Close to the Ground

by Jeff Mariotte

  When they arrived there, Jack Willits went behind an ornate antique desk. On its surface there was a green glass-shaded lamp, a leather desk pad, and a scattering of writing implements and random papers. The room was huge, about the size of Angel’s whole apartment, it seemed. A fire crackled in a fireplace almost tall enough to stand up in. On the mantel three Oscars gleamed. Jack waved toward a chair. Angel ignored him.

  “You set me up,” Angel said. “For Mordractus. You used your own daughter as bait.”

  “No,” Willits protested.

  “You’re right, my mistake. She isn’t your daughter. Or it wasn’t. It just looked like her. What happened to the real Karinna?”

  Jack Willits’s face crumpled. He looked like a man whose world was falling apart, turning to dust before his eyes. No matter how much he tried to grab handfuls of the dust, it still slipped from between his fingers, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  “I . . .” He sat down behind the desk, put his elbows on its surface, his face in his hands. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “How about the truth? Or have you forgotten how to do that?”

  “It’s more complicated than you can know, Angel.”

  “Try me. I’m a very complex guy.”

  “I believe —”

  “I said I was complex, not patient.”

  Willits choked back a sob. “He came to me, the day she died.”

  “Mordractus came to you?”

  “That’s right, that’s his name. Mordractus.”

  “The day Karinna died. I want some detail here, Willits.”

  “Yes, okay? Yes, the day Karinna died!”

  “How?”

  “She was shot. She was out clubbing, as usual. She had escaped her bodyguards and was going with a couple of people, older people, adults. They should have known better, but they didn’t. They were looking for a party. A friend of Karinna’s told me all this, someone who didn’t go with them. They left the club to look for this party, and I guess they were looking in the area where a nighttime bank robbery was taking place — you know, that gang that’s been taking down banks all over town?”

  “I’ve heard about them.”

  “So anyway, the bank robbers came out of the bank, I guess, and Karinna was out there with these other people. The robbers shot them, killed them all. I’m an important guy in this town, you under-stand that, don’t you?” He looked at Angel with great sorrow in his red-rimmed eyes, as if it was very important that Angel be clear about his status.

  Angel wouldn’t even give him that. Jack went on.

  “When the police realized who she was, they called me. She was a minor, her name wouldn’t have been released to the press. I didn’t even want it on the public records. My position at Monument was pretty tenuous, you know? Before, I mean. Before Mordractus. The last thing I needed was bad publicity.

  “I don’t know how he even knew about it, but he came to me, right there at the police station. I’d just been to the morgue, identified her body. They left me alone for a minute, and I turned around, and there he was. He was so soothing, so calm. He drew me into an empty office, and he started talking. He told me that no one ever had to know that she had died. That he could make sure her name wasn’t on the records. That he could keep it out of the press.

  “I would have agreed right there, but then he kept going. He could turn around Monument Pictures, he said. He could make sure I kept my job. Not only kept it, but improved it. All I’ve ever wanted to do was make movies, Angel. I didn’t set out to be an executive, but if you make hit movies in this town, that’s what happens. You keep getting kicked upstairs, until finally there is no more upstairs. You’re as high as it gets. And when you’re up there, you’re a target. There’s no shortage of people waiting for you to make a mistake, to tear you down. I didn’t want to be torn down, but I was about to be.”

  Angel stood silently, watching as Jack Willits rambled on. He didn’t even seem to know whether or not Angel was still in the room. A floodgate had been opened, and the words rushed out, a river of speech that would no longer be contained.

  “Mordractus promised me that wouldn’t happen. All I had to do was go along with his plan to keep Karinna’s death a secret — and that was what I wanted, too, that was the beauty of it — and he’d make everything okay at Monument Pictures. And it worked, Angel. A few days ago I was history, dead meat. Now I’m back on top. I’ve got Blake Alten. No one can touch me. Everything Mordractus said he’d do, he did.”

  “Including using Karinna’s likeness to draw me into a trap.”

