The Grimm Files Collection Boxed Set

by Selene Charles

  Anahita was flanked on all sides by Ebonia’s own guards. She had a terrible gash on her cheek and was holding the flap of skin together with her hands. Her eyes were wild and dazed.

  Hook was leering before her. Part of his nose was gone, along with a chunk of his left cheek and his good hand, yet he still moved on them. A spectacular warrior in his own right, he fought like the devil himself, his aim obviously to get to her.

  Crowley was just steps behind, but he was slowing from his countless injuries.

  “Hook’s going to kill her, and he’s a golem. He can’t be stopped. He can’t be stopped.”

  No sooner did I say it, then I saw it. Just as Hook reached for Anahita, Crowley reached him. He dug his claws into Hook’s back, ripping him away from her.

  But Hook twisted and in a move I never expected to see, he lifted his hooked hand and swung it down with such brutal and terrifying force that he ripped a hole directly over Crowley’s heart.

  Everything stopped for me.

  I saw Crowley look down, a quizzical expression on his brow, as if he couldn’t quite believe it himself.

  “No,” I whimpered even as I saw the first spot of scarlet bloom. “No,” I said more forcefully as he fell to his knees.

  “Noooo !” I screamed when Hook pulled out a sword from his scabbard and in one smooth move severed Crowley’s head from his body.

  Horror pierced my soul. Hook’s distraction helped Ebonia to whisk Anahita away, and they raced into the church, slamming the doors behind them. But Hook was already on the scent, moving toward it with determined strides, covered in Crowley’s blood. He stared sightlessly ahead.

  “I’ve got to go get them. I’ve got to help them,” I heard Hatter saying, but it sounded far away and as if he was speaking through a long tunnel.

  I whipped around on him and like a feral cat, I shoved hard, not even sure what I was doing anymore. “Go away! Go back home! Leave! Leave now!”

  His brows dropped. Pandemonium was all around, with people screaming and infants crying. Jacamoe had won. Hook couldn’t be stopped.

  I would try, but I would be damned if I saw Hatter die too.

  The bastard wasn’t leaving. “I’m staying,” he said, voice cracking.

  I shoved him again, hard enough to make him stumble. Panic was making me crazed and frenzied. “I don’t need you! I don’t want you here. You go. You leave! Go now! Why are you still here? Go.” But when he still didn’t move, I went apeshite. “I said go! I don’t need you. I don’t need you to fight my battles for me! Why are you still here?” I pushed him hard enough that he should have fallen, but he grabbed my wrists, locking his heels in place, causing us both to sway and nearly lose our balance.

  He growled, cocking his head. The fight had suddenly left me, and the only thing I could say was, “You saw what he did to the others. To Crowley. Why are you still here?” I choked on the sob stuck in the back of my throat.

  “Because, godsdammit,” he snapped tersely, his body glowing with the heat from his fire, “I need you. I need you.” And with those words, he pulled me in tight, kissing me so brutally that his sharp teeth pricked my bottom lip, making me bleed.

  But the pain was good. The pain made me feel alive, wanted, and full for the first time in a long time. I kissed him with everything I had, with all of me. I was his, and I had been for a long time.

  “Hatter,” I said breathlessly when we finally managed to pull away from each other. His forehead rested against mine. His breathing was harsh and ragged, but his heartbeat was a steady rhythm under my palm.

  The rustling snap of moving branches caused us both to become alert at the same time. I looked at him frantically, lost and terrified of losing him, too, just as I’d once lost my Hook.

  Hook: my greatest love and my worst pain, a golem sent to destroy us, feeling nothing and only existing to kill. The way he’d driven his hook through Crowley’s chest and ripped into his heart was a sight I knew I would never be able to purge from my mind.

  I’d loved Hook with all my heart and soul, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to forget the horrors I’d witnessed today. He was an unstoppable monster. But his maker wasn’t. Kill Doctor Frankenstein and kill the beast. “I know what to do.”

  Hatter looked at me. “We take down Hook. We— ”

  “It’s not possible. Not yet.”

