Grimm's End: Grimm's Circle, Book 9

by Shiloh Walker

  He might have sagged, gone to his knees. But he just nodded. “Do as you will. I accept.”

  “Your punishment is not yet over, but you will finish it outside the serpent’s reach.”

  “You cannot take him! I have marked him. He carries my blood. He is mine!”

  Nothing is yours.

  “If he passes through the barrier, then mine will pass through as well…so long as he lives. I will pass through.”

  I heard the slyness in the tone, the cunning, the craftiness.

  But you will not. You will rot here, trapped. Until it is done.

  Rob had lost an eye in the melee earlier. It was slowly regenerating, but he was still sightless on that side and his head turned, following the sounds Will made as he came back into the cave.

  “We need to get you mobile so you can get Mandy back to the mortal world,” Will said, crouching down next to Rob.

  Rob’s laugh was wet.

  He couldn’t yet speak.

  But the negative shake of his head was emphatic.

  “I can’t let you heal on your own,” Will said.

  The crunch of gravel behind him had him stiffening.

  “You’re going to drive him mad, healing him the way you are.”

  Crow.

  Will tipped his head back, staring up at the cracks that now latticed the ceiling in an almost delicate pattern.

  “You’re shoving nothing but pure power into him and his body is taking it, but it’s painful.”

  Will slid Crow a dark look. “I know that. But I’m sort of cut off from the well of power I once had. I can only go by what’s available to me here.” He flicked a hand to the desolation outside of the cave. “Not much in the way of the divine, is there?”

  For a moment, Crow just stared at him.

  Then he started to laugh.

  “You think you’re pulling power from the plains?”

  Will went back to the task at hand.

  Rob.

  Gripping the man’s hand, he thought back to when he’d first found the other Grimm. Rob had just been a boy. True enough, at almost twenty, others would consider him a man, and he’d seen far more horror than most ever saw. He’d spent every one of those years trapped here.

  But he’d known nothing of life and when Will had taken him into the mortal realm, his pure pleasure at what he’d discovered had been nothing but child-like awe.

  “I want to get you out of here, Rob,” he said quietly. “Most of the tears are gone. You all can fix things now. Take Mandy and just…”

  Crow squatted across from them. Blood dripped from his wing.

  It splashed on the stone.

  Rob’s nostrils flared.

  His mouth parted.

  Will glanced down.

  So did Crow.

  Then the wraith shrugged and reached down.

  A moment later, he had his hand, cupped and full of his own blood, held to Rob’s mouth.

  Rob gulped and slurped and licked.

  Crow grimaced. “Uncouth youth.”

  When he was done, he let Rob fall unceremoniously on the ground and he rose.

  Rob was already unconscious. But the pain coming from him was lessened.

  Will stared.

  Slowly, he shifted his attention to the wraith. “What was that?”

  A smile flirted with Crow’s mouth.

  Will could all but see him debating.

  But then he shrugged. “That one is so far from human, he all but reeks of it. Demons, they suck the humanity and the soul and the energy from all things.”

  “I know what demons prey on, wraith. I’ve hunted them for centuries.” Will glared at him.

  “Then why are you surprised to see a creature that is part demon being restored because he fed from an angel?” Crow’s black eyes all but skewered Will.

  Will looked back at Rob. His flesh was knitting back together as Will watched.

  “Do not worry he will fall prey to bouts of angel lust…no more than any of you sorry lot. He will likely rip his own head off should the temptation arise,” Crow said. He flicked a finger toward Will. “He will rest. He will heal. He will fight again and then you can drive him insane.”

  Will was about ready to rip Crow’s head off and then mount it on the femur bone of a dead demon.

  But Mandy made a low, guttural noise—a sound of pure torment.

  Will turned, staring at her as need twisted in him.

  “Can you take her from this place?”

  Crow canted his head to the side. Then he smiled, amused. “No.”

  He disappeared in the next moment, lost to the shadows.

