The Grimm Files Collection Boxed Set

by Selene Charles

  I frowned, planting my hands on his chest. “Maddox,” I hissed, “what’s the matter? What are you hiding?”

  Gasping, breathing so heavily and quickly that I was afraid he’d make himself faint, he began chipping away at the peeling paint upon his chest.

  “What are you— ”

  My words died as I saw, even in the dim lighting of the starry transdimensional tunnel, that Maddox had been wounded more than I’d known. The gold paint had created an illusion of wholeness, but without it on him, I could see the angry, red, and swollen tissue around a small but clearly inflamed vertical tear.

  “What is this?” I hissed, locking eyes with him.

  He snarled, but his face was twisted up into a mask of barely checked pain. “As I fought with Hook, he reached out and nicked me. I thought nothing of it at first. But damn,” he seethed, dropping his head back against the tunnel and breathing heavily, palm covering his wound as he squeezed tight, as though applying pressure to try to alleviate the pain.

  I swallowed hard, and my stomach twisted and dove in on myself. I’d fought four of those abominations, and I’d seen a viscous fluid leaking off the clawed tips of one of them. Most would claim that the thick clear fluid had no scent or odor, but I was a creature of the deep and had instantly scented the oh so slight as to be nearly undetectable tang of a stonefish’s venom.

  “Hatter,” I whispered, “may I?” I tapped his palm. I needed to look at the wound, because if it was stonefish venom, I had to get it out, and I had to do it right now. There was no time to waste. The longer it stayed traveling through his veins, the worse off he’d be, until eventually, the venom would move straight to his heart and he’d be completely transformed from man to stone—forever.

  Snarling, he dropped his hand, and any hopes I’d had that I was wrong fled at the sight of his skin now turning a chalky gray right around the edges of the wound. He’d been stabbed in the chest, meaning the venom would reach his heart far more quickly than usual.

  We had medical witches back at Grimm who were fully capable of reversing the poisoning. This kind of venom took seconds, at most minutes, before the damage was so great that it was irreversible. But those precious moments had been wasted with me sitting on my arse, having the mother of all freak-outs. And I was furious with myself for losing my head as I had. Because I was shite at composing my fear, I lashed out.

  “Godsdammit, Hatter,” I snarled, my panic turning to rage, as it so often did with me. “You could have told me this happened. Godsdammit!”

  He was breathing heavily, his lungs rattling with each inhalation. “I… I can fix this. I just need to burn…” His words hitched. “Burn it out of me.”

  My nostrils flared as I smelled the internal ossification process already starting. The chalky scent of calcium punched me in the nose. I covered his wound with my hand, adding some pressure.

  He rose up on his toes, his face blanching, then he slunk down the tunnel, landing flat on his arse, his strength leaving him instantly. “Elle,” he croaked. His skin was tacky with sweat, and the paint was rolling off him, making him look as though he bled gold. “I need to— ”

  I heard it. The goodbye. I’d suffered it once before, and like hells would I live through another one. I shook my head. “No. You hear me, you stupid bastard. Don’t you dare say anything else.”

  “Elle,” he murmured, eyelids slipping shut, “I’m not… not who you think— ”

  His neck was dark gray, and bulging bruised veins stood out in stark relief upon it. The venom was moving so bloody fast. I sank to my knees in front of him, yanked his chin into my hands, and physically opened his eyelids. The whites were pricked through with busted capillaries. Panic was a ravenous consuming beast in my head.

  “I don’t give a rat’s arse if you’re the bloody queen’s consort. You’re my partner,” I hissed. Why did the dying always feel the need to confess their sins? “You have to tell me yes, Maddox, you hear me. Tell me yes. Tell me to heal you. Because this is going to hurt like a son of a bitch and make you wish you’d never been born. So say yes. Tell me to make this better. Tell me I can. Tell me!”

  What I was about to do was highly illegal. I was essentially going to commit a crime, using the force of my siren’s powers against him. And considering that BS had forbidden me from ever tapping into a soul again with penalty of death if I should be found out, well… it could get me into a helluva pickle. But if I didn’t do it, he would die before we ever even set foot upon Grimm soil again.

