Blind Destiny: Grimm's Circle, Book 7 [retail mobi]

by Shiloh Walker

  “Fuck you,” he muttered against my throat. “For hours…”

  “Is that what you’re doing?” I groaned, thrashing against the bed. “It feels like you’re teasing me.”

  He surged against me, hard. Fast.

  I cried out.

  “Sina?”

  “Again, damn it.”

  He laughed softly. “I think maybe it would be more fun to tease you.”

  Slow, lazy strokes, alternating with deeper and rough ones…my eyes flared wide when he caught my wrists and pinned them over my head, holding me immobile. “Still think I’m so terribly gallant, Snow White?”

  “Yes. And if you stop, I’ll hurt you,” I told him. “Harder, damn it. Fuck me harder.”

  He growled against my neck. But instead of giving it to me harder, he slowed down—easy, teasing strokes.

  “Damn it, Luc!”

  I clenched around him and tried to work myself on his cock, and he stiffened, growled. Then his forearm came over my upper back, pinning me in place. “Be still,” he growled as he started to move. “Just…oh, fuck, Sina.”

  The naked need in his voice reached something within me, hitting me deep. I couldn’t be still. I thrashed. I used my internal muscles to milk him. I felt his cock jerk within me as he drove deep. And he snarled again, “Fuck it, be still before I—”

  “Do it,” I bit off. “Whatever it is…”

  He broke.

  And once again, that easy, gallant veneer fell away. Leaving me with a man I’d all but driven mad with hunger. As we pushed each other screaming into orgasm, I reveled in the fact that I could do this.

  I could do this…to him.

  “You like to push me,” he muttered as she sprawled across his chest.

  “Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet,” Sina said, laughing. “If we had the room, I’d beg you to chase me.”

  Luc closed his eyes. “Chase you.”

  “Hmmm.” She sat up and crawled into his lap, settled there, her wet heat snug on his cock. She caught his hands and brought them to her breasts. “I’m not a blushing, demure miss, Luc. Deal with it. I’d love for you to chase me. Take me down. I’m not into games or make-believe. Chase me, fight me… I’d give you the ride of your life.”

  And unbelievably, even though he’d already spent himself inside, he felt his cock stir against her.

  Reaching up, he hooked his hand over the back of her neck. “I’ll hold you to that,” he rasped her against her lips.

  “Good.”

  She was smiling. He could feel it.

  “We need to figure out what we’re going to do about this place.”

  I scowled as Luc’s low, husky voice cut through the very pleasant afterglow.

  “I have an idea.” I sat up and stared at him. “Let’s evacuate all the mortals. Burn this town to ground. Salt the earth.”

  Luc sighed. He had his eyes closed and I took advantage of the opportunity to study that insanely beautiful face. Seriously, it just wasn’t right that God had put that much beauty in one man. He opened his eyes and I looked away, blushing. How could he do that? I knew he couldn’t see me, but I still blushed.

  “Somehow I don’t think that’s the sort of thing Will had in mind.” A wide, wicked grin flashed across his face and he pushed up onto his elbows. “If it wasn’t for the all the innocent bystanders who’d have their homes destroyed, their lives uprooted and all of that, I’d be all for the idea, just to piss him off. Well, no. I’m not going to burn a town just to piss him off, but it’s a fun…”

  His face trailed off and he turned his face to the window. “There it is again.”

  “There what is?”

  He didn’t seem to hear me, though, as he sat up and climbed out of the narrow bed where we’d spent the past several hours. I think we might have dozed for thirty minutes, but I felt more relaxed, more at ease than I could remember feeling in, well, maybe forever. Leaning back on my elbows, I studied the sheer perfection of him as he moved to the window. He braced a hand there and just stood. Like he was waiting.

  “It never ceases to amaze me, how you do that,” I said quietly.

  He glanced toward, an absent look on his face. “Do what?”

  “You never stumble. You never bump into things.”

