But their presence was too large in Europe now. The majority of the Grimm had been positioned in various spots across Europe. He’d heard Will was in France with Sina, the two of them doing what they could to help there.
Help.
Help was limited when they couldn’t openly show what they were capable of.
“Demons?” he asked, keeping his voice low and his eyes on the people around them. He wore the uniform of s soldier, but it was stolen and he wasn’t in the mood to deal with any mortals if they decided to come nattering at him about why he was socializing.
Since they were doing what they could to help with the wounded, it was best to blend in and the uniform made it easier to do that.
Greta knew he wasn’t asking if it was possible that demons were in the area, because they both knew they were. They’d been dealing with them ever since they’d come here. Demons thrived on just this sort of chaos after all. No, it was likely a demon had claimed the infirmary as his own little banquet.
“Hmmm. Possible. But it doesn’t feel right to me. We need to start a watch there, though. I heard two bodies were found a few nights ago. Then one last week. The first was found two weeks before that. All killed the same way…shot, through the heart, single bullet. Bodies are discovered the next morning at the end of shift change or when somebody brings their breakfast or medication in—the dead ones are always the healthier people, expected to make a full recovery, so the nurses aren’t going in to check on them throughout the night.”
Squinting at her, Finn thought that through. “Am I to understand that people are being shot in the infirmary and nobody has heard gunshots?”
“Interesting, isn’t it?”
Finn scowled and then sighed. “They could be using a suppressor.”
“A what?”
“A suppressor—some new-fangled invention. Or new enough. You put it on a pistol and it minimizes the noise.” Finn rubbed his jaw, thought it through. More than a few could get their hands on something like that, but why kill people in an infirmary? “The staff…anybody showing up on the same shift when the killings happen?”
“Yes.” Greta smiled sweetly. “Both of them.”
Finn dragged a hand through his hair.
“They have four nurses. Two cover the day, two cover the night. They don’t change and none of them have had a day off in…” Her words trailed and she looked around. “I doubt any of these people remember what rest is.”
“Do any of us?” But it wasn’t the same. The Grimm, like Greta, like Finn, they could survive going days without rest and then fall down for two or three hours and drag themselves back up and be fine. If they cut back to starvation-type rations like many of these people, it wouldn’t have any affect. Neither Greta nor Finn had eaten any of the food in the village since they’d arrived six months ago. What food they ate was food they’d found for themselves well away from here.
“What are you going to do when this is over?” Greta asked, tipping her head up to stare at the sky, a blue so pure it hurt the eye, dotted with fat puffs of clouds.
“Will this ever be over?” Finn was starting think this war had no end. No end. No beginning.
“Of course it will.” Greta slid him a look from under her lashes. “Nobody understands better than you that a fire can only burn as long as there is fuel.”
“And how will it end?” he asked softly.
Greta shrugged. “A few who have the ability to foresee that Germany will surrender.” She paused, then added, “I guess that means we win.”
He watched a woman trudge by. Despite the smashed mess of his heart, there was a stir of interest in him—one he’d felt so rarely, but far too often since he’d come here.
As though she felt his gaze, the mortal turned her head toward him. Her name was Ada. He’d heard it, caught in the snatches of conversations he’d picked up.
Ada…with a smattering of freckles across her nose, echoed on her throat and across her hands. He wondered what else was freckled before he could stop that line of thought and then he made himself think of other things as she continued on.
Like the way her cheekbones protruded too sharply against her skin. How her eyes, a beautiful, light brown were too sunken in her narrow face. Like everybody else here, she was too thin and probably hadn’t had a decent meal in longer than she could remember.
“Does this look like winning?” He watched as Ada turned the corner up ahead, heading toward the infirmary.
Ada was one of the nurses.
Aw, shit.
He’d have to spend more time observing her now and that wasn’t at all what he wanted.
“Everybody loses in a war, Finn,” Greta said. “There are never any true victors, but there are the vanquished. This man must be stopped. We all know that.”
Turning his head, he met Greta’s gaze. Yes, Hitler must be stopped. Once or twice, he’d entertained thoughts he should never let enter his head. It could cost him his life, but it wasn’t worth much, really.
What he felt must have been written on his face because Greta reached up, patted his cheek in what he could only describe as a motherly gesture. Even though she looked a year or two younger, she had him by centuries. “It will end.” Then she went back to her perusal of the sky. “I’m going to sleep. For a week. Then I’m going eat all the delicious food we haven’t been able to eat in so long and I’ll take a hot bath every day. And I’ll wear a pretty dress every day—I might even change my dress two or three times a day. I’ll eat chocolate and have coffee. I might even go out and find a stranger and have crazy sex with him.”
Finn lifted an eyebrow as she grinned at him.
Then she cocked her head. “What about you?”
“I don’t know. Sleep. Sleep sounds good.” He was tired. Not physically. His body could handle everything thrown at him and more, but mentally, he was worn thin.
