Close to the Ground

by Jeff Mariotte

  “Sure, I understand,” Jack said. He took Angel’s hand in his death-grip again. “Just — thank you for bringing my Karinna home in one piece. If anything ever happened to her, I . . .” He paused, as if searching for the right words.

  Apparently, they didn’t come. “. . . I just don’t know,” he finished.

  “Yeah, thanks, Angel,” Karinna said. “You know where to find me if you ever feel like club-hopping.”

  “You be good, Karinna,” Angel said. He opened the door, glanced at the sky. Still dark. But not for much longer. The sun would start to edge over the horizon soon, and Angel had to get back home and inside before it did.

  “Good night, Karinna, Mr. Willits,” he said. He stepped out onto the short staircase. In the entryway Jack Willits still held his business card, turning it in his hands as if there were secrets written on one side or the other, if only he could figure them out. But his gaze was on Karinna, his daughter. They were both silent as he closed the door behind himself.

  Angel wondered, not for the first time, what kind of relationship they must have. Out till all hours, with bodyguards to keep her safe. Was that how the rich lived in L.A.? If so, what was the point of being rich?

  Angel had no kids, and he never could. But if he had, he thought he’d rather be poor and spend time with them than be so rich he had to pay others to do it for him.

  He descended the few stairs and got back into the Plymouth. The drive circled around and met itself, and he followed it back to the estate’s front gate, which opened at his approach. As he drove, he thought about Karinna sitting in the car next to him, looking so young and vulnerable in the cold breeze. The way strands of her fair red hair dangled around her face, curling at the line of her chin. The way she held her arms tightly about herself, knees pulled up inside them. He realized that she reminded him of someone.

  Someone from his past.

  But there was a lot of that, and he couldn’t draw the image out from the recesses of his mind. Couldn’t place who it was. The inability to do so frustrated him.

  Twenty-five minutes later he parked in front of his apartment. The sky was beginning to lighten — the precursor to the sun’s first rays. He hurried inside.

  And inside a darkened room in a recently rented apartment across the street, a curtain moved. The room smelled like stale coffee, pizza crusts, and burnt popcorn. The person who had been watching through the window crossed the littered floor to a plain wooden table, flipped on a tiny flashlight, and made a notation in a spiral-bound notebook. Angel was inside for the day.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Angel was a little surprised to find both Doyle and Cordelia still in the office. Cordy had curled up on the blue couch, with a blanket that Angel knew had been on his bed pulled over her. Doyle sat, head back and mouth open, in one of his guest chairs. The TV was still on, showing an exercise program in miniature. Tinny voices shouted instruction and encouragement to the couch potatoes who were watching at home.

  Cordelia opened one eye at the sound of the door closing, and then graced Angel with a smile. Or as much of one as she could muster at this time of day. A morning person, she was not.

  “Everything okay?”

  “I think so,” Angel said.

  Doyle stirred then, too, rubbing his eyes.

  “Hey,” he said. “Find her?”

  “Found her.”

  “And?”

  “You were right. Pretty girl.”

  “I knew it. What was her trouble?”

  “Her bodyguards were taking out their frustrations with their fists.”

  “On a girl?” Doyle asked.

  “I persuaded them to seek other avenues.”

  “So are we talking reward, bonus, or continued employment?” Cordelia interrupted. She kicked her feet off the couch and sat up, drawing the blanket up around her chin.

  “None of the above,” Angel replied.

  “None? Why not?”

  Angel shrugged. “Didn’t come up.”

  “How could it not come up? Did she have money?”

  “Her family has money. Her dad, I guess. You might know who he is. Jack Willits?”

  “Jack Willits? The head of Monument Pictures? The guy who makes the ‘Ten Most Powerful People in Hollywood’ list five years running? Never heard of him.”

  “I’m impressed,” Doyle said. “I tend to pay more attention to The Racing Form than Variety, so unless he’s a jockey or has a racehorse named after him, I probably wouldn’t know him.”

