Nick slid down the low earthen slope, brushing damp soil and crushed forest leaves from his trousers.
Just as he regained his footing on the pavement, a tall white man stepped out from the front porch of a detached house diagonally across the street, heading toward the roadside mailbox.
The man was unusually tall—easily six-foot-three—with a broad, solid frame.
He had a prominent nose, a high forehead, and a neatly trimmed beard that covered much of his jawline, making his exact age difficult to gauge.
Despite the late summer heat pushing past eighty-five degrees, he wore a heavy blue-and-white flannel shirt over a plain t-shirt, dark denim, and a pair of brownish-tan, eight-eyelet Dr.
Martens boots.
Nick’s eyes locked onto the boots, his gaze narrowing.
A boy and a girl riding small tricycles glided down the sidewalk past the driveway.
As the children pedaled by, the man’s shoulders twitched unnaturally, his head dropping low as a grotesque transformation rippled across his frame.
His short beard bristled like iron needles, wild fur sprouting across his cheeks and jawline until it merged with his hair into a coarse, greyish-brown mane.
The bones of his face cracked and shifted, his snout protruding violently forward.
Thick, razor-sharp canines pressed out past his lips, while his ears elongated upward into pointed, lupine shapes.
Compared to the balding, low-level dealer Nick had shot weeks prior—who had resembled a rat-like creature—this tall man’s transformation matched the classic, terrifying archetype of a European wolf-man.
Nick’s immediate instinct was to draw his Glock and yell a command, but before he could raise his sidearm, the creature lifted its snout.
Its nostrils flared, catching a scent on the breeze, before its head snapped directly toward Nick’s position across the street.
Their eyes locked across the narrow asphalt.
Even with his tactical background, a cold prickle of adrenaline shot down Nick’s spine.
The creature’s eyes had turned a fierce, luminous blood-red—cold, predatory, and burning with an unbridled hunger for violence.
It was the look of an apex carnivore evaluating prey.
The hesitation lasted less than half a second.
Nick surged forward, sprinting across the road.
Human or monster, a bullet stops both.
Seeing Nick charge across the pavement, the creature’s eyes widened in sudden, stark terror.
The coarse fur receded into skin, the elongated jaw collapsed back into a human face, and the crimson glow vanished, replaced by wide brown eyes.
“Police!
Freeze!
Hands where I can see them!”
Panicked, the man turned on his heel and bolted for his front porch.
Crash!
Nick slammed his shoulder into the heavy oak front door just as it swung shut, using his momentum to drive the taller man onto the hardwood floor of the entryway, pinning him face-down.
“Don’t move!
Where is she?” Nick barked, pressing the muzzle of his Glock firmly against the back of the man’s neck.
The man didn’t fight back.
He lay pinned on the floor, blinking up at Nick with a bizarre mixture of confusion, disbelief, and…
An hour later, the house had been thoroughly searched by PPB field officers.
Standing on the front lawn as officers packed up their gear, Nick watched the suspect sit quietly in the back of a patrol car.
A headache was forming behind his eyes.
He had acted on an absolute conviction, but procedurally, he had pushed the line.
“The guy’s clean, Nick,” Hank said, stepping up beside him and handing over a printed record.
“Zero prior arrests.
No warrants, no domestic calls, no flagged associates.
He’s a solitary clockmaker who does freelance repair work.”
Hank sighed, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Running back into your own house when an armed man charges across the street isn’t a crime.
We’re lucky he hasn’t called a lawyer to file an unlawful entry complaint.”
The file identified the man as Eddie Monroe, thirty-six years old, a horologist operating a home repair workshop.
He held a respected reputation among local antique collectors, volunteered at a community center, and lived a quiet, solitary life.
Nick couldn’t explain his actions to Hank.
What was he supposed to say?
I saw him sprout fur and fangs while checking his mail?
He wasn’t ready to end up on administrative leave facing a mandatory psychiatric evaluation.
Since the shooting in the alley weeks ago—where local news cameras had caught the confrontation on tape—Nick had replayed the footage dozens of times.
To the rest of the world, the suspect was just a jittery addict pulling a weapon.
No one else saw the face warp into a snout; no one else saw the eyes glow.
Nick had wondered if he was experiencing some bizarre, hyper-specific visual hallucination triggered by stress.
But the way these creatures reacted when they locked eyes with him suggested otherwise.
They saw him too.
They recognized something in his face that terrified them.
Before leaving the house, Nick had checked the soles of Monroe’s Dr.
Martens boots.
The lug pattern didn’t match the plaster cast from the crime scene in Forest Park.
The tread was entirely different.
Yet Nick couldn’t accept that the dismembered college student, the missing girl in the red coat, and a man who could transform into a wolf in broad daylight were unrelated events.
By 9:00 PM, Nick was crouched in the high grass near the tree line at the edge of Berkeley Park, looking directly across at Monroe’s property.
He had been lying in the damp brush for over an hour.
The insect repellent he had applied earlier had long since evaporated, leaving his arms and neck dotted with mosquito bites.
Inside the house across the street, a desk lamp flickered off.
A moment later, Monroe stepped out onto his back porch, lifting his head to sniff the night air.
What followed was one of the most bizarre displays Nick had ever witnessed. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
Monroe walked over to his wooden fence, raised his left leg against a post, paused as if suddenly remembering his own humanity, and awkwardly set his foot back down before unzipping his trousers.
After a moment, he moved to the opposite corner of the yard to repeat the process, then stopped and shuffled toward his back door.
“Unbelievable…
he’s marking his territory,” Nick muttered under his breath.
Stepping low through the shadows, Nick crossed the asphalt and slipped into the bushes edging Monroe’s backyard.
As Monroe reached for the doorknob, a rustle in the hedge made him freeze.
He spun around, his expression darkening instantly.
Under the moonlight, his brown pupils flared into a violent blood-red.
The fur surged across his cheeks, his lips curling back to reveal sharp, glistening fangs as he let out a low, guttural growl.
“Grrr…
You shouldn’t have come back, cop!”
Monroe crouched, preparing to spring, only to freeze as the dark, matte-black barrel of Nick’s Glock stepped out of the shadow, aimed precisely between his eyes.
“I’m hoping this keeps us on speaking terms,” Nick said calmly, stepping into the moonlight.
“The last guy who growled at me didn’t make it to emergency care.”
The transformation collapsed instantly.
The fur receded, the crimson glow faded, and Monroe reverted to a tall, somewhat panicked man in a flannel shirt.
He raised both hands slowly, offering a tense, placating smile.
“Okay, okay!
Easy with the trigger!
I was just establishing a boundary!” Monroe held his hands higher, taking a cautious half-step back.
“Look…
you don’t need the gun.
You’re a Grimm.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed, his grip on the frame tightening slightly.
It was the second time he had heard that word.
The addict in the alley had screamed it right before Nick pulled the trigger.
At the time, he had dismissed it as street slang or drug-induced babble.
Hearing it now, from a clockmaker who could turn into a wolf, confirmed that it wasn’t slang.
“Put the gun down, man,” Monroe urged softly, gesturing toward his back door.
“Come inside.
I’ll pour a drink, and we can actually talk about this.
Sound good?”
The predatory hostility was gone, replaced by the anxious politeness of a man trying to de-escalate a volatile situation.
Nick kept the weapon raised for two long seconds, studying Monroe’s face, before slowly lowering the barrel toward the ground.