"But when he blew through it for the first time, to his great astonishment, the bone began of its own accord to sing."
- The Singing Bone
The Nuckelavee didn't make it very far.
He trailed blood as he ran several blocks. He turned down another alleyway and made to scale its walls, but his legs gave out.
He tumbled back onto the pavement, missing Nick by just a few feet. His attempts to rise resulted in collapse.
"Who are you?" Nick asked.
The Nuckelavee's body shivered, and his human form bubbled up. "Grimm," he muttered.
"Why did you attack them?" Nick asked. "Who are you?"
He didn't respond; he stopped breathing. Nick checked his pulse. Nothing.
He went through his pockets. The Nuckelavee had a wallet, large envelope, flash drive, burner phone, and a large keychain. As he pocketed everything, he noticed that his own burner phone was gone.
He couldn't risk spending more time with a dead body, so he took everything and walked to the nearest tube station as calmly as possible.
Nick felt oddly serene.
His first few hours in London were far more eventful than he anticipated.
He took the tube for three stops and got off to purchase an MP3 player for Internet and a new burner phone. While shopping, he noticed that his jeans made him stick out, so he went into a clothing store to find something more fitting.
After an awkward conversation wherein Nick learned the difference between the American and British usage of the word 'pants', he settled on semi-casual black trousers and a light-colored shirt.
As he left the shop, something caught his eye: a masked figure moving toward him.
He blinked. The figure disappeared.
The disappearance didn't bother him as much as the mask; he'd seen it before.
Nick returned to the tube station; he had to get back to his room.
When Nick boarded the tube car, it was empty. He sank into his seat, relaxed. Suddenly, that same masked person sat opposite him.
He started in surprise.
The individual who sat opposite him was a square-jawed woman who glowered at his sudden knee-jerk reaction to her.
Nick averted his eyes; he still had four more stops to go. He leaned back and closed his eyes.
The masked figure appeared out of shadow. The mask was thick, like it was made of wood, and its ornament was strange. It was a lopsided face, quartered into distinct shapes. The shadows receded, and each quadrant of the mask separated. Each partial element seemed so familiar...
Nick's eyes snapped open. He must've dozed because the cart was now full. Luckily, he hadn't missed his stop.
He rummaged through his pockets for receipts and a pencil stub. He did his best to sketch on the thin paper with no hard surface. His drawings were crude, but each one of the four elements in the mask represented a different Wesen: Damonfeuer, or maybe a Skalenzahne; a Hundjager; something similar to a Mellifer; and an avian species, like a Steinadler.
He didn't have time to consider it further. His stop was up.
Nick returned to his room and emptied his shopping bag, where he stowed not only his new pants – no, trousers - but also the large envelop and other pilfered items from the Nuckelavee.
The Nuckelavee's wallet had four hundred pounds in cash, a tube card, an unmarked security card, and an id for someone named James Smith. The key chain was filled with those belonging to padlocks, or similar old mechanisms, along with one skeleton key and one car key. All in all, nothing terribly revealing.
So he emptied the envelope.
Labeled photographs and small papers with notes were clipped or banded together. The photos included the two men that the Nuckelavee attacked, along with casing pictures for various locations. The notes were straight-forward:
Sherlock Holmes
John Watson
Saint Bart's Hospital
221 B Baker Street
Cypress Celeste Hotel
Relatives: Mycroft Holmes, Mary Morstan
Live-ins: Mrs. Hudson
Associates: Molly Hooper, Gregory Lestrade
The envelope convinced Nick that the Nuckelavee must've been hired to stalk and kill, or at least assault, these two people. By the handwriting, there were multiple contributors to this packet, which could mean more than one person was involved in the hire.
He scanned through the phone. All calls from the same number. He turned off the internal GPS; maybe someone would call and give him something to go on.
Nick wrapped up everything and stashed it.
The thumb drive.
The Nuckelavee clearly favored hard copies, so why did he also have a thumb drive? Seemed redundant. Nick hooked it into his new MP3 player; it contained footage from the Cypress Celeste. It was too high-quality to be generic security footage, but it was all captured by a single, still camera.
