Furious Fire: Grimm's Circle, Book 8 (9 page)

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 stare 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.

It had taken time to
perfect
them, and years more to learn control, but the foundation had already been there and now, that ability served him well as he slid into the shadows. He heard a car, gliding through the streets and he eyed the roof above him. With a cursory glance around, he crouched and then lunged upward.

Once he was there, he settled in the shadows and watched the car he’d heard roll to a stop. It was sleek, black and worth a mint. He tried to make out the model as it nosed into the narrow space available just across the street. He failed, though. Give him a firearm and he could name the manufacturer, the year, and when it had started being used.

Cars were another matter.

The car had stopped in front of the building where the local law enforcement was located. Finn didn’t know what they called themselves. Sheriff, deputies, cop, bobbies…he barely kept up with the names as they changed from country to country, decade to decade.

But he recognized the thing that climbed from the car, pretending to be mortal.

He had one Colt in hand before the person even had a foot on the ground.

Demon
… It was a whisper in his ear.

Yeah, I got that memo
.

It—or the woman it pretended to be—was tall and sleek, her long black hair twisted in a coil around her head, almost like a crown. She glanced around, the look seemingly casual. There was nothing casual about her—there hadn’t been in a long, long time. Everything an orin did had purpose.

And the fact that one of the higher-level demons was here, now, had Finn’s gut going cold.

He touched the medallion at his neck for the second time in under two hours. This time, he didn’t just send out what he considered his
hey, call me back
sort of thought. It was more along the lines
we need to talk…yesterday
.

“I have a feeling things are worse than you think, old man. A lot worse.”

Finn stiffened as he felt that weight in his head. It took only moments for the response.

He was all too familiar with having Will barge his way inside his thoughts to not recognize it. So yeah, he knew it was what it was, all right. Knew it and despised it.

But it wasn’t anything that would harm him.

As Will settled within Finn’s mind, he fought the instinctive urge to back away, to try and force the older Grimm out, but it wouldn’t do any good. He’d learned that the hard way, more than once.

Will didn’t waste time with questions like “what is going on?”

He would have already picked up on that during his time loitering in the back of Finn’s brain as he made the connection.

No, he went right for the big salvo.
“Just why do you think this is what’s going on
?”

“I don’t. Not really. But it’s one thing that makes sense. The only bodies—or survivors—ever recovered are children and there are reasons why orin wouldn’t try for kids. They’re too weak to survive that kind of invasion. Too
many
bodies are disappearing for it to be vankyr. They don’t need
that
much flesh and even if they did, they’d leave a mess behind that sooner or later we’d have to clean up. I remember—Canada. You have to remember Canada.”

Finn felt the pressure in his mind darken, then twist.
Ohhhh, yeah
…Will remembered Canada.

“There’s never been any sign such a thing has happened,”
Will responded after a long, taut moment.

Finn sighed. He wanted a drink.
“Just because it hasn’t happened before does that mean it can’t happen now?”

So much time passed before Will answered that Finn thought maybe he just wouldn’t.

And then, in a single, grim statement, Will said the last thing Finn had wanted to hear.
“No.”

“Shit.” Finn dragged a hand through his shaggy hair and continued to eye the car in front of him. The thing that made the most sense, in his head, was to follow her when she left and see what he could learn. He stayed where he was, wishing he could see through the walls of the simple building. He could hear voices, but as he hadn’t heard her speak, he didn’t know which voice was hers, couldn’t pick it out from the other voices coming from all around.

“What do I do, boss?” He spoke the words aloud but it made no difference. Will would hear him.

A disgruntled sound escaped Will.

“
For now, stay alive. I have…something to attend to and then I’ll be there. Don’t cause too much trouble between now and then
.”

“Now, would I do that?” he murmured to himself.

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

Demons…

Sitting in the corner, knees drawn to my chest, I fought the shudders that tried to wrack me from head to toe. Tried to ignore the phantom pain in my gut.

I could remember that pain now.

This was the worst, remembering each way I’d died.

But at the same time, I could remember him…how he’d looked at me.

The first time had been the hardest, the most brutal.

And now, terrifying clarity, I realized there was something
more
. Something beyond that memory that I wouldn’t let myself examine.

It was enough for now. Wasn’t it enough for now?

She’s dying, mate
.

Those words, harshly, almost carelessly spoken, tugged at something hidden so deep inside, I suspected that when I
did
unearth it, it would be like tearing the very heart out of me.

She is dying…I cannot save her…

An icy bead of sweat trickled down my back. That voice…