The Dark Cycle 1: Master of Beasts
Chapter One
"This is Nikki Porter for WKRP-TV in Portland. I'm standing outside the City Courthouse where a jury has just unanimously found Elmore Carter guilty of seven counts of aggravated rape.
"Viewers will recall that Carter's activities sparked near panic and a massive police manhunt in Portland last year. His reign of terror lasted a little over three weeks before his arrest. The trial has been a complex one, with the defense questioning all the forensic evidence, fiercely cross-examining prosecution witnesses and finally attempting to plead mental incapacity on the part of the accused.
"One moment! There. Just emerging from the courthouse is the arresting officer and chief prosecution witness, Detective Nick Burkhardt of the Portland PD. I'm going to see if I can speak with...wait!
"A woman is approaching Detective Burkhardt. It's the mother of Elmore Carter, she's...Oh my god! She's attacking him! He's right on the top of the steps and...He's fallen! Geez, what a tumble! All the way down the steps. They're arresting the old lady. Somebody's looking after the detective...
"I'm Nikki Porter for WKRP-TV in Portland. More on this story as we get it. Now, back to the studio.
"Tell me you got all that!"
Nick switched off the TV with a savage stab of his thumb and tossed the remote onto the armchair opposite.
"Ah!" Juliette said from the kitchen door. "Anger management! Last time you tried to throw the remote through the screen!"
"There's the Middle East," Nick growled, "the economy, local elections, the goddamn weather to report. So how come every news broadcast for the last week has had that on it! Every time I turn the thing on I see myself getting knocked down those steps!"
Juliette came up behind him, slipped her arms round his neck and nuzzled close. "Well, you know, it isn't every day a big, husky member of Portlands' finest gets taken down by a little old lady."
Nick chuckled wryly. "I guess I was lucky at that. Hank told me they found a horseshoe in her purse, right next to the Bible!"
"Well," Juliette comforted him, "you'll be back at work tomorrow."
"Work!" Nick snorted. "Light duty only. Chained to my desk until this ankle heals. Well, at least Grimms heal quick."
"True." Juliette agreed. "And that herbal tea of Rosalees' isn't hurting, either. Or the ointment."
"I've been meaning to talk about that." Nick remarked. "You sure you have them the right way round? Because the ointment smells good enough to eat, but the tea tastes like it should be applied externally!"
"I'll be sure and check with Rosalee." She told him. "But she'll just put it down to GPS."
"GPS?" Nick asked.
"Grouchy Patient Syndrome." Juliette replied with a grin. "Now, how about I serve dinner and we can watch a DVD?"
Officially, Nick should have been on crutches. In practice, he managed with a cane he'd found in the trailer. The cane had a sword inside it, but that was sort of cool, he thought.
Wus' greeting was characteristic. "Hi, there. We've transferred you off the Crazy Old Lady Squad to something a little safer."
"Gee, thanks!" Nick replied, then noticed the cardboard box on his desk. "What's this?"
Hank grinned up at him. "It seems Mrs Carter belonged to a Church Ladies' Group. They kicked her out after what she did, and to say sorry they sent you a card and a cake."
Nick opened the box. "Half a cake." He observed.
"Well, we had to check it wasn't a bomb." Wu told him.
"Then we thought we'd better test it to make sure it wasn't poisoned or anything." Hank added. "And we needed more than one test subject, just to be sure."
"How many?" Nick asked.
"Well, Wu checked it first of course, it's his job. Then I had to check it, as your partner. Then Monroe stopped by, and thought he'd better test it, as a friend. Then Captain Renard, as your senior officer, figured it was his duty to take part as well."
Hanks' look and tone of deep sincerity and concern was enough to make Nick crack up with his first real laughter for a week. To be fair, he hadn't exactly gone short of goodies during his enforced leave. His eisbiber friend, Bud, had called round twice, both times bearing groaning baskets of his wifes' superb pastries. Then one evening Monroe and Rosalee had turned up with a casserole and three bottles of excellent wine. Monroe was a gourmet cook and a connoisseur, so the meal had been delicious, but more importantly, the big blutbad and his fuchsbau girlfriend were easy, undemanding company.
There was a little more banter and catching up to do, then Captain Renard came over.
