Chapter 2 : Inheritance of Blood
Forest Park stretched across Portland's northwest edge like a scar of green in the urban gray. Fir trees pressed close to the hiking trails, their needles dripping with last night's rain. Crime scene tape marked a perimeter fifty yards off the main path.
I ducked under the yellow line and immediately regretted wearing Daniel's dress shoes.
Mud sucked at my soles. The trail had become a slurry of wet earth and decomposing leaves. Forensic techs in white suits moved through the underbrush like ghosts, placing numbered markers beside evidence I couldn't yet see.
"Cross! Over here!"
A uniformed officer waved from the edge of the clearing. Young. Nervous. The kind of fresh-faced rookie who still believed police work made a difference.
"Detective Franco wanted you to see this before the ME shows up."
I followed him deeper into the trees.
The smell hit first. Copper and something worse—meat left too long in the sun. The body lay in a natural depression, half-hidden by ferns. Female. Mid-thirties. What remained of her suggested she'd been attractive before something tore out her throat.
My borrowed stomach lurched. Daniel's memories supplied clinical detachment. The original owner had seen bodies before. I forced myself to channel that experience, studying the wounds with eyes that wanted to look anywhere else.
The claw marks didn't match any animal I knew. Too precise. Too deliberate. Five parallel gouges ran from collarbone to navel, deep enough to expose white bone beneath.
[ANALYSIS IN PROGRESS]
[WOUND PATTERN: 87% MATCH - BLUTBAD (WOLF WESEN)]
The word surfaced with a rush of instinctive knowledge. Blutbad. Wolf-type Wesen. Apex predators in the monster food chain. Dangerous, territorial, and absolutely capable of this kind of violence.
But something felt wrong.
"The spacing."
I crouched beside the body, ignoring the mud that immediately soaked through my pants. The claw marks were savage, but they lacked pattern. A predator attacked with purpose—kill zones, weak points, efficient strikes. This was chaos. Fury without focus.
"You see something?" The rookie hovered behind me, notepad ready.
"The killer was angry. Or desperate." I pointed at the secondary wounds on her arms. "She fought back. These are defensive cuts. Whatever attacked her, she didn't go down easy."
[SPECIES ANALYSIS: 87% MATCH - BLUTBAD]
[BEHAVIORAL ANOMALY DETECTED]
[PROBABLE CAUSE: WITHDRAWAL OR RELAPSE]
Withdrawal. The word clicked pieces together. Blutbaden could suppress their predatory urges—go "off the wagon," as some mythology put it. Reformed Blutbaden lived like vegetarians, channeling their instincts into safer outlets. But when they fell off that wagon, the violence came back worse than before.
A Blutbad in relapse wouldn't hunt cleanly. They'd kill like addicts chasing a high—messy, desperate, driven by need rather than skill.
"Or someone wants it to look that way."
The thought arrived fully formed. This kill was too sloppy for an experienced Blutbad. Too performative. Almost like someone wanted the police to find exactly this kind of evidence.
A frame job.
"Cross?"
I stood. Mud squelched beneath my shoes. "Who found her?"
"Jogger. About five this morning. Guy nearly had a heart attack."
"Any witnesses? Cameras in the area?"
The rookie shook his head. "This section of the park doesn't have coverage. Nearest traffic cam is a mile east."
Convenient. A kill zone with no surveillance. A victim torn apart in a way that screamed animal attack but felt staged. And somewhere in Portland, a Blutbad—probably reformed, probably innocent—was about to become a suspect.
[QUEST GENERATED]
[THE WRONG WOLF]
[OBJECTIVE: Identify the true killer before an innocent Wesen is blamed]
[BONUS: Recruit the falsely accused to your Pack]
[REWARD: +200 XP | +100 BP | POTENTIAL PACK MEMBER]
I dismissed the notification with a thought. The System's objectives aligned with my own instincts, which was either reassuring or deeply suspicious.
"One mystery at a time."
"I need copies of the crime scene photos. And any similar cases in the last six months—animal attacks, unexplained maulings, anything with this wound pattern."
The rookie scribbled notes. "Detective Franco might have something. She's been tracking weird cases."
Weird. In a city full of hidden monsters, "weird" probably covered a lot of ground.
I took one last look at the body. The woman's eyes were open, glazed with the empty stare of the dead. Whatever she'd seen in her final moments, it had been terrible enough to freeze her face in permanent horror.
"I'll find who did this."
The promise felt heavier than it should have. I didn't know this woman. Didn't owe her anything. But Daniel Cross had been a man who solved puzzles, and whatever I was becoming, that instinct remained.
