Furious Fire: Grimm's Circle, Book 8 Page 9

  Ellie stopped, cocked her head.

  Then, without saying another word, she lunged for the door.

  I broke free.

  Free from the memory, free from the odd, scary-ass man in front of me, and threw myself against the window. If only I was a little stronger, maybe I could make the damn thing break. Death was going to find me soon anyway, why not choose my own way for once?

  “Don’t…” I gritted out, panting as I stared at him. “Ever…do that…again.”

  I was drenched with sweat. My hands shook. I could still feel the blood on me. I could feel men, drunk and panting on top of me. I could remember…my stomach rebelled.

  Fourteen. I’d been fourteen and my mother had sold me to the madam because she’d run out of money. A day later, I’d been raped by a man so large and filthy, the smell of him had nearly made me vomit.

  I could have happily lived without those memories. And now I was trapped with them.

  “Kalypso,” he said, his voice strangely gentle. He lifted a hand.

  I don’t know how he knew my name. If he could climb inside my mind like that, force my thoughts and memories to follow whatever path he chose, he could probably find out anything he wanted to know. My name was easy. Slapping away the hand he lifted toward me, I drew my knees up. A sob caught inside my chest. Burying my face to my knees, I fought to keep that cry inside me.

  I felt ruined. Stained. A hundred dirty hands grabbing at me…even though it had been more than a century ago and all responsible for it were rotting in their graves now.

  I didn’t want these memories. Not at all.

  Guilt and indecision rode him hard.

  On the other side of the suite, Will stared out a window facing the river but his eyes saw nothing.

  Or perhaps that wasn’t true.

  He saw what she’d seen…and all the things she wouldn’t allow herself to look at, at least not yet.

  She’d tucked herself away in a shadowed corner with that pistol of hers and she’d killed two more demons before they’d taken her.

  Finn and Ira had arrived before they finished with her. She’d heard sounds of fighting even as she struggled to free herself. She hadn’t understood what it was she heard, but he’d recognized the voices in her memories, the familiar sound of demon death and battle.

  He’d also seen the faces of his Grimm.

  Now he had the memory of her emotions inside him as well.

  You… She’d looked at Finn and it was like she’d waited her whole life for that moment.

  She’d been bleeding, dying from a knife that had been shoved through her gut, twisted with excruciating thoroughness, and she’d lain in her own blood and the blood of her friends for what felt like a lifetime before Finn and Ira made it to her side.

  Anger rode Will once more as he heard Ira’s voice through her ears.

  She’s dying anyway, mate. Doesn’t matter if she dies alone or not. We’ve got demons to run down. Let’s go.

  And Finn…she’d looked at him and all the pain faded.

  You.

  “You know him every time, don’t you?” he murmured.

  Head bowed, he stared at the floor. Until he’d looked into her dark brown eyes, his path had seemed so clear. No, he hadn’t felt the answer—there were times when he simply knew what he was to do and he both loathed and accepted those moments. When he knew, then he didn’t have to feel like this, torn with doubt. But when he knew, he had no control over the outcome and even when lives were lost, he didn’t have to wonder if he could have done anything different. He only had to carry the guilt of those deaths on top of so many others.

  He’d thought he’d known.

  It had seemed so terribly clear. But then he’d met her and he realized that he’d been following the wrong cues. What he needed to do was find her. But now what?

  There was no clear answer here, no clear direction.

  The only thing that was clear was this…if he ended her life as he’d planned, it wasn’t going to stop this cycle. And when she returned, it was all too likely Finn would learn what had happened. Perhaps not this time, or the next, but it would happen.

  That could well be the thing to push Finn over the edge for good.

  He shoved away from the wall and turned to look at her, but the need to find an immediate answer was cut short as the medallion he wore heated and a familiar tug in his gut grew—then it wasn’t a tug.

  It was an outright wrench on everything inside him.

  Wary, he lowered the shields he kept around himself and swore as Finn’s presence slammed into him, even from halfway around the world. Although Finn lacked the telepathic abilities most of his Grimm possessed, Will didn’t need it to connect with him. It was more a burden to him than anything that his abilities had yet to reach a limit—a burden, because no matter what he did, he couldn’t stop the violence, couldn’t stop death…couldn’t prevent others from making mistakes like he’d made, and nothing, absolutely nothing, he did would undo all the wrongs in his past.

  The heaviest burden of all.

  Pushing it aside he reached out, focused on Finn’s mind, merged.

  Scotland

  Ruminating over the computer he’d grown rather fond of, Finn nursed a pint of ale and read through yet another report.

  Following your gut was fine and dandy, but his gut told him there was a lot more going on than what he was seeing on the surface. He needed to dig deeper.

  So, deeper, he was digging.

  He’d caught a bit of the news earlier—a team was searching the island he’d just left. The inn was a popular vacation spot and the innkeeper well known by locals. Missing now, and although the reporter hadn’t confirmed it, Finn had caught the unspoken words.

