Grimm's End: Grimm's Circle, Book 9 Read online

  He would walk into hell for her. Hell’s not willing to let him back out.

  Grimm’s Circle, Book 9

  Years have passed since Will flung himself headlong into demon central. Everyone has told Mandy he’s lost to them, but she still won’t believe it. He was her heart and soul—still is—even if he never admitted they belonged together.

  When a friend is nearly torn through a rip between the worlds, Mandy gets the sign she’s hoped and prayed for. Her friend is thrust back through to safety by no other than Will himself.

  With all hell breaking loose on earth, only two Grimm can be spared for the mission to retrieve their leader—Mandy and the only other Grimm crazy enough to go with her.

  Will would forget the color of the sky before he’d forget the love of all his lives. But his time is done. It’s only a matter of which demon will finally destroy him.

  He never thought his final moments would be haunted by Mandy’s face. But is it a fitting punishment, or one last chance to atone for crimes he committed so long ago?

  Warning: This book contains too much angst, too many secrets, and two people who long to be together. It’s also the end of a long, fun ride. Thanks for taking it.

  Grimm’s End

  Shiloh Walker

  Dedication

  For my family…always. To Angie, for one rocking cover for the last book, and to the editors who’ve helped along the way.

  A special thanks to the readers who’ve taken the journey with me. Hope it was worth it.

  Author’s Note

  From the very beginning, I knew Will’s story wouldn’t be an easy one. I had a false start, a false stop and a lot of questions, but I had a rough idea of where it was all going, and why.

  Will’s story was one of betrayal and bad choices—his—and then one of penance. Again, his.

  Then there had to be acceptance. Again, his.

  All along, I knew his would be the last Grimm tale.

  Perhaps their fight doesn’t end here, but their stories will.

  Thanks for taking the ride with me.

  Prologue

  The red stain wouldn’t come off.

  He crouched by the water, scrubbing and scrubbing, but it wouldn’t come off. Emotion unlike anything he had ever known filled him, choking him as though ropes twisted around his throat. He had no name for what ailed him, because until that moment, he’d never experienced it.

  But it wouldn’t be the last time.

  Fear would become a regular companion.

  Fear, regret, grief…and loneliness.

  Chapter One

  “This isn’t right.”

  Strong hands curved over my shoulders, pulled me back against a body just as strong. Hair the color of virgin snow blew around us. Scotland. Always windy.

  “What’s not right?”

  His voice sent a shiver down my spine. Cool, remote, unaffected by anything and everything.

  It made me ache.

  Keeping my eyes focused on the castle, I gestured toward it with my head. “That. It hasn’t looked like that in probably a hundred years or more.”

  “Since the Jacobite Rebellion.” He slid those strong hands down, caught my hips and drew me back against him. “Are we here to discuss castle architecture, Mandy?”

  “What else is there to discuss?” I studied the stones and what looked to be varying designs. “They would have built on whenever they needed, right? It probably started out small, some sort of fort, being here on the coast.”

  “Yes.” He kissed my neck. “I don’t want to talk.”

  I wasn’t sure I did either.

  I just wasn’t sure I wanted this either. I was dreaming and when it ended, I’d be without him again. The pain would start anew.

  Still, when his hands slid up to cup my breasts, I wasn’t strong enough to push him away. When he gathered my hair and pushed it over my shoulder, baring my back, I didn’t resist. “Wings,” he said. “Only you would go and give yourself wings, Mandy.”

  “I did it before I died. I was being a smart-ass.”

  Hardly anybody knew about the intricate, detailed tattoo that ran from my shoulders down my arms and the length of my spine.

  His lips traced across the feathers inked into my skin. “You’re always a smart-ass.”

  “And you’re always a bastard. We’re a matched set.” I tried not to weep as I turned to face him.

  And he pretended not to notice the tears running down my face.

  He stripped me naked.

  I did the same to him.

  It wasn’t fair that the only times, the only memories I have of us being together like this are just something from dreams, things I conjured up on my own.

  His lips slid across my jaw, his fingers twisted and tangled in my hair, tugging until I lifted my mouth to his.

  Heat burned in me as his tongue swept into my mouth. I shuddered and curled my legs around him.

  He thrust in, deep.

  I arched up, desperate.

  It was a mad race, the two of us clinging to each other. This was all we had.

  I’d wake soon. I could all but feel it. I’d wake…and lose him all over again.

  “I love you,” I said against his lips.

  He caught my hand, twined our fingers together.

  “If I could have let myself, I would have loved you…”

  I tried hard not to look at the ruin of the castle.

  When I did, I saw it as I had in my dream, the imposing, majestic power of it—perfect and whole. Not that I’d ever seen it like, but what does your imagination care?

  I also saw him. I hadn’t seen Will in two years, but in my dreams, he was there, pulling me to him, stroking my face, my hair.

  Then fading as I woke.

  I didn’t want to think about the dream so I focused on the rocks and the crumbling corner where the tower had once stood.

