Grimm: The Chopping Block (32 page)

“I don’t want your blood money, you bastard!”

“You misunderstand,” Widmark replied. “You see, neither you nor your son will leave here tonight. Had you not come to me, I would have had Fixer pay you a visit tonight. To keep our society secret, we are forced to take extreme measures.”

Ellen pulled a steak knife from the left sleeve of her gown and brandished the gleaming blade in her right.

“Every last one of you will die tonight!” she said angrily, almost frothing at the mouth as she woged. “Grab him, Kurt!”

Kurt rushed around the side of the desk, but froze when Widmark pulled a handgun from the open drawer and leveled it at his chest.

“No!” Ellen yelled, attempting to draw Widmark’s deadly attention away from her unarmed son.

Behind her, the door burst open and she had time to glimpse the Dickfellig in a bloodstained butcher’s apron a moment before his thick forearm clamped around her throat. As he applied painful pressure, her vision dimmed, dancing with dark spots.

“Please, don’t hurt my son,” she begged Widmark, but her voice came out as a feeble croaking sound. She’d had one goal. Kill the host. And she’d failed. Now her son would pay the price for her failure.

* * *

A gun at his back, hands clasped behind his head, Monroe walked deeper into the woods lining the unpaved driveway of the Silver Plate Society’s banquet house, knowing each fateful step brought him closer to his own death.

Decker had him stop at a deadfall.

“Good a place as any to end our friendship,” Decker said. “It’s all good, though. I’m returning you to the forest, brother.”

“Why?”

“Because you can’t be trusted with this secret.”

“No,” Monroe said as he slowly turned to face his former friend, careful to keep his hands behind his head in the nonthreatening posture. He needed to stall, to give Nick time to catch up and stop Decker and the rest of them. “Why take the classes? The Pilates, t’ai chi, the meditation, all of it? Why bother? If you’re part of this meat festival, you had no intention of reforming.”

“I was surprised to see you at the market,” Decker said. “Thought you’d come to town for the feast, but then I remembered you live here. But I wasn’t buying the reformed act. Thought it was a cover. The wolf in grandma’s clothes. Keeping a low profile, above suspicion. If you didn’t know about Silver Plate, I couldn’t tell you. So I wanted to see if you were for real with the reformed nonsense. And the more I learned, the more pathetic you became.” Decker chuckled in a self-deprecating way. “Fool that I am, I thought I could tempt you to return to your roots. No such luck. The more you tried to get me to reform, the more convinced I became that I was wasting my time with you.”

“Obviously, I felt the same,” Monroe said. “Wasting my time with you.”

“So, imagine my surprise when you turn up at my pickup point,” Decker said, smiling. “For one hot minute, I thought, ‘He’s come around, at last.’ But the more I thought about you and those cop friends of yours—and those ridiculous classes—I couldn’t believe it. Either you were collecting evidence for your detective buddies, or you were hoping to lead them to our doorstep. If you could have seen how jumpy you looked in the van. The mighty wolf transformed into a rabbit! Well, this is the end of the road, Rabbit. You should thank me for ending the pitiful existence your toothless life has become.”

“You could let me go, for old time’s sake,” Monroe said, nervously.
Face it, Nick’s not coming. Decker must have lost him on the way here
. “Promise I won’t tell anyone about any of this.”

“Like I said before, brother,” Decker replied. “Can’t trust you. They call me Fixer for a reason. I clean up loose ends. And, unfortunately, you are a loose end.”

Decker extended his hand, aiming down the dark barrel of the automatic.

Taking an involuntary step backward, Monroe stumbled, almost fell.

Decker adjusted his aim—

—as a dark figure darted out from the trees behind him, reached around and sliced deep into his throat with a dagger.

Stunned, Decker toppled forward, blood gushing from the fatal wound.

The dark figure—the man from the van who had worn the tailored overcoat but now wore only a black tunic, black trousers and black boots—woged, revealing himself as a hound-like Hundjager. After wiping the dagger on the back of Decker’s jacket, the man shoved it into a sheath hidden in his left boot. He pried Decker’s automatic from his lifeless hand and removed his own gun from a holster in his right boot.

“Leave now, Veggie Wolf—or die with the rest of them!” he growled at Monroe. With an automatic clutched in each hand, the Hundjager darted back into the trees in the direction of the sprawling house above.

