Grimm Awakening (17 page)

He wedged the cigarette into a notch of the ashtray and gripped the beer glass. “Every word of it’s true, Lucien.”

Lucien shrugged. “I believe you. But I do have some questions. This Hex Rainbolt--were his people members of this Order of Sylvain?”

Siegel splashed more whiskey into his glass. The old man’s eyes were already very bloodshot. Lucien wondered how a man could drink so much and remain at all coherent, but Benjamin Siegel hadn’t been an ordinary man for a long time. “The Rainbolts were renegades. They were cast out of the Order of Sylvain eons ago and were stranded on this backward world.” Siegel gave his eyes a vigorous rub before continuing. “They were here for maybe a hundred years before managing to transport themselves to the alternate earth Andy and I come from.”

“Why were they expelled from the Order?”

Siegel’s expression reflected a deep sadness. “Because the Order of Sylvain was corrupt. Their power had grown too great and they were increasingly using it for dark purposes. The Rainbolts rebelled. They used non-violent means at first, but that wasn’t working. They were harassed and jailed. Tortured. Some of the more fiery members of the clan experimented with terrorist tactics. So the word went out. The Rainbolts were to be exterminated. I was told all the gory details by surviving witnesses to the massacre, all of whom are gone now. Order troops swept into Rainbolt townships and slaughtered most of them.”

He sighed and wet his lips with another small taste of whiskey. “Some managed to escape. Fewer than a hundred. Out of thousands. They hijacked a vessel capable of interstellar travel, but it was an old ship. When it crashed here, they were stuck. A lot of them died in the crash. And now the clan is down to just two surviving members--old Hex Rainbolt’s granddaughter and me, an honorary Rainbolt.”

The story of the Rainbolts was sad and tragic, but Lucien failed to see how it was relevant to their situation. He was anxious to finish whatever their business was here and get back to Jack’s world. There was work to be done there. Redemption work.

“Look, that’s all very interesting. But why should I care? As far as I know--and I’m pretty damn sure--neither the Rainbolts nor this Order of Sylvain are allied with the big boss of hell.” He finished off his beer and slammed the glass on the table. “I say we stop fucking around and get out of this goddamn place.”

Andy lit a fresh Marlboro from the dying embers of the previous. “Chill, Lucien. We’re not spinning our wheels here, I assure you. You know I sought Ben for his help with our problem. The Rainbolt history lesson explains
how
he’ll help.”

Lucien frowned. “Like hell it did. I’m still in the fucking dark.”

Andy smiled around the cigarette wedged into a corner of his mouth. “That’s because you’re still not privy to the remaining piece of the puzzle.”

“And what would that be?”

“The Eye of Sylvain.”

At that moment the outline of a door appeared in the red wall again. When the door swung open, Lucien saw only impenetrable blackness through the opening. Then Delilah, bearing a tray with a large glass ball on a black base, emerged from that darkness and entered the room. And Lucien was again entranced by her lithe and curvy body. He was captivated by the delicate and sensual interplay of her various parts, from the sway of her hips and the thrust of her breasts against the thin fabric of her dress to the way she held her regal, slender neck.

She set the tray on the table and Lucien got a breath-taking glimpse of the deep valley of creamy flesh visible beneath the top of her dress. She caught him looking and winked, but Lucien didn’t care. He thought he knew how Jack Grimm must have felt checking out the hot barmaid at The Dead End while under the thrall of the voice of Lust.

He met Delilah’s gaze and said, “I think I love you. I just wanted you to know that.”

She smiled. “Of course you do.”

Then she refilled their drinks and left the room again.

“I must have her.”

Andy chuckled. “I’m sure that’s doable, Lucien. Just make the necessary monetary arrangements. But for now I’d like to direct your attention to the object on the table.”

Lucien looked at it and frowned. “It looks like a crystal ball. A cheap one. The kind a little old lady fortune-teller would use.” He snorted. “
This
thing is the fabled ‘Eye of Sylvain’? Come on, man.”

Andy’s gaze slid over to Siegel. “Ben, you take it from here.”

