Grimm Awakening (9 page)

The big man gestured at him with the fat end of the baseball bat. “Because I think I’d have to spend the rest of the morning pulverizing every goddamn bone in your body if you were.”

The man grasping Lucien’s right arm snorted laughter. “He ain’t kiddin’. I’ve seen him do it. This one guy, he was still alive after Hank went to town on him with that bat o’ his. We sat out here, drank some beer, and watched the sumbitch flop around and scream for hours.”

The man holding his left arm said, “Shit, that was a good time. I ‘bout lost it when Jimbo pulled that boy’s britches down and stuck a firecracker up his ass.”

All-around laughter from his captors.

Lucien kept his gaze steady on the man with the bat. The big man. Hank. It was good to know his name now. He knew these men weren’t lying. They were sociopaths and sadists. They gave no more thought to killing a man than they would to swatting a fly. The grief of families and loved ones meant nothing to them. Men such as these were a cancer, a diseased and defective segment of the human race. As such, there was only one way to deal with them--by excising the cancer.

Lucien joined them in their laughter.

Hank’s laughter subsided and his brow furrowed. “What are you laughing at, hellhound?”

Lucien was still laughing. “At you, fat man. At you and your inbred cronies here.”

Hank sneered. “You are so fucking dead.” He went into a batting stance again. “Hold that bastard still, boys, while I knock his goddamn fool head off.”

“Uh...” said the man so amused by the memory of a firecracker exploding in a crippled victim’s ass. “Hank, he said he knew where that Grimm bastard was...”

“He’s lying. Do like I said and make sure he don’t move.” Hank’s eyes blazed with rage. “Else I’ll bust up you assholes, too.”

The men’s grips tightened around their captive’s arms.

Lucien grinned broadly at Hank. “Here comes hell, you son of a bitch.”

The change came over Lucien with startling quickness. His muscle mass increased greatly in seconds and his head was a blur as it changed shape and sprouted fur from every pore. A surge of exhilaration exploded within him. He’d hoped to buy enough time to fight off the effects of the drug and bring on the change and these idiots had been stupid enough to accommodate him. The men holding him screamed and released him. Hank gaped at him in utter stupefaction for a moment before recovering enough to raise the baseball bat again.

One of the other men said, “That bitch said that fuckin’ drug would stop this!”

Lucien snarled. Steam puffed out of his huge, ridged nostrils. He turned to look at the man who’d spoken. His voice was a guttural growl as he said: “She was wrong.”

Lucien’s right arm slashed through the desert air. His claws extended and turned the man’s throat into ribbons of bloody flesh. The man seized his throat with both hands and dropped to his knees. Blood rushed through his fingers as he looked up at the hellhound with wide, terrified eyes. Lucien gripped the man’s head and twisted it off. Blood jumped from the stump of the man’s neck like an oil gusher. Someone screamed. The surviving men were going for their guns, but Lucien moved with calm and deadly precision. He tossed the decapitated head at Hank, who, being a former ballplayer, snatched it instinctively from the air--then shrieked and dropped the head as if it were radioactive.

Hank raised a Magnum with a shaky hand and got off a single shot that went well astray. The gun fell from his hand before he could squeeze the trigger again. Lucien snatched the forgotten bat from the man’s other hand and broke it over his knee. He gripped the fat man by the neck and prepared to drive the jagged end of the bat’s handle through his chest.

Then there was an explosion behind him and a bullet nicked his ear. The sting of it elicited an annoyed growl from the hellhound. He let go of Hank and whirled on the other man. The man, who’d expected to see Lucien’s brains leap through an opening in his forehead, wilted at the sight of the beast’s glowering eyes. Moving backward, he stumbled in the direction of Hank’s Chevy Caprice. He fell against the driver’s side door and fumbled for the handle.

