Fight fight fight fight! Folks – thanks a million for all the wonderful reviews on 9. I've never written a story this long, and there's still 3 chapters left after this… I really hope that 10 lives up to your expectations and that you enjoy.

Got your Abba and Blondie soundtracks ready? Lol

xxxxx

"We've got to talk logistics, fellas. It's not like we can take him with us, is it?" Denny frantically stuffed every soft surface in the room round Jan to try to keep him vaguely protected, but it looked very much like they were looking at a slippery slope, survival-wise.

"I'll stay with him," Monroe said quietly. "You guys get out of here and get reinforcements."

"You sure?" Denny saw the long look of appeal and appraisal pass between Monroe and Nick and eventually Nick stepped away from it, wiping his hand down his face.

"C'mon, Nick, I'm a big bad alpha, remember? And at least I can hold the gun."

"I know it makes sense, Eddie. It just doesn't make it any easier to swallow."

The banging at the door made them all jump and Denny lunged over, shifting in mid-stride to lean heavily against their side of the door. "YOU'RE NOT HAVING HIM!"

"Jan? You in there? Ben je erin?"

The voice nearly made Denny stagger back from the door – almost as startling as Nick's full Grimm coming out. He glanced over at Jan, who was still definitely on the floor, very much unconscious, and in no state to be doing any ventriloquism. Who the hell was that? "Wie bent u?"

"Stefan!"

Denny frowned. Was that supposed to mean something? "Wie?"

"Zijn broer!"

His brother? Any Dutch arse – even one that sounded exactly like Jan – could claim that. "Hoe weten we dat?"

There was a pause. "Shall we switch to English?" 'Stefan' yelled back. "You're doing a great job, but still... perhaps put a little more u in your a."

Denny caught Nick's eye, or rather, caught Nick rolling his eyes. Nick waved permissively at the door.

"Family habits," Nick muttered. "He sounds for real."

Denny opened the door and a slightly, only slightly smaller Jan shot past him and joined his brother on the floor, laying several weapons down to free his hands and grab his head. Jan stopped panting and went still.

"Jan – we're five! C'mon. Wake up." Stefan looked back desperately. "Shit – I didn't think he had this far to come back from. What the fuck did they do to him? He looks like he's been run over!"

Nick came alongside Denny and took over interrogation duties, for which Denny was profoundly grateful. He couldn't be near Jan looking like – that. He'd shifted back to human, but migraine or not, he might be better off as Siegbarste. He seemed to feel things less, in his wesen form.

"I thought he was staying with you."

"He is, but if you know anything about Jan, you know he's good at keeping stuff to himself. C'mon buddy… open your eyes!"

What's the significance of the five?" Nick asked.

"You need five to make up a pride. At least. As soon as he's with it, I'll go get more help." Stefan got an arm under Jan's back and hoisted him up a little. "Can you help me get him up?"

Denny boggled. "Are you out of your mind? Look at him! What the hell are you doing?"

"Letting him know I'm here. Scaling Pride Rock. It's a Pride King... thing. I don't expect you to understand right now – that's one for later." Lighter green eyes than Jan's met his with the same expression of appeal as his older brother's, albeit in a much younger face. A cocky face. Denny preferred the mature version. Stefan sighed. "Come on, I know this is hard to accept, but I know what I'm doing. Help me get him up. I'm strong, but he's not exactly... compact."

He bent down with a snarl. "He's not bloody Lazarus, alright? If this hurts more than it helps, I'll pull your arms and legs off myself. Got that?"

"Stefan," Jan warned, "If you even think of jerking me up right now…"

Denny was so shocked he nearly dropped him. Jan's eyes were still shut, his face the shade of the north side of St Paul's Cathedral and still raining sweat, but his voice… totally coherent and composed. Very much on the correct side of the survival slope. He caught his breath, then blurted: "You're awake!"

"Just about."

"Well... bugger me sideways."

