A Calculated Magic lm-2 Read online

  Sighing, Jack folded his arms across his chest in annoyance. Nine men had died today and it wasn’t close to suppertime. He felt as if he were living in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

  “Continue with your story, Johnnie,” said his mother. She looked at her watch. “But make it quick. I have a business meeting with Mr. Weissman, the herring importer, in thirty minutes. I dare not be late. It would make your father furious.”

  Jack shook his head. When the real and the imaginary worlds collided, the real world won. His mom could deal with rampaging assassins without breaking into a sweat. However, the thought of telling her husband that she had fumbled a business deal was an entirely different matter. He hurried on with his explanation.

  “There’s not much more to tell. In the middle of the thirteenth century, the Assassins made the fatal mistake of killing two envoys under truce,” He glanced at the two ravens. “Seabury Quinn wrote a story about the murders. He titled it, ’The Gentle Werewolf.’ ”

  “Never heard of it,” said Hugo. “Another one from Weird Tales, I bet.”

  “Right,” said Jack. “In any case, the order was crushed by its enemies and Alamut was destroyed. Few if any members of the cult survived. But by that time it didn’t matter. The Old Man of the Mountain had achieved legendary status.”

  “I understand,” said Megan. As Merlin’s daughter, she was quite familiar with her father’s theories about mankind’s collective subconscious mind. “People refused to accept the Old Man’s death. Someone with that name ruled the cult for two centuries. Only an inner circle knew that it was not the same person. Tens of thousands of people in the region considered him immortal. In time, their belief created a supernatural being with the uncanny powers described in legends. As in the case of Dietrich von Bern, the actual human died but later returned as a creature of myth.”

  “Dozens of novels have been written in the past fifty years postulating that the Order of Assassins has survived to this day,” said Jack. “There might be more truth to those books than the authors imagined. These attacks on me seem to demonstrate that the cult is still in operation,” Jack paused. “Which means that the Old Man of the Mountain is alive and well and living somewhere in America.”

  “Sorry, dear,” said his mother, gathering him up in her arms for another bone-crushing hug, “but I’ve got to leave. You can tell me the rest later. I’m taking you and Megan out for dinner. A little celebration for your engagement. Hugo knows where. You birds stay here with Johnnie till then. Assist him in any way possible. But stay out of trouble.”

  His mother stormed out of the office, her face aglow with the joy of a Valkyrie about to engage in battle. Jack wondered how Mr. Weissman would cope with his mother. Then he remembered his father’s deft handling of equally enthusiastic salesmen. Maybe his mother was right and today’s businessmen were the real dragon slayers.

  “She acts like we’re not trustworthy,” said Hugo, his feathers ruffled.

  “Freda always makes it sound like we encourage violence,” added Mongo.

  “Well, Jack,” asked Cassandra, interrupting the two birds, “what’s the plan?”

  “Yeah, boss,” said Hugo, flapping his wings. “Who do we kill next?”

  Jack grimaced. “No more violence,” he declared, trying to avoid staring at the bodies on the floor. Instead, he found himself looking at one of the Uzis dropped by the assassins. It served as a grim reminder that the killers intended murdering everyone in the office, not just him. Shedding innocent blood was not one of their primary worries.

  “Unless necessary,” he added, knowing he was opening a Pandora’s box by using such language with supernatural. They bent definitions easier than politicians. “And I mean, absolutely necessary.”

  “We must somehow learn where the Old Man of the Mountain makes his headquarters,” said Merlin, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “He is the only one who can put an end to these attacks. Though persuading him to do so might prove difficult.”

  Cassandra smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. Even the two ravens appeared shocked. “Give me a few minutes alone with him,” she said softly. “I’ll show him the error of his ways.”

  “Hold on,” said Jack, raising his hands for silence. “We’re ignoring one important fact. The demigod behind things isn’t merely concerned with killing me. It plans to rule the world. There has to be another reason it contacted the Old Man of the Mountain than my demise. We have to discover that scheme and defeat it as well.”