Siegel leaned over the table and tapped the top of the orb with the tip of an index finger. Suddenly it was no longer a mere ball of glass. An ember of flame flared to life at its center, a bright pinpoint that then grew larger and filled the glass. Siegel closed his eyes and intoned more of that wizard mumbo-jumbo. A shape appeared within the brilliant light, a shape like...well, yes, like an eye. The sight of it sent a chill through Lucien. There was something vaguely sinister about it. Then the searing light did a slow fade, like the house lights of a movie theater going down at show time, and was gradually replaced by shapes within a murky fog.

Lucien’s eyes widened. “Goddamn.”

Andy laughed. “And now he begins to see…”

The scene the Eye displayed was like a shot from a movie, freeze-framed on a DVD player. Only he was pretty sure Jack Grimm hadn’t been a film star in an earlier phase of his troubled life. The Eye showed Jack flat on his back in an opulent hotel room, which had to be in The Maverick. He was lying amid an array of glass fragments and his long-lost wife--decked out in black leather and stiletto heels, like a dominatrix attired in nightclub gear--was standing over him. The demon lurking beneath the pretty surface was evident in her eyes--they gleamed with a fierce and unnatural light. Lucien peered closer and thought he detected a small pool of blood next to Jack’s head.

Lucien looked at Andy. His heart was pounding. He couldn’t abide the notion of failing Theodore Grimm. “She’s going to kill him. Unless we stop fucking around and go now.”

Andy heaved a weary sigh. “Lucien, time is stuck over there?” He said it like a question, which annoyed Lucien. “Try to remember that. And try to remember I’m showing you this for a reason. Besides, Mona won’t kill Jack. He’s too valuable a commodity, either for the information he possesses or as a pawn in the grand game being waged between the bad guys, represented by your former employers, and the good guys. The good guys being…well, us.”

Siegel said some more alien words and the frozen image of Jack and Mona was replaced by a different scene. Another hotel room. Also in The Maverick, Lucien assumed, although this room’s interior wasn’t quite so extravagantly appointed. A young girl stood at the room’s center, her head upturned, gaze fixed on the ceiling.

The girl, although small, was achingly pretty.

Siegel said, “This is Raven Rainbolt. My granddaughter.”

Lucien looked at Andy. “She’s in The Maverick, right?”

A nod. “Yep.”

Lucien drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “This help Ben is to provide us--it actually has to do with her. Right?”

Andy nodded again. “It has everything to do with her.”

Lucien grunted. “But she’s so...
little
. There’s no way she could get Jack out of there by herself. They’d slaughter her.”

Siegel glared at Lucien. “Don’t underestimate that girl. She can do amazing things. Things an entire pack of hellhounds couldn’t accomplish.”

Andy loudly cleared his throat. “Yes, she can. Raven is a formidable foe for any enemy. Nevertheless, she will not be attempting this rescue mission on her own. She’ll be assisting us, smoothing the way, clearing a path for us to get in there and do what we have to do. And if it comes down to a bad guys versus good guys fight to the death, she can kick as much ass as any of us.”

“Damn right she can.” Siegel’s voice crackled with pride.

Lucien kept his persistent doubts about that to himself. But something else was puzzling him. “Why is Raven at The Maverick? I know you didn’t have time to work this out prior to coming here. Her being there just when we need her seems...”

“Knock off the paranoia, Lucien.” Andy leaned over the table. “Hey, I know why you’re worried. Coming to our world was a hell of a risky move on your part. I can’t guarantee your old friends won’t get you someday, pal. They might. But I can guarantee something else--you are not being led into a trap. If you’ve got any lingering trust issues, now would be the time to lay them on the table.”

“Raven being there really ain’t so coincidental,” Siegel cut in. His gaze was again riveted to the Eye’s image of the girl. “She knows Las Vegas in and out. Better than me, even. And she knows The Maverick is the focal point of evil in our city. She goes there often, to keep an eye on what’s going on and look for weak links in their security.”