  “So what do we— ”

  “We kill the head of the beast. We have to find Jacamoe. We have to find him, and we have to stop him.”

  CHAPTER 50

  ELLE

  I COULD BARELY WALK. Hatter never let me go.

  “I don’t know where he is,” I admitted, trying like hells to focus on the fact that a man I’d once loved as well as any girl could love a father figure had turned into a complete madman. My heart hurt for all the deaths and for the fact that Crowley had died alone. If Hook ever woke up from his programming, he would hate himself—I knew it because I knew him.

  “Where did you see him last?”

  I shook my head. “He was at my hearing, reading off the charges to me. But he wasn’t there anymore.”

  “You know him best, Elle,” he said as he gingerly helped me over a pile of rubble. The level of violence that’d befallen the king’s realm spoke of deep-seated rage and hatred. It wasn’t merely about toppling my father’s legacy. It was more than that. It was about obliterating that legacy to the point that it had never existed at all.

  We entered the castle proper, which I’d expected to be in as much disrepair as the grounds, but it was still mostly intact. I could hear the screams and groans of those trapped inside. The ringing of steel on steel let me know the undead had made their way in here too.

  What’s his plan? To destroy it all? Or to take it over and reshape this place to suit his needs? I was confused. “How the hells did he get his magick back? That’s what I’d like to know.” We were making out way up the stairwell and toward the private quarters. “He’d been cuffed. There’s no way in hells that he should have been able to— ”

  “I think I might know the answer to that, Elle. I’m sorry, but I think it was he who contacted me in the above and requested that I retrieve a charm for him. I thought it was Crowley who’d contacted me, but I think now that whatever that charm was granted him the ability to do all th— ”

  We were just rounding the bend when an explosion of steel on stone sounded. “Watch out!” I cried.

  An undead siren with a face and body badly decomposed so that I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, lifted its bony arms to strike us down.

  Hatter shoved me away, and my breath rushed from my lungs when my back hit the wall. He then grabbed the soldier by its arms and, using a rush of fire, obliterated the limbs to dust in seconds. I winced at the heat billowing off him as steam rose up around us, obscuring us in its foggy folds.

  The undead didn’t die because it wasn’t alive to begin with. Though it had no arms left with which to strike at us, it attempted to do so with its jaws, smacking its decayed and rotting teeth together as it lunged violently in my direction. I threw my hands out, too tired even to conjure up my familiar.

  But Hatter grabbed it from behind and roughly pulled it off of me. It smelled of viscera and spoiled meat sitting out in the sun too long. I gagged and watched with tears in my eyes as he once more placed his hands on the nightmare’s head and reduced that to ashes as well. Finally, the threat had been neutralized.

  “Buggers aren’t easy to kill,” he grunted as he slipped his arm around my waist once more.

  “I’m fine, Maddox,” I whispered. “You should go. You should go now.”

  He glowered down at me. “I already told you, I’m not leaving.”

  My lips turned down. “Y-You could die here too. I won’t watch that happen, Hatter. I can’t— ”

  “C’mon,” he groused, picking up our pace and making certain to keep us deeper in shadow. It soon became impossible to remain hidden. There were just too many of them loiteri
ng about, with arms dangling down at their sides and weapons gripped loosely in their bony hands. The undead were everywhere, but they were no longer battling. There merely stood around like macabre statues. It seemed as though they could jump into action at any moment but had temporarily been shut down or immobilized.

  They didn’t say a word, but I felt their eyes on us. My skin crawled, and breathing was difficult to do. My eyes stung from the rotten smell, my stomach heaved, and I had to swallow back my body’s natural instinct to gag.

  The wall of them grew thicker and thicker as we moved down the walkway. They hovered deepest around the door to Father’s chambers, where I’d seen him just the day before.

  Jacamoe could not harm Father, not while Father owned his mark. And even with him in a comatose state, the magick recognized Father as the Djinn’s sovereign. He was probably the safest of everyone and ironically the entire reason for why Jacamoe had snapped as he had.