Jan gave him the tiniest flicker of a smile through obvious faintness. "That's a bit... impatient, Denny. I'd rather stay still, for a bit..."

Denny was too busy grinning with relief to reply, but Nick had resumed charge anyway. "We're sticking with plan A – Monroe and Jan remaining here. We'll clear a path out there, and send help back to you as soon as it comes. Stefan – can you share any of your arsenal?"

Stefan handed Nick a Colt and Denny felt a little irritated on Nick's behalf as Jan-the-Younger looked him appraisingly up and down, making no secret of his concern at someone as unintimidating-looking as Nick leading the charge. Then he met Nick's flat gaze and leapt back about four feet. "You're a Gri―"

"Later!" Nick barked, and headed for the door. Denny saw Stefan meet his brother's eyes dubiously, but Jan nodded sternly at him. Trust me, trust him, the glare clearly said.

Slightly more meekly, Stefan added: "If it helps, the cats out there are strung out on J. So they're violent, but they're also completely mentally scattered and have no sense of strategy – it seems that they're missing their leader."

"Thanks," Nick muttered, and threw the wad of cotton from his ear into the bin. Denny approved – no point in presenting them with an obvious target to hit. They both took one last look over at Jan, Denny tossing Monroe the keys, just in case they needed to seal the route behind them, and unbolted the door.

X x X

The sound of Hank's passenger window smashing made him clear his seat with shock: the nutcases worked quickly – the bat cracked through the window, and an arm struggled for the car door handle on the inside. Not too bright – a locked car with an electric command system. It wasn't going to open however hard the probing hand pulled. Hank smacked the butt of his gun over the invading knuckles and watched with surprised satisfaction as the hand reared out of the car, its owner yowling. The yowl cut off real sudden, and Hank heard a thud. Then saw a very familiar silhouette. He opened the back door, manually, and Renard climbed in.

"Good timing Sir, thanks."

"Finally, we do actually have help coming. Someone deliberately compromised connections between despatch and the PDs this evening. How are you doing?"

Hank shrugged. Actually, not so good. He was groggy and thought he might actually have broken his right forearm. "Good enough to help," he fibbed.

"Fine, you're staying here. Griffin – don't give me that look. STAY. HERE. There is only one exception to this rule."

Hank raised a brow. "What?"

"If you see Officer Yvonne Sands, take her down. With a kill shot if you absolutely have to."

Hank stared. "Sands? What?"

Renard met his eyes seriously. "I know you liked her a lot at one time, and it's hard to imagine, but she was the one who compromised the Southlands stakeout. If you have difficulty in getting your head around that, just keep thinking to yourself how long it'll be before any of your old buddies in narc will be well enough to drink with you again. Alright?"

Hank nodded silently, wondering whether Yvonne was also secretly one of those cat-things. Or whether she was just a dirty cop. Or both. He had liked Yvonne Sands at one point…He shuddered as Renard got out of the car and crept towards the insanity outside Tennant's Bar. Frankly, both options made him feel a little dirty. Neither one more than the other.

He realised that this was a pretty critical improvement in his state of mind about all things wesen: that it didn't bother him more that he had once kissed a treacherous, insane cat during the Christmas party. They were all convincing humans. And it was the human side he'd kissed. What the hey.

Still, just to be on the safe side, he re-checked the magazine cartridge in his gun. He couldn't have a misfire at the critical moment.

X x X

He could only hear it through one ear, but it seemed insanely surreal to be smacking heads and firing shots off to Blondie's 'Heart of Glass' – a club tune guaranteed to have him dancing (badly) in the kitchen as a kid. He worked as a tag team with Denny, half fighting, half startling them towards the Siegbarste, while Denny despatched them with punches and cracks round the head with the table legs.

