The VMR Theory (v1.1) (28 page)

“It is just a little fart’er,” Trixie said.

The path bent again with a last eastward course, and near the reeking summit, we came to a dark entrance. The sun, piercing through the smoke and haze for a moment, burned ominously, a dull, dreary red disk above us. The mountain waited, silent, folded in shadows. “I don’t see any tower,” Trixie said accusingly. “Did you bring tee street address?”

I stuck my head inside. “Hello? Is anybody home?” Trixie flicked on the flashlight that Cheeves had handed her, but it was cold and pale in her trembling hand and cast little light into the stifling blackness.

“Dam.” I took a few uncertain steps into the dark. “I wish we’d brought fresh batteries.”

The entrance led us into a long tunnel bored into the heart of the mountain. “Lava tube,” Trixie commented knowingly.

A short way ahead, the cavern floor and the walls on either side were rent by a great fissure. A red glare came leaping up, to die back again, and we were troubled by a rumbling noise from the depths of the earth below.

“T’ey should put down some carpeting, maybe a warm color to brighten tee place up.” Trixie dropped the kit bag holding her share of the truffles and pointed to a gaping gate of steel and adamant in the wall to our left. “I see an entrance.”

I pounded her on the back. “Hot dog! This must be it!” Past the gate, the cavern was filled with heat and red light. Rising up toward a ceiling hidden in the blackness above us stood tall pillars of black iron covered in graffiti like “This way to the diamonds!” and “Frodo lives!” From the cracks in the stone beneath our feet, we could hear the unearthly wailing of a punk rock band. I checked the magazine of the rifle Cheeves had taken from one of the Macdonalds and handed it to Trixie. “Smith must be around here somewhere. Hide behind these pillars. I’ll flush him out. When you see him, plug him. Okay?”

She nodded, brave, but obviously frightened.

I patted her on the shoulder. Walking around a couple of immeasurable pits and a chasm or two, I saw an eerie light and heard a familiar voice humming “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”

I spotted Smith just ahead of me, dumping some papers into a fiery crack from a beat-up old box labeled
Cox & Co., Charing Cross, London
in Victorian script. He was wearing a red jumpsuit. Beside him were two glowing braziers which periodically erupted in gouts of oily smoke, and a swimming pool filled with mounds of cash. There were a couple of skeletons propped up in the comer, although one of them still had the “Made in Taiwan” label tied to the toe.

Smith winked at me. “Hello, MacKay. I’ve been expecting you. Nice hat. Did you do something to your hand?”

“Never mind.” Curiosity got the better of me. “What’s going on here?”

“I was just cleaning up some old loose ends.” Smith dumped the remaining contents of the box into the fire. He also tossed in a bloody glove, a diagram labeled “Grassy Knoll, and about eighteen and a half minutes of old audio tape.” He dusted off his hands. “Then I plan to take a roll in the clover.” He gestured toward the money in the swimming pool. “I was a banker once, you know. You wouldn’t believe the things that bankers do with money when they’re alone.”

A little hunchback wearing a checkered suit, a red bow tie, and wingtip shoes came sidling into the room from a hole in the floor. He had red lips and slicked-down hair, and he was unnaturally pale. In the flickering light the lopsided expression on his face made him look like a rabid weasel. “Master, master, the prisoners are ready for you!”

“Thank you, Coleman. I’ll be down presently,” Smith replied, dismissing him.

I gestured. “What’s with little Igor, Gregorio? Are you auditioning for
Richard III?
“

Smith smiled indulgently and turned his head. “Oh, and Coleman?”

“Yes, master?”

“Please move your bicycle out of here. We have company.”

“Yes, master!!”

“And don’t ring the bell.”

“Yes, master!”

As the little dweeb scuttled off pushing his twowheeler, Smith explained, “Coleman is my accountant. Torturing prisoners is just sort of a fringe benefit for him. I suppose I could afford to let him go, but one must keep up appearances. So what brings you here to my humble abode?”

“Yeti’ve got my crew, Smith. I want them!”

“Tell me,” Smith chuckled, “did you recruit them all from the same institution? Harry is the one that interests me. He’s brain-dead, isn’t he? What do you use to make him move, little wires?”

“I’m serious, Gregorio. Read my lips—let my crew go.”

He stared at me. “You are serious. You actually want them back.” He tugged on his mustache. “I was thinking about keeping Harry for research—you wouldn’t happen to be running any experiments on him, would you?”

