Grimm Awakening (25 page)

“We’ll leave this place soon,” Raven continued. “Until then, we are beyond the reach of our adversaries. We are in a space that, for them, does not exist. There are cracks in the fabric of reality, tiny gaps between worlds accessible only to those with the right knowledge, including descendents of the Order of Sylvain. When we emerge from this dark place, we will be in the suite directly beneath the one in which Jack Grimm is imprisoned.”

“So what are we waiting for?” Lucien asked.

“We’re allowing time enough for word of our inexplicable disappearance to reach Mona Faust. We want both her and her minions confused and scrambling for answers. An ambush has been set for us. As confusion mounts, these plans will fall into disarray. Mona will be furious. And a furious Mona Faust is a creature out of control. She will take her anger out on her own people. She’ll likely kill some of them. We’ll make our move then.”

Lucien nodded. “Your strategy is a good one.”

Andy grunted. “One question--why not port us directly into the Royal Suite?”

“Because that suite is fortified by a very sensitive occult energy field. It’s the best alarm system ever devised. I wouldn’t be able to breach it even via reality gaps. Ordinary magic I can circumvent. But not infernal magic.”

Andy made a contemplative sound. “Regardless of whether the scenario you’ve described develops, they’re gonna know we’re coming before we get there.”

“Unavoidable. However, if we move quickly enough, I believe they’ll still be caught off-guard.”

Andy sighed. “Well, there aren’t any other options I can see. So when do we get on with this?”

Raven said, “Now.”

Lucien looked up and saw a white disc open above his head. Then he saw another shape, a human form, rising toward it. Raven. She disappeared through the disc. Something else materialized, a physical presence that had not been there before. A rope ladder.

A hand touched his shoulder.

Madeleine. “Passenger ready to board, sir.”

Lucien picked her up, took hold of the ladder, and climbed out of that dark place.

20.

“Something’s not right.”

Jack sat in a leather recliner in front of the Royal Suite’s immense fireplace. Columns of flame taller than Jack danced like pagan ghosts in the blackened recess. At first he puzzled over the presence of a fireplace here, given the arid desert climate. But Mona was from hell, where he supposed they liked it hot. The warmth was oddly pleasant, which maybe had something to do with the level of bone-chilling malevolence Mona exuded now. She stalked the area between the recliner and the fireplace like a frustrated beast of prey.

Jack drank from the bottle of fine scotch Mona had retrieved from the bar and thrust into his hands. “Hmm, so, for reasons you’ve yet to divulge, you feel things are suddenly not going your way. Am I supposed to care? That’s good news for me, right?”

Mona ceased pacing and stood before him. “No, Jack. It’s not. I don’t know what’s wrong, but something is. I feel it. If your friends have somehow gained the upper hand, I’ll rip your body to pieces before they can get to you.”

Jack shuddered. He understood this was no idle threat. “Fine. Do whatever you have to do, Mona. At least I’ll die knowing the good guys kicked your ass.”

Mona’s expression hardened an additional degree. “Perhaps I should start now by twisting your fingers off, beginning with the broken ones.”

“I’m sure I’ll scream like a baby. And I’m just as sure you’ll enjoy that. But torturing me at this stage won’t change anything. The die is cast, as they say.” Jack drank some scotch, then frowned at the bottle. He looked at Mona again. “The threats I understand. That’s standard operating procedure for your kind. What I don’t get is why you keep supplying me with quality hooch.”

A frosty smile touched the corners of Mona’s mouth. “Because you’re a drunk. You’re no better than some stinking, panhandling tramp on the street. You’ve spent most of your life a payday or two away from skid row. An innocent girl in Cincinnati died because you were passed out, too drunk to realize what was happening and call paramedics.” She snatched the bottle from Jack’s hand and took a gulp of scotch. “Every drop you drink is another stain on your soul. Every drop makes you that much more thoroughly damned.”

She pushed the bottle back into his hand and curled his fingers around it. “So drink up. Have your fill. Have more. Hell awaits, darling.”

She resumed her pacing then, albeit at a slower rate than before.

Jack looked at the bottle. Could there be truth in what she said? It was true that he was damned. His father had said as much. But the old man had set him upon this redemption path. And at no point had he said, ‘Also, alcohol is forbidden to you because it is bad and you are a very bad man for drinking it.’

He sipped some scotch. “Whatever, Mona. I think you’re still playing head games. You keep bringing up the girl who died on me. Why? No, don’t answer that. I regret her death. I wish I’d been able to help her. But she was no innocent, either. She chose to use that poison, so ultimately it’s her fault. Just like it’ll be my own fault if I keel over of alcohol poisoning one day.”

Mona smirked. “That’s another talent drunks have--they’re capable of the most astounding feats of rationalization. You keep telling yourself lies, Jack. Soon you’ll--”

The ringing of a cell phone cut her off. Mona went to the bar and snatched up the phone, then put it to her ear. “Yes?”

Jack watched her as she listened to the voice on the other end. Her expression went from smug to alarmed to visibly distraught before she finally spoke. “How could that have happened? That’s impossible! You incompetent, worthless piece of shit. Get up here now! And bring those other incompetents with you.”

Screaming as she did it, Mona turned and threw the phone across the room. It sailed through the space formerly occupied by the sliding glass door and disappeared beyond the balcony railing.

Jack knocked back a larger slug of scotch. “Wow.
More
good news?”

Mona glared at him. “A minor setback.”

Jack couldn’t help laughing. “Fine. The details aren’t important. I can figure out the bigger picture on my own. Your guys are losing, aren’t they?”

Mona opened her mouth to answer, but the ringing of yet another phone stifled her retort. This was an old-fashioned rotary phone on a little table near the fireplace. Mona removed the handset from the cradle and put it to her ear. “The entire squad is with you, correct?”