  “That’s amazing, Angel,” Cordelia went on brightly. “You actually met Jack Willits?”

  “Briefly. He wasn’t there the whole time I was helping Karinna. His daughter, remember? The one who was in trouble? But I dropped her off at home, and she introduced us.”

  “You’ve been to Jack Willits’s home? What’s it like?”

  “Again, briefly. Nice place. Big.”

  “Do you know what this could mean?” Cordelia asked.

  “That’s he’s a successful guy with bad taste in bodyguards?”

  “This could be my ticket to the big time,” Cordelia said. She threw the blanket off and jumped to her feet. “My break. You get in good with Jack Willits, and then introduce me. He’ll recognize my potential — I’ve heard he’s brilliant that way.” She crossed the room and threw her arms around Angel, enveloping him in a backbreaking hug. “Angel, thank you!”

  Angel caught Doyle’s gaze. Doyle shrugged, and Angel returned it with his eyebrows, as they were just about the only body part not being crushed by Cordy.

  “My pleasure,” he said.

  Finally she let him go and went back to the couch, a bit of a spring in her step and a dreamy smile on her face.

  “You know,” Doyle offered. “I ain’t so sure about this whole business.”

  “What do you mean?” Cordelia asked, horror creeping into her voice. “It’s perfect!” She fixed Angel with a serious glare. “Remember, you do have bills, Angel. Rent, electricity, credit cards, phone, insurance, gas, and so on. I know, because I just lined up all of mine on my coffee table so I wouldn’t accidentally see one anywhere and get all depressed.”

  “What I’m gettin’ at,” Doyle interjected, “is maybe it’s not as perfect as we’d like to think. I mean, sure it’d be great and all for you to hook up with this Willits guy and become a big star, Cordy. But what if the girl’s problems are a little more complicated than what Angel dealt with tonight? I don’t know for sure what the visions mean, you know. It could’ve meant her bodyguards were using her for a punching bag, but it could be something much worse. I think you need to be on your guard until we know for sure.”

  Cordy considered this.

  “I guess maybe you’re right,” she finally relented. “Maybe we should research the Willits family a little.”

  “Might be a good idea,” Doyle agreed.

  “I’ll start with Jack, and Monument Pictures,” she went on. “You do, I don’t know, whoever else there is.”

  “Gotcha,” Doyle said. “Glad to see you’re so concerned about their well-being.”

  “I am concerned,” Cordelia argued. “I just express it differently than you.”

  “You got that right,” Doyle said. “Just let me get a few more minutes of sleep and I’ll join right in.”

  He closed his eyes again, and in a few moments he was snoring softly. Angel decided he could use some as well and headed downstairs to his apartment.

  Mordractus paced the creaky floors of his rented house. The place sat back in the hills, and from a balcony off the living room he could see, in the narrow gap between two other hills, the brown cloud that hung over Los Angeles most days, and the sparkle of the city’s lights at night. But here in the hills the sky was blue overhead, and gentle breezes stirred the curtains. The place was a little drafty, but that reminded him of home, and he didn’t have a problem with it.

  He paced because he was anxious, and he was anxious because he was dying.

  And
worse, he was dying because of the Summoning, a spell he had begun, a spell that took months to complete, was sapping him of his life essence, and could very likely kill him before he was even finished with it.

  And then things would, he knew, get very nasty.

  Finally, exhausted from his pacing, he sat down in a wide wicker chair with floral cushions that faced a window.

  The house had been built in the 1920s by Arthur Pennington, a magician who moved in Hollywood circles and who had been, for a time, a student of Mordractus’s. It had everything a self-respecting magician might want in a house — secret passageways and trapdoors and a vast basement room with a slate floor.

  But Pennington had died in the fifties, and the house had been taken over by other owners, less interested in its special properties. They had made the ritual room downstairs into what they called a “rumpus room,” with games and a wet bar and a hifi system.

