Furious Fire: Grimm's Circle, Book 8 (5 page)

That way. I turned to the left and started moving. Through the crowds, elbowing my way through, ignoring the irritated comments and some of the outright hostility.

Never mind me. I’m just trying to make this world safer. Of course, none of you even know what I’m doing…
I’m too young to be so cynical. In my defense, I wouldn’t live to see thirty, so I might as well be as bitchy as I wanted to be now.

Something brushed the edges of my consciousness and I wheeled to the right, down an alley. Oh, lovely. An alley.

Instinct screamed and I contorted my body into an almost impossible position, avoiding the bar that came at me. Drawing the blade, I grinned at him as I moved out of his reach. “Hi.” I wagged the knife at him in greeting. “You left before I could introduce myself. I wanted to buy you a drink.”

Blue eyes glowed at me—they
glowed
. Yeah, there was a demon in there, all right. I braced myself for the intense, sexual assault that would come if he was one of the sex demons. But there was none of that—I hadn’t thought there would be. He had too much…sense of self to be the other kind I’m used to dealing with. Those were awful too. They ate some of their victims. As in
ate
them. I’d seen it, and when I managed to kill the one who tried to make me into its midnight snack, I’d hauled myself away and puked my guts out.

The one in front of me could pass for human if he dimmed the glow of his eyes.

“You…” He said, his voice slow and thoughtful, almost polite. He straightened from his crouch and studied me. “Are not one of them.”

The words caught me off guard but I didn’t let him see that. “One of who?” With a cheeky smile, I said, “If you mean one of your snacks, you’re right about that.”

“Snacks. Oh, you would be if I wanted. But you’re too…old for me. I’ll just kill you and be done with it.”

Too old?
For a split second, my feminine vanity tried to be injured. Twenty-six wasn’t
old
.

But then common sense intervened. Yeah. I had other things to worry about. Living, for one.

“Well, if it’s that easy, then do it already.” I shifted my body, giving him the narrowest target possible. It wasn’t just a fighting technique. It let me shield my hand so I could reach under my jacket. After all, only an idiot would take on somebody like him with a
knife
.

He eyed the blade, head cocked. “You look like you know how to use that.”

“Do I? Why don’t you find out?”

Will was tempted to let the orin kill her. He’d already checked her over. Some mortals were born with a sort of inner defense that protected them from psychic attacks—and invasion. The orin wouldn’t be able to push inside her. He’d only be allowed in at her invitation and a woman who’d just chased after a demon wasn’t going to invite one inside.

This
was
the woman he’d been seeking.

He was positive of it.

He’d sensed the demon earlier, well aware the thing had felt him as well, but he hadn’t worried overmuch. Sadly, St. Louis had been a hotbed for it for centuries. When the orin had taken off, he’d made a mental note of its presence so he could track the thing…after.

But then he’d sensed something else.

He hadn’t realized what at first.

Just a different sort of mortal.

Some were born different. Like Mandy, with her strange ability to heal. Thomas Renn, with his gift for animals. And now this woman.

She
sensed
demons. It was unique enough that Will would have spent months studying her, wondering, considering the idea that she might be meant for them, if it wasn’t for one thing.

He’d recognized her soul the moment he caught a good glimpse of her.

This was Finn’s Rebecca and she was doomed to die.

Doomed to die at Finn’s hand, or at his side, and adding to the guilt the man already carried with him.

So he stood and watched, wondering which road to take.

Did he let her die the warrior’s death she’d likely prefer?

Or did he handle it himself?

He was ready to end it so he didn’t have to brood any longer when she shifted her position and offered yet another mocking challenge to the orin. He wasn’t focused on her words, though.

It was her hand—her
empty
hand that he saw.

In less than a second, he saw it playing out in his mind’s eye, one of his many, irritating gifts.

And only seconds later, it played out in reality.

She had the gun up and leveled, aiming even as the orin lunged.

The bullet caught him between the eyes.

Will felt the demon’s shock at the body’s death, felt its essence rip free and spin toward her.

