"These victims of yours-they let you take their blood?" Mac asked incredulously.
The man laughed. "Oh, hell, no! All you need is eye contact and you got 'em hypnotized-women and kids are the easiest for men. Easy as fallin' off a log.
Only don't get no pattern or use the same area night after night, or the Vamp Squad will get you."
"That woman-she turned into a wolf. Can we?" Mac prodded.
"Oh, sure," the man told him. "Just will it. Also a cloud of white smoke or a bat. Handy sometimes. Just watch out that nobody tracks you back here, stay away from crosses if you were a Christian, or a Star of David or Seal of Solomon if you were Jewish, and remember that running water will drown you. Also, you'll find it hard to enter private dwellings if you aren't invited-there are ways around it, like hypnotizing somebody near a window to invite you in, but it's tough and usually a bother." He turned and looked out at the tall buildings going off in all directions. "Hell, in a city this size there are always a lot of folks out late, not just the fools but the ones who work nights, too. Take it easy, don't draw attention, cover your ass, and you'll be fine."
Mac nodded, still bewildered and numbed by all this, and thanked the little man. As they parted he called back, "Hey! Tell me something! If you weren't made by another vampire, you must've had an experience similar to mine-an equal number of people loving you and hating you. What sort of work did you do?"
The man laughed bitterly. "How fickle is fame far from home," he mumbled. "Why, man, I was once the Mayor of Philadelphia!"
Vampirism was definitely not common, and people often ignored its perils as they did other perils of the city at night. Just as in Mac's own world people insisted on waiting alone on dark street corners, hitch-hiking on lonely roads, and walking through mugger-infested parks, so, too, did the citizens of Chicago-a small percentage of them, anyway-brave the added risk of the vampire.
He had to allow himself the luxury of this one night, even if time were pressing terribly. He found, in fact, that his craving for blood became overpowering, and he finally encountered a victim without even thinking about it, held her in a hypnotic grip that came to him almost completely without effort, and drank some of her blood without being in the least repelled by it. He was conscientious, though, as the little man had instructed him. He took only enough, never too much, and though his victims fainted afterward, he always left them in as comfortable and unexposed positions as possible and always with a strong pulse.
The blood had an odd effect on him, too. The more he drank, the stronger he seemed to be, the headier and braver he became. It was more than food, it was a mild stimulant and very mild intoxicant, and he resolved to watch his consumption in the future. Overconfidence could lead to carelessness, and carelessness killed. He would be dealing with people who would know the protections and would guard themselves, particularly those in the upper echelons who would know where a Mafia don would keep a demon.
He also practiced the hypnosis and transformation tricks until he could perform them automatically and risked taking on a couple of men. One he could not control and had to depend on his incredible superhuman strength and transformation to get away; a second man was taken almost as easily as the women victims. Again it was a matter of emotion and willpower.
By sunup he was certain he had it all down pat, at least as much as he could master in the limited time allowed him. He also considered the parallels in his own life between this world and his own. In his own world he had quit rather than play that last season, even though he had felt that his team would go to the Super Bowl and be winners-an experience denied him. He had been smart and quit. His counterpart had given in to the temptation and died in that game. He wondered about that. His own world's Dallas had its own Billy Thompson. If he had played ...
The thought was still in his mind when sunrise brought sleep.
3
Jill McCulloch was impressed. They rode to the station in a huge and ornate coach seemingly fit for the King of England and pulled by a team of eight Clydesdale-like horses. With her was Constanza, his ever-present bodyguards, and O'Malley, who looked like a typical Irish, politician and was anything but.
Even master sorcerers in this world wore three-button suits and carefully knotted ties.
About the only thing that betrayed O'Malley's dumb-boxer impression was his eyes-steely blue-gray, hard, and alive with a tremendous intellect that seemed to see inside you. They were cold eyes, too, the eyes of a man who knows he is superior to the bulk of the human race and cares about them about as much as the exterminator cares about house flies. She'd asked him why he bothered to be in the employ of Constanza or of anyone, for that matter, and he'd just smiled and replied, "You see, miss, I have everything I need in the material world-I just love my craft, and as I lack ambition in worldly matters, it is people like Mr. Constanza who give me the challenges to practice it."
She had been surprised when she'd first discovered that this world had steam engines and steam trains. They looked like something out of the 1880s, and even then their boilers seemed too bloated and their wheels of odd size and even more unusual distribution, but they were close to what the old western movies showed for all that. Now, as the coach pulled into Union Station and moved to a private entrance for first-class passengers, the incongruity of these engines in an otherwise nontechnological society struck her full on.
"I can't understand, if you have these, why you haven't gotten to electricity or at least to gas lighting for the cities," she remarked to Constanza, who knew of her other-worldly origin from the interrogations.
He smiled. "Well, you see, things are different here," he explained. `Electricity is used in small doses, yes, for very minor things. But if this society were dependent on electricity, any good magician could disrupt its flow either specifically or generally. A society dependent on power so easily controlled by elemental spirits would be a captive one. As for the gas-" he sighed "-it's like most petroleum in the ground. The gnomes simply will not permit much drilling, let alone the pipelines necessary to bring it out. Most of it is in the strongholds to the west, too, and southwest, where the Indians have millennia-old alliances with the gnomes. Maybe someday we'll be able to compromise, but not now."
