by Rowan Casey
The image of the tentacled thing in the alley flashed across her mind, but she shoved it back down into the depths where it belonged, right next to the face she’d seen lurking beneath Dellacroix’s skin.
“No,” she said flatly.
He can’t be telling the truth. He just can’t.
Grimm shook his head in disgust at her continued evasions. “Bullshit. You’re lying; you and I both know it. Your presence here is no accident. For centuries the Knights have returned whenever the threat raises its head anew, reuniting to stand in the gap and protect the rest of the world from what they do not know exists. But this time, something went wrong! This time the Knights do not know their true natures!”
Jessie seized on that last statement the way a drowning man grips a life preserver.
“So, what, you’re telling me that I’m one of these Knights and I just don’t recognize it yet?”
“Yes!”
Jessie’d had enough. Her anger rising, she decided that now was the time for her to call bullshit.
“You might be a hell of a magician, Grimm, but you’re a terrible liar. I know exactly who I am and a knight in shining armor isn’t anywhere in the job description. I don’t know what kind of scam you’re trying to run here, but keep me the fuck out of it! If I see you around me or my place in the future, I’m calling the cops and we’ll see how good you are at escaping from an actual jail cell!”
She scooped up the photographs in front of her, folder and all, and then stalked over to the office door. Opening it, she glanced back to see Grimm watching her, his expression carefully neutral.
“Stay the fuck away from me,” she told him. “I don’t want to hurt you or your people.”
With that final warning, she stepped out of the office, yanking the door shut behind her as she went.
A moment passed, then a carefully hidden door in one wall opened and Hautdesert stepped into the office from where he’d been monitoring the conversation from the next room.
“Shall I go after her, sir?”
“No. We’ve devoted as much time to her as we can. We have others to worry about. Perhaps she’ll come about on her own before the circle gathers tomorrow night.”
“And if not?”
“We’re just going to have to get along without her, I guess. And before you say anything, yes, I know that will make the circle weaker as a result. Nothing we can do about that; we’ve got to play the hand that we’ve been dealt.”
“Understood.”
“See that she gets home without interference and then let’s concentrate on finding Arthur.”
“Very good, sir.”
Hautdesert let himself out of the office, leaving Grimm alone with his thoughts. He didn’t like the way things were going and with so little time left, he was feeling the pressure like never before. The fact that none of the knights recognized him when he showed up, that their avatars stayed silent and dormant in his presence, was unprecedented in all the years he’d lived in this realm.
It didn’t bode well for what was to come.
He considered what had just happened. He’d hoped that things would prove different with Jessie, but he saw now that his approach had been wrong. Rather than helping her understand that her visions were far more than just creations of her imagination, that they were in truth signs that the Veil was failing, that the services of the knights were needed more urgently than ever before, all he’d done was frighten her.
We’re running out of time, he thought.
Perhaps it was time to consider other avenues.
After a moment of consideration, he reached for the phone. A lot of time – and a lot of animosity – had passed between them. He could only hope that she would let bygones be bygones and take his call.
Her vision was often stronger than his. She had to see the threat looming before them.
Didn’t she?
Only one way to find out.
16
Jessie awoke the next morning still angry about the events of the night before. She felt trapped between a rock and a hard place. She was furious about the invasion of her privacy, but at the same time was realistic enough to recognize that it made sense for Grimm to look into her background before investing his time and energy into her, even if his sponsorship wasn’t disclosed. Which left her irritated for a variety of reasons.
Given that Grimm had deigned to find out what he could about her background, Jessie decided that it was only fair that she do the same. Grimm might have considerably more money at his disposal, but that didn’t mean she was without resources.
Jessie showered, dressed, and grabbed a quick breakfast down in the hotel restaurant. She had the doorman hail her a cab and then instructed the driver to take her to the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library.
Constructed in 1926 and now a historic landmark, the library was the third largest public library in the country in terms of books and periodical holdings. Jessie was hoping that somewhere in all that paper and ink was enough information about her target to get a sense of what he might actually be up to.
It was still early, so there were plenty of public computers still available for use without waiting in line. Jessie settled down in front of one and started with a simple Google search, typing Dante Grimm into the search box with her two fingered typing style and then hitting the Enter key.
The computer seemed to think about her request for a second before spitting out its answer; more than 600,000 results. Jessie tried again, this time putting the search term between quotation marks, hoping it might narrow the search some.
No joy. If anything, there were even more responses.
This is going to take a while.
She leaned back in her chair and began reading through the results, clicking on the articles that she thought might give her some background on the world-famous illusionist. She didn’t know exactly what she was looking for – was just trying to get some overall sense of the man beyond what she already knew – so she didn’t try to filter anything. Serious news reports were just as much fair game as gossip-style celebrity articles.
And, of course, there were a hundreds of Youtube videos to get through, as well.
