Grimm Awakening (13 page)

He was still dangling from the balcony.

He looked into the inscrutable dark eyes of the man holding him by one incomprehensibly strong hand. “That’s quite the amazing display of strength there. Conan.”

Mona giggled. “Enjoying yourself down there, Jack.”

Jack’s body swayed slightly as the breeze kicked up a notch. “Oh…you know. Just hangin’ out.”

“Would you care to rejoin me on the balcony.”

“No. No. This is kind of nice, actually. Scenic.” He shivered a little as the strong breeze brushed his face again. “Bracing. Refreshing, you might say.”

“I detect sarcasm.”

“Duh.”

“Men your age should not say ‘duh’, Jack.”

“Oh? Not mature enough, eh?”

Jack twisted his head to examine the dark balcony of the suite below Mona’s. A young girl, somewhere between the ages of ten and twelve, sat alone in a lounge chair. She sucked on a red lollipop and watched Jack with a bored expression. It was as if she were watching a dull show on late night television rather than a real-life crisis happening right in front of her. It made Jack want to scream. He fixed her with a searching gaze and tried willing her to fetch a responsible adult. Her mommy or daddy. Then maybe hotel security could be summoned, and then...and then...well, what?

He decided to keep the girl’s presence a secret for now. If he became desperate enough, he would consider a more blatant appeal to the strange girl.

“Maturity isn’t a word one often associates with the name Jack Grimm.”

Jack laughed. “Okay, how ‘bout this? Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck fuck. Fuck you, Mona. Fuck you up your stupid fucking ass with a fucking jackhammer.”

“Are you really so eager to die, Jack?”

Jack’s instinct was to deliver another wisecrack, but he paused to actually consider the question for once. No, he wasn’t eager to die. What he’d told Mona earlier hadn’t been bullshit. He had purpose in life again, real reason to work at becoming a better man and some kind of force for good in the world. He wanted to make his father proud, and he desperately wished to see the old man again at the end of his own life’s path. But his pragmatic side recognized the likely futility of these desires. He could keep wishing for some miraculous way out of this shitty predicament, but the reality of the situation was that he was probably about to die.

Like, really, really soon.

Jack turned his head again to get a better look at Mona. His neck ached. Hell, all the stretched-out bones of his hanging body ached. His head hurt. He’d never say it to Mona or her goons, but at some point his aches and pains would become such that a drop to the faraway sidewalk would come almost as a relief. But now he looked into Mona’s eyes and tried to detect something human there, the slightest hint of a capacity for mercy.

But there was nothing like that there.

Just the by now familiar mix of amusement and contempt.

“No, Mona. I don’t want to die.”

“Then talk.”

“No.”

“Very well. I’d hoped to avoid resorting to harsher tactics, but you’ve given me no choice.”

Jack chuckled. “Whoa, wait. You mean you’re admitting to yet another failure? How many does that make now? You couldn’t seduce me. You couldn’t get what you wanted by using my body as an ashtray. You failed miserably at charming it out of me. And now you’ve failed at scaring it out of me. In the big leagues they usually send you packing when you strike out that many times. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when ol’ Beelzebubba calls you in for your next evaluation.”

Mona shook her head. “You’re in no position to taunt me, Jack. Remember that.”

“I’m in no position to do much else, Mona. Remember
that
.”

Mona didn’t say anything for long moments. She looked at Jack with a face devoid of expression. Jack had long associated hell and demons with fire. With heat. But heat wasn’t what Jack felt now. There was a coldness issuing from Mona that would have chilled a polar bear. He sensed movement from the balcony below him and he welcomed the opportunity to shift his attention elsewhere.

The little girl was standing at the edge of the dark balcony’s railing. But Jack saw that his earlier assessment of her age had been significantly off the mark. She had looked like a prepubescent girl sitting back there in the shadows, but now he could tell she was somewhere in her early to mid twenties. But she was small, standing no more than five feet from head to toe (and that was being generous). She was slim and ghostly white, with a black pageboy haircut framing a very pale face. She was wearing a sleeveless green dress and was barefoot. She stood in a languid pose, with her feet crossed at the ankles and an arm tucked beneath her breasts. Her other hand moved the lollipop in and out of her mouth as she regarded Jack with unreadable brown eyes.

He was still looking into those strangely hypnotic eyes when he heard Mona say: “Get that worthless sack of shit back up here. You, go fetch my tools.”

Tools?

Jack didn’t like the sound of that. A desperate panic seized him and he looked at the strange girl with the most imploring expression he could muster. He fought the urge to call out to her. Alerting his captors to her presence would accomplish nothing. It might even mean bringing harm to the girl and he didn’t want that--despite her apparent disinterest in his plight.

Holding her gaze, he mouthed the words “help me”, taking care to form the words as clearly as possible. He repeated the silent plea, then opened his mouth to do so another time--and froze when he heard the words in his head.

“I may help you
,” a feminine voice told him. “
I haven’t decided yet. Are you worth saving?
”

Jack gaped at her. Save for opening to admit the diminishing lollipop once again, her mouth hadn’t moved. She was really speaking inside his head. According to Andy O’Day, true telepaths were rare but the ones who did exist tended to be mentally unstable. Great. Just what he needed--his fate in the hands of a pint-sized lunatic.

He heard girlish laughter in his head.

“Yes
,” came the intruding voice again, “
I am a lunatic. But you still haven’t answered my question--are you worth saving...Jack Grimm? That is your name, isn’t it?
”

Jack spoke aloud: “This is starting to creep me out.”

Mona leaned further over the railing above him. “Who are you talking to, Jack? Is there someone down there?”

