that before. What does that mean? And woge?”
Nicki’s knees threatened to give out as the tension winding her body up tight loosened. Hannah wasn’t going to commit her to the nearest mental hospital - at least, not yet. And her partner was like a bloodhound when she latched onto a lead. She wouldn’t stop following the trail of information until she found her target.
Nicki wasn’t doing this alone anymore.
Monroe, for her part, looked incredibly uncomfortable. “You know, I really shouldn’t-”
“You better start, or we’ll all take a trip down to the precinct and you can sit in a cell until you’re ready to talk,” Hannah said, propping her hand up on her hip.
They wouldn’t be able to hold Monroe for long. They had nothing on her. But the words seemed to do the trick, because Monroe started babbling, “Wait, wait, okay, look- a Kehrseite is, well, a human, who, you know-”
“Monroe,” Nicki said. “Breathe.”
She sucked in a harsh breath, nodded, and continued, “Yeah. Uh. A Kehrseite is what Wesen call humans who don’t know about us.”
“Mhmm.” Hannah eyed her. “And you’re one of those Wesen.”
“Yes Ma’am.”
Nicki piped up, “I saw a woman change into a lizard person. Was she a Wesen too?”
“Yep.”
“And the man I saw change into a zombie? He was one too?”
Monroe snorted. “Uh huh.”
Hannah blew out a rough sigh and crossed her arms. “Okay. So say I believe you. How many of there are you?”
“I don’t know. A lot.”
“More than a hundred?”
Monroe scoffed. “Oh, way more.”
Nicki muttered a curse under her breath. She did not need more monsters in her life. “Okay, well, can you show her or what?”
Monroe’s face pinched. “That’s… I have to like, prepare myself…”
“You’re prepared,” Hannah declared. “Show me.”
“It could make you go crazy.”
“I’m already there if I’m starting to think that you two might not be yourselves. Show me.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. Nicki’s gaze darted between them, her hand still wrapped tight around her gun.
But then Monroe gusted out a sigh, and said, “You asked for it.”
Another moment passed.
Nothing happened.
And then Monroe’s face twisted, sprouted fur and fangs and her eyes went blood red and Hannah cried out and ripped her own gun from its holster and then everyone was shouting again, Monroe at Hannah and Hannah at Monroe and Nicki at both of them.
Nicki shoved her way between the two of them, her arms outstretched to hold them apart. “Stop! Stop it! Just, stop!”
“Nicki, what the hell was that?!” Hannah cried.
“I told you!”
“You did not tell me! You did not say that she was going to sprout fucking fur!”
“I told you this was a bad idea!” Monroe said, her face back to its human guise.
Nicki rounded on her. “Shut up! Just, stop talking!”
“Nicki!” Hannah cried. “What the hell?! You said there were more?! A- a lizard person and a zombie?! I’m- I can’t do zombies Nicki, I told you before if there was a zombie apocalypse I-”
“Hannah!” Nicki whipped back to face her. “You are okay. Everything is okay. There is no zombie apocalypse. I think.”
She turned back to Monroe. “There isn’t, right?”
Monroe’s face scrunched up. “No?”
Nicki nodded and turned back to Hannah. “See? We’re fine. You’re fine. Nobody here is crazy. Pull yourself together. We still have a little boy to find. We can freak out together about this when he’s safe.”
Hannah sucked in a harsh breath and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. Let’s find that boy.”
Nicki gusted out a sigh and turned back to Monroe once more. “You. You’re like a dog, right?”
“What?!” Monroe exclaimed. “No?! That’s- so-”
“Okay, well, you can like, sniff stuff, can’t you? Could you sniff out the boy if we gave something of his to you?”
Monroe gaped at her like a fish out of water for at least a full thirty seconds before choking out, “The audacity-”
“Look,” Nicki cut her off. “There’s a little boy out there somewhere who might be torn to shreds-”
She cut off, and regarded Monroe.
Monroe scowled at her. “That has nothing to do with me.”
