Grimm Awakening

by Bryan Smith

  “Well, no.” Jack’s heart was beating faster and faster and his gaze kept shifting from Mona to the gulf between himself and the sidewalk. Keeping the raw fear he was feeling out of his voice was a struggle. “And stop calling me ‘dear’, you numb cunt. It’s starting to piss me off.”

  Mona threw her head back and a gale of laughter emerged. “Oh, Jack. Dear.” The laughter subsided almost as quickly as it began. She regarded Jack with a sober expression. “It’s time, Jack. Time to tell me what I want to know.”

  Jack closed his eyes. It might be best not to see death rushing up at him. “I don’t think so.”

  Mona made a tsk-tsk noise. “You stupid, stupid boy. So stubborn. I hate a stubborn man, Jack.“ There was a brief pause. Then “Let him go.”

  Jack opened his mouth to scream, to utter a last-ditch plea for mercy. But it was too late. His eyes snapped open and he watched the man to Mona’s left release his ankle and step away from the balcony.

  Jack dropped.

  7.

  “Luke, I sense a disturbance in the force.”

  Lucien squinted at Andy O’Day. “I’d advise you not to use any diminutive form of my name. I’m not a nickname kind of guy.”

  Andy tapped yet another cigarette out of the nearly depleted pack of Marlboros. The man went through cancer-sticks like a fat kid went through Twinkies. “What, you prefer your, ah, ‘Christian’ name? Heh. Don’t answer that. Anyway, the ‘Luke’ thing was a film reference.”

  “No kidding. Even in hell we’ve seen Star Wars.”

  Lucien tuned out Andy’s subsequent series of sarcastic retorts. The man could talk and talk. Meanwhile, Jack was still a prisoner of hell’s representatives here on earth. According to Andy, Professor Grimm’s son was in the top floor of a building taller than anything he’d seen in Greytown. The Maverick was taller than most of the hotel-casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, but it shared with its architectural brethren a breathtaking vibrancy. Lucien had seen things in hell that would astonish and horrify the living men and women of earth, things that would make them feel small and helpless, so he was surprised to find himself so awed by his present surroundings. As they drove down Las Vegas Boulevard, they passed Harrah’s, Caesar’s Palace, the MGM Grand, and numerous other sprawling, garishly-lit gambling/entertainment meccas. Places of legend among a certain demographic in hell. Lucien had heard their stories, but he’d never quite believed their descriptions of this grand spectacle.

  Now he believed.

  They’d cruised by the Maverick twice already. And now it was coming into view again as they made their third trip down this remarkable thoroughfare. Lucien leaned his head through the open window on his side as they drove by it, meaning to get a good look at the hotel’s upper floors. There wouldn’t be much he could discern from this distance, but curiosity compelled him to look anyway.

  But Andy grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him back inside the car.

  Jack’s friend regarded him with disdain. “Don’t be so goddamn conspicuous, man. You think they don’t have people watching for us? For that matter, I’ve been stupid, too. One time down the Strip should’ve been our limit.”

  Lucien nodded. They drove on past the Maverick. There was no shortage of other interesting things to marvel over in Sin City. He watched the MGM Grand come into view and shook his head. “Amazing. These places are like palaces. Does Mr. Siegel live in one of them?”

  Andy grunted. “No.” He stubbed his cigarette out on the dashboard and flicked the filter out the window. “Pull over here.”

  Lucien frowned. “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  Andy’s vagueness irritated Lucien, but he’d already learned the man wouldn’t be rushed or cajoled. He would share what he knew, or tell you his intentions, when he was damn well ready to do so--and not one nanosecond sooner than that. He pulled the battered Caprice over to the curb and put it in park.

  He looked at Andy. “Now will you tell me--”

  But he was looking at the man’s back now, because he was already getting out of the car. The door swung shut and Andy O’Day stepped onto the sidewalk. Lucien watched him approach an especially grungy-looking homeless man standing next to a bench. He guessed the poor old bum recognized Andy, because the man’s dour expression dissolved into a big grin when the younger man spoke to him. The old man became more animated as he talked to Andy, and Lucien could see traces of a former handsomeness in his lined and dirty face.

  Lucien got out of the Caprice and walked over to the bench. The wattage of the old man’s grin dimmed somewhat as Lucien approached. Lucien sensed a deeply ingrained wariness in the man. And when he looked into the man’s piercing blue eyes he detected intelligence and something else--something dormant but still there, lurking somewhere beneath the surface. This was a dangerous man. A killer, maybe, once upon a time. Lucien didn’t fear a man so clearly decrepit, but he did respect what he sensed beneath the broken-down exterior.

