Terrors by Richard A. Lupoff Read Free Book Online Page B

unsurprised, and gave her own name. The two women shook hands. “You need clothing,” Nzambi said. “I’ll lend you some things.”
    Isabelladel Sueño thanked the other woman. “I want to get rid of everything they gave me. This garment. It stinks of those creatures.And these jewels.” She ripped a bracelet from her arm. It appeared to be purest gold, studded with emeralds and diamonds. She laid it on a tabletop.
    Soon the three of them sat at a low table sharing hot cocoa and sandwiches. Isabella del Sueño had told her story again,this time going into greater detail than before. The Crimson Wizard had examined the jewelry that the beautiful actress removed. He placed a coded call to a certain telephone number and described the gems and ornaments with which Isabella del Sueño had been bedecked. He listened in silence, then said, “They shall be returned in the morning.”
    He rose from his place and crossed the room. He twirledthe tumblers on a heavy safe and locked the jewels in it. He rose to his full height and said, “
Señorita
, as much as it would please me to entertain you, I’m sure you wish to return to your home and resume your career. You can board a train in the morning and be home in a few days. I advise you to telephone ahead and arrange for protection. We are dealing with evil forces here and they seem tohave chosen you for a special role. Do you recall, despite your drugged state, anything that they said to you? Either before you were taken to the riverfront building or while you were there.”
    The lovely actress frowned. “They didn’t really mistreat me. They seemed in awe. They seemed to know that my family were from Spain. That we are of royal Bourbon blood.”
    “They treated you, then, with thedeference due to royalty?”
    “Yes, but—something more than that. They seemed almost to worship me. And yet I felt that they intended me no good.”
    “You are a most perceptive woman,
Señorita
. There have been tribes who make gods and goddesses of mortals. They generally favor handsome youths and beautiful maidens. They dress them in finest raiment and shower them with luxuries. But then, when theircalendar so dictates, ‘when the stars are right,’ as they sometimes express it, they slay their deities. I’m afraid, if I hadn’t intervened, you were doomed.”
    “And you saved my life.”
    “For the time being. But those monsters made good their escape. I blame myself. I should have brought assistance and laid a trap for them, but I didn’t realize how serious the menace was. I thought at first thatwe were dealing with ordinary jewel thieves. Such was not the case. The gems and trinkets that they placed upon you,
Señorita
, are unimaginably old and incalculably valuable, but the gems are the leastof our concern. These beings are not human, not part of the natural order of our world at all. Their ancestors came from some malign locale beneath the sea. They owe allegiance to no wholesome ordecent god or nation but to the foul world from which they came.”
    The Crimson Wizard paced back and forth, halting at last before a tall window facing toward the Saturn River. A glow illuminated the night sky where flames leaped upward from the now-demolished, abandoned warehouse.
    “Someday,” the Wizard intoned, “someday I will penetrate to the heart of this foul spew. Someday they will be destroyed.They must be. The only alternative would be too horrible to contemplate. But the time is not yet.” With a bitter grin he quoted, ‘the stars are not yet right.’
    “Still,” and behind the shimmering scarlet swirls that hid his features he raised his eyes to the heavens, “still, they must not escape unscathed. They must be pursued and punished for what they have attempted and for what they have done.”

    The Wizard summoned a trusted female aide from the aircraft hangar. He instructed her to accompany
Señorita
del Sueño to an exclusive but inconspicuous inn where she would spend the