CHAPTER 22
MIDNIGHT
GRIMM
The metallic taste exploded in my mouth when the blood of the man under me splattered on my face. I had no idea how long I had been hitting him, and even though he was long dead, I couldn’t stop.
His skull had cracked from the many knocks against the cement pavement, and his face became unrecognizable beneath my knuckles. I screamed as loud as my lungs would allow as I delivered a final blow to his already shattered face.
In the last few days, I made a habit of looking for trouble in the most dangerous areas of the city, and if I found someone, mostly drug dealers, rapists, and cartel affiliated assholes, I killed them.
This guy though, I had no idea who he was. He bumped into me while I wandered aimlessly through the alleys of Washington Park neighborhood, in the heavy rain, looking for absolutely nothing because I had no leads to follow, and the asshole had the guts to tell me to watch where I was going.
~ The fucking audacity.
I wiped the blood on my T-shirt as the rain pelted down on me.
The sky above thundered with the same agony I felt inside my chest, and physical pain no longer satisfied the monster inside me, the one who now seemed to tear at my flesh from the inside out, using her memory like a well-sharpened butcher knife, tirelessly striking my ribcage and making me spill my anger onto others.
~ As it should be. Why should we be the only ones who suffer?
I spat out the blood in my mouth and pulled out my phone, hitting the side of my head with my palm as I called Klaus, already prepared for him to reprimand me, and the disapproving attitude he kept displaying towards me lately.
“Address?” he asked as soon as he picked up, not bothering to ask if it happened again.
“59th Street, Washington Park,” I said as I stood up and lit a cigarette, then sent him my live location.
He hung up on me, and the photo of her I had on my lock screen lit up, staring back at me almost as if scolding me because I wasn’t with her, because I allowed those motherfuckers to steal her from under my nose like a damn idiot.
Sharp needles stung my eyes as I tried to wipe the blood off the screen, the red staining her beauty, but it wouldn’t go away.
“Where are you, baby?” I asked the image as if it was going to answer, and the tears slid out of my eyes, warm and bitter over my cheeks and mixing with the rain.
Fucking tears. Fucking life. Fucking everything.
I punched the brick as I sobbed like a pussy, then glued my back to it and slid down until I hit the concrete floor, bumping my head against the hard wall next.
“Where?” I ran a hand through my hair, grabbing a fist full of it, pulling at it.
It had been five days.
Five days since the woman who silenced the monster had disappeared.
It was as if she fucking vanished into thin air, leaving behind a vortex of memories, her scent everywhere, and a pink, fluffy slipper that I carried in my pocket at all times. I had found her golden cross necklace in a drawer in our closet, and now I had it wrapped around my wrist, trying to find some sort of faith that one day I would be able to put it back around her neck.
The men who kidnapped her were professionals, because every security camera in and around the building had been hacked and put on a loop, and Hannibal was actively trying to fix the hack and see if he could reverse the process, but aside from that, we had nothing.
We even checked the borders to see if she left the country, but we didn’t find anything that looked out of place, and if they illegally smuggled her out of the United States, she could be at the other end of the globe right now.
Alone.
Scared.
Klaus’ van backed into the alley, and his trusted minions came out the back doors, passing me without giving me so much as a look, getting straight to work.
No snarky comments, no sick jokes. They’d already learned their lesson on the first day, when one of them mumbled something about women, and suddenly died via bullet to the back of the head.
~ He stepped on my tail. What was I to do? Fucking thank him?
To my surprise, Klaus stepped out of the van with our father behind him.
“What the fuck is this?” I muttered as I stood up, stepping on the cigarette, then lighting another one.
“An intervention,” Klaus rolled his eyes.
“I’m fine,” I took another look at her photo before shoving the phone back into my wet jeans.
“You haven’t slept in three days,” Klaus countered.
“I’m fine,” I repeated with a growl.
My father stepped towards me.
He looked ready to attend a funeral in his perfectly ironed black suit, his hair all combed and styled as if he was stuck in the sixties, and that cold, calculated businessman stare.
“You’ve killed fifty-seven people in less than seventy-two hours.”
“I had a slow run,” I shrugged, grinning like an idiot as I raised the cigarette to my mouth.
I didn’t have the chance to take a drag, because he backhanded me across the face, his rings making my teeth clatter, and the cigarette flew out of my mouth into a gush of water.
~ Punch him back!
The blood rushed to my head, and I was about to hit him when Klaus stepped in front of him.
“You need to take a fucking cold shower and chill the fuck out before you ruin yourself for good, Grimm,” he said as he grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the van. “This isn’t how you find her.”
