Grimm Wolf - Julie Steimle (fantasy novels to read .txt) 📗

in the room were dim, with the fixtures along the walls like torch holders. One chandelier hung in the center, hardly giving off any light at all. But when they entered the room and went toward the center, someone turned on a spotlight and followed them with it, blinding Rick entirely.

Boos came from the crowd upon his arrival. Rick could smell the pungent musk of all the wolves in there with them. And a microphone came on, feedback painfully hurting his ears for a second. The speaker announced something in French. And despite a little more study of French since his last encounter with the Loup Garou, Rick still didn’t understand them. “Le procès de Howard Richard Deacon le troisième va maintenant commencer.”

The microphone passed hands and French accusers spoke. They said a lot of things in French, which of course he did not understand except for the gist of their meaning. Rough accusations. Coarse, crude shouts. Things of that nature. Once or twice they said something in English, but it was just as crude and worthless to listen to. But then another spotlight came on.

Blinking in the bright heat of the theater light was a man Rick did not know. This man’s face contorted with loathing as he glared in Rick’s direction. His amber eyes were savagely fixed on Rick, his mouth in a thin hateful line. And when he was handed a microphone, he spoke in English… with a German accent.

“You. You foul heretic. You murdering filth.” He rushed up to Rick, with his spotlight following him, and slapped Rick across the face. “You came to my home and you brought hunters with you!”

Rick blinked, his face stinging. Though he was groggy and unable to hold up his head long, this blow gave Rick enough strength to shake the effects of the chemical off and glare back. He knew who this man was now. “Schwitzer.”

“I accuse!” The German lifted his voice to the room, pointing at Rick who was breathing hard, struggling to regain more consciousness. “I am Kaspar Schwitzer! Ally of the Loup Garou! And this foul heretic came to my home, brought hunters there, and led the slaughter of my pack!”

“Lies,” Rick growled out.

The German wolf whipped around, swinging up a hand to strike him again.

“No!” Out of the darkness Remy, one of Rick’s half-brothers from the Loup Garou pack, rushed in, putting himself between them. He held up a paper in his hand and waved it for the crowd to see, hastily rattling off something in French to everyone listening. Then he slapped it into the chest of Herr Schwitzer. He said in English, “It’s on the wire, Schwitzer. They were just four friends backpacking in Germany. Your pack lured them to your castle. They did it! Your son killed one of his friends and tried to instigate a man-hunt.”

Kaspar Schwitzer spat on the ground as if it didn’t matter who did what. He growled out, “That’s just his story.”

“No,” Remy said, glancing to Rick, shoving the paper against old Schwitzer’s chest. “This report comes from England—from the two survivors.”

An echo of cries shouted down. Rick knew the crowd did not believe Remy—though the report gave Rick immense relief. Both Emory and Rhett were alive and talking. But the elders silenced the crowd, taking, apparently, another copy of the document from someone else in the shadows. Rick wondered who was helping Remy. Who would dare?

“Man-hunts are not allowed by pack law!” Remy lifted his voice for all to hear. And he said it again in French. He quickly looked to Rick to let him know he was on his side, his strong amber eyes wet with stress.

“Monsieur Schwitzer,” one of the pack elders called into the arena, “If this is so, you realize we cannot condone that hunt.”

Were the elders agreeing with Remy? It sounded too good to be true. The Loup Garou hated him. Not Schwitzer, but Rick. Rick had secreted away three of his sisters from the pack’s control and had taken them to safety. He only had three other siblings still in France under the Loup Garou’s control.

“The hunt was on our land,” Schwitzer replied with chin high and shoulders back. “We go by our pack rules. They entered willingly. They were food.”

“No!” Rick sat up, or tried to. “You stinking cannibal! They were tricked! They did not want to be food!”

But Schwitzer remained smugly confident.

The pack elders convened together, discussing it.

Remy stepped forward. “Elders, I beg on behalf of my brother—”

Schwitzer turned with a jerk toward Remy, shocked. His eyes then raked up and down the French werewolf indignantly.

“—he acted for the protection of those under his watch. Read the news report. There is no account of werewolves in it. Only a story about a psychopath who sic’d pet wolves on them. Our secret has not been broken.” Remy then rattled off those words in French for the benefit of those in the crowd who could not understand English. He then added, “We know the natural consequences for man-eating. The goddess holds strict disapproval. They brought this travesty upon themselves. And we know whom my brother associates with—whom the Deacon family knows. We have warned the Germans of this time and again. They were aware of the risk.”

Schwitzer spat on the ground again, then growled out, “No wolf should associate with hunters. He betrayed our kind.”

A rumble of agreeing growls filled the hall.

Remy was losing the argument. Rick could feel it. It didn’t matter if Remy was right. Though the French were not man-eaters, they believed that pack territory and pack law was more important than human law. And they despised all hunters. Any wolf who associated with hunters were traitors. It was that simple. And traitors had to be punished.

“I also have it on good authority that he consorts with demons,” Schwitzer added as if pouring syrup on top of a sundae he wanted them all to devour.

