Chapter 15: The Wolf's Den — Part Two
The first punch should have ended it.
Cole put everything he had into the strike—Skalenzahne-enhanced strength, Decker's training, twenty-three days of rage compressed into a single moment. His fist connected with Volk's jaw hard enough to shatter a normal man's skull.
Volk's head snapped back. He stumbled two steps.
And then he laughed.
"That's it?" The Blutbad wiped blood from his lip with the back of his hand. "I was hoping for a challenge."
He woged.
The transformation was faster than the Skalenzahne's had been—less than a second from human to monster. Red eyes blazed in a face that had elongated into something between wolf and man. Fangs extended past lips pulled back in a snarl. Clawed hands flexed, each finger tipped with something that could gut a deer with casual ease.
[WARNING: TARGET SIGNIFICANTLY EXCEEDS PREVIOUS COMBAT PARAMETERS. BLUTBAD STRENGTH ESTIMATED AT 2.5X HUMAN BASELINE. RECOMMEND CAUTION.]
Now you tell me.
Volk lunged.
Cole dove left, feeling claws whistle past his ear. He grabbed a chair and swung it with everything he had. The impact would have dropped a normal opponent. Volk caught it one-handed and hurled it aside like a toy.
"You're not Grimm," Volk said, circling. "You're not Wesen. What are you?"
Cole didn't answer. He was too busy calculating angles, distances, escape routes. The door behind him was still open—he could run, try to disappear in the chaos outside. But running meant failing. Running meant Volk survived to keep enslaving and killing.
Not an option.
He grabbed the bourbon bottle from the desk and smashed it against the edge, creating a jagged weapon. Volk watched with amusement.
"Desperate," the Blutbad observed. "I like desperate."
He charged.
Cole sidestepped—barely—and drove the broken bottle into Volk's side. Glass sank deep, drawing blood, but Volk barely flinched. A backhand caught Cole across the face, lifting him off his feet and slamming him into the wall hard enough to crack plaster.
His vision went white. Pain exploded through his skull.
Get up. Get up or die.
Cole rolled as clawed feet stomped where his head had been. He scrambled upright, ribs screaming protest, blood running from his nose and a cut above his eye.
Volk pulled the glass from his side with a grunt. "You're stronger than you look. Fast, too. But you're also alone, unarmed, and about to die."
He's right. I can't beat him straight-up.
The realization crystallized in Cole's mind. The Skalenzahne had been a solo predator, ambush-oriented, not designed for prolonged combat. A Blutbad was a different kind of monster—built for violence, bred for it over centuries.
I need an advantage. Fire worked before.
Cole's hand found his pocket. The burner phone was still there—the one connected to the accelerant in the storage room.
He pressed dial.
Somewhere in the building, something ignited.
The explosion wasn't huge—kerosene didn't detonate like gasoline—but it was loud, and the fire that followed was hungry. Smoke began pouring through the vents within seconds. Screams erupted from the main floor. The building's ancient fire suppression system groaned and failed to activate.
Volk's head snapped toward the door. "What did you—"
Cole tackled him.
They crashed through the desk, wood splintering around them. Cole got in two good punches before Volk recovered, grabbing him by the throat and squeezing. Cole felt cartilage compress, felt darkness creeping in at the edges of his vision.
Not like this.
He drove his thumbs into Volk's eyes.
The Blutbad howled and released him, claws raking his chest as Cole pulled free. Three lines of fire opened across his torso. Blood soaked his shirt instantly.
But Volk was blinded, at least temporarily. Cole scrambled toward the monitors, grabbed the heaviest thing he could find—a metal computer tower—and swung it into the side of Volk's head.
The Blutbad went down.
Cole hit him again. And again. And again, until his arms burned and the computer tower was a dented wreck and Volk stopped moving.
[TARGET INCAPACITATED. RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE TERMINATION FOR ABSORPTION.]
Working on it.
Cole looked around for a weapon. The broken bottle was somewhere in the debris. He found it under Volk's twitching body—pulled it free, positioned himself over the fallen Blutbad.
Volk's eyes opened. One was ruined, bleeding freely, but the other fixed on Cole with something like recognition.
"You're... like me," he rasped. "Predator. I can smell it."
"No," Cole said. "I'm worse."
He drove the broken bottle into Volk's throat.
Blood sprayed. Volk's body convulsed once, twice, then went still. The woge faded, leaving behind a middle-aged man with a beard and scars and dead eyes staring at nothing.
