“The A75? You’re kidding me. That’s an old urban legend. People claim to see shit all the time. There’s nothing—”
Will touched the bar. Although his hand was empty when he brought it down, as he spread it out, pictures spread out.
“Damn.” After so much time, Finn kept thinking he’d get used to all the oddities that came with being Will. It hadn’t happened yet. “You could make David Copperfield weep.”
Will frowned.
Finn suspected the pop culture reference threw him. They usually did. He was proven right at Will’s next comment.
“I don’t see how this relates to a book written more than a century ago. This is serious, Finn. Look at her. Look.”
Finn couldn’t stop himself from doing just that.
It was a child.
A pretty girl, young.
Pig-tailed with a bright smile.
“She’s missing,” he said, his voice gruff.
“No. She is dead. They found her near the car. The coroner found signs of a heart attack, although how that happens with a child so young and no heart defect?” Will placed the picture down. “The others in her family are missing. A teenager—fifteen years old. The parents. She was the only one left behind. You can imagine why.”
The inherent innocence of a child prevented them from being possessed by the demonic. The hosts had to be open, in some way, to the possession. Children had an innocence to them that didn’t allow it.
They could be killed, though.
Nothing was safe from the rot these things brought.
“Three group disappearances. Is that all we have?” He reached out, touched the other images, lifted up a picture of a car.
There were nail marks dragging down the side.
His gut twisted at the sight of them. He knew where those had come from.
“Three…in the past year. That have been reported.”
There were too many things unspoken in that comment.
Finn studied the picture a moment longer and then looked at Will.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked softly.
Will’s silver-white hair slid over his shoulders, shielding him as he stared toward the grimy windows facing the nearly empty street. “There was a village—almost empty. Less than a few hundred still remained and more left every year. This past winter…it was a harsh one.”
Finn narrowed his eyes. “I’m aware. You had us checking every demon haunt we could find—and some we’d never heard of. Activity was sky high.”
One small town in Alaska was nothing but a memory. At the last census, only seven hundred and ninety two people called the place home during the winter and since then, yet more families had moved.
At some point in February, a woman living in Juneau had become concerned because she hadn’t heard from her daughter since Christmas. It might have gone unnoticed for even longer, but the woman’s father was a state Senator.
Greta and Rip had arrived less than thirty minutes after the airplane had touched down.
They hadn’t been able to stop him from putting in the first panicked phone call.
Greta had been forced to use her ability to control the man’s mind while Rip went through and cleaned up anything that would allude to paranormal involvement. There would be questions forever unanswered in that small, isolated town.
For all the mortal world knew, they’d run out of food and turned on each other.
Greta and Rip had spent the next two months running the vankyr involved into the ground.
They’d fed, and fed, and fed…on so many people.
Bile churning in his gut, he stared at the scarred surface of the bar, waited until he knew the fire in him wouldn’t spill out before he asked. “The town—what does it have to do with the missing families, the college kids?”
“It was located only forty minutes from Buchanan Castle. There’s nothing directly connecting them.”
Will’s voice was almost carefully empty.
“Everybody?”
“Yes. Mostly older people—born there, didn’t want to die anywhere else. A woman who’d moved there in hopes of opening an inn to attract tourists. The man who ran the pub. All gone.”
“You’re thinking vankyr, aren’t you?”
“Yes. That’s why I have to send you. Even if they catch you unaware, all you have to do is turn on that flamethrower that masquerades as your body these days.” Ironic humor threaded into Will’s voice. “You can eliminate an entire pack, down into dust.”
Finn started to thump his empty glass on the bar. “If you were going to fuck me like this, you could have at least bought me the good whiskey.”
That went better than I thought. Will watched as Finn slid off the stool and cut through the crowd. He didn’t bother following. He could track every one of his Grimm, in a heartbeat.
For now, he’d just sit and brood a moment longer.
This had to work.
If it didn’t, if Finn’s spells with depression kept getting worse, if he kept having to kill the woman he loved time after time…
No. He made the choice then and there. If he wasn’t able to find a way to break the loop, then Will would do the only thing left to be done. Finn wouldn’t even have to know what was coming.
It would be a kindness.
For the boy.
It would cause another part of Will’s shriveled, worthless soul to die, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t sold that out back during a time most men now ascribed to myth.
The thought sent the echo, a memory of pain, suffered eons ago—back in his mortal life—tearing through. Rope, biting in—
Will cut the trickle of memory off and shoved it back into the well with all the other memories. The mists of time obscured most of them.
Too bad he couldn’t cut the memories of that life away. He could take bits and chunks from others. His own memories, though, he lived with them. Walked with them. On the rare occasion he could find rest, his own memories haunted him.
As they should, a dark, ugly monster whispered in his head.