  “Sounds simple enough to me,” said Mongo. “I love complicated webs of intrigue. Where do we start?”

  “Searching the pockets of our intended executioners might be a good beginning,” said Megan. “I know professionals aren’t supposed to keep clues in their pockets. But it never hurts to check.”

  As expected, none of the men carried any identification.

  However, a tattoo on one assassin’s shoulder served equally well.

  “’I love Las Vegas,’” read Jack, astonished. “I find it hard to believe that any respectable murderer would have his hometown tattooed on his body.”

  “These losers weren’t top-notch professionals, Jack,” said Cassandra. “I’d rate them fair at best. Maybe the Old Man of the Mountain has been experiencing difficulties recruiting new members for the order.”

  “Maybe,” said Jack. “But I still suspect it might be a trap.”

  “Who cares,” said Megan. “If that’s where the Old Man of the Mountain has his headquarters, that’s where we want to go. Trap or no trap. We don’t have much choice, do we?”

  “Nope,” said Jack unhappily. “No choice at all.”

  7

  Roger Quinn looked at the blemishes on his elbow and shuddered. There were five of them, evenly spaced around the bone. Dark marks, the size of dimes, they closely resembled the fingerprints of a child or a very small adult. That, of course, was impossible. No one’s touch caused skin to brown and age like old parchment. At least, no one human.

  “I’m at a loss to explain them, Mr. Quinn,” said Dr. Philips, frowning. “I’ve never seen their like before. It’s as if your flesh in those five spots is decaying at an unnatural rate. Nothing in my experience relates to selective tissue degeneration in such a selective manner. With your consent, I’d like to do some more tests.”

  Roger shook his head. “No, thanks. You’re the third skin specialist I’ve consulted.” There was a note of quiet desperation in his voice. “The others ran all the tests imaginable. They took samples of skin tissue from my elbow and analyzed it for weeks. The results were identical in both cases. Absolutely nothing.”

  “You have no idea what might have brought about this condition?” asked Philips. “You’re a scientist. Maybe an experiment went wrong?”

  Roger grimaced. “I work with computers, doc, not chemicals.”

  Wearily, he pulled on his shirt and began buttoning the buttons. He should have known better. No doctor living could help him with his problem. They were bound by conventional teachings. It never once occurred to any of them that they might be dealing with a manifestation of the supernatural. In reality, Roger needed an exorcist, not a specialist.

  Unfortunately, finding a real ghost breaker in modern California was no easy task. There were plenty of spiritualists in the phone directory, offering assistance in everything from love potions to fighting demons. They came in all nationalities and religions, both sexes, young and old, black and white. Only one common thread bound them all together. Each and every one of them was a fraud.

  Financed by one of Roger’s numerous secret bank accounts, a team of private detectives investigated the background of all of the self-proclaimed psychics. Not surprisingly, most of them turned out to be well-known con men or women, whose only talent consisted of making their clients’ money disappear.

  Those few spiritualists who checked out clean, the detectives visited. The investigators offered huge sums to anyone capable of demonstrating actual psychic powers. Despite hugel
y extravagant claims of great and miraculous powers by each individual, none of them was able to perform any actual feat of black magic or sorcery.

  After weeks of fruitless searching, Roger fired the detectives. He was still convinced that supernatural beings with amazing powers existed in the real world. He knew it for a fact. Sooner or later, the investigators would have found the right one. Unfortunately, Roger didn’t have time to spare.

  “You’ll stay in touch?” asked Dr. Philips as Roger rose from the examination table. “If those blotches grow bigger, we could try radiation therapy.”

  Roger grimaced. “I doubt if I’ll be back. I’m off to Las Vegas tomorrow. Hopefully, the answer to all my problems lies there.”

  “Las Vegas?” said Philips. “I didn’t know there were any major cancer clinics located there.”

