Off in the distance he heard a familiar voice, but he tuned it out.
It was Greta, talking to the head of the group who’d come in from America. The Grimm didn’t have papers—of course they didn’t—but by the time Greta was done, the man would be convinced that not only did Greta and Rip have the right to be there, he’d be escorting them around himself.
They’d wanted to be done before the humanitarian groups arrived, but they were still doing cleanup.
Cleanup, as in killing the demons who were hiding in the bodies of those too injured to survive, looking for their next ride.
So far, they’d killed ten.
Rip sensed others.
It would get very interesting.
The terrorists had attacked a youth summit that had been meeting at a conference hotel—it had been full at the time and rough guesses were that nearly five thousand people had been inside.
The death toll continued to rise.
Not just here, but everywhere.
Damn it, Will…
The thought escaped him before he could stop it and he wanted to grab it back, but he couldn’t.
Lately he found himself thinking those three words very often.
Ever since their leader had plunged himself into a portal that led straight to hell, their world seemed to have followed—everything here had gone straight to hell as well. It might have been better if Will had just done what that fuckface had wanted and sent others on while he stayed here and did what he did best.
Lead.
They were trying, Rip knew that. Trying to clean up and figure out where to go from here, but how did an army go forward when the one who’d designed the army was gone?
Back in his human life, Rip had faced a different sort of warfare. Now people called it the Revolutionary War, and they romanticized the hell out of it. There was nothing romantic about war. It was just war. Death was just death.
And it all sucked.
A bloodied bit of silver caught his eye and he knelt to pick it up.
“It was Moriarty.”
Looking up as Greta knelt in front of him, he just nodded. He hadn’t seen the other Grimm go down, but at this point he was almost numb to how many of his brothers and sisters at arms had fallen.
When they’d received word that something was happening in Egypt, they’d mobilized and Sina had called in ten of them—ten was a lot, so Rip had been prepared.
There were more new Grimm now than ever. Sina had been bringing them over in an almost unending flow and they had their hands full trying to train them, even as they fought the unending tide of demons.
And the Grimm were dying, left and right.
“Is he going to give us any trouble?” he asked, eyeing the back of the relief worker as he strode off into the night. They’d set up their “camp” on a relatively empty bit of land and they stayed close, each watching the other’s back.
“No,” she said softly. “I told him we were staying in the hotel and most of our belongings were destroyed. We’d gone out to lunch. He thinks he’s seen our passports.”
She made a face of distaste and Rip stroked a hand down her back in support. Her ability was unpleasant, unique and necessary—she could make anybody believe anything she wanted. An awful burden, but she had an unyielding core of honor and if anybody had to have such a gift, then he’d rather it be her. She wouldn’t abuse it.
“How many lost? Do they have a better idea now?” she asked, looking back at him.
“No.” He had a good idea, not that he planned to share it. She didn’t need to know—just as she didn’t need to know the relief workers had managed to get through to the private, onsite nursery that was provided for the hotel’s guests. None of the children had survived.
Greta nodded, her throat working as she swallowed. “We need to get back out there, keep moving. Rob is keeping watch, along with a few others, but we all need to keep our eyes open.”
“I know.” He even understood why. Cairo was one of the hot spots—a place where the barrier between the mortal world and the netherplains had been stretched too thin, weakened—and rent open. With this many wounded, it could turn into a…hell, was breeding ground even the right word?
The impotent fury that exploded through him made him want to scream.
Greta, sensing his rage, turned her eyes to him. “What is it?” she asked softly.
He went to shake his head, but all the rage, all the grief exploded out of him and he spun away. “We’re losing.”
He started to pace, clenching his hands into fists. The stink in the air only added to his fury and he wanted to punch something—destroy something. But there was no target for his rage, no target for the fear.
“Word went out that another rip was destroyed.” Greta’s words were soft, as though to offer some sort of comfort.
“I heard.” He bit his response off and it came out harsher than he’d intended. When Greta’s eyes fell away, he wanted to punch himself. “I’m sorry.”
She smiled, but it wobbled and fell and he felt like an ass as she turned away, shoulders slumped.
“Greta…”
“I hate this as much as you, Rip.” She folded her arms around herself. “This isn’t what I signed on for—to train new ones only to watch them die. To keep fighting day after day, only to lose ground. After all this time. You think I don’t know we’re losing? I’ve been at this far longer than you. I know what’s happening, just as well as you.”
Debris crunched under his feet as he moved to her.
She tensed as he wrapped his arms around her.
He didn’t know what he could say to her. She wasn’t wrong.
“Maybe we are losing,” he said softly. “But we do what we always do, yeah? Because it’s what we are.”
* * * * *
It could have been days.
It could have been a week…longer?
Rip didn’t know.
He knew the sun set and he knew it rose again and then set and the sky was starting to lighten again, but how many times that pattern repeated, he didn’t know.
They’d worked without pause and took care each time they had to end a life, took care each time they found another demon trying to slip into a mortal body.
