Grimm Awakening (29 page)

Jack clapped his hands over his ears and dropped to his knees. Covering his ears afforded scant protection for his eardrums, though. Unnatural howls of anguish pealed out of the mouths of the surviving animals. Then, mercifully, the sound ceased. He looked around, blinked at the impossible thing he was seeing, and grinned when he realized it was real.

He looked up at Raven. “Can you teach me how to do that? Freezing people would come in pretty fucking handy in my line of work.”

She smiled. “It is Rainbolt magic. Derived from Sylvain magic. Regardless, I will not be able to do it again once the Eye of Sylvain is no more.”

“WHAT!?
” Mona was on her feet again. She approached them again, but with more caution this time, moving slowly to the left even as she moved forward. “I can’t allow destruction of the Eye, you fucking bitch.”

Jack made a sound of disgust. “Can’t you just freeze her, too?”

Raven shook her head even as she kept a wary eye on Mona. “No. She is too powerful.”

Mona smirked. “You got that right, bitch. As you’ll find out shortly when I twist your little head off your shoulders.”

Raven laughed. “I only meant you were too powerful to be susceptible to that spell. You are not so powerful that I can’t kill you.”

Mona snarled like one of the big cats and came at Raven like a runaway freight train. Jack grimaced, expecting the she-demon to flatten the smaller woman. But Raven sidestepped at the last possible instant and executed a spin kick that, if anything, was even more deftly executed than the moves Mona had displayed in the Royale Suite.

The air exploded from Mona’s lungs and she went flying backward. She landed hard on her rear end and uttered a cry of pain. Before she could manage to get upright again, a tiny blur came at her. Then Raven was standing over her, with a foot planted on the she-demon’s throat. Mona thrashed and clawed at Raven’s bare legs, but she couldn’t dislodge the foot.

While this was happening, Lucien corralled the remaining animals and herded them over to the cage. He threw the door shut and when he turned back to face the others he’d shifted back to his human form. He went to Lana, who was still sprawled on the floor, and helped her to her feet. When he deemed her steady enough, he went after Fitzsimmons, who’d taken advantage of the confusion by attempting to crawl away. He grabbed the man by the collar of his long coat, pulled him to his feet, and looked at him with flat black eyes devoid of pity. One of the man’s shaking hands dipped inside his coat, but Lucien seized his wrist and snapped it. The man whimpered and sagged in Lucien’s grip. Lucien withdrew a 9mm pistol from the man’s coat pocket and pushed it into his mouth. Fitzsimmons’s eyes went wide with fear as he started to mewl like a baby. Lucien squeezed the trigger and a burst of red leaped from the back of the man’s skull. That done, he tossed the corpse aside and joined Raven. The others crowded around them, getting a good look at the woman who’d orchestrated the sick ‘entertainment’ spectacle that might have taken their lives with just a little less luck on their side.

Andy looked at Lucien, who was pointing the barrel of the 9mm at Mona’s forehead. “What are you waiting for? Blow her infernal brains out.”

Lucien glanced at him. “Would that kill her?”

Andy shrugged. “Maybe. Doesn’t seem quite as invincible now that her connection to the Eye has been severed. Try it.”

Mona’s voice emerged as a croak: “Don’t. I can give you anything you want. All of you. Riches beyond your wildest dreams. Power. You’ll be able to make anyone do anything you want. Join us and we’ll rule this rotten world together.”

Jack shook his head. “Whatever, Mona. I’ve heard this routine from you before. But you keep forgetting something--we’re the good guys.”

Mona made a sound that might have been a laugh (it was hard to tell with Raven’s foot still constricting her windpipe). “Bullshit. You’re damned, Jack. You’re
bad
. And one day you’ll be a servant of hell, too. Your friends would do well to keep that in mind.”

Jack wrestled the gun from Lucien and pointed it at the middle of Mona’s sneering face. “I think it’s past time I killed off at least one of my personal demons. Go back to hell, bitch.”

