Grimm Awakening

by Bryan Smith

  “A fucking spy!” Andy was breathing hard. He stood with his sword gripped in both hands, dividing his attention between Lucien--who was on the floor on his hands and knees--and the woman who’d been masquerading as a prostitute.

  “Beautifully played, dear.” Mona giggled. “I’d like you all to meet Madeleine Faust, my baby sister.”

  Andy said, “Should’ve fucking known that cunt was up to something when she grabbed on to Lucien and came here with us.” He glared at Mona. “All this time she’s been fucking Ben over there, getting him to tell her important things he didn’t realize were so important. Am I close?”

  “Close enough. It’s how we knew he was an acquaintance of yours.”

  Mona’s mouth opened to say something else, but what happened next occurred with such shocking swiftness it almost stopped Jack’s heart. Raven Rainbolt’s arm snapped like a whip and the rapier flew through the air like a lightning bolt.

  Holy shit, Jack thought. Suddenly I’m surrounded by ninja babes.

  The tip of the blade slammed between Madeleine’s breasts and passed all the way through her body. Before anyone could process that, Raven had plucked Andy’s sword from his hands and was bearing down on Madeleine Faust.

  Mona screamed.

  Madeleine tugged at the rapier’s handle. She never even saw the sword arcing through the air toward her neck. The blade passed through her neck like a machete shearing a corn stalk. Her head went flying through the air. Jack had just time enough to register the fact that the head was coming directly at him and he instinctively snatched it out of the air. Horrified, he looked down at the severed head--and was stunned to see that it was still functioning. Madeleine’s mouth opened wide and hissed at him.

  Then Andy was screaming at him: “Throw it in the fire, Jack!”

  Jack didn’t know why his friend wanted him to toss Madeleine’s head into the flames, but what the hell, it sounded like a great idea. He had seen some fucked up things in his life--more than his fair share, really--but this fucking head creeped him out more than just about anything in his experience. No decapitated head should be this damn frisky. He turned toward the fireplace, but before he could fling the severed noggin into the infernal flames, the goddamn thing slipped from his clumsy fingers and thumped on the floor. Madeleine’s still upright body snatched it up from the floor.

  She was in the process of affixing the head to the stump of her neck when Lucien finally roused himself and tackled her from behind. The head flew out of Madeleine’s hands and rolled across the tiled floor in front of the fireplace. Mona shrieked and dove for the head, hitting the floor and clutching a handful of blood-spattered auburn tresses a foot or so shy of the flames.

  Lucien, meanwhile, had Madeleine’s body pinned on its back. The hellhound was surprisingly energetic for someone who’d just been repeatedly stabbed in the back. Jack supposed this had something to do with shifting to hound mode, which had apparently occurred while he’d been down on the floor. He drove long black claws through Madeleine’s chest wall. Snapping sounds issued from the writhing body as he tore through muscles and sinew. Then he ripped something round and dripping from her body and surged to his feet. Mona saw what was happening and opened her mouth to scream, but there was no time for her to act.

  The hellhound threw her sister’s heart deep into the flames.

  A small explosion sent a wave of heat rolling through the Royal Suite. Jack looked at Mona and saw an expression he’d never seen on those fine features--stunned disbelief. Knowing he had a only a very narrow window of opportunity, Jack scurried over to where Mona still lay sprawled in front of the fireplace and yanked Madeleine’s head out of her grip. The head still showed some evidence of animation. It’s mouth was working in slow-motion, trying to communicate something that was beyond it now. Jack flipped the head into the fire and another, larger explosion was set off, this one more like the explosion of a grenade. Fire singed the back of Jack’s throwing hand, and the heat wave made him stagger backward.

  Lucien retrieved his fallen sword and advanced on Mona. But Mona was on her feet again. She managed to pivot her body in time and thrust a booted foot into his abdomen. The kick conveyed enough force to lift the hellhound off his feet and send him flying backward.

  Mona smiled and brushed soot off the front of her cat suit. “Don’t derive false hope from the relative ease with which poor Madeleine was dispatched. She was a formidable foe, I’m sure you’ll agree, but she was nothing compared to me.”

