He flicked the small lever on his pistol to stun and walked slowly to the side of the cemetery nearest the church, then carefully started moving past rows of wooden tombstones. He could see nothing, but it wasn't well lit here, anyway. Nobody burns lights in a graveyard, and the uniform twilight with its lack of a light source prevented shadows from any natural source. He considered that, reached out his left hand, and materialized a small burning torch. Its light was not the best, but it was an improvement. The flickering flame's shadow-making ability, particularly among the slabs and against the church wall, gave the scene an even more eerie cast.
Suddenly a small, dark figure bolted from behind a slab just as Mac was approaching it.
"Hold it!" Mac shouted and aimed the pistol. The figure did not heed his warning, so he pressed the trigger, using the pencil-thin beam to find its mark. It struck the figure just on the other side of the grave-yard and bathed it in an eerie reddish glow. The stun worked; the figure collapsed in a heap and remained still. Mac almost broke a record getting to the figure, then gasped when he reached it and turned it over.
It was a girl. Not a woman-type girl, a small one of perhaps nine or ten, barefoot and dressed in an obviously handmade shirt and pants. Her hair was cut short, her complexion was dark, and her features were vaguely Chinese or something similar.
He sat and waited for her to recover, planting the torch in a recess in the ground that he had ordered and holding the pistol lightly. The church service continued. He wondered if they ever stopped chanting.
He'd waited perhaps five minutes when he suddenly cursed himself again. He had no idea how long "stun" worked-he hadn't specified it. On the other hand, she had been knocked down by a weapon of his own will, so that meant she could also be brought around in the same way. He stared at her and his mind ordered her to wake up.
She stirred, groaned, sat up, and shook her head, looking confused. Then, suddenly, she became aware of him and her head turned slowly to look at him for the first time under these conditions. She gasped; her expression showed abject terror.
"Don't be afraid," he soothed, glad to find another living being. "I won't hurt you."
Confusion reigned again on her face, although the look of terror was not at all diminished. "Bu kasha liu briesto," she rasped through a fear-constricted throat. It seemed to be a plea.
"Oh, boy!" Mac Walters said aloud disgustedly. There had never been any reason to expect that someone here would speak English. He fervently wished he could understand her and she him.
"Bu kasha liu harm," she said in that same pleading voice.
Suddenly his head came up. Harm? Then maybe .. .
"I'm not going to hurt you," he told her again.
She plainly didn't believe him', but at least now she understood him. "Please, master, I did not mean to come to your holy place," she explained desperately. "Duru, my chicken, he got away today and I was just looking for him, just trying to find him, and accidentally came here. This was a forest yesterday, not a town." She started to cry.
Mac realized suddenly that he was able to under-stand her. This was a strange world. He relaxed the pistol a little. "I don't have anything to do with this town," he told her as gently as possible. "I don't know as much about this place as you do. And I'm nobody's master but my own."
Still, he thought, if this was a forest yesterday and is a town today, it is somebody's doing. Abaddon? Almost certainly-but where?
At any rate, she still didn't believe him. She waited to see what he was going to say or do next.
"Where are you from?" he asked her. "I didn't see anything but this town anywhere."
She looked, if anything, even more fearful and certainly hesitant. "I'm from Brobis," she explained, as if that told him anything.
"Never heard of it," he admitted. "No matter. What do you know of this place here? I mean, where are the people?"
A little of the fear lessened in her and she looked at him curiously. "You really don't know? You aren't just playing with me?"
"I'm perfectly serious," he assured her. "I never saw this town until a few minutes ago, and I certainly have no idea what or where a Brobis is. You're the first living thing I've run into since I got here."
"I still think you might be a simulacrum or a demon in disguise," she warned, "but if you're not, you'd better put out that torch and get outta here quick as you can. There's a demon here, and he'll hex you and steal your soul and use you for his toy unless you do."
He decided to take a part of that advice and nullified the torch in his mind. It ceased to exist.
