Crazed Hearts: Grimm’s Circle, Book 3

by Shiloh Walker

  “Guard,” he ordered them. But he knew it would change nothing. They would die.

  And so would Mandy.

  Looking back at her, he said, “I’ll be back once I have her safe.”

  “It will be too late,” she said, her voice trembling. “Now get the hell out of here, before I realize that I’ve become as crazy as you. I’ll slow them down the best I can. The ones who still have something human in them…those I can do something about.”

  An evil smile curled around her lips and she started to spin the bladed staff.

  As Ren turned toward the human, he heard a car door open.

  “Let’s go,” he said, his voice short and brusque.

  “Go?”

  She glanced past him to Mandy. Her eyes went wide and horror flitted across her face. She lunged, but Ren grabbed her arm. She struggled against him.

  “Damn it, they’re—”

  Ren swore and released her arm. She stumbled, a little dazed to be freed. Then she glanced at him.

  She never saw his punch coming.

  The blow was just enough to knock her out, but not enough to do any lasting harm beyond a headache. Ren caught her before she could drop to the ground. Keeping the book tucked under his arm, he tossed her over his shoulder.

  A high-pitched scream—male—rang through the air and Mandy laughed. Ren took off running. He could run, and he could do it fast. But it wouldn’t be fast enough.

  He watched the woods through the eyes of his creatures and even before he made it halfway home, he knew it was too late.

  Mandy fell.

  Chapter Four

  Will awaited him.

  Clothed in white from head to toe, he looked almost luridly pristine.

  “Why the hell didn’t you arrive sooner?” he growled, shouldering past the older guardian and laying the unconscious woman down on the couch. He dumped the book on the floor, careful to keep it covered. He’d burn it, and then he’d burn the ashes. And if there was anything left of the ashes, he’d burn those as well. Maybe piss on them.

  Slowly, he turned and looked at Will.

  The other man stood there. His hair, as white as his clothes, fell straight and smooth to his waist. His eyes were clear and pale silver. His brows were as white as his hair.

  Just the sight of him infuriated Ren.

  Will’s ageless face was smooth, unreadable.

  Fucking bastard had about as much feeling as a lump of clay. Nothing inside him, Ren thought. Not a damn thing, even though he’d spent a year or two with Mandy himself. Bastard came down from his mountain on high and actually worked with the girl, and he felt nothing over her death.

  He had to know. Bugger knew every fucking thing.

  Pain clawed at Ren. It exploded and he launched himself at Will. Will did nothing to stop him and they crashed through the solid oak bar. Glass shattered and wine bottles exploded. Ren felt bone crunch as he drove his fist into Will’s face. “You heartless fuck, why didn’t you come?”

  Will didn’t answer, didn’t move to defend himself.

  He struck him again, and again, the rage tearing at him. Dark, black memories of another girl he’d been helpless to save rose up, taunting him, merciless and cruel. Visions of Mandy’s fallen body, the memory of Rose… With each one, he struck Will harder, harder.

  Then suddenly, he started to cry. Pulling away, he sat on the floor, hardly able to think past the pain ripping through him.

  “Oh, fuck, Mandy. She was just a kid, Will. Why didn’t you…”

  The words froze in his throat, all but choking him. The memory of a small, heart-shaped face, big, dark eyes lingered in his mind. A sweet, mischievous smile and a voice like an angel…until a devil had taken her.

  Her screams…

  Rose.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

  It was like he was living through that time all over again…

  A hand touched his shoulder.

  Ren wanted to knock it away, but he didn’t have the energy.

  “Mandy made her choice,” Will said quietly.

  Ren looked up.

  Blood splattered Will’s face, staining his perfect features, the pristine white clothes. Blood, dirt, grime and wine. The older man looked a bit less angelic now.

  Ren shook his head. “She couldn’t have wanted to die that way.”

  Will crouched down in front of Ren and reached out, tracing his hand along the thin, nearly invisible scar that ran along the underside of Ren’s neck. Ren knew he’d gotten the scar when his mortal life ended, but he didn’t know how.