Nick streamed the footage to the TV to get a better picture. A woman waited a set table. The room was luxurious-looking, and from the small part of the window he could see, it had a great view, probably the top floor. A man joined her. She turned to greet him, and for the first time, the camera caught her face.
Nick paused it. He couldn't zoom in, but the image was very clear: the woman was Susan Gamble, the Tally Maker. He didn't recognize the man.
He pressed play. The rest of the footage documented a double homicide. Someone shot Susan Gamble with a sniper rifle. A second assailant stabbed the man several times just a few seconds after Gamble went down.
The knife-wielding assailant wore the Quadrant Mask that Nick had been seeing all day in the phantom manifestation.
He scanned through the footage; the masked attacker was, in fact, an individual wearing a mask, not a figment or a sign or a dream-figure.
Nick went over to his luggage and pulled out item he packed into the bottom of his case. He unwrapped the Quadrant Mask he acquired in Portland.
It was identical to the one on the screen.
"You'll know when it's time to start the Bone Song ritual. You'll feel it."
Nick pulled out a bag of powder from one of the hidden pockets of his jacket and slipped the thumb drive in its place; he might need it later. Then he mixed the powder into a glass of water and drank it down.
He focused, and he waited.
"Some say Bone Song taps into the blood line, the shared soul of your ancestors. Others say that it drums up ghosts, raising spirits from embers. But what it really does is pull up the songs from your bones so that you can finally hear them out in the open. Those songs know things long before you do, and if you listen right, they will guide you. Don't be fooled. Bone Song reaches into your inheritance, but your deepest nature can be more dangerous than an enemy. So be prepared."
Darkness covered everything. The place smelled of leaves, grass, and wood. Nick looked up. There were no stars.
The sound of moving water filled his ears.
Gun in hand, he stood near the river with his weapon aimed at James Palomino. He put his hands up.
"You need to help him. My boyfriend."
James woged, revealing his Jagerbar countenance.
"He's a good man. He needs help. Please!"
Nick fired.
"Wouldn't hurt a fly."
He fired again. And again. And again.
"He's a good man. He'd do anything to save us."
James returned to his human face as his body collapsed. Everything moved so slowly here, like the darkness clogged all the movement. His body slid down the bank of the river.
"Don't hurt him. He's a good person..."
Hank and Monroe raced toward him, concern and confusion apparent in their faces. They spoke, but the roaring of the waterfall overcame everything else as the body cascaded down and down and down...
"My sister told me about you."
Nick leaned against the doorframe of a hospital room.
"My name is Kiera," the patient said. "My sister, she told me about you. Nick, isn't it?"
"Sorry, your sister?"
Kiera woged; she was a Lowen. Nick came closer.
"Jess Reilly. She's a corrections officer," Kiera said.
"I remember her."
"My boyfriend needs your help. He's the reason we were all kidnapped. We're leverage."
"Leverage for what?"
"I don't know."
"Start at the beginning."
The words fluttered by, like watching a film in fast-forward. Kiera described the attack, and the threat, and everything around them became a deep, mahogany red.
Nick said, "You need to keep his family and friends away. Unless I call you. And you need to tell me where he'd go."
"An old family friend has this cabin out in the woods."
The mahogany aged, then became duller.
Nick threw open the cabin door. It was an older building, and all its walls were natural wood. And the cabin was completely empty: no furnishings, no decor, no people.
Blood trickled down the walls from the ceiling.
James Palomino stood in the middle of the room. His eyes were infinitely sad.
"James Palomino?"
He nodded.
"Kiera sent me to help you."
James spoke, "I never wanted to hurt anyone."
"What are you talking about?" Nick asked. "What happened?"
"Looks like someone beat the hell outa him," Hank replied.
Nick was inside the home office of Terrance Picket. Hank, Nick, and Carolyn Winters spoke about the body, the forensics, the facts.
Hank led the way down the hall.
There was a framed photograph of Picket fishing with three men, James Palomino among them.
"I thought he was my friend," James said, standing right at Nick's elbow. No one else seemed to hear him. He floated alongside Nick as he walked.
Hank went first down the stairs. At the bottom, Nick hesitated. Something was wrong. How did he get from the cabin to this place?