It was bloody, brutal work, the ending of a life, and that much more exhausting because there were so many mortals around, but finally, their instincts whispered. Silence…
They could fade away.
They couldn’t leave because the bloody portal that led to the netherplain was still open, but they could rest.
One by one, the Grimm retreated, simply waiting until the rescue workers were occupied, and then they slipped away. Silence was their companion and speed was easy to come by so it didn’t take much to dip into the shadows and meet at the farthest reaches of the devastation.
Seven of them remained.
Ten had come.
Two had gone down in the chaos that had erupted when the fighting started—Moriarty included—because the demons who’d worn the bodies of the terrorists hadn’t been pleased when the Grimm had shown up to interrupt their little party of blood and death. One had survived, but he was in stasis, the healing sleep that would hopefully get him back to fighting form soon.
“Over a thousand dead at this point,” one said.
It was Elsa, a quiet, pale woman. Rip had worked with her, fought with her before, and he saw the shadow of each death in her eyes.
“There will be more.” John, a powerful, tall man, shook his head. “We can’t leave yet. At least not all of us. The portal…”
“I’ll stay.” Tag, the youngest of them, a Grimm made only six months earlier, bounced on his heels, the need for blood practically glowing in his eyes. “They killed M. I want them dead—all of them.”
John clapped a hand on his shoulder.
Tag staggered under the force of it.
“He wouldn’t want you to die for him, boy. But if you want to stay, I’ll stay—”
; Tag jerked away. “I don’t need help!” He jerked away and stormed off into the night, the HK416 slung over his shoulder. He’d died on the battlefields of Iraq and he’d bonded with Moriarty alone.
“Give him a few minutes,” Greta said softly when Rip went to go after him.
“He needs to yank his head out of his ass,” Rip said, scowling.
But he stayed and talked with the rest, roughing out a plan.
The night was quiet and for the first time he could breathe in something other than smoke and death—well, if he could get past the stink of it on his skin. “John, I want you to…”
The words died as his skin started to prickle.
Slowly, he lifted his head.
He wasn’t the only staring out into the night.
Slowly, he turned, searching for the source of the disturbance.
He caught a glimpse of a shadow out in the night. The brilliant lights coming from the worksite back in the distance made everything else seem so much darker, but he could make out Tag’s form.
He looked at Greta, reassured himself. She was there. She was fine. She was safe.
The air went tight.
Then there was a scream.
It might have come from Tag, because he saw the young one stumble.
But it could have come from Rip himself. He stared, his body frozen. In the span of a heartbeat, one of the smaller rents formed in the air—an inky black blot upon the darkness of night. It formed right behind Greta and snaked out.
Her mouth opened, a scream ripping out as she was jerked back.
Rip lunged.
Something knocked him back.
Greta tried to claw free.
The rip was closing in—she disappeared.
Rip screamed.
For those few moments, his entire world ended and his heart disappeared.
Then…miraculously…
A dark shadow appeared. Blood spilled into Rip’s eyes, coming from a wound he didn’t realize he had. There was a form in that rent, the doorway into the void. No. Two forms.
Greta came flying out.
She landed on top of him and he grabbed her, clutching at him.
But she tried to tear away from him, screaming.
“Let me go!” she shouted.
“Greta…”
“It was Will!”
The rip closed.
Even as they both lunged, there was a deep blast—something that echoed on a plain they couldn’t see.
They felt it though.
The blast knocked them all to their knees—and then, briefly, unconscious.
When they came to, there was one less breech in the world.
* * * * *
“It. Was. Him.” Greta said each word slowly, carefully.
“Greta.” Sina gave her a weary smile, one that held understanding and patience. “I’d like to believe he’s still alive, but—”
Greta slammed the flat of her hand down on the table with so much force, the glass shattered.
As the bits and pieces fell to the floor, she gazed calmly at the other woman.
“This has nothing to do with belief,” she said. “I know. I was in there—and it wasn’t for just seconds. I was there and I saw him.”
Sina stared at the frame that had held the table only moments before.
Then she cleared her throat.
“Greta, you were only in the portal for a few minutes.”
Greta tucked her tongue inside her cheek and then she flipped her wrist over, tugging at the band that kept her watch in place. It was a simple affair, utilitarian and basic. A moment later, she tossed it across the room. Sina snagged it out of the air. “I was wearing that when I went through—the time was correct not long before the portal appeared. We’d coordinated the timing when we’d meet and I checked the time. When I came back…nearly six hours had passed.”
Sina was still staring at the watch.
“Six hours.”
Greta folded her arms and leaned back, her eyes hard. “I was there. With him.”
Finally, Sina lifted her head and the look on her face was haunted.
Greta said softly, “He’s still alive. And he’s still destroying the portals.”
Sina buried her face in her hands.
Rip’s hand stroked down her hair and Greta looked up at him. She wanted to smile at him, wanted to offer him some sort of reassurance. His face showed no expression—he never let anybody see when he was worried or when he hurt. Laughter and hunger and fury would show, but never anything that spoke of grief or fear. Greta knew though. Those emotions, she could feel inside her heart and she could almost glimpse the shadows of them hovering in the air around him, no matter how hard he tried not let them show.