  Andy turned to greet him. “Hey, Lucien. Ben, this is Lucien, formerly of hell. Lucien, this is Ben Siegel. Commonly referred to as ‘Bugsy’ Siegel.”

  They clasped hands and shook once. Lucien was surprised by the strength of the man’s grip. Perhaps he wasn’t quite so broken-down as he appeared. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Siegel.”

  Siegel snorted. “Call me Ben. Or Bugsy. Or what-the-fuck-ever. Used to be I liked my friends to call me Ben. And a man with the balls to call me ‘Bugsy’ to my face was likely to wind up a dead man. Nowadays I don’t give a red rat’s ass.” He smiled. “That old life is gone. The man I was is a dead man, a stranger to me. But, ah, I still have that dead son of a bitch’s memories. And it’s those memories my friend Andy wishes to probe, I imagine.”

  Andy patted Siegel’s shoulder. “I’m afraid that’s true, Ben. I know it’s been a while since I paid you a purely social visit, but things have been...well, fucked up. There are dark forces in motion, man. Bad craziness.”

  Siegel grinned. “In that case, you’ve come to the right place. This city is the epicenter of bad craziness. As you well know.”

  Andy nodded. “I do, indeed.” He indicated the sidewalk bench with another nod. “Have a seat, Ben. Let’s talk.”

  Siegel and Andy sat next to each other on the bench. Lucien hovered near them, keeping a wary eye on passersby as he listened to the men on the bench converse. He searched the eyes of each man and woman--and even some of the children--looking for subtle signals of surveillance. He didn’t know whether it was likely their adversaries here would have operatives patrolling the streets for them on foot, but his was a deep-rooted paranoia. He mistrusted damn near everyone, with the exception of Theodore Grimm.

  A young woman with big blond hair strutted by on heels high enough to put her at nearly eye-level with Lucien. She wore a leather miniskirt and a top that exposed a flat midriff. She noticed his scrutiny and made him an offer that elicited hearty laughter from Siegel and Andy.

  Lucien shook his head. “Not interested.”

  “Oh, fuck you, pretty boy. You’re probably gay.”

  He sensed something swooping toward him an instant too late. Whatever it was smacked the back of his head, invoking an instinctual fight response that most often was very bad news for whoever had been stupid enough to attack him. He had his hands around the attacker’s throat and was working to crush the windpipe beneath the fragile flesh before another conscious thought could penetrate the cloak of reflexive rage engulfing his mind.

  He blinked in stupefied surprise.

  Andy and Siegel were yelling at him.

  His powerful hands were clenched tight around the throat of the blond woman. Her eyes bulged and her face was changing color beneath her mascara. A wheeze emanated from her open mouth. She flailed at the coiled muscles in his arms with weakening hands.

  A hand gripped his left bicep and squeezed. Hard. Lucien’s gaze flicked left. Andy O’Day. There was panic in the man’s eyes. “Lucien, this ain’t hell, buddy. Unhand the dame
before the cops come.”

  Lucien looked at the woman again. Her eyes were beginning to roll back in her head. Lucien jerked his hands away from her neck and she tumbled to the sidewalk, breaking a heel and badly skinning a knee in the process. The woman sat on the sidewalk and sucked in huge gasps of air. She put a hand to her bruised throat and glared up at Lucien. “You’re gonna pay for that, you jerk.”

  She groped for her fallen purse, found it, and lifted the flap to reach inside. A gun came out. Lucien had a moment to recall the way he’d handled the gun-wielding men in the desert, how he’d come fearlessly at them in the face of erratic gunfire. But now--for the first time in his life--he felt paralyzed in the face of danger. The open landscape and emptiness of the desert had allowed him to react the way he always had, but now he was hyper-conscious of the big, sprawling, unfamiliar city around him, and of all the passing people. Here he was not above the law. In hell, he was the law. Here, in public, he could not kill at will.

  Lucien’s gaze locked on the black circle at the end of the gun barrel. It was aimed at his gut. It was a large-caliber weapon, so he wouldn’t be surprised to look down and see his intestines spilling out of the hole.

  But the shot he feared never came.

  Andy moved past him with the same disconcerting swiftness Lucien had witnessed in the desert. He disarmed the fallen woman as efficiently as he had Hank, except that he didn’t break her wrist. The gun went inside his jacket as he gripped the woman by a hand and hauled her to her feet. Lucien expected her to continue making a spectacle, but she was looking at Andy with an open-mouthed awe that was almost comical. A loose crowd of onlookers had gathered. Lucien glared at them, but they appeared not to notice him. So angered was he by their disregard that he was briefly tempted to shift to hound mode. He managed not to succumb to that particular level of insanity--but just barely.