Her terror was back. "You are one of Them!" she whispered fearfully. "Oh, I wish I had listened to Daddy!"
Again he felt the need to calm her down. "No, I'm not one of Them, whoever they are. Not a demon, anyway, and I was born of real people just like you. You might call me a . . . magician, let's say."
"Magicians get their power from demons," she retorted. "Same thing."'
In a way she had him there. Without Mogart he wouldn't be here, and he bore Mogart's brand on his palm.
"Some demons aren't as bad as others," he told her. "The demon I work for wouldn't scare anybody. He's a falling-down drunk. The other demons made him live with my people as one of my people, and now my home is about to be destroyed. The other demons won't help us, so we're trying to help ourselves."
She looked a little dubious. "You can't trust any demons," she stated flatly. "They don't care about people at all, or if they do, they treat them like toys. You oughta know that. Go ahead, do with me what you want. I'm in your power."
He gave up. Clearly the girl's universe didn't allow for such as he. He gestured back at the church and the town. "Are there real people there? Can you see them?"
She shrugged. "Bunch o' ghosts, I think. They're there-you just can't tell it. Living beings break the spell around 'em."
He nodded. That he could understand. Ghosts-or perhaps real people, it made no difference in this case-inhabited the town, but when another mind not part of its creation came into their proximity, they did not exist for that immediate area. That explained a lot. He just hoped he was as invisible to them as they were to him.
Clearly the girl could be no more help to him, though, and would be better out of the way. If this was Abaddon's town, and Mac had every reason to believe it was, then his next step was the most dangerous of all.
"Go home," he told her. "Don't come back around here as long as there's any action. It'll be safer for you." He holstered his pistol.
She sat there a minute, apparently not realizing she'd just been freed. Finally she gaped at him. "You mean you're letting me go? Just like that?" She was still suspicious but had visibly relaxed a little. "Why?"
"My business isn't with you or your people," he told her. "It's with the demon in this town. You can only get hurt here."
She couldn't seem to believe it. "What're you gonna do?"
"Seek him out. Find him. I understand he likes wagers. I have one for him he might find appealing. Now-go!"
She was on her feet, still staring at him in wonder. "You really aren't from here, are you? A living man with blood and unpledged soul? And you walked in here on your own? Not knowing anything? You're crazy!"
"Not crazy," he replied. "Desperate. Now-get out of here!" He stood up.
"Blood . . . life . . . soul," the girl repeated with wonder. As she did so she suddenly grinned, exposing not nice teeth but nasty, sharp fangs such as a carnivore might have. Her eyes shone inhumanly, and her form seemed to alter slightly into something neither human nor little-girl-like at all. That it had once been the girl there was no question. Her general size and features remained, but this thing was darker -its ears were pointed, animal-like, and it seemed to have long, nasty claws and- Were those bat wings, tiny bat wings, growing from its back?
He was startled, even a little scared, at this demonic transformation. And yet within him stirred something even stronger, an anger born of feeling like a fo
olish sucker. He'd been had! Softened up by the town and soothed by the little girl. He was mad as hell, and the pistol flew into his hand.
The creature looked at the pistol and laughed. "You got me the first time because I wasn't prepared for it," she rasped. It was still the girl's voice but now somehow changed slightly, more throaty and full. It sounded more like that of an old woman than a small girl. "That thing can't hurt me now."
"What are you?" he challenged, deciding that a brave front was best. Besides, he was mad and becoming madder. "Are you a part of this?" He gestured toward the town with his pistol, flicking the lever from stun to disintegrate.
"This is Hell, you idiot," snarled the creature. "All that dwell here are the souls of those who pledged or were pledged to the Demon Lords in world after world. In life I was sacrificed to My Lord Mammon, and I belong to Him. Now I will claim you despite your silly gun. You cannot kill the dead, and particularly not in Hell itself!"