Much like the nightmarish quality of his conscious, coordinated mind, Blondie's voice had gone all floaty and echoey at the chorus, making him feel queasy and confused. In between, what I find is pleasing and I'm feeling fine…

He felt far from pleased or fine, as it happened, but his peripheral vision worked well: a Klaus snuck up on his right side and got an abruptly-placed boot under his chin from Nick, thumping him into a boneless heap at the bottom of the sprawling stairs leading from the club doors to the upper balconies. Nearly there… He covered Denny to get the doors open while he fended off the six Klaustreichen trying to back them up against the wall. He fired at one Klaus who got close enough to swipe another hole in the side of his shirt – not that Jan had left them much material to work with – dropped him, and pistol-whipped the two on either side in a figure of eight, crumpling the pair of them before they'd worked out that their buddy in the middle had been shot. The remaining three fled towards one of the rear fire doors.

He heard a tremendous roar in the distance, just audible over the club music now that Denny had the doors open. He looked groggily over to the office door. Still shut – good. And the sound had definitely come from outside. He felt a tiny something in the back of his head go 'snick', felt his strength going with it, his vision, temporarily, and suddenly felt himself being held up by Denny at the open doorway.

"C'mon, Nick – a bit of weight on your legs, mate? Get smacked again?"

He couldn't answer. It wasn't just vowels on strike – more any kind of link at all between his brain and his mouth, or even brain and legs. His mouth was completely zapped of all moisture.

"Shit, alright – going to hide you a bit more, yeah? Hang in there and keep your gun pointed up ah – sirens! Can you hear them? Hang in there for the sirens, Nick. Agh! Bollocks – got to get back to work!"

Nick was left where Denny had put him – gently deposited in the black shadows near the club wall -and was relieved, at least, to see the flash of a dozen or so white shirts with black trousers – all Lowen – steam into the club courtyard, led by Stefan, as back-up for Denny - trapping the last floundering Klaustreich between them. He wasn't completely safe where he was – three of them saw his foot sticking out of the shadow and he suffered the brief winding of being stamped until the Lowen pulled them off and slammed them on the floor. It hurt – but not anywhere near as much as it should've done. Then the squad cars pulled in, uniforms poured out, and he blearily recognised Officer Sands rushing over to help him, though she'd clearly taken a boot or something in the head herself. He felt a weird, numb tension reign as his senses seemed to run out into the courtyard. She pulled him firmly and gently back into the blackest corner.

X x X

Monroe startled as a smash in the corner of the window sent a tear running across the width of the glass. They'd finally figured out that they needed something small and sharp to make an impact, and that throwing each other at it wouldn't make much difference. He looked over to Jan, wondering what the hell they were going to do, but Jan had rolled unsteadily onto hands and feet and swayed over to the gun left for them on Denny's table.

"That'll take them a moment," Jan muttered, pulled his shirt off and folded it. "Just reinforcing things a bit… ah-AH..."

Monroe watched, unable to stop himself wincing as Jan strapped the bottom of his ribs, and was slightly embarrassed to be caught in the giant's mild gaze as he looked down at him through a sweaty fringe.

"I think Denny ruined it quite comprehensively, anyway."

Monroe shrugged. "Believe me, your shirts would be no safer with Nick."

"On the other side of the window, please Monroe. I'm glad to hear that. Finally, a bit of purposeful disrobing. He used to stop to politely unbutton, you know? Odd boy."

It amused Monroe in an abstract way to hear Nick described as an odd boy – the benefits of the cheek of age, he supposed. But the amusement was nowhere enough to calm the anxiety that was grating at him, and he brandished his plant-spray twitchily, feeling as much good as a chocolate teapot with his current inability to shift – to anything. Jan was enormous. No two ways about it – not just tall and lanky – actually a very well-built guy, built on a completely different scale to everyone else. The gun he held so easily looked like a silly toy in his hand.

Jan unnervingly met his eyes again. "You alright?"

"Won't you get cold?"

"Monroe…I think… that's probably the strangest thing anyone's ever asked me. Let's not worry about the cold, eh?"