  His body was a weight, his head heavy, as though the ghost had already left him. I shook my head. “Wake up! Say it, Maddox. Bloody say it! Say yes!”

  His lips were blue, and beneath my palm, I could feel his heart slowing. His skin was no longer supple and warm but stony and cold.

  I shook him violently. “Please don’t be dead too. Don’t be dead too,” I whimpered. “Oh please, Maddox, please.”

  Then there was a flicker, a slight flutter of his lashes, and I screamed, lifting up on my knees. “I’ll take it,” I hissed. “I’ll take it. This is going to hurt, but it’s the only way, you hear me. So don’t fight me. Whatever you do, don’t fight this.”

  There was no more time. I called the siren, called her in all her deadly glory to me. I burned with her darkness, her powers. My marking burned like flame upon my forehead, and I opened my mouth, singing a song, a deadly beautiful song, calling him back from the dead, stealing his soul right back from the Pied Piper himself.

  He began to twitch at first, then he began to scream. Then… he didn’t stop screaming, even as blood ran like a river from his ears, his nose, and his eyes. I was unraveling him, tearing him apart from the inside.

  And I gloried in the feel of that dark craving, the violence of severing soul from body. I drew on the string of his light, wrapping it tighter and tighter around itself, forming a ball of brilliant gold.

  I was aware that it wasn’t normal, the gold. Souls were blue. Human souls weren’t the color of the gods. But I didn’t stop to ponder or to wonder. Because there was no time.

  And as I drew on the ball, I felt the hunger rising. Sirens consumed not only the bodies of their victims but their souls too. I’d once been brimming over with hundreds of them, maybe even thousands.

  Our souls were so small, so pitiful as to be nearly nonexistent. We ate souls because that was how we felt most. That was how we learned, how we knew what joy, desire, and want were. We consumed souls because when we did, we learned how to live.

  My mouth watered even as Hatter roared and his body began to smoke, to churn with his powers. But he wasn’t fighting me. I knew what he could do, the nova of raging fire he could become. Which meant he was still aware, still in there.

  I swallowed and closed my eyes, shuddering and trembling as I fought a need I’d not felt in ages. I was so empty inside, almost always.

  Just a taste, a tiny brush of his soul against my dried lips would be enough to set me to rights, would take off the edge that I fought on a nearly daily basis. The hum of exquisite and great power in my hands was so damned tempting.

  I continued to sing until the last bit of his light slid into my palm, and it was as if I held the sun in my hands, the fiery heat so intense, so mesmerizing. Like liquid gold, it swirled and danced.

  Hatter was silent, panting, and I could feel the burn of his eyes upon me as he studied me, wondering.

  I knew what I looked like, kneeling over him, his powerful soul trapped in my palm, my marking and eyes aglow with my power, my hair swirling like electrified and charmed snakes. I looked like death, like beautiful death.

  I had his soul, and he couldn’t stop me if I wished to consume it. I’d never tasted of soul so powerful as his. Even without touching my tongue to it, I felt the immense pressure of it like a ten-ton weight in my hand. I wet my lips, throat dry and aching for that first sinfully velvet drop of ambrosia.

  I drew a clawed finger down its brilliant warmth, hissing at the enormous strength of
its power flexing against me. I looked down at Hatter’s face. His eyes were open, shining with question and pain. So damned trusting. I growled, trying to fight instinct and desire that demanded I give in, that I stop denying myself the pleasure I was born to consume.

  My fangs had slid down. All I would need to do was lean over and prick his neck with them. I could end his suffering, his misery. It would be a mercy. Then with no form to hold him, I could eat his soul. He wouldn’t need it anymore.

  I blinked, and he nodded and closed his eyes, exhaustion clearly stamped on every line of his forehead. I could feel the transdimensional tunnel shuddering. We were close to Grimm.

  I was better than the monster inside of me. I had fought her for so long, denied myself for so long, that if I gave in now, if I even took a drop of his soul upon my tongue, I would unleash from its cage a beast I could never again push back in.