"Welcome back, Nick." He said. "I know you don't like being stuck at your desk, but if I have to make you wait a little longer to have you in top shape, that's what I'm going to do.
"Anyway, I do have a job for you. It's not much in itself, but the guy bringing the complaint is a big-shot in his community and a councilman, so if I let him talk to a senior detective, he'll know I'm taking him seriously. Just hear him out and if you can help him, do it."
Clayton Moreland was a big, rangy man in his fifties, clearly a former athlete. Good living had thickened his waist a little, but hadn't taken away the power in his wide shoulders and big hands, or dimmed the thousand-yard stare he bent on Nick.
"I heard of you." He remarked, after Nick had introduced himself. "You're the guy who got Carter, right? Heck of a job, there!"
"Thanks." Nick said. "But what can I do for you, Mr Moreland?"
"Well, it's like this, Detective," Moreland began, "I head up my local Neighborhood Watch. Now it's a good area, and we don't get a lot of trouble. Mostly college and high-school kids having too much beer and racing cars or just getting noisy. We talk to them and it's usually OK. Maybe a word to their folks, but kids, well, they're gonna be kids, right? We all did it, back in the day.
"But lately, something else has been happening. It started with pet cats going missing. Nothing odd about that, it's what cats do. They wander off, get hit by a car, find a new home or just go feral. We got woods fairly close, and some of 'em might go in there and tangle with bobcats or something else bigger and meaner than them. We didn't think anything of it.
"Then, it started to happen with dogs. Now you know, Detective, that dogs don't just disappear the way cats do. It started in the woods. There's a couple paths people use to walk their dogs, and they slip them off the leash to go run around. No poop-scoop laws out there! Well, it always happened the same way. Somebody'd let their dog off the leash, dog goes running off, then it'd start up a racket like it's found something, then go quiet. People would call it, then go looking, and not find it. So, next day – it always happened in the evening, never the morning – we'd get a crowd together and go looking, and find the dog! They'd always be a ways off the path, and they'd been torn up, ripped to shreds.
"That happened maybe three-four times before people stopped taking their dogs into the woods. They walk 'em where there's street lights now, and if they poop, they scoop. Better than losing your pet, right?
"But people were upset, so we called the cops. The cops looked at a couple of the dead dogs, said it was an animal and called in Animal Control. Animal Control said it was a wild animal in the woods and to tell the Rangers. The Rangers said it wasn't anything that lived in these woods, must be an escaped exotic, and to talk to Animal Control!
"Me and some of the guys walked the paths at night with rifles and shotguns for a week, but nothing.
"Then last night I get a call from old Mrs Husting. Seems she let her dog out to run around the garden last thing, like always. Then she hears it bark, then there's a heck of a commotion. She's real scared, but looks out the window after the noise dies down. Swears she sees a guy jump her back fence. She opens the door and calls the dog, nothing happens. So she locks herself in the house and calls me. I get a couple people and my wife and go over. My wife looks after Mrs Husting and we check the garden. We found the dog, what was left of it, on the lawn. I covered it with a tarp from my Jeep, and we got Mrs Husting to spend the night with us – she's there still.
"I came right over this morning, and I'm not about to put up with any more bureaucracy. I want some action, Detective!"
Nick was beginning to see why Renard had asked him to speak to this man. By the sound of things, there might very well be some kind of wesen involvement.
"What kind of dog was it?" He asked.
"I know what you're thinking." Moreland said. "This wasn't no ladies' lapdog. This was a four-year-old Pyrenean Mountain Dog, big white brute, very protective. Not an easy take-down. The other dogs were the same, a German Shepherd, a Rottweiler, and a pit-bull, I recall."
"And did you check the zoos, or any exotic pet license holders?" Nick enquired. "Only about five years ago one of these big lizards – Komodo Dragon – got loose from a collector and caused some trouble for a couple days. Animal Control had to shoot it."
"I asked around." Moreland told him. "Made a couple calls. There's nothing around here at the moment except at the Zoo, and they've had no escapes."
"And you say Mrs Husting saw a man jump her fence?" Nick wanted to be clear on this.