The total lack of mocking in Jan's voice made him feel ten times dumber than if he'd torn two strips off him for being a dumbass. A huge roar ripped through the air, audible even through the slightly cracked window. It was clearly coming from a long way off, but the power in it… almost as thunderous as Jan's own, earlier, which had set off two car alarms. Monroe stared at Jan.

"That was a call to arms. Clearly Stefan seems to think he knows where to find some supportive Lowen."

Monroe's eyes widened. "The wedding party! Won't they be miles away, by now?"

Jan smiled slightly. "Stefan is a Royal Marine, Monroe. I'm sure he did reconnaissance before coming anywhere near the building. Alright, they're making progress out there. If you could do me a favour – try to keep them on my right side? I can only just feel my fingers in my left. Ok? We'll take care of these jokers, then hope there's a clear path past the door."

Monroe nodded, pressed himself back against the wall, and the glass blew inwards, ironically as 'Heart of Glass' from outside segued into 'Dancing Queen'.

. . . .

Jan despatched with the first face leaning in through the shattered window by popping his right elbow backwards against the nose, sending the Klaustreich sidewalk-bound with a crunch. Another climbed over the top of his friend and leapt through the window to face him – no honour among assholes – and got the upper side of his right-back-hander, sending him airborne backwards across the room and making a dent in Denny's cupboard door. Unconsciousness reduced the Klaustreich to human – not that Jan needed any help identifying. He'd seen those striped claws up close more than a couple of times: Annalise's littlest brother, recovered from Monroe's earlier strike, but down again. One of the ears was bleeding – which seemed almost like just recompense for Nick. Feel the beat on the tambourine, ooooo yeahhhh, Abba bleated bizarrely, in the background.

A Klaus dived for Monroe while Jan had his hands full again (mostly full of neck), so he was pleased to see his new friend despatch the alley cat with a face-full of liquid nip and a neat punch. The beast went down knuckling its eyes, half-choking and screeching, filling Monroe with confidence.

"Right! Anyone else for some of my spray?"

"Door," Jan murmured, and made his way over, allowing Monroe to hold a competent rear guard with his two watering canisters. The cats outside the window – just as strung out as Stefan had said – hesitated about following any time soon. He had the four bolts unlocked, and had to pause for a dizzy breath, when a black door to the side of Denny's office finally splintered open and two refugees escaped before Jan managed to slam it shut again – hitting heads hard on the inside. The blonde Klaus struggled away on her hands and knees. He let her go. Gerard, bloodied but upright, still had his shank and plunged it towards him.

If he hadn't been hurting so badly, he could've deflected at the first flicker of movement and made Gerard stab himself, but the next best thing occurred: he at least caught the thin arm when the tip of the shank was less than a half-inch from his left side. Glaring into the centre of the slit-eyes in the hateful face, he grabbed Gerard's neck in his right hand and with his weaker left, squeezed the forearm until pain and panic made the little shit's mouth drop open and the eyes dilate into lemons. A plaid arm shot past him and sprayed nip straight in Gerard's mouth, producing multiple, satisfying choking and suffering sounds.

"Thank you kindly, Monroe." Jan regarded his spluttering tormentor dispassionately, raised him up by the neck and then dropped Gerard down onto his kneecap, crunching the cat's stones and getting him 'right in the feels', as Denny would probably say. "That was for the beatings," he explained calmly, then eyed the door of the men's toilet.

A particularly nasty memory came back to him as he hoisted the clam-folded Klaustreich by the back of his jacket and belt of his camos into the nearest cubicle, which was satisfactorily disgusting. He plugged the toilet bowl with Gerard's head and shoulders and flushed. Juvenile but fulfilling – and it wouldn't last the whole fucking night, like being tied while out cold to a bench in the yard, tipped backwards and made to inhale heavy rainstorm until he choked and passed out. Three times.

"That was for the waterboarding."

Finally, he picked up Gerard and threw him into the gulley by the urinals. He landed with enough of a crack to reassure Jan that he could get on with other priorities, for now. "I may be back to discuss 'the station stairs'."