A moment passed, then: “Good. Get in here.”

She hooked a finger into the rotary dial, gave it a full turn, and returned the phone to its cradle. Jack figured this was her method of buzzing people into the suite, a guess that turned out to be right on the money. A man in a kind of paramilitary uniform entered the room ahead of a column of similarly attired men. With the exception of their leader, the squad wore helmets with visors that obscured their faces. They were all heavily armed. Jack was taken aback by all the weaponry and the revelation that not all of Mona’s underlings were loincloth-clad, horribly scarred behemoths. The leader was a slim, grey-haired man who was maybe in his mid-forties. This man approached Mona and knelt before her with his head bowed.

“Your highness--”

Jack laughed. “
Your highness?
” He laughed some more and raised the scotch bottle in a mock toast. “All hail the demon queen.”

Mona ignored him. “I don’t want to hear any excuses, Commander Rollins. Humans don’t just go into a room and disappear.”

Rollins risked a trembling upward glance. The tremors rippling through his body increased in intensity as he met Mona’s penetrating gaze. “We have reason to believe these are not ordinary mortals. The squad you dispatched to fetch the Eye of Sylvain was slaughtered by these men. They clearly have the ability to move between worlds.”

Mona’s brow creased. “That can’t be. O’Day and the hellhound have certain talents, but feats of that nature require great power. Only a very advanced wizard could do such a thing.”

There was a desperate appeal in the commander’s shiny eyes. Jack had a feeling the man was telling the truth as he understood it. But Andy didn’t have that kind of power. Did he? He knew his friend was capable of a number of things ordinary men were not, but this went beyond--far beyond--anything he’d personally experienced. Nor did he believe Lucien capable of doing what the commander described.

Which left Raven Rainbolt. Of course. That had to be the answer.

“There is another among them, highness. An unidentified man. An older man able to change his physical appearance at will, according to the accounts of the surviving squad members. Perhaps he is the wizard.”

Jack frowned. He had no clue who the mystery man might be.

Mona slapped the commander. “Did I hear you correctly? Did you say ‘surviving squad members’?”

A blazing red imprint of a hand bloomed across the commander’s cheek. “Yes, highness. We--”

Mona slapped him again. “Why have these men not been beheaded, commander? They failed me. You know the penalty for that.”

Rollins couldn’t meet her gaze this time. When he was able to speak again, it was in the hollow, haunting voice of a man who knows his life is about to end. “These men were sent to collect the Eye. And this they did. It was their only objective. The presence of Grimm’s friends was an unfortunate coincidence.”

Mona was seething. “You have all failed me. You most grievously, commander. I told you I wanted no excuses and I’ve heard nothing but. I expect the people under me to be competent and that includes being able to adapt quickly to fluid situations. If O’Day and the others had been eliminated over there, they would not be here now. It really is that simple, commander.”

Rollins continued to shake and sob--and he apparently was out of things to say.

Mona’s voice rang out like a cannon blast: “STAND UP!”

It was a struggle for Rollins, but he managed to get to his feet. She thrust a finger at his face. “YOU!” The finger moved to include the rest of squad members. “All of you! Shed your weaponry. Every bit of it. NOW!”

There was no hesitation. The visors obscured the expressions of the other men, but Jack was certain they were as frightened as their commander--yet there wasn’t the slightest indication of resistance. The men threw down rifles and machine guns, removed handguns from holsters and discarded them, unsheathed knives and let them fall to the floor. Ammo belts and concussion grenades joined the growing pile on the floor.

Mona’s cold expression grew even frostier. “Off with the helmets, too.”

Rollins’s men removed the helmets at once and cast them aside. Most of the men were much younger than the commander. Jack was struck by how ordinary they looked divested of the paramilitary trappings--nothing at all like servants of hell.

Now Mona turned away from the commander and pointed in a new direction. “Into the fire. All of you.”

Horrified, Jack watched the commander walk past her en route to the fireplace. Again, there was no hesitation as he stepped into the flames. The commander thrashed and screamed for a time. The smell of burning meat made Jack’s eyes water. The rest of the men--still in an orderly column--moved toward the fire. One by one, they stepped into the leaping flames and did the screaming dance of death. Jack felt his gorge rise and turned to look away. It didn’t matter that these men--for reasons he could never fathom--had pledged allegiance to the greatest evil in existence, they were still men. Humans. Watching them march uncomplaining to their deaths was beyond awful. How anyone--even someone as malefic as Mona--could exert her will in this way was beyond Jack’s understanding.

Mona gripped the back of his head and forced him to watch.

“See them burn. Isn’t it lovely?”

Jack watched. One body pitched forward and a blackened arm and forehead fell out of the fireplace. Another burning, screaming man pulled the wayward corpse back into the flames before falling over himself.

“Their screams are the sweetest music.”

Mona squeezed his neck harder. “Soon, you’ll sing for me just like that.”

Jack watched until the ‘singing’ came to an end and the last man fell over dead in what was now a funeral pyre.

And he imagined himself walking into those same flames.

Could almost feel the searing heat on his flesh.

21.

Bright white light gave way to more darkness. Then that was gone and a softer light filled the room. Lucien turned and saw Raven with her hand on a dimmer knob. She turned the light up a little brighter and then strode across a large room that was more luxurious than the one they’d left behind. Instead of two twin beds, there was a large four-poster bed with a heavy velvet canopy and skirt. She moved past the bed and stood before a huge, ceiling-to-floor cabinet. The cabinet was varnished brown wood with gold inlays and knobs. It was maybe four feet across and about twenty-five feet tall. Raven gripped both of the gold knobs and pulled the doors open.

Inside the huge cabinet was a vast array of glittering steel.

Andy whistled. “Wow. Just...wow.”