“You changed when you saw those little boys in red pass by, didn’t you,” she said. Monroe didn’t respond, so she continued, “You said there are more Wesen. Are there more like you?”
Monroe’s expression soured further, but still, she didn’t answer.
But Nicki didn’t need her to. “I bet a Blutbad would be able to tear a person apart, don’t you, Hannah?”
Hannah hummed. “You know what, I think you’re right.”
“I didn’t do it,” Monroe bit out.
“But another Blutbad did,” Nicki said. “Do you know who?”
“No? I’m more of a lone wolf type.”
“Are there any others in the area?”
Monroe shifted her weight to her other leg and crossed her arms. She nodded, once, a slight bob of her head.
Nicki perked up. Finally. “Do you know where they live?”
“Sure. But I don’t bother them, and they don’t bother me.”
“If you know who has him, you had better tell us,” Hannah said.
Monroe shook her head. “I don’t-”
“But you have a good idea who does,” Nicki said, closing in on Monroe, backing her up against the wall behind her until they were chest to chest and staring up into those blood red eyes. “Tell me who it is.”
There was a long moment of silence.
Monroe’s voice was a soft rumble when she said, “I don’t know her name. But I can take you to her.”
“That works,” Nicki said, just as softly, and stepped back.
Hannah caught her shoulder with a frown on her face. “Woah, Nicki, we can’t take a civilian with us.”
“She’s a Blutbad. She’s probably the best one out of all of us to face another Blutbad.”
Hannah’s lips pressed thin. But she nodded, and slowly let her hand drop.
“Come back tonight,” Monroe said. “We’ll do it then.”
And so they were ushered out of the Blutbad’s house. Hannah and Nicki slowly made their way back to the car on the other side of the forest, silence hanging heavy between them.
Nicki was the first to break it, “My uncle said it runs in the family.”
“What, the crazy?”
She snorted. “Yeah. He brought a trailer full of books with pictures of- I guess they’re called Wesen? Wanna see it?”
“Uh, yeah?”
They stopped for burgers on the way, and Nicki sipped at what was left of her shake as Hannah told her exactly what she’d do if she ever saw a zombie.
“I would just-” she karate-chopped the air, shaking her head with her lips pressed thin. “You know?”
“Mhmm.”
They pulled up in front of her house and Nicki waved at the trailer in her driveway. “That’s it.”
Hannah hummed. “That’s a really inconvenient spot for it.”
“It is!” Nicki clicked her tongue. “That’s where I park…”
Hannah shook her head with a huff of laughter, and they got out of the car and trudged up to the trailer. Hannah’s eyes grew wide when she saw the inside, and grew even wider when she saw the pictures in the books. She sank down into the chair at the desk, slowly flipping through the one Nicki had placed before her the same way Nicki herself had done the night before.
“So…” Hannah sucked in a deep breath. “It’s… this is the stuff you were seeing.”
Nicki nodded, her fingers digging into the blanket on the little bed she was sitting on that was tucked against one of the walls. “Yup.”
“And… I guess… they’re real.”
“I guess so.”
That made Hannah look up at her. “You… you thought they were fake too, didn’t you.”
“I didn’t know what to think. I just saw those peoples’ faces change, and then my uncle showed up and started talking as if he saw them too…” She offered Hannah a small, weak smile. “I’m just glad I’ve got you here with me.”
“Hey…” Hannah’s lips twisted down, and she got up and crossed the trailer to sit next to Nicki, curling her arm around her back and pulling her close. “I’m sorry I… I’ve always got your back. You know that, don’t you? You can always tell me anything. I’ll always be here with you. Always.”
Nicki leaned into her, squeezing her eyes shut tight as she nodded.
They parted and began going through the trailer together, exploring the cabinet and drawers and bookshelves and showing off their findings to each other.
“See, this is what I’d use against a zombie,” Hannah said as she pulled out a spiked mace from the cabinet, making Nicki snort her now-melted shake mid-sip.