  Andy said, “Oh, don’t be too hard on her--she was one hell of an actress.”

  He selected a machine gun from the pile of discarded weaponry and aimed it at Mona’s midsection. “Anyway, there’s that tearful reunion in hell to look forward to.”

  Andy squeezed the trigger and held it down until the weapon’s clip was empty.

  Aside from the roaring in his ears caused by proximity to so many rapid-fire explosions, the only sound Jack heard next was that of spent shell casing rolling across the tiled floor. Despite the assault, Mona remained upright, with her hands on her hips, still smiling but leaking a viscous fluid from dozens of bullet-stitched holes in her body.

  Ben groaned in disbelief. “That’s not blood. The broad’s got motor oil running through her veins.”

  Mona laughed and sought Jack’s gaze, her smile brightening as she made direct eye contact with him. She touched her belly. “I want to reassure you, Jack. Our child wasn’t harmed by your brother’s outburst. I know you were worried.”

  Andy frowned. “What’s she talking about, Jack?”

  Jack grimaced. “Would somebody just kill her now? Please?”

  Before anyone could act on Jack’s suggestion, Mona shot away from the fireplace like a sprinter coming out of the set position. She drove a fist into Jack’s jaw and sent him sprawling on the floor. Lying on his back, Jack saw her leap over his body and drill another punch into Andy’s jaw. The machine gun he’d used on her was in her hands now and she was wielding it like a baseball bat. She swung it hard, smashing the weapon’s stock against the side of Lucien’s head.

  Raven came at her with the sword she’d used to behead Madeleine. But Mona launched herself straight up, did a flip in midair, and landed on her feet behind Raven. Raven whirled about and tried to get into a defensive position, but Mona executed a devastating spin kick that caught her in the stomach and sent her staggering backward. An additional series of spin kicks followed, one slamming into her knee, another striking the chest area, and the final one driving into her throat. The heel of Mona’s boot pierced flesh with every blow and drew forth streams of bright red blood.

  Raven dropped the sword and fell to her knees.

  Ben screamed and came at Mona with nothing more than his bare hands. Jack saw that a strange change had come over the man at an indeterminate point--no longer young and muscular, he was clearly no match for the enraged she-demon. She watched his approach with an almost amused expression--and dropped him with a single punch that broke his jaw and sent him unconscious to the floor.

  Jack’s so-called rescue party was getting its collective ass thoroughly kicked. Lucien, at least, wasn’t quite ready to quit. Still holding his sword, he struggled to get to his feet. Blood continued to seep from the wounds in his back.

  Mona kicked him in the throat.

  He dropped his sword and it clattered on the floor as he tumbled backward onto his ass, involuntarily reverting to human mode as he hit the floor.

  “Your pitiful friends are barely more competent than you, Jack. I’d expect nothing else, of course.” Mona surveyed the bodies sprawled around her, then went to Raven, who was lying on her side with her eyes rolled back in her head. She was still breathing, but she looked like a broken doll. “This one was the most troublesome. Who is she, I wonder? Not that it matters.”

  She lifted Raven off the floor, spun around a time or two to build momentum, and let her go, flinging her body through the space formerly occupied by the shattered balcony d
oor. Jack watched the girl disappear over the balcony railing and felt something break inside him. He hadn’t known Raven at all, but she’d done her damnedest to help him anyway.

  And now she was gone.

  Just another entry on the register of innocents who’d senselessly laid their lives down for Jack Grimm over the years.

  Mona looked at him and laughed. “Oh, Jack. Darling. Are you...crying?”

  He was.

  “Cheer up, darling.” She knelt next to him and pulled him into her arms. She kissed his forehead the way a mother would kiss the forehead of a sick child. “It’s time for the big show I promised you.”

  23.

  The Maverick Grande Theater was a 4,000 seat arena adjacent to the casino. It had a large stage and an orchestra pit. Throughout the year, the theater was host to showgirl revues, comedy acts, lounge singers, and other “quality” entertainments. At no point in its fifty-plus year history, however, had it ever played host to a spectacle like the one gearing up on its stage now.