  “I memorize the lay of the room and I have Krell’s eyes. Besides, living things give off an aura I can see in my mind,” he said, shrugging. “I have an advantage blind mortals don’t. It’s not any fantastical trick. Now hush a moment, would you?”

  “An aura?”

  I frowned and sat up, but even as I opened my mouth to ask him more, he was shushing me again.

  Damn it, there were only a handful of people who’d dare do that.

  One of them was Will.

  I couldn’t think of another right off the top of my head.

  Every muscle in his back was rigid with tension and the eerie silence of his thoughts finally got through to me, though.

  Something was bothering him.

  Easing my shields down, I tried to sense what it was.

  Cold…

  I felt an odd chill in the air.

  “Do you feel it?” he asked.

  “There’s a bite to the air,” I said. It wasn’t a cold that had to do with the weather, though.

  This was more.

  “I’ve felt it several times. When…”

  “Shhh.” I saw somebody.

  Moving down the narrow road and there was something terribly wrong about the way she was moving. “There’s somebody down there, Luc.”

  The pit of my stomach went icy as I saw her gaze. She was fixed on the Christou house.

  “Get dressed,” I said softly. “I see a woman and something isn’t right.”

  “Two.”

  I narrowed my eyes and peered into the darkness.

  That was when I saw the mortal I’d questioned at the police station.

  “Oh, now. Isn’t this just lovely.”

  It took us less than five minutes to dress, suit up and hit the street.

  It was still too long. Luc had Krell at his side, hand on the harness and the dog was yawning and making odd little grumbling noises in his throat, but as we crossed to the house, the dog went silent.

  His hackles were up, something that bothered me more than a little.

  Luc didn’t make a habit of picking nervous animals. Every one I’d ever seen had been as courageous as their master, willing to tackle vankyr and parasei with mean, little doggie grins, treating the demons like they were snacks.

  So what had him acting like that?

  “They’ve already gone in,” Luc said, his voice grim.

  “Yes.” I reached up and absently touched the chain around my neck. I was screwing up this assignment in so many ways. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out for this line of work anymore.

  But if I couldn’t do this, what could I do?

  The only other option was just give up my wings, live out the rest of my years as a mortal and then die. And I wasn’t entirely certain I was ready for that. I’d never be ready; it would require facing all the wrongs I’d done…

  Shoving all of that aside, I nudged Luc forward. “We need to get this done.”

  “I still feel that damned chill. What is it?”

  I shook my head. I could feel it too, but there wasn’t any time to worry about that now. Foreboding settled around me, dark and ugly, a weighted cloak that affected everything I saw, everything I felt. “We need to get in that damn house.”

  I hated that place.

  I hated that house.

  I’d thought that when I sealed it off two hundred years ago, it would be the end of it, but noooo…

  There was no way Fiona should have been able to move that fast, Natasha thought as she finally caught up with her.

  Of course, the only reason she did catch up with the other woman was because Fiona finally stopped moving.

  Right in the middle of the old house, in what probably was the main room.

>   In the dank, dismal room, Natasha could only see Fiona’s back. The flashlight she’d grabbed from the table before she hit the door wasn’t doing much to dispel the gloom, either.

  “Fiona, what in the hell are you doing?” she demanded, panting a little.

  It had been nearly a mile and half from the villa to here, and running just wasn’t her thing.

  Of course, it wasn’t Fiona’s, either, but Fiona didn’t even seem to be winded.

  Fiona turned around, a vacant smile on her face.

  And her eyes—

  Natasha stumbled back a step and immediately felt like kicking herself. It was a trick of the light that made Fiona’s eyes look…not like hers. That was all.

  No reason for Fiona’s pale green-blue eyes to suddenly look black.

  “Hi, Nat!” Fiona said, her voice overly bright, too cheerful in the hellish little room.