Andy’s nodded. “A fact I happened to be well aware of.” He grinned. “Stick with me, Lucien, and soon enough you’ll be a seemingly all-knowing Svengali, too.”

The outline of the door reappeared in the wall and a moment later it clicked open again. This time Delilah emerged from the darkness bearing a tray of hot food. The good smell of juicy steaks and steaming potatoes got Lucien’s saliva flowing. Someone else--a tall, thin man in a waiter’s uniform--followed her into the room, with trays full of food balanced on each of his upturned palms.

Delilah and the waiter set the trays on fold-out stands and began the process of arranging the plates of food around the table.

Siegel smacked his lips like a dog and removed utensils from a folded napkin. “I’m so hungry I could eat a federal informant.”

Lucien nodded his head in vigorous agreement. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in eons.”

Andy said, “We didn’t order any food.”

Lucien frowned. “What?”

Andy was frowning, too. “I said, we--”

Delilah snatched Andy’s steak knife off the table and wedged it against his throat. Lucien moved without thinking, without even knowing he had a weapon in his hand. Andy struggled against Delilah, who was so much stronger and quicker than Lucien would’ve thought. The blade broke the skin of Andy’s neck and drew blood. Lucien dove across the table, knocking the Eye of Sylvain and several plates of food to the floor. The fork gripped tight in his right hand plunged through one of Delilah’s eyes. She shrieked and relinquished her grip on both the knife and Andy. Blood and fluid welled around the tines of the fork as Lucien drove her to the floor. He pushed the bent utensil up into her brain and her body twitched a time or two before going still.

A rapid succession of gunshots boomed out and Lucien rolled onto his back in time to see bright splotches of blood bloom across the front of the tall waiter’s white shirt. The dead man’s body crumpled and hit the floor like a sack of rocks. Lucien turned his head to the left and saw Andy O’Day gripping a .45 with both hands. He looked at Andy’s bloody throat and was relieved to see that the knife had barely pierced the skin.

Lucien got to his feet and was pained to see that Benjamin Siegel hadn’t been so lucky. The old gangster was bleeding profusely from a knife wound to his shoulder. The blade, in fact, was still embedded in his shoulder.

But there was no time to tend to him because more would-be assassins were pouring into the room through the open door. Machete-wielding men dressed all in black with black hoods over their heads.

“Goddammit!”

Andy started firing with one hand while his other hand went into his jacket and produced another gun. Now he looked like a cowboy in an old shoot-em-up movie, a two-fisted gunfighter mowing down the bad guys. But there were too many of them to take out on his own. Lucien jumped into the fray, ripping machetes from the hands of two of the fallen black-clad men. He waded into the sea of attackers, his arms a blur of motion as he hacked away limbs and heads. A machete nicked his arm and he went into hound-mode, dropping the machetes in favor of teeth and claws. Blood and flesh filled his mouth, sating him in a way sex never could. He heard Andy pop empty clips out of his guns and replace them with fresh ones. But he only fired a time or two more. Lucien, covered in blood, looked up and realized there were no more live attackers. The room was filled with broken bodies. Lucien slipped back to human mode and stood up in his tattered clothes.

“What the fuck happened here?”

Andy’s eyes were blazing. The man’s expression was the embodiment of impending wrath, of a gargantuan fury ignited and about to blow. “A hit, that’s what fucking happened. A
failed
goddamn hit.”

A scream filled the room. Lucien looked at Siegel and saw that he’d plucked the big blade from his shoulder. “Okay, now that hurts.” To Lucien’s astonishment, he managed a chuckle now. “Red Room’s the right name for this place. Look at this shit.”

Andy breathed hard through flared nostrils. “O’Scanlon. That son of a bitch.”

Lucien looked at him. “But he’s your friend...right?”

Andy slammed the butt of a .45 into one of Lucien’s open palms. “I always thought so. But this couldn’t have happened without his cooperation. I’ll tell you this--we’re sure as fuck gonna find out.”

Lucien’s hand closed around the .45 Given what had just transpired, he wasn’t sure he needed a gun to deal with these people, but he was glad to have it nonetheless.