There was another voice, but he didn’t let himself acknowledge it.
Even after all this time, he hadn’t yet obtained forgiveness.
He didn’t deserve it, after all.
Chapter Three
One thing I am never going to understand in this life—why women wear toothpick heels to walk in places like this. Don’t get me wrong, I love the brick roads that make up much of Laclede’s Landing, a group of restaurants and shops down along the riverfront in St. Louis.
I was fond of this part of the country in general but I usually made myself stay far, far away.
I hadn’t been able to do it this time and I kept trying to distract myself by watching silly girls shiver as they stumbled along the brick road in heels more designed for a dance club or…hell. I don’t know. What were those shoes really made for, other than to kill your arches and cause a broken ankle if you stepped wrong? Especially here.
Yeah, they could look pretty damn nice but the sexy part went out the window when you couldn’t walk without stumbling.
I’d only seen a few who had managed it and I had to admit, I envied their grace.
Me, I was dressed in a pair of knee-high black boots with stacked, two-inch heels. It wasn’t a smooth heel, either. I could run in these boots. Run. Fight. Climb. Kick. The works. All of my clothes were bought with those specifics in mind.
Even the jeans I wore, jeans that looked like they’d been painted on moved with me like a glove. Nothing to get in my way when I had to move, and that was going to be soon.
There was a girl near the front window. If she was eighteen, then I was a supermodel.
And the man bent almost protectively over her wasn’t human.
I couldn’t quite get a read on him, but he
made my teeth ache. It wasn’t him—it wasn’t Tommy. A part of me wishes it was, even though once I saw him, it would be time to kiss this life good-bye.
Tommy wasn’t here. If he were, I’d know. I’d feel it. That meant I was free to focus on the demon—I’d yet to determine his breed. Focus. Move in. Evaluate. Kill.
But they were only talking and they were too far away for me to hear them. We were also surrounded, which meant I had to wait.
That left my mind free to wander. And brood.
No. No brooding.
It didn’t matter that I ended up here again. So close to where it had started…and ended. So many of my dreams centered around this place. I could pick out bits and pieces of them from each life, but I’d never realized it until this one. Until I saw that wide, rolling river, until I stood on the banks and felt it all rushing over me.
Even as my mind started to drift and wonder why…I looked back at the girl, and at the monster. They were the reason I was here right now.
Nothing else.
Nobody else.
He leaned closer and the almost-woman gasped as he lifted a hand, placed it on her neck.
She shivered.
I watched clinically.
Yeah, she was turned on.
I could remember the lives I’d lived. In most of them, having a man touch me at that age would have all but frozen me with fear.
This life was different, but it seemed everybody aged younger, and maturity came on hard and fast.
I’d been younger than her when I killed my first demon. If that wasn’t a sign of maturity, what was?
My heart started to race as the man slid a hand down her front, almost touching her breasts—almost, not quite. There was something subtly sexual about his actions, yet I didn’t think he was one of the sex demons. They affected everything around them and so far this woman wasn’t even trying to rub all over him yet.
But he had some kind of hold on her already.
Will didn’t know what he’d find.
Sometimes it just worked that way.
He’d left Finn in Scotland, near Buchanan Castle. It had been nearly a day and, if he knew his Grimm, the man would have collapsed, rested for a few hours and then gotten to work.
Just like Will.
He couldn’t bring Finn back to the States until this problem was solved. Will was going to change Finn’s twisted reality. It shouldn’t be like this.
The bar where he found himself pausing was a far cry from the one where he’d been with Finn just a day ago. It was all polished wood and brass and deep blue velvet. It spoke of a desire to be elegant and sexy, sophisticated.
It made Will think of a young girl dressing in her sister’s clothing to make herself seem something she wasn’t.
A façade. Nothing more.
But it was cleaner.
One look through the window at the bar told him if he had to drink to fit in, he wouldn’t have to sacrifice his taste buds.
Not that he ever fit in well, even if he did drink.
He’d clubbed his hair back into a tail at his nape, but the silver strands still stood out. The white trench coat, the white button-down shirt, the white slacks, yes, there was no blending with this ensemble. But he’d learned to work with it. At least in this day and age, people were used to those who dressed as if they were in costume their entire lives.
It might amuse some of them if they saw what happened when he tried to wear something that wasn’t white.
He could pluck a shirt, a jacket, even the sturdy blue jeans from any of them and don them right where he stood and as people watched, over the next thirty minutes, the color would just be leeched away. The darker the color, the thicker the material, the longer it would take, but in time, everything touching his skin would be as white as the clothes he wore now.
He eyed the crowd near the front and then started forward. People weren’t even aware they fell back from him and he was deep inside the throng within minutes, scanning the crowd, unaware of just what he was looking for.
