Grimm Awakening (6 page)

They park the Jaguar by a dark roadside and walk deep into the woods. They walk for maybe thirty minutes before Jack spies a strange source of light. It becomes dazzling as they near it. Then they step into a clearing and there it is. A shimmering circle of light containing shifting swirls of color.

“It’s a portal. I’ve made arrangements. Jack, you’ve got twenty-four hours to find that girl and get back here. Otherwise you’ll be trapped in hell.”

Jack nods. He walks toward the portal. Soon he is awash in light. The universe is only swirling shades of purple, red, and blue. Then he feels nothing. He is only incorporeal essence.

Then he’s standing on a street in Greytown. He takes a look around..

Then he sets out to find the girl.

13.

“I found her.”

Theodore Grimm’s expression was unreadable. “Yes.”

Jack’s body sagged. He felt exhausted, like a runner at the end of a marathon. The glittering crystal was gone, presumably returned to its place in his father’s robe. “What the fuck was that thing?”

“A key. It unlocks secrets of the unconscious mind.”

“Something like that could come in handy. I don’t suppose...”

His father’s voice was stern: “No. You need motivation to tame your darker appetites. A memory key would only grant you license to indulge them further. Now. Tell me about the girl.”

Jack sighed. “I’m sure you already know.”

“Tell me.”

Jack shrugged. “I found her in the basement of a nightclub not far from the Sundowner Inn. Nude and tied to a torture wheel.” Jack shuddered at the memory of the big smile on her sweaty face. “Hellhounds were lashing her with bullwhips. She was...she was...enjoying it.”

Theodore Grimm’s hands formed a steeple. He nodded. “She is there of her own accord. She’s in league with the powers we oppose.”

Jack felt a sudden chill--despite the warmth in the room. “I could see the corruption in her eyes. It was so total.”

Lucien said, “You left her there.”

Jack looked at the floor. “I did.”

His father said, “You had no choice.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. You are a flawed man, son, but you are a man of intelligence. You had the insight to recognize a battle already lost. And you had the courage to just walk away.” A hint of weariness crept into his voice. “There is valor to be gained in battle, but there are times when the bravest thing a man can do is to just walk away.”

Jack lifted his gaze from the floor and looked into the old man’s eyes. “Why did you walk away?”

“The reasons why will not be revealed to you today, but will become clear in the fullness of time. I serve a higher purpose now.”

Jack shot a quick glance at Lucien--the hellhound’s intent gaze was riveted to Theodore Grimm--before looking again at his father. “What purpose is that?”

His father’s expression became solemn. “The highest there is. At the heart of this dark domain lurks a force so evil it is almost beyond man’s ability to comprehend. And it is plotting a new war. A hell on earth. I am here to prevent that.” The old man’s gaze shifted to Lucien, lingered there a moment, then came back to his son. “What Lucien said before is true. I am not like other men. I am a mortal man, but I am gifted, or cursed, with abilities few other men have ever possessed. No other living man is as fit to wage the coming battle.”

The words made Jack’s heart ache. “Come back to earth with me.”

His father smiled, but his eyes were sad. “I cannot. I am needed here. And you are needed on earth. You are charged with a mission.”

Jack frowned. “What mission?”

“To redeem yourself.”

Jack didn’t say anything. He couldn’t imagine anything more difficult.

“Son, you are one of the hellbound.” Theodore Grimm’s voice became stern again, the way Jack remembered from when he was a kid and his father wanted his fullest attention. “You are marked for damnation. It is the reason you were able to enter hell. Because I have mastered certain forces, I am able to be here, but I am not damned. Son.” He leaned forward, his gaze growing more commanding. “Your redemption is the only way you and I can ever see each other again. I may succeed in turning back the armies of hell, but I will not survive the battle.”

Jack’s voice thickened with grief. “No…”

“I’m sorry, son. Redeem yourself.” The old man looked at Lucien. He smiled. He looked again at his anguished son. “The hellhound will accompany you. He, too, seeks redemption. But he seeks it for an entire race. For all the living creatures of hell. The hellspawn.”

