by Bryan Smith
Andy lit a cigarette as the first of the guards reached the edge of the surrounding crowd. He wedged it into his mouth and said, “Yeah.”
Siegel cleared his throat. “What about the innocent bystanders.”
Andy nodded. “Right. I’m thinking this is a hand-to-hand combat situation. Lucien, you may wanna go Big Dog on these guys.”
Lucien’s hand came away from the gun. He grinned. “Off the leash. At last.”
The thick crowd of gamblers knew by now that something exciting was about to happen, perhaps one of those big-time casino heists they’d seen movies about. As a result, they failed to turn and run screaming from the center of the action. Some of them were bound to get hurt. Which was too bad, but Lucien figured it was the price you paid for being that fucking stupid.
One bystander appeared even stupider than the rest. She was stumbling around wide-eyed, bumping into slot machines and mumbling about the flashing lights and the strange music from invisible musicians. But she had an excuse. Her name was Madeleine and she didn’t belong in this world. Lucien felt a degree of responsibility for her presence here, but all he could do now was hope she didn’t get herself killed.
Several guards had pushed through the crowd by now. Their weapons were drawn. This time the promise of impending violence acted on Lucien as effectively as the scent of spilled blood. The change came on quicker than at any time since leaving hell, without him having to will it. His hands and wrists thickened and sprouted fur. His forehead enlarged and his face elongated. Fangs as sharp as razors grew in his mouth. Streams of saliva rolled off the fangs, struck the green carpet at his feet, and sizzled. The rest of his body bulked up and the final strands of fabric holding his clothes together gave way. He raised his thickly muscled arms above his head and emitted a roar that finally induced a state of panic in the dumbstruck gamblers.
Madeleine screamed and fainted. One less thing to worry about.
Even the security guards looked terrified. One of them, a thin young man with acne scars, was struck so numb with shock that his gun slipped from his fingers and discharged when it hit the floor. Some more guards managed to get through the crowd just before the surge toward the exits began. Many others were caught up in the confusion and wound up trampled under the feet of scores of terrified patrons.
The skinny guard with the bad skin knelt and picked up his gun. He shakily aimed it at the strange trio. “Hands over your goddamn heads! Now!”
Andy chuckled. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
He flicked his half-smoked Marlboro at the nearest guard, who shrieked and jumped aside as if Andy had tossed a grenade at him.
“Lucien, buddy, let’s get this party started.”
Lucien was a dark blur as he surged toward the nearest group of guards. Several guns discharged at once, but no bullets found their targets. Siegel (who, with the rumpled fedora atop his head again, had also performed his version of the change) was already in motion, too. Lucien seized the skinny guard by the neck, lifted him into the air, and snapped his back over a knee. He tossed the twitching, screaming man aside and drove his clawed hands into the midsections of two more guards. Then his hands came out again and the guards’ intestines were spilling onto the floor. He swiped at another guard just as the man’s gun discharged. The bullet punched a hole through the middle of Lucien’s hand, but failed to impede its progress. He tore the man’s hand off at the wrist and the stump shot a bright arterial spray against Lucien’s chest. Another swipe of the injured hand send the man’s head flying deep into the casino--it landed with a thump at the center of a spinning roulette wheel.
During all this, Lucien heard occasional gunshots and meatier sounds, the impacts of fists on flesh. And the sound of limbs being snapped. Then an eruption of gunfire. Lucien spun the last guard in his vicinity around and tore his arm off. Blood from the stump sprayed a nearby bank of slot machines. Lucien saw that Andy’s hands held two liberated .38’s. When these were empty, Andy spun the weapons on their trigger guards and flung them into the faces of two approaching bad guys. While those men were on their way to the floor, Andy’s hands went into his jacket and came out with his own .45’s. He shot the fallen men where they lay, then turned and shot another man coming at him from the left. The casino cleared of innocent bystanders, Andy had forsaken hand-to-hand action to deal some lead. Siegel was doing the same.
