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

by Shiloh Walker

  Always at his side.

  At least as long as I had breath.

  I caught his hand.

  After a pause, his fingers closed over mine.

  “Why?” I demanded. Making my free hand a fist, I smacked it against my chest. Outside, the wind was nothing but a wail, comprised of the howls coming from the throats of a thousand demons. More. “It’s my concern. It’s his. But you…? Why you?”

  “Because I was charged with it.” The angel lifted a shoulder as he came toward us. “For millennia, I’ve watched. I’ve waited.”

  He glanced out the mouth of the cave. “And it draws to this.” He flung a hand toward the mouth of the cave as his gaze came back to me. “Do you know where you are, girl? And why?”

  “Yeah.” I lifted my chin. “Purgatory.”

  If I’d thought to surprise him…well. I didn’t know angels very well. Stupid of me.

  “That’s right, young one. Now…” He leaned closer. Will moved closer, his stance protective. “Do you know why?”

  He slid a look at Will. “Cain could tell you. But he won’t.”

  Against my will, I found myself glancing at Ca—Will. I mentally corrected myself as I found my mind following the subtle cue from the angel. But the man next to me hadn’t known that name in forever. That wasn’t who he was.

  “Purgatory…the home for restless, unclaimed souls,” the angel said. “Where they all come until judgement day. But you see…” He reached out, and carelessly tapped Will on the head. “Cain’s soul was already claimed. Stubborn fool that he is, he had a punishment to serve out. He would have done it here and then it would be over. After that, where he went, what he did…that wasn’t up to him. But the author of lies deceived him…and I imagine it was easy enough to do, Cain being out of his mind and desperate for escape. And he found it.”

  My mind danced back to the images I’d seen. Memories. Will had told me I was trapped. I’d seen memories. Memories…and more. Bits and pieces of his life, of the things he’d seen. Things he’d done.

  “You’re a smart one.” The angel with the bronzed wings looked from me to Will and nodded. “Each time he died, he was pulled back here because his physical body had been bound here, through blood-sharing. And each time he left, he made another tear. More and more of the unclean escaped. You call them demons. He’s spent his life cleaning up the mess he unwittingly made but it just gets worse. The only way to shut them all down…”

  “No!”

  I wanted to fling myself at the angel across from us and beat him bloody, make him be quiet.

  “It’s been…what…two thousand years, four thousand, six…more?” Bitterness choked me.

  But the angel ignored me, turning instead toward Will. “Does she know how it all happened? Do you yourself remember? You flung yourself from a cliff and that didn’t do it. Then you hung yourself. And then you sought out the demons themselves and let them make a meal of you. Finally, you’d done enough damage and the fallen one came upon you, forced his blood into you. You healed…and inside you, you carried a part of his foul, evil power.” He paused and then leaned closer to Will. “Do you remember?”

  “Yes.” He spoke through clenched teeth, lifting his head to stare at the angel with eyes that burned. “I’ve forgotten none of it.”

  “And then you had the slate wiped clean…all you did was say…I seek forgiveness. You let the unclean free on the world. We fought an ugly, bitter war to trap them all here and because of you, traitor, they roamed free again. Fouling up this world. You made your bed, as humans like to say. You should have been forced to sleep in it. But no…you asked for forgiveness and you were let out of that hell…along with so many others.”

  Shoving between them, I glared at the old being. He was old. I had a rough idea of how old Will was now and this creature with his glimmering wings and unreadable eyes, he was even older. “And he’s been doing clean-up ever since. Two thousand years! Isn’t it enough?”

  “This doesn’t concern you, mortal.”

  “I’m not mortal,” I half-shouted. “It’s been two thousand years—more. Hasn’t he suffered enough?”

  Will’s hands curled over my shoulders. I could feel him trying to pull me back. I wrenched away. “No!”

  I turned to look at him over my shoulder and then stopped.

  Because the angel’s expression had changed. Sharpened.

  “Indeed…two thousand years. A long time to…suffer.” The bronze came closer, paced in a tight circle around us. “Tell me…what is it they call you? Mandy? Mandy, then. Perhaps you can help me here. Can you earn forgiveness…?”

  I stared at the angel, then slowly dragged my gaze back to Will.

  “I’m not much in the mood for a philosophical or theological lesson,” I said, the ache in my chest spreading.

  “This isn’t a lesson.” His eyes cut into me. “This is something crucial. Something vital. Something you both should understand.”

  My grip tightened on Will’s hand.

  Thousands of thoughts tumbled through my head, but finally, I went with what was in my heart. Every time in my life that I had been hurt, every time I’d had to forgive. Even now…Will had hurt me, time and again. He hadn’t done anything to earn my forgiveness. Most often those hurts hadn’t even been intentional, but he’d caused them nonetheless.

  “You can’t earn forgiveness, no. It’s a gift, something that’s given,” I said, stroking my thumb across the back of Will’s hand.

  “Exactly so.” Something shifted on the angel’s face and I blinked, stared…

  He was smiling.

  He canted his head toward Will.

  “You can’t earn it…it was already given. But you have to accept.” The wails outside rose, drawing nearer and nearer. “And you have to forgive yourself, most especially, Cain. Son of Adam.”