  He didn’t remember those events…nor did he want to.

  “You didn’t die easy. Even now, after more than a century, you hide from it,” Will said quietly. “For some reason, it is our fate to go screaming into death. So few of us go easily, Ren. But she went not just willingly, but with a courage many of us cannot claim. To save a woman she doesn’t even know.”

  “And alone. She died alone.”

  “Yes.” There was an odd note in Will’s voice and Ren narrowed his eyes, studied the other man’s face.

  It struck him then.

  Rather blindingly, he realized.

  “You wanted to be there. To stop it.”

  “I could not. If I had gone, it would have interfered with a choice she had made. It was not my place,” Will said, and there was a world of rage in those simple words.

  Slowly, Will rose and held out a hand.

  Ren stood, and as he did he grew aware of the pain in his hands. It was fading already, but for him to even be aware of it… Studying Will’s battered face, he said, “It seems as though I should feel sorry for that.”

  Will lifted a brow that was now russet with blood. “Does it?”

  “I’m not.”

  With a grim sigh, Will said, “Oddly enough, neither am I.” Then he looked past Ren to the woman sleeping on the couch. “I know my duty, and I know it well. But never has it been so hard to remember it. The guilt of this… If ones like us could die from guilt alone, I think this might kill me.”

  “We need to go…take care of Mandy,” Ren said. Then he looked past Will to study the woman who’d brought this darkness to his woods. “I…I have to go with you. I have to. But she might wake. The book…”

  Will shook his head. “She will not.” He moved to stand by her, touched his fingers to her brow. “Not for a time, at least. She’ll be safe here, and none of them can sense the book here. As you well know. She’s safe from its taint. If she was going to fall to it, she would have already done so.”

  Then he looked at Ren. “Do not blame her, Ren. She carries no blame in this.”

  Ren’s lips peeled back from his lips in a snarl. “No, she’s just traipsing around the countryside with a demon tome—the picture of innocence there.”

  “All is not as it seems, Ren. You’ve lived long enough to know that.”

  Ren knew his home was secure.

  It was protected by more than just mortal security. As he slid outside, the warmth that hid his presence from the world—and the world from him—closed around the woman who slept inside.

  Tucked inside his home, even Mandy with her talented empathic skills would have a hard time locating her now.

  Or rather…she would have.

  Now she was dead.

  “She is not dead,” Will said. “She sleeps.”

  “Come off it,” Ren snarled. “She’s dead. We die, and He brings us back. I don’t need poetical nonsense to comfort and ease me. She died bloody, and she died alone, and she…”

  His voice trailed off. Sighing, he skimmed a hand across the smooth skin of his scalp. “I need to move past this for now. I don’t want Mandy waking to this. I’ll rant and rave and have my merry, psychotic little breakdown when she’s off acclimating—how does that sound?”

  Will gave him a half smile.

  Even from yards away, they smelled it.

  Blood, shit, urine. Death.

  The animals had crept off to
die away from the fight. One of the foxes was still lying there, panting, even though something had torn into him—literally. Crouching beside him, Ren drew a blade and murmured, “Thank you.”

  The fox’s liquid eyes stared into his. He held the small animal’s gaze with his, kept him distracted, kept him from feeling the pain. The fox didn’t feel it, but Ren did. He kept it from showing as his gut turned to fire and ice, as everything inside him screamed out in denial at what felt like death.

  He wasn’t dying, but his body didn’t know that—it felt like it was dying and his body reacted accordingly—heart racing, lungs tight, adrenaline crashing through his system…and the pain, centered exactly where the little fox had been hurt.

  Despite the pain, despite the adrenaline rush and the false sensation of death, Ren’s voice, his hand was steady as he stroked the little animal’s head. The fox gazed at Ren in fascination, adoration. Once the animal was no longer feeling the pain or the fear, he pierced the creature’s heart with his knife, ending the pain. He couldn’t have healed the fox—the damage was too severe.