  Lucien felt a hand at his elbow. He flinched. Siegel was at his side. The old man looked too calm. To Lucien, he looked as serene as a professional assassin in that last moment before looking down a high-powered scope and squeezing the trigger. “Andy will quell this fracas in no time. You watch.”

  So Lucien watched.

  His respect for Jack Grimm’s friend continued to grow. Andy leaned into the woman, whispering intently in her ear so that none of the onlookers could hear what was being said. The woman’s face expressed a wide range of emotions in a short time, shifting from shock to anger, then back to shock, and finally to a smile and a burst of shrill laughter. Andy and the woman laughed some more and appeared to flirt a little. Lucien wasn’t sure, but he thought at one point Andy might have slipped something into the woman’s hand. Whatever the case, she wandered off apparently happy moments later, hobbling over to a bus stop on her broken heel. Without so much as a parting sneer in Lucien’s direction.

  Andy turned back to Lucien and Siegel with an impish grin on his face. “Never underestimate the power of a silver tongue and dark good looks.”

  Siegel guffawed. “And never under underestimate the power of a fat wad of cash.”

  Lucien frowned. “I thought something passed between you, but it was too quick to make out.”

  Andy shrugged. “A pittance, really.” He looked into Lucien’s eyes and his smile receded some. “You are what you are, Lucien. You’re smart--very smart--but you’re a wild thing with the instinct of a killer. In other words, an invaluable asset for our side. Still, you have a lot to learn about how things are done in our world. And obviously our business with Ben would be better conducted elsewhere.”

  Lucien nodded. He didn’t feel reprimanded. There was too much truth in what Andy said. “Where do we go?”

  A corner of Andy’s mouth tipped upward. “A place where our privacy will be absolutely guaranteed.”

  Siegel chuckled. “Ah, yes. I see.”

  Lucien’s brow knitted in confusion. “I don’t.”

  Andy slapped a hand on Lucien’s shoulder. “Saddle up, pard. We’re gonna mosey on down to my buddy Ben’s favorite watering hole.”

  Lucien shook his head. “A bar? How is that supposed to be private?”

  Andy smiled. “When it’s in another dimension, that’s how.”

  “But I thought you weren’t up to opening any more portals tonight.”

  Andy nodded. “This won’t require a portal. It’s easy. The dimension is, for lack of a better way of putting it, right next door to our own” His smile broadened. “Any reasonably skilled wizard can access it.”

  So the wizard clasped hands with Lucien and Siegel and chanted something in Latin. There was a flash of white light. Lucien experienced a moment of pure nothingness. He was only incorporeal essence.

  Then everything came clear again.

  Except that everything was different.

  8.

  Jack dropped.

  But he didn’t fall.

  Once he was done hyperventilating--a space of time that might have occupied mere moments or several minutes, it was hard to tell--he turned his gaze upward again and saw that just one of the hooded men had released him. The other man still clutched his left ankle in one incomprehensibly strong hand.

  Mona was laughing again. “Haul him up.”

  Mr. Universe complied.

  But once Jack’s ass hit the balcony rail, he used his forward momentum to do something unexpected--he called up all his strength and drove a fist hard into the center of the hooded man’s face. There was a satisfying crack of splintering bone and the big man dropped like a three-hundred pound sack of dead weight, which was pretty much what he actually was, thanks to the lethal shard of bone Jack’s powerful punch had driven into his tiny Neanderthal brain. Mona screamed and made a dash for the open balcony door. The corners of Jack’s mouth spread wide in a half-demented victor’s grin as he bore down on the remaining devil slave, who was busy doing a bang-on impression of the world’s biggest pussy as he cowered beneath the glass-topped table. Jack grabbed the blubbering man by an arm, hauled him out, and heaved him over the railing. The distant thud that came when the man hit the sidewalk seventy-five stories below was sweet, sweet music to Jack’s ears. Almost as fine a sound as that of Mona’s hysterical shouts of panic emanating from the presidential suite. He would deal with her in time. Some pleasures should not be rushed. Meanwhile, there was drink to be had. He retrieved his empty glass and filled it to the brim with Johnny Walker Black.

  Ahhh...

  That would hit the spot. He could almost taste the scotch as it moved over his tongue and slid down his gullet. Of course, any attempt to consume any sort of liquid from his current position would not go well. It was that thought that broke up his Jack Superman fantasy, which admittedly had lacked a certain something in the realism department.

  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 dad
dy. 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.”