  It didn’t look good.

  Another missing person.

  Add that to the evidence of others he’d found.

  The families Will had sent him to search for…

  Brooding, he continued his search.

  He’d thought he’d find bodies. Vankyr, the most animalistic of the demons who could walk on this plain, had been known to feed on flesh. The newer ones couldn’t take in more than a few bites, but over time, they grew to crave it. Entire settlements had been lost to their ravening. It had been ages—decades or more—since that had happened.

  In recent years, they’d stuck to grabbing individuals or small groups, plucking them up in twos or threes, moving around like gypsies to avoid catching notice.

  People tended to notice if too many people disappeared from one locale, after all.

  One would think it would catch notice.

  One would think…

  Finn tapped his pen against his notepad, eyeing the list in front of him. He’d gone through the official missing persons databases, combed through them until his eyes bled.

  Now, he was checking other avenues.

  One in particular.

  And what he found was disturbing.

  People were searching for loved ones—without the aid of official help. Well, it seemed they’d tried.

  A Facebook post.

  Trying to find my sister. Was going on a weekend trip to Wales with BF, never came back. Authorities haven’t been able to help. She’s 28. They’re engaged to be married. Both of them are missing. Help us find them…

  Evidence of another person who’d gone missing in Ireland—a twenty-two-year-old who’d wanted to backpack through the United Kingdom and Europe.

  Have you seen my son? He left in April. We heard from him two weeks later, but nothing since. See site for info. REWARD! Please RT

  On a website that looked like it was devoted to news of the weird and mysterious variety, there was a post about a large group that had gone missing—it listed names, dates of birth, pictures…and when Finn tried to run those names through a search engin
e just out of curiosity, he found Facebook pages for a couple of them. None had been updated in more than a year—the updates had all been prior to the previous April.

  Finn hadn’t spent the past two decades hiding from encroaching technology. He’d actually almost welcomed it—a distraction, a way to keep his mind busy.

  It took him very little time to unearth phone numbers, places of employment. He checked his watch—calculated the time difference. Close to five in California but worth a shot. One of the missing men had worked for a software company.

  He dialed the number and waited until somebody picked up.

  “Hello, I’m trying to reach Eric Burris.”

  There was a faint pause—a clicking that he recognized as fingers striking on a keyboard. Then the woman on the other end replied, “I’m sorry, but Mr. Burris is no longer employed here. Would you like to speak somebody else?”

  Finn ran his tongue across his teeth. “No. Thanks.”

  He dialed another number.

  When he was done, he’d contacted seven businesses…and he’d reached nobody.

  He wasn’t lucky enough to actually get any information, but then again, he hadn’t really tried.

  If they needed it, then Will could go after it and pluck it from a memory or whatever.

  Finn had enough here to tell him something.

  That group, eighteen in all, had disappeared while hiking in the Canadian Rockies. It was entirely possible they’d gotten lost. That did happen, he knew. But if they’d just gotten lost, why hadn’t somebody run up the flag over it? Called in for help?

  Brooding, he hesitated only a minute before he made one more call.

  The leader of the group led paid tours. He ran a small company with his wife and they’d been handling hiking and camping groups for nearly twenty years.

  She came on the phone, her voice easy, relaxed.

  “Hi, I’m looking to set up a camping trip into the Canadian Rockies…I heard Lewis Parnell out of Outdoor Express was the best there was. Would he be available in mid-June for a weeklong trip?”

  The woman’s voice, just a moment ago, had been full of life, full of warmth.

  Now, it was empty, flat. Cold.

  “I’m afraid not. My husband left me, sir. I no longer go into the Rockies. Have a good day.”

  “Wait,” he barked it out.

  She responded, almost dazed. That got to him, more than anything else.

  “Did you divorce?”

  It was a nosy question. If he didn’t have chills running up and down his spine, he wouldn’t have asked.

  But those chills were enough to turn his blood to ice, enough to shrivel his balls, enough to cool the fire that usually lurked just under the skin.

  “He…” Her voice sounded more and more confused. “He left me.”

  Then she disconnected.

  Finn lowered the phone and went back to staring at the article.

  He made a mental note of each and every name, including the name of the man who’d written it.

  Then he continued his search.

  Within another hour, his gut was raw, his head was pounding.

  He’d ignored the ones that didn’t pull at his gut.

  Almost all of them tugged at his heart, as well they should. Many of them were likely dead, possibly worse, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. His job was to deal with the demonic threat of this world, not the human one, even if the humans outnumbered the monsters a thousand to one.

  But the Grimm couldn’t interfere with humans.

  Finn suspected it had more to do with the fact that humans had to make their own mistakes and carry on too. That might be Will’s take on it, but there was a darker reason for it, a more practical, if cold, one.