Her tone and look were menacing, but it didn't escape him that she was still talking and not charging him. The pistol had stunned her; she hadn't expected that and wasn't really sure just what it could or could not do to her. The logic behind her words came to him quickly in the adrenal flush of the standoff. Somewhere, in some world, this poor girl had been sacrificed to a particularly nasty demon in some sort of black-magic ritual, and she'd since been the creature of that demon here at the training site. No matter that he had an understanding of how these universes were set up and knew the rationale behind the magic, this girl didn't know that. Hers was the world of the purely supernatural, and frankly, it didn't matter what kind of term you put on it. Her concepts were as valid for her as his were for him. What had tripped her up was that his pistol was created out of the rules of this world, by him, for use against the creatures of this world. In a dark graveyard on his world, or probably on hers, she'd be right-but not here. Here there was a different set of rules, and the dead could die if he so willed it. He certainly hoped so.
"What do you intend to do with me?" he asked softly. In a way he felt pity for the girl and anger for the demon who had done this to her.
"You have blood . . . fresh blood," she responded hungrily, beginning to sound like a heroin addict in sight of a quick fix. "I shall drink it and gain your power, and you shall be to me in my service as I am in the service of the Lord Mammon." She shifted a little but still did not attack, and her eyes remained on the pistol.
"I serve Asmodeus," he told her, and showed the brand on his hand. "You cannot claim me for Mammon."
She considered the argument but rejected it. "You live and that is enough. I will take you now. You will become my husband and show me those things of love and sex that I was not allowed to grow to discover for myself!"
He felt real pity for her now. She'd been cheated of everything.
"I cannot," he said softly. "I'm sorry." He pulled the trigger on the pistol.
She was prepared, he had to give her that. She was enveloped in the glow but fought it fiercely. Still, his own willpower supported the blast, his own command that it work-and she had felt only the stun, not the full force of the beam. She struggled against it, but it was winning; the glow began closing in, eating at her. She writhed and screamed and spit, then ran for the graveyard. He kept the blast on her, a blast that should have eliminated her in the first millisecond. She made the second grave in the fourth row, seemed to reach out for the tombstone, wistfully, hopefully, and faded into the earth of the graveyard in front of it.
The beam closed in on her, became smaller, ever smaller, and he heard her cries abruptly cut off as the field closed to a single bright dot at the end of the pencil. He released the trigger and stood there a moment, shaking slightly. Finally he went over to the grave she'd tried so desperately to get into and willed himself able to read the inscription.
"Meka Chan," it read. "Born 17 Sept. 1874, Rangoon. Died 4 April 1883, Kubai, her soul pledged."
Suddenly he became aware of other noises in the graveyard, noises that had been partially masked by the chanting. This was a cemetery of the living dead, he realized. Mac turned and walked quickly back to town, consoling himself that at least she would suffer no more.
He barged into the church or whatever it was, stopping the service in the chilly silence he was now expecting. He was still mad and doubly determined to get this over with.
He walked about two-thirds of the way up the aisle and stopped, facing the altar. It was, he noted, exactly that, though it looked more like a place to sacrifice people than anything else. Behind it was a black-painted stage framed by black curtains which bordered the stone sacrificial altar and gave everything just the right theatrical touch. Clearly Abaddon was trying out different decors for whatever project he had in mind.
"Abaddon!" he called, his voice echoing through the hollow empty church. "Abaddon, I call upon you to appear to me! I have a wager for you!"
He waited as the echoes died down. For a moment he wasn't sure he'd been heard-or was perhaps being ignored. Then with a sudden force the rear doors of the church, which he'd closed behind him, burst open with a bang, and a great wind swept in and down the aisle, almost knocking him to the floor.
The torches that illuminated the church flared as if they had suddenly been fed by jets of pure oxygen. The effect was a roaring-fire noise that dominated the interior of the building.
As he stood there expectantly, the chanting returned-coming from countless voices both male and female in the choir loft. They were so realistic-sounding that he could almost swear he saw the chanters there.
The noises and sensations of a lot of people were inside now, in the pews, sitting there all around him. The choir chanted one word over and over, one name in a reverent summons: "A-bad-don! A-bad-don!" it called.