Moreland shrugged. "That part I don't take much stock in." He allowed. "Mrs Hustings' eyesight is poor, she was scared, and that fence is eight feet high. She had it built up when she got Snowy – the dog – 'cause a dog like that can jump a six-foot fence like it was nothing. But, heck, I was an athlete when I was young, but even at my best I couldn't hurdle eight feet like she says she saw!
"I'm not saying something didn't go over that fence, but I don't think it was a person."
"It might have been." Nick noted. "There's people do that parkour thing -free running, some of them call it – who could go over it easily.
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do, Mr Moreland. I'm going to make a call to a friend of mine who's a veterinary surgeon, and I'm going to ask her to go out to Mrs Hustings' house with her assistant and take a look at the dogs' remains. What she doesn't know about animals isn't worth knowing. Depending on what she says, I'll know what I need to do, OK?"
Morelands' face split in a wide grin. "You'll do that? Thanks, Detective, I mean that!"
"Don't thank me yet!" Nick warned him. "It could still turn out to be nothing I can help with."
"Yeah, I know." Moreland assured him. "I'm saying thanks for taking the time and taking me seriously. Whatever else, I won't forget that!"
He gave Nick the address, shook hands firmly, and left. Renard must have been watching, because he came over straight away.
"He looked pleased, anyway." He said to Nick. "What do you think?"
"Same as you obviously did." Nick replied quietly. "Could be wesen. Look, I'm going to ask Juliette to take Monroe and look at the scene and the dog. If it was some kind of big predator, she'll be able to tell, and if its' something else, Monroe might know, or he might pick up a scent."
"You sure she'll be OK?" Renard asked carefully.
Nick nodded. "She's pretty much back to normal, and now she knows..everything..she won't be too shocked. And if there's anything else there, it'll have to go through Monroe to get her, and he can handle himself.
"In the meantime, it might be worthwhile for me to go through the files for that district. Anything out of the ordinary could give me a clue."
Monroe, Juliette had decided, was more of a big old softie than a big bad wolf. He actually teared up at the sight of the mutilated dog. Nevertheless, he gritted his teeth and helped Juliette with the examination.
Snowy had been a magnificent sample of his breed, big, powerful animals bred to guard flocks against dangerous predators and larcenous humans in a harsh environment. Pyreneans are known to be highly protective of their family and very territorial. The unannounced arrival of a visitor in the garden would definitely have prompted Snowy to action, but it seemed he had more than met his match.
"Well," Juliette said, "whatever did this, it was no animal I've ever seen or heard of. Maybe a velociraptor, but we're a few million years late for one of those. What about you, Monroe?"
He shook his head. "Nothing fits." He told her. "I mean, the claw marks and the jump over the fence say fuchsteufelwild. But those bites look more like mauvais dentes, and the broken back and ribs are telling me lausenschlange.
"Apart from that, there's a scent. One I don't know, it's like nothing I've smelled before."
"Can you track it?" Juliette asked.
Monroe shrugged. "I could try, but should we? Whatever this is, I'm not sure I could handle it!"
"I don't mean follow it all the way, right now." Juliette explained. "But if we can get a line on where it might have come from, that'll help Nick. Besides, Nick said all the attacks happen at night, so we should be OK in daylight if we don't do anything stupid."
"And like, following this thing is smart?" Monroe grumbled.
Juliette flashed him a smile and headed out to the front. She was, she knew, being a little unfair, taking advantage. Monroe was a gentle soul, who naturally avoided trouble, but he would never abandon anyone he saw as part of his 'pack', or 'family', to be more polite.
In front of the house, two of the Neighbourhood Watch were waiting with a pickup. Juliette went up to one of them and said, "OK, you can take the dog, now. They're expecting it at the animal hospital, I'll need to do a full necropsy.
"My colleague and I are going to take a look around. He's a tracker, he might be able to follow this thing."
The Watch guy grinned down at her. He was a big, rawboned man wearing a USMC baseball cap over short-cropped hair. "Well, ma'am, if you find its' den, you be sure and tell us. We'll get a squad together and go take it out." He spoke with the quiet assurance of a veteran.
His friend, a thin, spidery, tough-looking fellow with kind eyes in a hard-bitten face, pointed over toward the woods.