  “I didn’t know who you were, Angel. I didn’t have any idea. Just some guy Mordractus wanted to get his hands on. He didn’t give me any details about that, just said that you’d respond to Karinna, so I had to play along. I said I could do that. You have to understand, Angel, everything was at stake. Everything.”

  “Everything according to you.”

  “Well, that’s life, isn’t it? Human nature? We’re selfish beasts, Angel. We look out for our own. We do what we need to do to further our own interests, right?”

  “You do what you do to line your pockets, Jack. Look around you. You could live — a dozen families could live — on what you could get by selling this house alone. You must have other investments. You don’t need more than you have.”

  “It isn’t just the money, Angel. It’s making movies, don’t you see? I don’t want to give up making movies.”

  “When was the last time you made a movie, Jack? From what I hear, all you make is deals.”

  “That is making movies, Angel. If you think it’s just about who’s behind the camera, you’re living in the past. It’s about deciding who’s behind the camera, and who’s in front of it. Those are the decisions that count.”

  “And the final result is in how many tickets it sells, right? Not what’s on the screen.”

  Jack looked at Angel again. He rose from his chair, went to a wall safe, and started to turn the dial. “You think I’m scum, Angel. I can see that. I can even understand it, to some extent. Maybe you’re an old-fashioned guy. You don’t get it, that’s okay. But entertainment is business. Big business. You lose sight of that, you take your eye off that ball, you’re yesterday’s news. You’re lower than the gum on the bottom of the theater seats. Do you have any idea of how much money we’re talking about here, Angel? You think I’m talking about a few million?

  “Billions, Angel. A hit picture. Ticket sales. International. Licensing. Video. Broadcast. One hit movie can make billions for the studio. There aren’t many that do, but it can, and I’ve done it three times. I’m about to do it again. There aren’t many people in this business who can say that. That’s why I’m Jack Willits, Angel. That’s why I’m on this planet. I make pictures.”

  “You used to,” Angel said flatly.

  Willits opened the safe. Angel could see bundles of cash inside it.

  “We can make this go away, Angel,” Jack replied. “Everyone’s got a price. You’ve got a price. Whatever it is, I’ll pay it. You can walk away from this, forget it ever happened.”

  He tossed one of the bundles to Angel. Angel caught it instinctively, glanced at it. Hundreds. A thousand of them. Jack threw him another, casually, like tossing a softball.

  “Tell me when to stop, Angel,” he said.

  Angel stood next to the fireplace. He dropped the first bundle onto the flaming logs, then the next.

  “Keep it coming,” he said.

  Willits tossed him two more bundles. They followed the first. This time Jack saw what he was doing.

  “Hey, what . . .? Are you crazy? That’s money!”

  “I know,” Angel said calmly. “It doesn’t burn very well. You’ve got to give it a few minutes.”

  Willits rushed toward him, panic in his eyes. “Get out of the way!” he insisted.

  “You’ll have to move me,” Angel said.

  “You can’t do that! That’s mine.”

  “You
just gave it to me,” Angel reminded him. “Mine now.”

  “Not if you’re going to burn it!”

  “It’s not your concern anymore.”

  Jack stared at him with disbelief. “Fine,” he said, grasping at a glimmer of hope. “But I wasn’t giving it to you for nothing. You need to let this go. Walk away.”

  “I can’t do that,” Angel said. “You brought me into it. I’m in.”

  “It’s over now,” Jack reminded him. “You’re still here. That must mean you beat Mordractus somehow, right? So it’s ancient history.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Angel, what do you want from me?”

  “I want you to recognize what you did, Jack. She’s your daughter. You used your own dead daughter to keep your job. Do you see how sick that is?”

  “She was dead!” Jack screamed. The tears welled up in his eyes then, tears of rage and sorrow and frustration. He pounded his fists against Angel’s chest. “She was already dead! What did it cost me? Nothing!”

  “It cost you everything, Jack,” Angel told him quietly. “Everything.”