It slammed into the protection she’d been born with, one of those puzzles he’d never been able to figure out.

That was when Will emerged from the shadows, eyeing the twining, vaporous form that was the orin’s form without a host. “You can’t enter her,” he said, smiling.

She spun to face him, gun still lifted.

If only that would work. He knew. He’d tried.

But it wouldn’t, so instead of concerning himself with it, he lifted a hand and watched as the gate opened in the ground right below the orin. “Go on.”

No, the demon couldn’t enter this woman, but there were any number of bodies around. Will wasn’t about to let this thing roam around until it found a host.

It screeched, a sound not heard on the mortal plain.

As it faded, the gate closed. And he looked up at the woman in front of him.

The woman he now had to kill.

Chapter Four

Loch Lomond

“You better bump up that body count, Will.”

It had been eighteen hours since Will had unceremoniously left him in the middle of the road, just outside of Drymens. The little village wasn’t far from Loch Lomond and Buchanan Castle.

Finn had done what seemed wisest at the time—he’d found a B&B and since it was still off-season, they’d had a room they were happy to offer him. They seemed rather bemused at his lack of a car, but they didn’t ask questions.

He’d been certain the friendly couple would chat about it—and he was right, he heard them talking after he’d locked himself inside his little suite of rooms.

The white house with the bright red trim was quiet and he’d fallen facedown on the mattress with one idea in mind.

Sleep.

He didn’t
have
to have it, but he preferred to get it. For a Grimm, he was still young and it wore on him if he went too long without rest. Besides, in his dreams, sometimes he was lucky—sometimes he found Becky.

He hadn’t last night.

He’d relived that awful night from more than seven decades past—a young woman’s blood spilling hot on his hands while she stared at him with eyes that made him feel like he should know her.

He woke up even hearing her voice in his ears.

You…

Which led to his current predicament. He’d left a note for his hosts, explaining he didn’t need breakfast, but if the room was available, he’d like to rent it indefinitely.

If he knew anything about innkeepers, that word would make their blood sing.

Indefinitely
. Or at least until they booked up for the tourist season.

And now he was out here, pacing the shores of Loch Lomond and trying to pinpoint the location of that stink. It was death—he’d know it anywhere and it hung in the air like fog, clinging to his nasal passages, lining his throat.

The stench would have been enough to make Finn sick, if he hadn’t gotten over that sort of thing a lifetime ago—no, wait. He did the mental calculation. A couple of lifetimes ago. He’d long since inured himself to the way blood and broken flesh and death created a reeking miasma that all but congealed and clung to the inside of the nasal passages, lining the throat until it seemed you’d never be free of it.

It couldn’t make him sick anymore.

But he was damn tired of it.

Even as much death as he’d seen in his life, there was so much of it in the air it made him even more tired than he already was.

He should have grabbed a couple of bottles of booze to help get him through this.

If he hit the scotch hard enough and fast enough, it might take the edge off. For a few minutes. Besides, he liked how it tasted.

A bitter smirk twisted his lips, recalling how many times he’d heard that bit of shit over his years. But in his case, it was true enough. Liked the burn of it, even liked the memory of the bliss he’d gotten back when he’d been alive and able to lose himself in the fog of alcohol.

He was willing to try it if it helped navigate the despair that clung like a fog, wisping along the ground. He practically expected to see it morph into a demon all on its own, there was that much misery in the air.

That much bad energy could probably give way to some sort of sentient being if everything lined up right—or wrong, depending on how you looked at it.

From Finn’s point of view, it could go either way. He didn’t really
want
to see some nasty get conjured out of nothing all because there was enough bad mojo. But on the flip side, if there
was
some kind of fugly monster he had to deal with, it would keep his hands busy, his head occupied and he wouldn’t have to think for a while. Better still if he ended up in a world of hurt, because
that
would keep him from thinking clear even for a while after.

Even better if something did him enough damage to knock him senseless. If he had to do a few months in stasis, then he’d get a few months of mindlessness.

Not that any of that was going to happen. There was
nothing
here, just that lingering malevolence, like a living, breathing entity.