“Knock it off, Smith.”

“You’re becoming tiresome.”

“Face it—the party’s over. Your Macdonald assault battalions have been routed, and Mordred’s turned himself in. So it’s time to stop whatever it is you’re doing and give it up.” I paused. “What are you doing?”

“Preparing to move on to the next phase of my little plan. It’s a shame about Mordred. He was such a handy tool.” Gregorio reached down, opened up his briefcase and began rummaging through it. “Now, the next step is to do something about you. You’re a vampire, aren’t you?”

“We prefer to refer to it as McLendon’s Syndrome.”

“And I prefer to be called an entrepreneur. Let me just see what I have here in the way of nifty vampire banes. Ah, here we go!” He held up an item. “A cross!”

I folded my arms. “Nope. I’ve been to confession, and my conscience is clean.”

“Pity. How about silver?” He held up two ingots of the stuff.

“Sorry. It didn’t work for William Jennings Bryan, either.”

He put the silver down and rubbed his hands together. “Well well well. How about a nice string of garlic, then?”

The garlic worked. Between you and me, it’s difficult to be suave, sophisticated, and slightly sinister when you’re throwing up uncontrollably.

I wiped some of the tears from my eyes. “All right, Smith, why don’t you give up?” I practiced a few more dry heaves. “I’m still on my feet, and you’ve taken your best shot.”

“Not quite. Not yet, at least. I have one more item here, one you may recognize.” He reached into his bag and produced a large handgun. “This is a .55 Magnum, the—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know—the most powerful handgun ever produced.” I tapped my chest. “I’m a vamp, remember? You need silver bullets to hurt me.”

Smith strewed up his face and stared at me. “Ah, MacKay—”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t actually believe that crap, do you?”

“Well, not really.” I stared at the pistol. “This doesn’t look good.”

“It shouldn’t. I have Lindquist and the rest of your crew, and now I’ve got you.”

“Look, Smith, keep the girl and let me go.” I paused. “That didn’t quite come out right, but you know what I mean.”

“True. But now that I have the drop on you, I think we can come to an understanding. You may be surprised to learn that I’ve actually thought of a way I can use you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did it ever occur to you that you and Lindquist are sitting on a veritable gold mine, the original Fountain of Youth, as it were?”

“No, why?”

“And that you can share your source of youth with others—for a price?”

“What? McLendon’s? There’re a lot of drawbacks to being a vamp. Who’d be crazy enough to pay for the opportunity?”

“Hollywood starlets. They’re never out before dark anyway. Becoming a vamp is cheaper than plastic surgery. What better way to prolong a career?”

“You’re stark-raving nuts!”

He shifted the pistol to his left hand. “Imagine the possibilities. You and all that beautiful young flesh, wanting to be young forever.”

“I still say you’re nuts! Do you know the kind of nasty things people say about vamps?”

“Look at the cosmetics industry—it’s all in the marketing.” He grinned. “If I can sell tobacco, I can sell youth. Besides, there’s a certain chic in sipping blood, and most of the people I’m thinking of are pathological anyway, so for them, becoming a vamp isn’t much of a stretch.”

“Yeah, sure, everybody loves leeches and ticks. Smith, are you aware that only three percent of the population has a genetic predisposition for the disease?”

“What do you care? We’ll bury it in the fine print. All those little nymphets can take their chances.”

“Smith, why you are trying to be so nice to me?”

Smith stared at me with distaste. “I suppose I’ll have to level with you, then. I’ve consulted with my investment brokers. It seems that despite your intrinsic insignificance, you are a pivotal fulcrum upon which the course of future events hinges. If I waste you, there’s simply no telling what will happen.”

“Wow.” I thought for a moment. “Did they, uh—”

“Oh, no! Not at all. You know how close-mouthed commodities mavens can be. The most they’d say is that if I hose you, the Fed will almost certainly raise shortterm interest rates.” He paused. “I suppose instead of killing you I could simply bury you in some dungeon forever, but that’s so cliche.”

Trixie popped out from behind the pillar with a bewildered look on her face. “Ken!”

“A Macdonald. A cute one.” Smith winked at me. “You devil, you. What do you say? Starlets and models?”

“It’s not what you think!” I looked at Trixie. “You were supposed to plug him.”