  He strode away from us, one hand coming up to rest on the wall of the cave.

  “The veil between here and there, it remains thin…you know why, don’t you?”

  Will stared, hard, at the back of the burnished head. So hard that his eyes began to water. Each hair seemed to shift, waver, all but alive, glowing from within as though lit by fire.

  The angel turned and looked at him, his wings fanning the air slightly.

  Rob and Mandy looked on in confusion.

  “This place is for unclaimed souls,” Will said, his voice thick. “The serpent…he tried to force a claim on me, but I refused. I was still under a debt to God. Before it was fulfilled, I…” Will swallowed. “I asked forgiveness. Part of me, it’s trapped here, isn’t it? The blood that still ties me to the serpent.”

  The angel nodded. “Indeed. For two thousand years. There’s only one way to undo it.”

  He went to fling himself forward, but Will reached out a hand. “Wait,” he demanded.

  The angel heard it too.

  Will clenched his jaw. “Your forgiveness, please.”

  He just nodded. “Time draws short, Cain.”

  “This…” Will swept his hand through the air. He was supposed to let go of his guilt? His regret? How was he to accept any sort of forgiveness after what his actions had done? “The demons who escaped—the veil is thin because of my actions. When I left…I damaged the veil between here and the mortal world when you pulled me out of here.”

  The angel inclined his head.

  “So, everything…the demons who escaped, even those who are able to reach through and tear things from the mortal world. It’s all my doing.”

  “No.” This time, something akin to grim frustration darkened the being’s features. “Demons escaped from the very moment we shut them in. Their only true prison will be the eternal one.” He flexed a hand. A length of fire appeared, solidifying into a sword, edged in flame. “Do what must be done.”

  Then the golden-winged being flung himself—not upward, but down.

  His descent was greeted by shrieks and the three left behind rushed to the lip of the cave.

&nbs
p; What they saw flooded them with apprehension and Mandy ended up on her knees, gripping the lip with knuckles gone white.

  There was a valley beneath them.

  And it was filled with demons.

  Completely and utterly filled.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “And I’m telling you…” Nose to nose, I glared at him. “I am not leaving this place without you.”

  Will gestured to a valley seething with demons. “Does that look to you like they are waiting for me to forgive myself and find peace? They’re waiting to devour us, Amanda! I won’t drag you into hell with me when they finally find the courage to make a move.”

  “You’re beautiful when you’re being stubborn.”

  For a moment, he just stared.

  Then, he growled.

  Rob sidled closer to me as Will turned and started to pace. “He’s gone over, poppet. You should let me take you back. Please.”

  “No.” Then I looked over at him. “You go though. No reason all of us should end up demon feed.”

  He stared at me, squinty-eyed. “You’ve gone barmy, love. No.” Taking a deep breath, he blew it out. Then he rotated his neck, cracked it one way then the other. “No. Where my leader goes and all the rot.”

  He smiled, then, a bit sadly. “To be honest, it’s a miracle I lasted this long.” He slid a look upward, as though seeing the mortal world we’d left behind. “I never thought I’d be long for that world, you know. I made it a few centuries. That’s saying something. But without Will to pull me back when things get dark…”

  Will stopped and spun, staring at us both hard. “You will both return.”

  “No.” Rob cast a smile at me. “We’ve drawn our lines in the sand, old man. You stay, we stay.”

  Will sucked in a breath, harsh flags of color riding on his cheeks.

  A huge blast of golden light lit the sky behind him, out past the opening of the cave.

  Rising cries, death wails, followed by the nascent stink of burning flesh.

  The color still lit the air and I realized it was flame. Fire.

  Something—no, someone—had lit the bodies down in the valley, or some of them. Two sets of wings filled the mouth of the cave before I could rush to look. Crow and the nameless angel.

  “The ideal option,” Crow said in his ancient, echoing voice, “would be you go, they go.”

  Will flicked a look at Crow. The antipathy between them, one that spoke of centuries, rose. But he said nothing more than, “My work isn’t done.”

  “I told you what work you had to do.” The bronze-winged angel turned, wings swept wide as he gazed down on the devastation he’d left behind. “You have but one job that is required of you. The rips are to be sealed, the veil restored. Demons will continue to thrive here…only your arrogance allows you to think you could kill them all.”

  Then he turned, and flung out a hand.

  Rob caught me and spun us backward.

  Will went the other way.

  The cave—no, the mountain shook around us.

  Dust choked the air and I forced myself to stop breathing when I lifted my head long moments later.

  “Go,” the bronze one said, pointing into the dark heart of the cave. “It will take you out to the other side, away from the valley. It will wind back around, close to where Rob and the young one came through.”

  I twitched at that. The young one. But compared to all of them? Young didn’t even touch it.

  Then he looked at us. “Once you go through, you must part. You must exit through where you entered. All of you.”

  “But…”

  I jerked my head around and stared at Will.

  He was also staring at the angel, his black eyes flickering. “You tell me I am to leave. These are my orders.”

  “Yes. And you know what else you must do…otherwise, the veil…” He inclined his head. “It will not just thin, Cain. It will fall.”