He could almost feel it watching him.

No bodies.

No blood.

He hadn’t seen anybody since he’d left the little village before dawn, and that had been hours ago. He’d passed several houses and all of them had that abandoned air, and underlying had been that hint of misery. Of death and pain. Of violence that lingered in the air like blood splatter on a white wall.

People had been here—had died here. He’d left the last house behind a few miles back, moving along the shore of the loch, moving closer and closer to…what…he didn’t know.

Whatever had happened, whatever
was
happening was enough to stain this place. Might be why it all seemed abandoned for miles around. He didn’t know, not yet. But he would. Because something was definitely wrong, and it involved death.

He knew it as well as he knew the shape of his hand, the weight of the twin Colts he wore in a manner nearly identical to how he’d worn them when he’d died shortly before the American Civil War.

Right now, he carried one of those Colts in his hand. They were a matched set, well over a century old and he’d sooner pull out his eyeteeth, using a pair of tweezers, than give up either of them. It was surely a sign of something that he took more than a little comfort in the way a Colt felt in his hand. It wasn’t even that he needed the gun to kill anything. He could kill with fire, with a knife, with his hands—and had.

The weapon was just…familiar. The only thing left of a life that was no longer his.

The wind moaned through the trees and the sound was enough to send a shiver down his spine.

Tough son of a bitch you are,
he thought sourly.
Trembling at the sound of the wind
.

He left that stretch of beach, his gaze shifting to one of the shadowy islands, barely visible in the darkness.

There. Whatever he needed to find, it was out there.

That island was where he found the first sign of life. Not people, again—and no bodies, either.

Crouching at the remains of a fire, he tried to ignore the wind that cut through him like a blade. It might not be possible for him to freeze to death, but he hated the cold.

“I kind of hate you, Will.” He eyed the remains of the fire. Using a stick, he scraped away the sticks, the twigs, the ash. Nothing to be found.

Inside the barrier of the trees, set back some distances from the shore, he paced, eyes on the ground.

The scent of blood was cloying. Fresh blood. But he saw…

“What is this?” he mused.

Crouching down, he studied the white wrapping on the ground in front of him. He already knew what was in it. Bread. Meat. Mustard. His sense of smell was far sharper than what he thought was really needed. And because of that sense of smell, he knew, even before he unwrapped the sandwich, he’d find something odd.

It was fresh. Made within a day or so.

The weather here was still cool, hovering in the thirties or forties, but if the sandwich had been more than a day or two old, the lettuce on it wouldn’t look particularly appetizing and the bread would be a soggy mess.

Odder still was the fact that none of the game on this island had grabbed it. Food was food, after all.

But even as he said it, he found himself rising and turning, head cocked, ears listening. He closed his eyes to drown out everything else.

Nothing
—

His eyes flew open and he started to jog around the island, eyes alert for any sign that he’d disturbed something. Anything.

It took him thirty minutes to make a rough circle of the entire island and then bisect it. It wasn’t a big stretch of land. But he’d seen enough as he circled around to know there should be
some
sort of wildlife here. Even if it was just a bunch of wild rabbits.

But there was
nothing
.

Just the remains of the fire…and a sandwich. Strangest of all was how little sign there was of the person who’d dropped it. He couldn’t see any sign of where they’d come ashore, and no sign of how they’d left.

“Okay, Will. You win this round,” he muttered.

His voice echoed in the silence and he almost wished he hadn’t said anything at all.

Moving at a slower pace, he started to hunt, cutting the island up into cross-sections. He’d go over it with a fine-toothed comb if he had to. There had to be a sign, somewhere, somehow.

The sign, when he found it, wasn’t the one he’d wanted to find.

Down the slightest of inclines, around a rocky outcropping, he found a circle of sleeping bags and a small boat, the kind you’d row in. It would seat four people.

And there were four sleeping bags.

Along with those sleeping bags, he found a staple of dry goods, canned foods, water. The sort of supplies people would put in if they planned to hide out awhile.

He crouched down and he breathed in.

His gut was already roiling and he knew, even before his mind started to process it.