She thought that there was an awful lot she still didn't know about this world and probably never would and dismissed it.
They emerged from the carriage and walked into the station, the bodyguards fanning out and clearing the way, even opening doors for them. Constanza had a private car waiting at the end of the train and they boarded. Beyond, on the platform, large groups of men and women in Victorian modes of dress were boarding the regular cars as well. Some glanced back to the opulence at the rear, while newsboys ran up and down hawking papers and shouting headlines that sounded to Jill as if something like the fairy gold workers were on strike demanding AFL-CIO representation.
A minute or so after they had boarded, the train pulled out. The ride was a little shaky at the start but became much smoother once they left the railyards, much smoother than the trains of Jill's own world. They were heading west.
The private car had everything from a small bedroom to a flush toilet, plush, fur-covered seats, and even a small pool table down at one end that converted into a card table. A bodyguard mixed drinks from a hand-tooled leather-covered bar and brought them to Jill, Constanza, and O'Malley.
"So what happens now?" she asked them. They hadn't been very specific up to now, probably to minimize the risk of leaks. Constanza still hadn't found out where his rival had obtained the information on the files.
"First we head west, then southwest," Constanza told her. "We'll go off the main line at Kansas City and take the branch for Dodge, a dead end, you understand, because it's a railhead for cattle. You'll be quite comfortable on the trip. The two cars forward are also mine-one is a dining car with a superb chef in my employ; the other, a first-class accommodations car with private bedrooms for you and Mr. O'Malley here,
and quarters for my staff. From Dodge we will travel by coach and horseback to the Mexican border, and there I will camp until word comes. Then it's O'Malley's turn with you, and I have only a vague notion of what he will do. From that point, though, you will be on your own."
She didn't relish the thought of being alone with O'Malley, but, as Constanza kept reminding her cheerily, she had little choice in the matter.
"This Amazon army-where is it located?" she asked them.
"Not Amazons, just women in my service," the don responded. "They will meet us along the way-or, rather, you. I wouldn't worry about it. Your role in this is quite simple and effortless."
Effortless, she thought sourly. Perhaps. To order a mass slaughter, to make certain that every last man, woman, and child in a town and its surrounding farm land were killed, then to turn over the land to Constanza "freely and of my own will," thus regaining for him his stronghold and for her the jewel.
"You have the jewel with you?" she probed.
Constanza chuckled. "No, of course not. As you yourself must be aware, it would kill any of us."
"Then what assurance do I have that you will give it to me when I have completed this-this massacre?"
"Mine, Miss McCulloch," O'Malley's low, uncharacteristically operatic voice intoned. "Theritus is held by a spell of my own device. He must obey me. For my spell we shall work a bargain-you had a similar pledge with Asmodeus, did you not, where he swore you to service?"
She nodded and he continued.
"A bargain's a bargain. You will agree to liberate the land and I shall agree to turn over the stone in payment. It will be handed to you at the gates of the Citadel. I must honor that part or the Dark Ones will claim my soul on the spot, and Don Constanza must allow me to do so because he requires my service to make the Citadel secure once again."
She glanced over at Constanza and saw he was trying to conceal his irritation at that remark. It irked him to be in need of someone he could not buy, threaten, or control.
The train rolled on.
A day and a half later they were in Dodge City, Kansas, a town that looked very much like it must have looked when the West was being tamed and legends like Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson ran it. They wasted no time there, though, heading west almost immediately in a wagon train and luxury coach.
There was only a sign at the border, which they reached an hour or so after sunset. She was surprised at that. International borders were not normally so lightly guarded, even in her own North America.
"There's no need," O'Malley explained. "The spells are far more effective than any fence and network of guards. Smugglers and illegals will find it difficult if not lethal to cross. We have the proper seals from Mexico; we can pass."
And pass they did. Jill felt a slight tingling as they moved by the border sign, as if she'd just gone through an enormous spider web, but it quickly evaporated. Clearly there was some sort of barrier there, and she was thankful that they hadn't had to fight their way across.
Constanza set up camp-a large tent village for himself, his bodyguards, and his cooking staff-and offered a last dinner. But O'Malley refused all food and drink, as he had all day, and forbade Jill to take anything, either.
"Now we will go," he told them. She looked nervously around; the stars were incredibly bright, so bright that their numbers defied any rational attempt to count them, but otherwise it was very, very dark, almost absolute darkness.
Still, Constanza did not protest and snapped his fingers. A bodyguard brought up two good-looking horses and a pack mule loaded with two sacks of something indistinguishable.
"You know how to ride, I hope?" O'Malley asked her.
She nodded. Once having exchanged her Victorian dress for a shirt and jeans, she felt more normal and more human. "May as well get this over with," she mumbled in reply and mounted.