"But he wasn't. He's one of them," James said.
Picket's wife, Erin Rollins, was in the kitchen, shaking. She woged briefly.
"He's part of the Reinhiet," James continued. "He was helping that... woman."
Wild bovine features with a blunted head. She was a Monitor. That meant Picket was likely a Monitor as well.
"You got something?" Hank asked.
James disappeared. The world was solid again. It was just Hank and Nick standing at the bottom of the stairs.
"No, nothing. Just thought I saw something."
A starburst filled the room, bleaching out all discernable colors and shapes.
He was back in the cabin with James.
"My grandfather was part of the resistance to the Reinhiet... they called themselves the Reife. I sort of inherited his work. I was so close... collecting information on their finances, trying to find who funding everything. Terry was my failsafe."
"He betrayed you?" Nick asked.
"When I realized what Terry did, that's when that woman came. She said she'd kill everyone I loved unless I gave her everything. Hard copies. Originals. Digital. But that wasn't enough for Terry. If people knew he was a part of the Reinhiet... he decided to kill me before I could tell anyone."
"Where are these records now?"
"Tainted. Bleached. Burned. Stolen."
"Those files Hank recovered at the storage unit," Renard said, "they're a money trail."
The world split in two. Nick stood half in the cabin and half in the Captain's office. Or, maybe he was in both places.
"FBI will get through it, but they won't find anything illegal," Renard continued.
James continued, "They funded hospitals, drug trials, medical research. All legitimate. Every penny, every line, everything in order. All around the world. I was so close. So close. So close."
"They won't even get close," Renard said.
"We have to get this information to Palomino," Nick said to Renard. "He's the one who put it together. If he can get us a name out of this, a place to start..."
"But now they know I killed Terry," James said. "Only a matter of time before they come for me."
"He confessed to a murder," Renard said.
"Self-defense," Nick pointed out.
"If I called the police, that woman would've killed my family," James said.
"Doesn't look like self-defense," Renard said. "And we can't connect the Tally Maker to Terrance Picket."
"It looks bad," Nick said to both of them. "But Captain, you and I both know this guy is our only real shot."
"No one can know," James pleaded. "Or everyone I know will be in danger. Forever."
"No one can know," Renard said. "And I mean no one. It's too dangerous."
"But Rosalee is connected to the council," Nick replied.
"The Reinhiet persecutes Wesen who marry outside their own species," Renard said. "Monroe and Rosalee are exactly who they'd target. You can't bring them into this."
"No one can know," James repeated.
"No one can know," Renard said.
The words echoed against one another, filling the world with vibrations. When it stopped, everything was tinted blue and green.
"Will you be home soon?" Juliette asked.
"Actually, I'm heading over to Monroe's for a bit," Nick replied. "Not sure how long I'll be."
"Saw you were in with the Captain. You got something on the Picket murder?" Hank asked.
"Just trying to figure out where the Tally Maker case is."
"Hey, man, you wanna join us for dinner?" Monroe asked.
"Actually, I've got plans with Juliette."
Rosalee asked, "What's going on?"
"I'm thinking our guy is a Jagerbar," Nick said. "His sister is, and the crime scene was pretty savage."
As she mixed things together, Nick pocketed a few items behind his back: a bottle of Knochenstaub, a packet of finely ground theraphosa blondi, and a vial of essentia messorem.
"You can't buy these ingredients. She'll want to know why. Or worse, she'll already know why."
He calculated how much he owed Rosalee. He'd have to pay her back.
"Listen, my brother's recent attempt to ruin your life can help us here," Renard said. "He set up a number of false identities to smuggle you out of the country. Credit history, passport, paper work, everything."
"No one can know," Nick repeated.
"No one can know. Since my brother is dead, there's no one to track this identity: Sebastian Cane."
James joined them in the woods. "No one can know. All I wanted was to protect my family. My grandfather thought the Reinhiet would die out by my generation."
"No one can know," Nick repeated.
"Once he's down stream, I'll get him to a safe house. Miss Reilly will have to take things from there," Renard said.
The Captain disappeared. It was just James and Nick at the river.
Monroe and Hank were screaming, but they had a ways to go.