“Just talking to myself, Mona. I’ve been hanging like this too long. Becoming delirious.” He raised his head to grin at her. “Say, have I told you to go fuck yourself lately?”

Jack watched her knuckles turn white as she gripped the railing hard in an effort to contain her fury. She looked at the man holding him by the ankle. “Get that asshole back up here.“

The man didn’t move.

Mona glared at him. “What the hell is wrong with you? Do what I say if you don’t want to die.”

Jack frowned. As surreptitiously as possible, he shifted his gaze back to the dark-haired girl. He thought: “
What’s going on?
”

The disconcerting presence in his head replied, “
My abilities aren’t limited to telepathy. I’m exerting a bit of control over the man holding you. I want you to answer my question.
”

“Yes
,” Jack thought, “
I am worth saving. I’m one of the good guys, honest.
”

A brief, contemplative silence ensued. Then the girl thought. “
Good enough. You may be seeing me again, Jack Grimm
.”

Jack’s frown deepened. “
Who the hell are you?
”

“My name is Raven Rainbolt.
”

From above, Mona spewed epithets and commands. She was positively apoplectic. Jack drew in a startled gasp of air as he began to move quickly upward. He got one more glimpse of the dark-haired mystery girl--Raven, he reminded himself--before she disappeared from view. Then he was upright again, standing on the balcony on unsteady feet. Mona punched him in the face and he toppled like a third-world army facing the United States Marine Corps.

But Mona wasn’t finished venting her rage.

Jack watched through bleary eyes as she reached for the man Raven Rainbolt had somehow immobilized. She ripped the hood off his head and Jack gasped reflexively at the sight of a face that looked as if it had been dipped in some very corrosive substance. Her right hand whipped out and her fingernails raked bloody trails across the hideous countenance. Then Mona grabbed the huge man by the crotch and the neck and lifted him over her head.

Jack could only gape at this. For once, wisecracks eluded him.

Mona moved with little apparent effort--she almost seemed to be gliding across the balcony--and stopped at the railing, where she heaved the doomed slave into the great big emptiness.

Mona stood at the railing and watched the body descend.

Jack cleared his throat and recovered his voice. “Jesus...”

Mona turned to look at him. Her nostrils flared, her face flushed, and her wide eyes gleamed with excitement. Jack hated to admit it, but she looked supremely sexy just then. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anything sexier.

Which was just all kinds of wrong.

But true. Shamefully, shamefully true.

He gulped. “Goddamn. Holy shit. I could use another drink right about now.”

Mona smiled. “So could I. Then you get to decide what I use on you next--the blowtorch or the power saw.”

Jack winced.

If he’d had the strength, Jack might’ve flung himself over the balcony railing then. But there was no time for further contemplation of suicide. The remaining devil slave hauled him to his feet. Mona braced her hands against Jack’s chest and gave him a hard shove. He crashed through the sliding door amid a shower of glass. His head struck something unyielding and everything went black.

9.

The alternate realm Andy’s murmured hoodoo chant transported them to looked a lot like hell’s OverDark district to Lucien’s eyes. So much so that he briefly thought he’d been transported back to hell. There weren’t many things Lucien feared, but a return to the realm of his birth was near the top of that very short list. Should he ever return to that forsaken place, the hellpack would hunt him mercilessly. And they would capture him, he was sure of that. Not even Theodore Grimm’s network of renegade operatives would be able to help him.

But this wasn’t hell. That was obvious to Lucien within a few moments. Like OverDark, this was a world in dire need of an industrial revolution. Horse-drawn carriages clomped over cobblestones. Dirty-faced children clad in rags prowled the streets. Several women--most of them slightly less dirty than the foul-smelling street urchins--were clustered around the mouth of a trash-strewn alley. In manner and attire, they resembled the Victorian-era prostitutes Lucien had seen in OverDark. They called out lewd come-ons to passing men. One man stopped to negotiate with a woman in an ankle-length red dress.

Andy O’Day smacked his arm. “Stop gawking at the tarts. We’ve got drinking and talking to do.”

Lucien blinked. “Sorry.”

Siegel grinned. “Give the boy a break, O’Day. Hey, Lucien, I know a special lady. See that one in the green dress? Yeah, the one doesn’t look like she’s rolled around in shit lately. That’s Madeleine. Dame’s got a mouth like a Hoover vacuum.”

“A what?”

“A Hoover…never mind.”

Madeleine had long auburn hair, a curvaceous body, and the kind of long, slim neck that would make a vampire drool. She saw Siegel pointing her out and blew the old man a kiss. Then her gaze shifted to Lucien. Her luminous green eyes locked on his and Lucien felt his pulse race.

He looked at Andy. “Get me inside somewhere. Now. Before I do something we’ll all regret.”

Andy smiled. “Tell you what. If we can get Jack out of the Maverick, we’ll all come back to Skellington to celebrate. Lovely Madeleine will still be here, I assure you.”

“Skellington?”

“That’s the name of this shining beacon of a city.”

Andy turned away from them and began to walk up the street, moving away from the cluster of prostitutes. Lucien and Siegel followed, with Lucien casting a last, yearning glance at Madeleine before turning away from her. A hundred yards further down Andy turned left down another street. This street closely resembled the one they’d just departed, except that there were more business establishments and more people. Andy walked down another block and crossed the street behind a slow-moving carriage.

Lucien spied their probable destination. It was a ramshackle pub in a small green building with blacked-out windows. A crooked sign above the batwing doors read:

O’SCANLON’S PUB

Estab. 1958

Lucien grunted. “Interesting. This world calculates the passage of time in a manner similar to your own.”