Furious Fire: Grimm's Circle, Book 8 (7 page)

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.

Rising from the bed, I looked around, searching for some clue as to where I was. Oddly enough, this interior decorating nightmare didn’t seem to be
his
idea of comfortable digs. A glance out the window told me one thing—we were still in St. Louis. I’d know that skyline anywhere. Downtown, even. And pretty high up.

Hotel, maybe? I flicked another glance around, decided that was entirely likely. The suite of rooms was pretty large but it didn’t seem to be a condo.

The knife’s grip was sweaty in my palm and my heart was racing harder than I could ever recall. I’d faced some scary shit. It was stupid that this man would terrify me like this.

“Who are you?” I asked. I hated to hear my voice shaking like that. But I couldn’t stop it.

“Nobody you’d know.” He stood, arms crossed over his chest, head cocked.

“That’s why I am
asking
,” I snapped, even though some part of me was whispering “be nice to the crazy man who can kill you with a blink.”

And I had to wonder if maybe that wasn’t a fanciful thought. He all but burned with power. Maybe he really
could
kill me with a blink.

“You’re a puzzle,” he said, his voice soft.

“No. I’m an open book.” I gave him a dazzling smile even as I surreptitiously looked around. I was wearing most of my clothes. Not my boots, though, and half my weapons were missing, I could tell just by a few shifts of my body.

I needed those weapons, particularly the guns.

“An open book.” His words were flat, but the corner of his mouth quirked up. “Perhaps one that was written in ancient Sanskrit. How many lives have you lived?”

That was the
last
thing I expected to hear.

Dumb, I stared at him.

My mouth went dry. I cleared my throat, had to do it twice before I managed to speak. I didn’t
quite
manage the
are you out of your mind
tone I’d been shooting for, either. “How many
lives
?” I lifted a brow, thankful that at least my
facial
expressions would cooperate even if my voice wouldn’t. “Did you crack your head or something? I’m pretty sure we only get one trip on this crazy ride, man.”

“The lucky ones, yes.” His tone was bored. “And you’re lying.”

Without looking away from his face, I gauged the distance between him and the door. Could I make it? I really didn’t know. But I’d damn well—

“You won’t make it. If by some miracle you’d reached the door, I’d simply stop you from moving, from opening it. It won’t be hard. Now, why don’t you answer my questions? It will go much easier if you do.”

That did it.

I lunged. I was fast. People never, ever believed how fast I was—it hadn’t occurred to me how odd it was until I saw how
slow
everybody else seemed to be.

I’d cleared three quarters of the distance between the bed and the door even before my brain processed my movement. Victory was a jubilant song in my head.

And then—just like that, my body froze.

Literally.

It froze.

I couldn’t move.

I barely managed to breathe.

There was a sigh behind me and then, wheeling my eyes around, I saw his shadow fall across the floor as he moved to stand between me and the door. “Woman, I told you it would go much easier if you would just answer my questions.”

He stood in front of me now, so close.
Too
close.

Terror was a slithering, whispering hiss inside and then that odd force that kept me captive disappeared. I fell back so abruptly, I ended up on my ass, scrabbling away from him like a crab.

“What are you?”

He wasn’t one of them.

That much I knew.

He wasn’t one of them.

But somehow, that didn’t reassure me.

“How many lives have you lived?” he asked again, ignoring my question.

I had to make a choice, I realized. I could tell him what he wanted to know and hope for the best. Or refuse…and prepare for the worst.

Either way, I had a feeling it would be a good idea to just buckle down and get ready for the shit to hit the fan.

A fist grabbed me by the throat. I kind of wanted to sob.

Because I hadn’t found
him
yet.

It wasn’t supposed to end, not now. Not until I saw him.

But that wouldn’t matter to the man in front of me.

Slowly, I rose to my feet. No matter what happened next, I wasn’t going to stay on my tail, cowering like a terrified animal. Even if I
did
feel like one. I backed away, placing myself near the window. The coolness reached out, kissing my skin through my shirt, chilling me even more as I stared into alien, unreachable eyes.