  This bizarre time loop was going to drive me insane.

  I had no idea how long I’d been trapped. Where I was trapped, I didn’t know, but I had better be trapped somewhere. If I was dead, I was going to come back and haunt Will’s ass until the end of time.

  It was, simply put, a rather familiar scene.

  A hill.

  Three crosses.

  And unlike the scenes depicted in much of rural America, those crosses had bodies on them.

  Living bodies. People who breathed and moved…

  And there were other bodies, people who actually gathered around those on the cross and mocked the men hanging there. Calling out and laughing at them. I shoved a fist against my mouth, forgetting that I couldn’t make a sound here.

  There was a sound next to me, a low and familiar voice.

  That ugly one.

  “Go to him. He hangs there, making a martyr of himself. Such weakness…he could call himself down from there and end all of this. Go, son of Adam. Ask him to end his suffering. And yours.”

  I turned my head and found myself staring at a scene that was far too familiar. That voice came out of a woman’s mouth. But there was no woman inside there anymore. She was possessed. A demon lived inside there now. A strong one too.

  “Leave here,” a man said. He stepped forward, a spear slightly pointed outward. “I would shove this through your heart in a moment and not suffer at all, snake.”

  The demon inside her laughed and laughed. “You threaten when I am here to help you? Go…go to him. You hate to see his suffering. I’ve watched, you know. You followed him at a distance. Listened to him, longed to go into his presence even when he denounced you.”

  Rob sat up, one hand pressed to the faint crater in his side. He looked around and then back at Will.

  Shoving a finger in Will’s direction, he said sourly, “I’m not leaving. You want me gone? Tear open a rip, tear off my head and shove me through. Only way you’ll get me out of here. And you better be prepared to knock her out.”

  Will watched him dispassionately for a moment and then looked at Mandy.

  “She’s still unconscious.”

  A feral smile curled Rob’s lips. “That’s not unconscious, boss. That’s seeing sleep. She’s seeing it all, and it’s nearing the end. When she wakes up…” Rob shrugged. Then he rested his head on the back of the cave, looked out. “They’re going mad out there. I have never seen them like this.”

  “I have.” Will shifted his attention from Mandy and Rob to the mouth of the cave. “Once.”

  Rob’s brows shot up, all but disappearing into his hairline as he waited for the answer.

  It didn’t come though.

  When Will turned back around, Rob demanded, “Well?”

  “I thought you knew me,” Will said mockingly. He gathered his hair back, paused for a moment at the sight of the thick black strands. He’d forgotten what his hair had once looked like. Clubbing it back, he tied it off with a shredded scrap of cloth from his shirt and then he put his back near the wall at the entrance of the cave. “It was when I fell. I came here.”

  He studied the vast, miserable landscape and then looked back at Rob. “You know where we are, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. The netherplains. No place like home and all that rot.”

  “It’s purgatory, Rob.” Will grabbed a handful
of rock and grit and debris and flung it down the small incline, watched as it scattered out over the bodies below. They’d remained there, decaying, stinking, withering for all time. “Where all restless, unclaimed souls come. But the demons are kept apart from them until the end of days. They are rather eager to hasten all of that up. And they aren’t the only ones.”

  Rob gaped at him. Then he shook his head. “That’s…no. That’s just not right.”

  “Tell that to the angel who pulled me out of here, then. I took my orders from him.” Will rested his head against the wall, his gaze mirthless. “You soaked yourself in the written word when you made it topside. You might have an idea of who he was. The bloke with the flaming sword and the wrath of God on his side.”

  Rob’s eyes bulged now and he breathed out, “Mi—”

  “Don’t say his name here.” Will looked away. “You’ll bring them all down on us. They fear me, but him? They’d piss themselves senseless if they even thought he’d look this way.”

  “He…” Rob cleared his throat and shot a glance upward. Then softly, he tried again. “He pulled you out.”