The effort made him a little green, but anger helped him bounce on his toes, for now. He was a little more confident of getting outside and home to Theo in one piece, which ramped up his pain threshold another twenty percent or so. Monroe stepped up beside him and twirled his canisters. Jan almost smiled. For a guy temporarily limited to human… he was pretty deadly. Then a cold wave swept over him – one of his pride, down and helpless. Jan accepted Monroe's arm round his hips, leant heavily and they stumbled past the clutter of passed-out and wounded bodies on the floor to the front of the club as quickly as they could manage.

X x X

Denny kept glancing over to see if Nick was doing ok, but he seemed to have been hauled off somewhere quieter. Probably a good thing: the little bastards with their makeshifts were absolutely brutal, even with a bunch of bloody Lowen helping out. But at least now the braver of the beat cops were struggling their way into the melee, taking down Klaus with force that could almost be called Police Brutality, completely unaware of what exactly they were fighting. But he didn't like not being able to see Nick: he had a horrible feeling that it wasn't a new blow that had taken the Grimm down, but an older one, making its level of damage suddenly clear. Panic and guilt took over, pushing him back into the remaining fight. Stefan was down – he thundered over to cover him.

X x X

Nick's eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he tried to thank her for standing over him for those few moments while the fight wound down. Hank staggered into view in the distance, waving the med-evac down onto the cordoned area of Freelands blocked off from the traffic. He didn't look too good. Sands was now bent in front of him, feeling through his hair, gently.

"Did you take a smack?"

He couldn't answer, so he nodded, which jerked harsh stars behind his eyes.

"I'm sure Jan would prefer to be doing this."

Huh? Nick stared at her silhouette. Even in the gloom, her face looked pinched. What the fuck was she talking about?

"He always had a thing for you. More than a 'thing'. Annalise tried so hard with him. Did you know that?" Her fingers became claws.

Nick felt panic set in. Klaustreich – friends with Annalise, no less, and despite growing terror, even without the blackness, he was in no state to do the eyes, or the voice, and certainly not the arms.

"Do you know how hard it was for her? She tried so hard. For those first two years. She did everything for him, tried to be the perfect wife, but you can't make it work with someone who's already in love with someone else. She needed him to love her, be his rescuer, but he destroyed her – because of you!"

And she sure got her own back, Nick thought, thinking of the abuse that followed, and he wasn't sure whether that sudden violent jerk of the leg was down to him, or whether it was panicked reflex, but he caught her in the chest hard enough to smack her backwards out of the shadow and scramble for her gun for a moment before standing and aiming at him again. Behind her, Jan appeared, his arm straight, face colourless and deadly under the black hair, and fired.

She screeched, turned, and her spin-fire caught Jan high up in the chest, flicking him over backwards. Nick caught his breath as his friend dropped, but the giant was caught in a pincer movement between Denny and Monroe before he hit the courtyard. Then her gun was pointed unerringly, once again, straight towards his face. He heard her pull the hammer back, let his lids drop shut, then heard a shot that didn't reach him. When he opened, confused, she was side-down on the ground and Renard emerged out of the blackness, standing over her bleakly.

Nick let go the breath he'd been holding.

Denny was talking urgently into Jan's face, gripping one hand, which was clearly being gripped back – hard – while Monroe was dutifully pressing hard against the bleeding collar bone with his ripped-off and folded-up shirt. Nick thought, vaguely, that they'd all need a new wardrobe after this Boys' night out. Jan stopped howling and was reduced to groaning against Denny's chest, but the med-evac paramedics were already swooping over with the gurney.

Good – so it wasn't all for nothing – Jan was in good hands, and the Captain was walking towards him, saying his name quietly in the darkness, followed at the double by Hank.

He tried to say "I'm here", but it didn't work. Nick was vaguely aware of a sharp, grating sensation against the bruised, kicked side of his face as violent tremors kicked in and then he slipped down the side of the wall.