Close to the Ground

by Jeff Mariotte

  Finally Mordractus brought three small books from the cabinet’s depths. They were bound in pale brown leather and looked very very old. As he carried these to the altar, he looked at Angel for the first time since his preparations had begun.

  “Going to have time for pleasure reading?” Angel prodded.

  “I have never summoned the demon Orias,” Mordractus replied. “The phrasing, the invocation, is quite different from the rituals I have used to contact Balor. I will have to read sections from my grimoires, rather than reciting from memory. In a perfect world I would have taken the time to memorize it all, but as we both know time is the one resource I’m short on.”

  “What about common sense?” Angel asked.

  “You’re hardly in a position to judge, my young friend.”

  “I don’t know about that. It looks to me like you’re messing with forces you don’t know that well, in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to save yourself. What’s the old saying — scared money never wins?”

  “This is not a game of chance, Angelus,” Mordractus snapped. “This is something I’ve prepared for my whole life. I know what I’m doing.”

  “I’d like to think so, since my brain is the one you’re planning to make soup out of. But I have my doubts.”

  Mordractus waved a gnarled hand at him. “You’re simply trying to shake my confidence. Well, I can tell you it won’t work. I’m nearly ready to begin, so take a last breath of the world, vampire. Enjoy it while you can.” He walked around the outside of the room with a large metal snuffer which he used to extinguish the torches mounted on the walls.

  When he was done, the snuffer went inside the cabinet. The only light in the room came from the flaming brazier and the two greasy-smelling candles on the altar.

  Mordractus hurried across the room, his feet shuffling on the stone floor with a sound like sandpaper on blocks. He went to the altar and picked up the Dagger, jamming it into his belt. Then he came over and stood before Angel. He fixed his cloudy gaze on the vampire.

  If I could break these irons . . . Angel thought. But he knew it was useless. Mordractus’s magic had its effective moments; the rope with which he’d been captured and the manacles that held him still were testament to that.

  “Are you ready, Angelus?” Mordractus asked.

  “What if I say no?”

  “No matter. It’s only out of courtesy that I ask at all. I bear you no ill will, you know. You have cost me much recently, but that was all out of your own desire to stay alive —”

  “I’m not alive,” Angel interrupted.

  “Undead, then. Whatever you call it, it’s a motivation that I must respect. No, this is simply a matter of need. You have something, I need it, I will take it.”

  “Nothing personal.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “There is no need for insults, Angelus. I’ve already told you, your verbal barbs find no target in me.”

  “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  “I suppose not.” Mordractus raised the long bony fingers of both hands and gestured toward Angel. The vampire felt the manacles fall away from his arms, and tried to bring his limbs back under his control. He couldn’t. Even without the iron there, his arms were useless.

  Mordractus walked backward, continuing his bizarre hand motions. Angel felt himself drawn across the floor, away from the wall toward the center of the room. Toward the pentagram. His legs wouldn’t respond, either. There was no escape from Mordractus’s holding spell.

  Angel hated the sensation. Control was important to him. Control was all he had, really. When he had no control, he was the rogue vampire Angelus, scouring the countryside for victims to drain of blood. Once his soul was restored to him, control was also restored, the ability to make his own decisions, to choose good for its own sake.

  And now, he had no control.

  Mordractus moved him into one of the incomplete circles he had painted. When Angel was centered inside its two-foot diameter, Mordractus took the Dagger from his belt, leaned over, and completed the circle by scratching its last segment on the floor with the knife’s point.

  “I heartily suggest that you remain within the circle at all times,” Mordractus said. “You may think, what do I have to lose — I won’t survive this invocation anyway. But I assure you, there are far worse things than death in this universe, and from this point on, for any man to leave the circle would be to risk those exact things. Understood?”

  “I hear you,” Angel said.

