House of Grimm: Book One of the Grimm Trilogy

Chapter Twenty Four

Chapter Twenty Four

Everything is happening so fast I can't keep up.

Rella screams when she sees me fighting for life on the ballroom floor, and launches herself down the stairs. I see her coming, but I don't have the strength in me to stop her.

And damn, I've never seen her so mad.

"Dora!" she shouts.

She throws herself on me as Jakob continues to fight his brother behind us. I hear the punches being thrown, the sickening crack as bones are broken, but I can't do anything to stop it. Rella's hands are on me, helping me sit up, smoothing my back. Rachelle quickly joins us, and I feel my best friend's arms around me.

Finally.

"I knew you were alive," I whisper weakly, "I knew it this whole time."

"You're going be okay," Rachelle whispers, "everything is going to be okay."

But we both know that's not true.

In the blink of an eye Wilhelm's fist comes down on Jakob's head. Hard. I try to scream out as he goes down but I can't get out the words. He's laying there...just laying there. Please don't let him be dead. Please don't let him die. Then, Wilhelm limps over to his book and snatches it up. He ambles over to me and Rella and Rachelle and, despite having an obviously broken leg and a smashed up face, pulls himself to his feet. He towers over us.

"And now," he gurgles to me, "you die."

But before Wilhelm can do anything Rella takes us all by surprise.

She charges at Wilhelm.

With a blood curdling scream, the kind that puts horror movies to shame, she tackles him and they fall backward together. A pile of tiny limbs and blonde hair flail backward, and I don't think Wilhelm even knows what hit him. In the time it takes the oldest Grimm to throw Rella off of himself, which isn't long, I've scrambled over to Jakob and am holding his head in my lap.

"Please wake up," I whisper, tears spilling down my cheeks and mixing with the dried ink on my lips. "Please don't leave me."

There's only one thing left that I can think of to do. With shaking hands I hover over Jakob, and brush my lips against his one last time.

His green eyes shoot open, and an ear-splitting gunshot rings out behind us.

I turn to see Rella drop to the ground in a pool of black.

"No!" Charles and I scream in unison.

Wilhelm is standing there in the center of the room, bloody and weakened, his book nowhere in sight. Not Rella, anyone but Rella. I rush to her and drop to my knees, sobbing over her. He shot her square in the forehead, square in her beautiful forehead.

She died instantly. Saving me.

"You monster!" I shout.

Hot black fury courses through my veins and I see spots. Maybe that's just the ink welling up inside me, I don't know, but something is happening. Then something falls out of Rella's pocket at my feet. The journal.

She stole it from him before he killed her.

"Dora, write!" Jakob shouts, and I grab Wilhelm's book.

I scrawl out the final words to Grimsby's story as Wilhelm's mouth opens in horror.

"Wilhelm's body drops to the ground...." I write hurriedly, glancing up as the scene unfolds around me.

Wilhelm's body drops to the ground in a crumpled heap and Jakob runs to me, reading over my shoulder, but I keep writing:

"Wilhelm's body drops to the ground in a crumpled heap, the words that he'd written backfiring on him once and for all. Everything around us, everything I've ever known, crumbles to the ground as Grimsby disintegrates into nothing and I step into reality."

"Genius," Jakob breathes, "absolutely brilliant."

He drops the journal to the ground and collects me in his arms, kissing me harder than he ever has before. Sweat and ink mingle on our lips but I don't even care—Jakob is here. He's here and he loves me.

"I love you Dora Klein," he whispers, looking down into my eyes.

"I love you too, Jakob Grimm," I say, my tears spilling over onto the ground. We stand and I look around, at the ending that I'd created spreading out before me. Rella's body is already gone, and something in my heart breaks as I realize that I'll never get to say goodbye to her or Rachelle or my family. They'll never know the truth about any of this, they just won't exist.

Will I exist?

"You took his place," Jakob whispers in my ear as Wilhelm's body turns to ashes in front of us. Ashes. "You wrote him out of reality and yourself into it. You ended the story."

He reaches down and touches a finger to a cut on my arm. His finger comes back red. Blood, real, actual blood.

"We need to get you to a doctor," he says.

My story is ending and looping around full circle. I look around at the now empty ballroom, the bloodstains, the ink. It's all caving in on itself. No, not caving in...being erased. The lines of the castle are being smudged away and every character's face is being rubbed into infinity by some unseen eraser. Towers, statues, the hall and its crimson curtains...nothing and no one is safe from The End.

Because none of it exists.

Even Dexter is disappearing, his scraggly fur being wiped away bit by bit.

Something in me is solid and real and...horrified. What is this feeling? Like...like I know that this has to happen, but I don't want it to. How can I sit here and breathe while everything I know is collapsing?

Horrified, I realize that it's not just everyone in the castle, not just Rella and Rachelle and Charles, even Ryan...but the entire town is crumbling, too. All of a sudden I look up and realize that Rachelle's legs have already gone, the silent eraser easing its way up her front. I sprint to her and grab her shoulders, pulling myself against what's left of my best friend.

"I'm sorry," I murmur, clinging to the last person in the room I have left from this world of mine. The last character.

"Please forgive me..." I whisper. But I know I'll never forgive myself, and nothing can make Rachelle real like me yet. Her features are blotted out of the air in an instant, and the breath in my lungs hitches.

She's gone.

"Dora," Jakob says kindly, taking my hand and pulling me toward the front of the castle. I follow him numbly, walking up the stairs and watching the last strand of Rachelle's red hair denature.

How can I live in a world where everyone I've ever known is being erased?

"Dora," Jakob says again, placing a soft kiss on my temple. "You can get them back."

I lift my eyes to his and blink frantically. But then the walls around us start to disintegrate even more and I know that we have to leave quickly. We walk through the double doors and through the looming foyer. When we get to the front doors I look back at all of the death and destruction behind me. My entire life, my friends, my family, my world...would it all be erased away because of something I wrote in a book? I close my eyes and fold my hands over my mouth.

I'm so sorry I didn't tell any of you. I'm so sorry I did this...

"Dora, we can write them again one day," Jakob says as he places one hand on the small of my back, and one on the front door knob.

"As long as you remember."

He opens the door slowly, revealing the city streets and Central Park sign.

"I will remember you," I whisper behind me, not just to Rachelle and the rest, but to everyone in my small little town. As Jakob and I walk hand in hand onto the city street, the last words of my story echo in the back of my mind:

My end is only the beginning.