Demon.

Sweat.

The fire inside his veins started to burn as he caught the final scent.

Sex.

Quebec, 1912

“Well. This is different…”

Finn ignored the man at his side, listening instead to the conversation in the house across the street.

Not that it was much of a conversation.

There had been a scream, several minutes of grunts, groans…

Obvious sounds of struggle. That, on top of the fact there were humans inside, it meant they didn’t have an easy night ahead of them. He’d hoped to go in, kill everything in sight, then leave.

A hand touched his arm and he looked over at Rip. The man jerked his head, pointed to his chest, then jerked his head at the roof, then gestured toward the alley.

As a plan, it was simple enough. Rip would go in that way and Finn would come in from another. They needed to see what they were dealing with and they needed to get as many mortals out as they could before the incubae in there called the rest of their friends home. Incubae and succubae were like bees, the majority of them just drones, guided by the strongest—a king or queen. They operated in a hivelike state, sometimes in groups as small as four, sometimes as large as twenty.

This one, they estimated at fourteen.

Rip and Finn planned to pick off the stronger ones, then wait for the others to come rushing back so they could deal with them as well.

One thing about the demons who dealt in sex—they were predictable. Take out the leader and it was like they had no control. They always followed that instinct and they found themselves pulled back to wherever it had happened.

Before they separated, Rip held up a hand with three fingers extended. Three minutes. Then he’d see how many he could save.

He spent the first two minutes and twenty seconds checking his Colts, the bullets, even though he already knew everything was in perfect working condition. He eyed the door in front of him, felt it as his heart rate started to slow, his vision sharpening down, clarifying.

Ten seconds to go—

There was a scream, cut short. And then, a freezing, chilling sensation he knew all too well.

Son of a bitch.

One of demonic, freed, left to search for a body and there were plenty of them inside.

Finn opened the door and stepped into a dark, dark maw.

His eyes needed no time to adjust and they instantly locked on the woman, crouched, absurdly, behind a piano.

There was a gun in her hand. Finn narrowed his eyes, recognizing the make immediately. A Colt M1877, just like the two he carried and the black woman held it with confidence.

In the span of five seconds, he noticed several things.

She had an exquisite beauty to her features, and a mouth made for all things carnal.

She had blood on her face.

And as the demon edged closer to her, she eased soundlessly away, almost like she knew he was coming.

Finn studied him in the few seconds he had. Eyes too aware, too focused. The king—this hive’s particular leader. This might not be that hard after all. If they could do this without any humans getting killed.

“That was foolish, girl,” the incubae said, his voice silky. “All you did was give him a chance to find a new home. You should have left him to bleed, then he’d be helpless a few more minutes. But now…”

Finn heard the noise coming from the far side of the room. A split second later, he heard something else—a crack, then Rip’s voice, caustic and sharp. “Oh, don’t worry, old man. I took care of that…”

A man’s body was flung from the depths of the shadows and the demon snarled.

But instead of lunging for Rip, or fleeing, the king turned and caught the piano, wresting it from the floor and hurling it across the room. It came close enough to the shadowy alcove where Finn waited that he felt the wind of its passage against his skin.

“One more move, Grimm…”

His words ended on a painful broken snarl. “You…little…cunt…”

Finn emerged from the shadows in time to see the knife flash.

Rip lunged forward just as Finn did, but neither of them could pull her back in time. Blood pulsed in a heavy flow down her neck and she stumbled, almost fell. Finn caught her in his arms.

Once more, too late.

He clamped his hand over the flow as Rip snapped the demon’s spine, ensuring he would live for a while yet. Long enough for Rip to make sure none of the mortals here could serve as a new host.

“Finn…” Rip’s voice trailed off.

He barely heard the man, staring down at the woman he held, her blood spilling out of her with every passing second.

“Hush,” Finn said as she struggled to talk.

“American,” she said, the words garbled and liquid. Broken.

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes. “…know…what…they…” the words trailed off, more blood gushing from the wound, even as he tried to stem the flow.

“She wants to know if you know what they are,” Rip said, his voice grim.