Grim Tidings (22 page)

Leo folded me into his arms again. He was warm, and I was so slick with blood I felt like I'd slipped underwater, going down and down until the blackness swallowed me.

U
riel was where I'd left him, lying in the snow. He was pale—corpse pale, blue around the edges, and I shivered as I touched his skin. It was cool and lifeless. I put my hand on his face. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I was wrong about you.”

Leo stood at a respectful distance, and I looked back at him. “Leo,” I said softly. “I don't feel so good . . .”

I swayed, and fell over on Uriel. I couldn't stop myself. The wound from the Scythe was filling me up with poison and there was no controlling my muscles anymore.

This time wasn't like the last, when there had been panic and confusion. This time I was almost glad. Saddened to leave Leo, but so glad the pain was almost done . . .

“Do you mind?” Uriel muttered at me. “You're small but strangely heavy.”

I started, barely able to lift my head. “You're not dead.”

“Not yet,” Uriel said. He rolled his head to look at Leo. “Reaper. You need to release what the Scythe is holding. We're dying because it's sucking the life force out of us.”

Leo looked down, stroking his fingers over the Scythe. To his credit, he didn't waste any time with a bunch of questions.

“Hold on,” Uriel said. “This is going to hurt like a bitch.”

Nothing he'd said could have prepared me for what came next, though. If being stabbed had felt like a truck, this felt like a freight train. I arched like I'd been shocked, and fell over, feeling myself twitch as I convulsed. I couldn't even scream, it hurt so much, and thankfully I blacked out for a few seconds before I came to, looking up at Leo.

He smiled at me. “How was it?”

“Fucking awful,” I said, sitting up. I still had a hole in my shoulder you could drive a compact car through. Uriel also tried to get up, making it to one knee.

“On the bright side,” Leo said, helping me to my feet, “you both look better than he does.”

We all regarded Gary for a moment. A light layer of snow had already covered his body, covering the wounds and the ugliness.

“Who was he?” Leo said.

“Belial was just an alias,” Uriel said. “If he was really something as ancient as all that . . .” He shrugged. “There are a lot of mysteries left in the folds of the universe. Things even the Kingdom has forgotten. I don't know what he was.”

“He was adaptable,” I said.

“He was a fucking asshole,” Uriel said, making it to his feet with a groan. “And he ruined my suit.”

I looked to Leo, and then to the figure behind the chain link. Cain was still watching us. I don't think he'd blinked since we'd shown up. “Leo,” I said quietly. “We can't leave him alive.”

“Yeah, I know,” he sighed. He turned to Uriel. “I know you just came back to life and all, Clarence, but we need one more favor.”

Uriel dipped his head. “You want to go back to the Garden.” He beckoned when we didn't step closer. “Well, come on. I don't have all night.”

The sun was
rising, somewhere behind the gray snow clouds, when we returned, Leo holding the stake we'd cut from the tree. He and Uriel stopped at the fence, though, and he turned the stake over to me. “This is yours, darlin',” he said. “You earned it.”

I sucked in a breath and then ducked through the cut in the fence. I could feel Hank's spell gently curl away from me and then close behind me as I crossed it and stood before Cain.

“I didn't think you'd come back,” he said.

“But I did,” I said. I held out the stake, balanced on my palm. “And now you have to hold up your end of this deal.”

Cain stretched out his hand, then drew it back. “Will you do the honors?”

I shook my head. I didn't want to be a part of this. It was sad, and private, and it wasn't mine.

He nodded after a moment. “I'm glad I didn't see the end,” he murmured. “When Belial told me . . .”

“He wasn't Belial,” I said. “But you knew, I think. You've been around a long time. Even when you were alive, you were a powerful warlock. Probably the most powerful I've met.”

“I wanted to die,” Cain said. “I still want to. I wasn't thinking straight.”

I put the stake back in his hands. “It's your time,” I said. “Past time.” I started to leave, and then turned back. “Do me a favor. If you change your mind—come back to me. Because I'll make damn sure that thing goes in your heart.”

Cain nodded, and then reached out and grabbed my hand, positioning the stake between his ribs with the other. “I told you we'd be together in the end, little bird. We could take this and slay the Grim Reaper and—”

I leaned into him and shoved the stake up and between his third and fourth rib, angled into his heart. “You don't know me,” I whispered. “And you don't own me. And your time's up.”

I walked away without saying anything else. I didn't want to see his end. I walked west, past Leo and Uriel, toward the big orange scoop of sun sitting on top of the snow, and stared into it until my own vision dazzled me. I told myself that was why I was crying, and not any other reason at all.

L
eo caught up with me on the other edge of the field, the far one beyond the silo. We were on a short cliff above a frozen river, the water hissing and crackling below the surface. “That was him on the highway,” I said, putting my head on his shoulder. “Cain. Trying to get to me before we even hit Minneapolis.”