Monroe patted his sweater pocket and panicked when he found it empty. Then he realized he’d put Hank’s phone in his pants pocket—given to him as a spare by Nick in the Land Cruiser long before he’d left to board the van—and dialed Nick’s number.

Nick picked up almost immediately and confirmed they’d lost the tail, but they were tracking Hank’s cell phone GPS and expected to arrive momentarily.

“Hurry, Nick,” Monroe said. “There’s a Hundjager here and he plans to kill everyone.”

Monroe sprinted across the woods, backtracking the path he’d taken with Decker until he reached the unpaved driveway. As he looked toward the county road, the Land Cruiser turned into the driveway, headlights off as it rumbled across dirt and gravel, halting inches from the white van’s rear bumper.

Nick and Renard jumped out of the SUV, guns drawn, and followed Monroe as he raced toward the expansive log cabin home.

In the distance, they heard a bell ring three times.

The man called Chef by the guests in the cannibal house wheeled his serving tray lined with carving knives beside Hank’s X-shaped table. He raised his hands and the background music faded. Immediately, all conversations stopped and everyone gave him their undivided attention.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Chef said. “After twenty-five years of anticipation and planning, the time has finally come for us to conclude our festival with the
Straffe Kette Abendessen
.”

Those holding wine or champagne glasses raised them. Others clapped or cheered. A few chanted, “Tight chain supper!”

“Wait!” Hank said. “The other one—your host—he said to wait.”

“These people have waited long enough!”

Cheering erupted. Hank saw one elderly man, hands clasped together under his chin, actually lick his lips.

Chef picked up a knife with a serrated six-inch blade, grabbed the bottom of Hank’s V-neck sweater and sawed upward to the collar. He repeated the cutting motion on Hank’s shirt, mostly to rip the buttons free, and exposed Hank’s chest.

More than a dozen cannibal Wesen edged closer.

A wide-eyed man, who might have been a stockbroker or a bank manager, leaned toward Hank’s torso and said, “Should I use a knife or”—he woged into Geier form, holding claws up for Hank to see—“or simply rip a hunk of flesh off with my bare hands? The latter, I think. It’s a night for the old ways.”

“Get away from me, you sick bastard!” Hank gasped.

The man’s clawed hand darted out and raked a narrow furrow in Hank’s chest, then he brought the tip of the claw up to his tongue and tasted the blood. Hank thrashed, snapping his chains back and forth, but with no real hope of freeing himself.
If I get my hands on any of these Wesen psychos, I’ll rip off their damn fingers and shove them down their throats!

Chef raised an arm, blocking the man from a second strike.

“Now, now, sir! I haven’t given the rule or the word yet.”

“The only rule is, no individual feeding frenzies,” Chef said. “When you get a hunk of meat or fistful of organ, you step back and allow the next guest his or her turn. That way everyone gets a taste before we reach loose chain. Understood?”

They all nodded, but their eyes stared hungrily at Hank, at the line of fresh blood trickling down his side.

Hank had his doubts that they would restrain themselves, but he also understood that “loose chain” meant the moment he went into shock from pain or blood loss—or died.

Chef held up one hand.

“For those who prefer blade to the claw, I’ve laid out an assortment of carving knives. Please take one and let me know if we need more.”

Several people near the serving cart hefted knives, while those on the other side of Hank’s table held out their hands and waited for someone to pass them a blade, handle first.

“After the triple-bell sounds, you may begin,” Chef instructed. “Health and circumstances permitting, I hope to see you all again in twenty-five years!”

With that, he lowered his hand—

—and the familiar bell rang, three times.

Despite Chef’s admonition, a feeding frenzy began. Men in tuxedos and women in evening gowns rushed forward, woging en masse, pushing and shoving indiscriminately to get the first hunks of Hank’s living flesh.

A gunshot rang out.

Hank saw the carving knife slip from Chef’s hands before he saw the bullet hole in the center of the man’s forehead. Blood trickled down either side of Chef’s nose before he toppled over. The cannibals recoiled from the unexpected death among their own ranks. Several shouted in fear.