  With a heavy breath, I hissed, then forming my left hand into a fist, I punched into his chest, tearing through flesh, muscle, bone. He screamed in agony, nearly flying off the ground as he shoved up on his shoulders and the balls of his feet.

  His fires began to sputter, began to flame on. Soon, he would be a nova I could no longer touch. Guarding his precious soul against the cage of my body, I grasped hold of his hearts and pulled.

  Hatter went slack beneath me, his screams no more.

  When I yanked his hearts out, I saw the stone of them. Three-quarters of one and the entirety of the other had already been turned. Another few seconds would have ended him.

  The tunnel quivered, the lights of the stars exploded around us, and we were dumped right onto the steps of Grimm PD—Hatter with a large gaping hole in his chest and me covered in his gore and blood and kneeling over him, with his soul orb hidden in one hand and his hearts in the other. And beside the both of us was the prostrate and still-silent body of the imposter Hook.

  Then someone screamed.

  CHAPTER 26

  DETECTIVE ELLE

  IT HAD BEEN two days since our return to Grimm.

  The rumors of what I’d done hadn’t been pretty. They ranged from me snapping and reverting to my deadly siren side—which was ironically true, in part, anyway—to my being a double mole for the Slasher Gang. There had been an office vote as to whether I’d snapped and needed to be put down. Apparently, I only still drew breath thanks to one vote. If I knew who it was, I’d be tempted to bring them cookies.

  Bo had debriefed me extensively. I’d been forced to go through a rigorous series of exercises and tests to ascertain whether I’d really done all of that to save Detective Maddox or whether I’d snapped.

  Even the bastard Crowley had made a brief appearance, glowering and growling at me, recommending that I be handed over to him to be “put down as feral.” But I’d cleared my tests. The witches had determined—and rightly so—that I’d not snapped and I was one hundred percent in my right frame of mind when I’d done it. In fact, the doctors of the Hawthorn Hills Hospital had said it was only my fast thinking that had saved Maddox’s life at all. Another minute with those hearts in his chest, and he’d have died. My only true joy in the last two days had been in watching Crowley being forced to return to BS empty handed.

  I’d hidden Hatter’s soul, though it hadn’t been easy. The temptation of shoving his soul inside of me had been great, but I knew I couldn’t push my luck. So I’d rummaged in one of Ich’s drawers for something suitable to contain it, and just as I knew I would, I had found just that something. A golden, and rather insignificant looking, locket. I’d given Ichabod detailed instructions on where to take it and where to place it. He’d never even asked me what was inside. He simply nodded and did as I’d asked of him.

  Hatter could live without a soul long enough to heal, and none would be the wiser that it had been taken from him. At all costs, I would protect my partner, and now that I’d had more days to think things through, I knew that he had a secret, a secret I wondered if even Bo knew about.

  But with the amount of poking and prodding he was getting, his golden soul would have been sussed out quickly, and if he wasn’t ready to share the truth of it with them, well then, by damn, I’d make sure no one ever learned of its existence. They would simply think him soulless, which was better than the alternative.

  I wasn’t certain what Maddox truly was, but I had a few ideas, all of which, if true, would be more than just shocking. They could even be extremely dangerous.

  “Next!” a chirpy voice cried out, yanking me out of my thoughts. I stepped to the front of the line. I didn’t want to leave Hatter’s side, so I was downstairs at the Witches’ Beans instead of getting my double squid-ink latte at Georgie’s.

  I looked at the bubblegum-pink-haired witch as she looked at me. She was short, just barely coming to my chin. Her eyes were bright green and her lips full and a strange shade of bluish purple. I thought that maybe she had some fae in her blood, but I wasn’t entirely certain, either.

  “What can I do you for?” she asked with a large and overly friendly grin that made me want to punch her in her pretty face.

  I always hated the really happy people. More often than not, it was little more than a façade meant to hide the darkest parts of them. Or maybe I was just a jaded cop who desperately needed caffeine. Probably the latter.

  I frowned, glancing over at the menu for the hundredth time. “Do you have any sea blends? At all? I’d even take pond scum if you had it,” I said with an edge of desperation.