  At one end of the stage was a large metal cage that usually housed lions and tigers for Walker & Fitzsimmons, an act that combined magic with animal stunts. W&F were often accused of ripping off the similar Siegfried and Roy act, but the duo had long been one of the Grande’s most popular attractions.

  Tonight, however, the animals were on the outside, two tigers and one lion, all of them restlessly patrolling the stage from one end to the other. Jack’s wounded friends were inside the cage. They looked haggard and beaten. Lucien’s earlier shift to hound mode had performed a degree of healing on his stab wounds, but he’d been shot full of the same drug Mona’s henchmen had used on him earlier in the evening. According to Mona, the hellhound wouldn’t be able to shift again for several hours. Which essentially meant he was doomed.

  Jack sat next to Mona in the front row of the auditorium. Only the orchestra pit separated them from the slaughter about to commence on the stage. Standing in the center of the stage was a man in a foppish outfit. He wore a top hat, long red coat with wide lapels, a white shirt, and black slacks tucked into knee-high boots polished to a reflective sheen.

  This was Victor Fitzsimmons, animal trainer and magician.

  And, apparently, servant of hell.

  Fitzsimmons had a whip he would occasionally snap at the big cats. Each lash of the whip elicited a throaty growl from the animals. A sense of gut-clenching dread came over Jack as he realized why he was doing this. He wanted to annoy the animals and gradually stoke their anger. Anger he would harness and eventually use to kill the caged men. While Jack watched, this ringmaster of horrors shifted from snapping the whip at the floor and made contact with each animal’s hindquarters. The new tactic brought forth roars of rage.

  Mona was eating from a big bag of buttered popcorn. She pushed the bag at Jack and insisted he have some popcorn, too. Jack refused, which was a futile gesture. She forced his mouth open and pushed some of the moist kernels down his throat. After nearly gagging several times, he acquiesced and ate from the bag. He imagined how this scene must look to Lucien and Andy and felt shame. But what could he do? He wasn’t capable of overpowering Mona. And even if he could devise some way to get free of her, there would still be the Guild of the Black Sun to contend with. Black clad men with machetes ringed the auditorium.

  So he was stuck with no choice but to sit here with Mona and enact this mocking imitation of a couple out on the town for an evening’s entertainment. The thought of having to just sit here while his friends were torn to pieces on the stage made him sick. He entertained a fantasy of bolting from his seat and making a dash through the orchestra pit to the stage, where he could maybe antagonize one of the big cats enough to get it to rip his throat out. At least that way he would ruin some of Mona’s fun. But he remained where he was, knowing he’d get no more than a few feet away before being corralled again by Mona. And who knew what she might do then? Hard though it was to imagine, it might even make things worse for his friends.

  Mona’s voice boomed out: “Ringmaster! On with the show!”

  Jack winced at the volume of her voice.

  Victor Fitzsimmons showed his mistress a cruel, thin-lipped smile and bowed at the waist. Then he snapped his fingers and a tall, statuesque assistant in showgirl attire appeared from stage right and walked to the center of the stage. In one hand she held an electric cattle prod. In the other was an oversized gold key. She smiled brightly and displayed the key by holding it above her head.

  “Good evening, Lady and Gentleman.” The ringmaster’s smile turned vulpine. He looked as predatory as the animals prowling the stage. “Welcome to the Maverick Grande Theater and tonight’s entertainment extravaganza! In a moment my assistant, the lovely Lana, will unlock the cage containing tonight’s audience volunteers and use this…” He pointed to the cattle prod. “…to induce one of them out onto the stage. First, however, a demonstration for your edification.”

  Jack scowled at Mona. “Volunteers? Seriously?”

  Mona giggled and munched more popcorn.

  Fitzsimmons tucked the whip under his arm and sharply clapped his hands. The curtain at the rear of the stage rippled like a flag fluttering in a breeze, then parted in the middle. Two Black Guild assassins guided a frightened young girl in a silk negligee to the center of the stage. She was tall and lanky, with frizzy blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. Her feet were bare and she shivered as she stood there nervously watching the animals patrolling the perimeter of the stage. Jack guessed she was maybe in her early twenties. Probably a tourist on her first trip to Vegas. She would have expected a wild time, but certainly nothing like this nightmare.