  Considering what had happened here, the grass should be withered and brown and…

  No.

  There shouldn’t be any grass.

  Withered and brown grass, after all, could become green again. I’d seen it. All you had to have was some rain. Some sun. The right conditions and anything could thrive.

  The right conditions.

  What a laugh.

  No. There shouldn’t be any grass here.

  There shouldn’t be anything here, except perhaps a field of nothingness. Dead things. Corpses piled left and right to mark the battles we’d fought, something to mark the battles we’d lost…

  And maybe a marker.

  Something ugly and bleak to mark what I had lost.

  Instead there was green grass.

  The ruin of the castle, beautiful despite its decay, rose into the air, a testament to time and to tragedy.

  Perhaps that was the marker.

  Bending forward, I curled my hand into the pliant green blades and closed my eyes.

  I could still taste the snow in the air.

  I could still see his face before me.

  I could feel his warmth against my skin and that surreal power blasting against my shields.

  It had been two years.

  Two years since Will had stood before me.

  “No!” The panic that had blindly driven her for the past few days was gone. No, Mandy realized. It wasn’t gone. It just wasn’t blind anymore. As she hurtled toward Will, past that gaping void that opened into something so terrible her mind didn’t want to accept it, Mandy focused on one thing. And one thing alone.

  Will.

  She drove her fist into his chest—a pointless sort of punch, but it was all she could do at that moment. Will’s only reaction was to reach out and cup her face.
>
  Tears were already flowing.

  “You son of a bitch.” She tangled her hands in his hair—white as the fallen snow, softer than the finest silk. It felt oddly warm, almost alive. She jerked his head toward hers, pressed her brow to his. Her heart was breaking. “You can’t do this to me. Don’t you know what you’re doing?”

  “Yes.” His voice was gentle, and that hurt her even more. “Because I’m doing it to me as well. But you must understand. This, you, me…it could have never happened. Happiness was something I was never meant to have. And you would have made me happy.”

  When he kissed her, Mandy thought she would die. If pain alone could kill an angel, in that moment, her heart would have stopped.

  She wished it would have.

  “If I could have let myself,” Will murmured softly, “I would have loved you.”

  She reached for him, hardly able to think past the agony that ripped through her. But strong arms came around her.

  She jerked against the hold of the man standing next to her. She thought it might have been Luc, one of the others—a man she’d liked, up until that moment, when he kept her from Will.

  “Don’t,” Mandy pleaded. “Don’t do this, Will. I love you.”

  “I know. I never should have let that happen. You deserved far more.”

  Mandy didn’t care about what she deserved—she cared about what she wanted. She would have told him that, but he was already looking away. And she could barely breathe. Jerking against Luc’s hold, she struggled to break free. If she could just follow—

  “Sina will guide you. Follow her,” Will said, his voice flat, colder than normal. Hollow, even. There was no fear in his eyes though. There was…nothing. His eyes were already dead.

  Then he looked at her, for one brief moment.

  In the next, the earth ripped apart and he turned, plunging into the very heart of it.

  She managed to tear away from Luc.

  But it was too late.

  “Why do you return here?”

  The sound of that familiar voice made me close my eyes.

  The only thing I wanted in my pitiful existence was for Will to return.

  But sometimes, I fantasized about finding a way to kill wraiths.

  The towering, black-winged angel of death wasn’t what I would have pictured if somebody had said the word wraith to me back in my mortal life. But back then, I hadn’t imagined that fairy tales had any basis in reality either.

  Who knew?

  Yeah, some of those crazy stories about breadcrumbs and grass slippers and magic mirrors actually have some truth to them.

  I think there was even some sort of shred of truth in the one about Little Red Riding Hood. But that’s neither here or nor there.

  As the wraith drew closer, I decided to close my eyes and pretend he didn’t exist. I did a lot of that these days. I thought I’d gotten over that habit of pretending the bad things would go away if I just didn’t acknowledge them, but then again, life had been full of a lot of bad things lately. Especially over the last two years.

  My throat threatened to lock up on me as I thought about Will yet again.

  If I’d known this would happen, if I’d known I’d fall in love with him, if I’d known…

  But whom was I fooling? I’d been on a one-way street to this very point for a long, long time. I don’t even know I’d undo a single choice that had led me here. Even knowing that I’d be sitting here hurting like this, all because some asshole with a grudge had decided to make the man I loved pay for some ages-old personal vendetta.

  And that was what it was.

  Hatred seethed inside me. It was a vendetta. I knew that much. I didn’t understand it and I had no true understanding of what was going on, but I knew that much.

  I’d figured it out from the very moment that other…angel…or whatever he was had shown up in the middle of the battle. The very air had been charged with the emotion. And while theirs was foreign, something I had only barely been able to grasp the nuances of, emotion was emotion. It was something I understood too well.

  From the time I was twelve, I’d understood one plain and simple fact.

  I’m not normal.