  Will drew his knife from the makeshift sheath and started to draw patterns in the dirt. “Do you know what it’s like to have blood staining your soul? Know what it’s like to have one mistake that you’d give anything to undo?” He slanted his gaze to meet Rob’s.

  Rob just stared at him.

  “I don’t just have one of those…I’ve a dozen. Or more.”

  Rob might have asked him to go into detail. He thought he knew the mistake, but a dozen? Then there was no time.

  In the next moment, Mandy came awake.

  Choking, gagging, gasping…screaming.

  “You ask for forgiveness. For a chance to make amends.”

  He lay facedown in the dirt, back in the murky world that had no sunrise, no sunset, no end to the strange, yellowish light that pierced the eyes and never allowed for rest. He had dirt and gravel in his mouth but he didn’t dare move to spit it out.

  “Yes,” he said quietly.

  “You say you would do anything. You’ve taken so many lives over the course of your own. Do you understand that?”

  He gave a halting nod. “I cannot undo those actions. I would if I could.”

  “Yet you still seek redemption. Salvation.”

  “I seek forgiveness.”

  And rest…escape from the unending years that weighed on him.

  He didn’t say those words aloud. But they were heard, nonetheless. “You will not find rest. You were to wander for the years you robbed your brother, but you tried to escape your punishment. Not once, but three times. Now you must atone for each one. Out of the dirt, son of Adam.”

  Slowly, he shoved his way to his knees and stared at the creature who’d seized upon him just as he would have fallen into slumber. The celestial being was fire and bronze and just looking at him hurt.

  “When the serpent shared blood with you, it twisted something within. I’ve within me the power to mend it, to fix you.” Gold wings fanned out, lifting and churning the air. “But I cannot hunt down those he has helped to cross over all these years.”

  “Those…”

  “They should have been trapped here. You were not meant to pass back and forth, but when you were brought out of it…” The winged being shrugged, a gesture oddly human. “Before, only the strongest—their leader—could pass. Now he has been trapped here as punishment for his transgression. He can still reach across the veil and spread his influence to his children…now they can follow the paths he made.”

  Fear gripped him as he began to understand. “Why wasn’t I just left here to rot then?”

  “Because that wasn’t what was chosen for you. You will find them all. Kill them. Destroy their pathways.” There was a pause. “It will take a very long time.”

  “She’s trapped.” Rob growled and leaned closer, snapping his fingers in front of Mandy’s face.

  As if that would have an effect.

  Will knocked him aside and cupped Mandy’s chin, said her name.

  She just screamed and screamed while the scent of her blood rose around them.

  “Trapped where?” he demanded.

  “Where…who?” Rob offered a weak smile. “I’m not sure which question is right.”

  “Don’t play your insane games with me right now.”

  “I’m not playing.” Rob blew out a rough sigh and gestured vaguely at himself. “This…what runs inside me, Will. It’s not like I came with a training manual. It’s not like I was ever meant to be spliced and diced and mixed with human—or angel—DNA. You know what happens when you get just a small amount of my blood inside you. And when I take in yours…well.” He shrugged. “Talk about an acid trip. But she took a lot of me inside her. My blood and yours. If there were any of us who shouldn’t have made up a blood cocktail, it was us, mate. And she tossed the whole soddin’ thing back.”

  Will breathed in, then out through his teeth, trying to calm himself.

  He knew what Rob was saying.

  He understood the magnitude of it.

  Mandy was trapped by Rob’s power—and she was trapped in Will’s past. The whole, miserable, ugly mess of it.

  Mandy choked again, the sound of it almost painfully familiar, and Rob muttered, “What the hell is happening?”

  Will sank to his knees in front of the woman he loved. Gently, he caught her wrists and forced them away from her throat. She was clawing herself bloody. It narrowed down the where/when question though. She could either be caught in one of his earliest memories back when he’d been mostly human, or his later ones, when he’d been made something else.