  “You handle it easier than you used to,” Will said quietly.

  Ren drew a folded cloth from his pocket and cleaned his blade. “No, I don’t. I just no longer let it show.” All his life, he’d felt a kinship with the creatures that walked the earth, creatures that flew, creatures that crept along on their bellies, and with humans. He just felt more at ease with animals than with people.

  After all, they’d always welcomed him. Always accepted him.

  While his father…

  Now, mate, you can’t go thinking down that path right now, he told himself.

  Not wise. Not at all.

  They neared the rise and Ren’s gut gave one viscous twist. With his lips peeling back in a snarl, he leaped down, clearing the earth in one leap.

  Will beat him to it.

  The vankyr—bloody, beastly demons—turned their blood-stained faces to them and grinned. Ren bent down and grabbed his staff from the ground. Specially designed, bladed at both ends, it fit in his hands like it had been made for him and him alone. And it had.

  One vankyr leaped for him. As he buried the blade in the heart of the demon-possessed human, the rage threatened to consume him. He could see, somewhere in the back of those monstrous eyes, the remnants of the mortal soul.

  The mortal, trapped, an unwittingly and unwilling prisoner, went screaming to his death. Forcing the words out, Ren said, “Have mercy on him.”

  It was hard to force the words though. Demons couldn’t take one who was completely unwilling. It simply did not happen—somehow, this man had done something, said something that had opened him up for possession. He had no idea it would lead to this, had no idea he’d become the weapon in a horrific murder.

  Nonetheless, it had happened.

  Nonetheless, the blood of Ren’s friend stained his face, hands and mouth.

  They’d fed on her.

  While bile rose in his throat, Ren spun around and faced another.

  And another.

  And another.

  There were ten in all—a lot for the vankyr. Seemed like overkill. Vankyr were good for nothing but destruction anyway.

  As the last one sank to the ground, Ren muttered to the dying soul trapped inside and then looked for Will.

  The old Grimm wasn’t hard to find.

  He was where Ren would have expected him to be.

  Mandy…

  Dear Lord.

  Her body had been…savaged.

  There were no other words for it.

  Vankyr weren’t known for their refined tastes—rape, pillage, plunder…feast. That was all they wished. Living. Dead. It didn’t matter. Ren had one thing to be grateful for—Mandy hadn’t been alive for much of this. There simply wasn’t enough blood.

  And her face, oddly enough, was peaceful. Peaceful, and thankfully untouched. That was a memory he wouldn’t have to take into the nights with him.

  Her eyes, lifeless, were locked on the sky overhead and there was a faint smirk on her lips. Like she knew a secret none of her killers knew.

  Ren reckoned that was even the case.

  None of them would survive the week.

  He’d hunt them all down.

  He had to swallow the bile churning up his throat. He’d seen ugly things, but what they’d done to her…

  Ren shook his head. “You can’t bring her back here.”

  “No.” Will’s voice was soft, almost eerily so. Flat, emotionless. Carefully so.

  When the other Grimm looked up, there was a screaming, empty hell in those dark eyes.

  The fury there…

  “Do you see?” Will asked, in that strange, quiet voice. He wasn’t looking at Ren. It was like he was seeing something else…something other.

  Ren suspected he knew just what Will saw too.

  The older Grimm’s gifts were varied…and endless.

  Ren imagined he was seeing every awful atrocity done to her. As it was done.

  A cold wind danced down his spine.

  “Do you see what they’ve done to her?” Will whispered.

  Crouching down in front of Will, Ren reached out, touched the man’s shoulder. “Yes, I see, old man. I see. But she doesn’t have to. She wasn’t here when most of this happened. She didn’t see it, she doesn’t know what happened. She won’t ever know it.”

  Something sparked in Will’s eyes. Those black, black eyes flashed.

  Power rolled from him.

