Two decades had passed since Dad had returned from a portal to that terrible 'Other Place' claiming he had defeated an evil entity named the Zerstorer. When he had told everyone that story, everyone had believed him them. Some pretended to and thought he had just lost his marbles, but I knew better.
Daddy Sean–or just Daddy as I often called him–was wrong to doubt Dad–as I had often come to call Nick. He might have come to believe Nick when he told much about the 'Other Place', but he had refused to believe in the Zerstorer. However, apart from Nick, only I knew the truth of the matter. My mom and brother Kelly simply believed him, although oblivious of what had really happened.
But life went on for two decades after that event. Nick had gone off and married my mom, which I felt happy about, and a few months ago, I had graduated from one of the top universities in Boston. I could have any job I could have, but I decided to return to Portland and help Nick and my mother with the responsibilities they had taken upon themselves. It didn't help that my young brother–half-brother actually–had decided to give college a pass and become a full-time Grimm. Our parents didn't really want him to drop out of his education, but Kelly had been insistent. Surprisingly, he had been quite effective and earned his reputation of being fair in the Wesen community. Just like our father.
Today, I stood outside a small café, thinking of all that had happened over the quiet few years we have had. Apart from a few Wesen crimes, nothing big had happened. But twelve years ago, some strange events had occurred, and the Wesen had finally been outed to the world. A biological virus had caused the Wesen all over the world to woge, and before a cure could be found, the entire world got to know that the stories they had read were real.
The humans–Kehreseite as the Wesen termed them–were scared and terrified, but fortunately, the Grimms acted quickly and arranged talks and educated people that Wesen were just like any other people, just with special abilities. This endeavor was led by Dad and Aunt Trubel, and succeeded for the most part. Every city now had a Wesen-focused department that handled Wesen Crimes, and every government across the world had a Wesen ministry that catered to the problems of the Wesen in the country. Representatives of these ministries often formed part of the Global Wesen Council, which also had Grimms from across the world. Dad was the President of the Council while Mother had taken up a high administrative role in the Council, drafting new laws and modifying the old ones, especially that of the Honor Code.
The Portland PD, like many other cities, had its own Wesen department, and Kelly had joined the department as a Grimm liason. And he assisted with helping the law and order fabric deal with Wesen-related crimes, not that there were many. After I had returned to Portland, I decided to join it as well to help my brother deal with the Wesen who thought of committing crimes and follow the old laws and Wesen behavior.
A loud horn brought me out of my thoughts, and in the distance, across the narrow street, I saw a tall man walking briskly towards her, close to crossing the road at the busy traffic junction a little ways ahead. I recognized the man. He was an informant I had developed in the Wesen world. A little money and some small favors here and there in return for some information. And he was always keen on helping. He felt he owed it to a peaceful world.
"Can we talk inside?" the man asked, huffing and puffing from all the brisk walk.
I bobbed my head. "It was always my plan," I quipped, leading him inside into a quaint little café that had sprung up in the neighborhood only recently. Being new, it saw fewer customers than the others, but the crowd was picking up. This café served excellent coffee and tea at the same time, a rarity among brewery chains. She took a seat closer to the window overlooking the road while she bade the man sit on the one opposite her.
A blond waitress appeared, clad in the clichéd yellow dress with the logo of the café emblazoned on the right -hand side of her chest. "Hello, Ma'am, Sir," she said in her chirpy voice. "How may I help you?"
I barely saw the menu, having decided what I wanted already. It helped that I came here often, alone most of the time, as this was the place I gathered my thoughts the most. "One cappucino, hot, with caramel and hazelnut."
"And anything to eat, Ma'am?"
I shook my head and let my companion place his order.
"Get me some chai tea please... make it hot."
The waitress nodded and scurried away to place the order at the counter.
"So, what do you have for me?" I asked.
He rummaged through the brown satchel and removed some photographs. He placed them on the table, each photograph showing different crime scenes.
