And The Devil Will Drag You Under (1979) (26 page)

His mind was already racing. The vampire should have the legendary powers as well as weaknesses. Such power could be useful.

"What about the demon and the jewel?" he asked her.

She sighed. "I know who he's with-the demon's name is Theritus, by the way-but not exactly where. That's what's caused me a problem. I was hoping you'd show up. As a vampire, though . .

."

"Fill me in," he told her, getting to serious business.

"There's a Mafia boss, name of Constanza, who lives in Cicero. He's a big rackets boss, known not only for a massive smuggling-and-drug empire but also for providing certain illegal magical supplies and services. He's hated even by the other bosses, but somehow a few years ago he ran into Theritus and imprisoned him. Demons can be bound by a strong magician, kept against their wills and forced to do things for the binder, just like in the old legends. Looks like he actually knew how to do it-or had somebody who did. Theritus is bound and living somewhere in the city here. Constanza owns half of it or more, including the police department"

"And you haven't been able to find him?"

She shook her head. "He's well buried. I material-ized near the Loop, so that might be a clue.

I've worked and worked on it. About a week ago I managed to get a lead on where his magical files were kept-they'd reveal the particulars."

"But you haven't gotten to them yet?" he guessed.

She sighed in frustration. "Oh, yes, I got in, with the help of a half-baked disbarred magician; but he wasn't nearly up to what Constanza can buy, and my sources weren't too discriminating, either. While I was in the building and my inept magician friend was still working on the spells for a lock, who should come busting in but a Chief Necromancer for the F.B.I.! There was a terrible facedown between the feds and some demonic guardians, but the feds won out. I was a floor away and I heard it all. Of course, out went the files. While I was trying to make my own getaway, some of the mob's men got me."

They had been none too gentle with her. For a while they thought she was a fed herself; she'd acquitted herself as an expert swordswoman by inter-cepting two guards on the lower floors and had done a very nice job neutralizing a minor demon. They took her out a tunnel the feds didn't cover and then off to Cicero; she never saw her magician friend again.

An empathic mesmerist had been brought in and she was questioned extensively. It was impossible not to answer, and the mesmerist guaranteed that she could not lie even if she were fighting him-he smelled lies. She'd spilled the whole story.

The hoods hadn't believed her, anyway-it was just too fantastic a story-so they kept her there, a pris-oner, awaiting the return of Constanza from Miami. Word of the raid brought him back in less than three days.

He turned out to be quite different from what she had expected. She didn't really know what he should look like-old and ugly, certainly, with evil eyes and a scarred face. He was none of that. He seemed to be no more than forty, and a young, healthy, tanned forty at that. He was extremely handsome and gentlemanly suave.

They had sat at dinner, sipping fine wine and eating exquisitely cooked pheasant. "Some more wine, my dear?" he had suggested. "It is an excellent vintage-few today can savor its excellence."

"Thank you, no," she responded politely. "I ap-preciate the offer, but I'm quite full. I must say, though, that you are a gracious and charming host, not at all what I would expect from a . . . a-"

She stalled there.

He smiled. "A gangster? But, my dear, the roots of this organization go back to the union of Italy in eighteen seventy-one, when the nobles of the old King-dom of the Two Sicilies were ousted for the Corsican conquerers. They fled here, a land that was still open and growing, and established a shadow kingdom that was a reflection of their former lives. Here nobility was money, not birth-so my ancestors went into business, providing goods and services which people really wanted, even if they openly professed they wished them banned. No one has ever been forced to make an illegal bet at gunpoint, nor do squads go out into the street shanghaiing poor, innocent young men to patronize brothels, and no man borrows from a loan shark if he has good credit and pays his bills on time, to name but three examples. By providing these services, huge sums were raised; armies of 'sol-diers' were put together; the nobility truly reestablished itself and looked after its own. We have our family feuds and internal rivalries, even wars, but these are all kept pretty much within the family and away from the innocents. The demand for our services has grown so great, our family now includes Jews and Blacks and Poles and Chinese as well. I see no reason why we should not be expected to be civilized human beings-we are, after all, aristocracy!"