“What, no plans for extravagant meals, nights on the town…you can go to New York and see a play, take a lady—or five—out on the town,” she teased, bumping her shoulder against his. “We’ve lived monkish lives lately.”
“Wouldn’t that be nunnish for you?”
“You get the point. We’ve lived and breathed this war.” She watched as a man, missing the lower half of his left arm, walked down the street. “Everybody has. For too long. We deserve a chance to forget it all for a while.”
“Burying myself in vice won’t make me forget. It won’t help.”
Greta sighed. “Neither will chaining yourself to the past.”
He flinched when she reached out this time, her hand resting on his arm. “You carry too much grief, Finn, and not just from the war. Maybe it’s time you talk.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“You should.” The compassion in her eyes, in her voice, infuriated him. Not just because he didn’t want it, but he actually almost wanted to talk. To tell her about the misery…the pain. About Becky.
Lashing out, he snarled, “So this is why Will put me with you. It makes sense now. If I choose not to talk, what then…are you going to force it out of me?”
Her mouth went tight. “Finn, now wait—”
“I know about you. People talk. Even to me, sometimes. I’m one of the freaks like you. My abilities aren’t the same as yours, but you freak people out as much as I do. My ability works on everybody—human and Grimm alike…just the way yours does. Only I can’t mind-fuck people. I burn them alive.” That ability to coerce people, force them to do things against their will, was an unnerving one.
Little more than a silent rape, but it had been put into the hands of a woman with a will of iron, and Finn knew, just as he stood there, that he was off-base.
Greta only used it when there was no other option—to save lives.
She went white, the only sign that his jab had found its mark. Even that was enough to
fill him with guilt. Even as the apology churned inside him, Greta started to speak.
“Finn, I—”
“I don’t want this,” he said, the words ripping out of him in a torrent. “I never wanted this. I thought I was being given a chance to save her. To have her back, to have my life back. But she died right in front of me and I see it every time I close my eyes and…”
The words tumbled to a halt and he stopped, dragged a hand down his face. He’d kept it locked inside for eight decades. But Greta, with her calm eyes and quiet voice, she’d had broken the dam. The rest of it wanted to spill out of him, like she’d sliced him open and he held himself together with his hands and desperation alone.
“I’m trapped now.” The words were wooden. Gently, he broke her grasp and moved away. “I’m trapped here, and she’s lost to me and I still love her so much that I can smell her skin on mine, feel the softness of her hair. I close my eyes and I see her in front of me. How many years am I going to live like this, Greta?”
She was silent. In that moment, he could hear the families all around them. The family across the street was sitting down to their meager dinner, while a man berated his wife a few more houses down. A baby wailed somewhere close by and a mother, her voice fretful, tried to calm the infant.
Finally, Greta spoke, her voice gentle. “Maybe it’s time you let her go. You’re alone, always alone. But you don’t have to be.”
Like he chose to feel this way. But even as that thought rolled through his head, he pushed it aside. In a way, he realized he did. Even if he could find a way to let Becky go, he wouldn’t. The very thought of it felt like betrayal. It wasn’t just guilt. In his mind, she was still there. How could he ever let her go when she still felt so real to him? So very much alive? He half-expected to turn and see her.
“Yes,” he murmured. “I do.”
Perhaps it was his penance. Regardless, there was no way he could let his woman go. She was still too alive inside him.
So alive, that even looking at another woman made him feel as though he’d broken the most sacred of trusts.
“I spoke with one of the day nurses,” Greta said, settling with him not even an hour later. He passed her some jerky left from a deer he’d shot and killed a week earlier.
She eyed it with disdain before taking a bite and washing it down with the beer she’d carried over from the bar.
“A soldier was brought in—collapsed. Has pneumonia. Stable and he’s not going to die. Has all his parts in working order.”
Finn lifted a brow.
She tapped a finger against the table, eyeing him. “An able-bodied, relatively healthy young man with a condition that will likely pass. That is what our killer is looking for. We need to watch the infirmary tonight.”
Finn set his jaw.
Then he nodded.
They didn’t get to pick and choose how they did their job. If they were lucky, this mystery would be easily solved and he could go back to ignoring the pretty blonde with pale eyes and freckled skin.
They finished up in short order and made their way to the infirmary under cover of night.
Most of the small village was already tucked away for the day, worn thin and ready for their rest. More than a few soldiers walked the streets and both Finn and Greta turned a blind eye when they came across one who had a woman pressed up against the wall. They were well out of sight and although they were making a great deal of noise, the woman was clearly enjoying herself.
Everybody should have a break away from this, after all…if they could find it.
Finn couldn’t find it.
It was too soon that he found himself looking through the window in the back, while Greta settled herself on the roof. He was always left on the ground, but it made sense. He could do plenty of damage from a distance with his pistols and he had a close-up view of the nurse sitting at her station, her pretty blonde hair tucked up neat.