“I pulled tee trigger, but tee gun did not shoot.”

“It helps if you take it off safety.”

“Ken, somet’ing is wrong,” she said despairingly. “Smit’, he is not human. He is-—”

Smith pointed a finger at her and she froze. “That’s quite enough from you.” He pulled the rifle out of her hands and tossed it on top of the cash in the pool. He looked at me. “She’s a telepath, isn’t she? Damn, they’re turning up everywhere. Hmm, I wonder what you’re thinking.” He gave me a look of intense concentration. His eyes bored into mine.

I concentrated on absolute nothingness. After a moment he shook his head. “The reception’s terrible. I’m not picking up a thing. And will you stop humming that stupid song about setting sail for a three-hour tour?”

“You can read minds, too, can’t you? What did you just do to her?”

“I grabbed control of her thought patterns. Telepaths are vulnerable to that sort of thing. Don’t worry—she’ll be all right when I turn her loose.” He shrugged. “I suppose my cover as a simple tobacco merchant is wearing pretty thin.”

“Yes. Now that you mention it, it is. She was trying to tell me that you weren’t human. What are you anyway?”

“I don’t suppose I’ll be able to get any cooperation out of you if I don’t tell you. Oh, well. Permit me to introduce myself.” He tucked the gun in the back of his pants and bowed. “Lucifer, Prince of Darkness, at your service.”

“Get out of here!”

“No, really! I am he, in this semblance of all-too-mortal flesh.” He reached out and shook my hand with a grip of steel. Then he took out his contacts to reveal two glowing red eyes. “My card.”

I took it from him. It was gold on black with Gothic lettering,
HIS INFERNAL MAJESTY, LUCIFER.
Easy credit terms arranged.

“Well, that would sort of explain the eerie music.” I handed the card back and gave him a fishy look. “I’ll bet you’ve got another card that says you’re a Secret Service agent. You mean to say you’re really Satan, the Devil himself? Enemy of mankind?”

“You’ve been reading too many press releases. Just think of me as the advocate for the other side, a defense counsel for evil, so to speak.” He pulled a slim, silver cigarette case out of his pocket. “Care for one?”

“Not on your life.” I went over to Trixie, who was standing like a statue. I pushed her limbs into place and sat her down on the steps. “So what’s the deal here?”

“Actually, a deal is what I had in mind, since I calculate that if I simply blast you into a heap of ashes, there is a seventy-four percent chance that it will adversely impact on my operations.” He removed a scroll of parchment from his left sleeve. “You don’t seem to scare easy, so I confess I came prepared to offer you the standard terms.”

“Like what?”

“A thousand years of youth, wealth beyond your wildest dreams, beautiful women, you know—the usual.”

“I already have the youth, for what it’s worth, as you so poignantly reminded me.”

“You vampires think you’re long-lived, don’t you?”

“Well—”

“You are as children beside one such as I, who witnessed the building of the pyramids and the fall of mighty Atlantis!”

“Can you really deliver lines like that with a straight face?”

“You bet. Pretty good, don’t you think?”

“You could sell aluminum siding. What, would I have to sign the thing in blood, or something?”

“There always something to be said for tradition.” Smith noticed the squeamish look on my face and hastened to add, “But if it’s a real problem for you, I’m sure we can work around it.”

“So what would I have to do in return?”

“Refrain from interfering with my plans, hypothecate your immortal soul, bow down and worship me, vote for teaching creation science in the schools. That sort of thing. You don’t sound all that interested.”

“I’m not, really.”

“I could throw in the lives of your friends.”

I shook my head. “For some reason, the deal still doesn’t sound all that great. Besides, I’d want Bunkie to look over the fine print for me.”

“Let me throw in a sweetener, then. You vamps occasionally have sudden bursts of hysterical strength, right?”

“Yeah, mostly around dinnertime. It’s great for opening jars:.”

“What if I told you I could arrange to make it a permanent thing? Think of the possibilities here—you could run faster than a speeding bullet, leap tall buildings in a single bound, fix traffic tickets.”

“You plan on throwing in a thirty-day money-back guarantee?”

“Aw, come on! What do you really want?”

“How about a cure for the common cold?”

“No, seriously. What tempts you? Gold, precious gems, thirty-year T-bills? Tell you what—I’m in a generous mood—I’ll let you have anything you want, except maybe a bank loan at two points under prime.”