  Hatter looked toward me, and I nodded. We had to go inside.

  Stepping out of Hatter’s arm, I lifted my chin. I felt stronger than I had earlier. I can do this. I have to do this.

  I gently pushed open the door. It groaned on its hinges, making me automatically cringe and reach for my weapon, which wasn’t on me and hadn’t been the entire time I’d been trapped in Undine.

  Father was still lying as he’d been before, but Jacamoe looked up at me with bleary eyes. And behind him hovered a body. A form that I’d recognize anywhere. It was the Sea Witch herself. Comatose, just as father was. But I couldn’t understand how she’d shown up here now, when she’d not been here before.

  But I saw the power, the dark black shadow curling and winding like cobras from her body, flowing through Jacamoe’s form and somehow I knew that he’d used her powers for his own.

  He’d amplified his already not so insignificant magick with hers. The Witch had literally been under our noses the whole time.

  “Oh my gods,” I whispered, as the full scope and horror of just how deep this plan had gone went.

  Weariness was etched into thick grooves around Jacamoe’s eyes and upon his forehead. “I knew you would find me,” he said in a soft, scratchy tone.

  I stared at the man whom I’d loved with all my heart as a child and even as an adult. Even though I knew the horrors he’d committed, that damned love was still there.

  I knew what it was to snap, to still be a good person but to do the most heinous and awful things to others because of a pain so terrible that it twisted you from the inside.

  He was sitting beside Father with an expectant look upon his face. The Witch was as harmless as a child behind him.

  “The day I saw you,” he said, and I frowned, wondering what he was doing, “I do not know, Arielle, but I felt… a bond. An instant bond. You were the daughter to me that I could never have. And you treated me as a father. I loved you well. With all my heart. I was never going to allow them to hurt you.”

  I trembled. Silence filled my bones, a type of silence that could only be born from a dawning horror of realization.

  “Your father made me watch for you. I had to report everything back to him. When I saw you with your mother, the witch, I knew what would happen because I knew you.”

  I gasped, mouth gaping. A thousand thoughts rolled through my mind. “What are you saying, Jacamoe?”

  He was quiet for so long that I thought perhaps he meant not to answer, but he finally let out a long-suffering sigh. “I lured your sister into the gardens. And when the witch’s soul tore through our Kingdom, I captured her. I managed to siphon off just enough of the witch’s power to enhance my own magick so that the cuffs could not hinder me. Just long enough to make it look authentic. But your father swam into the blast I had directed at Aquata, and…I…I…” He shrugged. “I was not supposed to be able to harm him, maybe because it was not purposeful, but he is stronger than Aquata, and he survived what she could not, though the blow took its toll on him. After that, I panicked. And I got you mixed up in this, and I am sorry, daughter of my heart. I am sorry. I only wanted to be free of this place. Of these people.”

  I didn’t realize how hard I was shaking until I nearly fell. Hatter’s arms around me once more kept me standing. That strange numbing silence in me grew. “You did this. You did all of this. You killed my family. My friend. This wasn’t a small deed you did, Jacamoe. You hurt people. A lot of people. You need help. And I need to take you in.”

  He shook his head. “It is over for me now, anyway. When the Council of Djinn discovers my perfidy, they will sentence me to a lifetime of purgatory. The tortures I will endure there will be worse than your imagined nightmares of it.” His smile was stiff and grim. “No, there is no other choice. I have to die. I will not allow them to take me in.”

  “Are you asking me to kill you?” I shook my head. That wasn’t happening. I knew what he did, but I would not allow it. He could still be saved.

  He frowned. “I see your thoughts, Little Fish, but they are no use. I will kill myself. I have done wrong. I see that now. It all slipped through my hands. I never meant for any of this to happen. I just didn’t know how to stop it. When I am dead, the undead will cease moving. But not Hook. Anahita wanted me to place a charm on him, allowing her to control him.”

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “She meant well, I think. It is your curse. She thought she could thwart it by being able to control any future actions on his part.”

