Grimm Awakening

by Bryan Smith

  He looked at the other men. “Guys--”

  Siegel said, “No.”

  “I was just going to say--”

  “Never mind what you were going to say,” Siegel snapped. “I know perfectly well. But get this through your infernal head--I’m no acrobat and no way in hell am I going to climb my way down. Aside from being altogether too fucking scary, there’s no way any of us would get far before meeting a terrible fate.”

  Andy nodded. “I have to agree.”

  Lucien fumed. “You cowards. What’s the alternative? Are we to wait here until the construction crew returns tomorrow?”

  Siegel shoved his hands into his coat pockets and shivered against another gust of wind. “I see no other choice.”

  Lucien shook his head. “No. Hell, no. By then, Jack will either be dead or back in hell. Either outcome is unacceptable. I’ll go alone if need be.”

  Andy sighed. “There may be one other way.”

  Lucien and Siegel looked at him.

  Andy coughed. “If you gentlemen could make your way toward me--carefully, please--I’ll perform the transference chant again. And this time I won’t rush it. I’ll be sure we land somewhere safe. On solid ground.”

  Siegel snorted. “With our luck, we’ll rematerialize on the wing of a passing jetliner.”

  Lucien had to laugh at that one.

  Andy glared at them. “There really is no other way. Lucien, which do you prefer--my plan or that long climb down?”

  Lucien glanced downward. He took a moment to appreciate anew how very far above the ground he was, then he looked at Andy. “I guess I’ll do it your way.”

  Andy’s gaze shifted to Siegel. “Ben?”

  Siegel shrugged. “Oh, hell. Let’s just do it already.”

  And so the hellhound and the gangster began to make their way across the girder to where Andy stood. Once they had arrived there, Lucien asked, “What now?”

  “You guys know the drill by now.” Andy clasped hands with Lucien and reached around the vertical girder to clasp hands with Siegel. Lucien and Siegel’s free hands joined. Andy took a deep breath. “Okay, here we go.”

  He began the transference chant. By the time he reached what Lucien now recognized as the midway point, the breeze around them stirred again. It steadily stiffened until it was making them shift and flutter on their respective girders. Lucien tightened his grip on the other men’s hands. He silently urged Andy to reach the end of the chant. He was almost there. Maybe another indecipherable sentence or two. Just as Andy was opening his mouth to intone the last few words, Siegel’s footing slipped and he began to fall, taking the other men with him. Lucien and Andy fell against the vertical girder as Andy screamed the remaining words and brought on that welcome white light.

  Then the white light vanished, displaced by a disconcerting view of a rapidly approaching cobblestone street. There was no time to yell, curl into a protective ball, or anything else. Lucien hit the street and felt the shock of impact in seemingly every nerve ending in his body. But since he hadn’t splattered like a ripe melon tossed out a window, he could assume he hadn’t plummeted from a distance equivalent to his former position on that building’s metal skeleton. He heard two more nearby thumps and knew Andy and Siegel were now feeling that same blinding instant of pain he’d experienced.

  Lucien groaned and rolled onto his back. A loose crowd had gathered to study the curious phenomenon of men falling from the sky. Beyond the line of people he could see O’Scanlon’s Pub. A woman knelt next to him and put a hand to his forehead. Lucien recognized the prostitute Siegel had identified as Madeleine.

  She smiled and her green eyes sparkled as if lit by a light from within. “You poor boy. We should get you to a doctor straightaway.” She arched her back, thrusting out her spectacular bosom. “Then you can convalesce at my flat.”

  Lucien blinked rapidly. “Uh...”

  But Andy was already up and moving. He hauled a groaning Siegel to his feet and they made their way to where Lucien was still flat on his back, staring raptly into the face of the whore/angel. Andy knelt and gripped Lucien by a hand. He glared at Madeleine. “Out of the way, you fucking tart.”

  “How dare you!” Anger flared in Madeleine’s eyes, turning them a deeper shade of green.

  She reared back a hand to punch him, but Siegel restrained her. “Maddy, doll, we’re in a delicate circumstance. You’ll have to forgive my friend’s coarseness.”

