She did so, and together they walked to the door, then stopped.
“Turn and face me, Angelique,” he ordered, and she did so.
“By the oaths and spirits which bind all and rule all, do you agree to come with me, without protest, without resistance? We do not ask that you convert, only that you no longer fight. Do you swear?”
She hesitated a moment and swallowed hard. “Yes. I swear.”
There was a sudden roaring of the wind outside as if the storm had returned, and it seemed to Mac Donald that it penetrated the room and made it chilly. It was gone in a second, and the Dark Man reached over, opened the door, then turned back to the man on the bed.
“Our one compromise is this, Mr. MacDonald,” the Dark Man warned. “You do not really figure prominently in our plans from this point. If you come again, there will be no one to save you.” And, with that, both he and Angelique stepped over the body of Maria, snoring on the floor, went out, and closed the door behind them.
He could feel the presence leave, feel will and strength coming back into his body. Suddenly he leaped up, ran to the closet and pulled out his rifle, then ran to the door and outside, almost tripping over Maria.
He shouldered his weapon and looked around, ready to kill even Angelique to save her from this fate, but there were no cars visible except the van and two others parked in front of rooms down the block.
There was a sudden, great flapping noise, as if some impossibly gigantic bird had launched itself into the air above him. He turned and looked up, and for a moment saw a shape there, a huge, dark, terrible shape of a creature that was more monstrous than he could ever imagine, rising with incredible speed into the night sky. Before he could react, it was gone in the clouds.
He lowered the rifle, cursed, and spat. He needed Bishop and Rook. He needed a drink. No, he needed a distillery. He suddenly was aware of the cold and chill and looked down. Before any of that, he realized, he needed some pants—if he hadn’t inadvertently locked the damned door behind him.
Poor Angelique! he thought sorrowfully. What will they do to you now?
13. A SMALL, DEVOUT BAND OF SCOUNDRELS
“Why is it,” Bishop Whitely asked grumpily, “that it is impossible to get a decent coddled egg in any restaurant in this country?”
“Because they ran away from home and mother when they were too young and turned their back on culture,” Lord Frawley responded. “On the other hand, why are the best restaurants in London run by foreigners?”
Gregory MacDonald smiled and shook his head, although he wasn’t in much of a mood for smiling. These two old men acted like doddering British codgers most of the time, and it wasn’t an act. It was just difficult to take them all that seriously, and they were at heart very serious men indeed.
“So he really said to you, ‘Why this is Hell, nor am I out of it?’ ” the Bishop asked between bites of toast.
“Or something like that. Why? Is it important?”
“It’s Goethe,” Whitely responded. “Faust. It’s what Mephistopheles tells Faust when they’re discussing the bargain and the demon’s pressed on just what Hell is like. He may have a point, too. This world is going to hell. You can see it, sense it, feel it.”
“It’s been going to hell since I was a boy,” Lord Frawley noted. “It hasn’t gotten there yet.”
“Ah, but that’s a relative thing. I’ve been studying the news since I’ve been here, and I’ve called in for correlations. Did you know, for example, that those grisly murders in San Francisco made page fourteen of the Chronicle and didn’t even rate a mention in the national news or in other papers? Not long ago that would have been headline news. Even Tass would have covered it as evidence of how lawless and savage and decadent the West was. Now it’s barely a mention. Single murders, ordinary ones, and most rapes don’t even get a line any more. Now people take it upon themselves to drive into crowds and play ‘smash the pedestrian’ in many major cities. It’s almost common. Serial killers used to rate big play—they’re still talking about Jack the Ripper, after all. Now there are so many that the media is hard pressed to come up with macabre new nicknames for them. Assassinations and assassination attempts are so commonplace it’s odd when there’s a day without one. No, Pip, it’s on the move.”
“Modern times, that’s all. It’s the price we pay.”
“No, there’s a pattern. It’s well distributed, and the incidents are almost geographically uniform and patterned out. The beast is loose. People are going mad in droves, and the rest of the population is increasingly terrified. Nowhere is safe. We’re being primed with violence.” Whitely paused a moment and looked over at Greg. “He didn’t ask you who the King was?”
“No, that was the most insane part of it. He as much as said that they let her run loose at least partly to expose the organization, yet he didn’t ask me a single question about it. It was as if it didn’t matter any more.”
“Perhaps it didn’t. Perhaps he already knows all he needs to know and has other plans. Perhaps he needs an opposition. Indeed, he may just have known that you don’t know who the King is.”
“But that’s just the point,” MacDonald said, slowly drinking his coffee. “I do know. And I would have spilled it, I have to admit. I would have spilled anything at that point. Until now, I’ve never really believed that somebody could be pure evil, but I’ve met him now.”
“Rubbish,” Pip sneered. “Evil is a relative term related to goals. This fellow had all sorts of electronic gimmickry to use and to disguise himself, but did you feel that he was supernatural, somehow? Or was he in fact a human being?”
“Well, Hitler was a human being, so I suppose it’s not too far off. Yes, I’d say he was human. He wears boots, anyway. I could tell by the sound when he walked out. He has that power—tremendous gobs of it—but you could tell he really hated to use it. He much preferred the pistol and the physical threats and torture. He was such an arrogant, totally self confident bastard that you wanted to strangle him, but he was a pro. He knew exactly what he was doing and what buttons to push.”
“After all she’s been through, though; to surrender that easily…” Frawley muttered.
“But that’s the point, isn’t it?” the Bishop responded. “I mean, he set her up for alternate rises and falls. He gave her physical freedom, but took away looks and communications abilities. He let her run free, even gave her a taste of power and killing, knowing that she’d be forced to give that up and lock herself in just to foil them. Then he lets her run, gives her plenty of rope—too much, as he admitted, a price of that arrogance and self-confidence—but at the very moment of consummation he appears to first show her closest friend in the world to be a Judas and worse, then to taunt her not with any more horrible things to her but rather to him, once she’s really committed herself for love. Considering her background, her extreme naivete, it’s a wonder she didn’t crumble before this.”
“Many brave men and women are dead because they preferred it to crumbling,” Frawley noted.
“But many more aren’t. The threat of death is still the strongest one. Consider—ask a group of women what is the worst crime that they fear and nine out of ten will say rape right off. Yet the vast majority of women who have been raped are still alive and even healthy. Why? They were given only two choices—the rape, which was incredibly repugnant, or death.
That’s the same principle the Dark Man uses. He finds the thing you fear the most, whether it’s death or perhaps paralysis and total helplessness, as in Angelique’s case, and he gives you two choices. Let your mind and body be raped at will by him, or choose what you truly fear the most. It’s quite effective, and it’s an old story. He’s just far better than most at determining your worst fear.”