“You know, for a pussy who’s afraid to pull the fucking trigger, you have some strength in you,” I mocked him. “What’s that thing you do? Calisthenics, was it?”
He slammed me against the side of the van faster than I could blink and pressed his forearm to my throat. His hair fell over his face as if he was the black-haired version of Kurt Cobain. He was tall as the devil and too agile for my inebriated state, and I was almost shocked by his reaction, but then again, that redhead he had a crush on must’ve done a number on him and made him grow a pair.
“I’m not afraid to pull the trigger, brother, I’m afraid of what the gun might be capable of in my hands,” he pressed harder on my windpipe for a second before stepping back. “Are you fucking drunk?” he wrinkled his nose in disgust.
“Guilty as charged,” I raised my arms defensively and lit another cigarette, as the last one was taken away from me.
~ Rude.
“Klaus talked me out of sedating you and putting you to sleep for a while,” our father intervened. “I’m still not convinced I shouldn’t just do that, so get in the fucking van.”
“Oh, look at you two, finally talking to each other again,” I said as I made a sad puppy face. “What a fucking happy family,” I scoffed, then spit some more blood on the concrete and got in the van.
I knew I shouldn’t piss him off when he was already angry, because he wasn’t beyond kicking me when I was already down and beating me until I couldn’t stand up anymore.
And death wasn’t an option, because I knew that I deserved to suffer tenfold for allowing them to steal her away from me. I deserved to writhe in agonizing pain for leaving her alone on that cursed day.
I didn’t deserve the quiet of death.
And I also refused to die without seeing her smile once more.
They took me to the warehouse where they treated me like a prisoner in jail. They forced me to take off my clothes and basically waterboarded me. Granted, I didn’t have a cloth over my face, and it wasn’t supposed to be a torture session, but they shoved me into the shower, not without making sure the hot water was turned off first.
They said steam wouldn’t be good for my head.
~ Alcohol isn’t good for your head either.
~ I drank to make you shut up.
~ How’s that going for you?
I tossed and turned in bed half the night, fighting the urge to go back outside and find myself another asshole to pummel to death, since the last guy barely landed a good punch before he lay dead on the concrete.
I slept the other half of the night, almost as if my body caved under the pressure.
When I woke up and looked at the clock on the wall, it was already noon.
~ What the fuck? Is this a fucking joke?
I actually slept for a full, uninterrupted, five hours.
It was still raining, but slower, and somehow, I felt calmer than I had in the last few days. My skin wasn’t itchy anymore, and I could tie two coherent thoughts together without using the word “kill” as a comma.
I put on the clothes hanging for me next to the bed. I slept in the same room she had slept in the first night she came to the warehouse, when she had given Klaus her blood. I made the decision to sleep there in the hopes I would find her scent still lingering around, but that wasn’t the case.
When I walked into the garage area of the compound, which was also the largest space available, there was a long table in the center, the roll-up door was wide open and cool air wafted into the room.
Klaus was sitting next to a young guy I’d never seen before, who couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, and when they noticed me, the boy, who was wearing ripped jeans and a Skillet T-shirt, grinned at me as if he knew me.
Who the fuck?
“Welcome back to the land of the living, sleeping beauty,” Klaus sneered.
His arrogant smirk was back on his face as he seemed unaffected by the things I said to him last night.
“What is all this?”
“This is the team that will help you find your Rapunzel,” he pointed at the boy and himself. “Well, part of it, we’re still waiting for the rest.”
“No shit,” I rolled my eyes. “How is a goth kid supposed to help me? He’s going to teach me how to play the violin with a blade?” I mimicked the act of cutting my wrists.
I was surprised when the guy stood up and I noticed that he was almost as tall as my brother, and Klaus was fucking 6’8”. The kid had some muscle mass, but it was clear that he was still at the beginning of his training, and he looked like a college kid who had a deep-rooted, rather loud passion for nineties grunge.
“Hannibal,” he held his hand out to me.
Fuck. Me.
“Motherfucker,” my eyes widened as I shook his hand. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Well,” Klaus began as he patted Hannibal on the shoulder, then hung his arm around the kid’s neck. “I convinced our little friend here to come out of his basement, because calling him every two seconds isn’t helping anyone.”
I was half shocked, half stunned.
I thought Hannibal was a lanky computer geek who ate junk food all day and drank nothing but energy drinks. I thought he had acne and dark circles under his eyes, but he looked more rested and healthier than most people.
“Who are the others?” I asked, throwing myself onto a chair, frowning at the meticulous monitor setup on the table.