  “There aren’t,” said Roger. “I’m going there to see an old man about his payments on a mountain.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said the physician, sounding puzzled.

  “Neither do I,” said Roger, heading for the door. “But that’s not unusual. I rarely do anymore these days. Mere mortals are not privy to the secrets of the Gods.”

  “Whatever you say,” declared Philips, shaking his head. He obviously thought Roger was slightly demented. “I’m an agnostic myself.”

  “So was I,” said Roger. “Once.”

  Stepping into the street a few minutes later, Roger squinted in the harsh sunlight. According to the city directory, there was a travel agency located within two blocks of the physician’s office. He glanced down at his watch. The doctor’s appointment had lasted six minutes longer than he anticipated. However, he had allowed an eleven-minute margin of error in his schedule. His day was proceeding pretty much according to plan.

  Roger was meticulous to a fault. A computer programmer for twenty years, he believed in exactness. Each morning, he mentally outlined his schedule for the next twenty-four hours in fine detail. Once decided, he maintained that routine no matter what happened. Though most people thought Roger was slightly crazy, he considered himself the soul of logic.

  A tall, thin man with a scraggly beard and thinning brown hair starting to gray at the temples, Roger appeared to be nothing more than the usual California computer jock. His sloped shoulders and intent, slightly glazed glare reinforced that image. Few people realized that he was president of one of the most powerful consulting firms on the West Coast. And none of that select number knew the secret of his success.

  Five years ago, Roger had been a computer hacker working for a minor software company in Silicon Valley. Smart but not brilliant, his obsession with exactness had lost him jobs with most of the major firms in the computer industry. Thus, he struggled in obscurity, earning a salary barely enough to cover the high cost of living in California.

  The big change in his life came the night he attended a New Age seance. Convinced by the event that the occult existed, Roger spent weeks investigating spells necessary to raise demons. He soon concluded that black magicians, unwilling to reveal their closely guarded secrets to others, deliberately changed their invocations when committing them to print. It was as if the spells had been published in code, without a key. But medieval sorcerers had not taken into account the greatest code breaker of all time—the modern computer.

  Less than a month after attending the seance, Roger raised his first demon. Soon he was making his talent pay, in a manner never considered by earlier sorcerers.

  An unexpected talent for deception made Roger extremely rich. Quitting his job, he set himself up as a business consultant, specializing in correcting problems no one else could solve. Using black magic, he summoned a host of minor fiends and sent them out on missions of industrial espionage. Invisible to all but their master, the devils proved extremely capable agents of destruction. And they cleverly disguised their efforts so they appeared to be the result of accidents or employee blunders.

  Needless to say, Roger’s corporation displayed an uncanny ability to spot and eliminate such troubles. Within a short time, his firm had earned the reputation as the company that solved problems no one else could handle. Within months, Quinn Enterprises had risen to national prominence in the consulting field, After a year, there were company offices in major cities throughout the United States. And there was talk of expanding overseas.

  Much of the work handled by the firm was routine and required no supernatural intervention at all. His competent and capable staff handled those matters. Roger reserved his demonic allies for special efforts.

  The invisible creatures made wonderful spies. They eavesdropped on confidential conversations and copied confidential documents with ease. Knowledge was power and Roger knew the secrets of most of the major corporations in the country. From such information came even greater wealth. But too much was never enough, and Roger wanted still more. It was a path that led to disaster.

  Seeking more powerful allies, one night Roger attempted to raise one of the demon princes of hell from the Bible. Unfortunately, he forgot that the names of most of the major devils from the New Testament were based on the titles of ancient pagan gods. Instead of raising a demon, Roger summoned the Crouching One, Lord of the Lions, a long-forgotten Babylonian deity.

  Not subject to any of the usual binding spells, the demigod frightened Roger. When it was accidentally freed from the magic circle holding it prisoner by an unexpected earth tremor, the being proved to be more trouble than he could handle. Roger reluctantly found himself serving the Crouching One in the demigod’s quest to rule the world.