She came up for air several hours later and wandered outside to grab lunch from a food truck parked nearby. Taking her food with her, she sat down on the lawn and considered what she’d learned so far.
Grimm burst on the illusionist scene about ten years earlier in a traveling show with three other performers. He had rapidly risen in popularity, outdistancing the others in the tour, and soon had a show of his own in Vegas. That had led to several television appearances, which in turn had gained him a show of his own on HBO that ran for several years. He had been named Magician of the Year several times, as well as Magician of the Decade, by the International Magicians Society, of which he was a lifetime member and was now considered one of the top, if not the top, stage magician and illusionist in the world.
There was very little information on his childhood and what little she could find was often contradictory and confusing. For instance, she had half a dozen articles that claimed he grew up in the United States and another half dozen that claimed his country of birth was Great Britain. Grimm himself often avoided giving a direct answer during live interviews, joking he’d been raised by wolves or leprechauns or alien abductees, depending on the mood he was in. There was no mention of where he’d gone to school or gotten his higher education, if he had done so at all. One article noted that he’d trained at the feet of a world-class magician for more than a decade, but it never named the individual, which left Jessie wondering if the man, or woman, actually existed.
Grimm’s performances and television specials had made him very rich; Forbes estimated his net worth at more than $500 million dollars. Several articles made mention of his mansion up in the Coldheart Canyon section of the Hollywood hills and his penthouse apartment in New York City, as well as his ranch in Buenos Aries. He was also supposed to have a per
manent, personal apartment at his disposal in the Magic Castle in LA.
Grimm had been seen with a variety of celebrity women over the last several years and his love life was a topic of frequent gossip for the celebrity magazines that covered such things. Jessie found article after article about Grimm in the company of this or that Hollywood starlet and plenty of speculation about what the relationship between them might be. What she didn’t find was any suggestion of a serious relationship the illusionist might be having with any of those named.
There were several articles about his possible relationship with Marilyn LeVay, a former actress turned socialite who was best known for the lavish parties she threw at the Chateau Marquand several times a month, but LeVay was seen with more than her fair share of good-looking men on a regular basis; Jessie dismissed the connection for what it was, plain old gossip.
More interesting were the things missing from the information she collected. As far as she could tell, Grimm had no criminal or civil complaints against him in any searchable jurisdiction. Not even a traffic complaint. There was no evidence of sex scandals, failed marriages, drug or alcohol abuse. No hidden girl or boyfriends. No tax liens.
In other words, the guy was squeaky clean, which, for a Hollywood star, made her even more convinced that there was something funky going on here.
It was almost as if someone had gone through his public record and scrubbed it clean along the way.
Now you’re being paranoid.
Maybe, maybe not, Jessie told herself. Could be he’s just one of those ultra-privacy people, like Howard Hughes.
She glanced across the room to the clock on the wall, saw that it was getting late. Her growling stomach was telling her it was time for dinner as well. Lunch had been good but there hadn’t been enough of it. With the money she’d won last night, she could afford to splurge on a decent dinner for a change and she intended to do just that.
Jessie was about to call it a day when, on a whim, she typed White Stag and Symbolism into the search engine. She wasn’t expecting much, so she was surprised at the number of results it returned. Her surprise grew further as she began reading.
The stag, also known as a hart, was viewed as an important symbol in a number of different cultures, both ancient and modern. From Mesopotamia to Babylon, from England to China, the stag was seen as an elusive symbol of pending change with profound consequences for the humans who encountered it in the wild glades and mountain peaks where it made its home. The sight of the white stag often heralded great spiritual change for the viewer.
Goosebumps ran up and down Jessie’s arms as she considered what she’d read. She’d seen the white stag for the first time during her title match against Hagland. Change had run rampant through her life in the aftermath of that encounter.
It’s just a coincidence, she told herself. Doesn’t mean anything.
But she kept reading nonetheless.
Hungarian legend had a white stag leading the brothers Hunor and Magar to settle in Scythia and establish the Hun and Magyar people. Native American tribes, including the Chickasaw, Roanoke, Algonquin, and Seneca tribes all had stories about the Great White Deer. In Japan, an entire herd of white deer were said to have come out of a cave to listen to a sermon given by the founder of the Engakuji Temple on the day it opened.
In Celtic mythology, the stag was seen as symbol of the Otherworld, of the supernatural, and a sign that powerful forces were in action. It often appeared when something sacred – an oath, a law, a code of behavior – had been broken or sundered.
That stopped Jessie in her tracks. A symbol of the otherworld? Of the supernatural? A sign that powerful forces were in action?
Her thoughts turned to what Grimm had said during the first part of his act, all that stuff about the other realms and the creatures that inhabit them. And his insistence during their meeting that it was all true.
She remembered staring into the stag’s brown eyes in that first vision. The feeling of wisdom, of intelligence, that had radiated from the beast when their gazes locked had been close to overwhelming. And then, just the other night, it had led her to safety in the midst of her dream, vision, whatever-the-heck you wanted to call it.