He squeezed the trigger and a bullet punched through the bridge of her nose. Another squeeze and another bullet made a hole in her forehead. Yet another bullet made a pulpy mess of one of her eyes. Then the other eye went. Shot after shot in rapid succession obliterated the image of otherworldly beauty--the face that had once held such sway over Jack’s dreams and nightmares. For several seconds, the act of murdering his former wife became the most grimly satisfying event of his life.

Just one problem.

She didn’t die.

Instead, the physical trauma seemed to energize her. She howled like a wild beast, grabbed Raven’s ankle, and flipped her away. She rocketed to her feet and started capering about the stage, looking for someone to dismember. Their one advantage over her was her lack of sight. Jack fired the remaining rounds in the 9mm’s clip into her already bullet-riddled head, but beyond the additional holes punched through her flesh, they had little effect on her.

She caught Lucien’s scent and staggered in his direction. Lucien moved away from her, but even blinded she was relentless and was closing the gap between them quickly. Jack watched helplessly as this latest bit of drama unfolded, but something happening in his peripheral vision diverted his attention. Raven Rainbolt was handing off the Eye to Andy. And now Andy had a firm, two-handed grip on the object. He looked like he was protecting the Eye, which made Jack frown. Hadn’t Raven said something about destroying the thing? Andy was likely too caught up in the moment to think of something as simple and obvious as dashing the damned thing against the stage floor.

So Jack raced over to where his friend stood and wrested the thing from his grip. Andy looked confused, but there was no time for explanations, so Jack raised the Eye high above his head then brought it down with all his might. Instead of shattering it bounced like a basketball and shot skyward.

“Goddammit.”

Raven leapt into the air and intercepted it. When she was back on the floor, she looked at Jack and shook her head, affirming the futility of that approach in pointed non-verbal fashion.

Mona broke off her pursuit of Lucien and turned toward Raven. She smiled with what remained of her mouth. “I’m coming to get you, little girl.” She took a slow, confident step in Raven’s direction. And Jack saw that she had ample reason for confidence. Her damaged tissue and bones were healing. Reforming. “Rapid regeneration is another perk of the hellspawn. The traitor hound could tell you that. So you can’t stop me. Not now. Not
ever
.”

Jack glanced at Andy. “Did you see the way that thing bounced? How the hell are we supposed to destroy something like that?”

Andy shrugged. “You’re asking me? Shit, I don’t know.”

Ben, who’d been observing the drama from a corner of the stage, approached Raven and whispered something in her ear. Whatever he said appeared to startle her because she gave her head several emphatic negative shakes. But Ben was just as insistent. He gripped her right bicep, pulled her close, and spoke urgently into her ear. Her state of denial appeared to give way to begrudging acceptance as tears appeared in her eyes.

Then she handed the Eye of Sylvain to Ben, who moved as far away from the rest of them as possible. He went to the far right end of the stage, descended the steps to the floor, and moved into the orchestra pit.

Raven wiped the moisture from her eyes and walked rapidly to where Andy and Jack were standing. Jack looked past her and saw that Mona was squinting in the general direction of the orchestra pit. She evidently still couldn’t see clearly.

“You. Old man.” She moved slowly toward the front of the stage. “I urge you to choose better than these idiots. I can give you all the things I promised them. I can make you young and strong again.”

Ben laughed. “I’ve got that covered, lady.”

“I know all about you, Benjamin Siegel. You can only perform a temporary transformation. I’m offering you a true return to your youthful state. Surrender the Eye and you can be lord of this city again.”

Raven clasped hands with Jack and Andy and guided them past Mona, who was oblivious to them now. She led them to the center of the stage, where Lucien stood waiting with Lana.

“We have to go now.” Her voice was a flat monotone. “I’m taking you back to the dark place for a while.”

Andy frowned. “Why?”

“Because if we linger any longer we’ll all be dead.”

Lucien nodded at Lana. “She goes with us, then. She tipped me off to the magician’s gun.”

Jack’s breath caught in his throat for a moment--because all at once they were no longer standing on the stage of the Maverick Grande Theater. He was in darkness, suspended in some strange void. He was terror-stricken at first, then he heard the voices of the others and realized he was in the ‘dark place’ Raven had mentioned.