  “Don’t you ‘hi Nat’ me,” she snapped. “Are you trying to get us both in trouble? The permit for us to be here has restrictions, damn it. We’re supposed to let them know when we’re coming, and we’re sure as hell not supposed to just parade in whenever we want, like this place is a damn store.”

  “I just wanted to see,” Fiona said, smiling an empty smile. Empty. Empty as her eyes. Void of personality, void of life. Just empty.

  It shook Natasha down to the core.

  Needing a minute to compose herself, she looked away. She blew out a breath and stared at the ground. That was when she noticed the odd, wet tracks—footprints.

  Red footprints.

  “Oh, shit, are you barefoot?” she asked, shining her flashlight at Fiona’s feet and wincing when she saw the red smears of blood. “You cut your damn feet. Are you sure you just took two of those pills, Fiona?”

  “Hmm?”

  Fiona moved forward, swaying a little.

  Off in the depths of the house, something moaned.

  Natasha shivered. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”

  “But don’t you want to look around?” Fiona evaded Natasha’s outstretched hand. “That’s why you came all this way. You wanted to learn about the bloody sisters—about Bloody Despoina.”

  Natasha froze. Despoina—

  Staring into Fiona’s eyes, she said quietly, “Where did you hear that name?”

  Fiona just laughed and twirled around. “Come on. I know where you can find all about her…”

  When Fiona lunged for her, Natasha was almost too stunned to move.

  Almost.

  They were already inside the house when they heard the scream.

  Luc caught one mortal around the waist and jerked her back against him, clamping a hand around her mouth and silencing her with his hand.

  Sina handled the other one.

  “You…”

  “Not a terribly clever greeting, Ms. Curry,” Sina said shortly.

  Luc grunted as the woman he held sank her teeth into his palm. And she fought like the very devil too. Not quite demon strong, but too strong to just be a mortal. Something about her felt very, very wrong too. There was no demon taint, but there was something.

  “What are you doing here?” the mortal asked. “And don’t lie and say it’s police business. You are not a fucking cop.”

  “No. I’m not a cop, fucking or otherwise,” Sina said agreeably. Then she looked at Luc. He felt the weight of her stare, felt her shock.

  Then she whispered into his mind. Come into my mind, look at her.

  It was a disconcerting thing, still, even after all of these years, to see his body through the eyes of another.

  But this time, that wasn’t what gave him a shock.

  It was the woman he held.

  Her skin was pallid.

  Her eyes were vacant.

  And although she moved and he could feel the rise and fall of her chest under his arms, the woman was a corpse.

  He hissed out a breath. “How is this possible?”

  “I don’t know,” Sina said quietly. “But we need to figure that out. And we have to deal with this woman here.”

  The woman who was currently trying to slip a hand into her back pocket.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sina snapped.

  She stormed forward and Luc watched as she jerked a phone out of the mortal’s hand, threw it down and stomped on it, grinding it under the heel of her boot.

  Then, she leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “Listen, precious, I don’t have time for that. You’re not going to get hurt, so save us the histrionics and don’t go trying to call the police. They can’t handle this problem.”

  Luc had to hand it to the girl. Even though she was terrified, she didn’t let it get the better of her. She glared at Sina and then at him. “Oh, forgive me for not being overly convinced. That big bastard has my friend helpless, you’ve got a dog the size of a miniature pony and you just busted my phone—oh, and you pretended to be a cop! You’re really inspiring trust. But you’re not going to hurt us. We’re perfectly safe.”

  Sina sighed. “Girl, I never said you were safe. I never promised your friend wouldn’t come to harm. She’s already past my help.”

  “Wha…” Natasha clamped her mouth shut, swallowed. Then she shook her head. “What?”

  “You can feel it,” Sina murmured.

  Luc realized it, then. Something Sina had probably realized all along.

  The girl had something odd about her.

  Odd abilities appeared in humans every now and then. It wasn’t terribly common, but it wasn’t altogether rare, either.