Klaus pushed a coffee mug towards me, and I stared at it like it was a piece of heaven. It was one of hers, and although I had no idea where he got it from, probably my apartment, I was glad he had it. It made me feel closer to her, just like the pink slipper I carried around, like sleeping in the bed she had slept in, and using every excuse I had to smell fucking lemons.
Just as he was about to answer, two cars entered the garage, parking next to Klaus’ van. My father’s shielded Hummer and a flashy Maserati MC20 with tinted windows. Although I couldn’t see the driver, I knew it was Damiano, because everything on that motherfucker was Italian.
I raised an eyebrow in Klaus’ direction, wondering what the hell he was thinking, bringing the man who stabbed him here, but he just rolled his eyes and shrugged.
“I don’t hold grudges, brother,” he said. “You could learn a thing or two from me,” he winked.
~ No shit, Sherlock.
The Italian fucker got out of his car looking like he was ready to walk down a fucking runway with his black leather shoes, pressed pants, and black button-down shirt that was only halfway closed.
~ I’m internally vomiting.
Even his hair was much too styled for the place he came to, and I rolled my eyes when he flashed us an arrogant grin.
~ Klaus does arrogance better.
~ I still think we should have killed him when we had the chance.
~ He’s everywhere.
~ He called me fucking docile.
~ Shut it!
I hit the side of my head, then frantically shook it, trying to shake off the annoying voice.
My father seemed to have given up his suit for the occasion, as he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, revealing his tattooed arms and scars, including the fresh one on his forearm that Arella fixed for him, like she fixed everything for everyone.
I lowered my head when he looked at me, because it was the first time in forever that I felt ashamed of my behavior. The thought that I’d almost thrown punches at my own father made my skin crawl.
The thing inside me seemed to have gone half-dormant since last night, as if it decided it was time to stop the rampage and actually do something to find her.
~ No, but you’re boring me with all this groveling.
It didn’t want to admit it, but I think the monster missed her just as much as I did.
~ I don’t miss her.
~ Sure, you don’t.
I almost laughed.
“Gentlemen,” he tilted his head slightly. “You have work to do,” he said as he stood before us all like a looming shadow.
“You’re not going to join us?” Damiano asked, and I finally lifted my head to look at my father’s face.
It showed the usual range of emotions: boredom, disinterest, arrogance, but also something I wasn’t accustomed to seeing, and it was completely directed at me.
I never thought I would see the day when the great Nikolai Abaddon would publicly show concern for his children, but there it was, written all over his face and sparkling in his eyes…. fucking worry.
“No,” he replied as he took out a cigar and casually lit it. “But in return, I’ll give you something I am not happy to share, though since you’re supposed to step into my shoes one day, I suppose it’s as much yours as it is mine,” he addressed me directly, and I was more confused than ever. “Midnight,” he explained.
Fuck.
I thought Midnight was a story he used to scare his enemies.
Supposedly, Midnight was his personal assassin, specialized in finding people who didn’t want to be found. He was the only person working for my father who no one else ever met, and while I was the assassin he sent when he wanted to deliver a message, stake a claim, or teach a lesson, Midnight was the epitome of death. He was sent to find and kill. No message, no claims, no lesson. Only killing.
He never missed his target, and he never left a trace.
Not even I was so spotless, no matter how hard I tried not to make mistakes, I still forgot things from time to time.
Midnight didn’t.
In and out, like a fucking ghost.
“What’s Midnight?” Damiano asked, and Klaus burst into a morbid laugh.
“Who,” my father corrected.
“Wait, Midnight actually exists?” I asked, dumbfounded, and my father raised an eyebrow.
“Yes,” he looked at his watch. “Should be arriving any minute now.”
“
Spasibo
[18]
,” I thanked him, because for once he actually deserved it.
“
Idi k svoyey devushke
[19]
,” he smiled a little, but it was gone as quickly as it had come.
I nodded just before another car pulled up next to Damiano’s Maserati, a 1970s Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda with tinted windows. We couldn’t see the driver yet, but we could hear Evanescence’s Lithium loudly blaring from the speakers.
“Is this Midnight dude playing for the other team, or what the fuck is this music coming out of his car?” Damiano mocked, and my father grinned menacingly.
The music came to a stop and the driver’s door opened.
I was expecting a muscle bag with scars on his face to emerge, but a tiny woman came out from behind the door.
She walked slowly, her high-heeled boots clacking on the concrete as she seemed to scrutinize us one by one. Her hair was cut into a messy bob, and every inch of skin we could see was covered in dark tattoos, while the rest of her was obscured by a tight black T-shirt and tight black leather pants.
Midnight was a woman.
A very small, seemingly easily breakable woman.