Dazed, he stumbled to the mouth of the cave and went to his knees.
“Rob, you son of a bitch,” he said, breath coming from him in ragged pants.
He swallowed back the bile, the guilt, the shame.
As Rob approached him, he looked away.
“Isn’t a few millennia long enough to punish yourself?”
Surging upright, he grabbed Rob by the front of his shirt. “No! Ten thousand millennia wouldn’t be enough. A hundred thousand. It doesn’t matter! You know what I did!”
“Yes. And you know what? What you did? You’ve done your time and then some. Stop punishing yourself already. Even murderers can get out of prison these days.”
Will jerked back as though he’d been burned. Curling his lip, he backed away. “Stop punishing myself?”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, old man. You fucked up well and good. But you didn’t do anything that the man upstairs didn’t know was going to happen.” Rob rubbed his chin and shrugged. “I didn’t know you had a run-in with Old Scratch though. I get the big picture, see. But you know what they say…the devil is in the details. The big bad, as Buffy would say. He pegged you right, didn’t he?”
Slowly, Will backed away.
He would have gone to his knees inside that cave, would have stayed there, letting the guilt and the shame tear him to pieces all over again. He’d lived centuries like that.
But an odd noise came to his ears.
Low and raw.
Tormented.
Slowly, he turned his head.
Mandy was curled into a ball.
Her eyes were open.
Locked. Staring at nothing.
And she was shaking.
Rob flicked him a look, then followed his line of sight.
A moment later, both of them were at her side. Will wrenched her arms over her head. When he saw the still-open wounds on her belly, he hissed.
But Rob was the one who started to curse, low and ugly and furious.
When he finished, he shot Will a dark look. “I hope you got some juice left in you. She’s got some of my blood in that wound. It must have happened when I grabbed her. It’s why she’s not healing.”
Slowly, Will lowered his gaze and stared at the open, bloody mess. Ah, no. But one touch on her mind told him what he didn’t want to accept.
Rob’s blood, poisoned, tainted…twisted. Rob’s strange gifts were tied to his dual lineage and the demon part of him pierced memories like a slip of paper. Now that blood was inside the woman on the ground.
She was already wounded, burning with fever…and now she was going to take a trip through thousands of years of memories. Those memories were enough that Will had tried to force himself to forget and now she was going to…
“Fuck,” he snarled. He tore his gaze from her face and looked at Rob. “When? How long?”
He needed to know what she’d see. How much. Would she even survive it?
“Ah…probably everything? No telling how much will make sense…at first, at least.” With forced cheer, Rob added, “Look at it this way. Now you won’t have to ever tell her why you’re so dark and bloody moody all the time, am I right?”
Will would have hit him.
Hard.
But the howls rose up from somewhere outside the cave.
Rob rose, his face haggard. “I’ll go deal with Mum and Dad. You heal her.”
“Your mother was human,” Will reminded him tiredly. He would have dragged a hand down his face, but it was smeared with blood and grit.
“Well, Dad, aunts, uncles, cousins.” He gave Will a crazed smile. “Dad’s dead, didn’t you know? I killed him. Ate his liver, I think. They had thrown me in some small pit, just weeks before you found me, and he’d come down to torment me, have a bit of sport with me. Taunting me about how he’d done it all, grabbed my mum, fathered me because he thought it might be easier for somebody with human blood to tear open the rips and make them permanent. But I didn’t want to play. I got my hands on him. He screamed…but they weren’t fast enough.”
The flickering light that was Rob’s sanity was fainter now and he turned, rocking on his heels as he faced the mouth of the cave.
“Heal her, Will. Get her, get you out of this maddening place.” Then he shot Will another look. “And for the love of God—you were given a second chance, by the one who basically wrote the book on second chances and redemption, all of that. You called the man your king, made a vow to make good all the wrongs you’d done. You dishonor the promise you made, you know. Take the chance you’ve got and run with it.”
Will narrowed his eyes.
Rob swayed out of reach and gave him a maddening smile. “How many times shall I forgive my brother, Will?”
Then he lunged.
Screams arose and Will had to focus on Mandy.
Those screams were much, much closer than he liked.
And she was healing much, much slower than she should be.
Chapter Eight
There was pain and there was darkness and I didn’t think either would ever end.
Both of them did, though, except when I opened my eyes, I was still lost in the black. There were voices and they were screaming. Their panic called to the fighter I’d become and I went to leap up.
I couldn’t.
Strong arms held me pinned to the ground.
Son of a bitch—
But the words wouldn’t come…and neither did my strength.
A hand clamped over my mouth while another, hard and calloused, wrenched my wrists overhead and held them down.
“Be still. Please. Do not leave the tent. I wish to harm no woman, no child…”
“What…”
I couldn’t force the words out though. I sucked in a breath and realized, that at least, I could do. I could breathe. A storm of scents hit me, all of them foreign. I didn’t know what was going on. Nothing made…
Wait.
The man pinning me down. His cheek rasped against mine as he whispered in my ear again. “Do not be afraid. I will not harm you.”
