Blind Destiny: Grimm's Circle, Book 7 [retail mobi] (16 page)

The woman who was currently trying to slip a hand into her back pocket.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sina snapped.

She stormed forward and Luc watched as she jerked a phone out of the mortal’s hand, threw it down and stomped on it, grinding it under the heel of her boot.

Then, she leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “Listen, precious, I don’t have time for that. You’re not going to get hurt, so save us the histrionics and don’t go trying to call the police. They can’t handle this problem.”

Luc had to hand it to the girl. Even though she was terrified, she didn’t let it get the better of her. She glared at Sina and then at him. “Oh, forgive me for not being overly convinced. That big bastard has my friend helpless, you’ve got a dog the size of a miniature pony and you just busted my phone—oh, and you pretended to be a cop! You’re really inspiring trust. But you’re not going to hurt us. We’re perfectly safe.”

Sina sighed. “Girl, I never said you were
safe
. I never promised your friend wouldn’t come to harm. She’s already past my help.”

“Wha…” Natasha clamped her mouth shut, swallowed. Then she shook her head. “What?”

“You can feel it,” Sina murmured.

Luc realized it, then. Something Sina had probably realized all along.

The girl had something odd about her.

Odd abilities appeared in humans every now and then. It wasn’t terribly common, but it wasn’t altogether rare, either.

The question was what they did with it, whether they acknowledged it.

This girl…she acknowledged it.

“You already know what’s wrong, if you’ll look.”

Natasha stumbled back a step.

“Just let us go,” she whispered.

There was denial now. Denial, but when she looked at the woman who still struggled in Luc’s arms, she flinched. And then she spun away and went to her knees and started to vomit.

He couldn’t blame her.

If he hadn’t dealt with a number of odd and disturbing and scary things, he might have been a little sickened by the fact that he was essentially holding a moving corpse. “Mind if I keep use of your eyes, Sina?” he asked.

“Of course not.”

He nodded and then called to Krell.

The dog yipped.

Nodding at the mortal still on her knees, he said, “Guard.”

She couldn’t leave, not yet.

They had to figure out what to do with her, but first they had to deal with the other puzzle.

He pushed away the dead thing he held, shifting at the same time and drawing out a blade. “So…just who is controlling her, do you think?”

Chapter Eleven

Over his hand, I could see her eyes.

Wide and locked on my face.

Although her body was dead, there was an intelligence in that gaze and it was downright freaky.

I’d dealt with the demonic before, but dealing with the dead? That was something new.

Usually once the soul was gone, the body just stopped fighting.

The soul
—

Something danced in the back of my mind. A faint bit of knowledge, lost in the cavern of memories. Too many years, too much that I’d seen, too much that I’d done.

But this, this was something I needed to remember.

“Take your hand away,” I said softly, studying her face.

Luc grimaced but complied, keeping ready.

Off to the side, the other girl was still retching. Judging by the rapid rate of her heart and her unsteady breathing, she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. She was probably tottering near shock. Perfect. A great way to etch things on the memory. Will was going to be pissed.

“Who are you?” I asked.

I wasn’t talking to the woman who’d once owned the body. She was gone and her soul wasn’t here. I could sense souls, just like Luc could. But this woman’s was gone. Her body was hollow and the thing settled inside her, it was like a snake coiling into a hole, ready to strike.

But there was something familiar…

As she started to laugh, I knew.

“Despoina,” I said quietly.

The girl on the floor flinched.

And Despoina smiled. “You remember me.”

“Only barely.” I glanced around the house and then back at her. “How do you still linger?”

“You trapped me here.” Her eyes narrowed to slits, but still that smile lingered on her face. “For a while, I hated, and raged. But then I learned. I learned what I could do. See the body I’ve taken? Someday, I’ll be able to break free of this prison and I’ll walk again. Then I’ll find what I seek and even
you
, angel, cannot stop me.”

“Oh, please.” I prowled around the room, stepping carefully over the rotted boards, searching for whatever bits and pieces I’d marked. We could put a mark on a place. Some might call it a blessing. I don’t know if it’s that. But I’d left my mark on this place, hoping to contain whatever it was that had lured her so. “You waste your time here, old woman. There are none of the books. You wasted your entire life looking for something that
isn’t
here.”

“You
lie
,” she shouted.

The sound of it rose through the air like a banshee’s wail.

Sighing, I closed my eyes and concentrated, waited until I knew I’d wrapped the house in enough of a protective bubble that any and all sounds, sighs and whatnot would be held within. It was a trick the older ones managed to pick up and I should have done it earlier.

Of course, I hadn’t thought I’d come face to face with a ghost with a knack for possessing bodies, either.

“Old woman, there are no books here. You’re standing on the ground where I killed a bunch of vicious women centuries ago, stupid women, just like you, and any power, any echoes or memories you feel are echoes of what I did to them, and what became of
me
. There is nothing
else
here,” I told her.

Her smile turned crafty. “There is. There is a darkness that drives people insane. Even your man feels the chill in the air.”

“That chill in the air has nothing to do with the sickness invaded this town.” I slanted a look at him and then looked back at her. “That’s all on you and once you’re gone, it will end.”

I continued to search for what I’d marked. What had I touched, damn it?

It would have been something durable—should have just burned the house. Burn.

The fireplace.