  Still other owners took it over in the seventies, and they were swinging Hollywood types who held orgies on weekends and decorated with lots of hanging beads and soft fabrics in earth tones.

  Now, the house was sparsely furnished. Mordractus had “persuaded” the rental agency to evict the previous tenants with no notice, and to let him move in without signing a lease. The tenants took most of what they owned, but left behind a few pieces, and there were remnants of all the previous owners remaining, too.

  The place was a decorator’s nightmare.

  Mordractus didn’t care about any of that. He was just somewhat offended by the indignity of having to sit on a floral cushion in a wicker chair that had probably been bought in the 1970s by a small-time actor wearing an orange shirt and a wooly vest and bell-bottoms, with a medallion around his neck and a thick mustache over his lip.

  He could have done something about it, but he didn’t want to expend the energy. Instead, he lifted his head and called out in a weak, quaking voice, “P’wrll! Water!”

  The bogie’s gnarled form shuffled into the room. “Reg’lar, or bubbly?” he rasped.

  Since coming to California, Mordractus had become entranced by sparking mineral water, which he called “bubbly” because he couldn’t remember any of the brand names. The household staff accommodated him.

  “Bubbly,” he said.

  “Comin’ up.” P’wrll left Mordractus alone by the window.

  Mordractus gazed outside blankly, not really registering anything that lay before him. He was thinking, instead, of Balor.

  According to ancient Celtic legend, the Fomorians were a race of giants who had inhabited Ireland long before people tried to move there. Each time people came, the Fomorians drove them off — wave after wave of humans trying to gain a foothold on the emerald isle, each time turned away by the ferocious giants.

  And the king of the Fomorians — the Celtic-Irish God of Death — was named Balor of the Evil Eye.

  Whenever things got tough for the Fomorians, all they had to do was bring out Balor, their ultimate weapon. He was enormous, and he had only one eye, in the middle of his forehead, which was also enormous — so big, in fact, that he needed help to lift his own eyelid, so heavy was it. But when that eye was open, it destroyed everything Balor saw. Normally, he kept his eye shut, so as not to cause mass destruction, but in battle it was propped open and he was a force to be reckoned with.

  There was only one thing that Balor was afraid of — a prophet warned him that he would be slain by his own grandson. To prevent this prophecy from coming true, Balor had his only child, a daughter, kept under lock and key at all times. In spite of that precaution, with the help of druid magic, a Danaan lord made Balor’s daughter pregnant with triplets. Balor ordered the triplets to be drowned in the sea. But one, a baby boy, washed up on shore and was found in Danaan territory. This baby was named Lugh.

  Years later Lugh rallied the Danaans against the Fomorians. In a bloody battle at Moytirra, he challenged his own grandfather, Balor. Balor, who had been using his evil eye to cause great losses amongst the Danaan forces, accepted the challenge and called to have his eye opened. As soon as it did, however, Lugh hurled a stone with a slingshot, and it hit the eye with such incredible force that the eye flew out the back of Balor’s head, wiping out a contingent of the Fomorian troops.

  Balor went into the Otherworld, the parallel world below the one that we can see. When the Gaels, the early equivalent to the modern-day Irish, took over the island, the Danaans were sent to live in fairy mounds and to rule the Otherworld. Under Danaan rule, Balor kept his eye closed, but gradually, over the course of millennia, it healed.

  Mordractus intended to bring Balor back from the Otherworld.

  Restored to the visible world, Balor would be his to command. His evil eye would be a devastating weapon at Mordractus’s beck and call. Or more likely, Mordractus knew, it would be held back as a powerful threat — give me what I want, or I’ll open his eye! Blackmail more powerful than any ten stolen nuclear weapons, and it would have the added benefit of shaking the modern world’s beliefs to their very foundations. They thought the stuff of legend was just that, stories told by ignorant peoples to explain their world.

  It was more than that, Mordractus knew. The stories were true. The part about them being mere legend came later, to keep people in the dark. The fewer people who understood the old ways, the more power was concentrated in the hands of those who did. Mordractus had kept that faith for hundreds of years.