"It's chronologically ordered, from L-R," he said, tapping on each photograph in the direction he mentioned. He pointed to the left one soon after. "This was in Bethany. An old couple killed five days ago. Motive unknown. Assailants unknown. No witnesses. No cameras either. The cops have been able to recover zilch. Nothing, no DNA, no identifying markers, nothing. Except that there was black van shown zooming out of the area from surveillance a block away in the middle of the night. The cam caught the license numbers. The van belonged to a Mr. Joseph Stiles. Bethany PD found that this Mr. Joseph is a Wesen. A Blutbad in fact. Registered with the local chapter of the Wesen Council. However, he had reported the van stolen from a nearby shopping mall. Everything checked out at his end. Clean record and all. Cops seem to have given him a clean chit, and the local Wesen chapter is still investigating him for more Wesen related background checks, but everything looks fine for him as he has been extremely cooperative."
I nodded as the waitress returned with my cappuccino and his chai tea. As she placed them on the table, her eyes went to the photographs on the table. She let out a squeak but hurried away as I threw her a concerned glare. "Carry on!" I said, sipping from my steaming cup.
He tapped on the second picture next. "This crime scene is in Mountains View Champions Park. A witness reported the body of an athlete on a tree. The MO is the same though. Throat slashed and wrists cut. Again, there were no witnesses to the actual attack. Mostly happened in the dead of night. Again, there was the same black van. License plates were the same."
"Same killer then!" I remarked.
"Killers, I am guessing," he said.
"What makes you say that?"
"This time, the cameras caught two men sitting on the front seats of the van. However, they didn't catch the real faces. They had woged. As far as what the Wesen cops have discovered, both of them were Siegbarstes."
She muttered a curse under her breath.
He traced his finger to the third one. "This third one happened a couple of days ago in Lowami Hart Woods. The victim was female this time. Again, same MO and same situation. Black van was found everywhere. The fourth one happened yesterday in Happy Valley. And the fifth one happened much closer to Portland in the Pearl District. This happened this morning. The cops are all over it. But their investigation no doubt will lead the case to be transferred to the Wesen department."
I nodded. "Any other connection between the victims apart from the van?"
My companion shook his head even as he finished his cup of chai tea. "All random incidents. I could find no connection between them either, but too early to tell right now. But while the victims were not common, there was a mark that appeared at all the places."
"A mark?" I questioned, suddenly curious.
"Aye!" he remarked. "A diamond and then two diagonal lines extending down from the sides." He pointed his fingers at the symbol in one of the photographs.
I leaned in and focused on the symbol. A moment later, I let out a sigh. "An Odal rune or an Othala as it is known."
"You know of it?" he asked.
I nodded. "It's one of the runes in the Elder Futhark runic alphabet. Usually, it represents inheritance, ancestral heritage and property. However, the Nazis misappropriated this rune, just as they did the Swastika, tainting its use. The Nazis used it to represent their ideology of racial purity and supremacy."
"So these Siegbarstes using these symbols... they're Nazis?"
I shook my head. "Neo-Nazis maybe or ones deeply accepting of the ideology."
He sighed. "I wonder what they want and why they killed all these people... so randomly at that."
"That's a question I'd like answered to as well, but thank you for all of this. I'll take this to the department."
He nodded. "You can keep it all."
"Thank you once again, and please see if you can find out more... if there's a Wesen supremacist group up and running, we need to know."
He nodded. "Yes, we all could do without the Wesenrein and the Black Claw."
I couldn't help but smile a little at that. "Yes, we could definitely without toxic organizations as those."
He quickly closed his satchel, nodded at me, and then hurried out of the café, vanishing in the crowd outside. I sat looking at the photos for a moment. I was so focused on it that I couldn't register the sound of my phone ringing.
When I became conscious of some of the customers' eyes on me, I shook myself off my focus on the crime scene and looked at the screen on my phone. Swiping up, I held the phone close to my ears.
"Well, well, well... the Triplets calling after a long time!"