"I'm bettin' he's somewhere in there." He said. "You need to be careful. I seen some damn big birds over them woods in the evenin'."
Juliette thanked them, then she and Monroe made their way around the back. Monroe was able to pick up the scent again. The trail led along a strip of empty land between the houses and several rows of small buildings.
"Do you know what those are?" Juliette asked Monroe.
"Some kinda business units." Monroe told her. "You can rent them out for whatever you want to do. They have auto-shops, electrical repairs, plumbers, custom furniture, interior decorators, even a micro-brewery. I was thinking of renting a unit myself if the clock repair business gets any bigger."
"What about the bigger ones over there?" She pointed.
Monroe squinted. "Those are mostly old warehouses and factories, all condemned. City'll get around to demolishing them one day. Probably build a mall there!"
"You can never have too many malls!" Juliette laughed.
As predicted, the trail ran into the woods. As it did, it became clearer, undergrowth had been beaten down or slashed out of the way, only the larger trees causing a momentary deviation.
"Whatever it is, it doesn't care about being tracked." Monroe noted uneasily.
"Unless it just wanted to get wherever it was going before sunup." Juliette suggested.
The woods got denser, well off any hiking or hunting trails. Then they found the first body.
"Geez!" Monroe said. "What is that?"
"You mean what was it." Juliette corrected him. "It's dead. I'm not sure I've seen anything quite so dead!"
The thing had been about the size of a large dog, but seemed to have had six legs. What was left of the hide was composed of large, rough scales, an unpleasant green-black colour. The skull had been smashed in, but sported a long jaw full of curved fangs. The rest...
"Looks like a horse trampled it." Juliette remarked. "But it's also been bitten by something with a lot of long, sharp, teeth. Which is weird, because the only hoofed animals I know of are herbivores. You ever heard of a hoofed carnivore?"
"Nope, but that doesn't mean they don't exist." Monroe said flatly. "On or back?"
"On a little further." Juliette decided. "This is getting a lot weirder."
"And to think," Monroe grumbled, "that I moved to Portland because nothing ever happens here!"
The next body was hanging from a tree. It was about five feet long and skeletally thin, covered in coarse crimson fur. The remains of a pair of shredded, batlike wings indicated that it had been flying when attacked. The dog-like head sported not only a formidable set of jaws, but a pair of ivory horns. The cause of death was very apparent – the thing was impaled on a thick branch, clean through the chest.
"Attacked in the air, fell down and got speared by the branch." Juliette surmised. "That's odd. The damage on the wings looks like the bite-marks on the other dead animal.
"A hoofed predator that flies? What would that look like?"
"Kind of like the thing behind you." Monroe said quietly. "Turn round, but don't make any sudden moves."
It looked a lot like a horse, about the size of a Clydesdale, but almost skeletal. Jet black, with a long mane of the same colour and a narrow face that was somehow reptilian. The only sign of any other colour was in the eyes, which were blank, white and faintly luminous. It stood quietly in the trail, blocking their path onward, and seemed to be watching them.
"Keep still." Monroe said in a quiet, even voice. "I have an idea."
Slowly, keeping his hands in view and his eyes on the creature, he stepped toward it. At first, it didn't react. But as he came within a yard of it, it shifted. Wiry muscles slid and bunched under the sable hide as it half-spread a pair of huge, leathery wings from its shoulders. It tossed its head and snorted, showing a flash of gleaming white fangs for a moment.
Monroe took another step, and the creature came forward slowly to meet him. It stretched out its neck and butted its snout against his chest. Not hard -it could have knocked him flat had it wished to -just enough to stop him. Monroe stood his ground, and it butted him again, a gentle shove that sent him a step back. Another shove, another step back. Then the creature returned to its previous position, still blocking the trail.
"OK." Monroe said, still in the same calm tone. "OK."
He backed away a few more steps, then turned and came steadily back to Juliette. "Turn around," he told her, "and we walk away. Back the way we came. It doesn't want to hurt us, but it won't let us go any further."
Juliette did as she was told. "That isn't what killed Snowy." She said. "but it, or something like it killed those other things. What is it?"
"I don't know." Monroe told her honestly. But, he thought, I know someone who might.