  At the door to the travel agency, Roger once again muttered a silent prayer to whatever powers existed that kept the Lord of the Lions confused about the power of direct dialing. The ancient god still did not understand the modern world. Otherwise, it might realize that making reservations to Las Vegas didn’t require Roger taking an afternoon trip downtown to a travel agency.

  At times, these brief moments of freedom tempted him with the thought of escape. A quick drive to the airport and he could be in another country in a few hours. Roger strongly doubted that the Lord of the Lions would be able to locate him once he was a thousand miles away. He had plenty of money in bank accounts easily accessible throughout the world. His nemesis was woefully ignorant about branch banking. Still, two factors prevented Roger from acting.

  The first, and most important, were the marks on his elbow. The five spots were the fingerprints of the demigod, placed there when he first summoned the creature to the material plane. Roger remembered watching objects wither and age, then turn to dust, after being touched by the Crouching One. His was a grip that killed.

  At present, the Lord of the Lions needed him, and thus the spell of dissolution was held in check. Roger suspected any attempt to escape would result in the magic taking effect. He had no desire to be reduced to a pile of ashes.

  Secondly, the Lord of the Lions planned to rule the world. He was a ruthless, ambitious god. Forgotten and unworshiped for thousands of years, the demonic being possessed little of its original powers. Still, it schemed and plotted a return to greatness.

  Recognizing its limitations dealing with the modern world, the Lord of the Lions had promised Roger tremendous rewards for his help. Assuming that the promises of a part-God, part-demon could be trusted. Roger doubted the Ancient One’s word—but the thought of being absolute ruler of the United States tempted him more than he liked to admit. For there was the real possibility that the Lord of the Lions might prevail.

  The demigod’s first attempt at restoring its powers had nearly succeeded. A massive human sacrifice in Chicago had been thwarted at the last minute by a college mathematics student named Jack Collins, aided by several supernatural creatures. Collins had used logic and modern technology to defeat the powerful sorcery of Dietrich von Bern, Master of the Wild Hunt, and servant of the Crouching One.

  To Roger’s surprise, the Lord of the Lions accepted the setback with equanimity. Good always aros
e to battle evil. If the Crouching One symbolized darkness, then Jack Collins and his friends, under the guidance of Merlin the Magician, represented the light. The demigod had engaged in such battles before. It was confident, in the end, night would triumph over day. Roger wasn’t so positive, but his opinions didn’t matter. At least, not yet.

  As he pushed open the door to the travel agency, Roger wondered for the dozenth time why the Crouching One wanted to go to Las Vegas. The demigod had offered no explanation for its command and Roger knew better than to ask. The Lord of the Lions acted in strange and mysterious ways.

  As he explained his needs to the woman behind the desk, Roger mentally shrugged his shoulders. At the moment, the Crouching One was in control of events. Roger accepted that fact for now. But it didn’t mean he wasn’t planning to change things in the future.

  Ever since raising the Lord of the Lions, Roger had schemed to gain mastery over it. For all of its age and knowledge, the demigod possessed the personality of a strong-willed child. Roger felt sure, given enough time, he could use psychology to influence the Crouching One’s ideas. Lately, growing impatient with his servitude, he had begun investigating another method of attack. What could be summoned by black magic could be controlled by black magic. Or so Roger reasoned. All he needed was some time alone with his computer. And the black magic texts in his library.

  Jack Collins had been quite useful in that respect. The longer Collins and his friends held the Crouching One in check, the better.The Ancient One had a one-track mind. Worrying about the Logical Magician, it ignored the ambitions of its assistant. Roger smiled. His scheme was nearly complete. Another few days and he would once again be in charge.

  Arrangements for the trip took three minutes less than Roger estimated. He had six minutes to spare before returning to his mansion and the Crouching One. That gave him plenty of time to make the world a bit more difficult for his boss. He looked around the office, and noticed a bunch of flyers and cards about Las Vegas.