  I shook my head. “There is no curse on me, Jacamoe. I don’t believe it. Father had to have lied about that too. Hook died. I never changed.”

  He sniffed, ruffling bloody fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair. “Mayhap. Your father, I fear, was an enigma to us all. Perhaps he did lie. But it is no matter now. What does matter is that Hook has no soul. It was easy to turn him into a golem because he could not fight me off. And without his soul, he can never be saved. Once I am dead, you will need to put a spear through his temple then cut off his head and all his limbs. Bury them separately. Without a soul, he will simply come back together and rampage again unless you do. Bury him as far as the East is from the West. It is imperative you do so, Arielle.”

  “You keep saying that you will kill yourself”—I held up a hand, inching closer to him—“but you don’t need to. Let me speak to the council of Djinn. Not everyone who is lost is unworthy. I was once too. And I came back. You can come back.”

  He grinned. “No, princess. I can never come back. Because I will kill your father.”

  My father was not a good man, but I would never allow that. “No, you won’t. You won’t stain your hands that way. You won’t do this, Jac. He will answer for his crimes, but you must stop this. Now.”

  His smile was soft, and full of pain. “I love you. I always have. He is a bad man, Arielle, who has done many, many bad things. He has hurt countless others. His tyranny is unlike any I have ever known before. I know you want to save everyone, but some people are not worth saving.”

  “No.” I shook my head and took a step closer. “No, Jacamoe. No. You will not hurt him. I cannot allow it.”

  Then, finding strength I’d not known I had, I ran toward my father. Hatter wasn’t far behind. Using myself as a living shield, I widened my stance and held up a restraining hand.

  I expected for him to try and fight his way to me, but he still sat, staring at me with an overwhelming radiance of love bursting through his eyes. “So you did not know. It is okay, my dear. I always wondered. But you have given me a gift this day. Your love was always unconditional, I see that now. I wondered with the others. But I always hoped you did not know.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “Long ago, when he captured me, he forced me to tether my soul to his, binding my life force to his and lengthening his years exponentially. The only true way he can die is if I do. You see, that blast should have killed him. He cannot come back from it, Arielle. Not unless I will it, and I do not. The Djinn are notoriously difficult to kill. But there
are ways.”

  Suddenly he held an obsidian blade.

  My eyes grew wide. “Stop! Don’t!”

  “It is okay, Little Fish. It will not last long. Just look away. Look away.”

  “Jacamoe, stop!” Hatter roared, racing for him, but time slowed to a standstill, and I screamed as I watched him raise his arm and pierce his carotid with the knife. A geyser of red pumped thickly into the water.

  I feel to my knees. “No! No!” I reached for Jacamoe, my heart shattering in my chest. What he’d done had been monstrous, but he’d been my father in every sense of the word.

  My blood father’s body began to convulse and twitch violently. He was dying too. Jacamoe hadn’t lied—Father really had leeched off of Jacamoe’s life energy.

  It was neither as painless or as quick as Jacamoe had said.

  “Elle,” Hatter squeezed out, and then he was racing toward me. What was happening, neither of us could stop it. But I could not look away either. I held onto my blood father, but it was Jacamoe that I watched with tears and love burning in my eyes.

  When it was over there was nothing but silence. The witch remained unmoved. Her powers returned to her now withered and near skeletal body. My mother. My true mother. What a fecked up world I lived in. I felt myself sinking into a quagmire of pain and thousands of thoughts and what ifs.

  Hatter’s hands were on me, and I felt a violent shaking. “Get up. Stop. You must come back to me. We have to reach Hook before he gets to your sister. Don’t forget why we’re here. Come back to me, Elle. Come back.”

  Tears and snot ran down my cheeks and nose, but his words snapped me out of the yawning darkness of agony. I clutched at his arms. “Hook. Yes. We have to save him. Hatter, I can’t— ”

  “You won’t lose him. I vow it. Now. Get. Up!”

  I did. Somehow, I found the will. I got up, and we went to find Hook.

  I’ll be damned if I let him die. No more death. Not today.