[TARGET ELIMINATED]
[INITIATING ABSORPTION PROTOCOL]
[REMAIN WITHIN PROXIMITY]
The sensation hit Cole like a freight train.
Energy poured from Volk's corpse—not golden-green like the Skalenzahne, but something darker, redder, carrying the weight of centuries of predation. It slammed into Cole's chest and spread through his body like wildfire, igniting every nerve, rewriting something fundamental in his cellular structure.
He screamed.
The Skalenzahne absorption had been painful. This was agony on a different scale entirely—a Blutbad's essence fighting to maintain its identity, to resist being consumed, to turn the predator into prey.
[ABSORPTION IN PROGRESS: 23%... 47%... 68%...]
Cole collapsed beside the corpse, convulsing, foam at his lips. Volk's memories crashed through his mind like a tidal wave. Decades of hunting. Hundreds of kills. The joy of the chase, the ecstasy of the kill, the cold satisfaction of dominance.
[ABSORPTION COMPLETE]
[BLUTBAD ESSENCE ACQUIRED]
[ABILITIES GAINED:] [— ENHANCED STRENGTH: MAJOR (2.5X BASELINE)] [— ENHANCED SPEED: MODERATE] [— ENHANCED SENSES: SMELL, HEARING] [— REGENERATION: MINOR] [— PREDATOR RAGE: PASSIVE (WARNING: CONTROL REQUIRED)]
[HUMANITY: 91%]
Cole lay on the floor of a burning building, covered in blood, fundamentally changed. Smoke poured through the door. Screams echoed from the main floor. He had maybe three minutes before the fire reached this room.
Move. Move or burn.
He forced himself upright. The wounds on his chest were already closing—not fast, but faster than they should. Blutbad regeneration. His muscles felt different. Stronger. More dangerous.
And somewhere deep in his mind, something howled with joy.
The slaves. There are still slaves in this building.
Cole staggered toward the reinforced door Volk had entered through. It was locked, but his new strength made short work of the mechanism. Beyond was a corridor, smoke-filled but passable, leading deeper into the warehouse's hidden sections.
He found them in the basement.
Twelve Wesen in cages, some still wearing shock collars, all terrified and screaming as smoke filled their prison. Cole tore the cage doors off their hinges one by one, barely feeling the effort.
"Out! Service entrance is through the east corridor!"
They ran. Some stopped to thank him, others just fled. The Fuchs from his first visit was among them—the one who'd won his fight and survived. Their eyes met briefly.
"Go," Cole said. "Don't look back."
The Fuchs ran.
Cole followed them out, the last to leave the burning basement, smoke filling his lungs with every breath. The service entrance was where his mental map said it would be—a metal door leading to an alley behind the warehouse.
He burst into the October night and kept running.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Cole made it four blocks before his legs gave out. He collapsed behind a dumpster in an alley that smelled like garbage and rain, his body shaking with the aftershocks of absorption and trauma and the simple animal relief of survival.
The warehouse was fully engulfed now. He could see the orange glow against the clouds, hear the roar of flames consuming everything Volk had built. Fire trucks were arriving. Police cars. The chaos would be tremendous.
Twelve Wesen freed. One monster dead. Building destroyed.
He should have felt triumph. Instead, he felt the Blutbad's hunger prowling through his consciousness, testing the walls he'd built around his humanity, looking for weakness.
[ADVISORY: BLUTBAD ESSENCE REQUIRES SIGNIFICANT INTEGRATION TIME. ESTIMATED 72-96 HOURS. EMOTIONAL VOLATILITY EXPECTED. RECOMMEND ISOLATION DURING INTEGRATION.]
Four days. I need to hide for four days.
Cole pushed himself to his feet. His car was still in the parking lot—probably surrounded by emergency vehicles by now. He'd have to walk home. Five miles through Portland's streets, covered in blood and smoke and the essence of a monster he'd killed.
One foot in front of the other. Just like the first night.
He started walking.
The rain began somewhere around mile two, washing blood from his face and hands, soaking through clothes already ruined by fire and violence. Cole lifted his face to the sky and let the water fall.
Somewhere behind him, Volk's empire burned.
Somewhere ahead, a new kind of monster was being born.
And somewhere in Portland, Nick Burkhardt was hunting something in the industrial district, completely unaware that the greatest predator in the city had just become something far more dangerous.
Cole walked through the rain, and the thing inside him howled its satisfaction at the night.
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