Nick checked files. He listened to the report Juliette phoned in, and looked at the photos she emailed to him. Then after lunch, he spent a couple of hours in the trailer. Finally, in the late afternoon, he met with Renard.
"We have a problem." He said without preamble, laying some files on his captains' desk. "Moreland told me that all this started with cats disappearing. Well, around about the same time, a couple units on an industrial park nearby were vandalized. By which I mean trashed. There's no connection between the businesses; one was an auto-shop, the other a bakery.
"Then, last week, a patrol spotted signs of a fire in one of the abandoned warehouses in that area. They had a look, found two bodies, badly burned. Now there was an investigation, but not much of one. That warehouse was a regular shelter for drifters and tramps, and what was left of the dead guys' gear pretty much confirmed that that was what they were. Report says that they must've been trying to tap some old storage tanks for kerosene to start a fire, and set themselves alight. Problem is, there's nothing left in those tanks but vapour, and the place the bodies were found was a good distance form the tanks. Also, why didn't the fire spread to the rest of the building? Lots of dry, flammable stuff there, but the fire was only around the bodies and the immediate area."
"And you're saying all this is linked, including the attack on the dog?" Renard asked.
Nick shrugged. "The timing tells me they're linked, so does the geography and, more importantly, so does my gut.
"But this isn't me thinking like a cop, I'm thinking like a Grimm. We both know that more goes on than anyone knows or will talk about. Then there's the other stuff..." He told Renard briefly about what Juliette and Monroe had found in the woods, including their encounter with the strange animal. The captain shook his head.
"That's beyond any weird I ever saw, and I've seen a lot! You're sure no wesen are involved in this?"
Nick shook his head. "I can't be absolutely sure, but it seems unlikely. Look, the tramps in the warehouse, that could be a damonfeuer, except that it doesn't fit their behaviour pattern. One of the industrial units was smashed up physically, and that could've been done by a siegbarste. But the other unit had incredibly acid goo poured over everything. This stuff ate through metal – melted it like ice – but it evaporated as soon as sunlight hit it; the CSUs' couldn't get a sample. I don't know any wesen that does that in quite that way.
"Whatever killed the dog doesn't match any known wesen either, any more than the flying horse-thing or the bodies Juliette found in the woods do. There's nothing in any of the books I have. Either they're all random unconnected incidents, which doesn't feel right, or a lot of rare, possibly undiscovered, wesen are acting together, and that feels wrong as well."
Renard glanced through the glass panel of his office, then leaned forward and spoke quietly. "Have you thought about asking any of your other friends? Your British friends?"
"Now what," Nick asked blandly, "would two Scotland Yard cops know about this?"
"Don't be coy, Nick." Renard said sharply. "I recognised Harry Potter and Ron Weasley as soon as they walked in here! I also knew you'd figure out who and what they were. My relatives have been trying to get a foothold in that world for centuries. They were on the point of doing it, too, until Potter killed the last of the Gaunts.
"I know they edited Hanks' memories, but not yours. You let things slip sometimes, Nick. Nobody else would notice, but I'm a zauberbiest, and we don't miss much.
"Now, you've asked the audience, and gone fifty-fifty: I think it might be time to phone a friend!"
Monroe had followed a similar line of reasoning to Renard, and as soon as he reached home, he made a call to the local office of the Federal Bureau of Sorcery. Special Agent Wednesday Addams sounded tired and harassed, but listened carefully to what he had to say.
"OK." She said. "The dead creatures I don't recognize, which worries me. The live one is what we call a thestral. They're just what they appear to be – winged, carnivorous horses. They're very elusive, quite rare and highly intelligent. They can only be seen by humans – and apparently wesen – who've seen death.
"Wild thestrals avoid people as much as possible, though they can be trained. Wizards legend says an Ancient Greek Muggle named Bellerophon captured and trained one once, called it Pegasus, though some people say that was a hippogriff. There is one domesticated herd in the UK. But all the herds in North America, there are two large ones and maybe three smaller ones, are wild.
"You say this one seemed to be guarding an area of the woods? Odd. Because it's not their foaling season, which is when they guard territory rather than just moving on if people get close. They try not to hurt people, even when they're guarding foaling mares, but they will attack and kill animal predators."