  “Sea blends? Um, no,” she said with a nervous laugh then pointed at the strange menu full of weird symbols and characters. “We’ve just got the regular roasted beans, with some extra juice if you want it.”

  The café was crowded, and I could feel the tension of the couple in line behind me. Clearly, I was taking too long. If I didn’t need the caffeine, I would leave. I’d never had regular coffee before and doubted I’d enjoy it. And what in the hells was juice?

  I sighed, shoulders slumping. I hadn’t slept in two days. Well, technically three. Time was ticking with my case. I’d still heard nothing about imposter Hook, and Maddox was sleeping and hadn’t stirred even an inch, and I was basically at the end of my rope. I was hanging on by a thin thread of hope. Add to that that Bo wanted me to head over to Midas’s castle in about an hour’s time to see if maybe he’d learned anything in the days since the attack, and I was going fecking insane.

  “I’ve never been to a mundane café before,” I said slowly. “How does this work exactly? All I see on your sign is coffee, and”—I pointed to the sign, which was nothing more than emoting faces, some mad, sad, happy, etcetera—“what the hells is this? What juice are you talking about?”

  “What the hells, man,” the woman behind me hissed loud enough for me to hear. “Comes to a witches’ bar and doesn’t know what in the hells she’s doing. Hurry up!”

  I narrowed my eyes, tapping my fingers on the countertop, telling myself not to turn around and snap her head off her neck for being so bloody annoying.

  The petite cashier smirked. “The faces are just asking you what kind of mood you’d like.”

  “So what, it’s like a shot of emotion or something? You can do that?”

  “Goddammit, is she slow or something? How stupid do you have to be, like seriously?” that same bitch behind me hissed, then I heard the man beside her whisper, “Glenda, stop it. We only learned about this last week ourselves.”

  The cashier grinned with a twinkling gleam in her bright-green eyes. “Something like that. You seem a little stressed. Perhaps I can help.”

  I ground my front teeth together. I could hear the foot-tapping behind me growing louder.

  If I weren’t wearing my badge, I’d probably lose my head, but I was wearing a badge, and I was so damned tired. “Yeah, whatever. Just give me whatever.”

  “Coming right up.” Then she turned and in a loud voice that cut as clear as bells through the cacophony of noises, called out, “One large dark with a shot each of forbea
rance and qui vive !”

  My eyebrows rose on my forehead. What was that, and did I even want to know? It was a witch hospital, so it stood to reason there might be witches working in the café. Had they spiked the flavorings with their spells? I was starting to rethink my drink order. But I was also thinking I might kill something before the day was through if I didn’t get my drug.

  So I said nothing as I watched a skinny and pale-skinned brunette with long pigtails that fell past her breasts whip up my drink in what seemed like no time at all. Then she grabbed two clear bottles full of glittering colored liquid that made me think of dyed unicorn tears. One was golden. The other was a deep aquamarine blue. The pale barista squirted a drop of each into my cup, gave it a quick stir, added a lid, then tossed it over her shoulder to my cashier, who grabbed it without even turning around.

  I blinked. “What was…” I shook my head. “How?”

  She didn’t answer my question, but her eyes sparkled as she looked at me and said, “Here you go.”

  A little stunned by how odd that had been, I reached into my pocket, pulled out a wad of cash and tipped them both well. That had been the most entertainment I’d had in days, sadly.

  I grabbed hold of the cup and sniffed it tentatively. All I smelled was the bitter, slightly burnt scent of black gold.

  Needing the jolt of caffeine more than I mourned the loss of my delicious squid ink, I took a large swig. The texture was velvety and rich as it slid down the back of my throat, like warmed caramel with hints of bitter dark chocolate. I sighed as that wondrous elixir worked its magick on me.

  The shots of whatever had clearly been a gimmick. I couldn’t even taste them—though to be honest, I had no idea what forbearance or qui vive was supposed to taste like—but I could grudgingly admit that the coffee wasn’t as noxious as I’d expected it would be. I took another, bigger sip, loving the feel of it warming my belly, then I started to move.

  “Finally! Rude much?” the female behind me asked with a snort.