Over the altar stone, a writhing, twisting shape that was neither matter nor energy but a little of both began to emerge against the black backdrop. A face was forming there-huge, gigantic, monstrously animalistic and leeringly evil-a satanic, goatlike head that seemed to radiate both pure power and absolute evil.
Mac was impressed, he had to admit that.
The choir continued its chanting of the name, but now in joyful greeting rather than as a summons, and the unseen congregation joined in in hushed whispers of respect.
The chanting grew faster, ever faster, until finally it was a frenzied, near-insane plea. The choir was at a fever pitch, overcome with emotion, intoning faster, ever faster . . .
"A-bad-don! A-bad-don! Abaddon! Abaddon! A-baddonabaddonabaddon!"
Then, suddenly, the fury was over, all was still. Yet within the silence was an overpowering sense of expectation, of waiting for something to happen.
The image behind the altar spoke. "Who summons Abaddon?" it demanded, its tone powerful, tremendously deep, and overwhelmingly ancient in its feel.
Mac Walters tried to imagine the effect of this act on a real congregation. Hell, he might have converted himself!
"I did!" he shouted at the head.
"From whom do you come, and whence?" the great, evil head demanded to know. "And by what boldness do you face Abaddon?"
"I come from Asmodeus, also called Mogart," he shouted back. "I come as his agent with a proposition, a wager, a contest. Now cut out this great showmanship and let's talk it over! Your display is all very impressive, but leave that for the dumb masses."
The fury of the great head was terrible to behold. "You dare mock Abaddon, Prince of Darkness? Why should the great and all-powerful Abaddon not just strike you into oblivion from where you stand and get on with his business?"
That worried Mac a little. This show of bravado was all well and good, but the demon could in fact just get rid of him with a mental flick of his finger-and he might believe in all this. After having seen two others of his kind, Mac wouldn't be at all surprised.
"As I remember it, Asmodeus is King of the Demons, second only to Lucifer Makrieg himself in the demonic pantheon," he responded bol
dly. "In short, he outranks you if you want to keep this up. But I was told that the great Abaddon was fond of the wager and the challenge of gaming. I come with a proposition for such a game from Asmodeus himself, as you can see from his mark on my palm. If I was wrong, if the great Abaddon has no stomach for a fair wager and desires only sure things, then I will leave and report so."
Mac hesitated a second, almost afraid that he'd overplayed his hand with the taunt, made the creature mad.
The evil, leering goat's head seemed to be thinking over the proposition. Finally it asked, in that awe inspiring voice it had, "If this is so, then why did Asmodeus send a representative and not come himself? Why must I deal through a vassal?"
Mac started to feel better. The demon wouldn't be asking questions if he weren't at least interested. Mac controlled his enthusiasm slightly, though, reminding himself that Abaddon was only considering the offer. He hadn't accepted it, still hadn't even considered dropping the Black-Sabbath act. Mac wondered where the demon really was and experienced a sudden feeling of uncertainty. What if this were all part of the setup? What if the demon really wasn't anywhere around, and this thing was just another creature of the demon's imagination?
"You know very well where Mogart is," he told the head flatly, letting a little disgust and resignation creep into his voice. "He's back in a bar on his plane, drunk as a skunk."
The head seemed frozen for a moment. Then, slowly at first, then building, it started to laugh uncontrollably, until peals of deep, rich laughter almost shook the foundations of the building. Then in an instant the creature was gone, leaving only the echoes of its mirth, but there was another sound, the sound of a thin, reedy voice still chuckling-near him.
Mac whirled. Sitting not two pews in back of him, on the aisle, was the demon prince Abaddon himself. He was still laughing, and he looked and sounded exactly like Asmodeus Mogart.
The demon, who was wearing a flowered aloha shirt and baggy jeans with boots, grinned at him and applauded slightly. "Very, very good!" he chuckled, then looked around thoughtfully at the church. "Obviously the act still needs a little polishing, though."
And the Devil Will Drag You Under Page 16