  He shifted her wrists to one of his hands and used the other to cradle her face. He could feel her, if he tried. The connection was weak now, the power that had come so easily to him a bare whisper of what it had been. But he could feel her. Her agony was a streaking line of red, one he could follow endlessly.

  But he could feel another seething line of red—the demons that surged and swarmed ever closer.

  Teeth bared, he looked between the mouth of the cave and Mandy’s face as she started to twitch. Her expression was locked in a rictus of pain now. “Can you get to her?” he asked Rob.

  “Me? What? No.” Rob shook his head. “I don’t have a bond. Not to her, not to you. Nothing connects me. Blood put her there, but I’d need something to follow, Will.”

  She gasped then and contorted her body, trying to tear away from Will.

  In the end, the only way he could still her struggles was to pin her down to the unrelenting floor of the cave. Swearing, he pressed his face into her hair. “We’ll have to tie her,” he said tonelessly. “What do we have that would…”

  The faint ripple along his flesh was the only warning he had.

  Slowly, he lifted his head as Crow came into view.

  The bastard wasn’t alone either.

  As the bronzed, burnished angel filled the cave’s mouth, Will heard the wails of terror rising up in the abyss all around them.

  “She’s hardly your concern.”

  Will came up to his knees, but he didn’t let her hands go.

  “She is.” From the corner of his eye, he saw that Rob had been struck mute, going to his knees. “Both of them are.”

  The angel shrugged and, just as before, Will thought the gesture seemed too human for a creature who had never been anything but celestial. “They made the choice to come here. They’ll suffer the consequences, to the end.” He flicked a hand dismissively. “You could just end her suffering now and—”

  Mandy started to scream again.

  The angel turned his eyes on her and the scream stopped. At least the noise did.

  Will felt his heart turn to ash because he could see that she was still screaming, silently, mouth open, neck arched to an obscene angle. He couldn’t imagine…well, no. He could. Every memory he’d buried, every memory he’d forgotten. All of it lived in his blood and now it flowe
d through hers as well and she was trapped there.

  Forcing the words out, he said, “Please.”

  The angel cocked his head, studying Will as if he were a strange creature he’d never seen before.

  “Please don’t make her suffer for my sins,” Will said, swallowing back the bitterness, the guilt, the grief, the anger. It was all directed at himself, emotions he never allowed himself to feel or to face. “I can bring her out of this and then Rob can take her back. After that, what becomes of me doesn’t matter.”

  “But it does.”

  There was an odd note in the angel’s voice now and he came, crossing the dusty cave with its cracks and fissures. Strangely, where his feet touched, those fissures closed up, the ripples sealing themselves. It was like watching a mirror shatter in slow motion, only in reverse. He crouched in front of Will and Mandy, but his gaze never strayed to her.

  “What becomes of you has always mattered.”

  As he stared into inhuman, bronze eyes that burned and rolled with fiery intelligence, Will felt his rage spill out. “Haven’t I suffered long enough to satisfy my debt? It’s been millennia. Eons have passed!”

  “Yes. It has. So…let me ask you.” The angel smiled. “Have you suffered enough? Or was it even about…suffering?”

  The angel leaned forward, at an almost impossible angle now, holding a position that defied gravity. But such matters made no difference to one like him. “You refuse to follow commands at every turn. You never accepted rebuke or correction, and when you finally showed remorse, it was as much out of weariness as it was regret. After all this time, there is one thing you refuse to do. Have you ever simply asked for forgiveness?”

  Then, the angel settled back on his heels and dropped his gaze to Mandy.

  He touched her between her eyebrows, along the straight line of her nose. The vicious, silent scream ended, and her face went lax. The awful contortions of her body eased and she was still, for a moment.

  “She’ll never forget what she has seen.” The angel flicked a look at Will. “The memories are now part of her. But if you can bring her back, then she and the demon-thing can leave.”

  He glanced at Rob and shook his head.

  Then he strode to the mouth of the cave. As he went, he held out a hand and fire appeared there. A fiery length that slowly formed into a sword.