  * * * * *

  I clung to him.

  In the distance, shards of light pierced the air.

  Dust choked the horizon and those bits of light were smothered after just a few heartbeats.

  Rob waited for me.

  This…

  Face shoved against his chest, I struggled not to cry.

  This was the one thing I hadn’t planned on, the one thing I couldn’t fight.

  I could fight Will and I could fight demons and I could deal with the idea of dying.

  But when the angel had looked at us and spoken those words, I’d realized what he meant.

  The flickers and pulses of the rips that allowed demons to enter our world were because the veil had, as the angel put it, somehow thinned and it was tied to Will. Tied to whatever had happened when blood had been forced on him.

  I pressed a kiss to his neck. “I saw what happened—you didn’t ask for that.”

  “But I put myself in that position. He was at my heels all the time and I knew it.” He rubbed his cheek against mine. I felt all the tenderness, all the love he’d never let himself voice in that gesture. “I should have been stronger, but instead, I was weak. As I had always been.”

  “No.” Forcing his face to mine, I said, “You’re not weak. People can change. I did. I was seconds away from calling up demons. I was a drug-dealing, desperate bitch…and I would have been dead, save for Rip and Greta. I changed.”

  “You were young.” He brushed his knuckles down the back of my cheek.

  “So were you.” Staring hard at him, I clung to the belief that I knew the man before me now, even if I didn’t know the man he’d been then. “If I can go from being a useless waste in a few years, then you can go from being whatever you were then to a good man now…in a few thousand. You have to believe that. You have to…so you can come back to me.”

  His head slumped.

  “Please.” I hated to beg. I hated to ask anybody for anything. “Please…”

  He cupped my face.

  His thumb stroked over my lower lip.

  “If it is within my power, I’ll come to you. I’ll find you. Somehow.”

  A snarling in the distance, one we’d heard before, drew closer.

  He nudged me back. Rob’s arms came around me.

  “Keep her safe,” Will said.

  “With my last breath.”

  I reached out—and Rob jerked me close, tearing open the seam he’d created when he first brought me through.

  Those words Rob had spoken to Will proved to be an omen.

  I knew something was wrong almost immediately.

  Rob, apparently, knew even sooner and while I was dashing away tears and struggling to breathe, he was drawing his blades and crouching down, readying himself.

  If I’d been faster, if I’d been less torn apart with grief, maybe I could have saved him.

  There were more than a dozen of them, gathered around, like they’d been waiting.

  Later, Rip would tell me that some demons, like the orin and the parasei, could sense it when there was a passage between the plains. They likely had been waiting, the whole time.

  Just waiting, and hoping.

  I heard Rob’s mental summons even as I sent my own out.

  But we’d never hold all of them off, not when I was still somewhat weakened from the gutting I’d taken—

  Rob snarled, a low noise that was nothing human, and I saw him spin, twist, move in a way that had never been human. Blood arced and sprayed and two heads toppled, flew.

  One of the parasei made it to me and I slashed out.

  Rob took another down, then another.

  One of them darted around him as he hamstringed another demon and he caught the movement, spun.

  I lunged to face it.

  Light exploded.

  The hamstringed demon lurched up, a knife in hand.

  “Die…” it whispered.

  Another closed on me and I gritted my teeth, furious.

  It all happened in slow motion.

  I saw Sina and Luc, rushing out
as more demons emerged from the shadows, as though they’d been waiting for just this moment.

  “Die,” another demon said.

  This time to me.

  Close. So close…

  Rob saw.

  He made to reach for me.

  The demon behind him, he never saw.

  I screamed.

  It was Rip who beheaded the demon who’d been breathing down my neck. He swooped in, emerging from the circle of light with Sina. I hadn’t even seen him. They’d answered our summons and rushed to us—arriving, despite my doubt—in time.

  To save me, at least.

  Rob stumbled to a halt, going to his knees and staring dumbly at the gaping hole in his chest.

  Only two ways, really, to kill one of us.

  Remove our head…or our heart.

  He toppled to the side as I reached for him.

  I caught him and guided him to my lap.

  “No!” I screamed as the Grimm around us cleared the rest of the demons. A small clutch of them, just a small, small nest. And Rob had dealt with almost all of them.

  All save for the one who’d managed to steal away his heart.

  “No,” I whispered.

  Tears burned my eyes.

  But he was already gone.

  Sina came to her knees across from me, lifting a hand to her mouth.

  “Save him!” I demanded.

  She looked at me, the answer in her eyes.

  But I made the demand again, nonetheless.

  Luc came to me as Rip folded me in his arms. Luc gently took Rob away—after Rip forced me to let go.

  From somewhere, Greta emerged.

  When she spoke my name, I flung myself into her arms.

  And there, I wept as though my heart was broken.

  It might as well be.

  I’d left it on the netherplains—in purgatory.

  And I didn’t know if he’d be able to find his way back to me. Rob, my last connection to him, was now gone.

  * * * * *

  “Are you certain you want to lay him to rest here?”

  I stared at the stone cairn for a long while and then looked up, nodded.

  Rip brushed a hand down my hair.