  The prostitute struggled to wrench her wrist free of Siegel’s grip, but the old man held fast to her. “Forgive, hell!”

  Andy stood and pulled Lucien to his feet. “Let’s get on with this.”

  Someone in the gathered crowd said, “Did anyone see from whence these strange men came?” The man’s gaze was turned upward.

  Someone else said, “You blind fool. They fell out of the bloody sky.”

  Andy’s eyes went wide with annoyance. “Seriously, let’s get on with this. Or I’ll be forced to start shooting people again.”

  Lucien nodded. “Okay.”

  The men joined hands again. Andy told them, “I want both of you to help me this time. Think of Las Vegas Boulevard. Visualize it clearly in your head. I’ll do the same. We’ll try to land on the ground there.”

  Siegel grunted. “Probably in the middle of the street with a bus full of tourists bearing down on us.”

  Andy sighed. “Just do it, okay?”

  “Sure, whatever.”

  Andy began the transference chant yet again. Lucien closed his eyes and pictured the dazzling strip of enormous hotels and casinos. But a still peeved Madeleine prodded him with a finger and whispered into his ear. “Listen, you’re a fine-looking bloke.” Her tongue tickled his earlobe, and her voice dropped to an even lower register. “Why don’t you leave these kooks here and come back to my place. I’ll fuck you blind, pretty boy.”

  Lucien struggled to keep his focus. Madeleine’s hand moved from his crotch to his arm and slid down its length just as Andy was nearing the end of the transference chant. A terrible notion disrupted Lucien’s fevered thoughts of Vegas, an alarming possibility that--

  Too late.

  Andy finished the chant.

  The warm flash of white light engulfed them. This time, thankfully, there was no sensation of falling through space. Lucien’s first awareness as they reemerged into their own world was of a din of voices and music. Then, within that sound, a whirring followed by a THUNK, THUNK, THUNK. When he could see again, he realized this was the sound of a slot machine.

  The next thing he noticed was that Madeleine had made the journey between realms with them. She looked like a terrified fox cornered by gentlemen hunters.

  Siegel said, “Oh shit.”

  Lucien’s first thought was that the gangster’s dismay had something to do with Madeleine’s presence in Las Vegas. Then he saw that neither Andy nor Siegel were looking at the bewildered prostitute. Each man’s gaze was trained on a sign that hung suspended from chains above the ranks of gleaming slot machines.

  The sign read: MAVERICK HOTEL & CASINO.

  Lucien groaned. “Oh shit.”

  Sure, he’d hoped to wage a frontal assault on the powers in charge of this place, but he’d wanted to do so on his own terms. Instead, they’d landed unprepared in the lion’s den. And now he could see a dozen or more uniformed security people pushing their way through the milling crowd, converging on him and the others from all directions. The men instinctively stood with their backs to each other, forming a human triangle.

  Andy said, “Lucien, buddy, you were wrong when we were up on that building.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Andy’s laugh was humorless. “Now we are well and truly fucked.”

  Lucien watched the security guards draw closer.

  And his gut clenched as he realized Andy was right.

  14.

  Jack couldn’t help it. He opened his eyes again and watched the pool of acid draw nearer. He saw tiny fragments of b
one, presumably those of the slave he’d dispatched. They were bubbling on the surface, growing smaller by the moment. The smallest fragments soon disappeared altogether, leaving behind a grouping of tiny bubbles and a thin column of rising smoke.

  Jack thought: I’m about to burn.

  Dissolve.

  He was terrified. Almost to the point of being willing to beg. If anyone other than his father had been involved, maybe he would’ve given them up rather than face so gruesome an end. But it was useless to ponder a thing like that. He knew himself too well. He’d been in situations like this before--minus the demons and the fast-approaching pool of acid--and he’d been tortured for information on more than one occasion. And not once had he given anyone up or betrayed a confidence.

  So at least he could go to his death knowing he wasn’t a scumbag rat.

  Well…not a rat, at least.