Then the gunfire ceased and Lucien and his comrades stood alone in a room surrounded by carcasses and one unconscious woman. Lucien slipped back to human mode. When he noticed the other men frowning at him, it took him a moment to realize what the problem was.
He looked down, then looked into their now smirking faces. “No clothes. This never happened in hell. Special infernal fabric.”
They heard a groan and looked around to see Madeleine regaining consciousness. She sat up. And the first thing she noticed was Lucien’s state of undress. She stared at his groin and a wicked grin spread across her face. The second thing she noticed was all the dead people. Then she started screaming again.
Andy and Siegel glared at Lucien now.
Andy said, “Anyone’s eardrums not shattered yet? It’s your fault she’s here.”
“No, it’s her fault. She wouldn’t leave me alone.”
Lucien scanned the scattered bodies of the dead security guards for a suitable clothes donor. Prospects looked bleak until he spied a man with a snapped neck who was his approximate size. Lucien stripped the dead man’s khaki pants off his limp legs. He stepped into them and was pleased to find they were a comfortable fit. So were his shoes. He didn’t bother with a shirt, as he was certain he would have to go to hound mode again before all was said and done.
Madeleine was on her feet now, though she still looked a bit woozy. “I am sick unto death of you evil men discussing me as if I were not here. How was I to know you were sorcerers or that you’d bring me to this godforsaken place?”
Lucien said, “She’s got a point there, fellas.”
Andy addressed Madeleine directly for the first time since their arrival in the casino. “Okay, floozy, it’s important that you understand some things. Firstly, we are not sorcerers. Not all of us, anyway. Look around you. My friends and I are from an alternate version of your world. Our earth is far more technologically advanced than yours. Ninety percent of the things you take to be magic are instead evidence of our technology. The remaining ten percent will be actual magic. Up to speed yet?”
Madeleine just glared at him.
Siegel coughed. “We appear to have more company.”
Lucien sighed wearily. He should have known the hapless security guards would not be the Maverick’s lone defenders. Men clad in all-black getups identical to the ones worn by the men who’d attacked them at O’Scanlon’s were racing toward them from the far end of the casino. Bearing machetes and machine guns, they swarmed through the casino like a giant mass of black hornets bearing down on them.
Andy said, “Gosh. I’m not giving up or anything, but there’s a lot of them.”
Lucien nodded. “Several times more than we encountered at O’Scanlon’s.”
Siegel said, “It’s a goddamn army is what it is.”
Lucien understood that going to hound-mode would be a useless gesture against so vast a force, so he didn’t even consider it. “So...what are our options here?”
Andy again indulged what Lucien now supposed was the man’s habit when staring mortal danger in the face--he lit a Marlboro and wedged it into a corner of his mouth. “Well,” he said, puffing smoke around the dangling cigarette, “the way I see it, it comes down to three things. We could stand here and get killed, or we could commit honorable suicide, hari-kari, Japanese style, or we could start begging for mercy right now.”
Lucien sneered. “Begging is for maggots.”
“Okay, so no begging.”
The surging swarm of black-clad warriors continued to advance. They would be upon the little group of interlopers within moments. Judging from the
way they were brandishing their weapons--as well as from the shrill, banshee-like war cries trilling from their throats--Lucien figured these men had little use for the concept of mercy anyway. When the leading edge of the massive force was less than fifty feet from them, a sound so high-pitched and ululating that it was like the aural equivalent of a nuclear detonation filled the casino. Everyone standing, including the black-clad legion and their prey, had no choice but to clap their hands over their ears and fall to the floor. Lucien landed on his back and looked up to see a small form appear through a hole in the ceiling. The form dropped away from the ceiling and rotated several times in the air until it neared the floor, where it landed smoothly on its bare feet.
A girl. Maybe five feet tall--at best. Lucien had seen her before--in the Eye of Sylvain.
Siegel struggled to a sitting position. “Raven!”