Leo breathed big, his chest raising and lowering me. “I am not looking forward to going back to all that mess. I always hated office politics. Why I became a cleaner and didn't fuck around trying to be the boss like my old man. I liked working with sulfuric acid and a fifty-five-gallon drum a lot more than coworkers.”

I looked up at the sky, the faintest hint of blue showing behind the iron-bellied clouds that scudded over the plains. “At least Lilith put your main competition in a coma,” I said. Leo snorted.

“I should send that witch a muffin basket.”

We were quiet for a long time after that, Leo keeping his arm tight around me. I was glad to be under it. Things had been shitty and scary and chaotic for way too long, even by my standards.

“Do you think he was right?” I said. “Gary—or whoever—I mean? Do you think the world is really ending?”

“You're the one who grew up in the Bible Belt, kid,” Leo said. “Signs and portents and all that. What do you think?”

I wriggled closer to him, until his arm could almost circle me. “I've been around awhile. Things are different now. It's not like an apocalypse—more like a virus. All the things Gary said are happening. Maybe it's not so much an end as an overlap. Maybe there's too much for the barriers to handle. Who knows what tipped it over?”

“Lilith sure didn't help,” Leo said. “Or Uriel using you to do what he didn't have the balls to.”

“Ease up on him,” he said. “He saved my life, and he got you your Scythe. He's not so bad.”

Leo grunted, but he didn't say anything.

“If things can't support their own weight they implode,” I said. “Maybe all of what happened this past week or so is us starting to see the cracks in the wall.”

“So this is how the world ends,” Leo said. “With a whimper. A little hairline crack.”

I replayed everything Cain and Gary had said to me. How I was like Cain. I was meant to be here, now, at this precise moment. Not because I was unlucky. For a reason. And it didn't have to be the reason Gary or anyone else picked. I didn't have to be a sign or a portent. If I wanted, I could be here to shore up the foundations. To keep the walls from cracking.

I watched the clouds roll back from a daylight sky as Leo gave me a squeeze and went to start the car. I watched sunlight touch ground it hadn't in weeks, starting to melt the ice, and then Leo honked the horn and I turned and jogged back to the car.

Spring would come. It might be slow and muddy, but eventually it would be like winter had never fallen at all.

Leo shook his head as he pulled out onto the highway, heading north to whatever was waiting for us back in Minneapolis. “Just a little crack,” he said again.

I patted his arm, and watched the road. In a strange way, I owed Gary a thank-you, wherever he was.

He'd finally gotten me to stop waiting for the world to end.

I squeezed Leo's hand as he accelerated, pushing the car to the limit. “Not if I can help it.”

CAITLIN KITTREDGE
has written sixteen novels for adults and teens, including
Black Dog
, the award-winning Iron Codex trilogy, and
Coffin Hill
, published by Vertigo. Caitlin spends her time in Massachusetts fixing up her 1881 Victorian house that she shares with several spoiled cats and a vast collection of geeky ephemera.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
hc.com
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“With an unrelenting pace, wildly imaginative details and moments of shocking emotion, this is a book—and surely a series—that is going to earn an eager following.”

—
RT Book Reviews
(top pick, nominated for Best Paranormal Romantic Suspense @ RT Awards)

“[D]efinitely a keeper. The pacing is speedy without being too rapid, the character design is intriguing . . . and the story is a clever riff on the tried-and-true revenge motif. . . . Lots of promise here; make this one a series to watch.”

—
Booklist

“A fast-paced read perfect for lovers of dark fantasy.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“. . . Kittredge employs an enjoyable variation on the standard urban fantasy worldbuilding.”

—
Library Journal

“This is a fascinating world, with a well-developed supernatural setting that includes Kittredge's version of Hell. I highly recommend it for readers of urban fantasy.”

—GeekMom Blog

“The combination of the world and the action kept me turning pages late into the night with this one.”

—All Things Urban Fantasy

“Always providing a fresh and unique perspective on commonly used tropes and archetypes, Ms. Kittredge herself weaves her own sort of magic with words on the page. . . .
Black Dog
is the perfect start to a (hopefully) long and happy relationship with the new Hellhound Chronicles series.”

—Literary Escapism

“Caitlin Kittredge has a way with words, she teleports you to this world she has created and then vibrantly paints it for you.”

—Once Upon a Twilight

“Kittredge has created a very interesting world with very intriguing characters/creatures, and I think it will only get better from here.”

—Dark Faerie Tales

Hellhound Chronicles

Black Dog

Black London Series

Street Magic

Demon Bound

Bone Gods

Soul Trade

Devil's Business

Dark Days

Young Adults

Iron Codex Trilogy

The Iron Throne

The Nightmare Garden

The Mirrored Shard

Cover design by Adam Johnson

Cover photographs: © Dmytro Vietrov / Shutterstock (reaper); © Viorel Sima / Shutterstock (couple)

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

GRIM TIDINGS
. Copyright © 2016 by Caitlin Kittredge. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Harper Voyager is a federally registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

EPub Edition April 2016 ISBN 9780062316943

ISBN 978-0-06-231693-6

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