There was a flaw somewhere in his justification, but she decided to wait a while to find it. There were more pressing matters now. "What will you do with me?" she asked softly.

He grinned again and sipped his wine. "As you know, I was raided recently. A result of our family squabbles. One of my brother businessmen who wants a lot more managed to. bribe or torture a key person or two in my service to reveal the existence of some vital records. Because of my pet demon he has been unable to assault me directly-so he assaults me thus. I plan to fool and foil him. I can run my share of the kingdom from afar, but not
too
afar, and certainly not from prison."

His eyes narrowed to slits and his face became grim. "I had such a perfect place all established.

My own private little city-state in the Southwest, in the Chihuahuan District of Mexico. I moved most of my operations there, in fact, and enjoyed it for many years."

She tried to reconstruct things a bit. On
this
Earth, Mexico had never lost its northern possessions; Chihuahua ran north from Monterrey through most of west Texas, southern New Mexico, and all of Arizona.

Constanza's face clouded. "But I was outdone only a few months ago by what, it is now clear, was the opening of a full campaign against me. The local people, farmers mostly, never liked me or my rule. I maintained a magnificent castle overlooking a river that was the only one for hundreds of miles around. I purchased the dam controlling the river and thus controlled its flow.

They were dependent on me, but I was, I think, a just ruler." His face beamed at the memory.

"Ah, it was like the old days in Naples must have been before the Corsicans! I ruled several thousand subjects, fairly but sternly." His face clouded again, became almost angry-looking. "And yet they acted against me!"

Jill suppressed a grim smile. It wasn't difficult to see that such a man as this would enjoy reestablishing feudalism, and even less difficult to guess that frontier farmers wouldn't want to surrender their lands, reclaimed with sweat from the desert, and move on.

"The C.I.A., that's part of what did me in," Constanza 'continued. "I can see it now. My enemy, an unprincipled common wretch named Julius Goldfarb, obviously had the information he needed well in ad-vance and sought to cut off my retreat. First they cut off my retreat, then raided my files. I am as one with his back to the door, and without time to establish yet another safe enclave. I must either flee the con-tinent-putting me away from control-or go to prison. There is only one other way-break that wretched spell on my southwestern headquarters."

She was fascinated by the story but puzzled. "So what does this have to do with me?"

He smiled again and lit a big cigar. "Well, you see, the spell was a basic one, intended mostly to keep me
out.
It was, in other words, a quickie, and those have flaws in them. The spell was simple enough: `No man shall cross the boundary of this domain,' followed by the domain itself-including the dam. This kept me and my soldiers out, and, armed, the men inside, cut off from any hope of reinforcements, were easily beaten. The spell is sound-a necromancer of the highest classes was used, along with some new pro-cedures, which is why I know the C.I.A. was in-volved. None of my sorcerers or even the nonhuman and halflings in my power can prevail against it."

"Why not a nonhuman army, then?" she wondered aloud. "After all, the spell wouldn't keep
them

out. And don't tell me your captive demon couldn't punch holes in it."

He chuckled. "The nonhumans and halflings come under different rules, surely you must know that. They would not put together an army for any save
their own kind. And as for the demon-well, he is confined by a powerful spell, but he is confined to one spot. If I move him I free him-and he'll hardly work for me after that. Far from the scene, he can do nothing to neutralize a spell-he must be there to find the mathematics of the spell itself before he can undo it. Thus, he, too, is out. But there is still a way to recapture the place, and if it is done in my name, my experts feel certain that the spell will fall. One group who could be collected into an army and would not be hampered by the spell."

She was confused and said so.

"The spell said, `No
man
shall cross,' " he reminded her.

.

She saw what he was driving at. "Oh," she re-sponded. "And you want me to join your army of Amazons?"

He laughed now. "No, no. You miss half the point! I want you to
lead
it."