So this was her, the last of the ancient Rainbolt clan. Heir to a legacy of tragedy and powerful magic. She favored Siegel with a shy grin before turning to face the black-clad legion, whose members were beginning to come to their senses and get to their feet. Raven went rigid. Her mouth opened wide and a sound like the roar of an avenging angel emerged. It was a sound so astonishingly huge Lucien couldn’t fathom how so small a body could produce it. Nor could he guess how so improbable a sound could have the power to immobilize an army--but precisely that had just happened. The entire legion of warriors was paralyzed, each black-clad man frozen in a pose that made him look like a life-sized action figure.
Now Raven faced Siegel and the others with a tiny, cryptic smile touching the corners of her mouth. “They won’t remain this way long. There are too many for the spell to hold. We must hurry. Come with me.”
She whirled away from them, the hem of her green dress swishing around her pale thighs. Andy and Siegel hurried after her. Lucien regarded the frozen army a moment longer, wondering whether he should decimate their ranks while he had the opportunity.
No.
As much as it pained him, the strange girl had to be trusted. His instincts told him she was Jack Grimm’s only real hope for salvation. While Madeleine stood watching him, an indecipherable expression twisting her face, Lucien liberated guns from dead security guards. He stuffed one into his waistband and gripped one in his right hand. Then he seized Madeleine by a wrist and they hurried to catch up with the others.
16.
“So, darling, was it good for you?”
Mona giggled like a schoolgirl.
Jack paced about the dungeon, giving the still open acid vat a wide berth. A familiar feeling was welling within him, the kind of self-loathing he’d stupidly imagined was consigned forever to his tawdry past. Reluctantly, he let his gaze drift to where Mona, still nude, lay languidly upon the dungeon floor, her head propped in an upraised palm. “Don’t you mean, ‘Was it good for you, too?’”
Mona smiled. “Oh? You think you satisfied me, then?”
Jack buttoned his pants and pulled on his shirt. He scoured the dungeon floor for the shoes cast aside in the throes of lust. “Either that, or you were practicing your imitation of an air raid siren.”
“Fucking almost always feels good, Jack. You’re nothing special.”
Jack found his shoes and slipped them on. He looked at Mona. “Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, Mona, baby. But Jack knows the truth. That was the best rocket ride you’ve had in, oh...ten years, give or take.”
Mona’s smile never faded. Jack found this disheartening. He’d done well at getting under her skin with snide remarks, but this latest salvo failed to perceptibly ruffle her. She got to her feet and stretched, raising her hands high over head and standing on the very tips of her toes. Jack felt a tightening in his chest as he drank in the sight of her perfect body at full extension. Her shapely legs seemed to go on forever and her full, pert breasts were just amazing. When she was done stretching, she moved the palm of a hand over her flat belly. The disconcerting smile brightened to an alarming degree. “Again, your bravado appears to know no bounds, but I know the truth about you now. You prop yourself up with brave words to disguise the weakness within you. Your little heart is hollow and shriveled. Yet you continue to cling to notions of loyalty and honor. In anyone else, such feelings would be...quaint. In you, though, they’re laughable.”
Jack had grown increasingly uncomfortable throughout this speech. Too much of what she said echoed feelings he had about himself sometimes. Unable to hold her gaze anymore, he looked at the floor. “You don’t know me as well as you think.” He’d meant this statement to drip with sarcasm--instead, he sounded unsure of himself. And now he felt that familiar darkness beginning to envelop his soul. He wanted a drink, or maybe a dozen of them, enough to drive these feelings away. “Those are human qualities you’re talking about. A thing like you knows shit about that.”
Mona was close to him now. Jack drew in a sharp breath and looked up. He’d been unaware of her approach. There was a smugness in both her expression and general demeanor that rankled him. She took one of his hands and drew it to her belly, where she pressed the flat of his palm against a smooth expanse of flesh. Jack’s pulse accelerated at this intimacy. The feel of her skin against his was so pleasurable it made him lightheaded. Christ, how could he ever have expected to win a battle of wills--or any other kind of battle--against this she-demon?
“I can hear your heart pounding.”
Jack swallowed hard.
Mona’s hand covered his and pressed it more firmly against her belly. “Can you feel it, Jack? Can you feel the miracle?”