When night came they drove back to Monroe’s house, who demanded that they take her tiny-ass car instead of Hannah’s perfectly sized one. So they all crammed inside of it, with Hannah in the back because she lost a furious game of rock-paper-scissors with Nicki for the passenger seat.
“But you’re smaller than me!” Hannah said.
“Shhh,” Nicki hushed her. “Losers don’t get to complain.”
Hannah grumbled but squeezed into the small space.
Monroe turned out to be a horrific driver - she stuck her head out of the window for most of the drive, and Nicki and Hannah both clung to the interior of the car as it swerved along the unpaved forest road. The moment the car stopped on a bridge they practically fell out of the door, and Monroe frowned at them as she walked around the car and asked, “You two okay?”
Nicki leveled her with a flat look. “Peachy. Why’d we stop here?”
“We have to walk the rest of the way. Here.” Monroe made them rub some kind of weed on themselves before she’d lead them any further, but at least it didn’t stink.
And then Monroe made them walk through the river despite the fact that they had just parked on the bridge.
She had not led them too much further, though, when a house appeared through the trees. The three women slowly approached it, and Monroe sniffed at the air.
“Oh yeah,” she said quietly, “she’s here.”
“You can really tell?” Hannah asked.
“Oh boy can I.”
Nicki placed her hand on Monroe’s arm. “Would you be able to tell if she has the boy with her?”
Monroe stared down at her hand for a long moment, and did not look up when she said, “Yes.”
Nicki slowly removed her hand. “Then we’ll get you inside.”
Monroe’s eyes were red when she finally looked up at her. “She’ll know I’m a Blutbad.”
“Let us deal with her. You just find that boy.”
They approached the house, Nicki and Hannah in the lead with Monroe trailing behind them. The door opened after a quick knock to reveal a homely woman with faint dimples in her rounded cheeks from the stretch of her smile.
“Hello,” the woman said. “What can I do for you young ladies?”
Hannah flashed her badge. “We have a few questions for you.”
“Oh. Why, of course! Come in.” She waved them in, but stepped in front of Monroe before she could enter, her pleasant demeanor not diminishing but her voice becoming slightly rougher, “I’m sorry, honey, who are you?”
“I’m-”
“She’s a consultant,” Nicki cut in. “She’s working with us on a case.”
“Oh…” The woman slowly stepped out of the way, and Monroe entered the house. She turned to Nicki and Hannah again, but her gaze remained locked on Monroe. “Well! I can put on some tea if you’d like?”
“No thank you,” Hannah said. “We won’t be long.”
Monroe stepped close to Nicki and muttered into her ear, “The boy is definitely here.”
Nicki nodded and turned back to the woman, who was staring at them, her eyes red.
“Grimm!” the woman growled, and her face twisted into her wolf form with a rough shake of her head. She leapt at Nicki, tackling her to the ground before she could rip her gun free from its holster.
Nicki cried out as claws raked down her side, but then the weight lifted off of her as Monroe ripped the woman back by her hair. The woman howled and clawed at her hand, but Monroe gouged her own claws across the woman’s throat, nearly severing her head from her body. She dropped the limp woman onto the ground, where she twitched and gurgled and then finally stilled.
Nicki stared up at Monroe with wide eyes.
“What the fuck,” Hannah breathed.
Monroe’s red eyes were locked with Nicki’s blues, and she took a step closer before Hannah barked, “Don’t you fucking dare!”
She broke their eye contact, and seemed lost for a moment as she frowned at Hannah, who had her gun trained on Monroe. But then she glanced down at the dead woman at her feet, and at her bloodied hand, and her eyes went wide, and she mumbled, “Oh fuck- oh, fuck, I- I have to- go. I- I can’t be here-”
She rushed to the door, wrenched it open so hard it came off of its hinges, threw it against the wall, and then disappeared outside.
Nicki stared at the space she had just abruptly evacuated, her blood turned to ice in her veins.
A monster.
Monroe was a monster.
A monster that had just saved her life.
“Nicki!” Hannah rushed over to her, her hand hovering over her side as she cursed under her breath. “I’m calling back up. This was way too far above our pay grade.”