  The pool was less than a foot from the bottom of the cage. In a moment, he would be smelling the stench of burning shoe leather. He heaved a big breath, gripped the bars tighter, and braced himself for the coming moments of total agony. The only sounds in his world now were the slamming beat of his heart and the ratcheting of the mechanism lowering the cage through the hole.

  The cage was maybe two or three inches above the death pool.

  Now an inch.

  The first wavelets of acid climbed the bottom bars of the cage. There was no sizzling sound as the acid made contact with the metal. Of course. Mona would reuse the cage, so probably it was constructed of a metal resistant to the acid’s corrosive properties. Probably was even fortified with dark magic. A wavelet lapped at the bottom of Jack’s shoes and now came the lovely odor of burning shoe-leather. He raised his hands to the top of the cage, tensed the muscles in his arms as he gripped the bars there, and pulled himself up. He held his body as close to the top of the cage as he could manage, putting a few more feet between himself and the acid. The strain of holding himself this way made his biceps quiver and his feet involuntarily kicked downward a few times. And now it happened again, the sole of his right shoe skimming the surface of the acid. He glanced down and saw a small curl of smoke rising from the bottom of his shoe.

  He thought: This is crazy.

  This little exercise in acrobatics wouldn’t save him. He was only prolonging the anguish. Probably he would’ve been better off staying where he was and accepting his fate. Really, though, he was helpless to do anything other than what he was doing. This was a display of the survival instinct at its most primal. The cage dropped another foot. Then another. Then the bottom of the cage was no longer visible. Jack managed one last burst of strength. His arms ceased shaking and he was able to lift his legs to the point where the heels of his feet were nearly touching his rear end.

  Then the ratcheting noise stopped and the cage ceased descending. He sighed. So Mona wasn’t done playing games with him. He should’ve figured. But, despite being spared for the moment, Jack knew his situation remained dire. The strain of holding himself up this way would become too much very soon.

  “Oh, Jaa-aaack?”

  Jack turned his gaze upward to see Mona crouching at the edge of the hole in her latex catsuit. “What the hell do you want now?”

  “Tsk-tsk.” Mona laughed. “Darling, stop being stubborn. I know you want to tell Mommy what she wants to know.”

  “What’s with this ‘mommy’ shit? Stop talking to me like that, you bitch.”

  Mona laughed. “Jack, look--I have something to show you.”

  Against his better judgment, Jack turned his gaze upward yet again.

  Mona pitched the remote control device into the hole. Jack’s heart leapt into his throat as he watched the thing sail past the cage and hit the surface of the acid pool. The acid ate through its metal housing in an instant and there was a shower of sparks as the device short-circuited. Soon it was a shapeless lump of rapidly liquefying metal.

  “Shit.”

  Mona laughed some more. “Looks like it’s lights out for you, darling.”

  Jack supposed some part of his subconscious had known Mona would halt the descent of the cage to play this last round of mind games--hence his current precarious position. Now, however, his awareness of his impending death felt more real, more concrete.

  “You look scared, Jack.” Mona’s voice was devoid now of that mocking sex kitten playfulness. “Really scared. Are you?”

  Jack swallowed a lump in his throat. “Yes.”

  “Should I come get you out of there?”

  “If you don’t, it won’t matter soon, anyway.”

  “I’ll ask you one more time--should I come get you?”

  Jack felt defeated. What other way could he answer? “Yes.”

  “Say please.”

  Jack didn’t say anything.

  He sensed movement above him. Something struck the top of the cage and rocked it, making him cry out. One of his hands was jolted free of the bar it’d been clinging to, but he managed to grab it again before disaster could strike. He looked up and saw Mona squatting atop the cage. She was grinning. She gripped the chain and gave the cage a hard shake. Jack screamed and held on with all his might (what was left of it). Mona tossed her head back and laughed heartily.

  She rattled the cage one more time--though not as roughly--then looked at Jack. “Say please, Jack. Come on, you can do it. It’s just one teensy little word.”

  Jack didn’t have to look too deeply within himself to realize it was the only thing to do. He surrendered. “Please.”