  It was time all that changed, though. After centuries of living in the shadows, he was finally ready to become a very public figure. He would make his demands known, and he would demonstrate that he had the power to back up his demands. He could unleash Balor, and by controlling their king, could bring back a whole army of Fomorians if need be. He would be, after all these years, a political and economic force to be reckoned with, instead of an unknown working spells of which only he knew.

  Mordractus considered himself the most powerful sorceror who had ever lived. By the time he was finished, history would know it to be true. The world would tremble at the sound of his name.

  All he had to do was live until the autumn equinox.

  Summoning Balor from the Otherworld was no simple task. It required decades of research, years of preparation, once it even occurred to him. And in his research he discovered that it could only be completed when the moon and stars were in a certain alignment in the heavens, at the equinox — an alignment that occurred only once every five hundred years or so.

  This year.

  Having made that calculation, he realized he had to act fast. He began the rituals, which themselves had to be spread over many months. They should have been spread over years, in fact, but that would have meant missing the deadline and waiting another half-millennium. Mordractus was patient, but not that patient.

  So he fast-tracked the Summoning, performing parts of it that should have been months apart in weeks instead. It would still work, he knew. The preferred schedule was mainly set for the health of the practitioner. This kind of necromancy wore heavily on the one carrying it out. There should have been long periods of recuperation in between the different segments.

  By the time he realized he wouldn’t live through it, it was too late. Once begun, he couldn’t turn back. If he stopped, if the next ritual didn’t follow the last within the specified period, he would be drawn back through the veil he had opened. He would be taken into the Otherworld, where Balor and the other Fomorians would be very angry that he had disturbed them with unkept promises of a return to the visible world.

  He didn’t want to live through an eternity of that. He had to finish. The equinox was less than a month away now.

  And he knew he’d never live the month. Not without help. He had grown too weak, too frail. The magic that had kept him alive for so long had run its course, used up by the stress of the Balor-recovery rituals.

  With Balor and the Fomorians backing him, he would be supremely powerful, and he could dedicate himself once again to ensuring his own
longevity (immortality) with all the wealth and power over petty humans that he had long deserved.

  No, he thought. I will not die. There is a way, and I know what it is.

  When P’wrll returned with his mineral water, Mordractus took the glass in a shaking hand and drank deeply. He swallowed and looked at the bogie. “Where are they?” he asked. “Bring them to me, all of them.”

  P’wrll nodded. “On the way,” he said.

  When the bogie left, Mordractus leaned over to put his glass on the floor. His chin felt comfortable against his chest, and he left it there.

  A few minutes later he looked up again. All his minions were gathered around him, human and non alike. There were Currie and Hitch, Needham and Blaine, McCourt and McIver, Leary and O’Neil. Intermixed with them were goblins and bog-fairies, hog-men and howlers. A total staff of twenty. And they haven’t been able to perform one simple task, he thought.

  He looked up at them, meeting each one’s gaze, in turn. He willed himself to sit up straight, to look more strong and robust than he felt.

  “We all know why we’re here, isn’t that right? Here in California.”

  There were murmurs of assent.

  “Then why isn’t it done? There are plenty of you to do it.”

  McIver spoke. “We’re usin’ the plan you came up wi’, sir,” he said. “It’ll take a stretch o’ time for it to work, though, as you said yourself.”

  “I said that, did I?” Mordractus responded. “That was when I was more patient.”

  “It’s under way now, though,” McIver said. “Might as well play it out.”

  “Might as well,” Mordractus echoed again. “You do understand that there is some urgency here, do you not?”

  “Aye,” McIver said. “I think we all do.”

  “And the rest of you? Does McIver speak for all of you?”

  Again, words of assent from the crowd, in both human and fairy speech.

  “That’s interesting, that’s good,” Mordractus said. “McIver, who appointed you to speak for this lot?”