  “Good.” He went to his own circle, next to which he had placed the altar. He removed the Cup and the Rod and the books, his grimoires, and placed them all within his circle. Then he stepped inside and closed his own circle, as he had Angel’s, with the point of the Dagger.

  He faced the circle at the center of the star, and began to speak in a loud voice.

  “I invoke and conjure thee, O Spirit Orias, and, fortified by the power of the Supreme Majesty, I strongly command thee by Baramelamensis, Baldachiensis, Paumachie, Aplolresedes, and the most potent princes Genio, Liachide, Ministers of the Tartean Seat, chief princes of the seat of Apologia in the ninth region, I abjure thee by the names of Lucifuge Rofocale, Satanachia, Agalaiarept, Fleurety, Sargatanas, and Nebiros; do thou forthwith appear and shew thyself unto me, here before this circle, in a fair and human shape without any deformity or horror; do thou come forthwith, from whatever part of the world, and make rational answers to my questions. Come presently, come visibly, come affably, manifest that which I desire. I command thee, Orias, arise, arise, arise!”

  Angel had no idea if Mordractus knew what he was doing, but he spoke with authority, his voice ringing firmly in the vast cavernous space. He knew enough about the ways of the world — the things that most people denied — not to write off Mordractus as a fraud without seeing him at work. But no demon showed itself, so Angel began to relax. Maybe the magician was too weak already. He was breathing pretty heavily over there, trying to get his wind back for a second round.

  Angel was heartened by the man’s lack of success. I will get out of this, he thought. He started to look forward to spending a day in his own bed.

  And then he heard it, distant but clear. A bell rang, a bell so true and pure that it could never have been forged on Earth. It rang again, closer. And one more time. Angel felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

  The ringing stopped, but the room was suddenly cold as a wind whipped in from nowhere. Angel could see his breath, and Mordractus’s. The candles guttered and went out, simultaneously. The only light in the room was from the brazier, and that fire burned only faintly.

  Mordractus had composed himself, and started in again. This time he held one of his small leather books in his hand and read from it.

  “‘I invoke, conjure, and command thee, O Spirit Orias, to appear and shew thyself visibly before this circle, without deformity or guile; by the name Hagios, by the Seal of Adonai, by Jetros, Athenoros, Paracletus; by the three Secret Names Agla, On, Tetragrammaton; by the dreadful Day of Judgment; by this name Primeatum; do thou make faithful answers unto all my demands, and perform all my desires, so far as thine office shall permit. Come therefore peaceably and affably, come visibly and without delay, manifest that which I desire, speak with a clear and intelligible voice that I may understand thee.’”

  The room’s temperature dipped still more. Angel felt himself shivering against the cold. A bell began to ring again, too, but this time it was louder and deeper, as if he were standing inside something the size of the Liberty Bell or larger, turning from a ringing tone into a deafening roar.

  And in the center of the circle, bound by the lines of the star, a glow began to appear. There was no shape to it, no form, no solidity.

  “Shew thyself!” Mordractus commanded. “Be disobedient and I will curse and deprive thee of thine office, thy joy and thy place! I will bind thee in the depths of the bottomless pit, there to remain until the Day of the Las
t Judgment!”

  The amorphous glowing mass began to coalesce into a real shape, though not one that Angel had ever seen before. The shape spilled over the boundaries of the small center circle Mordractus had painted for him, but was still clearly constrained by it. As Angel watched, it became more clear, almost like he’d been looking through a camera’s view-finder as someone turned the focus knob.

  Standing before them was a lion mounted on the back of a powerful black stallion. The lion had a serpent’s tail, and in his right hand, which was more human than feline, he clutched two huge, hissing snakes. Somehow Angel knew, looking at the thing, that no single part of it was the demon Mordractus had summoned. When it spoke, the sound seemed to come from the lion’s mouth, but the lion was no more Orias than the snakes were.

  “Why hast thou summoned me?” it demanded.

  “I wouldst have thee perform a transformation for me,” Mordractus replied. He still held his grimoire in his hand, and he flipped through pages as he spoke.