Rick closed his eyes. Of course he consorted with demons. Tom was technically a demon. And Eve McAllister was most definitely a demon. They were just good demons. Remy looked back to Rick to confirm if what Schwitzer said was true. Off in the shadows, Daniel Deschampes and Theon confirmed what Schwitzer had said, recounting whom they had ‘dispatched’ in the hospital—the ‘fantôme blanc’.

Opening his eyes, Rick said, “Can I speak in my defense?”

A rumble passed through the crowd. The elders conferred. Then he heard Monsieur Otso Mbulu speak, his resonant voice carrying in the room even without the microphone. “You may.”

Trying to sit up, wincing from his wounds, Rick attempted to rise out of the wheelchair also. Remy reached out to help him up, surprised Rick had the strength. He barely did, but he felt he had to make his case standing. Lifting his eyes in the direction of the pack elders in the dark, Rick said, “I tried my best to lead my friends, who were just ignorant college boys, away from his territory. We were not going to linger in his pack’s land until his son purposely sought out my friends and lured them up to his castle. I begged his son to leave my friends out of our family disagreement. And he refused, repeatedly. He laughed. And then, when he could have just let them go, his son chose to make a game out of hunting my friends. They were ignorant of anything about our kind. I never told them a thing. And he—” Rick choked up. “His son slit my friend’s throat…” Rick closed his eyes swallowing hard. “My college roommate. He killed… he tried to make me eat my own friend!”

The room was silent. No growls. Nothing.

“So did I call in hunters?” Rick shouted at them. “Yes! I damn well did!”

An uproar surged from the crowd. The elders growled.

“How dare you think I was going to allow the murder of my friends and not fight back with all the power I had in me!” Rick shouted. “And yes! My friend, Thomas Brown, who is CIA and part imp, shot his son! His son tried to kill me! And he killed my friend Jordan!”

The cries of hérétique exploded from the wolves around him. But Rick did not care. They were blind to real injustice, clannish, man-hating wolves.

“A wolf’s life is more important than a human life,” Monsieur Blanc said. Rick recognized his voice, though he could not see the white haired, blue-eyed elvish-looking man-wolf.

“Bull!” Rick wobbled on his feet, losing strength in his legs. “You were so against Claude for becoming a man-eater, and you said he deserved the punishment he got when a hunter executed him! You hypocrites!”

Remy held Rick up, coloring. Claude was their half-brother—one who was not living because he had done exactly that, hunted and ate humans. And the pack had let him get killed by a hunter. 

“That was in our jurisdiction,” Monsieur Blanc said. “Germany is not.”

“Then if Germany is not in your jurisdiction…” a gray haired he-wolf of model proportions marched from the sidelines into the spotlight, his amber eyes flickering to Rick and Remy before looking to the elders of the pack, “…Then the claims of this German wolf is not our business, and we should let our brother free.” 

“Henri,” Remy murmured, clapping a hand on his shoulder.

Rick stared at Henri also, his other living half-brother. Last time he had seen Henri, the guy seemed taller. But of course Rick had grown since then. Rick was now an inch higher than Henri was, though Rick’s knees were weakening, and he was finding it difficult to stand.

“You dare stand with that heretic wolf?” the elder bit out.

Henri lifted his Adonis-shaped chin and nodded. “I do. He is my kid brother. Our father’s heir. And I will not sit by this time and see another brother get killed.”

“Neither will I!” In rushed a she-wolf. She had features similar to Genevieve, their half-sister, the same silver gray hair, though underneath was a charcoal shade of hair—two toned. She was slim, pretty and freckled, and her gray eyes were almost feral with a hint of his father’s amber. She definitely looked related Henri. This had to be Louisa, the one sister he had never met.

“You would defy the pack—?” Monsieur Blanc lifted his voice in fury. He had to be truly angry for being so defied by Deacon blood in his pack.

“Family should stick together!” Louisa shouted. She then looked to Rick, her eyes begging apology.

“Do you all wish to pay for his crimes?” Schwitzer asked coldly. And the crowd around them seemed to echo that sentiment. Rick knew the Loup Garou was displeased with the Deacon family. They were angry because of what seventeen-year-old Rick had done the last time he was in Paris. Back then he had defied the pack. He had upset their order and had refused to be intimidated by them. He had refused to mate with their she-wolves in particular. But had also rescued three of his sisters from their control.

 “Was what he did a crime?” Louisa said to the elder with a thin, sharp grin.

“The strength of the wolf is the pack. The strength of the pack is the wolf,” Schwitzer said to her through his teeth.

Rick moaned, slipping back into the wheelchair. He was unable to stand anymore. “Quoting a human such as Rudyard Kipling does not make your argument correct.” Rick murmured with a groan. “It’s ironic, actually.”

The wolves murmured in the crowd, almost admiringly. They had to admit, Rick knew wolf literature.

“Kipling was a wolf!” Schwitzer shouted down, rounding on him.

“Wasn’t.” Rick gazed up through his brothers who surrounded him and held Schweitzer back. “He was a British author who wrote Just-so stories. Just because you like his sentiment does not make him a wolf.”

Schwitzer looked likely to maul him right there, however, he stepped back from Remy, Henri, and Louisa, recognizing and respecting their protectiveness over their ‘wayward’ brother. Instead, he turned to face the pack elders. “It is very simple. That wolf is a