  The high-pitched gasp that came from Mona then sounded almost orgasmic. “Oh, Jack!” She clapped her hands together. “You’ve made Mommy so happy!”

  Mona grasped a bar at the top of the cage--not one Jack was clinging to--and began to pull at it. There was an unpleasant sound of rending metal as Mona ripped the bar loose and tossed it into the acid pool. She did the same with another bar. And another. Then she reached through the hole she’d created, gripped Jack by a wrist, and pulled him out of the cage. “Jack, have you ever wondered how it would feel to be Superman?”

  Jack frowned, wondering what she could possibly mean by that, but the answer came a moment later when she tossed him high into the air. He was propelled with such force that he flew through the opening above. His flight trajectory resulted in a crash landing on the dungeon floor. The impact hurt like a motherfucker, but, he reflected, the pain beat dangling from the top of a cage over a pool of acid.

  He turned his head in time to see Mona shimmying up the chain like Tarzan climbing a vine. When she reached a point where she was several feet above the level of the dungeon floor, she swung herself off the chain and hit the floor on her feet like a cat. She strolled over to Jack, gripped him by the collar of his shirt, and hauled him to his feet.

  She clamped a strong hand around his jaw. “You’re such a fun playmate, Jack. I’d love to spend all day hurting you and fucking with your head. But it wouldn’t get me any closer to what I want to know, would it?”

  Jack shook his head. “No. It wouldn’t.”

  Mona released his jaw and patted his cheek. “Then do you want to guess why you’re still alive?”

  Jack shrugged. “No idea, Mona.”

  Her arms went around his back and she drew him into an embrace he didn’t bother fighting against. What good would that do? She curled a leg around him and laid her head on his shoulder. “Because I want you alive to watch your friends die.”

  The comment jolted Jack. “Won’t happen. You’ll never take them alive.”

  Mona nuzzled against him and made a purring sound into the crook of his neck. “You think so? Well, guess what? They’re here. In the Maverick. I received word of it while you were in the cage. They’ll be in custody within moments.”

  “No.”

  But even as he said it, some instinct told him Mona was telling the truth. He felt it in his bones and in his gut. He longed to twist out of Mona’s embrace and run for the door, maybe mount a daring, improbable rescue. But M
ona sensed the disturbance within him and restrained him as easily as a kidnapper restrains a doomed toddler.

  She made the purring sound again. “Isn’t it divine, darling? You’ll watch them die watch them suffer, and then you’ll spend all eternity as my slave, haunted by the awful memories of how completely you failed your friends.”

  Her mouth opened on his neck and Jack felt her teeth push lightly at his flesh. The tip of her tongue lapped at a trickle of blood still seeping from one of the holes created by the collar studs.

  Jack experienced loathing and shameful lust simultaneously. Alongside these feelings was the fear he felt for the safety of his friends. He didn’t want to let his father down. And he didn’t want to succumb to Mona, didn’t want to surrender to his basest instincts, but he suspected that part of it was already a lost cause.

  He was right.

  Mona ripped his shirt open, pulled it off his torso, and flung it aside. She did the same with his pants, upending him and depositing him painfully onto the floor. He watched her wriggle out of the catsuit. When she was shed of it, she stalked toward him like a panther closing on helpless prey. Then she was on him and he was inside her. A fresh explosion of shame and regret filled his head. He hated her. He’d kill the bitch given the chance and the means.

  But for several blindingly pleasurable minutes none of that mattered.

  The dungeon resounded with the sound of screams.

  For once, though, they were screams of ecstasy rather than agony.

  15.

  Lucien did a quick rough count of the security guards in his field of vision. Maybe a dozen. With more coming from other angles.

  “I see at least twelve.”

  Andy, standing with his back to Lucien, said, “Maybe ten over here.”

  Siegel said, “Hell if I know. A lot of the bastards.”

  Lucien’s hand flexed over the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans, which, as a result of the change to hound-mode at the Red Room, were clinging to his body by a thread. “Think we can take them?”