The man pointed his Glock in Lucien’s direction and squeezed off three rapid shots that didn’t get anywhere near the intended target. Lucien lunged across desert sand and was upon him in a nanosecond. He ripped the Glock from the terrified man’s hand and snarled at him. Severe tremors wracked the man’s sweat-soaked body and babbled pleas of mercy streamed from his mouth. Lucien shut him up by shoving the barrel of the Glock into his mouth. He meant to pull the trigger and empty the man’s brainpan, but his hellspawn senses alerted him to something strange happening nearby. It began as a subtle change in the atmosphere. The desert air seemed charged with electricity. Then there was a sound like a thousand mosquitoes buzzing in his ears. Lucien turned to look at a spot in the desert beyond where Hank was struggling to catch his breath and get to his feet. A warm pink glow penetrated the darkness some twenty yards away.

By now, Hank had recovered enough to become aware of the strange disturbance, too. Up on his knees now, he gaped at the phenomenon for a moment before turning a haggard gaze toward Lucien.

“You’ve had it now, hellbeast. The big boss is comin’ for you.”

A low growl rumbled through the hellhound’s clenched teeth. He squeezed the gun’s trigger and the bullet did its work. He let the dead man’s twitching body fall to the ground.

Hank’s grin faded as he watched Lucien begin to move cautiously in his direction. “Stay away from me!”

On his hands and knees, he searched the dark desert floor frantically for his cast-aside gun. A pathetic mewling sound came from him as his frustration grew. He frowned as he closed a groping hand on something unexpected. He held his hand up to his face to examine his find. Lucien sensed what it was and laughed. Hank’s face became a study in undiluted primitive fear. His jaw dropped open and his bulging eyes looked ready to pop out of his head. He screamed when the scorpion stung his palm, then flung the thing away.

The wedge of pink light was about the size of a door. Lucien watched as the light changed to a deeper shade of pink, followed by orange, then a bright red. The annoying buzzing sound changed pitch, becoming a steady hum not much louder than the noise generated by a refrigerator.

There was something moving within it.

Lucien’s finger tensed around the Glock’s trigger. It was only instinct--if Hank was right, the gun would not save him, nor was there any chance now of running to safety. So he stayed where he was and watched the figure inside the light grow more distinct. It was a humanoid figure, but that meant little--the big boss of hell could take any form he damn well pleased.

Hank was curled into a fetal ball on the desert floor. He clutched his injured hand and whimpered like a sick baby. But he managed to shoot a ferocious look at the hellhound. “You’re going to pay for this.” He moaned. “Oh, God, it hurts!” He glanced at the emerging form and a sound that was a deranged cross between a laugh and a wail of agony emanated from him. “You’re a dead motherfucker, beast. You’ll see.”

“Maybe you’re right, fat man.”

The figure within the field of light solidified and began to move forward like a man walking through fog. Lucien felt relief as the man--who his senses told him was a real man and not a facsimile of a man--came into view. There was just the slightest hint of swagger in the man’s gait as he strolled toward them. The man was of medium height, maybe a couple inches beneath six feet, and he had slicked-back reddish-blond hair knotted into a small ponytail at the back of his head. He wore jeans, boots, and a black leather jacket open over a plain t-shirt. In his right hand he held a foamy pint glass filled with what Lucien supposed was Guinness.

Lucien reverted to human form. “You must be a friend of Jack’s.”

The man smiled. “How’d you guess?” He raised his glass before taking a sip from it. “Cheers, mate.”

Lucien shook his head. “Who are you?”

“Andy O’Day.” He held out a hand. Lucien gave it a quick, not-quite-friendly-yet shake. He was anxious to know why this man had come to this place in so unorthodox a manner. “I’ve known Jack since we were wee little ones. I’ve communicated with you through intermediaries on a number of occasions. You must be Lucien.”

Lucien nodded. “Okay. Why are you here?”

Andy drank some more Guinness. “Well, I was all set for a relaxing night of quaffing stout at the Sherlock Holmes Pub in Nashvegas when I learned my boy Jack had gotten his balls in the wringer again.”

Lucien frowned. “How did--”

Andy laughed. “How did I know that?” He shrugged. His mouth formed a small, inscrutable smile, the kind that said, ‘I have secrets I won’t divulge any time soon.’ “I have ways. But there’s no time to go into it. We’ve got to get our asses over to Hell’s headquarters in Las Vegas and pull Jack’s drunk ass out of the fire.”

