"Oh, I don't know," said Megan, smiling a smile that set Jack's heart racing at an unhealthy speed. "Sometimes a little trouble can be fun."
Chapter 42
THE PHONE RANG. Its inhuman face twisted with unspeakable rage, the Lord of Lions beckoned to Roger. "Answer it," hissed the Crouching One.
The demigod wore a plain white cotton robe, decorated on each shoulder with a golden lion's head. On its feet were simple leather sandals. In one hand, it held a slender polished wood scepter. On its hairless head, the Crouching One wore a gold circlet. It sat on a throne specially constructed of white marble, in the center of Roger's library. It had been waiting there for lightning to strike for the past five hours.
Roger, dressed casually in blue jeans and a sweat shirt, hurried to pick up the receiver. He caught the phone on the third ring. After listening to a few words, he turned to the Lord of the Lions. "It's for you," he declared solemnly. "From Chicago. I don't recognize the voice. It's definitely not the German."
Snarling in rage, the Lord of the Lions grabbed the telephone from Roger. "Speak," it commanded. "I am listening."
Silently, the Crouching One stood there, one ear glued to the receiver. The scowl on its face changed first to a look of absolute astonishment, then swiftly switched to anger, then finally ended in a mask of grim resignation.
"Thank you," it said into the mouthpiece, catching Roger completely off guard. "Your information is greatly appreciated. When my day comes, you will be richly rewarded."
Hanging up the phone, the demigod shrugged its shoulders in a very human-like expression of disgust. "Collins defeated von Bern and all his minions."
"The Great Beast?" asked Roger.
"Sent back to the outermost dark," said the Crouching One. "Obviously, you were correct. I underestimated our foe's ability and ignored the Huntsman's glaring faults. Those were mistakes I will not make again."
Roger sincerely doubted that, but he knew better than to say anything.
"If von Bern and his troops were destroyed, who was that on the phone?" he asked instead.
"A contemporary of mine," said the Crouching One, sounding almost nostalgic. "His people, the Etruscans, called him Charun. Like me, he was originally a death god. However, when his followers died out, the ancient Greeks adopted him into their religion, but no longer as a God. They renamed him Charon and made him a ferryman, a mere servant of their own gods. A reversal of fortunes, to be sure, but ultimately it worked in his favor. He escaped the exile the rest of us suffered centuries later, with the rise of the One God."
"Why did he call? Old friend or not, he never phoned before."
"Charon is interested in the welfare of only one being," said the Lord of the Lions. "Himself. He loses nothing in informing me of Collins's victory, and puts me in his debt. If I triumph, he claims a reward. If I do not, he is out nothing. He is an opportunist."
"What now?" asked Roger. The Crouching One was accepting this setback with amazing equanimity.
"We wait. We watch. We plan." The Lord of the Lions's eyes glowed yellow as blue sparks creased his fingertips. "We devise a scheme avoiding the errors of this first attempt. We find new allies, stronger and more dependable allies.
"In the meantime, we leave Mr. Collins and his friends strictly alone. Let them wait and wonder until the moment is right. Then we strike, seizing power and crushing them with the same stroke."
"You sound pretty positive," said Roger, "for having lost the first round of the fight."
"I am a God," said the Crouching One, "and Gods are very patient. A battle was lost," and blue sparks flashed across its features as it spoke, "but the war is far from over."
Epilogue
CHICAGO'S NEWSPAPERS REPORTED several unusual stories the next morning.
The most dramatic, making both the local and national TV news, was the discovery of the ninety-one kidnapped women in an abandoned underground railway yard beneath the city streets. What kept the report in the public eye for more than a week was not the details of the story but the lack of them. For despite the vast diversity in age, nationality, and intelligence of the victims, not one of them remembered a single detail of their capture or imprisonment. It was as if someone or something had gone through each of their minds and erased all memories of their experiences involving the crime.
A few tantalizing details of odd and unusual discoveries in the underground tunnel network raised more questions than they answered. Who had blocked certain passageways with handcarts filled with bricks? And, more importantly, why?
A thorough examination of all the entrances to the system revealed the crooks' method of stealing away their victims without being discovered. But, again, no one could explain why an entrance to the network located by the Field Museum, far away from the scene of the criminal activity, showed definite signs of having been recently disturbed. Nor could investigators explain the smashed concrete at the mouth of that same tunnel, as if it had been hit repeatedly by a gigantic battering ram.