  Fitzsimmons addressed the Guildsmen: “Be gone.”

  The black clad men left the stage and Lana took up a position near the cage, leaving Fitzsimmons and the girl alone at center stage. The ringmaster touched the girl’s trembling chin, lifting it so that they were eye to eye.

  “Young lady, would you mind sharing your name with the audience this evening?”

  The girl mumbled something in a voice thick with emotion. Jack ached for her. Seeing this innocent’s misery made him want to wrap his hands around Mona’s throat. Again, however, he was dissuaded by the obvious utter futility of a move like that.

  He looked at Mona. “This isn’t necessary. She’s got nothing to do with any of this.”

  Mona laughed. “That’s what’s so exquisite about it. She’s dying for no reason at all.” She looked at Jack. “Like the whore in Cincinnati.”

  “Dammit, Mona, stop this. Please.”

  She smiled. “I love it when you beg.”

  Up on the stage Fitzsimmons slapped the girl. “Tell us your name!”

  In a small, scared voice the girl stammered: “M-my name i-is E-Emily.” She sobbed. “Please don’t hurt me…please…”

  Fitzsimmons grinned. “Oh, I won’t hurt you, sweet Emily.”

  The girl looked at him with hopeful, shining eyes. “R-really?”

  Fitzsimmons stroked her cheek with the back of a hand. “I give you my word.” Then he turned away from her and stalked to the edge of the stage, where he stood and looked directly at Jack Grimm. “However, my animals haven’t been fed all night. It isn’t really my fault if they find you...tempting.”

  He spun about then and snapped the whip at the nearest tiger, catching it across the face. The animal shrank back marginally, hunched its back, and bared its fangs. The furious roar that erupted from its throat sent a chill through Jack. Fitzsimmons cracked the whip again, this time striking the floor in the general vicinity of young Emily.

  The ringmaster screamed: “Zeus! Feed!”

  Emily screamed and stumbled backward. Jack gritted his teeth and clutched his seat’s armrests as the animal sprang out of its crouch and pounced on the young girl. Zeus opened her abdomen with one swipe of a claw. Blood and bits of intestine spilled through the wide gashes as the girl dropped to the floor. Then Zeus was on top of her, sinking his fangs deep into her throat.<
br />
  Jack’s eyes welled with moisture. “Goddamn you, Mona.”

  Mona patted his knee. “Relax, Jack. We’re just getting warmed up.”

  * * *

  Lucien watched the grisly scene on the stage through eyes still bleary from the drugs coursing through his system. He shook his head and tried to turn his thoughts back to earlier in the evening. Back to his struggle with the kidnappers in the desert. How much time had elapsed between the ambush and the moment when he had been able to overcome the effects of the drug? Maybe an hour. Maybe two. It was impossible to gauge. More time, anyway, than had passed since this more recent drugging.

  The murder of the innocent girl angered him, but a colder part of him welcomed the delay. Every moment Mona and her lackeys spent otherwise engaged brought him a moment closer to having full command of his faculties again. And only by having the drug purged from his system could he hope to fight and survive.

  He turned away from the sight of the big cat Zeus tearing out the dead girl’s entrails and sagged against the bars of the cage. Andy and Siegel hadn’t been drugged, but they looked every bit as weary and out of it as Lucien felt. The old gangster sat on the floor of the cage with his head bowed. His hat, that Rainbolt talisman, was gone. Somehow Mona had sensed its significance and had disposed of it in the Royal Suite’s fireplace.

  Andy was the only one who looked alert and calculating. He paced the cage, his gaze flicking rapidly from the girl’s savaged corpse to the smirking ringmaster and to the front row seats where Jack and Mona sat eating popcorn. He could almost hear the gears of the man’s mind whirring away, but Lucien, in his diminished state, couldn’t fathom one even remotely viable course of action.

  Then the ringmaster was speaking again: “An impressive display of brute physical strength. These animals are truly among nature’s finest marvels. Such strength. Such beauty. Such grace.”