Nicki blinked down at the tears in her shirt that had stained a deep crimson. It didn’t hurt. She could barely feel it. She caught Hannah’s wrist as she pulled out her phone and said, “The boy. Monroe said he’s definitely here.”
“Okay, well, our back up can find him. You need an ambulance.”
“No- Hannah, we have no reason to be out here.” She winced as she pushed herself up. Okay, that did hurt. She nodded at the dead woman on the floor. “And how are we going to explain her death?”
Hannah’s lips pursed. “You still need medical treatment. We’ll say a… bear, or something, broke in.”
“Into the house? That we were just in? In the middle of the forest, for no reason?”
Hannah sighed. “What do you think we should do, then?”
“Find the boy, first. Then call back up.”
“We’ll still have to explain all of this,” she waved to the body, “to Renard.”
“It’ll give us time to think of something. Come on. He’s got to be around here somewhere.”
Hannah helped her up, and she hobbled around the small house with her checking everywhere a small boy could be hidden. But they didn’t find him, and they reconvened in the living room with the dead woman.
“He’s not here,” Hannah said. “Monroe was wrong, and she nearly got you killed because of it. She did get someone killed because of it.”
“No, he’s here. I just, I know it.”
“The same way you knew he was at Monroe’s?”
Nicki winced. “That- I saw Monroe change. I thought she had taken him.”
Hannah sighed again. “Okay. Well, I’m calling you an ambulance.”
Nicki nodded. She sat down on one of the chairs in the living room, careful not to get any blood on it, her gaze lingering on the dead body on the floor.
Monroe had killed the woman without any effort. She could have done the same to her and Hannah when they’d first met. It would have been a simple thing for her to do, and yet she hadn’t. It didn’t make any sense.
Not that she was complaining.
Her gaze trailed over the sundered throat, to the pool of blood spreading out across the wooden floor.
But the blood wasn’t spreading. It had stopped at the edge of one of the planks of wood in the floor, forming a straight line against it.
Nicki frowned and hauled herself up, hobbling over to the rug that covered that part of the floor. There was a table on top of it, and the moment Hannah saw her attempting to move it she hurried over and helped her. Hannah pulled the rug out of the way for her, revealing a trap door.
Hannah cursed and yanked it open, pulling out her flashlight to light up the pitch black basement. She took the lead, and they filed down the stairs.
And there, on a cot in the back of the room, was the missing boy, tied up and gagged.
They untied him, holding him close as he sobbed. Hannah carried him out of the basement, hiding his face against her neck as she passed by the body on the floor. They waited outside, and soon enough back up came screaming through the forest.
The paramedics wrapped up Nicki’s wound, and while she protested going to the hospital she ended up getting sent anyway for stitches. Julian met her there and sat beside her with her hand in his larger one, his lips pressed to her knuckles, a faraway look in his eyes.
“If you keep frowning like that your face will stick,” Nicki said, wincing as she tried to get comfortable.
Julian hummed and frowned harder, an exaggerated face that had its intended effect as Nicki chuckled softly. His lips turned up ever-so-slightly, and he pressed them back against her knuckles as he murmured, “I don’t like you in danger like this.”
Nicki sighed. “We’ve talked about this. You said-”
“I know what I said. And I’m fine with you being a cop. But you getting attacked by a wolf- a wolf, Nicki!” He leaned back with a ragged sigh and dragged his fingers through his short red hair. “You could’ve died!”
“But I didn’t-”
“But you still got hurt. And that was after you almost got sliced in half by a crazy scythe wielding murderer that broke into our home!” He leaned forward again, cupping her hand between both of his and looking her right in the eye. “How are we supposed to start a family together if you’re- if you… die?”
Nicki swallowed hard. She wrapped her other hand around his and said, her voice hushed, “I’m not going to die. And we- we’ll figure it out. Plenty of cops have families.”
Julian’s frown did not lessen, and she released his hand to cup his cheek instead, guiding him closer so she could attempt to kiss it away.