I found the mark there, carved into the stone. Just a crude wing, but that it was the intent to protect that mattered. The blood that had been shed, and there had been that. My very blood had watered this ground centuries ago. It probably still remembered me, but I’d bled over it again the night I came for Despoina. I hadn’t brought my staff and none of my blades would work. I needed more leverage. “Do you have a longer blade? I need one. Or your staff.”

He nodded, still clutching Despoina’s struggling body. She struck back with her head, but Luc evaded easily.

“Short sword,” he said. “Sheath along my back.”

I fetched it and went back to the fireplace. “This place no longer needs me.”

Crow felt it.

The moment
her
power faded.

With a satisfied smile, he wrapped his wings around himself and hurtled through the night to the house.

Luc tensed.

That cold.

“Sina?”

She grimaced. He could feel it, an echo as he rode inside her mind, sharing her sight. “It’s okay, Luc. It’s one of the wraiths.”

One of the wraiths—

Swearing, he shoved the puzzle of the animated dead woman to the floor and jerked the bladed staff from inside his jacket.

“You can’t say
it’s one of the wraiths
and
okay
in the same sentence.” Wraiths were dangerous.

They were rare creations, things that existed between worlds, caught between the mortal plain and the netherplains, where the demons dwelled. Luc had never dealt with one, but he knew they were bad news.

“Oh, put it away,” Sina said, shoving at his hands. “He won’t be here for you. They come for the resistant souls.
Hers
.”

Luc spun around. “I will not put it away—”

The door blew open.

What came through looked more like a black cloud than anything else. Krell moaned low in his throat and Luc whispered into his mind. The mortal on the floor went to jump up but then she froze. It was like the very air froze her. Krell wrapped his big body around her, his pale blue eyes glittering.

Luc palmed his staff, still riding in Sina’s mind, and cursing the fact that he had to do so. If she went down—
no
. That wouldn’t happen.

The boiling black mass slowed and as they watched, it took form, the tendrils of blackness shaping into what looked like…

Feathers?

Luc scowled as more and more feathers appeared.

Wings.

He was staring at wings.

Massive wings, wrapped around a massive body—oddly batlike, he thought.

But it was no bat standing before him, massive or otherwise.

As they stared, the dark creature lifted his head and Luc found himself staring at a man.

It was a man.

Or at least he resembled one.

Gold skin, black eyes. Black eyes that reflected no light and spoke of death.

And the cold coming from him was enough to chill Luc to the bone. He hadn’t felt that sort of chill in his mortal life, not even during those long, endless nights when he’d slept in a tent on a wintry battlefield, uncertain if he’d ever return home to his wife, to his family.

It wasn’t just the cold of death. It wasn’t just the ice of fear. It was more, and he couldn’t even begin to describe it.

But he didn’t have to describe it to face it, to fight it.

Twirling his staff, he moved to keep his body between Krell and the mortal. Poor, idiotic little fool. He didn’t know what going to come of her, but his duty was clear—he was here to protect the human race, and she was human.

“Luc.”

Sina’s voice was a distraction he didn’t need as the wraith came forward.

Wraith
—

A damn poor word for this big bastard, Luc thought. The man moved and the very ground seemed to shudder under his footsteps.

“Damn it, Luc, put the staff away. He’s not here for us,” Sina said.

The words penetrated, somewhat, but Luc knew a threat when he faced one and this man had threat written all over him.

The man slanted a look his way. Although Luc couldn’t see him, he thought maybe the man smiled. Sina could see him and through her eyes, he saw the way the man’s profile changed.

“You’re not teaching your new ones well, Grimm.”

Luc curled his lip. “New?”

“Wraith, your kind rarely come here,” Sina said, her voice flat. “All of us are taught of you, but no more than a handful of us have ever seen any of you. And none of us ever have to
deal
with you.”

“True.”

I studied the wraith, fought the urge to shiver. It had been so long since I’d felt the cold, I barely recognized the sensation at first.

He wasn’t particularly wraith-like. I’d met one other wraith. She’d been more in keeping with what I’d imagined a wraith to be. Wispy and thin and all tremulous death sighs and moans.

This one was walking death. Personified.

With rather lovely wings.

“Why are you here
now
?” I asked him even as he continued to move forward.

Stalking his prey. A woman who couldn’t run.

Despoina.

Held frozen in place.

It seemed Luc, Krell and I weren’t affected by his presence the way mortals were. Despoina couldn’t seem to control the dead now, even though I could feel her struggling to do so. It was like a moth beating against the glass—a struggle I felt in my mind all too clearly.

The wraith stopped in his tracks and looked at me. “Would you rather I left her here? So she continues doing what she has done for the past…” His eyes went vague and time ticked away endlessly.

Minutes passed. I sighed and said, “The past what?”

He blinked and shook his head. “The past…decades. Centuries? How long since you killed her, Grimm? You trapped her soul here, then marked this damnable ground.
You
did this.”

I flinched under those hard, uncompromising words.

“I killed her,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady. “That means
she shouldn’t have been an issue
. I marked the damned ground to keep anybody else from being drawn in the way she was.”

“Then you walked away from the mess you made.”

You walked away…
His words hit me hard. Yes, I marked the land, hoping that I’d keep anybody and everybody except for mortals away from this place. Hoping it would keep me from never having to return. But somehow, I’d done the unthinkable, I realized. I’d trapped her here. I’d locked her to this place, and because I’d marked the land, I’d kept the wraith from coming to claim her as well. She
should
have just died, but sometimes the soul could cling to a place. Despoina had clung rather tenaciously.