Jack frowned. “What?”
Mona’s fingers lightly stroked the back of Jack’s hand. “Why do you think I’ve been after you all evening? Do you imagine I used my sexuality purely as a means of extracting information?”
Jack’s hand was shaking now. Mona’s belly felt hot. He wanted to pull his hand away, but it felt glued to her flesh. “No. You’re just messing with my head.”
Now Mona pried Jack’s hand from her belly and closed it tightly within her own, exerting just enough pressure to make the grip painful. “I do want to know what you know of your father’s plans, but that’s a secondary aim. I have faith in the hellpack’s ability to eventually hunt the old wizard down. What I really wanted was to conceive a child with you. A beautiful, powerful child. Can you imagine it, Jack? The offspring of an immortal and a man with wizard genes. This child has a glorious destiny. One day he will rank second only to Lucifer in the hierarchy of hell.”
Mona loosened her grip on Jack’s hand and he yanked it away. “This is bullshit.” Jack was shaken, though he tried hard to hide it. “Even if it were possible, how could you possibly know you’ve conceived?”
Mona trailed the tip of a forefinger down the length of Jack’s torso. “I know because of what I am. I’ve conceived twice before. A thousand years ago, and a thousand years before that. I fully control my body chemistry. I become fertile when I choose to and infertile again when the job is done. I always know, Jack. Your child is growing inside me even now.”
She moved away from him and retrieved her catsuit and boots.
“So why all this?” Jack indicated the dungeon with a wave of his hand. “Why the torture? Why the mind games? For Christ’s sake, why’d you have those goons hang me off a balcony? If you’d just wanted to fuck me, you could have accomplished that a lot sooner and a lot more easily without all this cloak and dagger medieval horseshit.”
Mona worked her legs into the catsuit. She grinned. “Why? Fun, Jack. Just fun. And besides, if you had given up your father, that would have made for a very nice bonus.”
Jack shook his head. “You’re one twisted bitch.”
Mona was all the way into her catsuit now. She pulled her boots on, walked over to Jack, and turned around. “Zip me up.”
Jack’s hands were shaking again. He willed them still and took the zipper tab between a thumb and forefinger. He pulled it up, watching Mona’s unblemished white flesh disappearing beneath
black latex. When he was done, Mona turned around and folded her arms beneath her breasts. She eyed him up and down, appraising him in a coolly amused way.
“Of course, you’ll have to be dead long before your child is born.”
That jolted Jack. Given the information she’d divulged since rescuing him from the cage, he’d assumed Mona would keep him around indefinitely, either for her own amusement or to bear witness to the atrocities she and the forces she represented meant to commit in the coming years.
She smiled. “What’s the matter, Jack? You don’t look well.”
Jack ached to get as far away from Mona as possible, but he stayed where he was. He didn’t want to appear as weak as he felt. “I guess I’m just surprised. And a little confused. One moment it seems like you’re trying to kill me, the next you’re offering me eternal life in exchange for information. Next thing I know I’m being tortured and threatened. And at every stage of this lunacy you’re trying to turn me on.”
Mona smirked. “What do you mean ‘trying’?”
Jack made a derisive noise. “You know damn well what I mean. It’s almost as if you’re trying to keep me off-balance. Keep me from reasoning things out by shifting the paradigm every few fucking minutes.” He frowned. Wheels were spinning in his head, then locking into place one by one. “I think you’re hoping I’ll become so confused that I’ll reveal something important by mistake.”
Loud laughter erupted from Mona. “That’s it, Jack! Congratulations! Wow, I guess you’re not as bad a detective as I thought.”
Jack grunted. “If you’re conceiving at intervals of approximately every thousand years, you could have had a child with me years ago without going to all this trouble.” He nodded. “Yeah, I think this is just another cheap ploy on your part, a clumsy kind of psychological warfare. I dunno, maybe you hoped to play on my emotions, get me to swear my loyalty to this imaginary child of ours and in the process betray the people opposing you. Excellent plan, Mona. I applaud you. Too bad it failed miserably.”