Someone had killed her and pointed the evidence at an innocent Wesen.
I intended to find out why.
Portland Police Department — Two Hours Later
The bullpen hummed with controlled chaos. Phones rang. Officers shouted across desks. Someone's coffee maker had given up the ghost, filling the air with the acrid smell of burned grounds.
I navigated Daniel's workspace on autopilot. His desk sat in a corner near the forensics wing, far enough from the detective pool to maintain professional distance, close enough to grab whenever a case needed his expertise.
Case files from the past year spread across the surface. I'd requested everything related to animal attacks, unusual deaths, and unexplained violence. The stack reached nearly a foot high.
"Welcome to Portland."
A shadow fell across my desk.
"Mr. Cross. I don't believe we've been formally introduced."
The voice was cultured, precise, and carried an accent I couldn't quite place. I looked up into the face of Captain Sean Renard.
Tall. Dark-haired. Features that belonged on a European aristocrat rather than a police captain. Daniel's memories supplied professional respect and subtle wariness—Renard was not a man who asked casual questions.
What Daniel's memories didn't supply was the shimmer.
It was faint. A ripple beneath the surface of Renard's human features, like light refracting through water. The System's analysis kicked in automatically.
[WESEN DETECTED]
[SPECIES: ZAUBERBIEST (PARTIAL) / HUMAN (ROYAL BLOODLINE)]
[THREAT LEVEL: A-RANK]
[CAUTION: SUBJECT DISPLAYS HEIGHTENED POLITICAL AWARENESS]
A Zauberbiest. Witch-like Wesen, powerful and connected. And "partial" suggested something interesting—mixed blood, maybe. The Royal designation raised even more questions.
I kept my expression neutral. Daniel Cross wouldn't know any of this. Daniel Cross would see only his captain.
"Captain Renard. Good morning."
"I heard you were brought in on the Forest Park case." Renard's eyes were calculating, measuring. "Unusual victim. Unusual wounds."
"Consistent with a large predator. Beyond that, I'm still analyzing the evidence."
"Keep me informed." A pause. The shimmer intensified briefly—a woge fighting to surface before being suppressed. "This case has... political implications."
"Does it now."
I nodded professionally. "Of course, Captain."
Renard held my gaze a moment longer than necessary. Something flickered in his expression—recognition, maybe. Suspicion. Then he turned and walked away, expensive shoes clicking against the linoleum.
[RELATIONSHIP STATUS: CAPTAIN RENARD - NEUTRAL (WATCHFUL)]
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. That was close. Too close. Renard was dangerous—not just as a Zauberbiest, but as a man who noticed things. If he suspected I wasn't quite the Daniel Cross he remembered...
"Move faster. Learn faster. Before he figures it out."
The case files waited. I buried myself in paperwork, searching for patterns.
Three hours later, I found Monroe.
Detective Franco's Cold Case Files
The name appeared in a witness statement from two years ago. A break-in at a clock repair shop. Owner reported seeing the intruder's face change—"like a dog" was the exact quote. Police dismissed it as stress-induced hallucination.
Monroe. First name Eddie, though everyone called him Monroe. Address in Portland's residential northeast. No criminal record. No suspicious activity. Just a clockmaker who'd seen something he shouldn't have.
Or been seen.
[SPECIES PROBABILITY: BLUTBAD (78%)]
[BEHAVIORAL PROFILE: REFORMED / NON-VIOLENT]
[RECOMMENDATION: APPROACH WITH CAUTION]
A reformed Blutbad. Exactly the kind of Wesen who might be blamed for a brutal murder they didn't commit. Exactly the kind of Wesen who might have information about who actually did it.
And exactly the kind of Wesen who might kill me on sight if I approached wrong.
Grimms and Blutbaden had history. Centuries of hunting and being hunted. Walking up to Monroe's door and announcing myself was either brilliant or suicidal.
"Maybe both."
I gathered the case files—crime scene photos, witness statements, the evidence of a frame job. Proof that someone wanted a Blutbad to take the fall. An offering of good faith from a Grimm who wasn't looking to hunt.
The address was twenty minutes away.
I grabbed my coat.
Across the bullpen, Captain Renard watched Cross leave. The forensic consultant moved differently today—shoulders straighter, gaze sharper. Something about him had changed.
"Interesting."
Renard returned to his office and closed the door. His phone buzzed with a message from Vienna: Have you located the Grimm artifacts?
His response was brief: Working on it.
The game was shifting. New players were entering the board. And Cross—whatever Cross had become—might prove useful.
Or might prove a threat.
Either way, Renard intended to find out.
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