"Are you ready?" Nick whispered.
James nodded.
"You need to hold your breath till you reach the waterfall. Don't forget the rope."
James nodded. His eyes were infinitely sad.
Then the yelling started. As Hank and Monroe closed in, James attacked, and Nick fired.
Again.
And again.
The sound of the waterfall became absolutely deafening.
Nick sat up in bed.
It was four in the morning.
The primary goal of Bone Song was to dig out revelations, and though Nick chose the serum specifically for the secondary byproduct – concealing his Grimm scent and identity from all Wesen for a period of seventy-two hours – he was disappointed by the experience.
He remembered the events and people that brought him to London; re-living the highlights of those experience revealed no new insights for him.
He turned to get out of bed.
James Palomino stood in his room, dressed in a stiff suit. Red eyes and a deathly pallor hung about him, and water dripped off of him continuously. He smiled.
"That clock is wrong. It's an optical illusion."
James produced a mask.
"My grandfather gave it to my mother, and she gave it to me. Never thought I'd have to use it. If you mean what you say, you'll need it before the end."
Nick blinked. He wanted to ask James how he got here and why, but he couldn't speak. So he took the mask.
"That clock is wrong, but the time is right."
The masked figure appeared. James Palomino turned to stone.
"Don't let them fool you," the figure spoke. The voice was familiar.
"Don't let them fool you."
Nick tried to move, but he couldn't.
"Some will fight in the name of an ideal, a belief, a religion, but it is merely a veneer, means to achieve whatever ends they wish."
The figure removed the mask. It was his mother.
"Don't let them fool you, Nicky," she said.
She left the mask in the air, and a body formed around it as she, too, turned to stone.
The masked figured danced and sang. Its voice was androgynous, almost electronic.
"The sounds of wind and rain build. The rain stops, but the wind continues: sharp billows, hushed gusts, indistinguishable bustles."
The masked figure cut off its own head and pranced with it in its hands. The head continued to sing.
"And somewhere in the rippling, a whine becomes a ring. That ring becomes a chime. And those chimes transform into a soft song that goes on and on for any ear that can catch its tune."
Splash!
"Nick." It was the voice of Sean Renard. "This is too dangerous, even for a Grimm. Even for you. You need to let this go."
"Whatever it is, you can tell me," Juliette spoke.
"I can help," Hank said.
"We can help," Rosalee spoke up.
"We can help." That was Monroe.
Their voices came together and built up one body: the same masked, dancing figure.
"Where are we?"
"We can help," echoed the voices of his four friends.
"Can you tell me where we are?"
"Under the earth," they said together.
It was true. Wherever they were, it was underground.
"I don't understand. Where are we?"
Lines of formed around the dancer; they turned red. Or maybe they were always red. Nick couldn't remember.
"Bond," the dancers replied.
"What does that mean?" Nick asked. But the world was bleaching white. Darkness was coming. The wind and rain curled around him. That song. He could hear it.
It was coming closer.
Nick woke up. He had fallen asleep on top of the covers, and his arms were wrapped tightly around the quadrant mask James gave him before he left for London.
It was morning.
Nick took a few minutes to adjust. He drank some water and washed his face. This was the real world, as far as he could tell.
So he had to figure out his next move.
According to James Palomino, the creators of the quadrant mask, the Reife, set up a primary hub in each major city under the protection of a legitimate business, usually something involved in the arts or historical preservation.
Nick considered the most abstract elements of his Bone Song experience. "Bond." That was what they said.
He pulled up a map of London. Bond Street. Seemed as good a place as any to start.
He wrapped the mask in a sweater and grabbed a bag. It would make an excellent conversation starter.
Nick explored Bond Street for about half an hour, looking in on every art gallery he saw. Nothing stuck out to him.
Something in the pit of his stomach tightened. He had pushed everyone away to get here. Susan Gamble was his only real connection, and now that she was dead, he had nothing to go on. Not without finding members of the Reife.
He felt like he was drowning. He couldn't fathom how his mother did all this, alone.
Just ahead of him, a sly smile caught his eye, as if thinking about his mother conjured her. She beckoned him, and he followed her to a gallery featuring London artists. She vanished in the doorway.