  “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

  “You want me to walk away. To forget this happened. I can’t.”

  “But there’s nothing you can . . . what can you . . .”

  “Mordractus is gone, Jack. You don’t have his protection anymore. You don’t have his help.”

  Angel glanced at the fireplace. The money was finally starting to catch. There was more in the safe, though. Angel crossed the room, looked inside. A couple of bundles remained, and some envelopes. Documents of some kind, insurance policies. Angel ignored them.

  There was something else. A small white rectangle of paper. Angel turned it over.

  His business card.

  But not the one Angel had given him. That had been dog-eared, with a phone number written in pen on the back. This one was pristine.

  “Souvenir?” Angel asked.

  “I forgot I had that,” Jack said, between sobs. “He gave it to me. In case you didn’t take the bait. I don’t know how he knew you’d come to help Karinna, he never explained that. But he gave me the card. If you didn’t show up, I was supposed to call you, hire you that way. Either way, you’d meet Karinna, agree to help her — he was sure you’d agree to help her.”

  “And I’d be so caught up in helping her that I’d lower my guard, let Mordractus get me.” Angel turned to Jack’s desk, where an old-fashioned paper Rolodex was open. He flipped through the A’s, found a card for Blake Alten, pocketed it. Jack, teary-eyed and distraught, didn’t even seem to notice.

  “That was the plan.”

  “The plan worked. That part of it, anyway. Mordractus was smart. But he underestimated me. So did you.”

  “Looks that way,” Jack said.

  “You won’t do it again.”

  Jack slumped into his chair again, his face hidden in his hands, his body racked by sobs. Angel watched him for a moment, and as he did, he felt the anger that had driven him here fade.

  It was replaced by something else, something he had a hard time putting a name to.

  When he finally did, the closest he could come up with was “disgust.”

  “I came here because I wanted to hit you,” Angel said. “I have never in my life wanted to do violence against a person the way I wanted to pound on you. I’m not proud of that impulse, but there it is. I wanted to wear out my fists on your face.

  “But I can’t do it, Jack. You aren’t worth the effort.”

  “You can hate me if you want, Angel. Spit on me. Pity me. Just don’t . . . don’t do anything that’s going to hurt my career. Don’t hurt Monument Pictures. That’s bigger than any of us.”

  “You’re too late,” Angel said. “Your values are too perverse. Karinna — whoever that was — told me you’d rank the movie business above your own family. I didn’t believe it at the time. Now I see that she was right.

  “All you’re about, Jack, is greed. Greedy people collect what they’re owed. And I owe you a debt, Jack. I owe you a big one.”

  “Angel, let it go,” Jack sniffed. “You’ve got to just let it —”

  “No, I don’t, Jack. I can’t. I won’t.”

  “Angel . . .” Jack sobbed. “All right. Do what you have to do.”

  Angel turned and walked out of the study. Behind him, he heard Jack Willits, repeating himself over and over. “Do what you have to do,” he said. “Do what you have to do.”

  Angel went to do it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  He found her upstairs, in her room. He pushed the door open, and she was sitting up in bed, smiling at him.

  It wasn’t a smile with any humor in it, or any good wishes. It was a smile full of cold, malicious evil.

  Angel shivered, in spite of himself.

  “I smelled you coming, vampire,” she said, voice as chilly as that smile. “Smelled you all the way downstairs. Had a little chat with Jackie, did you?”

  “Do I still call you Karinna?” Angel asked evenly. “Or do you want to tell me your true name?”

  “If you don’t know, I’m not going to give it to you, Angel.”

  “Sure, why make it easy on me?”

  “You figured everything out, you think?”

  “I think so.”

  “And what do you think you can do about it?”

  “Send you away.”

  She scrunched up against her pillows. She still looked like Karinna, looked like a teenager, in spite of the horrible grin. Her room, strangely, didn’t even look like a teenager’s room, but like a little girl’s. A rich little girl’s, Angel corrected himself. Her bed was a queen-size white four-poster, much larger than a girl Karinna’s size would need. The bedding, curtains, and carpeting were all in the same shade of pink, with white trim. The room’s furniture and walls were all white — the bed, an armoire, vanity with a chair before it and a lighted mirror above.