  The question was what they did with it, whether they acknowledged it.

  This girl…she acknowledged it.

  “You already know what’s wrong, if you’ll look.”

  Natasha stumbled back a step.

  “Just let us go,” she whispered.

  There was denial now. Denial, but when she looked at the woman who still struggled in Luc’s arms, she flinched. And then she spun away and went to her knees and started to vomit.

  He couldn’t blame her.

  If he hadn’t dealt with a number of odd and disturbing and scary things, he might have been a little sickened by the fact that he was essentially holding a moving corpse. “Mind if I keep use of your eyes, Sina?” he asked.

  “Of course not.”

  He nodded and then called to Krell.

  The dog yipped.

  Nodding at the mortal still on her knees, he said, “Guard.”

  She couldn’t leave, not yet.

  They had to figure out what to do with her, but first they had to deal with the other puzzle.

  He pushed away the dead thing he held, shifting at the same time and drawing out a blade. “So…just who is controlling her, do you think?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Over his hand, I could see her eyes.

  Wide and locked on my face.

  Although her body was dead, there was an intelligence in that gaze and it was downright freaky.

  I’d dealt with the demonic before, but dealing with the dead? That was something new.

  Usually once the soul was gone, the body just stopped fighting.

  The soul—

  Something danced in the back of my mind. A faint bit of knowledge, lost in the cavern of memories. Too many years, too much that I’d seen, too much that I’d done.

  But this, this was something I needed to remember.

  “Take your hand away,” I said softly, studying her face.

  Luc grimaced but complied, keeping ready.

  Off to the side, the other girl was still retching. Judging by the rapid rate of her heart and her unsteady breathing, she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. She was probably tottering near shock. Perfect. A great way to etch things on the memory. Will was going to be pissed.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  I wasn’t talking to the woman who’d once owned the body. She was gone and her soul wasn’t here. I could sense souls, just like Luc could. But this woman’s was gone. Her body w
as hollow and the thing settled inside her, it was like a snake coiling into a hole, ready to strike.

  But there was something familiar…

  As she started to laugh, I knew.

  “Despoina,” I said quietly.

  The girl on the floor flinched.

  And Despoina smiled. “You remember me.”

  “Only barely.” I glanced around the house and then back at her. “How do you still linger?”

  “You trapped me here.” Her eyes narrowed to slits, but still that smile lingered on her face. “For a while, I hated, and raged. But then I learned. I learned what I could do. See the body I’ve taken? Someday, I’ll be able to break free of this prison and I’ll walk again. Then I’ll find what I seek and even you, angel, cannot stop me.”

  “Oh, please.” I prowled around the room, stepping carefully over the rotted boards, searching for whatever bits and pieces I’d marked. We could put a mark on a place. Some might call it a blessing. I don’t know if it’s that. But I’d left my mark on this place, hoping to contain whatever it was that had lured her so. “You waste your time here, old woman. There are none of the books. You wasted your entire life looking for something that isn’t here.”

  “You lie,” she shouted.

  The sound of it rose through the air like a banshee’s wail.

  Sighing, I closed my eyes and concentrated, waited until I knew I’d wrapped the house in enough of a protective bubble that any and all sounds, sighs and whatnot would be held within. It was a trick the older ones managed to pick up and I should have done it earlier.

  Of course, I hadn’t thought I’d come face to face with a ghost with a knack for possessing bodies, either.

  “Old woman, there are no books here. You’re standing on the ground where I killed a bunch of vicious women centuries ago, stupid women, just like you, and any power, any echoes or memories you feel are echoes of what I did to them, and what became of me. There is nothing else here,” I told her.

  Her smile turned crafty. “There is. There is a darkness that drives people insane. Even your man feels the chill in the air.”

  “That chill in the air has nothing to do with the sickness invaded this town.” I slanted a look at him and then looked back at her. “That’s all on you and once you’re gone, it will end.”