Read Grimm: The Killing Time for Free Online

of it—on the floor around the man’s head.
    “Rich,” she said. “He’s my husband.”
    She remembered what she had done. Had it really been only a few minutes earlier? She knew it was happening again, and much faster this time. She was already losing her grasp on this new identity. Her thoughts were as hard to hold onto as mist, and her body was burning itself out at a rapid rate. She felt lightheaded, feverish, weak. She looked at Rich’s corpse and regretted her impulsiveness in killing him. She could only assume the identity of the living; she should’ve left him alive and saved him for when she needed him. But he’d threatened to take her somewhere. She couldn’t remember exactly where, but it was somewhere she hadn’t wanted to go, she knew that much. So she’d had no choice but to kill him—hadn’t she?
    If only she could think straight…
    One thing was certain. She needed a new identity, and she needed it fast. If she didn’t manage to change before this body burnt itself out completely, then that would be the end of the road for her. She’d lived a very long time, so long she couldn’t number the years. But she wasn’t ready to die yet. She’d do anything,
become
anything, in order to survive. It was the way of her kind.
    Whatever she was going to do, she had to do it quickly, before—
    Her thoughts, scattered and desperate, were interrupted by a knocking at the front door. She grinned. It seemed as if her dilemma was about to be resolved.
    “Just a minute!” she called out.
    She looked down at her clothing, and was relieved to see she’d managed to escape getting bloodstains on it. She caught her reflection in the toaster and grabbed a handful of paper towels from the counter, quickly cleaning the ice cream off her face. She tossed the used towels in the sink and then concentrated. Her physical appearance shifted as she once more assumed a guise of health and strength. She had to draw on this body’s dwindling energy reserves to effect the transformation, but she could hardly answer the door looking half-dead. The last thing she wanted to do was make her visitor suspicious.
    The knocking came again, louder this time.
    “Coming!” she shouted, and hurried to the door, grinning in excitement. She wondered who she was going to be next.
    But when she opened the door to find a man in a police uniform standing there, her hopes died away. A police officer meant trouble. Perhaps someone had seen her duplicate Dana Webber and had called in a report. She knew better than to take someone out in the open like that, but she’d been so desperate… Her instincts for self-preservation kicked in, and she decided to hide in this identity for the time being rather than risk taking the officer. She’d already made a couple of serious mistakes by being impulsive tonight. She didn’t want to risk making another.
    “Good evening, ma’am,” the officer said. “My name’s Sergeant Wu, and I’m with the Portland Police Department. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
    She forced a smile.
    “Not at all.”
    * * *
    “That’s supposed to be a body?” Nick said.
    Nick, Hank, and Sergeant Wu stood on the sidewalk, looking down at a colorless, viscous mass containing bits of solid material that Nick had to admit looked uncomfortably like pieces of bone.
    Sergeant Wu was an Asian American man, lean and athletically built, dressed in a police uniform. He had a permanently wry expression on his face that made him look equal parts cynical and amused.
    “According to the man who called in the report, yes.” Wu referred to his notebook. “A Mr. Ernest Delgado called 911 at 8:27 p.m. to report that he was taking out the trash when he saw a woman lying face-down on the sidewalk in this exact spot. According to Mr. Delgado, she was unconscious and wasn’t breathing. He went inside to call an ambulance, but by the time he’d hung up, she was gone.”
    “Anyone else see anything?” Hank asked.
    “I