You…
I would have hit him, if I could. I tensed my muscles again, ready to tear away and then knock him over, beat him bloody. He would let me too. He’d done it before. I knew him. He was different, different in ways I couldn’t describe, but I knew him. He’d called to me from the very beginning.
But I couldn’t break free. My strength just wasn’t there.
Then it hit me. I wasn’t me. This body wasn’t mine and as soon as I understood that, the terror washed over me and it froze her, this woman whose body held me prisoner.
The voice that came out of her mouth wasn’t mine, and neither was the language, but I understood it.
“What do you want?”
Something sharp pricked my neck. “Scream, woman. Scream loud and I will not be forced to hurt you.”
She screamed…while I fought inside her.
Darkness sucked away again and when I found myself able to see, I was lying on the ground. Men gathered around me and I braced myself.
What in the hell is going on…?
I had no idea where I was.
I had no idea when I was. Slowly, though, I was figuring out just what was going on. I was somehow trapped inside Will’s head…or his memories. And judging by the rough clothes these guys wore and the weapons they held, he just might be older than I thought.
Pain shuddered through him and I felt every bit of it.
But he was smiling.
The bastard was smiling. Will, who hardly ever smiled, had smiled while he lay bleeding and broken on the rocky, broken terrain.
“What have we done?” All around him, men whispered and their fear ate me like vultures feasting on carrion. Blood spilled out of the body I was forced to share, but he smiled.
One of the men bent and grabbed his hand, jerking his arm up into the air. Even as Will—or whoever he was—screamed, relief wracked him. The action forced more blood out of him as the man turned to those
behind him. “You see it, don’t you? You see the—”
The oldest man silenced the one who had been speaking. “No. I see an old madman, a man possessed.” He tapped his brow and looked around. “He attacked us. We cannot be blamed for protecting our women, our children. And he wouldn’t have done that. It cannot be him. Legend.” He spat on the ground and it came near the blood that was sinking into the ground. “Just legend. Stories our fathers told us so we would guard against jealousy.”
Can’t be who? I wanted to ask. But I couldn’t ask. And the man whose body I wore was dying.
His vision grayed, dimmed.
Just before he would have breathed his last, he thought, I wander no more.
“Come on, you foolish, stubborn woman.” Will sat at her head, his hands on either side, buried in the thick silk. He’d dreamed of doing that, longed to do it. And now, here he was. Dream fulfilled. But not in the way he had wanted.
He should know better than to dream.
To long for anything.
A vicious shout, somehow jubilant, rose from the mouth of the cave, but he didn’t look away from her face.
“Come on…show me where you are.” He tried to follow the tangled skeins of his memory, but his lifeline stretched back so very far. And for a while, there had been more than one. Which path did he take?
“Do you not yet understand, son of Adam?”
I jerked at the sound of that voice. It was a terrible, ugly sound, something so awful, I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. Broken glass, nails dragging down a chalkboard and discordant music, all shrieking together, blended together into a voice not meant for human ears.
It came from a thing that wavered between a man and monster, and that thing stood staring up at a twisted mockery of a tree.
I followed its gaze and had to shove my fist against my mouth when I saw what held its attention.
Son of Adam, it had said. I had no idea what that meant, but there was a desiccated husk up there. A husk that had once been human.
Then, it shifted, lifting a hand in a plea, and I screamed.
It couldn’t… Swallowing, I backed away. There was no way it could still be alive.
But the wrenching anguish in my heart said otherwise. It also told me just who it was hanging there.
“You cannot die, boy,” the thing on the ground said. “You were cursed to wander and wander, you shall.”
An anguished noise that might have been a moan came from the ruin of a man. I wanted to help, had to help. Assuming I’m not crazy, I told myself, I don’t think I’m even here. I’m just along for the ride.
I was really hoping I was crazy though.
That thing moved closer to the tree and I watched as it began to climb. Up, up, up…until it was right beside him. The man who wasn’t yet Will.
Bone and sinew were visible through the skin. He shouldn’t be alive.
The thing that was sometimes a man held a wrist up. “Drink…it will make you strong again.”
“Away, you whoreson.”
The thing cackled. “You know who I am, son of Adam.”
There was silence.
I was all but holding my breath.
This was all getting a little too fairy tale, even for me, but maybe this would help me make sense of it.
“I know you.” It was the only answer given.
Another withered, rasping laugh. “And you call me a whoreson?” He stopped laughing, lowering his wrist. “You will tire of the suffering. But perhaps you need incentive…”
Howls rose out in the distance. The man’s body flinched as he spun on the cobbled-together rope.
I spun away—
Blood dripped from Rob as he flung himself to the cave floor.
“If that’s your blood and you shed so much as a drop of it within two feet of her, I’ll rip your throat out and feed you to the demons myself,” Will said calmly. He’d almost caught her in time. She’d gone nearly all the way back, seen practically the worst of him. But then she’d fallen, slid into another one of his lives and he had to track her again.