  “You don’t even know what I am, vampire.”

  “I have a guess. You’re a shapeshifting fairy. Rather prominent, in Celtic myth. And that’s what Mordractus drew on, right? Creatures from Celtic myth and legend? Things most people didn’t know ever existed, don’t believe in? But he’d been around Ireland long enough to know there’s more to that island than meets the eye.”

  “You’re right there.”

  “So he brought you over from Faerie. Showed you Karinna. Dead Karinna. You took her shape, drew me into a trap. But you couldn’t appear before a mirror, because mirrors can’t be fooled. Your true self would be revealed. That was your mistake — I’m a little sensitive to mirrors myself.”

  “I told him I could just kill you. Begged him to let me. But he wanted you alive. He was convinced that you had turned into some kind of do-gooder, that you’d rush to help poor Karinna. And that once he had distracted you, he could capture you alive. Obviously a fatal mistake on his part.”

  “I don’t know if fatal is the word,” Angel suggested. “But the consequences will definitely be long-lasting. Eternal, even.”

  Karinna’s form shrugged. “Mistakes happen. Doesn’t mean they can’t be fixed.”

  “Meaning what?”

  She sprang from the bed, suddenly, fingers hooked like claws. Angel barely had time to raise a defensive hand against her attack. Her fingernails scraped across his already-damaged cheek, tearing skin.

  Angel shoved her backward. She hit the bed and came again.

  This time he noticed, her hands didn’t look like Karinna’s. Her fingers were gnarled, the nails long and sharp.

  “Showing your true colors?” he asked.

  She snarled and slashed at him. He blocked her. She came again, and he pushed her back again.

  With a young girl’s legs, she climbed back onto the bed, squatted. Then she pushed herself off, and charged him with a demon’s twisted claws, powerful jaws snapping at his throat. Her hair had turned white and stringy, her flesh mottled and creased. All resemblance to Kar
inna was gone now. This was her true face. This was what Angel had seen in the nightclub that night, for just the briefest of milliseconds.

  He caught her wrists, held her at arm’s length. Her strength was enormous, though, and he was tired. It seemed like days since he’d rested. Since before he’d been captured by Mordractus.

  She writhed in his grip, snapping with sharp teeth. Angel gathered his strength and threw her back onto the bed. She bounced once, then hurled herself at him again.

  This attack he met with a balled fist, driving it into her jaw. She stumbled, and he followed with a kick to her solar plexus.

  She fell back, arms crossed over her middle, gasping for air. Angel snatched up the antique white chair that stood before Karinna’s vanity, raised it over his head, and smashed it into her.

  “Glad you changed faces,” he told her unconscious form. “I would have had a hard time hitting Karinna. But I’ve got no problem clobbering you.”

  In the sudden quiet Angel drew the book from his pocket, flipped to the section Doyle had marked. “It’s a simple banishin’ spell,” Doyle had said. “No muss, no fuss, no special equipment. If what you’re tellin’ me is right, you’ll need to use it instead o’ just killin’ her outright.”

  The first section of it was in Latin, which Angel had learned as a boy.

  When he spoke it, the room’s lights dimmed and the shapeshifter stirred uncomfortably on the floor.

  He turned a page. The next section was in English, or a version of it, anyway, and he read it aloud straight from the book, feeling a little like Mordractus with his grimoire.

  “‘Begone, thou wretched beast from below,’” he read. “‘Thou hast outspent thy welcome in this place, and are cast away. Away! Return thee now to the realm from whence thou were summoned, without argument or insult, without threat or favor.’”

  The shapeshifter’s leg twitched. Angel glanced away from the page at her, and saw her eyes open, lock onto his.

  “Think you’re getting rid of me so easily?”

  “I don’t think there’s a lot you can do about it.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Angel returned to the book.