But she couldn’t offer any reassurance.
She didn’t know what to think.
Will…
Rip’s hand slid through her hair and closed around her neck.
She sank into the heat of it as a shiver wracked her entire body. She was cold. She’d been cold ever since she’d been torn from this world into that slice of hell. It was a cold that no amount of heat could chase away, although Rip’s presence helped. Bit by bit, she thought she’d warm. She hoped.
It was the cold of despair and desolation and the total absence of hope and love.
It was the cold of emptiness.
Her sanity felt stretched thin and she’d only been there a few brief hours.
How had Will managed?
She thought of the way he’d looked at her and the cold that gripped her heart only spread.
He hadn’t even looked like himself. The differences went deeper than the skin and she wasn’t ready to explain that to Sina, because Sina was still struggling to accept what Greta had told her.
Greta knew what she’d seen—who she had seen. It had been Will, but he was…changed.
She shivered again and Rip caught her in his arms, scooping her up and then sitting where she’d been with her on his lap. “You’ve been shaking ever since…”
He stopped.
Greta looked up at him.
His jaw was tight and he was staring at the wall on the far side of the room. His eyes were flat and unreadable and his mouth was a firm straight line. He looked remote and unreachable.
Deep inside, she felt the echo of his fear inside her, squeezing at her heart.
“I’m okay,” she said quietly.
“I know.” He nodded stiffly.
She leaned and pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth. “Rip…I’m okay.”
His arms clamped around her and she sucked in a lungful of air as he buried his face in her hair.
“Rip.”
Luc’s voice came from somewhere over her head.
Rip slowly let her go and she went to stand.
“Rip, Greta. There’s a room for you on the third floor. Go. Shower. I’ve sent food up…eat and…” Greta watched as a faint smile danced across the man’s too-beautiful face. “Rest.”
“Luc, we need to figure out what we’re going to do,” Sina said. She hadn’t moved from her spot.
“We will,” Luc said. Sightless blue eyes moved across the room and lingered on Sina’s face, as though he could see perfectly. He hadn’t been able to see since his mortal life but that didn’t slow Luc down. A black brow arched up and he said, “But Greta is exhausted and she would probably appreciate a bath and a meal. I think Rip would appreciate some time alone with her.”
“We need—”
“Sina, he could have lost her,” Luc said, his voice flat.
She wanted a shower. She craved to wash the clinging sensation of that desolated world from her skin, but when the door shut behind her, Greta’s gaze fell on Rip.
He stroked his hands down her shoulders. “You can shower. Then you’ll eat.”
She curled her hands around his wrists.
“Come with me,” she said.
“Luc’s right. You’re exhausted.”
She was. None of them
had had any rest since they’d arrived in Egypt—and Greta and Rip had been in upstate New York before they’d come here, dealing with a nest of parasei. Downtime seemed to belong to that other life. They’d do one job, crash for a few hours, then move on to the next.
She was worn thin and she knew it.
But she needed Rip.
Moving in close, she pressed her lips to the hard, stubborn line of his jaw.
“Come with me,” she said again.
He dipped his head and rubbed his cheek along hers.
“I can’t be gentle with you right now.”
“I don’t need gentle.” She curled her hands in the front of his shirt and jerked. It tore down the middle and she slid him a look, smiling up at him as she smoothed her hands up the heavily muscled slab of his chest.
Rip’s lids drooped. He gripped her waist and tugged her close. “Greta…”
She could see the frayed edges of his control, feel how he struggled to hold on. Smiling, she stepped back and grabbed the hem of her shirt. The synthetic material was black and close-fitting, designed for combat. It was also filthy and it stank of sweat and sulfur. She’d never wear it again. She stripped it away and dropped it to the floor, then reached for her bra. It went the same way as her top. From her lashes, she sent her husband a slow smile as she reached for her belt. His chest rose and fell. “Are you just going to stand there?”
“Well, it’s not a bad view.” His eyes lingered on her hands for a moment and then he glanced up at her. “If I touch you right now, I’m going to leave bruises on you.”
“I won’t break.” But she shrugged. “Then you can just watch for now.”
Slowly, taking her time, she undid her belt, making a tease out of it, sliding it from the loops. She rested her fingers on the button, watching him from under her lashes. His gaze was on her hands. When she freed the button, a harsh noise escaped him, something more like an animal’s growl than anything human. It made a shiver break out across her skin and for the first time in hours, she felt warm.
Warm didn’t even cover it when Rip started to reach for her—then stopped—as she dragged the zipper down.
She gave a small wiggle as she went to push her pants down and then she stopped, pursing her lips. “Oops.”
She glanced up at him, her close-fitting cargoes trapped around her upper thighs. “I forgot my boots.”
Grimm's End: Grimm's Circle, Book 9 Page 2