  The more they did, the more likely it was humans would learn about the world that went on beneath their noses and that would only up the stakes more. How many would leap at the chance to remain forever young, to turn into a walking, talking sex god, to suddenly have the ability to manipulate the minds of those around you? The war the Grimm waged on the demonic was already terribly unbalanced. If humans as a whole learned about their existence, it would only get uglier.

  The list Finn was putting together continued to grow. These people had families who had attempted to notify the authorities. Either the investigations went nowhere, or they stalled, and in some cases, the families were dismissed.

  Those left Finn fighting the urge to bite something. With every report, he made note of whatever investigating officials he could find. With this many people missing, and no resolution, there had to be a connection.

  Absently, he tapped in a query.

  Mass disappearances.

  The familiar suspects popped up, and more than a couple, he knew, were tied into the very creatures he’d expected to find were responsible for the mess going on here. Roanoke, a large Inuit village in Canada—the populations of those had fallen victim to a large-scale demon attack. Finn had actually been called in to help with the cleanup in Canada, although he suspected Will wished he had been able to do more.

  Well, of course Will wished he’d been able to do more.

  Prevent it outright, that would have been ideal, but the disappearance of two thousand people was a mystery that even now was still investigated. If Will had known in time, he could have kept word of it to a minimum, or perhaps planted a story to explain two thousand missing people. Too many were left speculating about that one, still asking questions even now. It had been a mess of epic proportions—the trapper who’d stumbled on the village had gotten to the authorities before Will or any of his Grimm had known of it and by the time news of it had spread, the damage was already done. Will could alter the minds of a few but if it went past a few, he had to step back and leave it alone.

  But there were other disappearances, some of them outlandish, from the disappearance of the Eskimo village to flight disappearances, ranging from the confusing to near preposterous…

  Unless one believed in demons prevented it altogether. If he’d gotten there sooner, they could have.

  Demons could break from the netherplain, a subexistence between hell and the mortal world, if they were strong enough.

  The numbers, though, were staggering, and the mystery wasn’t just one for mortals.

  There was little question of whether or not demons had been involved. But as far as the Grimm had searched, they’d only ever found that lingering presence of demon. That knowledge that demons had been there.

  But no sign of the people they’d taken.

  Where had they gone, though? One thing to take a few, even to devour a few.

  But that many?

  And so often.

  It seemed these random disappearances, even a few here and there, spread out as they were over periods of weeks and months, were becoming more and more commonplace.

  It defied even the typical MO for vankyr.

  They left the remains. Finn knew that, for a bloody, ugly fact, because when the attacks were on a large scale, very often, he was the one called in for a cleanup. He served as a very useful incinerator. As upsetting as it was for people to never have answers, it would be even more upsetting for people to see evidence of what appeared to be mass cannibalistic attacks, and that was something they could never let come to human attention.

  There weren’t enough remains for all these disappearances. So unless there was one massive cache of bodies somewhere, one that had been growing and growing, escaping even Will’s notice all this time…

  Finn jammed the heel of his hand against his eye socket and tried to come up with another answer.

  Bodies could be hidden. He knew that. But Will would unearth them sooner or later. He always did.

  As long as the bodies were somewhere on this earth…

  He stopped, lowering his hand to s
tare blankly at the monitor in front of him as that thought circled in his head.

  As long as the bodies were somewhere on this earth…

  “Son of a bitch,” he whispered. He rose and slammed the laptop shut with enough force he heard the plastic casing crack. He didn’t even give a damn. Could it even be possible?

  For the typical vankyr, no.

  There was only one kind of demon on this plain that could pull up the power to move from here back to the netherplains, where all the demons dwelled. Many demons could summon up the strength to go from there to here, but to cross and back and forth?

  No. That took a singular sort of strength—and focus.

  And if Finn was even close to right, then they were in more trouble than he could even begin to fathom.

  He reached up, closed his hand around the medallion at his neck.

  Focusing his thoughts, he sent them out in as clear a stream as he could manage. He lacked the telepathic abilities most of his brethren had, but what he lacked there, he made up for in sheer stubbornness. The fire inside him swelled, flames flickering under his skin, dancing and rolling as he sent his thoughts out toward Will.

  The medallion pulsed, almost as hot as his skin now.

  Taking that as an acknowledgment, he dropped the medallion. Then he gathered up his gear, shoving the computer in his bag. He tossed a few bills down on the bar and left the pub without a backward glance.

  Well, well, well…

  He hadn’t gone back out to explore another island.

  He didn’t care if that area seemed to be where Will wanted him. He had a functioning brain stem and he knew how to follow his gut, so that was what he did. His gut drew him through the city, following the evil that was an oily whisper in his ear.

  It grew stronger as he passed by one small, simple building.

  Then it peaked and swelled, barely in enough time for him to drawn down the shields that would help cloak his presence. Not all of the Grimm had such effective shields, he’d been told, but Finn had all but woken with them, shields that were nearly impenetrable.

  A necessity…because of the fire.