Bone Song. Apparently it worked.
"Can I help you?" someone asked as soon as he entered.
"Maybe," Nick replied. "I'm looking for some information about something I inherited. This looked like the place to do that."
"I'm Millie Beasley, and I'd be more than happy to help."
Nick produced the wrapped mask from his bag. Millie carefully unwrapped it, but she nearly dropped it when she saw what it was. Her eyes became huge, like an owl, as she woged in surprise.
But she didn't take any note of Nick.
"Oh, sorry, masks sometimes do that for me," she said. "Now, this was handcrafted. You said you inherited it?"
"That's right. My grandfather left it to me, but he didn't say anything about it. I think he meant my mom to do that, but she died when I was a kid, so..."
"Oh, I see," Millie said. "Well, I can ask one of our native art specialists. But she's not in today. How about I take a picture and your number and have her ring you up?"
"Oh, well, I'm only in London for few days. Any chance I could talk to her before then?"
"I can't make promises," Millie said, "but I promise she'll give you a ring."
Nick ducked into the tube station. If the members of the Reife were going to keep him waiting, he might as well check out the apothecaries, get a feel for the Wesen community in the area. Especially since the Bone Song didn't last forever.
He had sixty-six more hours before the effects wore off.
It was the first time he saw a Wesen woge so closely without getting a scream of terror. Being in the know without the yelling? It seemed too good to be true.
That's when he noticed it. Something was wrong. He suddenly became tense and alert.
Instead of heading for the platform, he veered away, and two people followed him. He turned a corner and found himself at a dead end.
"You're not from around here," one of the stalkers said. "I'm Jim. This is Bill."
"Why are you following me?" Nick asked.
"Ooo, this American doesn't got manners, now does he?" Bill asked. "The proper thing to say is, 'Hello Bill. Hello Jim. My name is ...' Give it a go."
"Hi, I'm Sebastian. Why are you following me?"
The two woged, revealing klaustreichs. Nick didn't flinch, but he didn't comment, either.
Jim snatched the bag from Nick.
"That's mine!"
"Looky here," Jim said. "Reife."
"Aw, that's too bad. Been a long time since I've seen a Bi-oju in London. But we don't let blood traitors live."
Jim pulled out a .22 caliber. Nick could handle two klaustreichs, but he didn't have a gun or weapon on him.
"You don't wanna do this," Nick said.
"Don't we?" Bill asked. "Sebastian is such a stupid name."
Bill charged.
His only hope would be to keep Bill between himself and Jim, so he parried Bill's full-force attack and knocked him back into his partner.
"Never knew a Bi-oju to fight," Bill said. "Shoot him already."
Nick tucked and rolled, desperately hoping to break past them so he could make a run for it.
"Ah!"
Suddenly, Jim was on the ground, gun-less, and Bill was tussling with a fuchsbau.
"Stay where you are!" a woman yelled.
Nick wondered, dimly, if he would have to deal with local police. When he got back to his feet, he saw Rosalee taking down Bill with a wicked spinning sidekick. The woman who took the gun from Jim was Juliette.
For a moment he wondered if the Bone Song was somehow responsible.
Juliette handed off the gun to Rosalee.
"Juliette?" Nick said. "What are you doing here?"
She slapped him.
"Ow."
"What the hell were you thinking?" she demanded.
"Uh, guys, maybe we should do this later," Rosalee said.
"You have any handcuffs?" Nick asked.
"Seriously?" Juliette replied.
"Then, Jim, Bill, you'll have to strip."
"What?" Rosalee asked.
"We can't tie them up, so if we leave them in their underwear, they'll be less likely to chase after us."
"Take this," Rosalee said as she threw them a vial.
"No way!" Bill said.
"Either drink that or strip. Relax, it's just a sleeping tonic."
Jim and Bill took equal gulps from the vial.
"What do I do with this?" Rosalee asked, indicating the gun.
"Depends. How fast does that stuff work?" Nick asked.
The two klaustreichs dropped.
"No way," Juliette said.
"Fast acting sleep tonic."
"Wipe the gun down and leave it," Nick said. "And let's get the hell out of here. Oh, and thanks."