Lucien spoke. “This is the real reason for your presence in hell, Jack. Your friend Andy sent you after the girl knowing it was a lost cause. He is allied with us. We have to go now, Jack. Redemption awaits. Come with me and fight the darkness in your world. That’s your path to salvation. You can do it. You
will
do it.”

Jack shook his head. “No. No, no, no.” He looked at his father. “I can’t lose you again, Dad. Ten years. Ten fucking years…”

Theodore Grimm nodded. “This is not how I wish things to be, but this is how things
are
. And now you must go.”

Lucien hooked a hand under Jack’s armpit and pulled him to his feet. He began to guide him to the door. The hellhound whispered into his ear: “Remember everything he said. This is what has to happen.”

Lucien opened the door. “Now, Jack. We’re almost out of time.”

Desperate voices of denial clamored in Jack’s head. He was going. Something within him was willing him to do what had to be done. The truth of his father’s words resonated clearly within him. But the primal need to stay, to cling to this resurrected piece of his past, was strong. “I’ll see you again, dad.”

And he heard his father say, “Stay strong, son.”

And then the door was shut.

14.

They were in Lucien’s cruiser, heading for Greytown’s dismal outskirts. The groupings of buildings became smaller and farther apart, disappearing altogether as they neared an approaching electric haze many miles from the heart of the city, an ominous dark wall that looked like a shifting mass of thunderclouds. It was still miles away, but the sight of it made the hairs on the back of Jack’s neck stiffen. They were aimed straight at it, a turbulent, unstable realm where hell itself ceased to exist. Lightning bolt after lightning bolt emerged from the wall and stabbed the scarlet sky.

Jack saw a tilting sign on a rusted metal post.

It read, YOU ARE NOW LEAVING GREYTOWN.

And, TURN AROUND NOW.

Jack watched the sign diminish in the passenger side mirror.

He looked at Lucien. “So, are you going to tell me about Mona?”

Lucien kept his gaze on the road ahead. “What about her?”

Jack rolled his eyes. “How stupid do you think I am. I mean, yeah, I’m a drunk. And so, yes, okay, I
do
have the occasional alcoholic blackout. But that doesn’t make me an idiot. My wife has something to with what happened to my father. It can’t just be coincidence that she took off months after my father’s supposed drowning-at-sea.”

Lucien nodded. “You’re quick on the uptake, Jack. It’s not a coincidence.”

Jack waited. “Well. What’s the deal, Lucien? Am I supposed to guess at everything? I’m tired of this ‘let’s-keep-Jack-in-the-dark-for-his-own-good’ bullshit. My father’s some kind of, I dunno,
wizard
, how’s that for freaky, and Mona...”

Lucien glanced at Jack. “Isn’t human.”

Jack covered his face with his hands. “Well, shit.”

“We don’t know much about her, Jack. What we think we know is supposition. We think she got involved with you because of your father.”

Jack’s laugh was a fragile, humorless thing. “Love had nothing to do with it.”

Lucien looked at him with evident sympathy. “I’m sorry, Jack. But you need to deal with this. She wanted to get close to your father. He knew the forces arrayed against him were closing in and he knew they meant to strike soon. He just didn’t know from which direction the attack would come, which is why he did what he did. I showed you the picture--a recent one, by the way--because she is from this place. But she is no mere hellspawn. She is one of the devil’s own elite. And she is dedicated to bringing an end to the world you know. We must find her.”

Jack’s hands fell away from his face. He peered into the approaching thunderwall and for a moment imagined himself disappearing inside it. He thought about that. Just ceasing to exist. The temptation was so alluring he thought he’d make a run for it when Lucien stopped the cruiser. But the memory of his father’s wrinkled face came to him and the impulse withered. He wanted to see that face again.