But there was something.
Something…
It eluded him and he couldn’t hone in on it.
It was either too vague yet, or he had been out of the game far too long. He knew he was rusty—he hadn’t actively hunted for five decades. He had too many Grimm now and it was a chore just keeping them in line. His skills needed some polishing, a fact he’d figured out when he had to take over Mandy’s training. This simply drove it home.
He snagged a beer from the man behind the bar and looked around for a bit of wall where he could watch.
“I think you’re lost, man.”
Slowly, he looked up, eyeing the man in front of him. Wide-shouldered, tattoos that climbed up his neck. Bald scalp and a goatee. Will imagined the man thought himself quite the badass.
He lifted a brow and cut around him.
A hand clamped down on his shoulder. “Didn’t you hear me? I think you’re lost. The costume party is on the other end of town tonight.”
The man’s breath was scented faintly with beer, but just faintly. He wasn’t drunk. Too bad. That would have made it much easier. He sounded highly amused with himself. Will could sense his desire to put on a show, impress his friends. It didn’t really bother him. It annoyed him. Flies, mosquitoes, all very annoying. But the man was mortal and Will hadn’t been placed in this life to deal with annoying mortals.
It would cause a scene, though, if it continued. There were any number of a hundred ways this could go, and almost all of them were guaranteed to cause a scene. He supposed he could fake taking a hit, let the son of a bitch get his jollies from that. But then both of them would be asked to leave, and he might draw too much notice.
Dropping his shields, he braced himself for the emotion that would slam into him and then he seized on what he needed.
It wasn’t hard. After all, this was a bar, and in a bar, there was almost always somebody who’d drank too much, too fast, on an empty stomach…
He fed that into the man’s mind, watching as his eyes went from clear, smirking amusement to cloudy.
What sickens you? Will pried into the man’s mind and almost laughed when he saw it. Little wonder the man walked around with his idea of masculinity all but pasted on him. Such a small thing.
Well, there we go then. Your head is spinning. Like you’re on the blasted Ferris wheel—oh, bollocks. What is this? It’s spinning too fast…
He fed those images into the man’s eyes, dragging it out, although in reality, only a few seconds had passed. He added to the nausea he’d induced in the man, courtesy of a woman who was even now puking her guts out in the loo. The man’s skin went green.
What if it breaks… a girl’s voice teased, something from a memory.
Will sighed. It was cruel, but really. The sod had gone and asked for it. So Will twisted that nightmare image and then shoved it into the other man’s mind even as he sensed the rise of bile.
He barely moved out of the way in time to avoid the spray of vomit.
Others weren’t so lucky.
A few men moved forward, laughing as they knelt by him.
An employee rushed up, torn between Will and the man who was still puking.
“I think he had too much to drink.” Will smiled, automatically falling into the flat accent common to the American Midwest. People remembered when accents weren’t the norm and he already stood out too much as it was. No need to make it any worse than necessary.
Both the employee and one of the man’s friends offered apologies.
Will shrugged it off, wracked his brain for the modern version of You need not concern yourself—oh, yes. That’s it. With a polite smile, he said, “Don’t worry about it.”
Well, lookey here. Mr. Shiny.
He was new. I haven’t seen anybody like him before.<
br />
Looking at a demon was like looking into a maw of death.
This man, made me wish I had sunglasses, not that they would help.
I saw these things…well, you can just say I see the entire world a little differently.
Sunglasses, flashlights, nothing altered the view.
This man glared with light.
Once I’d adjusted to his glow, I almost snorted at his appearance—white, all white from head to toe. Man, did he want to attract attention or what?
Except he didn’t…not exactly. I saw people look at him, and I mean look, but as he drew nearer, they couldn’t look away fast enough. It wasn’t normal, I decided. After what had just happened, people should be looking at him. A lot. Hell, I was looking at him and not just because of the weird getup he had on. He was…well, beautiful didn’t seem quite the right word. He was beautiful in the way a Siberian tiger would be, even as he was about to close his teeth around your throat.
That’s what it was, I realized.
He was a deadly, menacing, beautiful threat.
Clad all in white and shining so bright, it almost dazzled that inner eye of mine.
Not everybody would see the threat, and I was used to being the only one who could see the weird, but why weren’t other people gaping at the crazy getup, why weren’t women ogling that surreal face, framed by pale hair that couldn’t possibly be real yet I knew it was. He should have at least a few women trying to approach him, he was that delicious.
Yet I watched as the crowd literally parted for him. Like Moses and the Red Sea.
People who had been staring at him from a distance found themselves looking anywhere but at him as he moved closer, gliding left, gliding right, whichever way would remove them from his path and once he had passed, the space closed back up.
Furious Fire: Grimm's Circle, Book 8 Page 4