There were whispers, too, of giant wicker baskets found on the floor of the railway yard and ropes dangling from the ceiling. No one, other than the most outrageous tabloids, seemed willing to connect the two, and even those papers dared not suggest anything as incredible as ancient sacrificial rites involving human beings. Though there were those stacks of timber directly beneath each of those ropes, and the remains of timing devices filled with gasoline. It was all quite mysterious.
The police and FBI tried to maintain an aloof attitude towards the press's questions, but neither department was able to hide its frustration dealing with the kidnap victims. If it could happen once, the Federals argued, it could happen again. So they had to know the truth, the whole truth, to prepare for any future disappearances. But they soon discovered that wanting and learning were two entirely different matters.
It wasn't that the women weren't cooperative. By and large, they wanted to know as much as the investigators what took place in that vast underground railyard. But try as they might, they couldn't remember. Not a glimpse, not a hint, not a word of what took place remained. Their minds had been swept clean of every detail.
It was incredible. Even supposed flying saucer victims were troubled by partial memories or weird dreams. Not so with the "Chicago 91" as they were dubbed by the media. Drugs and hypnosis proved equally ineffective. They just could not remember. It was uncanny. It almost seemed... supernatural.
In any case, none of the women suffered for their ordeal. They were given a standing ovation by the Chicago City Council, received special letters of thanks from the mayor, and even got a call from the President of the United States. Several of their group, chosen by a random lottery, appeared on Oprah. And several enterprising local Firms produced a full line of novelty T-shirts, caps and buttons featuring witty sayings about the women or their ordeal.
Despite the lack of facts, all three major TV networks announced immediate plans to film a made-for-TV movie about the disappearance. Hollywood insiders confirmed that each production featured a different explanation—ranging from visitors from another planet, to a top-secret Army experiment with nerve gas, to a fiendish scheme by a well-known Arab potentate whose dream of revenge against America was foiled by a secret government task force. Needless to say, none of the explanations came close to matching the truth behind the kidnappings.
A second story, pushed back to the center of the newspapers and the second half of the local evening newscasts, concerned a major scandal breaking at Chicago's largest engineering college. A British exchange student, Simon Fellows, had uncovered shocking evidence that the school security director was also the mastermind behind a campus illicit drug ring.
Using his position to monitor and threaten any potential rivals to his gang, Benny Anderson had been selling dope on campus for nearly four years. When a local street gang recently made a move on the security chief's turf, Anderson had diverted blame by accusing an innocent mathematics graduate teaching assistant of his crime.<
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Refusing to believe his professor guilty as charged, Fellows spent his free time trying to learn who benefited the most from the allegations. Surprisingly, the trail led right to Anderson, an outspoken foe of illegal drugs. Investigating further, the exchange student discovered the security chief needed the money to support his extremely expensive sexual escapades. Evidently sensing something amiss, Benny Anderson fled campus a step ahead of the police officers coming to arrest him. Though the security chief was still at large and described as "armed and extremely dangerous," his capture was expected at any moment.
Jack Collins, absolved of all guilt, returned to campus from hiding to collect his possessions from storage. Leaving school to begin work for a consulting firm, he was especially concerned over the whereabouts of his collection of science fiction and fantasy paperbacks. Assisting Collins was a stunning young woman, Megan Ambrose, one of the principals of his new employer. Various descriptions of her invariably relied on the terms "elfin" or "pixieish." Though the young couple refused to comment on anything but Collins's recent ordeal, the frequent glances they exchanged left no doubts to their feelings for each other.
In a third story, totally unrelated to the other two, buried in the back of the papers and not even reported on the TV news, Russian President Boris Yeltsin announced that, in keeping with the new spirit of openness that had swept his nation, he was releasing the secret KGB files dealing with secret biological warfare experiments carried out in the late 1980's. Most experts on Soviet affairs agreed that Yeltsin was merely reacting to documents leaked to the press a few days earlier and which could no longer be suppressed.
According to the secret papers, early in 1989, in St. Petersburg, more than sixty people died when an experimental airborne anthrax plague germ was released into the atmosphere. Authorities had succeeded in stopping the spread of the killer disease only through massive efforts of the army and secret police. Briefly noted at the end of the story was that the developer of the plague, Dr. Sergei Karsnov, had vanished shortly afterward. Presumably, he had been executed by the KGB, though no report of his death could be found in the agency's records.
Reading different stories in Illinois and California, a master magician and ancient demigod both nodded in satisfaction.
A Logical Magician Page 24