She was taken aback. "In the first place, I'm no general-I've never even killed anyone human. In the second place, what makes you think I would do it for you even if I could?"

His dark eyes twinkled merrily. "Well, you see, I can recruit such a force by coercion-a massive col-lection of women bound to obey by powerful spells. But there is no one I can trust to lead them and carry out my orders. Most of the women best qualified to do so are also too dangerous-give them command of an army like that and they might well just take over and start their own kingdom, not hand it over to me. The problem has been unsolvable until you dropped in so unexpectedly." He snapped his fingers.

In the background, ghostlike, she heard her own voice, sounding drugged or numbed, answering, ques-tions, telling of her problem and her adventures in other worlds.

"Dr. Lambeth's crystal ball showed me your entire interrogation," Constanza told her. "You have been through a lot. You are brave, clever, resourceful. And, more important, you absolutely
must
have something only I can produce for you-the demon's powerful amulet."

"You would trade the jewel for this?" she re-sponded unbelievingly. "And surrender your demon's power?"

Constanza shrugged. "He is useless to me now. So far, my lawyers have kept the feds out of my magical holdings, but it is only a matter of weeks. They will break in sometime, under powerful counterspells, and with experts who know how to banish demons. I am losing him anyway, Miss McCulloch. I am strong enough to rule without him now." He leaned forward and stared hard into her eyes. "You will lead my female army, McCulloch, and you will force the sur-render of the will of the people inside the boundary or kill everyone. And then, thus breaking the spell, you will surrender the castle and its domains freely to me in exchange for the jewel. If you do not, then you will not get the jewel; Theritus will be banished from this plane, and you will be stuck and your own world destroyed. You
will
do it, Miss McCulloch. You have no choice in the matter. You needn't know mil-itary strategy, there will be those with you who do. Nor do you need to soil your hands with blood. You need only order the killing. And
you will do sol"

"He gave me this apartment," Jill continued, facing Mac Walters across the bed, "and tomorrow I'm off. I have no choice, as he said, Mac. I'm going to have to kill a valley of peaceful farmers and turn what's left over to Constanza. And I'll have to do it five days from today, unless
you
can locate the demon and get the jewel before that." Tears stood in her eyes. "I don't see any way out.

It's a question of the lives on our world or the innocent lives here. I'd hoped you could still work on the demon angle here and save me but as a vampire, well, I don't know."

He considered the situation. "Look, this has its advantages and disadvantages," he told her.

"The two biggest disadvantages are this Vampire Squad you mentioned, which I'm going to dismiss since it's prob-ably not any better than any other cop squad, and the fact that I can operate only in darkness. Look, what's the month and day?"

She looked puzzled. "September fourteenth. Why?" His head bobbed up and down in satisfaction. "That means almost equal daylight and darkness, so I have some operating room.

And if the rules hold all the way here, I have tremendous powers of movement, of invulnerability, and probably a lot more once I learn the rules. I can get in places you can't and obtain information you couldn't. I think I can give it a good try.”

She seemed slightly heartened. "I hope so, Mac. I don't want to have to make the choice."

"When do you leave?"

"In the morning. Why?"

Mac suddenly remembered Mogart's warning. "We both have to be at the same place to get us both back to Reno," he told her. "If I get the jewel, how will I find you?"

"That's an easy one," she assured him. "If either of us gets the jewel, we just order it to take us to the other and only
then
to Mogart."

"That makes sense," Mac responded. "Abaddon told me that anybody, even one of us, could use this Eye of Baal-six jewels. Okay, then. So where do I start?"

She gestured toward the living room. "Go in there. I'll follow."

He chuckled. "Still afraid of the big bad vampire?"

"Can't be too careful," she replied. "After all, you're very powerful, but you're also like a dope addict, subject to compulsions beyond your ability to countermand. The nicest people become vampires, Mac. I can't take chances."

He agreed and they moved into the living room. To prove his trustworthiness, he even struck and lit the candles in the other room. She rummaged through a desk and brought out a folder from a briefcase.