A throat clearing had them breaking apart. Hannah stood in the doorway with a strained smile on her face. “Looks like you’re feeling better.”
“Hey Hannah,” Julian said.
“Hey.” She nodded at him. “Can you give us a minute?”
Julian’s frown came back full-force. Nicki squeezed the hand still in hers and asked him softly, “Can you get me some coffee please?”
He turned his frown on her again. “I’ll get you some water. How’s that?”
Nicki pursed her lips, but nodded, and accepted his kiss. He left them alone, and Hannah settled into the spot he had vacated with a heavy sigh and said, “Renard bought the wild animal attack story.”
Nicki’s brows shot up. “She did? How?”
Hannah shrugs. “Beats me. But she didn’t even question it.”
“Damn. Lucky.”
“Mhmm. We’re going to have to figure something out about, you know,” Hannah waved her finger around in a circle at Nicki’s wound, “all of this.”
Nicki snorted. “What, you don’t want everyone to think we’re crazy?”
Hannah gave her a pointed look, and Nicki sighed and said, “Yeah, I know. This isn’t likely to be our last time fending off a Wesen.”
“No. It’s not. It’s probably not even our first time, if there’s as many as Monroe said there is.” Hannah’s face scrunched up. “Did you see how she just… she didn’t even try.”
“I know,” Nick muttered. “But it- she was defending me. We can’t arrest her for that.”
“What would we even arrest her with? For being a werewolf? Cause that would definitely go over well.”
Nicki sighed again. “I bet a lot of those cases we’ve marked off as animal attacks were actually…”
Hannah finished for her after a long pause, “...Wesen.”
Nicki nodded.
Julian returned, and Hannah bid them both farewell and took off. They sat in silence while they waited for Nicki to be released, and once the papers were signed Julian caught Nicki’s hand again and pressed a kiss to it, murmuring, “Let’s get you home.”
“Not yet. I want to check on my uncle first.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
Julian kept his arm around her as they walked through the hallways of the hospital, and when they reached her uncle’s room Nicki turned to him and asked, “Can you actually wait outside, please?”
He squeezed her shoulder. “Yeah, of course. I have to use the bathroom anyway. I’ll take the long way.”
Nicki awarded him a tired smile. “Thanks.”
Julian took off down the hall, and Nicki let out a soft sigh and slipped into the room, carefully settling into the chair next to Uncle Martin’s bed with a wince. She stared at his slack face, at the tube coming out of his mouth, and swallowed hard against the lump that had formed in her throat.
He had never looked so fragile.
She sucked in a deep breath, and said softly, “I… I don’t know what you want me to do. I looked through the trailer, and… everything… I believe it. I’ll do it. Whatever it is you came here for, I’ll do it. But I just… I have so many questions…”
Nicki trailed off as a doctor stepped into the room, quiet and unobtrusive. The man stepped around to the other side of the bed, and Nicki glanced up at him.
It was the blond businessman who had turned into a zombie - a Zauberbiest, the book had called him - outside of the jewelry store.
“You…” she breathed, and her gaze snapped down to the syringe and vial of green liquid in his hands. She surged up, her hands clamping onto his wrists. He grunted and ripped one of his arms free, shifting into his Zauberbiest form and backhanding her hard enough that she crashed back into the chair with a cry as her stitches ripped open. She clutched at her side and tried to push herself up as she gritted out a slurred, “S-stop!”
But the man injected whatever the fuck was in that vial into her uncle and then swept out of the room, and she could not get her fucking feet under her to stop him with the world tilting and her ears ringing and her vision blurring, and then all of the monitors started screaming and the room filled with nurses and doctors and someone grabbed her and put her into a wheelchair and pushed her out of the room, away from Uncle Martin and down the hall and into another room where she was hauled back onto a bed, and she punched one of the doctors attempting to staunch the blood seeping out of her freshly torn open wounds in her attempts to get back to her uncle, and then there were so many hands on her and a needle in her arm and then the world went dark.