  He’s stalling, Angel realized. He didn’t expect Orias to come so quickly, or to respond so positively, or something. Now he’s got to find the right phrases to use to command it.

  As he came to this understanding, he also realized that he could move again — that Mordractus, in giving all of his concentration to the demon, had been unable to keep holding him.

  He could move — but he couldn’t leave the circle.

  Or could he?

  Mordractus had warned that no man could leave the circle without risking eternal torment of some kind. But Angel was no man. Angel was a demon himself.

  He took the chance.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  There were banks in L.A., and then there were banks.

  Downtown, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills — these places had august financial institutions worth billions. Branches of nationwide banking chains set up in such locations. Much of the business done at these centers of finance was in large movements of currency — buying, selling, trading, investing. All on paper — or, more accurately in the modern age, on computer. No actual pieces of paper changed hands, just bits of information, moving from one account to another. The meaning was in what it could buy, in terms of other bits of information.

  As Kate Lockley stood on the dark sidewalk out-side Western Standard Savings and Loan, she thought about that kind of bank. The kind where the bankers wore thousand-dollar suits and six-hundred-dollar shoes and carried briefcases from Gucci or Mark Cross, and the clients came in similarly attired, and sometimes they went out for tennis or drinks together at the end of the day.

  The people who banked at Western Standard couldn’t take bits of information and buy groceries for the table. The people who banked here deposited paychecks and welfare checks and Social Security checks, or they just cashed them outright. The purpose of a bank, in this neighborhood, was to be a dispenser of cash to those who needed it, when they could manage to keep their accounts out of the red.

  Western Standard was no billion-dollar business. But it was a business that went through a lot of cash in the course of a day.

  And it was just a block from the gas station at the corner of Avalon and Slauson. It didn’t face onto either of those streets; it was on Fifty-eighth, sandwiched between a dry cleaners and a discount jewelers.

  This was where the crew was tunneling toward, she could feel it in her bones.

  Kate glanced at her watch. It was a little after midnight. The neighborhood was deserted. No one walked these streets so late except those no one would want to meet here anyway. She was a cop, her gun was close at hand, and even she was a little nervous.

  Okay, a lot nervous. But that had more to do, she knew, with the fact that she was standing outside a bank that even now might have a crew of robbers with automatic weapons emptying the vault into big cloth mailbags or heavy army surplus duffels.

  On the other hand, she thought, the crew could be halfway there, digging underneath the street and dreaming of cool drinks and warm beds. Just because she had found the target didn’t mean they were there yet.

  She blew out her breath, realizing that she was probably tensed up for nothing. They were in time to stop this. She’d get some backup down here, they’d get the bank open, and they’d be waiting inside the vault whenever the crew came through the wall. The robbers would be so surprised they’d drop their shovels and give up.

  That’s how it would happen. In her dreams.

  Police work just didn’t come that easy. Not in the job description.

  Speaking of backup, she thought — where are they?

  It had been fifteen minutes since she’d left Glenn Newberry back at the gas station, telling him to call in. She hadn’t heard a peep from her radio, hadn’t heard a siren, hadn’t seen a squad car or one of those American boxes the FBI liked to think would blend in.

  She was alone on a dark street in a tough neighborhood with a bunch of killers possibly cornered inside a bank. She wanted (Angel) a SWAT team down here, at the very least. She wanted to see cops with guns, cops in body armor, cops with flashing lights and roadblocks and yellow crime-scene tape.

  Angel? Where did that come from?

  Sure, he was probably working somewhere in the city. Working nights didn’t seem to phase him a bit. He was probably doing some pro bono job for a client who couldn’t afford to pay him what he was worth, and wouldn’t even if he could, and he’d probably let the client get away with it.

  Angel was a tough guy; she’d seen that. But he let his clients walk all over him. Almost as if he wasn’t in it for the money, but for some other, less definable, motive.