Which, in a way, was nowhere at all.

* * *

Mona Faust’s vision was improving. She could see the old gangster standing down there in the orchestra pit. He was a blurred figure, but she saw him. Soon she would see as well as she ever had. At which point she would dispense with this sham of a negotiation and pounce upon the old man. A shiver of pleasure went through her at the thought of simultaneously regaining the Eye and tearing the man’s throat out.

Standing at the edge of the stage, she stood with her hands on her hips and smiled at him. “Bugsy Siegel, give up the charade--you’re not one of the good guys.”

She leapt off the stage and landed on her feet.

Siegel shuffled backward. “That’s right, doll. But you’re using the wrong tense. Bugsy Siegel was not one of the good guys. Bugsy was a murdering, no good son of a bitch. But I am not that man. He died a long time ago.”

Mona shook her head. It never ceased to mystify her why humans as flawed as this man and Jack Grimm found the notion of redemption so attractive. They were hellbound and would be better off embracing their dark sides.

“Give me the Eye, Bugsy, and I’ll make your death quick and merciful.”

A lie, of course.

A sad smile dawned on Siegel’s face. “We’re both about to die, Mona Faust.”

Mona stopped in her tracks. She again experienced that unfamiliar emotion--fear. But this was silly. The old man was broken. He was no threat to anyone anymore. Still, that sense of unease remained. Worse, it intensified.

“What do you mean, Bugsy?”

The old man’s free hand went into his coat and came out with a knife, a pearl-handled switchblade. He thumbed the switch and a gleaming five inch blade popped out.

Mona laughed. The fear ebbed out of her. She shook her head, unable to believe she’d actually felt threatened by this old buffoon. “You mean to kill me with
that
? Seriously?”

Siegel shrugged. “In a way, yes.”

Mona’s shoulders shook with laughter that verged on the hysterical. “Hilarious. Bugsy, I’m about to take that blade from you and use it to cut off your shriveled old cock. Then I’ll feed it to you.”

Siegel shook his head. “No, Mona.”

He turned the knife so that the blade was pointing at his own chest. “A long time ago a great man named Hex Rainbolt gave me the greatest gift I’ve ever received. A cleansed soul. I made a vow, then, to never again kill an innocent. And I’ve kept that vow. Until now.”

Mona frowned. “What’s this to do with anything? You’re more feeble than I imagined.”

Siegel smiled again. “
I’m
an innocent, Mona. In this incarnation. I’ve had a good second life. But now it’s over.”

Then he dropped the Eye of Sylvain, gripped the handle of the knife in both hands, and stabbed it into his chest. Once, then again. Then, the knife handle still protruding from his chest, he toppled over and lay still.

Mona’s frown deepened. Siegel’s suicide baffled her. The act was a mortal sin. For a man so concerned with redemption, it seemed an extraordinarily stupid thing to do. He would wake up in hell for sure now. Oh, well. It didn’t matter. Probably he’d just been too much of a coward to face her wrath.

She bent to retrieve the Eye of Sylvain.

Ben Siegel drew in a ragged, gurgling breath.

Then another.

Then he was gone.

And Mona never heard the immense explosion that consumed her.

* * *

Jack sighed.

“So…what he blew himself up?”

He heard Raven breathe a shuddery sigh. “Yes.”

“But…how?”

“Hex Rainbolt’s failsafe. A bomb…” A bitter laugh. “…a
magic
bomb planted inside his regenerated body. It was to keep him in line should he ever feel tempted to succumb to his old ways. The bomb would trigger if he ever took the life of another innocent. Which is what he just did.”

“So he sacrificed himself to save us all?”

Raven sniffled. “Yes. It was the only way, though I didn’t want to accept it at first. The Eye of Sylvain was too powerful to leave in the hands of a thing as evil as Mona Faust. It was hidden for a time in that other world, but my uncle believed that merely concealing it wasn’t good enough anymore. The mere fact of its existence made it a threat too large to ignore. With its destruction, my talent for manipulating people and things has greatly diminished. But I still know the things the elder Rainbolts taught me when I was young. I can still fight the evil in our world.”