Unable to avoid it, I answered, giving him the secret that nobody else had ever been told.

“As far as I know, this is my fifth…or maybe the sixth.”

He lifted a brow.

I shrugged and looked out the window. “There was another life—one I don’t remember. I think it was the first. The first time I died. But I don’t remember anything from it.”

It wasn’t really a lie.

I had bare fragments of memories of that life, echoes of dreams. And his name. “Why do you think you keep coming back?”

“If I could figure out the answer to that, I’d fix whatever the problem is so I could get off this crazy train,” I murmured. Abruptly, I was exhausted. I’d estimated that I’d lived less than a hundred years, all combined…except for that first life I couldn’t quite grasp. And in that moment, I felt the age of every one of those years. Never mind the fact that I was, in actuality, only twenty-six.

Dropping down on the wide lip of the windowsill, I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling a cold that cut me to the bone.

Turning my head, I met the man’s silver eyes.

“So. How do my nine lives concern you?”

She had old eyes. He’d known mortals who’d lived more than a century who didn’t carry the age this woman did.

Instead of answering her question, he asked another of his own.

“What do you remember of each life?”

She made a frustrated sound and he almost smiled. The more irritated she became, the less fear she felt. So he would irritate her. A lot. He didn’t like scaring people. It hadn’t always bothered him. Now, though, he realized he could hardly stomach it.

Mandy, he suspected, Mandy and her too-mortal ways were wearing on him.

Or maybe he was just too old for all this rot.

“You haven’t answered a single one of my questions.”

Inclining his head, he replied, “It seems that you’re not in a position to make demands, mortal.”

Her lids flickered.

Even though she tried to control the terror she felt, she sucked in a breath. He heard the rush of oxygen into her lungs and he fought the urge to swear a bloody blue streak.

“Mortal,” she said, the word a tight whisper. “The way you say it, I have to wonder what that makes
you
.”

“At the moment, your jailer.” Then he gestured to the door, injecting enough arrogance into his voice that he thought it just might make her grit her teeth. “Unless you’d rather go for the door again.”

“You are an asshole,” she said. It was spoken in such a calm voice she might have been discussing the weather.

There she was…back to anger.

“I’ve been called that more times than you can possibly imagine.”

She bared her teeth in a grim mockery of a smile. Then she folded her arms over her chest. “If I answer that question, you answer one of mine.”

“A bargain?” He narrowed his eyes. “What makes you think I can’t force the information from you?”

“If that was how you rolled, you would have already
done
it,” she pointed out.

“How I roll?” Will chuckled. The sound was rusty. He imagined it would be for decades, centuries. It wasn’t until Mandy forced life back on him that he’d even remembered what humor felt like. Now he did—it was as painful a blade as caring, at times. But he couldn’t fight that keen edge of amusement as he studied her.

He really, really didn’t want to kill her.

But he wouldn’t be able to decide anything if she didn’t answer his question.

“Very well. One question…but I am far from done with the questions I have for you. You
will
answer them. If you ever want to leave.”

She paled. But nodded.

Her answer, when it came, explained her courage, that almost unending well of it.

Baldly, and without flinching, she met his gaze and said softly, “I remember dying. The clearest, and the oldest memories I have are from how I’ve died. The past two lives are the clearest, but there are vague memories of the one before that as well.”

“One more question.”

“Hey!”

“One more,” he snapped, moving to her. Mind whirling from what she’d said, he didn’t think to check his speed and it wasn’t until he was two inches from her, her eyes wide with shock that he realized what he’d done.

“What?” she whispered, the words thin.

“How old were you when these memories first began to come?”

She looked away then, but not before he saw the misery in her eyes. “Always,” she murmured. “I’ve always known.”

His eyes glowed now.

That was some freaky shit there.

He stood there, staring at me and those silver eyes of his glowed as if somebody had flicked on some kind of switch inside his skull.

Maybe he’s a robot
.