Grimm Awakening (22 page)

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.”

Mona’s fist snapped out like a whip and connected hard with Jack’s jaw. Jack staggered backward, struck the wall, then dropped to his knees. He heard the strident thunk of Mona’s boots on the concrete floor and looked up in time to see her gearing up to deliver another blow. He raised a hand to ward it off, but the force of the punch that came at him snapped two of his fingers and continued in a straight path until it connected with his jaw again.

Mona jerked him to his feet, slammed him against the wall, and jammed a forearm against his throat. Jack looked into a pair of eyes burning with a fury so intense he could almost feel it scalding the back of his brain. “
YOU THINK I HAVE TO PLAY GAMES TO GET WHAT I WANT!?
” The decibel level of her voice exceeded anything in Jack’s experience, including heavy metal concerts and the sound of a Concorde’s engines gearing up for takeoff. “Think, Jack. For once in your worthless life,
think
. You felt the presence of our child growing inside me. So, go ahead. Talk yourself into not believing it.” Her forearm pushed harder against his throat. Her voice was quieter now, but the words no less fiery or bitter. “The baby is real. And, no, I wasn’t just messing with your head when I said you’d be dead before it’s born. You’re a disgrace. A wreck. The creation of this life will be the only thing worthwhile you’ve ever had a hand in. And this baby will never know what a useless cur its father was.”

The pressure against Jack’s windpipe eased some and he drew in a ragged lungful of air. “Okay, Mona. Whatever. I believe you. But if you’re going to kill me, can’t you just get it over with? You’re kind of boring the shit out of me at this point.”

Mona’s free hand curled around Jack’s broken fingers and squeezed hard, triggering twin bolts of pain that made him cry out. “How boring is
that
, you fucking worm? What I said before stands. Before I kill you, you’ll watch your friends beg for mercy and die.”

She released him and moved a step back. “Killing you will be more of a mercy than you deserve.” She smiled again, just a small one this time. That irritating smugness was back. “I know all about you, Jack. I know about the blackouts and the mistakes you’ve made. Some of them deadly. I know about the prostitute in Cincinnati, the one who haunts your dreams. The one you murdered.”