Looking at Ada, and all those pretty freckles on her neck—
Stop it.
He could punch himself in the head for every thought he had about her and it wouldn’t be enough to assuage the guilt.
Becky’s face swam through his mind and that cooled the need to go to the young nurse, kiss that freckled neck. Setting his jaw, he ground his teeth together and started to scan the interior. He could get inside quietly, but if she turned—
Her head lifted.
He pulled back just as she glanced over her shoulder, her gaze unerringly seeking out the spot where he’d just been.
As though she’d sensed him.
She pushed the chair back and his skin pricked in warning as she started toward the back door. He started to pull back into the shadows, but then he stopped.
A whisper of evil slid down his spine.
Damnation.
Demon. Coming in fast.
He had to get in there and get her out. He took off at a run.
Ada spun around and he gaped as she lunged for her desk. She grabbed a bag from the floor, jerked it up. In the time it took him to reach the door, she’d opened it and pulled out a gun.
Her head whipped toward him and she froze, her weapon hand falling slack to her side.
Her mouth parted, as though she’d say something, but then they both turned as a sound slithered through the air. It was faint, so faint she shouldn’t have heard it. How did she?
In his limited German, he managed to tell her to leave.
Ada arched a brow. “I speak English. No. I’m not leaving.” Then she moved off into the darkened infirmary. “They just keep coming. This will never end…”
Shock rippled down his spine as she placed her back along a wall, and then peered down the hall.
They…
There were several of them, their evil a toxic breath along his skin. And they were coming closer.
He didn’t waste but a moment.
There was really only one thing he could do.
He was here to protect mortals and she was mortal.
Grabbing her, he rushed the back door, a hand clamped over her mouth to silence her screams.
They were outside in seconds and he had her in the shadows, on the ground.
She was up swinging and he caught her wrist, that frail wrist, her skin dry, rough…and he didn’t care. He wanted her naked and under him and the guilt was eating him alive, both for that desire and for what he had to do. “You can’t do this,” he said, his voice grim. “You don’t know what is in there.”
“I do,” Ada spat at him. “They are demons and my job is to kill them and protect my patients.”
He gaped, but only for a second.
“No. My job is to protect them. You heal them. And you’ll continue to do it.” After she woke up.
He swung out a fist, clipping her on the jaw. He caught her before she hit the ground.
She’d wake in a bit, but by then, he and Greta would be done.
His partner was already in there, fighting in a fury, from what he could hear. This wasn’t a fight for mortals, even if she did somehow understand what she was fighting.
I was dreaming.
I knew it and struggled to break free. It was useless, but I tried anyway.
Right up until he was there.
Even as I lay dying in his arms, I felt whole.
All because he was there.
He stared at me, eyes stark and I wanted so badly to reach up, touch his face.
You… I wanted to tell him something, but I couldn’t.
And then the dream began to fade. My throat ached. I wanted to reach for him, pull him to me, hold tight. Then he couldn’t disappear. But some part of me knew this wasn’t real. It was a dream. Just a dream. Eyes like copper. Hair that tumbled far too long down to his shoulders, curled into his eyes.
My hands itched to push his hair back,
itched to pull him closer.
You…
Some part of my heart sighed. How many lifetimes?
Tommy…
Tears pricked my eyelids now. I feared opening them. I’d seen him—
No.
I swallowed the knot in my throat.
I hadn’t.
I was remembering the other times. I swallowed and could almost taste the blood in my throat. I thought maybe that had been my last life, but I wasn’t sure.
They all ran together, especially now, with my head a hazed, clouded mess. The fog began to clear as the dream grew more insubstantial. Waking was a bitch, especially now, when the memory of him was so close, it was like I could reach out, pull him to me.
But he wasn’t here.
And my head was killing me.
Also, I had no idea where I was.
That right there had me tensing up.
“If you’re awake, you might as well open your eyes. This won’t end until we solve the puzzle of you.”
That voice—
I bolted upright, sweeping my hand out for the knife I slept with, only to realize how stupid—
Except it was there.
Under my pillow.
The pillow, I realized, that wasn’t mine.
Blinking, I studied the pillowcase—a shade of blood red—before lifting my head to stare at the man in front of me.
He was just as inhuman now as he had been the last time. Silver-white hair, silver eyes, white clothes. As perfect as if he’d been cut from crystal by a master—and there was no emotion on that hard face.
Nervous, I looked around. Instinctively, my lip curled. We looked like we’d fallen into an art deco nightmare. A very posh one, but it still made my eyeballs gyrate and vibrate inside my skull. Red walls, set with black and white geometric prints. The floor was white. The furniture was black. Everything was vivid and harsh…
Including him.
That man moved a few steps closer to me. He wasn’t quite as painful to look at as everything else in the room so I focused on him. Much easier, I decided, than the prints on that wall. They made my eyes feel like they’d bleed out of their sockets if I stared too long.
Furious Fire: Grimm's Circle, Book 8 Page 7