  After all, normal people couldn’t go around healing open wounds or setting broken bones.

  I can.

  The ability had gotten stronger as I’d gotten older and so had…other things. Voices in my head. Panic attacks. I’d be feeling fine and then, abruptly, I’d be overwhelmed by an impulse to hide in the bathroom and nobody could talk me out. Then, in the blink of an eye, I’d be hit with the urge to grab the captain of the junior varsity team and push him up against a locker and…well. We’ll just let it go with me pushing him up against a locker, okay?

  It had taken me years to get a handle on it.

  Even longer before I realized that I could actually use those emotions to my benefit. I made a lot of bad choices before I started making the right ones.

  Every single one had led me here.

  “You think remaining silent is going to make me leave?”

  It had worked before. Doggedly, I focused on the small ready-to-go camping kit we were all expected to keep with us any more, especially in the so-called hot spots. I knew what was in each assigned pack—I had been required to go on the shopping trips. I was modernized—Sina’s favorite term for anybody dead under a century. We blended in better and we knew how to make sure the old ones didn’t attract too much attention.

  Not that there were many of them left now.

  Despondent, I reached out and fisted my hand in the grass.

  The stupid, stubbornly green grass.

  Black feathers appeared in my line of sight and a moment later, gold-dusted skin followed.

  Crow sat in front of me and finally, I looked up.

  He arched a brow.

  “You will not speak?” he asked softly.

  “I don’t have much to say to you.”

  “It isn’t my fault the traitor is gone,” Crow said, lifting a shoulder. “He owes a debt he can never repay.”

  Oh. That was so the wrong thing to say.

  I was on my feet. I didn’t even recall moving. Shoving my face into his, I jammed a finger into his chest. It was like trying to shove a finger through a boulder. He didn’t budge. I just shoved harder. “I don’t give a damn what debt he owes. If you got a problem with him, that’s your tough luck. You clearly have no idea how many lives he’s saved, how much good he has done. Whatever he fucked up back in the day? I think he’s square with the house again.”

  “Square?” Crow’s brows dropped.

  I watched as he puzzled through what I’d said. Yeah, yeah, yeah…I’d used modern talk with somebody who was clearly not modern. The weight of his years hung over me like an oppressive cloak, grabbing at my neck, all but choking me.

  Will and Sina had that kind of feel to them, but Crow was even more so. I don’t want to think about how old he was. Once, I’d managed to get enough information out of Sina to make a stab at her age. She wasn’t quite two thousand years old, but she was close.

  Will was—and damn it, he was still alive—older.

  Crow had even more age to him—I could feel it weighing down the air around me.

  He felt so very…other.

  He might have been human once, but he now made no attempt at being anything but what he was. Other.

  “Yes.” I went back to staring at the spot where I’d last seen Will. “He’s paid his debt, and then some.”

  Sometimes I thought that if I stared hard enough, if I waited long enough, he would just come back. He could find his way back.

  Crow sighed.

  “Foolish child. You don’t even understand what he did. How can you decide if he has paid?”

  “He’s got more than two thousand years of paying under his belt,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s been forced to kill and bring people back, forced to watch everything he knows, everybody he knows die and watch as the world changes all
around him—and he’s still here. You think that’s not an acceptable payment?”

  I looked up at him.

  “He’s given up his very soul. What else must he give up?”

  Crow made a derisive snort. “The one you call Will has no soul. He gave that shriveled, useless thing up long ago. But believe in your fairy story if you must. Perhaps it will comfort you.”

  He rose and launched himself into the sky. My eyes watered from the force of his passing.

  “Fairy tale,” I muttered. “It’s fairy tale.”

  And I’d do just that. I had little else left to believe in.

  Chapter Two

  Rip was no stranger to war.

  In his mortal lifetime, he’d been a soldier.

  His second life was no different. He was still a warrior.

  It was all he knew. He was born to fight—to protect, really, not that he’d tell anybody that.

  He was no stranger to blood or the stink of spilled guts or the smoke of cannon fire—not so common these days—or the devastation caused by landmines—more common than he liked—and in his mind, those things were evil.

  He couldn’t even count how many individual fights he’d survived, and he’d never bothered to count anyway, because there was no point. He’d survived and that was all that mattered. There were just too many tussles that didn’t even rank the space it would have taken up in his head to remember them.

  The hot desert wind blew in his face, bringing with it the stink of death and decay and all the unpleasantness of battle, and he knew he’d never seen a battle like this.

  And that was what it was.

  The mortal media would report it as something else—a terrorist attack—and in a way, they weren’t wrong.

  Terrorists had indeed attacked and terror had indeed been struck into the hearts of men.

  But the terrorists had just been the weapon.

  He’d never seen a demon attack quite on the scale of this. Not even—

  He stopped the memory before it could finish forming. It had been more than two years and they were still struggling to clean up from the fallout. Struggling. Failing.

  As evidenced by the nightmare that stretched out under the blazing heat of the Cairo sun.