"Do you have any idea about what may be going on here?" Monroe asked.
"None at all," Wednesday admitted. "And there's not much I can do, right now. We've had some intel that there's trouble in the Nevernever that might just spill over into our plane. We're on full alert and stretched pretty thin, I can't spare anyone right now. What I can and will do is get the word out to the local wizard community to be on the lookout and to let Rosalee know if anything weird happens.
"You guys be careful, and good luck!"
Juliette had invited Rosalee and Monroe over for dinner, to say thanks for their help during Nick's incapacity. Rosalee immediately offered to help out in the kitchen, allowing the two men to exchange information.
"So Renard knows about the whole wizard thing?" Monroe said. "I can't exactly say I'm surprised. Are you going to take his advice? Call Harry?"
"I may just have to." Nick agreed. "The fact that those thestral things seem to be part of the wizard world makes me think some kind of magic is involved, for one thing. For another, Harry told me he knows a lot of people, so maybe he knows somebody who can tell us more. We need some kind of handle on what's going on, and Harry would be a good place to start."
"You going to call him now?" Monroe asked.
Nick glanced at the clock and shook his head. "Nah. It's about 4 AM in London now, and he's got kids, remember. His wife wouldn't be pleased with me if I called now! I don't think Juliette would be too happy if another guys' wife turned me into a frog!"
"Would she, like, notice?" Monroe wondered.
The evening, despite Monroes' question, was an unqualified success. After bidding their friends goodbye, Nick helped Juliette stack the dishwasher.
"Right!" She said firmly. "I'm going to bed! You coming?"
"Just got one thing to do." Nick told her. "I won't be long."
"Better not be!" She said, then kissed him deeply and went off.
Nick went into his den and dialled the home number from the card Harry had given him a few months back. The phone rang for a moment or two, then a womans' voice answered.
"Potter residence, Ginny speaking. Hold on a moment...KREACHER, MAKE SURE THAT TOAST DOESN'T BURN! Sorry, who's calling?"
"Hi, Mrs Potter. My name's Nick Burkhardt, I worked with your husband a couple months back. I wondered if I could have a word with him?"
"Oh!" She said. "Of course! HARRY! TELEPHONE!"
Nick winced a little – Ginny Potter had exceptional lungs. Then she asked in a normal voice. "Nick? Nick from Portland, right? The Grimm?"
"That's me." He replied.
"Thought so when I heard your accent." She said. "So nice to talk to you, put a voice to the name. Here comes Harry now. I'd better get back to the kitchen. If the kids don't get fed soon, they'll start eating each other! Lovely talking to you."
He heard her say "It's Nick from Portland." Then Harrys' voice said:
"Hello, this is Harry Potter, wizard extraordinaire, defence against little old ladies a speciality!"
"You know about that?" Nick asked.
"Me and about half the world!" Harry laughed. "The video went viral on the Net! Seriously, though, how are you doing, mate?"
"Not so bad." Nick allowed. "Had a concussion and a broken ankle, but I'm almost back to normal now. If normal is a word people like us can use!"
"Depends," Harry said, "what's your given value of normal? But you didn't call me at half-seven in the morning just to catch up. How can I help?"
Nick outlined the situation as quickly and as clearly as he could. When he'd finished, there was a short silence, then Harry said crisply:
"You did right to call, Nick. This sounds as if it might turn into something nasty, but you're in on the ground floor as it were. If it can be nipped in the bud, it'll save a lot of trouble."
"You know what it is?" Nick asked eagerly.
"I can have a guess at what it might be." Harry told him. "But I'm not going to say anything for definite, because I could be miles out.
"Now look, I'm tied up on a case at the moment, and so's Ron. But I'm going to call someone who should be able to help. If it's what I think it is, he specialises in that kind of thing. If it isn't, well, he's still a useful bloke to have on your side. I'm going to call him when I get to work. He can travel pretty fast when he has to, so he should be with you late tomorrow - your tomorrow - OK?"
"Fine. "Nick said. "I can use all the help I can get. Who is this guy?"
Harry laughed. "It'd take a week to tell you, Nick, and even then you'd need to see it for yourself! His name's Dante."