“Relax, mate.” Rob was panting and when Will looked at him, his eyes had gone demon red. A brilliant grin lit his face, reckless, yet somehow…innocent. Odd words to describe Rob, but they fit, somehow. “The blood’s not mine. It’s just demon blood and she’s taken baths in that by now. It’s all good.”
No. It was not all good.
But as long as no more of Rob’s bizarre blood mingled with Mandy’s, Will thought he’d be able to pull her out of the memory loop.
He hoped.
He wished.
He would even pray.
“See? I knew you would tire of the suffering.”
I wanted to grab a rock, a stick—even a femur from one of the dead demons would work—and drive it through the head of the thing that taunted the man.
He was no longer a broken, withered husk. On his hands and knees, he stared down into the dirt and I could see something dripping from him. When he lifted his face, he stared at the thing in front of him.
“Away from me, you snake.”
I flinched. I don’t know what caused it though—maybe it was what he’d called the monster. It made something echo deep inside me. A memory of something, long buried. Son of Adam. Snake.
He swiped his hand over the lower half of his face, sending droplets of the stuff flying. “Undo this…this…thing you’ve done. I told you no! No deal.”
“You were unconscious. In the deepest of sleep and suffering.” Its voice was low and soft, almost soothing now, and as I watched, it stepped toward the man, taking on the guise of a woman, tall and lean and lovely, her body nude, her breasts full and heavy, soft. She reached up and brushed back his hair.
Don’t touch him! I tried to shout. But the words were soundless. Just like everything else I did here.
He knocked her hand away. “I could have been dying the worst of deaths and I would not ask your ease. Undo it!”
“But it’s already done.” She smiled and leaned against him. “My blood is in you now, son of Adam. You are mine.”
“No!” He wrenched away. “I know how you work, through trickery and deception. I gave you nothing. You cannot take what I have not given.”
“But you show the very proof of what I’ve given you. Your health. Your strength…you are mine now.”
Light slammed down and the earth shattered.
Will stared at the bloody mess that was Rob.
He’d managed to beat back the flow, again.
But for how long?
“They aren’t going to stop.”
The voice behind him had Will freezing.
Then, slowly, he turned to look at Crow.
“Why must you ever show up at times like these?”
The wraith seemed to ponder the question, then he smiled, his teeth flashing white against his swarthy face. “Because it is when you are most despairing and your misery is like sweet, sweet wine.”
Will curled his lip and then looked back at Rob.
Sinking to his knees, he pulled up the well of power inside him.
“You can’t heal as you once did.”
He tuned the ceaseless prattle out and laid his hands on Rob’s body. All that remained in him was raw power. He couldn’t guide it, couldn’t control it. It was like he was nothing more than a conduit between those around him and…rage.
But that rage was fathomless and deep, a void so full of seething energy and all he had to do was guide it.
“Damn it, man.” Crow knocked his hands aside.
Will shoved upright and gathered the aborted power, now roiling inside him like magma. It erupted out as he drove his fist into Crow’s chin.
The wraith’s body went up. Straight into the rock over their heads.
Bits and pieces of stone rained down on them.
Crow came at him immediately, wings spread and beating.
They were out of the cave in a flash, hurtling down the sheer rock face.
&n
bsp; Panic lit inside Will and he struck out, tearing free of the other angel. Death angel. He had to get back—had to get to Mandy and Rob. Had to—
Crow struck him with a massive hand, shoving Will’s face into the jagged bits of rocky earth. Will felt each sharp rock as it tore into his skin, shredding it. He didn’t care. The pain was no obstacle. Pain had long since stopped affecting him the way it would have in his normal life. No, what he cared about was the fact that Crow was keeping him from Mandy.
He reached out, grabbed a rock. It was flat and mostly smooth. He crushed it in his grip until he felt sharp, rough edges and then he moved, twisted.
Crow’s enraged howl echoed through the plain as Will succeeded in partially severing one wing. Rising, he stared down at the bloodied form of the wraith. The wraiths—death angels—weren’t as used to battle as some of the heavenly guard. Actually, there were only a select number who had been specifically created for battle.
Will headed one of the armies and he had done nothing but fight for millennia.
Young, compared to the other army.
But war was all he knew.
“Never stand between me and mine, Crow. You will always come out bloodied,” he said.
Then he ran back to the cave.
He saw nothing between him and his Grimm. No…not his anymore. But they were still safe in the cave as the wraith came to his feet outside the cave.
Chapter Nine
What is this thing you have done?
I heard the voice. But I didn’t see anybody speaking. And the voice…it flooded me with a sense of both awe and terror. I couldn’t even imagine moving now. Couldn’t imagine speaking or blinking or…existing.
Not daring to move, I held still in my small corner of space, not even sure if anybody knew I was there and watched everything play out.
The man who wasn’t yet Will and the monster who pretended to be a man were both face down in the dirt, although only the man seemed okay with it. The monster writhed and twisted, as though he was only there because some giant hand forced him to be.
You…
The man was upright, just like that, and in his face, I saw the echoes of the man I might come to know.
But it wasn’t him.
Not yet.
You cannot stay here now.
Grimm's End: Grimm's Circle, Book 9 Page 8