They were close to the wall now. Jack felt the rumble of thunder deep within his bones. The electricity made his flesh tingle and instilled a sharp pain within each of his teeth. His eyeballs felt as though they were shrinking in their sockets. Lucien pulled the car to within a hundred yards of the wall and it loomed over them like a terrible, vengeful creature of the elements, Mother Nature’s darkest side.

Lucien parked the car and they stepped out. They walked to within another fifty yards of the wall. They’d left the last section of paved road behind by now. At this distance, Jack could feel the wall pulling at him. He stumbled a step toward it, the suction it exerted was almost too powerful to resist. Lucien extracted a timepiece from an inner pocket of the jacket that had replaced his Hellpack blazer. It was a gold watch on a chain, a gift from Theodore Grimm. The most accurate timepiece in all of creation, according to the old man.

The hellhound flipped the watch open. He nodded, his expression grim. “Almost time. If the portal doesn’t open in less than a minute, we’re fucked.”

Jack grunted. “Thanks for breaking it to me gently.”

Lucien didn’t reply, choosing instead to track the progress of the watch’s relentlessly progressing second hand. Jack heard the ticking like the timer on a bomb. Despite the mighty roar of the thunderwall, each tick reverberated in his ears like the blast of a cannon. He closed his eyes, muttered a silent prayer, and waited for the doom that seemed inevitable.

Then Lucien said, “There it is!”

Jack opened his eyes and looked. He saw it materializing just above the ground to their right, the same shimmering portal Andy had coaxed him through just twenty-four hours earlier. Or one just like it, at least. Jack’s heart thudded. It was all he could do not to take off at a run for the portal. He didn’t even know whether he
should
resist that impulse.

He cocked an eyebrow at the hellhound. “Now?”

Lucien nodded. “Yes.”

The two men, human and hellhound, began to walk toward the portal.

Then something changed. Jack could feel it in his bones and at the back of his skull, in every weeping pore of his weary body. Something was
wrong
. The ground rumbled beneath their feet. Lucien’s eyes widened with alarm and he yelled, “
Run!
”

But Jack was already running.

Lucien’s voice was brittle with terror: “Something’s coming! Something’s trying to stop us!”

As if in answer to the hellhound’s cries, the sky darkened behind the portal and something began to materialize in front of their only means of escape. Jack convulsed as a wave of cold swept through him. The desert storm humidity of before was gone. Jack felt like a naked man stumbling across a frozen tundra. The thing taking shape before them was like a black slash wound against the flesh of the world. Its curled tail rotated like a twister about to touch down. Its eyes were red and malevolent. There was deeper darkness within the darkness that resembled a grinning mouth, a mouth that looked wide enough to open up and swallow them whole.

A terrible voice that seemed to obliterate everything else spoke inside their heads. “Such audacity.” Its laugh was like the sound of an earthquake ripping earth asunder. Jack thought his head might explode. “I am fear itself. I am hate and I am murder. I am war, famine, and disease. I am everything that powers your nightmares. I am the bringer of the ultimate blood cleansing and my time is coming. You will not stop me. You
cannot
stop me.”

That laugh again. A bomb detonating inside their heads. Jack clamped his hands over his ears and sank to his knees. He sobbed and hot tears spilled down his face. He thought of the gun in his shoulder holster and despaired. Bullets would be as nothing against this awesome force.

It spoke again: “Would-be usurpers. Plastic heroes. You amuse me. As do the meddlings of the old man. I will deal with him in time. As for you, go forth and attempt redemption. It is useless. You are of no concern to me. When my time on earth comes, your suffering will surpass the suffering of any soul. It will be endless.”

Then it was gone.

Jack needed several moments just to catch his breath. His eyes were clenched shut, but he heard Lucien panting next to him. He managed at last to unscrew his eyes and blinked at a landscape devoid of devils. The freezing cold was gone, the heat sweeping back in. The portal was still before them, but it was fading, the swirls of multi-colored light rotating at a slower and slower speed.