Whipping his head around, Hank located the shooter: a man dressed in black, an automatic handgun raised in each hand. A moment later, the man fired both guns, dropping one cannibal after another. Before the mass of Wesen around Hank could disentangle themselves and scatter, the man-in-black’s shots fell with deadly accuracy, reminding Hank of the old expression, shooting fish in a barrel.

Next Hank heard a crash from farther away and guessed that someone had kicked in the front door.

“Portland Police!” Nick’s familiar voice shouted into the panicked crowd. “You’re all under arrest.”

* * *

Ellen Crawford flinched at the sound of gunfire. For a split second, she thought Widmark had shot Kurt. But she recovered her wits quicker than Widmark or the Dickfellig who throttled her. They hadn’t expected gunfire to interrupt their festivities.

She swung her right arm backward, with all the force she could muster, and drove the tip of the steak knife into the right eye of the butcher. Releasing her, he stumbled backward through the open doorway, into the hall.

Another gunshot rang out, this one much too close.

Her gaze flicked toward Widmark and saw the savage expression on his face, before she looked to the left—and screamed. Kurt staggered backward, crashing into the wall before sliding down into an awkward sitting position. A look of agony twisted his face as he peered down at his hands, clutching his stomach, covered in blood.

* * *

As soon as Nick raised his foot to kick in the front door, he heard gunshots from inside. Monroe had told him about the Hundjager armed with two automatics who’d vowed to kill everyone in the house. And Hank was in the house, along with an unknown number of abductees. With the tight chain supper and a murderous Hundjager on the loose, they’d run out of time for subtlety.

Nick burst through the doorway first, gun raised in a Weaver stance. Renard followed and shifted to the right, Monroe to the left. Before Nick could register the layout of the rooms on the first floor, the members of the Silver Plate Society rushed toward him, most of them wielding knives of various sizes, eyes wide with panic.

“Freeze!” Nick shouted, his finger tightening on the trigger.

“Nick!” Hank’s voice called, from another room.

“Stop them,” Nick yelled over his shoulder. “I’ll get Hank.”

An old man in a rumpled midnight-blue tuxedo lashed out at Nick with a carving knife as long as his forearm. Nick dodged the blow and clubbed the man on the back of the head with the butt of his gun.

Captain Renard shoved a woman in a glittery silver gown carrying a thin silver knife back into a chair, knocking the chair over, and her with it.

Monroe woged and slammed a young man with a knife into a hutch, smashing the glass doors.

“Hank!” Nick called.

“In here,” came Hank’s reply.

Nick veered down the hall to a main dining area, and registered the bizarre tableau in an instant.

A woged, ambidextrous Hundjager shot an old woman cowering in a corner, hitting her in the back of the skull. When the gun’s slide locked open, signaling an empty magazine, he tossed the gun away.

Nearby, Hank lay spread-eagled on an X-shaped wooden table, chained at wrists and ankles, a locked iron band wrapped around his waist. His shirt had been ripped open and blood ran down the side of his bare chest.

Nick stood in the doorway, but the room had another door in back, through which some of the guests had slipped out, unnoticed by the Hundjager. But he spotted Nick, pivoted, and fired with his other automatic.

Nick had jumped back at his turning motion and felt bits of drywall spray his face as the bullet ricocheted past his head.

Abruptly, the Hundjager lowered the barrel of the gun to Hank’s face—

From upstairs, they heard a woman scream—

Startled, the Hundjager looked up—and retreated to the rear archway, shooting defensively at Nick to provide his own cover fire.

Crouching low, Nick crossed into the room and fired two shots at the Wesen. But he couldn’t risk pursuit, as that would leave Hank chained and helpless.

“Glad you made it before they served the entrée,” Hank said. “Now get me the hell off this cannibal table.”

Nick glanced around the room. “Keys?”

“The hell should I know?” Hank asked. “Improvise!”

Nick located the padlocks on the iron rings securing his partner to the table. He chose the safest angles and fired bullets into each lock, then wrenched the locks from the rings. The final lock held the iron waist band in place. Hank still had manacles and chains on wrists and ankles, but they were free of the table.

After helping Hank to a standing position, favoring his casted foot, Nick retuned his shield and sidearm.

“Prisoners in the basement,” Hank said. “They plan to kill them all.”

“Can you manage?” Nick asked. “I have your crutches in the car.”