  Ren gritted his teeth as it struck him. “Tone it down, old man. Take her now…she’s waiting to come back. You said she’d made her choice and she can’t very well come back without you, now can she? You’re kind of like that old bastard Charon in the ancient Greek legends—the one who guides the boat on the River Styx? Except you don’t ferry people to Hades. You ferry the Grimms back to life, and you can’t bring Mandy to us if you go and…well, have a nervous breakdown. That’s my territory anyway.”

  Will lowered his head.

  White hair fell, hiding his face.

  When he looked up once more, a mask had fallen and that ageless face was unreadable. Will rose and looked around them, studying the devastation on the road. Bodies—thirteen of them. Between Will and Ren, they’d killed ten vankyr, which meant Mandy had killed the other three.

  Ren was prepared to have the mess of cleaning it all up dumped in his lap, but to his surprise, Will lifted a hand. A flash of white came, blinding Ren. When he could see again, it was to find the area meticulous. All signs of death, destruction and devastation were gone. Even the bodies of the animals who’d died at Ren’s call were gone.

  All that remained were the cars. The woman’s car was unmarked—even the window he’d busted to get the book was whole, untouched. And the tire Mandy had slashed was fixed as well.

  Just a few feet away lay Mandy.

  As Ren watched, Will knelt by her side. With a gentleness that might have surprised some, he gathered her lifeless, broken body in his arms.

  “Will…” Ren’s voice faded and he closed his eyes, made himself banish the images of Mandy from his mind. If she came back to train with him, he couldn’t have those memories in his mind. There was no telling what the transition would do to her gifts and he didn’t want his memories to become hers as well. “Will she return here?”

  Will flicked a glance at him and then shook his head. “It is unlikely. I think you’re about to go on a different path. I’m going to have a few others come out. They’ll be here within a few hours. The woods won’t be empty for the next few nights and I’m not leaving you here alone.”

  “I can handle myself,” Ren said, scowling.

  He didn’t want anybody crawling through his woods, even if they were fellow Grimms.

  “It’s no longer just you,” Will reminded him, cradling Mandy’s lifeless body. To Ren’s surprise, a faint, bittersweet smile curled the other man’s face. “Life is all about doors, you know that? One closes. Another opens.”<
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  Then, before Ren could process that, Will was gone.

  Chapter Five

  As he drew nearer to his home, Ren reached out with his senses and knew that the woman, this nameless intruder, still slept. He couldn’t feel much from her beyond that unless he really lowered his shields. He didn’t really want to do that.

  It had been ages since he’d used his abilities on a mortal. He was probably a bit rusty.

  Which suited him nicely.

  He didn’t want to be in touch with mortals. Most of them had caused him nothing but pain in his years before he’d left his mortality behind.

  Even those who hadn’t caused him harm directly had been somehow tied to pain and suffering. His sister, his mother.

  Mandy—

  No. He wouldn’t blame the girl. She’d made the decision she’d needed to make for her, and it wasn’t like he had truly lost her, had he? He’d see her again in time, and they could find that friendship again.

  Friendships were something he had too few of. Friends were even harder to come by than lovers.

  Aw, but hell, it hurt. The loss of her was going to be an ache in his heart. Having somebody there to talk with, it had done something to ease the darkness in him, and because of Mandy’s empathy, she hadn’t leaked all over him.

  He might not connect well with human emotions as he once had, but human emotions—well, they were a lot like odors. They collected. And he was tuned in on their frequency. He didn’t have to connect with those emotions for all the baggage to drive him to the edge.

  He was already insane. Having that pressing in on him…

  As he circled through the trees to his home, he tried to make himself quit thinking about the emptiness that would await him once he’d divested himself of his unexpected guest. Tried not to think about the odd, empty sensation it left in his heart when he thought about her leaving. She’d leave, after all. She’d have to, and he’d be alone.

  Again.

  An empty home. What of it? Not like he wasn’t used to it. He did best solo anyway. It was how he’d spent so much of the past century. Just the occasional job with Elle, and that was a thing of the past now that the pretty princess had reunited with her prince charming.