Lucien’s frown deepened. “Okay, but--”

An explosion obliterated the rest of Lucien’s intended query.

Andy frowned--in his hand was a fragment of the now empty beer glass. He shot a look of dismay at the puddle of spilled stout on the desert floor before shifting his attention to Lucien’s lone surviving captor.

Hank sneered at them from his position on the ground. He was still in tremendous pain, but he’d nonetheless managed to retrieve his gun during Lucien’s conversation with Andy. “Thought you was done with me, huh?” He paused to spit. “Ignorant hellbeast. Scorpion sting ain’t no worse than gettin’ stung by a bee, most times.” He laughed. “I advise you boys to start makin’ peace with your--”

But he didn’t say anything else, because by then Andy O’Day was on him. Lucien had never seen a human move so quickly. Jack’s friend snapped the man’s wrist and tossed the gun aside. He pinned the howling man to the ground and shoved the broken fragment of glass against his throat.

A savage grin flashed across Andy’s face. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you never to touch another man’s drink?”

The man’s only reply was an unintelligible gurgle--which was the only sound he could produce now that Andy had ripped his throat apart with the bit of broken glass. Andy was on his feet again in an eye-blink, fast enough to avoid being touched by the blood spraying from the man’s severed jugular vein.

Lucien’s brow furrowed as he watched the dying man convulse. Andy swatted at the front of his shirt, brushing off sand. There was more to this man than met the eye. That he was human was beyond question--Lucien’s extraordinarily sharp senses did not lie--but a select few humans were gifted with special abilities and rare talents. Theodore Grimm, a formidable wizard since his teens, was a prime example. He was a member of a tiny percentage of the race that was more evolved than the rest of its kind. Obviously, Andy was also a member of this exclusive club.

Andy clapped his hands together. “Time, as they say, is of the essence. Let’s go get Jack before the bastards roast him.” He removed a whiskey flask from an inner pocket of his jacket. He drank deeply from it, then offered it to Lucien. “For luck.”

Lucien took the flask. “The hell with luck. I need a drink.”

He drained the flask.

Then he extracted the keys to the Chevy Caprice from the dead fat man, got behind the wheel of the car, and waited while Andy slid into the shotgun seat. Lucien turned the key in the ignition and the engine sputtered to throaty life.

They drove away from the dead men.

4.

“Seriously, is that all you’ve got?”

Jack maintained the grin on his face through a supreme effort of will. His body was in agony, but he was determined to project an air of implacability as long as he could. Beyond that first, attention-getting application of the lit end of a Lucky Strike to his scrotum, the burn torture wasn’t anything he couldn’t endure. Sure, he’d screamed a few times, but who wouldn’t? At least she’d applied all subsequent lit cigarettes to relatively less sensitive areas of his body.

A smirk tugged at a corner of Mona’s mouth. “You don’t fool me, Jack. Inside you is a momentous scream straining to get out.”

Jack hissed through gritted teeth. The false grin faltered a bit. He had no comeback this time--what she said was true.

“Let it out, Jack.”

“Fuck you.”

Mona smiled. “This is mild stuff so far, Jack.” She extracted the last cigarette from the depleted pack of Lucky Strikes--she lit it and sat on the edge of the bed next to Jack. She exhaled smoke. “A warm-up for the main event, you could say.”

Jack grimaced. “It doesn’t matter what you do to me, Mona. I’m sure you can make me scream and beg for mercy. Every man has his breaking point, even a prime stud like yours truly. But that’s all the satisfaction you’ll get--I won’t tell you what you want to know.”

Mona shifted her body and leaned over him. Jack briefly thought she would kiss him, and despite the torture and humiliation he’d endured at her hands, there remained a part of him that yearned for it. A very, very hopelessly sick part of his damaged psyche, sure, but knowing that failed to suppress the shameful desire.

But she didn’t kiss him. With the thumb and forefinger of one hand she held open one of his eyelids--and her right hand brought the cigarette close enough to his unprotected eye to singe lashes. “What’s the matter, Jack? You’re shaking like a leaf.”