Constanza came up to her. "God be with you," he said sincerely, and offered his hand.
She looked at him strangely. He can't be serious, she thought. But he was serious-his own private world saw no contradictions.
She spurned his hand. "I'll do your killing for you," she told him, "but not in the name of God, nor in your name, either, but only for the sake of my people." She looked up at O'Malley. "Let's get out of here before I get sick."
Constanza seemed not at all offended. He shrugged and walked off. O'Malley kicked his horse into action and pulled on the rope in his free hand that was attached to the mule's harness. "Stick close and to the road," the sorcerer warned.
In minutes the glow from Constanza's camp was gone, leaving them alone with the brilliant Milky Way and the darkness, yet she could swear that she heard, somewhere behind her, Constanza laughing, laughing hard at some sort of self-satisfying joke.
The joke on her.
They rode for what seemed like hours. Her legs quickly became very sore, and she felt muscles start to ache that she'd forgotten she had. Jill knew how to ride, yes, but it had been two years or more since she'd had to do so and she'd gone soft in all the wrong places. Also, she was becoming increasingly hungry and thirsty.
She had just about reached the point of total surrender when she was going to stop in the middle of the darkness and tell O'Malley that she could travel no farther until food, drink, and rest were provided, when he stopped all by himself.
"This is a good enough spot," he said, more to himself than to her, and dismounted. She followed, weariness mixed with blessed relief from the pain flowing into her. She sat down on the ground, fording the dirt road preferable to the almost impossibly tall grass that seemed to line it, and waited. She heard O'Malley fumbling with the packs on the mule and then heard him doing something in the dark over to one side, just off the road in the grass. She wondered how he could see to do anything at all.
Finally he was ready and walked unerringly up to her, his strange eyes oddly reflective of any stray bits of light, almost like a cat's eyes yet with some kind of internal luminescence as well. He had changed clothes, she saw as he drew to within a meter of her. Gone were the tailored shirt and pants and the fancy, polished riding boots; now he wore a garment that looked more like a dark blue robe and a matching blue skullcap.
"It is time, Miss McCulloch," he said softly. "Please rise and come with me."
Jill looked at him but didn't move immediately. She was bone-tired.
"Please. It must be done now," he urged softly.
"All right, all right," she grumbled, and got up, taking his extended hand for support.
She followed the man in the darkness, wondering what was going to come next.
As they walked to one side of the road she saw that here the grass was gone, the ground barren, hard dirt. As she took her fifth or sixth step on the flat area, braziers suddenly flared into life, illuminating the place in an eerie blend of colors-blue, red, yellow, orange, and green, all bright and sparkling and reaching upward into the night. Five colors, five flaring braziers, arranged in a five-pointed shape. A border had been drawn in the dirt, she saw, and the braziers had come to life as she had stepped over that boundary. A pentagram.
O'Malley also walked into the pentagram and over to a small table in its center. Motioning Jill to stand in front of the little folding table with a box on it, he stood behind, reached into the box, and pulled out a wand of some sort. It started to glow in his right hand, and he seemed to check it out to see if it was working properly. Then he looked up at her.
"Remove all your clothing, please," he instructed.
She flinched. Even Constanza hadn't taken any sexual advantage of her. "I'll do no such thing," she told him.
He sighed. "Please, Miss McCulloch! We must remove all foreign objects. Remember, please, that I am not casting a spell over you, simply striking a bargain. The spell is for the work that has to be done. I assure you your virtue is safe with me."
She didn't like the way he had said that. Not as if he were merely disinterested in her, but as if the idea-and she-were of no
consequence to him.
"Miss McCulloch, if I were so inclined I could turn you in a matter of seconds into a panting love-slave or anything else I chose. That is not the job here, nor my interest, nor the interest of my employer. Now, for the last time, will you please disrobe and throw all your clothing outside the pentagram without leaving it yourself?"
She sighed. The trouble was, she could believe everything he was saying was true. She did as instructed and saw him nod approval, not of her but only of her action. He was preoccupied with other matters.
Although it was mid-September, the air was not chilly; either the climate was warmer in this world or there was a strong snap of Indian summer in the air. Soon O'Malley was ready. He closed the box lid and faced her, holding the wand in his hand. It resembled a thin version of an aircraft wand, a flashlight with a long plastic tube of yellow. Yet she knew they had no flashlights here, nor batteries to store energy.
"From this point, just stand there facing me," he instructed. "Say or do nothing until and unless I specifically ask you for a response. Clear?"
She nodded.
O'Malley began. At first it was a prayerful chant, then it rose in pitch, becoming a call, almost a summons. The language was vaguely Latin-sounding, yet the words made no kind of sense to her at all.
"Siruptis vergobum una toma maculum Tobit!" he chanted, and the wand waved all over the place. He chanted the same phrase again, and yet again, and continued making odd motions with the wand.
For a moment there seemed to be no effect at all, just a silly-looking man standing in front of a table in the middle of nowhere chanting mumbo jumbo. But, quite abruptly, things started to happen.
And the Devil Will Drag You Under Page 21