How was that even possible?
It isn’t, her inner voice said sharply. Now get a grip.
But getting a grip was the last thing she could do at the moment, for every article that she read only led her deeper down the rabbit hole. When she got to information about how the white stag figured into Arthurian legend, how its appearance often represented a knight’s call to head out on a sacred quest, how the stag was one of the forms that the wizard Merlin used to interact with the natural world, Jessie was about ready to come right out of her skin.
Grimm said that something had gone wrong, that the knights who were supposed to defend the world from the beings on the other side of the Veil didn’t know who they were. Didn’t believe that such things even existed.
That description fit her to a T; on any given day she would have said Grimm was nuts for even suggesting such a thing. Had said that to his face, in fact. And here she was, seeing the stag seemingly every time she turned around, as if the animal were trying to tell her something important.
Could he have actually been telling the truth?
Jessie felt like the ground beneath her feet, the very bedrock on which she’d built her life, was slowly crumbling away. Her hands began to shake and her chest began to tighten, making it harder for her to catch her breath.
She got up abruptly and headed across the room, needing to get away from it all. Some fresh air would help, she told herself, and she was practically running by the time she reached the exit. She burst through the double doors and headed across the lawn, not looking where she was going, not caring really, just wanting to put as much distance as possible between herself and the information that had struck so deeply to her core.
When at last she stopped to catch her breath, she was several blocks from the library and more than a few of the pedestrians she passed were looking at her with concern on their faces, though whether for themselves or her, Jessie didn’t know. She took a moment to gather herself, then flagged down a cab. When the driver asked where she wanted to go, Jessie told him the first place she could think of.
Dex’s warehouse.
The late afternoon traffic turned a twenty-minute ride into nearly an hour, giving Jessie plenty of time to think. And thinking allowed her to calm down considerably, especially once it occurred to her that the information she’d unearthed didn’t necessarily support Grimm’s statements as truth, but the other way around. Grimm had no doubt researched myths and legends from a variety of cultures and used that information to give his act a sense of believability that it wouldn’t have had otherwise.
But you saw the stag long before you ever met Grimm, her inner voice chimed in, but Jessie brushed it off as coincidence.
My subconscious must have seized on that earlier image and simply reused it during later episodes, she told herself.
See? Nothing to worry about.
By the time she reached Dex’s warehouse, she actually believed it, too.
Jessie still had keys to the place so she let herself inside after paying off the cabbie and sending him on his way. Dex was out of town on business, so there were no fights scheduled for that night. That meant she had the place to herself, for which she was grateful. Dealing with a hyped-up mob right about now just wouldn’t have gone well.
She flipped on the lights and then headed into the “locker room” where she kept a duffel bag with a set of workout clothes. She changed quickly and then returned to the far side of the main room where Dex had set up a small gym for his fighters. Nothing too fancy, just some free weights with benches and several punching bags in various sizes, from 100 lb. heavy bags to 25 lb. speed bags.
Jessie started with some stretching then moved to her speed bag routine; warming up the muscles for the workout to come. She felt at home here, amidst
the weights and the punching bags, and that sense of grounding did more than anything else to bring her back to a feeling of equilibrium after the events of the afternoon.
The speed bag was replaced with the heavy bag and she spent twenty minutes working various combinations, punches and kicks, before taking a short break to hydrate and give her arms a rest.
Jessie was getting ready to start with the free weights when a loud crackling sound filled the air. It was there and gone in an instant, but it caught Jessie’s attention. It seemed to have come from the other side of the warehouse, over near the spot where the fighting ring was painted on the floor.
The lights were on in that area – the neighborhood was too rough for her to leave half the place in darkness when she was here alone – so Jessie could see that there was no one there.
She frowned, wondering if she’d been mistaken. Perhaps the sound had come from outside?
After waiting a few seconds to see if it would be repeated, Jessie turned away, shrugging it off as nothing important and focusing again on her workout routine. She moved over to a nearby barbell and began stripping the weights from it, intending to replace them with a different set.
Just then the crackling sound ripped through the warehouse again, louder this time.
Jessie looked up and was in time to see the air over the fighting ring literally tear itself apart, like someone grasping each side of a set of curtains and pulling them in opposite directions. The rift, the gaping hole in reality, was a good six feet high and three feet wide, big enough that Jessie could see right through it.
A wasteland of ice and rock lay on the other side. Snow swirled in the air, carried on a bitter wind, and Jessie was struck by the sharp sense of desolation that seemed to exude from the very stones that made up the place.
She rose, barely aware she was doing so and took an unconscious step toward the rift, when the opening was momentarily darkened by the movement of something on the other side. Jessie watched in stunned fascination and a growing sense of dread as five figures stepped out of the rift to stand on the concrete floor of the warehouse.