  PIs didn’t do it for those motives, though.

  Cops did. Cops believed in those vague ideals like justice, protecting the innocent, fighting crime. The only cops who are in it for the money were — well, there are some crooked cops, she figured, but mostly if they’re in it for the money, they’re on the other side.

  Or they’re a PI. In a city like L.A. a private investigator could get in good with a couple of movie stars and be set for life, keeping their little mistakes and indiscretions out of the papers. For every Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade in the city there was a joker with a license and a gun on somebody’s payroll getting rich for doing a publicist’s work.

  But Angel didn’t fit into any of those categories, as far as she could see.

  Kate shook her head. She was letting herself get distracted. Not a good idea. She had to act as if she were on a stakeout. As if the darkened windows of the bank could erupt in gunfire at any moment.

  And still no backup, she noted. She made a call on her portable.

  “Detective Lockley,” she identified herself to the dispatcher. “I’m in front of 378 Fifty-eighth Street, the Western Standard Savings and Loan. I have reason to believe that our bank robbers are tunneling inside this bank, and I need some backup down here right away.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Detective,” the dispatcher promised.

  She’d have to give Special Agent Newberry a piece of her mind when she saw him. She wondered if he had even called for the Federal backup he’d mentioned. She didn’t like the idea of him waiting at the end of the tunnel alone — if the crew came out that way, they were likely to be edgy and scared, and when they saw Newberry — who a five-year-old could pick out as a G-man from a hundred yards — they’d shoot him on sight.

  He stepped from the circle.

  And Orias whipped around to face him, serpentine tail whipping through the air, snakes in its fist hissing and snapping. The demon opened its lion mouth and a jet of flame blasted from it directly at Angel.

  Angel dodged. He jumped, hit the ground, and rolled. The flame scorched the stone floor but missed him.

  “Thou art mine!” the demon’s voice roared.

  “Not yet,” Angel replied. He was on his feet again, running around, putting Mordractus, still presumably safe within his circle, between himself and the fire-spitting demon.

  To leave the circle, accor
ding to Mordractus, was worse than suicide. But to stay in it was certainly suicide as well — this monster would snap his head off and make soup from his brains, so what did he really have to lose?

  “ If I release thee, give to thee the gift of this one,” Mordractus shouted to the demon, “Thou shalt returneth to thy circle forthwith!”

  “Agreed!” roared Orias.

  “You really think you can take a demon’s word like that, Mordractus?” Angel asked. “You let it out of the circle, it might run rampant through the city. How will you rein it in?”

  Mordractus’s face was fraught with uncertainty. The magician gave it a moment’s thought, then made up his mind.

  “Take him!” he called. Again, nothing to lose, Angel thought. If the demon doesn’t get me, then Mordractus is finished anyway.

  The demon stirred as the invisible bonds that held it to the circle fell away. There was an undeniable smile on the horse’s face.

  Angel vamped out. It was fine to pass as human, but in vampire form he was stronger and faster, and he knew he’d need all the power he could muster.

  His first impulse was to escape, to head through the doorway and up the stairs. But he knew if he did that, the thing would only follow. Then what he had warned Mordractus of would surely come true — unleashed on L.A., the demon would cause untold carnage. It wouldn’t be as bad as if Mordractus succeeded in bringing Balor back to life. But it wouldn’t be pretty.

  So he stayed where he was and let the demon come to him.

  When it did, it lunged suddenly, snake heads spitting and biting the air in his direction. Angel leaped into space, somersaulting over the demon and landing behind it. The thing spun around, tracking him. But before it could get its bearings, Angel moved in, kicking twice at the stallion’s face. The lion roared and spat flame again.

  Angel kept moving. He dodged fire, charged, hitting and kicking, dodged again. He tried to attack each of the thing’s joined bodies, horse, lion, and snakes. Each of them, in turn, tried to get at him.